Taryn Southern
- Created the world’s first AI-composed album
- Built an audience of 1B+ views as an early digital creator
- Explores what AI, neurotechnology & emerging tech mean for human potential
Taryn Southern Speaker Biography
Taryn Southern is an award-winning storyteller and creative technologist exploring the intersection of emerging tech and human potential. Her groundbreaking creative experiments offer unique insights into how technology can help us unleash creativity, joy, wellbeing and productivity.
Originally from Kansas, Taryn’s first foray into entertainment began at 17 when she competed in the semi-finals of American Idol. In 2007, after obtaining degrees in journalism and anthropology, Taryn uploaded her first video onto YouTube.
Ten years and 750 million views later, this early YouTuber produced more than 1500 internet videos, at the forefront of the online content revolution. In 2007, she hosted and produced a TV series documenting her travels to meet her MySpace friends and uploaded her first viral video to YouTube.
Over the next decade, she created over 1500 videos garnering more than 1 billion views, served as an early advisor to YouTube, Google VR and Snapchat product teams, and consulted for companies like Conde Nast and Marriott on digital content strategy and narrative design.
In 2017, Taryn began experimenting with emerging technologies to push the boundaries of her creative work. She composed the world’s first AI album, which landed on the Top 100 US Radio Charts and received widespread media attention. She then combined VR, blockchain, AI and spatial computing to create an award-winning Google VR series, earning her the AT&T Film Award. Her directorial debut, “I AM HUMAN,” a documentary on brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, won numerous awards, and is now available on Apple and Amazon.
Since 2021, Taryn has served as Chief Storyteller at a leading implantable neurotechnology company, where she launched the world’s first BCI museum and oversaw communications strategy for two successful funding rounds totaling over $230M+. An advocate of women in science and tech, she has also angel invested in future-forward companies such as Oura, Etched, Extend Fertility, Vessel Health, and Forever Labs.
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Speech Topics
Limitless: Unleashing Creativity with AI
Pioneering content creator and award-winning AI artist Taryn Southern has worked at the intersection of transformative technology and storytelling for more than a decade. From releasing the world’s first solo pop album composed with AI to directing an award-winning film on the future of human and artificial intelligence, Taryn shares the key lessons for optimizing individual and collective creativity and demonstrates how you can use AI to craft powerful, imaginative stories.
You’ll explore:
Practical lessons for creating attention-grabbing, human-centric stories
The way to shape the future through messaging
The neuroscience of creativity and how to improve your storytelling AI
Superhuman: The Future of human & AI collaboration
Taryn Southern has always had a front row seat to the future. As one of YouTube’s first breakout creators, she helped redefine what it meant to be a storyteller in the digital age. Years later, she pushed new boundaries—releasing the world’s first pop album composed with AI, joining one of the world’s leading brain-computer interface companies as Chief Storytelling Officer, and creating a digital clone of herself. Then, in 2020, while facing cancer, job loss, and profound personal upheaval, Taryn began a series of unconventional experiments using emerging technologies not just to create, but to heal, rebuild, and reimagine what’s possible. In this session, Taryn invites audiences into that journey. Drawing from neuroscience, real-world applications, and her own lived experience, she shares mind-blowing examples of real-world AI applications that reduce friction, expands creative potential, and reignites the human imagination—offering a framework of personal transformation for both your business and life.
You’ll explore:
The way emerging tech can shape the future of work, play, and education
The neuroscience of creativity and the possibilities unlocked when human ingenuity intersects with AI
Practical insights to uplevel your life
Storytelling with emerging technologies
Scaling the Imagination with AI
