Chris Branch

A music person first

Chris Branch is the creator and host of AI LIVE, the weekly live show that reviews the best AI creative in front of an audience that votes on every piece^[1]. Before AI there was music. He has said on AI LIVE that he was in a band, that he DJed and that he "toured for over a decade" (Ep. 110)^[17], and that he lectured in music and taught it (Ep. 106)^[13]. He has not named the band, the venues or the college on air, and the show's transcripts carry no speaker labels, so these details are his own account as heard on the show.

I come from an audio background, but I have arguments with film guys because my argument's always been that sound is 60% of what you're experiencing and 40% is the visuals.

Chris Branch^[24]

That background runs through how he judges AI work. "Audio just can make or break a piece," he said on Ep. 117^[20], and he still makes music: the drum and bass soundtrack to Seedily's World Cup flags film^[24], and an album called Game Over, which he turned into a dance game with Claude in October 2026^[27]. In January 2026 he said he was judging the music categories at the Bionic Awards^[13], and a month later that he had sat on the EDM music-video panel at the Chroma Awards^[15].

Seedily and the Coca-Cola moment

He co-founded Seedily, a generative AI creative agency, with Paul Parsons, its Creative Director and the producer of AI LIVE^[44][7]. The company was already trading at seedily.co.uk in 2022, as an archived copy of its website shows^[36]. He has said he got into generative AI that year through Disco Diffusion and then Midjourney, before ChatGPT launched (Ep. 107)^[14], and on air he has referred to his "big agency experience" before that, without naming the agency (Ep. 111)^[18].

On 20 March 2023 The Coca-Cola Company named four AI artists to kick off Create Real Magic, its platform built by OpenAI and Bain & Company on GPT-4 and DALL-E: Emma Sofija, Chris Branch, Paul Parsons and Ean Hwa Huang^[3]. Seedily says its relationship with Coca-Cola began with that first initiative, and that it went on to make hero visuals for the Create Real Magic campaign, including AI-generated holiday snow globes shown in Times Square and Piccadilly Circus^[7]. Its site quotes Pratik Thakar, Coca-Cola's Global Head of Generative AI, calling Seedily the company's "go-to team" for innovation, AI and creative technology^[7].

That year he spoke about the work in public. On 18 July 2023 he presented "Generative AI Coca-Cola x Open AI Campaign" at Digital Hollywood's online summit AI: Breaking the Net, billed as Managing Director of Seedily^[4]. At DO Wales 2023 he gave a DO Lecture, The Impact of Generative AI, billed as founder of Seedily and Artificial Inspiration; its pull quote is about how the tools let autistic people make and share art^[5]. DO Lectures also lists him as a guest of Tomorrow's World with Jon Kaye on DO Radio^[6].

As a result of these technologies, we now have autistic artists.

Chris Branch, DO Wales 2023^[5]

A LinkedIn chat room that became a show

AI LIVE counts its first episode as a LinkedIn Live on Wednesday 8 March 2023, "How's it growing? AI on LinkedIn"^[2]. It ran inside the How's It Growing? podcast brand, talking about generative AI for LinkedIn, agencies and marketing^[1]. Chris remembers it as "a weekly LinkedIn chat room that I hosted" (Ep. 121)^[22]; the event titles do not name a host until October 2024^[1][10].

From June 2023 it was Generative AI update of the week, a news round-up with live questions (Ep. 15 to 32)^[37]. In March 2024 it became In A(I) Nutshell, a live generative AI podcast (Ep. 33 to 46)^[9], and booked its first big names: Hedra's CEO Michael Lingelbach on 14 August 2024 and the AI filmmaker Dave Clark on 12 September 2024^[38][39]. A clip of Chris from a LinkedIn Live was later published on the In A(i) Nutshell podcast feed^[33].

On 3 October 2024 the name AI Live arrived: "AI Live via Artificial Inspiration / Chris Branch", every Thursday (Ep. 47)^[10]. On 10 April 2025 it became AI Live via Creativize (Ep. 69)^[11], with Andrew Davis named as co-host from Ep. 79 in June 2025^[40]. The show reached YouTube that autumn; the earliest stream in the channel's catalogue is Ep. 98 on 6 November 2025, where his lower third read "Chris Branch // Creativize Founder"^[12][8].

On 26 February 2026 (Ep. 110) the show went out as AI LIVE^[17], with a new intro he says was made with Seedance and "powered by Seedily" branding^[18]. A week later, on Ep. 111, he moved it to Tuesdays and repositioned it around the best uses of generative AI in advertising and marketing, because "advertising is just going crazy"^[18]. Since Ep. 116 it has gone out from 4pm to 6pm UK, after the audience asked for a slot that suits San Francisco^[41].

The vote

On 14 April 2026 (Ep. 117) Chris introduced "a brand new widget": a poll viewers vote in by typing one, two or three in the comments, for "Awesome!", "Ok." or "Not for me."^[20]. Since then the reviewed pieces have gone to the vote each week. The count is taken the way StreamYard's live poll takes it: every 1, 2 or 3 in YouTube chat or LinkedIn comments while that piece is on screen, one vote per person per poll^[42].

By Ep. 136, 248 pieces had been put to the vote across 19 episodes, and 2,442 votes had been counted on 227 of them, from Ep. 118 onwards: 1,786 for Awesome (73%), 471 for Ok (19%) and 185 for Not for me (8%)^[1]. Each episode page on this site carries its own scoreboard.

The point, as he puts it, is curation against the feed. "We want to be the anti-AI slop guys," he said on Ep. 110^[17], and on Ep. 136: "We showcase the stuff worth watching and that's not necessarily what algorithms are going to showcase to you"^[29]. On Ep. 135 he even had a Grok agent pick the running order, briefed to find "AI worth watching"^[28].

We showcase the stuff worth watching and that's not necessarily what algorithms are going to showcase to you.

Chris Branch, Ep. 136^[29]

The Creator Sessions

On 8 July 2026 he launched The Creator Sessions, long-form shows that take one leading AI creator's films apart with them, starting with Uncanny Harry^[30]. He has hosted all eleven so far, ten of them with Andrew Davis: Uncanny Harry, Gossip Goblin, Kavan the Kid twice, Albert Bozesan and Robert Sladeczek, Henry Daubrez, BLVCKL!GHT, Marco Magario, Afro Futcha, Karim Youssef and Phil Langer^[31]. The Gossip Goblin session, two hours after Pomegranate premiered, is the most watched AI LIVE stream on YouTube^[45][8].

Putting himself in the film

He tests new models on himself. When Seedance 2.0 arrived in February 2026 he showed three of his own tests on Ep. 110^[17]. For a fighting-game bout with Andrew he screenshotted a fight layout, had Nano Banana swap the two hosts in, and used that still as an Omni reference in Seedance through CapCut. For a sword battle with MetaPuppet he pulled a giant blade from a mountain rock and dragged it down a road at dusk, to see whether the model understood weight. For a video-to-video test he swapped himself and friends from his WhatsApp group onto real dancers in silver suits^[17].

His first question for any new model, he says, "isn't how good is its photorealism, it's how good does it adhere to styles" (Ep. 108)^[15]. On Ep. 135 he explained why so many creators now star in their own films: "You can get sign off. It's easy"^[28].

Music, code and Game Over

On 12 June 2026, Seedily released World Cup Flags Reimagined Through Real Landscapes, a 38-second film for MiniMax in which every nation's flag appears in its own landscape^[32]. Paul Parsons had the idea while photographing the White Cliffs of Dover; they turned it round in 48 hours before the opening ceremony, and Chris made the music, a drum and bass remix of the official World Cup song^[24].

On Ep. 133 (6 October 2026) he showed Game Over: he gave Claude Opus 5.5 one image, the vinyl cover art he had made for his album, and one of his new songs, then iterated until it became a 51-second dance game with five levels, sound effects and a GAME OVER screen^[27]. He sees code as the next medium for video: "It's going to be a fascinating future with code involved in all of this. And you need no coding ability" (Ep. 132)^[26].

Around the industry

He came to Ep. 98 "fresh from Adobe MAX"^[12]. In March 2026 he said he would host the advertising panel at a Bionic Awards event in London^[18]; he has also met Artlist's team in New York^[14], attended the Upscale conference in June 2026^[23], and in September 2026 brought Seedily and himself onto GenHQ's new creative marketplace^[26]. AI LIVE co-hosted the AI Commercial Meetup in London with Moonmax, Hailuo AI (MiniMax) and Raindance Film Festival^[34], and the show's newsletter and invites now run through Luma^[35].

His conviction, said in many ways over 136 episodes, is that tools are catching up with each other and taste is what is left. "Taste matters more than ever. That's the thing that I'm learning," he said on Ep. 112^[19]. And the humans should get the credit: "It's not the AI making it" (Ep. 118)^[21].

I'm getting quite passionate about how much we need to shout out the humans involved in this AI content. It's not the AI making it.

Chris Branch, Ep. 118^[21]