How Mixbook uses AI to tell real stories, with Andrew Laffoon

Your camera roll isn’t a memory system, it’s a backlog, and the bigger it gets, the harder it is to turn real moments into something you can actually revisit. Gary Pageau of The Dead Pixels Society sits down with Mixbook CEO and co-founder Andrew Laffoon as Mixbook hits its 20th anniversary. We dig into a question that matters to anyone who cares about photography, printing, or preserving family history: What makes a photo book feel like a story?

Laffoon gets specific about the real friction points that stop people from finishing photo books. Years ago, the problem was missing the right shots. Now it’s the opposite: thousands of images, multiple shooters, and no clear starting point. He walks us through Mixbook’s new Story Mode, an AI photo book workflow that starts with a prompt, interviews the customer to capture intent and tone, then proposes structure, selects scenes, lays out spreads, and writes narrative text that’s meant to sound like your voice. We also talk craftsmanship, why “the last five percent” is most of the work, and why AI has to feel helpful rather than generic, creepy, or oddly robotic.

Laffoon also discusses the market, too: who the “chief memory officer” is, why younger generations are printing more than you might think, and why the industry still struggles with awareness compared to TikTok and short-form video.