← The a16z Show
The a16z Show
Seeing The Future from AI Companions to Personal Software
00:50:20
Eugenia Kuyda, CEO of Wabi and AI pioneer behind Replika, joins Erik, Anish, and Justine to reveal how personal software will transform from a developer monopoly to a creative medium for all. She exposes why command-line AI interfaces are the new MS-DOS, explains how mini-apps will become as shareable as TikToks, and details her decade-long journey from training language models in 2012 to building the platform where your mom can create custom apps in minutes. Plus: untold stories from OpenAI's apartment days and why voice-only devices completely miss the point.
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- [00:00]
A
Right now, AI is just an app on your phone. It should not be that way. Sometimes you need to sort of go big or go home. Not having the balls to do that, especially in this current environment, you can suffer the consequences. There's a huge mind trap that exists among builders in the space where they somehow think that voice is the main interface. That's because they are somehow thinking about the movie horror all the time, but not in the right way.
- [00:25]
B
So you were true pioneer in the space before everyone else was doing it. Maybe just talk about your reflections of how that category has as you helped create it, and then how it's evolved.
- [00:35]
A
It definitely evolved. I've noticed it's pretty crazy. We had a very strong belief that it would happen, but we still were so surprised when it actually happened. I guess this was just. It just still felt like complete magic.
- [00:52]
C
Personal software is about to explode. From 20 million developers to 8 billion creators today. You'll hear from Eugenie Yokoita on how Huobi is building the YouTube of apps where anyone can create, remix and share software as easily as posting a video. We discuss why current AI interfaces are holding us back, how many apps will become the new social currency, and what it really means when software becomes ephemeral, personal and delightful. Let's get into it.
- [01:20]
B
Zhen. I'm excited to get into everything you're doing with Wabi, but first let's contextualize this a little bit. When you look back at sort of the arc of your career, perhaps the last decade, what is the through line, through replica, Wabi, etc.
- [01:32]
A
Oh, wow, that's a hard question. But I guess maybe the main theme is we're always early, sometimes a little bit too early, sometimes hopefully this time around the right type of early. But generally, yeah, I've started working on AI in 2012, so over a decade ago and was always fascinated by kind of the idea that you'll be able to talk to a machine, to have a meaningful conversation with a machine, but more importantly with the fact that that could influence your life in a really good way. And before that was really the focus was on these AI companions, AI friends that could really be there for you and help you live a better life, help you feel better. And now I guess it's just the same idea, but applied to personal software like can we build mini apps or software that will really help us throughout the day in a very personal way and we'll be focused on you, on helping you live a better life.
- [02:25]
B
Trace the journey of how you got excited about this new category and what you hope it becomes.
- [02:30]
A
I guess while running Replika, we always had these conversations with our users about what other products they use and how they use AI. And it always struck me as strange that they were using products like ChatGPT or Gemini Claude, but really they were mostly using it for very simple use cases, like they were using chatgpt just for search or to help them write something, help with homework or something else. And no one was really mentioning any of these exciting capabilities that we just kept seeing the models get. And so we felt like there must be an interface problem. When people look at a command line or a chatbot, they really just see search, writing tool. Maybe I can talk to this. But if you think about that's the affordance of a command line that really these are the main use cases. I think even recently ChatGPT OpenAI published one of those studies showing that these are in fact the main use cases for ChatGPT. I think a third of all of the use was around writing or writing help. And so that gave us an idea that there should be some next interface. There should be something else on top of this. There should be something more interactive, visual, simple, for everyone, me included, to actually discover these amazing use cases that all these models already have. And so we started thinking, we got obsessed with this metaphor that the current chatbots are really the Microsoft DOS era for AI interfaces, and that there will be some sort of a Windows macOS moment. And I think the confusing part for most people is that there is so much traction with chatbots anyway. Almost a billion people using these AI tools already, but they only use them for these kind of simpler use cases. And in order to unlock something else, you need a more exciting interface, paint.
- [04:17]
B
More of a picture of what the world will look like when this Windows or macOS moment happened. What will that look like?
- [04:23]
A
Well, I do think right now we exist in the paradigm of when I was growing up, we had TV and here you had maybe a few dozen TV channels. Back in Russia, we only had six TV channels. And so then of course, now TV still exists, but now we watch YouTube and Reels and TikTok, a lot of UGC stuff. And so I think the same will happen with software. Right now we're kind of stuck in this world where these few apps developed by professional developers. And then eventually, of course, we're going to move on to this new world where apps are built by all of us, for all of us, and maybe sometimes by AI for us. So if you think about it, the operating system of the future. You open it up and you see your regular popular apps you use all the time. Maybe it's X, maybe it's Instagram, whatever it is. And then you see maybe some cool apps that you discovered your best friend's using, or maybe you built for yourself, or you tweaked one of the apps you found for yourself. And then you'll see AI suggesting some apps for you. Maybe you're going to New York next week and you're into art. So it made an art show finder app for you, which is going to help you find art shows around the Airbnb you're staying at. So it's a lot more flexible, malleable, and very deeply personalized. Think of it as an operating system built on the platform of you and not on some random fixed context.
- [05:45]
D
Can you talk about that? We've always had this idea that software has to be durable because it's really expensive to make. And it seems really serious. What types of ephemeral software like the New York New York Art Gallery app do you imagine existing?
- [05:58]
A
Well, so right now we're already seeing, you know, some of our first users building very specific apps that would never exist on the App Store. They're just too small, they're too personalized, too niche. They don't have 20,000 features. Like someone built a motivational quote app that's only pulling from one particular show that I didn't even know anything about. But he's really obsessed with that show. And so he just wants that at 5:30am when he wakes up. I feel like people are building very particular things to fit their needs. Like for example, I was putting my kids to bed the other day and my daughter wants to play these puzzle games. When I tell her something, she's trying to guess what it is. And so we built a game very quickly where it's a puzzle. And then she sees four pictures, she can click on one. But she also wanted them to be about Princess Elsa and Princess Jasmine. And so we had to incorporate that. And so now she was so happy. Cause now she's doing these puzzles, learning something new. And then we change it to Italian. Cause she goes to an Italian preschool. And so this is another way to practice. And she's so excited. We couldn't put this thing away. And it took me two minutes to build it and then, you know, few seconds to tweak it versus going on the App Store. I don't even know if an app like that exists. And going through 15 minute onboarding pain again. Then it's not really what she wanted. There's no personalization there. So I think these are the use cases where something like that should happen. And I do think in the future I should just be able to say hey, I'm putting my kids to bed or it should know that context and just maybe suggest a few apps that are already pre built for me that I could use right now.
- [07:29]
E
It's funny, I just got a new iPhone and on the new phone I got to delete a bunch of my old apps because I like to start fresh and there were like probably over a dozen apps that I downloaded and in some cases paid for that I just totally didn't need anymore because I had built better versions of it on Bobby. Everything from like migraine tracking to like tracking restaurant recommendations to like a really hyper personalized notes app to special things around image transformation in a particular style. And I can imagine that will be true for a lot of people which is like in instead of having to find this long tail app that's running all these crazy ads pop ups all the time and is hard to use and is not personalized to you, you can just make exactly what you want on the fly and tweak it which is another really cool part of the product.
- [08:13]
A
I think this is what and I'm so glad to hear that you're using it. But for me that was kind of the product market fit with Wabi for me was around that where I found there were a few things I really needed. Wanted an app for to track my weightlifting very beginner level weightlifting workouts. I just figured out you gotta go up in weight. This is. I didn't know. How would I know a woman. Anyway, so I got this app and I was tracking it in app Apple Notes and I tried to find some apps on the app store and they're just. There's just so much in these apps that I didn't need and so I just wanted a really simple. I'm also trying to follow one particular book. I wanted the workouts to be based on that book. So anyway I built a simple app to track these workouts and then now anytime I go to the gym I built it on the way to the gym. But now anytime I go to the gym I find something else I want to add to it. First it was just the tracker, now it's generating new workouts based on all of my inputs where I am matt the book I'm trying to follow whatever the ladder technique of like progressive overload. And so I put it all in the prompt and every time I go to the gym, I add a little bit to that. I want a little more of this, a little more of that. So now I'm not just using the app. I'm kind of the constantly in the process of tweaking it and republishing it to Wabi, kind of mini app store. Hopefully someone will find it useful.
- [09:30]
D
How many people do you think? Or generally, as you think your audience, do you think it will be 90, 10 sort of consumption creation? Or do you think that most people. I think one of the things we saw with Sora, for example, is that many people, the majority of people are creating. Do you think that Wabi will be like that?
- [09:45]
A
I hope that more people will at least tweak, but I'd say like fully kind of original creators, probably still under 10%. And what we're working on right now, this week we're releasing, we're pushing sort of a big update, the social graph. So you'll be able to see who is downloading what mini apps, how they're using them. You're gonna be able to see comments or like mini apps. And so in this case, for example, if I created that workout app, someone in comments can ask me to tweak it. They can also remix it and change the app however they want. But maybe they just want this particular app to be slightly different so they can put in. And maybe as a creator, of course, I'm going to be reading all the comments, changing the app also for these people to be able to use it. So I think this is cool because it creates. All of a sudden, it's not just about building apps for yourself. It's really about discovering apps and finding what your friends are using, using these apps together and so on and so on, and even asking creators to change them in some particular way.
- [10:43]
D
Amazing.
- [10:44]
B
Anish and Justine, how do the categories or the topics that we've been discussing as it relates to personal software relate to themes that we've been exploring on the investing side in terms of what got us excited here?
- [10:54]
D
Yeah, I mean, look, I think that the YouTube metaphor is the right one that Eugenia outlined, which is that we would have said in 2007 that 100 cable channels is enough, or six in your case. And now obviously there's this entire ecosystem, everything from unboxing videos to all of the like very YouTube native content that exists. And I think people are sort of have more content, are more fulfilled by it. And then there's also the act of creation. Some people create for a business. But many create and post just because it's fulfilling to themselves. And software has just been so restrictive because there's only 20 million developers in the world. So in a sense all of the software that we consume is downstream of the preferences of those 20 million people. And it seems intuitive that if more people could make software, they would and that there would be a mass market consumer product here. I think unlike many of the other products, and you should comment on this that we've seen, it feels like this is not text to app, you know, it's not a developer or developer adjacent tool. It's truly a mass market consumer product for non technical people.
- [11:53]
A
I agree with you and we really made this kind of choice early on that we're never going to show any code or anything or say anything in the app that's even remotely technical. No API keys, no bring this, whatever, connect this integration or anything like that. We do have integrations. You can add your apps and services, but you can just say use my Apple Health or use this, use that or use my email. And we call them power apps. So that's sort of probably the most technical you're going to get here. But we wanted, so yeah, we wanted to make it super simple for anyone to make apps and to make this process very delightful and almost to feel like you're just creating something really quick. You're not even really building mini apps. What we're adding right now is more, I think the company of the product we're looking at most is Canva and the ease with which they're letting people create beautiful presentations. The similar kind of similar thing needs to happen here. Right now we're talking about Vibe coding a lot but I feel like we should be more about Vibe kind of taste around or Vibe designing these apps. So we're going to give a lot more of the just visual controls, more in the vein of like choose a style, choose some colors, you can go a little bit deeper but really it's just one button and things look great versus yeah, you need to go deep and just really try to understand what to do and get technical with your mini app. And I do think that unlocks a certain level of creativity where all you need to think about is like what's the use case. One other interesting thing that one of our investors Soleil mentioned was that apps, mini apps could become kind of community starters. So if today the App Store is very much not social and it probably won't ever be social because of the Apple's mandate for obviously privacy and how Important, that is, for them, which is great. But at the same time, you probably do want to know who else is into, I don't know, toddler activities in Petrarch Hill. I want to know what other moms are going to an Italian preschool. I want to have their kids go to that preschool. And maybe, I don't know, my design is really into bird watching in London, in his particular neighborhood. So creating that app and finding some other people who could be a little bit of a community building around that topic.
- [14:22]
E
Yeah, I think there's a bunch of really interesting choices you guys made in designing the product that it feels like really built on. The explosion in vibe coding, or building with AI, whatever you want to call it, in a super interesting way. One of which is like, yeah, for many consumers, the existing tools are a lot more accessible than coding something from scratch, but. But it's still pretty easy to like, break them or get to something where you don't know what to do. Whereas I think, Wabi, you've purposely put guardrails around the experience to make it hard to like, super mess up, which is actually extremely helpful for consumers. And then it also feels like, you know, we needed to move beyond this paradigm of like, great, you vibe code a website and it exists out there, but like, is that the best interface for you to be using a product you want to use daily and storing personal information on and having your own records and like, like all of these sorts of things? Probably not. And for a lot of people, like, their phone is where they spend most of their time online. It's kind of their primary interface and where they want to use things. And so obviously I know there's like challenges designing for mobile and that sort of thing, but it, it felt like a really smart choice for you guys to start there, just to get so much more deeply ingrained in someone's daily life or daily workflow.
- [15:41]
A
You know, I've only pretty much built mobile apps. Yeah, I really like the idea of mobile apps and a lot of things you're not going to be doing on really just putting in a website or whatever, some link. Exactly. And I do believe a lot in the concept of an organizational layer. Like, to a degree, the App Store is the organizational layer for the mobile and the browser, the organization layer for Internet. And so something like that should exist for coding, I guess, or for this new era of software for AI. Let's call it AI software. And I don't believe that people will be. I do believe that we're all going to be building some sort of software and using software that everyone builds some UGC software. But I definitely don't believe in links that people will share with each other. And with me, relying on some random person somewhere who's not a professional developer to support the database for the app where I might store some sensitive data, or at least data that I don't want to disappear, even if it's not very sensitive. And we've already seen this with some apps, Vibe coded apps reaching the top of the app store. I think the one around women dating, that all the super sensitive information got leaked and that wasn't because they are bad actors, it's just they're not professional developers. So there needs to exist some, some platform where everything will live. And to a degree, we're not watching videos somewhere, UGC videos somewhere, we're watching them on Instagram, on TikTok, on YouTube. It's not like people are passing around links. And so the current situation I do think is very similar to the very beginning of the Internet where people were creating personal pages with GeoCities and some other tools like that, which I don't remember very, very well because it was very little. But yeah, before LinkedIn, people were sending these links to each other. And of course now there's LinkedIn, there are certain guardrails. You can't really do everything the way you could do in geocities, but at the same time, you have to get the social graph. You get the platform, you get all sorts of cool things there. Gets the same as Shopify for E commerce. Yeah, you can build your own online store, but no one's really doing it anymore. Everyone's just using Shopify and then they also get all the platform benefits. And I feel like the same will happen with Wabi. Yes. Cannot download an app from Wabi and put it on the app Store, but you can use it inside Wabi and you can get the social graph and all the integrations and the potentially the shared context between all the apps and the memory behind, you know, for, for, for that user and so on, so on, so on.
- [18:19]
B
Our mutual friend Heaton said that Wabi is not just a collection of apps, it's a framework for memory, context and expression. Every time you create or share, you're teaching it who you are. Is that how you see it?
- [18:31]
A
I believe in it 100%. I think with every. I believe I still remember, of course, and you guys obviously remember too. But I do remember how the first iOS apps were just people trying to squeeze those websites into an app format or just kind of toy apps like Ibear or there was my favorite one, I am rich, that was $999.99. And it didn't, it didn't do anything. And then of course people figure out, well, you know, there's something special about this being a mobile app and maybe GPS and connectivity and things like Uber and Tinder came out a whole new categories of apps and so they figured out what's so special about mobile. And I feel like for AI, the super special thing is personalization, but really deep personalization. So for me, kind of vibe coding an app, but that still is sort of like the same old software that's not really taken any of your context into consideration, where the data of that app is not exposed to AI that keeps learning. It's kind of just old school. I do believe a lot in Andre's idea of like software 3.0, some next level of software that's super deeply personalized. So if you think in the context of a Wabi mini app, how can you personalize it? First of all, you can personalize the features, the looks, you know, whatever, skin the app in a certain way. But then on top of that, you can also change the prompt. So for example, for my workout app, I added to the prompt a couple things. First of all, the book that I'm reading that that method that I want to work out using that method, also the fact that I go to as a fitness and it has a certain, I added a photo of that gym. So kind of the model is not generating workouts in a completely different size of the gym. If it's a superset, it has to be next to each other. So this is the deep, deep, deep level of personalization that is following. And of course on the Wabi platform level, the mini app also knows that I'm a certain age, that I live in San Francisco, that I have kids, these are my fitness goals, and so on and so on. And then eventually when I build another mini app, maybe around nutrition, those apps should be able to talk and pass along that context. And today of course, all of that exists in just the, you know, the walled gardens. You're fully locked in in one app, which to me feels absolutely crazy. And I can connect, if I connected my email or my calendar, it can be connected to both of these apps. I have to go through the process with every developer all the time. They have to build it, I have to connect it. That seems crazy too.
- [21:05]
D
Do you imagine people building true social apps where the in app experience involves a community?
- [21:13]
A
I'd love that. And we're. We're building multiplayer right now as we speak. We spend the whole day to try to figure out like what. It's really complex just because all apps can have very different type of multiplayer and that needs to be explained to users as well in a very intuitive way. But yeah, totally believe in, first of all, using apps together, at least with your friends, your family, but also potentially building these more kind of community apps where everyone can join. Maybe I can make my app multiplayer and open for everyone to join. A good example of that is made some image gen app around dogs where you can turn any of your dogs into like a royal. Some user built in. It's like a royal portrait of different era. And so that would be cool for all the dog owners to just join that app and to be able to post to the universal feed. And so that's something we've been talking about today because this would be really cool. Instead of you just making these photos and then sharing somewhere, you're just adding them to the ongoing feed of dog photos. Sorry.
- [22:16]
E
Yeah, there's a. I mean, no, no, I think it's a great example.
- [22:19]
A
I.
- [22:19]
E
Well, yeah, I'm definitely.
- [22:20]
D
I mean you're talking to my exact dog.
- [22:23]
E
But I feel like there are so many examples too of image and video prompt sharing that happens in very unoptimized ways today. Like I've been following a lot, as you know very well, like teen girls and college age girls are often early adopters of stuff and they have been making all of these like Nano, Banana and Quinn image edit prompts of like, like lying on a couch and the ghost face killers behind them for like Halloween and the. And they'll like post the image on TikTok or wheels or wherever and it will blow up. And then they'll be like commenting like this long form prompt like in the comments on TikTok, which makes no sense as a way to do it. And then everyone's asking like, where do I go to do this? Like I have the Google app, why isn't letting me do this? And you have to explain like, no, you need the Gemini app. And it just feels like there's already this consumer demand and consumer behavior around like prompt sharing in particular for creative stuff that could be done. I've already made a bunch of Wabi mini apps for this and it could be done so much better and I think the creative community would really thrive with this.
- [23:25]
A
Oh, that was the most. And I guess this is why we started the company. How is it possible that we have this godlike technology, yet we pass around these text prompts, which is almost like Microsoft DOS commands, but worse because at least the commands were. It was like sort of like you could learn them. There were a few, whatever, like they were short, they weren't that long, and now these crazy unstructured paragraphs of text. Sometimes you also need a reference image or something else. To me, that's a little bit crazy. And I think that is kind of one of the biggest problems with discovery, with AI, it's hard to find these prompts even if you saw the output of, you know, you saw this cool photo with the Ghost, whatever. But then how do I recreate that? I need to find the prompt, I need to know what app I need, I need to know what model to choose. Oftentimes it's not even very intuitive. And at that point I've just lost all my motivation to do that. Instead of that, if you could just quickly, you know, click on the link in comments on TikTok and open a mini app where everything's already set up for you. Just add a photo and you can see examples, you can choose different styles and this and that, and then you can see in comments what other people are doing. I think this is the way to go. And I think what's most interesting, that it sort of combines the vibe coding apps, one of the biggest kind of trends of the last year at least. And also just using AI before that it was all, you know, it's either the are you in the text to prompt to app market or are you in some other market? And this kind of puts together like this is really the one place to use amazing prompts or. And it kind of blends this difference.
- [25:06]
D
How much, you know, it's interesting you mentioned, Justine, that it's a mass market consumer behavior or maybe like a future one to be sharing prompts this way. How much do you think for the average person whose only AI experience has been with ChatGPT, that this is going to be a surprising new behavior that they have to sort of adjust to or something that feels very intuitive and obvious and like, wow, I've been waiting for this.
- [25:27]
A
I hope it will be easy because in the end of the day, it's just a mini app. It's just the app graphic user interface. So it's something that we're all used to. You don't need to learn how to use these new tools. I'd argue it's harder to use a command line because you need to know, well, do I copy paste the text here. Do I add an image right here with this prompt or do I edit later? It becomes a little bit more. It's too loose. There are no guidelines, but everyone knows how to use apps. And to a degree, a lot of these kind of thin rappers blew up at some point. Like Prisma was one of them or Lensa where it was just like change your photo into some avatar. Some headshot apps I do high school yearbook, high school yearbook, clutch. But a lot of, you know, they're awesome. But again, there's a reason why apps like that gain traction and not, you know, people just passing along this, this prompt because again, it's too high. Whenever there's the motivation is not too high. This amount of friction just kills all of my mojo. I wake up in the morning, I'm on Twitter or Reddit and find all these cool prompts. I'm like, I gotta try it. And then I'm like, oh, copy paste. It didn't really work. Whatever, I forgot about it. So that I think is something that at least we're super excited about. And it's not about just image and prompts, but also some cool text prompts. Like people come up with all sorts of cool stuff. There's, there are millions of people in the subreddits like chatgpt prompt genius, which I love those. Sometimes you can find some crazy stuff in it, but you would never even know that this could be a cool way to use ChatGPT unless you found it there. Like, for example, someone made a fantastic prompt to analyze your blood work. But again, I don't even at this point remember what was and how I'm going to find it.
- [27:17]
D
Right?
- [27:18]
A
Versus I could just download a mini app from Wabi and kind of keep it in my health folder.
- [27:24]
B
On the investment team, we've said that there's, you know, the world has 1% of the software that it needs and that the rest is going to be built in the next five years. So let's give an example or say more about what that looks like if we're 100xing the amount of meaningful or impactful software.
- [27:41]
A
Well, I don't know. I guess I'm always going back to how magical YouTube felt in the very beginning and all of these platforms where it was all really about just creativity and very raw, you know, sometimes weird things like putting a home tape, whatever home video on online for TikTok. I still remember all my, you know, young, whatever friends, younger kids, lip syncing to different music and how weird it was and felt like A toy and then all of a sudden became really, really huge. And I think the same will happen with, or at least we hope that the similar, a similar trend will happen to Wabi where in the beginning maybe a lot of that will look like toys or something very simple, very kind of funny almost and innocent and then eventually can grow into a much larger platform. But I guess if you think about it like, like today we just treat apps as software, but what if apps, we could treat them as content. If I'm a health influencer or Fitness influencer on TikTok, maybe I should put out, here are my five mini apps in Wabi build that are kind of showcasing my fitness protocol. Get them and maybe there's a way to monetize it in some way. Maybe it's a way for that fitness creator to create more content that's now useful. Right now people sell courses and stuff. Instead of that. I think a mini app could be much better. And then people can be talking about that in the community in the comments section. Again, this is a start of some community. People are working out together, people are doing something together. I do think we'll see just a completely different type of software. Not just apps, not just stale fix apps, but more content, community build, community starters, conversation starters and just fun little toys.
- [29:35]
D
Do you imagine like a creator class, a kind of professional class on Wabi?
- [29:39]
A
Oh, a hundred, you know, yes, of course. I do believe that ideally this should happen if we're really thinking about as YouTube. That's sort of the last frontier at this point. Creators can make their own professional content, they can make videos, they can make shows, they can write, but they still cannot create software. It's still really not happening. But any, anyone and especially small niche creators should be able to afford to create for free any software for the their fans. And that's what I'm really, really looking forward to.
- [30:13]
B
I've been struck that by the idea that, you know, Mr. Beast, the biggest creator in the world, is such a close connection with his fans. They do anything for him and the thing that he makes is chocolate. Like that's the thing, the thing that he chooses to do. That seems like the best monetization and it just feels like this is yet another sort of, you know, type of offering that creators can provide to be, you know, have a closer relationship with their fan.
- [30:35]
A
Exactly. And if you think about it, just even the style, like I would love, like certain designers, I want their apps that they build because I'm sure they're going to build very beautiful apps. And I want to look at them and even if it's the same functionality, the same whatever, Pomodoro timer, but I want their take on it and so on. I think this. There's so many different groups and niches that. And it shouldn't all just be about monetizing. It's really just about different styles, different outlook on life, the world. And that is to me is very, very interesting. I'm a huge user of Reddit and I find it very exciting because people just join around certain interests and that doesn't happen on other platforms really that much. So that's something that I'm excited about to hear as well.
- [31:26]
E
Yeah, I think from the creator perspective, one of the weird things about. And we're all kind of content creators in various ways and put out content and one of the weird things about that I think is you often, you don't really know, like you see how many impressions it gets, but you don't know if those are bots. You don't know how many people are actually like using the prompt you posted or watching the full video or whatever. And I think that is going to be like even beyond monetization. That part of Wabi where like you can see, see what someone else has done or created or accomplished or whatever with the prompt you wrote or the app you made or the thing that you developed will be incredibly cool. Not only for existing creators, for who it's really obvious I want to do this, but also for people who are not creators today, but who have really interesting ideas and just like no way to build their own mobile app, get it approved in the App Store, ship it, like distribute it, that, that whole type of thing.
- [32:17]
A
Yeah, like what other new class of creators could be. Yeah, that's why in our style, like in some of our communications, we' also trying to, I guess a little bit nostalgic about those early days of the Internet and just being weird and staying weird. Right now a lot of the video platforms are very polished and very commercial. You don't even see your friends anymore. You don't see that much weird content. You just see very curated, polished stuff. But with many apps, with software, I guess we're just entering this new era of just tons of really weird and fascinating new mini apps that wouldn't even could never exist because they wouldn't be enough of a business on the App Store.
- [32:59]
D
Right, right. Well, speaking of the early days, should we talk a bit about replica and kind of your history in the community?
- [33:06]
B
Yeah, maybe we'll just. So you were A true pioneer in the space before everyone else was doing it. You know, you mentioned 2012. Maybe just talk about your reflections of how that category has as you helped create it and then how it's evolved.
- [33:23]
A
It definitely evolved, noticed. It's really crazy. It's wild because we were thinking about recently, just talking to one of the early employees of Replica that we had a very strong belief that it would happen. But we still were so surprised when it actually happened. I guess this was just. It just still felt like complete magic for me. I got into it because my friend worked at Google DeepMind in 2012 and so he came to me to tell me about Word2Vec and kind of the first technology to translate words into vectors and to be able to actually do something with words. Before that language was just this whole separate almost thing that computers could not interact with. But now all of a sudden they could. And to me, I grew up reading Wittgenstein, so for me it was like, well, the limits of the language are the limits of my world. So I felt like, oh well, that's insane. If the computers learn language then they'll learn about the world. That will be, they'll be truly smart. That is the future of artificial intelligence. And so that's also imagenet just came out. So we saw all these new models around image recognition and we felt like, well, we got to start a company focused on language models, focused on dialogue generation. But of course there were no papers around it at all and no known algorithms or anything. Built models really back then there was nothing. So we just focused on building some technology to build chatbots using whatever the. Trying to build some language models around that. And then of course 2015, the first paper came out of Google by Cochlear that actually showed off the first deep learning model applied to dialogue generation. And they didn't publish any models back then. So it was all about just kind of reading the paper and seeing some of the obviously cherry picked results and trying to replicate that. And when we saw that in August 2015, we just basically put all of our bet everything we had at the company on building those models. We said, okay, well this is it, this is right on the corner. We need to really focus on building these language models, getting the first generative AI product, Chatbot out there, which we did with Replica, but it wasn't around the corner, it was like seven years away. And then we just had to survive for long enough to actually get to the first transformer models. And then of course I think the next magical moment Was the Mina paper also out of Google, with the first Transformer model. And then I remember in 2020, we got invited by OpenAI to go see GPT3 before, you know, API to partner up with them, to be one of the first partners for GPT3 API to launch. So we came to the office and Mira, who back then was actually leading partnerships and Sam showed us GPT3. And I remember that was just. I was floored. It was insane. Just to. Before that, if you think about it, we had to train every model. We had to create the specific data set. If you wanted to train a dialog model, you have to have tons of chat data. You would train the model and the model could only do dialogue. But with GPT3, it was the first kind of zero shot, few shot model where it could do anything. It didn't just have to respond in a dialogue format. You can tell it well, write a tweet like Sam Altman or write the tweet this or translate and it would do that. And so that felt absolutely magical. And we were one of the first partners of OpenAI GPT3API. And they. It was still crazy because we still have a Slack channel where Greg Brockman is training a model for us, which now feels just such a amazing, weird reversal.
- [37:11]
D
Do you still have the model?
- [37:16]
A
I think it was a fine tuned da Vinci for replica, but we were the biggest customer in terms of API calls because we were the only chatbot available in the market that actually used generative AI. And now it's weird to think about it, but back then all the big companies were scared to put out generative AI products because Microsoft TIE happened and it turned into some Nazi chatbot in literally an hour. And so everyone else was too scared to put them out there. So we were sort of the only ones for so, so long until OpenAI had, you know, put out their ChatGPT and kind of changed history with that, of course. But it was crazy because before that we literally owned all the keywords like AI, chatbot, artificial intelligence on every single platform. And then we also owned like hundreds of AI domains which I just let expire because I felt like no one wants them. They're not even on any of the big domain platforms. And then recently I went to see what AI domains are still available that are still just regular words. And the only words that are available are like vomit AI and Iraq AI. Oh my God, this is so upsetting. Naming Wabi because of that was pretty hard. Yeah, so that's kind of the evolution from my Perspective.
- [38:38]
D
You told us a story at dinner about the time that you'd spent in the OpenAI office. Maybe talk a little bit about that when you guys were working out of there, what it was like, what the energy was like, what were the expectations of the team?
- [38:50]
A
I think that, yeah, so when. When OpenAI started was kind of out of YC, it was YC research. So they were doing a few. I guess you remember they were doing a few different research groups, one on ubi, one on AI, some other ones. And so because we were YC company and they let us come, they were very generous with their time and they would let us come to back then Greg's apartment where they were headquartered, I would say, and they would let us come with a couple other companies that were doing AI at YC to ask questions, learn from them and just talk, maybe exchange experience on what we're building. So we would come to that apartment and ask all the questions. Usually it was Ilya and Andre and some other people. And that was absolutely incredible. We were, of course, absolutely starstruck and super happy to be there, Just so grateful for the opportunity. And then they moved to their office and we would go there as well. And very quickly they stopped working on language models. And we were very upset because we really wanted to continue going there, but they didn't want to talk about any language models because no one was really working on them. And that made us feel very strange because we were so set on continuing believing in language models. But they completely moved away to shift it to playing video games and all of these kind of agents kind of rebuilding the worlds and agents in those worlds, reinforcement learning for that and all these other interesting things. And I guess the only person for in the beginning it was kind of Alec Rutffer continued to work on language models. So we had an opportunity to ask him some questions. But. But yeah, of course, that was. It's just wild to think that because when we were going to OpenAI, of course they were superstars even back then, but still it felt like such a small kind of research group that is trying to do something interesting. Of course, now to see it become one of the biggest companies in the world is absolutely wild.
- [40:57]
D
Well, it's interesting because Andrej said on the recent POD that the entire video games direction was an incorrect direction. It was incorrect research direction, and they probably should have stuck with language. So you guys were right.
- [41:10]
A
Well, being right is not always like, you gotta be right, but also execute. I think to a degree. We were really invested with Replica in building Language models. But at some point we just required a lot more capital to do that. And after being, after working on that for so long, at that point we just got, got really into just revenue maximization at some point because a little bit got maybe scared. We're like, well, we didn't have the balls to say, okay, well we need 20 million and we'll build that model even. Although that was our discussion internally right after Mina paper and so on. You just need to get a lot more money. If you think about it, with Replica, we only raised $11 million and I guess it's still all in the bank. And we went for many, many years and built a big business. But of course this is in hindsight a very interesting lesson that sometimes being very nimble and very kind of scrappy and very profit oriented is great, but you can miss out on almost like a generational chance. And I'm not saying even if we bet on it, maybe we would have not built it. I would never compare myself to the geniuses that actually did it. We probably were not the right people anyway. But still the lessons I think still stands. Sometimes you need to sort of go big or go home. And not having the balls to do that, especially in this current environment, I think you can suffer the consequences.
- [42:44]
E
One of the things we say on the consumer team is consumer behavior, especially new behavior, cannot be predicted. It can only be observed. I think you are actually one of the few people that is not true for because you seem to be able to predict consumer behavior. Like you've been so early to a number of these things. And I think just every time we talk to you, you seem to have an eye on not only like what's going on today, but like what the next thing should be is that like, how did you develop that sense? I guess I'm sure a lot of people would be curious to know.
- [43:14]
A
I don't know if I have that sense. I only have like a couple ideas, but I really believe in them deeply. And then I go really deep down the rabbit hole. I start thinking about it and. But I do think that I do have a lot of. I do have a background in journalism and pretty much the whole. I grew up dreaming of being a journalist. My first job was 12 years old working in a newspaper. I was an investigative journal reporter for a while. And the one thing I loved about is being able to go and talk to people and to really, really try to get to know them and live their lives. And so for that you sort of have to have a lot of Empathy and just trying to real and curiosity about people. And I think today what I'm seeing with AI especially it's being built by a very specific type of person personality. It's oftentimes these savants this like brilliant geniuses, physicists, mathematicians, and they're insane in building algorithms and math and kind of scientific breakthroughs, but they usually lack on the human empathy side. That's just kind of how it is. Meanwhile, I'm the opposite. I'm a dumb dumb when it comes to science. Coming from a family of physicists, they were always like, oh my God, like why can't you be smart and also go study physics? But I couldn't. But at the same time I'm just really interested in human condition, what people are doing. And just seeing my mom trying to understand how to copy paste a prompt from Reddit, it was such a foreign idea for her to her. And I realized like my mom is very savvy with computers. She's always on her phone, she's always on her laptop, but somehow she can't crack that. This is just do. It's just not user friendly enough. And kind of understanding those concepts and I think was really what led us see kind of come up with the idea for Wabi and the same goes for replica. Just traveling around and talking to people and seeing how much loneliness there is and how much people just want to be able to tell someone what they're going through and how few people are able to listen. And I think that realization that maybe an AI is not can't talk well today, but it could listen, that that could be a groundbreaking thing for millions in the world. So I think this is kind of what just allows me to have a slightly different angle at the same problem.
- [45:38]
B
If you wanted to speculate on the future of like hardware, like what is sort of the that hardware or just like like you know, five, 10 years, what is going to be the interaction? Like how are we going to be be interacting with these applications?
- [45:54]
A
I do have a few ideas around hardware and I'm not a hardware person at all, but I'm a hardware user like all of us, so I get to have opinions. I think, I think there's a huge mind trap that exists among builders in the space where they somehow think that Voice is the main interface. It's like the best ultimate interface. And I, I think that's because they are somehow thinking about the movie her all the time, but not in the right way and kind of missing the whole point of the movie her that yes, Voice Was amazing in that movie because it was Samantha Johansson constantly heavy breathing his ear. And that totally worked. You didn't even need to see anyone. In my case, that's why that worked. But if you really think about voice interfaces, they're just so, so imperfect. You can't use that device if you're laying in bed with someone who's sleeping. You can't use it in a crowded space. You can't use it at the office. You can use it even walking around. It's a little bit weird. And so all of a sudden you're betting everything. There's a lot of people trying to build voice only devices. In my case, completely wrong. It can be a fantastic extra way to interact with the computer. But every single Alexa right now is like 75% of them are being shipped with a screen. Because even if I'm setting a timer when I'm cooking the proverbial voice use case, even then, sorry, I need to see the timer. I'm not going to be asking, hey, how much, how long left? Every second. This is just strange. And so I think this is kind of the biggest mistake in my view is trying to ship these screenless devices. I love screens. I think there's no way with voice to solve for discovery, for productivity. I would hate if, you know the worst thing with voice and the iPhone is reading out push notifications, text messages that are coming. I'm like, please shut up. It's horrible. It's very hard also to turn it off. If this was just being. You want productivity, but you don't want it to be read out loud in your ear because this is just this very slow way of getting information in your brain. So anyways, I think this is kind of the biggest mistake I would not ever make as screenless device. In fact, I would make it very much screen first device. But I do believe that the AI device is not about a voice driven thing. It's more about building this AI first operating system. Having all the models run locally as well. I think that there's a lot in that, like building truly an AI first smartphone and, and not today. Kind of more CPU driven whatever hardware, but more the hardware of the future where there are models that can run locally with the operating system is super different from what it is today with no fixed apps, with being able to change and create software on the go for you, with a level of personalization that goes a lot deeper than what it is today. Yeah, I think that there is definitely space for a device like that right now. You know, AI is just an app on your phone. It should not be that way, I guess.
- [49:15]
B
And it's a great note to end on. Eugenia, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.
- [49:21]
C
Thanks for listening to this episode of the A16Z podcast. If you like this episode, be sure to like, comment, subscribe, leave us a rating or review and share it with your friends and family. For more episodes, go to YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Follow us on X16Z and subscribe to our substack@a16z.substack.com thanks again for listening and I'll see you in the next episode. As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, business, tax or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund. Please note that A16Z and its affiliates may also maintain investments in the companies discussed in this podcast. For more details, including a link to our investments, please see a16z.com disclosures.