Not all work happens in writing. Teams that work with photos, videos, and audio need AI that works for them too. This is why, with Dropbox, you can search within multimedia content for key moments and important information—not just text.

In this episode, we talk with Appu Shaji and Hicham Badri, two Dropbox machine learning engineers who are part of the team that makes all of this possible. They explain how multimodal search works—from understanding the context of the initial query, to identifying objects and actions in complex scenes—and how they ensure those models work fast, even at Dropbox-scale.

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 Working Smarter is brought to you by Dropbox. Find, organize, and share your work—all in one place—with context-aware AI from Dropbox.

You can listen to more episodes of Working Smarter on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. To read more stories and past interviews, visit workingsmarter.ai

This show would not be possible without the talented team at Cosmic Standard: producer Ben Montoya, sound engineer Aja Simpson, technical director Jacob Winik, and executive producer Eliza Smith.

Special thanks to our illustrator Fanny Luor, marketing consultant Meggan Ellingboe, and editorial support from Catie Keck. 

Our theme song was composed by Doug Stuart. 

Working Smarter is hosted by Matthew Braga. Thanks for listening!

When AI is at its best, the conversations can feel uncanny—almost magical in their accuracy, relevance, and speed. For that you can thank the AI agents that work together behind the scenes to search, reason, and sift through all your content to get you what you need to do your job.

We talk with Jongmin Baek and Marta Mendez, two Dropbox machine learning engineers, about building conversational AI that's helpful, useful, and grounded in your team’s shared context, so you can spend more time on the work that really matters.

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 Working Smarter is brought to you by Dropbox. Find, organize, and share your work—all in one place—with context-aware AI from Dropbox.

You can listen to more episodes of Working Smarter on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. To read more stories and past interviews, visit workingsmarter.ai

This show would not be possible without the talented team at Cosmic Standard: producer Ben Montoya, sound engineer Aja Simpson, technical director Jacob Winik, and executive producer Eliza Smith.

Special thanks to our illustrator Fanny Luor, marketing consultant Meggan Ellingboe, and editorial support from Catie Keck. 

Our theme song was composed by Doug Stuart. 

Working Smarter is hosted by Matthew Braga. Thanks for listening!

How do you build AI that actually understands you and the work you do? It all starts with having the right context. 

We talk with Dropbox staff product manager Noorain Noorani and principal engineer Sean-Michael Lewis about the art of context engineering and how Dropbox connects to all the tools your team needs for work—so you get AI that works wherever you do. 

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 Working Smarter is brought to you by Dropbox. Find, organize, and share your work—all in one place—with context-aware AI from Dropbox.

You can listen to more episodes of Working Smarter on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. To read more stories and past interviews, visit workingsmarter.ai

This show would not be possible without the talented team at Cosmic Standard: producer Ben Montoya, sound engineer Aja Simpson, technical director Jacob Winik, and executive producer Eliza Smith.

Special thanks to our illustrator Fanny Luor, marketing consultant Meggan Ellingboe, and editorial support from Catie Keck.

Our theme song was composed by Doug Stuart. 

Working Smarter is hosted by Matthew Braga. Thanks for listening!

Modern work can be frustrating and chaotic—if you don’t have the right tools. From context engineering to multimodal search, go behind the scenes and hear how Dropbox engineers are building AI that actually understands you, so you can focus on the work that matters most.

If you’re new to Working Smarter, we’ve travelled from the F1 track to the bottom of a lake, and heard real stories from chefs, doctors, lawyers, and founders about how AI is helping them do more of what they love about their jobs. But in our third season, we’re talking to the people behind the tools—the engineers and product leaders building helpful, time-saving AI features into the Dropbox experience you already know and trust. You’ll hear all about their work on agents, inference, security, and, of course, how the people building AI use AI themselves.

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 Working Smarter is brought to you by Dropbox. Find, organize, and share your work—all in one place—with context-aware AI from Dropbox.

You can listen to more episodes of Working Smarter on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. To read more stories and past interviews, visit workingsmarter.ai

This show would not be possible without the talented team at Cosmic Standard: producer Ben Montoya, sound engineer Aja Simpson, technical director Jacob Winik, and executive producer Eliza Smith.

Special thanks to our illustrator Fanny Luor, marketing consultant Meggan Ellingboe, and editorial support from Catie Keck. 

Our theme song was composed by Doug Stuart. 

Working Smarter is hosted by Matthew Braga. Thanks for listening!

The world record for fastest pit stop—a mere 1.8 seconds—was set by the McLaren F1 Team at the Qatar Grand Prix in 2023. It’s an incredible feat of speed and choreography; a pit stop that fast can’t happen without a team of people operating at peak human performance. But as Dan Keyworth explains, AI plays a crucial role, too. As the Director of Business Technology at McLaren Racing, Dan is responsible for helping the whole team perform at their best—and that starts with having the right tools. Whether it’s the firehose of sensor data coming off a race car, video analysis of the pit crew in action, or marketing analytics for the next Grand Prix, AI helps the McLaren F1 Team make the right decisions—and make them fast.

On this episode, Dan talks about the importance of getting simple answers from complex data, how they use Dropbox Dash, and why we shouldn’t think of AI as labor replacement so much as laborious replacement.

You can learn more about the McLaren F1 Team at mclaren.com/racing/formula-1. And if you haven’t already seen it, be sure to watch their world record pit stop at youtube.com/watch?v=tRBOiq-Q6_s. Seriously, it’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it fast.

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Working Smarter is brought to you by Dropbox Dash—the AI universal search and knowledge management tool from Dropbox. Learn more at workingsmarter.ai/dash

You can listen to more episodes of Working Smarter on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. To read more stories and past interviews, visit workingsmarter.ai

This show would not be possible without the talented team at Cosmic Standard: producer Dominic Girard, sound engineer Aja Simpson, technical director Jacob Winik, and executive producer Eliza Smith. Special thanks to our illustrators Justin Tran and Fanny Luor, marketing consultant Meggan Ellingboe, and editorial support from Catie Keck. Our theme song was composed by Doug Stuart. Working Smarter is hosted by Matthew Braga. Thanks for listening!

Iain Thomas is a poet, author, and the Chief Innovation Officer at Sounds Fun—an advertising and creative agency that he co-founded with the belief that human creativity could be enhanced, rather than diminished, with the help of AI. It’s a realization that actually began to dawn on Iain a few years prior, after his mother died. He wasn’t sure how to explain death to his children, so he turned to an early version of ChatGPT for help—and was so impressed by the poetry of its responses that he came away convinced of AI’s immense potential as a thought partner for his creative work. 

On this episode, Iain talks about using AI to make more space for the creative parts of your work, and why, in a world where everyone has access to the same tools, it’s never been more important to lean into the skills, context, and experiences that make each of us most unique—and most human.

Learn more about Sounds Fun soundsfun.co

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Working Smarter is brought to you by Dropbox Dash—the AI universal search and knowledge management tool from Dropbox. Learn more at workingsmarter.ai/dash

You can listen to more episodes of Working Smarter on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. To read more stories and past interviews, visit workingsmarter.ai

This show would not be possible without the talented team at Cosmic Standard: producer Dominic Girard, sound engineer Aja Simpson, technical director Jacob Winik, and executive producer Eliza Smith. Special thanks to our illustrators Justin Tran and Fanny Luor, marketing consultant Meggan Ellingboe, and editorial support from Catie Keck. Our theme song was composed by Doug Stuart. Working Smarter is hosted by Matthew Braga. Thanks for listening!

Bespoken Spirits isn’t your typical whiskey distillery. Yes, they’re based in the American bourbon heartland of Lexington, Kentucky, and yes, they often make private label whiskeys for clients. But everything from how Bespoken Spirits distills their whiskey to how they market it is done with the help of AI. Jordan Spitzer, their head of flavor, can finish a whiskey in days instead of years—while precisely crafting its taste—using their machine-learning backed approach. And Wane Lindsey, their director of marketing, credits AI tools with helping his tiny team punch way above their weight.

The result is a whiskey that may not be traditional, but still tastes great—and in a fraction of the time it would otherwise take. That’s time they can spend on the creative side of their craft and the work that has the most meaning: building brands and bespoke spirits that people will want to drink.

On this episode, Jordan and Wane share how AI has helped them explore creative new ways to make and market whiskey—and why, no matter how smart our tools get, there’s still no substitute for human taste.

You can learn more about Bespoken Spirits at bespokenspirits.com

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Working Smarter is brought to you by Dropbox Dash—the AI universal search and knowledge management tool from Dropbox. Learn more at workingsmarter.ai/dash

You can listen to more episodes of Working Smarter on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. To read more stories and past interviews, visit workingsmarter.ai

This show would not be possible without the talented team at Cosmic Standard: producer Dominic Girard, sound engineer Aja Simpson, technical director Jacob Winik, and executive producer Eliza Smith. Special thanks to our illustrators Justin Tran and Fanny Luor, marketing consultant Meggan Ellingboe, and editorial support from Catie Keck. Our theme song was composed by Doug Stuart. Working Smarter is hosted by Matthew Braga. Thanks for listening!

Amanda Cupido doesn’t speak Spanish or French. But using AI, she and her team helped a global nonprofit make their internal podcast more accessible to as many employees as possible. Amanda is an audio producer and the founder of a production company called Lead Podcasting. One of her clients is a global nonprofit with over 35,000 employees—and not all of them speak English. So she made them a pitch: what if they added AI into the mix? They would make the podcast in English, and then use generative AI voice tools to translate it into Spanish and French—with a lot of human oversight, of course. Driven by a desire to use these tools for good, the goal was never to replace people, but to reach more people, and it worked.

On this episode, Amanda shows what it’s like—and what it sounds like—to make a podcast with AI that’s still human at its core.

You can learn more about Lead Podcasting at leadpodcasting.com

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Working Smarter is brought to you by Dropbox Dash—the AI universal search and knowledge management tool from Dropbox. Learn more at workingsmarter.ai/dash

You can listen to more episodes of Working Smarter on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. To read more stories and past interviews, visit workingsmarter.ai

This show would not be possible without the talented team at Cosmic Standard: producer Dominic Girard, sound engineer Aja Simpson, technical director Jacob Winik, and executive producer Eliza Smith. Special thanks to our illustrators Justin Tran and Fanny Luor, marketing consultant Meggan Ellingboe, and editorial support from Catie Keck. Our theme song was composed by Doug Stuart. Working Smarter is hosted by Matthew Braga. Thanks for listening!

Very few people get paid to visit shipwrecks—but for Stephanie Gandulla, it’s all part of the job. Stephanie is a scuba diver, maritime archeologist, and resource protection coordinator for the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary. The agency safeguards Lake Huron’s historic shipwrecks, many of which have yet to be discovered. That’s where Katie Skinner comes in. She’s an assistant professor at the University of Michigan and the director of the school’s Field Robotics Group. Skinner and her team have been developing autonomous underwater vehicles that can find new shipwreck sites, all on their own. For humans, a search is costly, time-consuming, manual work. But for AI? Skinner thinks it could help us find answers in a snap. 

On this episode, Stephanie and Katie talk about using AI to find shipwrecks in a literal lake of data, so that they can spend less time searching and more time exploring—as only humans can do.

You can learn more about some of the people and projects featured in this episode, including… 

• The Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary at thunderbay.noaa.gov
• Katie Skinner and the University of Michigan’s Field Robotics Group at fieldrobotics.engin.umich.edu
• Previous efforts to autonomously map Thunder Bay’s historical shipwrecks at theverge.com/2020/3/5/21157791/drone-autonomous-boat-ben-shipwreck-alley-unh-noaa-great-lakes-thunder-bay

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Working Smarter is brought to you by Dropbox Dash—the AI universal search and knowledge management tool from Dropbox. Learn more at workingsmarter.ai/dash

You can listen to more episodes of Working Smarter on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. To read more stories and past interviews, visit workingsmarter.ai

This show would not be possible without the talented team at Cosmic Standard: producer Dominic Girard, sound engineer Aja Simpson, technical director Jacob Winik, and executive producer Eliza Smith. Special thanks to our illustrators Justin Tran and Fanny Luor, marketing consultant Meggan Ellingboe, and editorial support from Catie Keck. Our theme song was composed by Doug Stuart. Working Smarter is hosted by Matthew Braga. Thanks for listening!

Ian Ramirez has spent his career finding innovative ways to make mouth-watering meals for clients—and one of his latest ingredients is artificial intelligence. As a chef, culinary consultant, and co-founder of Mad Honey Culinary Studio and Goods, he’s the guy that brands hire to get their product on restaurant menus, and make it look and taste good—whether it’s a sauce, syrup, spread, or spice. Ian uses AI to tackle the repetitive, time-consuming parts of menu planning for commercial kitchens, and help clients visualize new concepts before anything gets sliced or diced. It’s a tool that augments his creativity, he says, and makes prep less of a grind. 

On this episode, Ian talks about how AI is helping him and his team spend more time doing what they love: cooking and getting creative in the kitchen.

• Learn more about Mad Honey Culinary Studio and Goods at madhoneyculinary.com
• Learn more about Dropbox Dash—the AI universal search and knowledge management tool from Dropbox—at workingsmarter.ai/dash

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Working Smarter is brought to you by Dropbox Dash—the AI universal search and knowledge management tool from Dropbox. Learn more at workingsmarter.ai/dash

You can listen to more episodes of Working Smarter on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. To read more stories and past interviews, visit workingsmarter.ai

This show would not be possible without the talented team at Cosmic Standard: producer Dominic Girard, sound engineer Aja Simpson, technical director Jacob Winik, and executive producer Eliza Smith. Special thanks to our illustrators Justin Tran and Fanny Luor, marketing consultant Meggan Ellingboe, and editorial support from Catie Keck. Our theme song was composed by Doug Stuart. Working Smarter is hosted by Matthew Braga. Thanks for listening!