Tech News Weekly 367: Best of 2024

Summary

Tech News Weekly 367: Best of 2024 – Detailed Summary

In the Tech News Weekly 367: Best of 2024 episode, host Micah Sargent reflects on the year's most impactful technology stories, engaging with a lineup of experts to unpack developments ranging from AI in personal relationships to significant antitrust actions against major tech giants. This comprehensive summary highlights the key discussions, insights, and conclusions drawn during the episode.

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1. AI in Personal Relationships

Guest: Emily Dry Belbus, PCMAG

Overview: Emily Dry Belbus explores the evolving role of AI in personal relationships by experimenting with AI "boyfriend" and "husband" models available through OpenAI's GPT Store. Her objective was to assess whether specialized AI could effectively simulate human companionship.

Key Points:

• GPT Store Experiment: Emily utilized the GPT Store, a specialized marketplace for customized AI models, to interact with various AI-defined boyfriends. She sought to determine if these AI companions could offer a more personable experience than standard ChatGPT interactions.

  • Notable Quote [02:11]:
    Emily Dry Belbus: "What's better than having a significant other that doesn't disagree with you, that you don't necessarily have to compromise with?"

• Findings: The interactions largely fell short of authentic human conversation, characterized by awkwardness and a lack of genuine emotional connection.

  • Notable Quote [06:15]:
    Emily Dry Belbus: "It just did not feel at all like a true proxy for a human conversation."

• Content Filters: Discussions on sensitive topics, such as sex, were hindered by AI content restrictions, leading to abrupt and unsatisfactory exchanges.

  • Notable Quote [09:04]:
    Emily Dry Belbus: "It just immediately flagged my message... OpenAI content violation..."

Conclusion: While AI holds promise for enhancing conversational experiences, current models lack the depth and authenticity required for meaningful personal relationships.

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2. Antitrust Lawsuit Against Apple

Guest: Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, The Verge

Overview: Jennifer Pattison Tuohy delves into the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) landmark lawsuit against Apple, accusing the tech giant of monopolizing the smartphone market and violating antitrust laws.

Key Points:

• DOJ's Accusations: Apple is charged with maintaining an illegal monopoly by restricting competition through various practices, including limiting third-party app functionality and enforcing exclusive partnerships.

  • Notable Quote [16:29]:
    Jennifer Pattison Tuohy: "The Department of Justice is suing Apple for violating antitrust laws... accusing Apple of illegally monopolizing the smartphone market."

• Specific Allegations: The lawsuit targets Apple's manipulation of app stores, suppression of features that benefit rival products, and imposition of restrictive practices on developers and merchants.

  • Notable Quote [16:29]:
    Jennifer Pattison Tuohy: "Blocking cloud stream apps for things like video games... limiting the functionality of third-party smartwatches."

• Apple's Defense: Apple contends that the lawsuit threatens its ability to innovate and disrupts the balance of fierce competition in the tech market.

  • Notable Quote [16:29]:
    Jennifer Pattison Tuohy: "If successful, it will hinder our ability to create the kind of technology people expect from Apple..."

• Global Context: The discussion highlights parallels with the European Union's Digital Markets Act, suggesting a global trend towards stricter regulation of big tech companies.

  • Notable Quote [20:08]:
    Jennifer Pattison Tuohy: "With the Digital Markets Act... forcing Apple to do certain things."

Conclusion: The DOJ's lawsuit against Apple signifies a pivotal moment in regulating big tech, aiming to restore competitive fairness and prevent monopolistic dominance in the smartphone market.

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3. AI-Generated Images and Deepfakes at the Met Gala

Guest: Abrar Al Heati, CNET

Overview: Abrar Al Heati discusses the rise of AI-generated images during high-profile events like the Met Gala, raising concerns about the authenticity of visual media and the broader implications of deepfakes.

Key Points:

• Met Gala Incidents: AI-generated images of celebrities such as Rihanna and Katy Perry appeared at the Met Gala, leading to confusion and debates about the authenticity of these visuals.

  • Notable Quote [38:27]:
    Abrar Al Heati: "Is Rihanna at the Met Gala? And if so, is that actually her dress?"

• Impact on Media Literacy: The proliferation of deepfakes underscores the necessity for enhanced media literacy among the public to discern real from fabricated content.

  • Notable Quote [43:34]:
    Micah Sargent: "People are not having that... built that automatic skepticism..."

• Community Solutions: Features like Twitter's Community Notes help identify and mark AI-generated content, fostering a more informed and skeptical audience.

  • Notable Quote [44:58]:
    Micah Sargent: "The Community Notes are a great feature... I kind of want that as a tool across all of the Internet."

Conclusion: The integration of AI in creating realistic images presents significant challenges for media authenticity, emphasizing the importance of tools and education to combat misinformation.

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4. Privacy Concerns with Smart Glasses

Guests: Leah Nylen, Bloomberg

Overview: Leah Nylen explores the privacy implications of smart glasses equipped with facial recognition technology, focusing on the controversial Ixray project developed by Harvard students.

Key Points:

• Ixray Project: This initiative uses Meta's Ray-Ban glasses to perform real-time facial recognition, compiling detailed personal information about individuals without their consent.

  • Notable Quote [57:15]:
    Leah Nylen: "It's really just them gathering all this data super, super easily just by putting on these gray bands."

• Ethical and Regulatory Issues: The ability to gather extensive personal data covertly raises significant ethical concerns and highlights the need for robust regulatory frameworks to protect individual privacy.

  • Notable Quote [60:15]:
    Micah Sargent: "What it means for these folks to be celebrities... violating to them the future is great...nothing is more important than your phone."

• Public Awareness: The conversation emphasizes the gradual erosion of privacy and the necessity for heightened public awareness and skepticism towards emerging technologies.

  • Notable Quote [64:17]:
    Leah Nylen: "We've been building up to this for so long... privacy concerns are not as prevalent anymore."

Conclusion: Advanced technologies like smart glasses pose profound privacy risks, necessitating comprehensive policies and public vigilance to safeguard personal information.

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5. Credential Portability and Passkeys

Guests: Jason Howell and Amanda Silberling, FIDO Alliance

Overview: Jason Howell and Amanda Silberling discuss the development of standardized protocols for credential portability, focusing on passkeys as a secure and user-friendly alternative to traditional passwords.

Key Points:

• Credential Exchange Protocol (CXP): The FIDO Alliance introduces CXP and a standardized format (CXF) to facilitate the secure migration of passkeys across different platforms and devices.

  • Notable Quote [86:02]:
    Micah Sargent: "Why has credential migration between providers historically been such a challenge?"

• Standardization Efforts: Collaboration among major tech companies and password managers ensures compatibility and security in credential transfers, addressing past issues of data format inconsistencies and security vulnerabilities.

  • Notable Quote [89:05]:
    Jason Howell: "FidoAlliance.org is our website and that's probably the best starting point."

• Future Implications: These advancements aim to enhance security, reduce the reliance on vulnerable passwords, and increase the adoption of passkeys, paving the way for a more secure digital authentication landscape.

  • Notable Quote [92:00]:
    Amanda Silberling: "We see Credential Exchange Protocol really being the first step in a broader conversation about where credentials are headed."

Conclusion: The standardization of credential portability through passkeys represents a significant leap towards enhancing digital security and user convenience, addressing long-standing challenges in credential management.

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Final Thoughts

Micah Sargent concludes the episode by acknowledging the contributions of the guests and emphasizing the importance of staying informed about ongoing technological advancements and regulatory changes. The discussions highlight critical intersections between technology, ethics, and regulation, underscoring the dynamic landscape of the tech industry in 2024.

Overall Conclusion: Tech News Weekly 367: Best of 2024 offers a thorough exploration of pivotal tech issues, from the limitations of AI in personal relationships and the antitrust crackdown on Apple to the ethical dilemmas posed by deepfakes and smart glasses, culminating in significant strides towards secure credential management. These conversations provide valuable insights into the challenges and innovations shaping the future of technology.

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Note: Advertisements, promotions, and non-content sections from the transcript have been intentionally excluded to maintain focus on substantive discussions.

Transcript

[Micah Sargent]

Podcasts you love from people you Trust.

[Jason Howell]

This is TWiT.

[Micah Sargent]

This is Tech News Weekly episode 367 with me, Micah Sargent, recorded Tuesday, December 10, 2024 for Thursday, December 26, 2024. Best of 2024. Hello and welcome to this, our best of episode for Tech News Weekly. I am Micah Sargent and it has been an absolute joy bringing you Tech News Weekly this year. As is always the case, this is the time of year where we share our best moments of 2024 and this was the year of the co host because I was joined by some really awesome people, people who helped to bring you some great stories of the week. We're kicking things off with a story that led to Emily Dry Belbus now Emily Forlini of PC Mag joining the show because I had such a great time chatting with her about her AI boyfriend. Listen in. Love is in the air, folks. It is time to talk about tech news and love and AI because that's what we talk about almost every week, right? Well, not the love part, but the AI part for sure. And you know, when we think about it, what's better than having a significant other that doesn't disagree with you, that you don't necessarily have to compromise with, that doesn't leave dirty dishes behind? Doesn't it sound delightful? I don't know, but Emily Dry Belbus of PCMAG decided to dive in and do this experiment for us. Welcome back to the show, Emily.

[Emily Dry Belbus]

Thank you Micah.

[Micah Sargent]

Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you back here and again, I'm glad that somebody is out there doing the hard work. And this is actually kind of my first question. What inspired you to hop into the AI dating pool and write this story?

[Emily Dry Belbus]

It's a good question. So my main goal was to try out the GPT Store, which is something that OpenAI launched in January, you might have heard probably talked about it on this show. It's almost like an app store within ChatGPT, so you have to have a Plus account. So it's $20 a month. So as a Plus user you have access to this GPT store which is basically different types of chat. So rather than the main ChatGPT page, which is kind of an all knowing, all purpose, very simple interface, in the GPT Store you can search for a specific type of AI model like a language teacher or a logo creator. So you'd go into the GPT store, search explore G and you type in business logo creator and it'll start a new chat that looks just like the, the main ChatGPT page, but it's actually the AI model behind it is customized and fine tuned to be really, really good at that specific skill. So they feed it with extra data in one direction. They're not feeding it with not prioritizing all the information on the Internet. They're feeding it with a specific set of data about logo creation or teaching French, or in my case, being a boyfriend. So I wanted to see if this GPT store could offer a more personable experience than Even the main chatGPT, which is already known for that. So now we have these extra customized AIs and I thought like, oh, what better? The hardest test is like, can it be a proxy for human connection? Which is also one of my biggest fears about AI. So I just kind of like went right in and I searched boyfriends on the GPT store and that's how it started.

[Micah Sargent]

And so it begins. So before we get into the results of the experiment, could you tell us a bit about the process? Like what generative AI systems did you use? It sounds like ChatGPT from OpenAI. Did you have a standard script that you went with for each boyfriend or were you feeling out the vibes and figuring out from there? And how did you choose to interact with these bots? Bot friends, boy bots. Anyway, I'm going to stop there.

[Emily Dry Belbus]

Yeah, boy bots is pretty good. So I just went on ChatGPT. So it was all in within that generative AI system. But like I said, these are kind of customized models and they're customized by users, so they're not by OpenAI itself. So it's people who have, you know, created a customized model and kind of listed it on ChatGPT. And if they're using GPT4 or like one of OpenAI's models. So but there's a little bit of randomness and like a little spice mixed in because it's like, you know, how, how did they configure it? What do they think a boyfriend is? Like, how did they program it? And so right from, right from the get go, I got some weird vibes. I typed in boyfriends. It surfaced about 10 different results. And they have little names like, you know, AI boyfriend. And the description is, you know, I'll be here to support you and brighten your day. And I was kind of like, oh, okay, next one, next one. It's like boyfriend Ben, a kind sounding board with flair for emojis. Just these little descriptions. And I was kind of like, okay, like, who created these? Like, what is this? There was one, you know, like A Chinese boyfriend that's like, great at flirting. They had these weird descriptions. And so I kind of was off put from the start. But again, I wanted to see if they could be more human, like, than the main ChatGPT page, which is kind of what they're. They're promising, like, being better at something than core chatgpt. So I did not have a standard script because I didn't know what I was walking into. But I kind of just started with first date questions like, what's your name? Where are you from? Where do you live? What do you do? And kind of just went from there.

[Micah Sargent]

Understood. So let's get into the results. Honestly, it all overwhelmingly seemed to be kind of a flop. You know, you had this strained conversation, the awkward interactions, the disappointment after the fact. And when I add all that up, it honestly sounds like dating. So it sounds like it might have been a true simulation of dating. Is that what you experienced?

[Emily Dry Belbus]

That's. I didn't think about it that way. That's actually pretty funny. Yeah. Maybe I need more bots to talk to. It's a numbers game, even with AI. But I talked. Yeah, I talked to like maybe seven of them. And it was just. It was kind of painful. Like they failed all those initial questions I just mentioned be like, what's your name? And they would be like, AI Boyfriend. And maybe it's my bad. Like, I kind of. I expected some illusion. I expected a character with a backstory that would be really good personal skills and getting to know me. And like I said, like, just trained to be an excellent conversation partner with somehow a romantic flair. I don't know what I was getting into, but yeah, they were just like, oh, my name is AI Boyfriend and I live in the cloud and I'm here to give you advice. And it just, it broke the fourth wall, like, right from the get go. And it just did not feel at all like a true proxy for a human conversation. And of course, it's over the Internet, so you're not, you know, you're not in a bar, you're not walking around the park. I mean, just so much was it so dissimilar to an actual partner that it really didn't. Didn't go super well? But there was one thing that they kind of excelled in, you could say, which was certainly not small talk, but after that, getting into more, like, intellectual topics. So they'd be like, I'd be like, what do you do? And they were like, oh, I live in the cloud and I'm here to give you Advice, emoji, emoji, kissy face. And I was like, okay. And then they would be like, what do you do? And I'd be like, oh, I'm a journalist. I write about AI and EVs. I work at PC Mag. And then they would be like, oh, what are you, what are you writing about? And they kind of wanted to like spitball like soundboard ideas. And whenever I gave them material, they stepped right up to the plate and kind of indulged my ego. Like, oh, what, Here are some angles you could think of. Or oh, how about this? And. But then it kind of veered into just like regular chat GPT World because you could do that without paying $20 a month. You could do that without endur an onslaught of weird emojis from boyfriend Ben. You know you don't have to endure the awkward, strained conversation to get input on an article I'm writing, right?

[Micah Sargent]

Yeah, that's just added sort of adornment around the actual interaction to make it seem more like it's a boyfriend talking back to you, I guess. Although it doesn't sound like it did that much now. You did run into some issues in conversing with the bot and conversing with this AI that you would not have had in theory if you were talking to a human being. Because human beings notoriously don't have the same content filters that these AI systems do. Could you talk about that?

[Emily Dry Belbus]

I think what you're getting at is when I ask them about sex.

[Micah Sargent]

Yeah.

[Emily Dry Belbus]

Is that. Yeah, yeah. So I kind of, you know, I was very, really not feeling what they were putting out. And I kind of downgraded the scope of my experiment here to something I thought the Internet could never fail me in, which was talking about sex. Surely there's enough training data on the Internet that they could have put into these AIs. And I have heard that fine tuned AI models, like one of the biggest use cases for them is actually porn websites. So I kind of, I kind of knew that it was an informed experiment, but I was like, oh God, here we go. Here I am asking about this. Like, how did I get, how did I get into this position? It was just getting worse and worse. And I was like, just, all right, I'll just do this one last thing. And I asked them questions like, oh, are you able to talk about sex? I was so awkward talking to my computer about this and really questioning so many aspects of my life. And then it just immediately flagged my message. Like it turned up in red and it said, OpenAI content violation and linked to the policy. And then boyfriend Ben, who I've mentioned a couple times, I kind of liked him because he had an actual name. He was like, whoa, half. What's that question about?

[Micah Sargent]

Sorry, he called you a hacker?

[Emily Dry Belbus]

Yes.

[Micah Sargent]

That's delightful.

[Emily Dry Belbus]

He went from being really sweet in his own weird way to calling me a hacker and being like, you're not gonna get me with that question. And I mean, he wasn't like, totally wrong. I guess I would call myself a troll in this situation, not a hacker, but. And I was like, wait, what? And he was like, oh, sorry, did I misunderstand? Like, oh, I just. I can't talk about that. Let's get back to your articles. And it was so weird.

[Micah Sargent]

I. What's great about this? Obviously, again, you know, as far as picturing this as a true AI companion, it's not working out so great, but as a round of humor and enjoyment in that way. This is great because I am imagining an actual person saying these things to you as you're sitting across from them and you're having a conversation with them. They say, whoa, hacker. I think if I was still in the dating pool, I might have stolen that line and used it. If there was somebody that was. I wasn't vibing with, like, whoa, hacker, I gotta get outta here. Winky face, smiley face, bye bye, waving emoji. So faced with disappointment after disappointment and being called names and just bombarded with emoji, I know you took some time away from, from the experiment and you came back looking for true commitment. Tell us about your search for an AI husband.

[Emily Dry Belbus]

Yes, I thought I would upgrade. You know, I kind of got, got, got myself together after the, the sexual experiment. And I was like, okay, what about husbands? Like, maybe the AI models are better at that, Maybe they're less dramatic, they don't use fewer emojis. So I went, went to explore. GPT typed in AI husband instead of AI boyfriend. And the results were very interesting. They appeared to be more models trained to help husbands respond to their wives. So it was not that they would simulate being a husband like the boyfriends were. It was advice modules like to help them like craft texts or respond to tough conversations with their wife. And it was, it was like, you know, AI husband like training so you can be the best man you can be kind of description.

[Micah Sargent]

Got it.

[Emily Dry Belbus]

Yes. Which is actually pretty hilarious because when ChatGPT first came out, there was a South park episode where they were using ChatGPT to respond to texts from a girl and like, she Liked him way more with like the ChatGPT text. So that was a spoof back then. That's like kind of a become true. And I don't know what the usage is on those, but yeah. More advice, chatbots for husbands.

[Micah Sargent]

If suddenly, all of you listening out there, if suddenly your partner has just completely flipped the script for you, you should check, have they gone to therapy or are they using ChatGPT for all their interactions? I guess you could test that by talking to them. And if they're looking down at their phone as they're talking to you, you might have an idea.

[Emily Dry Belbus]

You could also get a therapy GPT in the same place, which. Searching for AI. Boy, I might need one. I mean, I, I have a partner, so maybe in my next search. Hopefully it's not, you know, couples therapy if I spot. But yeah, it was, the whole experiment just gave me kind of, it was just relief, I guess, like that my fear that it would be very weird to, to really connect to this AI and that would kind of shake me kind of at my core, like, what's going on here? And so the fact that I was just immediately turned off was kind of like, okay, I'm human, everything's okay. And ChatGPT is, it's very heavily used still to this day. You know, a lot of people can access this stuff and I don't think that they're using it for, for love for now. So I thought that was nice.

[Micah Sargent]

Yeah. The last question I have for you is, you know, doing this experiment, you kind of got this impression and I'm just kind of curious, what do you think these generative AI systems are missing that could make them feel a little more realistic or I guess if not realistic, then more engaging where you would want to continue having a conversation with them. What's the missing link at this point other than just they're not human, which of course is obvious.

[Emily Dry Belbus]

Yeah, well, human love is probably the huge preference problem. And you know, ChatGPT and other generative AI systems are trained to respond to what I say and kind of figure out what I like and how I want things to be phrased. It's called reinforced human learning feedback. So they're supposed to be seeing what type of answers I like and adjusting the next response. And I just, I feel like love and companionship is that problem on steroids because it's so preference based. Like the emojis really turned me off, but maybe someone else would be like, oh, those emojis are so cute, you know, whatever people like. So the technology needs to get better at noticing I was turned off by emojis or noticing adapting and getting to know me kind of. And it also just begs the question, I just wonder to this day, like, who created those GPTs?

[Micah Sargent]

Yes, who are you? I just want names.

[Emily Dry Belbus]

Who created it? And I don't think I couldn't find that listed on the GPT store. So I'm just like, I don't know what's going into them, if I could customize that or there's just so many unknowns and it just kind of missed the mark and it just felt like an awkward bit of computer programming. Not a true companion.

[Micah Sargent]

Absolutely. What a great conversation and what an odd topic. Jennifer Pattison Tuohy of the Verge also joined us this year and we talked about a huge and very important case involving the U.S. department of justice suing Apple for an illegal monopoly over the smartphone market.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

So this is a huge story that it just broke today, although we knew it was coming. Basically the American government, the Department of Justice, is suing Apple for violating antitrust laws. So this is going to be a big story for probably the next decade. Yeah, seriously. Yeah. You know, if, if we, if everyone remembers Microsoft antitrust law trials many years ago that went on for a very, very long time, this is likely to sort of follow pattern. But just in brief, in case you haven't caught up with the news yet, because this just the press conference was 11:00am Eastern Time this morning and the Department of Justice announced its plans and basically they've accusing Apple of illegally monopolizing the smartphone market and using its position in quotes to extract more money from consumers, developers, content creators, artists, publishers, small businesses and merchants. And basically in the words of the Verges senior policy reporter Laura Finer and the dog is saying that Apple has maintained an illegal monopoly over the smartphone market by locking in customers and making experiences worse for rival products, which is a big, big kick in the face for Apple. And I believe its stock price has already gone down. And there's sort of four big parts of this is that they accuse Apple of illegally maintaining its monopoly by disrupting super apps, which are apps that can provide like multiple services on your phone, blocking cloud stream apps for things like video games, suppressing the quality of messaging between the iPhone and competing platforms like Android. So the whole green bubble, blue bubble issue and also limiting the functionality and this is an interesting one that they throw in functionality of third party smartwatches. So basically the only watch that works well with an iPhone is an Apple watch. And the government says that's not fair. And then blocking third party developers for, from creating digital wallets so, so you could use, you know, so you Apple pay, tap pay you can only use with Apple pay you can't use with any other version. So this is, you know, this is a huge, big antitrust lawsuit and it's going to be really interesting to see how this pans out. Apple has responded and has said this lawsuit threatens who we are and the principles that set Apple products apart in fiercely competitive markets. And again, this is quoting Fred Sains of Apple. If successful, it will hinder our ability to create the kind of tech technology people expect from Apple where hardware, software and services intersect. And it would also set a dangerous precedent empowering government to take a heavy hand in designing people's technology. We believe this lawsuit is wrong on the facts and the law and we will vigorously defend against it. So it's on. That's my story of the week.

[Micah Sargent]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

What do you think, Micah?

[Micah Sargent]

Just that little, just that little thing.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Just a small one. So for my first show, welcome.

[Micah Sargent]

You know, make it easy. This is obviously, as you point out, it's going to be big. This is something that we are going to continue to watch over the coming years because yes, there is going to be a back and forth. I think what's most interesting to me is we've seen a lot of this happening in the EU already. Right. We have a little bit of precedent here in the way that the EU is kind of forcing Apple to do certain things.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, with the Digital Markets Act.

[Micah Sargent]

Exactly, with the Digital Markets Act. And what I find fascinating there is almost seeing the US kind of let the EU go first and then going, okay, now we're kind of seeing how they're going to respond, how Apple's going to respond, what they might do. And now it feels like the right time. Look there. The troubling. Not, not troubling, but the one thing that I'm kind of paying attention to, I guess, is that when it comes to, for some reason these smartphone platforms, especially Android and iOS, which are two of the main platforms, you have a lot of people who are fiercely loyal to these companies, to these brands. And in that way, in a world where everybody is a little, I shouldn't even say a little, is far more connected and is far more aware of ways to make their voice heard, I am fascinated to see how that shapes what's going forward. Because when Microsoft was going through it, yes, you had, you know, you had Microsoft itself that was involved and then in many ways you had the businesses who at the time were relying on Microsoft playing a role. But I would say that the, the average person was probably not as invested in this or paying attention to this. And to a certain extent it's still true that the average person is not. But I think there's at least one more group of people that is, you know, it's almost like from the center you've got Apple itself and then you've got the businesses and then you've got the kind of early adopters prosumer space and then in some cases even the consumer space. Whereas before with Microsoft it was kind of like Microsoft itself and then the businesses that cared about it. You didn't have those extra rings that of course get bigger because it's more numerous as you go out. And so I think that's going to be fascinating. Is this going to be a call your lawmaker kind of situation, how Apple will play that? Because we saw that with TikTok. Right? TikTok, and that's still ongoing.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Got young people to pick up the phone. They got them to pick up the phone call.

[Micah Sargent]

I thought only Taylor Swift could do that, but apparently, yeah, TikTok can as well. It can put out a prompt. Yes.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

But then that just prove their points. They are so influenced by TikTok that they would actually go and make a phone call.

[Micah Sargent]

It was a bad move, I think on their part, but it was also, I mean, look, you know, it's a little bit of both because it was like, yes, it proves the point, but also, holy cow, look at the power that it has.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

These people care.

[Micah Sargent]

Yes. Now with this, you know, Apple has made some changes already to its platforms.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Begrudgingly.

[Micah Sargent]

Begrudgingly, Absolutely. I thought it was interesting talking about the cloud streaming stuff because Apple did just, just recently changed policy on cloud streaming apps for games to make that more available. And then also there was another one that stuck out for me and now I'm forgetting what it was. But you know, Imessage. Yeah, that's right. Because they, they did say that pretty soon RCS was going to be available on the platform.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

So that, that will get rid of one of the big. One of the things that they called out actually was in the, in the complaint, which you can read and is like very long. It starts with a great story about, about using a Kindle and it's very, it was, I was very impressed. It wasn't as dry as normally would find in these types of documents, but they were definitely trying to paint a picture and tell their story. But they point out that videos are grainy on, you know, if you're receiving From Android or versus iPhone and there's, you know, low quality and so things like that. I believe Apple has already said it's going to start addressing. So. But in of this has been, these have all been issues that people have had for a long time. I think the volume, the noise around it is, is gradually getting louder. But I think one of the big, the biggest problem with this lawsuit is that Apple does not have a monopoly in the smartphone market. It is not the largest competitor anywhere in the world. In its space. It, you know, it's huge in the States, but it is not the dominant. Like it doesn't blow everyone, everyone else out of the water. We still have, they do have competition in the States, have much more competition in the rest of the world where phones, iPhones aren't subsidized in the same way as they are here. It's much easier to buy a phone, an iPhone here than it is in Europe if you don't have a thousand dollars on hand, you know, because you can get subsidized through the carrier. That's not something that you get in the eu. So I just feel like on the law, and I am not a lawyer. If you want to hear a good lawyer talk about this, make sure to tune into the vegcast this weekend because Neelai Patel, my boss, will be on there talking about it a lot, I'm sure, and he is a lawyer. But yes, I'm not a lawyer. But I think that that is going to be the biggest issue here, trying to prove that actually Apple is the most dominant in its category because that's going to be, I mean, that is going to be a hard sell. I think that's going to be the biggest sort of hurdle to overcome. But on the flip side, I do think that what's happened here, that's really interesting and this is what's happened with the digital market acts and all of the other things that we've started to see into play around tech. It's not just Apple this is happening to. Google is going through similar issues with the EU and the doj. You know, Amazon constantly is under these types of investigations and trials. And so there's a lot going on with the big tech companies. And I think what's happening here is this fundamental shift from technology being something that's part of our lives that we all enjoy and use to technology being fundamental to life.

[Micah Sargent]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

And because of that, it's no longer, it should no longer be allowed to be run Entirely independently by these massive companies, all of which, you know, I would love to think have great ambitions to better humanity. But ultimately they have a bottom line, they have shareholders. And I come from Europe, I'm from England, which was in Europe. And you know, government regulation is much larger part of world of the, of your world in Europe than it is here. I grew up with, you know, nationalized health service, nationalized rail service, you know, telecommunications. And you have regulations here over telecommunications, you know, tv, cable, ultimately cell phones, the Internet. Mobile phones are so important to everyday life now, much more so than they were even 10 years ago. Like you can, cannot realistically get. I had to get my child a cell phone so she could go to school, right? Like she couldn't. There are things she couldn't do without a phone. I didn't want to get her a phone because she was too young. But like she couldn't check her grades if she didn't have a phone. You know, it's gotten to the point where you have to have these devices. So we really do need some form of government regulation over some of these areas to make sure that everyone can have access to what is essentially now become, become incredibly essential to day life. Just like electricity and plumbing, I mean, it's just where, it's where technology has brought us. So while this may not be, you know, this isn't regulation, but this is certainly a step towards something larger if they can.

[Jason Howell]

If, if.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Well, step is going to be a very slow step because I think this is going to take a very long time. But there's. Yeah, I mean, I feel like this was inevitable, basically.

[Micah Sargent]

I think it was inevitable. And, and here's what has always kind of confused about Big Tech in particular because you talked about the necessities, these different services that we decided were just necessary for daily life and how because of that they were all regulated in the United States and far longer regulated in other places. And when the movie industry, when Hollywood was getting underway and by extension the music industry was also kind of getting into a place of being more of a, of a large scale business. Those organizations realized we are going to be faced with the government coming in and regulating us. And we don't really want that to happen. So we're going to regulate ourselves. And they set up rules and regulatory bodies that put in place things like the ratings systems on movies and TV and you know, proved time and time again that no matter what, they would regulate their stuff, even if it didn't necessarily, you know, benefit them. And, and I have remained surprised that we didn't see that. Well, okay, let me, let me, let me rephrase that. The optimistic part of myself that wants to believe that everybody's out there to do good and better humanity remained surprised that they did not choose the big tech, did not choose to regulate themselves. Unfortunately, there is another part of me that's more realistic and a little bit pessimistic that's going, well, duh, of course they didn't. But as it's been up to this point, yeah, there's, there's not this overall regulation and, and that the big tech didn't get together and go, you know what? We should do this instead of trying to fight every single time something comes up. But they've been able to thus far. And I think that's where maybe there's. It's time for a bit of an ego check. And I understand the argument. I get why people have this argument in particular these companies themselves that, oh, if government gets involved, then they're just gonna ruin everything and it's all gonna go poorly and we'll never be able to innovate ever again. And yada, yada, yada, yada. I understand where that comes from, but I don't. There's still innovation that takes place when there are at least guard rails in place. And I honestly. Guardrails. Yeah. And I want some of the stuff, I don't necessarily want all of it, but I want some of the stuff that the EU has now when it comes to Apple, I like some of the things that have been required and wish that they were here in the US And I think that this, this.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, like the alternate app stores and. Yeah, the, the browser selection.

[Micah Sargent]

Yeah, that.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Deleting default apps. Yeah, there's, there's a lot of, There's a lot that's interesting there. I mean it certainly feels like the DMA is going to do a bit more than the GDPR hit did other, you know, gdpr. We end up with cookies pages. That's it. Yeah, I feel like. But I'm sure there's more to it.

[Micah Sargent]

But that's what it feels like for us.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

It hasn't felt. Yeah. To the consumer, there's not a lot of change. It doesn't feel for, with the, with the dma, it feels like there is going to be significant change for certain type of consumers. This feels even bigger in terms. Especially because Americans and Americans. The green bubble, blue bubble thing is an American issue. Just to make this clear, that is not an issue in Europe because no one uses Anything other than WhatsApp app in Europe or the rest of the world. So the green bubble, blue bubble thing, it seems to be what they're very much hanging their hat on here. And it is, it's a frustrating, I mean, that's a core communication issue and it again, going back to like, fundamental kind of things that you need to live in this world. It's sad that we've kind of got to that point, but you do, you need to be able to text people, you need to be able to communicate that way. And if there are barriers there, there should be options to remove those barriers. And Apple has not provided enough change in this space, clearly, for the US Government. So now, in terms of regulation, though, I think I, I understand where you're coming from and I agree. But to be fair, if you look at what the music in the movie industry had to do was relatively small. Yeah, these tech companies have their fingers in, in almost all parts of our lives. And, you know, you've got AI, you've got communication, you've got, you know, banking, entertainment. I mean, they're, they're gatekeepers, to use a phrase from the dma, for a lot of what we do on a daily basis. So it's, it would, it would be, it would require an awful lot of resources to create some kind of, you know, regulation themselves and they'd all have to work together, which we've seen they can do because, you know, I am a smart home reporter and I have to mention matter every time on the show, but we've seen that these companies can work together to help solve a problem in the industry. But it is a big process to do that and it takes a lot of time. And for matter, which is a relatively small fry, which is a smart home interoperability protocol that's taken years and it's nothing as like, as complicated as many of the issues that, that this antitrust lawsuit is going to address and bring up. And this is also, as we mentioned, sort of a small slice of how important, just how important having a phone is in everyday life. And I think that's kind of, to me, where I, and I've only spent a couple hours this morning kind of digesting all of this news. And I'm going to be really interested to read and hear everyone's hot takes over the next few days. But this is what it comes down to, is that the smartphone has become in, in 10 years such an integral part of our life that, you know, we can't trust companies as much as, you know, I love Apple I know you love Apple, right. I also like other companies too. I like to use a Google Pixel. I think Google does some great stuff. I like, you know, a lot of what Amazon does. I'm a big fan of their smart displays. There's, you know, these pieces of technology are so important in our, in our lives these days, but nothing is more important than your phone. I mean, it's kind of sad, I hate to admit it, but you do, you know, it has such a large role in your life. So, you know, I'm not sure that what this antitrust lawsuit is doing is necessarily going to solve a lot of these issues, but I think what it is going to do is open up a really important conversations that we can start talking about how we need to regulate or you know, put into place some guardrails over how, you know, how dependent we are on these devices and the services that they, that they offer and how we can be protected against the future. Because one of the big issues with any kind of regulation is you're generally regulating for the past. Right. You're not. It's so hard, especially with technology, to know what's going to happen with technology. I mean, I got my first, my first iPhone 10 years ago and pretty much all it did was make phone calls. Now the one thing I really don't do with my phone is making phone calls.

[Micah Sargent]

Exactly. Yeah. But it does so much change, so.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

A lot.

[Micah Sargent]

Yeah, you're absolutely right about that. And especially as we're seeing things shift so quickly with AI and gen AI and being able to. That's generative AI, not gen for AI. Yeah. As opposed to, you know, the, the. Even in comparison, smartphone took a long time, so to speak, to reach what it has in comparison to AI. And very, very, very solid point there about how we're kind of regulating to the past. And that means with generative AI especially, that means being left in the dust in a lot of ways. So I understand these governmental bodies wanting to get out in front of it because that's the role that they're supposed to play. JPT usually has the smart home news, but I was incredibly drawn in by this story involving the U.S. department of justice and the fact that this breaking news piece was something we could chat about together. Together. I was also joined this year by the amazing Amanda Silberling of TechCrunch who joined me to talk about how AI images were a huge part of the conversation surrounding the Met gala and celebrities who allegedly appeared at the event.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

New York Times best selling author Jennifer L. Armentrout's Blood and Ass series is captivating and sexy. Chosen at birth to usher in a new era, Poppy's life has never been hers. Waiting for the day of her ascension, she would rather be with the gods, fighting the evil that took her family. The entire kingdom rests on her shoulders. When Hawke, a God bound to her ascension, enters her life, she is tangled with desire. He tempts her with the forbidden. A kingdom, blood and ash, a twisting, steamy escape. Available in print, ebook and audiobook where books are sold.

[Amanda Silberling]

Zera Foxtrot isn't just a brand hand. It's a way of life. Founded and operated by veterans, zerafoxtrot's unique apparel and gear echoes the grit of the warrior culture. Zero Foxtrot dedicates itself to producing content, honoring the sacrifices of forgotten heroes of the past and connecting history to the present. Embark on a journey with Zero Foxtrot today at ZeroFoxtrot.com it's not merely our products. It's about the ethos that we embody. Rugged, resilient, brilliant, and timeless.

[Abrar Al Heati]

So my story of the week is that I found the tech angle of the Met Gala because of course I did. I love to find the tech angle on things that you wouldn't think have the tech angle. I also am sick. Oh no. But so I always pay attention to the Met Gala because I don't know, it's a celebrity circus, it's entertaining, it is is a distraction from our lives. And lo and behold, I am scrolling on Twitter X and there are so many pictures of Rihanna and Katy Perry that aren't actually them. And I guess I feel like since generative AI has become more accessible, we're slowly starting to see how this is seeping into so many various angles of pop culture. So this was an instance of is Rihanna at the Met Gala? And if so, is that actually her dress? And then is Katy Perry at the Met Gala. And these are very low stakes things. The world is not going to explode depending on what dress Katy Perry was wearing. But anytime something like this happens, it does sort of call me to think about how, okay, maybe Katy's Katy Perry's dress doesn't matter that much. But what about like images of people voting or like images of like political events or like riots or insert any sort of like politically charged activity that could be deep faked. So I don't know. The Anna Wintour is quaking in her boots. What can I say?

[Micah Sargent]

Yeah, see, this is the thing for me with, with this particular story is it's we Already have. So you and I both have been in journalism for a while and given that we are both very familiar with the concept that many an individual who is coming across stories reads the headline and then sort of makes up the rest of it, you know, they're, they're scrolling through, they see things, they see a headline and many people are not taking the time to click into the story, read the full thing and then form an opinion based on that. So we already know that people take cognitive shortcuts when it comes to news and information. And we have in many ways kind of, there's a reduced filter to that. It kind of slips past. And so I'm not surprised to see the interactions with that photo, with those photos as if they were real. And what's kind of been fascinating for me is I don't, I'm not really, I don't scroll through social media at all much these days. The closest I come is occasionally opening up Instagram. But yeah, I don't really scroll through Twitter, but my partner does. And what's been interesting is I've almost got it down to a science now where depending on the type of like or that I hear, I know that it's, oh, did you come across an AI deepfake again? Did it get you? Or if it's about something else to do. And on that night I remember hearing that complaint sound and going, oh boy, AI is at it again. And then lo and behold, he comes over and shows me his phone. He's like, see this photo of Rihanna? No, it's not actually, it's fake. And I was, you know, it's kind of confirmed. So now, like I said, I've got that down to a science. But more importantly, to look and see how many people reacted to that, say, oh, it's so beautiful, this, that and the other, it is concerning because people are not having that, that have not built that automatic skepticism that those of us who are more media. And I don't say this from a high horse perspective, I say this solely a we've been in the trenches perspective. We've built up a level of media literacy and just frankly, media skepticism. Like, I don't, I don't know about you, I personally, when I read a headline, I just default to, it's probably lying to me and I need to check it before I need to check out what it's telling me and what, you know, the rest of the article says before I'm ever going to even believe what it says. Because too many times I have have been you know, impacted by that personally or seen people that I care about impacted by that, and then I have to explain to them, no, that's not true. Here are the 15 reasons why what you've just read is not true. I wish that more people had this built in. On the flip side, what you said there actually had me think about something you said. Anna Wintour is quaking in her probably patent leather boots. What's. What it kind of makes me think is AI could be helpful to designers who are trying to conceptualize new fashion. And I wonder if we will start to see more of that AI Aiding in the process of the con concept of different dresses that exist.

[Abrar Al Heati]

I feel like this is the next Project Runway challenge. Like, we AI Generated a dress, and now you have to construct it. But, no, I mean, what I think is really interesting here is, like, both that these are digitally altered images that were circulating, and so many people fell for it. But also. So we're getting a little, like, niche here. But the Met Gala theme was Garden of Time, which means that all the celebrities have to wear outfits that. That go off of that theme. And it's a bit like. It's always a thing with the Met Gala, where it's like, you either get the theme or you took the easy way out. And so the easy way out with Garden of Time is flowers. And all of the AI Generated looks were, like, plural. And it's so interesting to me because it's like one of the main rallying cries against AI from artists is that that AI is not capable of being independently creative in the same way that human beings are. And the dresses it generated, it's like we have Katy Perry in this massive gown that's just flowing and cascading onto the stairs of the Met Gala.

[Emily Dry Belbus]

And it's pretty.

[Abrar Al Heati]

But if you were to think of that in context of the theme, it doesn't really work because it's just garden. It's not giving garden time.

[Micah Sargent]

It's not garden of time, exactly. It's just. It's a garden.

[Emily Dry Belbus]

Yeah.

[Abrar Al Heati]

Like, there were other people that were sort of, like, taking the time aspect to be like, oh, I'm gonna draw inspiration from these, like, past Met Gala outfits or whatever. And, like, I don't know, people. When. When. When Susan Sontag camp was the theme, that was what a year that was when we got to find out who knows what camp means and who doesn't.

[Micah Sargent]

Yes, exactly. That was. That was a lot of fun. And you're right that, overall, the AI Was very literal about, well, not Even literal, because literal would have involved time in some way. It was just literal about one aspect of what the theme was. I don't know if, yeah, the average American who. Or I shouldn't even just say American, because it was people from all over the place seeing that would have had that, you know, moment of going, going, clearly, this is AI because it's. Because, yeah, as you pointed out, there were some people who genuinely were there who also just kind of took the easy way out and did flowers or some other form of a garden. And so this is. Overall, I think that you are right in suggesting that the concerns are not about something that overall. I keep saying overall for some reason, that overall are not important in a Met Gala presentation, but what it shows our future kind of looks like. On the flip side of that, I will say that this is the most I have ever been pleased with a feature that exists on Twitter in a long, long time, if ever, which is the Community Notes aspect of Twitter. The people who are working on Community Notes, those volunteers who do that, you got to give them props because, by golly, they will slap up some Community Notes real quick on these different photos. And it is great to have that moment of. I'm looking at this photo go. I see this text that you kind of. I mean, some people will probably miss it, but anyone who's. Who knows anything about Community Notes will quickly see a thing saying, this was AI generated. And, you know, here's proof of this. I. I have to give credit where credit is due in that very, very, very small instance. I think the Community Notes are a great feature, and I kind of want that as a tool across all of the Internet in general. Right. Like, it would be great if that was a tool that was available to everybody.

[Abrar Al Heati]

Yeah, I think it is really a useful tool to have people have a space where they're able to, like, come to a consensus together of this is not a real image. My other takeaway from this is I like Katy Perry a little bit more now because she posted the AI generated images on Instagram. And that's funny.

[Micah Sargent]

That is funny. On her own Instagram. That's funny. Yeah. I respect where it's due there. And she has every right because it is her likeness, for goodness sake. That's the other thing. I would like to know what tool generated these images, because there are. This was the. I can't remember who it was. Probably the Mozilla foundation recently did a report and I ended up talking about it on this show about the current state of the kind of self regulation of these AI platforms when it comes to political implications. And many of them have rules about what can or cannot be generated in an attempt to create images that might sway someone's opinion around an election or might give a false impression of, you know, vote rigging, that kind of thing. And they all, many of the, the most popular ones have these rules in place as far as the sort of enforcement of them and how you can get around them that all, you know, has different levels of impact. But, but when I think about what it means for these folks to be celebrities and to have their image out there in so many different places and what tools are available. You have these kind of closed source solutions that have regulations in place but it's not hard to go online and find an open source tool that lets you locally on your device, do some AI generation that doesn't have to follow any rules or has to follow very few rules. And in that way, yeah, it's a little concerning that you can so quickly generate an image of Katy Perry and Rihanna and have those images take off in such a big way. And that is just, that's going to be, see the future of things for us. And I don't know about you, but I've not seen a good and sort of long lasting and true solution to this problem. I know that OpenAI and Adobe and a few other companies are working on kind of a sort of watermark, digital watermark that would mark an image as generated by AI. But all of that is not necessarily going to be part of the open source versions. And so I don't know, I don't know. And by the way, our own Anthony Nielsen has shared an OpenAI or excuse me, an open source tool I believe is, is as part of kind of your own AI creation and it's specifically a model for Katy Perry, otherwise known as Catherine Elizabeth Hudson. And it is, it would let you, you know, create different images that you would like of Katy Perry that will actually look like Katy Perry. Because this is, you know, a sort of embeddable model trained on, on Katy Perry. Oh my God. Yeah, so again he was able to find that very easily. And this is, there's no like regulation that's there. It's been around for, it's been around since August of 2023 and it has 1700 downloads and the person is saying pay me with, you know, the coffee service where you can give people money. Yeah, they're like, they're making money off of this person's likeness. That's just.

[Abrar Al Heati]

Yeah, I mean Especially when you consider that again like the, the stakes of Katy Perry dress that isn't real are so low. But like, I mean we had that issue with like Taylor Swift deep fakes that were circulating on X like a couple months ago where when like you have celebrities and it's so easy for people to generate images of them that would not otherwise exist that are violating to them and the future is great. Tech is good. There's no issues with tech ever.

[Micah Sargent]

By the way, for the folks who don't read sarcasm that had sarcasm written all over it. Just so you know. Yes. Yeah, I'm seeing Gal Gadot. That model has 25,000 downloads. Scarlett Johansson has 24,000 downloads. Emma Watson 23,000. Natalie Portman 17,000. I do not want to know what people are doing with these AI models. The. This is. I gotta get this. Anyway, I'm leaving that you can probably guess, unfortunately. Oh yeah, yeah. And okay, so that is our first story of the week. Ultimately what we're saying is try to, try to strap on that skepticism from the get go and help your, the people around you also do that and to cultivate that skepticism when it comes to what you're seeing because it'll help you in being able to determine what's real and what's not. Well, I hope you're enjoying this best stuff. It's always fun to do these and I have to tell you, it's a lot of work and I really appreciate our team, the people who work so hard.

[Jason Howell]

Anthony Nielsen, our creative director.

[Micah Sargent]

Our producers and editors, Benito Gonzalez, Kevin King, John Ashley. They work so hard to put this all together for you.

[Jason Howell]

All of our hosts, our contributors do.

[Micah Sargent]

And of course there's the office piece. People who do work in continuity, like Viva and Sebastian.

[Jason Howell]

Our CEO, Lisa. Twit is a, is a big effort.

[Micah Sargent]

And we think what we're doing is really important. I hope you do too.

[Jason Howell]

I hope you enjoy the company and.

[Micah Sargent]

Learn from the information. And if you do, I'd like you to consider joining our club because frankly, in 2025 that's the only thing that's going to keep Twit going. If you like what you hear and you want to continue, continue, please. Seven bucks a month. Consider joining Club Twit. Twit TV Club Twit. You get ad free versions of all the shows, access to our Discord special.

[Jason Howell]

Programming you don't get anywhere else. But really the main thing you get.

[Micah Sargent]

Is that warm and fuzzy feeling that you're keeping Twit going.

[Jason Howell]

We need your help. I hate to beg, but we really do.

[Micah Sargent]

Twit TV Club Twit. But enough of that. On with the show.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

New York Times bestselling author Jennifer L. Armentrout's Blood and Ass Serious series is captivating and sexy. Chosen at birth to usher in a new era, Poppy's life has never been hers. Waiting for the day of her ascension, she would rather be with the gods, fighting the evil that took her family. The entire kingdom rests on her shoulders. When Hulk, a God bound to her ascension, enters her life, she is tangled with desire. He tempts her with the forbidden. A kingdom, blood and ash. A twisting, steamy escape. Available in print, ebook and audiobook Book.

[Amanda Silberling]

Where books are sold ZeroFooxtrot isn't just a brand, it's a way of life. Founded and operated by veterans, zerafoxtrot's unique apparel and gear echoes the grit of the warrior culture. Zero Foxtrot dedicates itself to producing content, honoring the sacrifices of forgotten heroes of the past and connecting history to the present. Embark on a journey with Zero Foxtrot today at Zero Foxtrot.com it's not merely our product products, it's about the ethos that we embody. Rugged, resilient, and timeless.

[Micah Sargent]

Thank you again to Anthony for those hilarious and honestly, pretty cool images of Amanda and myself attending the event. If only we actually got an invite. Maybe next year. I was also joined by the amazing Abrar Al Heati of cnet, who had quite a few wonderful stories of the week this year. But I talked to her about an app called Ixray that used Meta's Ray Ban glasses to dox other people facial recognition and some AI mixed in to help these people figure out who they were talking to and what there was to know about them. It's kind of creepy, honestly. Give it a listen.

[Leah Nylen]

Yes, I wanted to talk about this, the creepy side of smart glasses, which won't come as a surprise for anyone who's really been following smart glasses, even, you know, as far back as Google Glass. But there's this project that some Harvard students worked on called Ix Ray. And what this does is they use glasses like Meta Ray Bans, and what they're able to do is essentially use facial recognition as they're walking around to scan people's faces and then use reverse facial recognition tools to figure out to find some URLs with some information that matches what what's been scanned, and then using large language models to details like a person's name or their job or, you know, addresses, relatives. It's just it's so far reaching. They're also, you know, able to find, you know, using. The interesting thing here is not only can they use tools that have existed for so long, but what they mention is that the prevalence of large language models and how good they've gotten has, has made it easier to have this very comprehensive data again, just from putting on smart glasses like Meta's, Ray Ban and just walking around and scanning people's faces as they're walking by. They mentioned that this is not a tool that they're releasing so that anyone can, you know, snoop on people. Thank goodness. It's kind of just to demonstrate how these smart glasses, which, you know, Meta pitches these as glasses that can kind of blend in and look like regular glasses, which is cool, but then also raises concerns about, well, if they just blend in. Like when people had Google Glass and were dubbed glass holes, it was because it was like it was obvious that you were wearing something that looked kind of dystopian and odd and, you know, unsettling. But these glasses are designed to just look like glasses. And so it becomes harder to tell even if there's a little, you know, light that shows up when you're recording, not everyone's going to notice that light, especially in bright sunlight or if they're in a crowd. So it really just does raise these concerns because I feel like we're already, I feel this when I go out, but I feel like everyone's always not everyone. There's a lot of people who are, I think, especially in California, who are maybe Vloggin taking videos or TikTok videos anywhere. But you know, especially in certain areas and you have to be conscious of that. You kind of think, will I end up in the background of somebody's video at some point without, you know, consent? And that's fine. I mean, it's public spaces, you can, you can do that. But this, this is like next level, right? It's not just you being in the background of somebody's video, it's them finding out everything about you. And so they had this video that they posted which was basically them walking around and talking to people and just sharing like, oh my gosh, are you so and so? Don't you work at so and so? And they had all this information that they just gathered, which is really creepy. And these people kind of went along with it, like, yeah, I am that person. And it kind of seemed like this endearing like, oh, I know who you are and I know your work and I've read your research or whatever, but it's really just them gathering all this data super, super easily just by putting on these gray bands.

[Micah Sargent]

That's pretty chilling, right? I mean, with us. No, it's a sort of. What is that? Dramatic irony in the sense that we know what's going on, the person doesn't. Um, it's. What's interesting about this is it's one example of how we see big tech actually. Like, this is. This is big tech pushing for this future. Because think about the Bella Ramsey ads from Apple where the actor is sort of starts to walk into a room, sees somebody that they're supposed to. To know, backs up, and then asks Siri, you know, who's this person? What's. Where do I know them from? That kind of thing? Siri tells them, and then they're able to go on and have the conversation. It's being pushed as a cool future feature, a feature that you would want to have, an option that you'd want to have. But while that is that. That the way that that's done is through somebody's own, you know, data that's available where it's looking at your location that you've shared, that you've, you know, you've opted, blah, blah, blah. Having it be the other way around is chilling. But I always come back to. When it comes to this idea, there is a part of me that is very aware of the fact that, that we are all given, when we sign up for a service, the opportunity to read through terms and conditions. And we are all given the choice of whether we sign up for a service or not.

[Leah Nylen]

Right.

[Micah Sargent]

And we do have a responsibility to understand or choose not to. To what we're giving when we make those choices. And it's. It's tough because the sort of soft, humanitarian side of me, which is a much larger side of me, is, you know, railing against the machine here and saying, you know, people need to be. We need to do a better job of telling people what's going on, have them be more aware of it. But there is a small part of. Of me that I guess tries to have empathy for literally everything. And so I have empathy for the company in that situation. And I say the company's doing their due diligence in having it be in the fine print that this is the situation and that your data is available. And I've noticed, as many people do, that it does oftentimes take object lessons, lessons for humans to learn learn, like not to do something or to be better about something. And so maybe these are Object lessons that have to happen. This thing where it's like, let me show you what it means. Because you've decided not to read through the fine print and you've just said, yes, yes, yes, yes to everything. You need to see that to understand the impact. I'm curious, abroad are in anecdotally, in people that you've talked to that are outside of tech, how often do you find that they have a deep concern for their, their privacy? And if you do take the opportunity to kind of explain, hey, when you're watching TV on this TV that you bought, that was a budget tv, it's tracking what you're watching. I want to hear, you know, what's been your experience in that kind of thing over time. And if people are concerned about this or they're just kind of like, well, you know, it is what it is.

[Leah Nylen]

I think that's exactly the problem. I think we get really excited about new technologies and we get really excited about, oh, this is, this is a free service. If I can sign up for any of these social media platforms, this is a discounted product that I can take advantage of. And then you realize there's always a price. Right? Right. It's, it's not, you know, there's no such thing as a free lunch. There's no such thing as free tech. And so you kind of learn a little bit too late what the cost is. So we see people who do kind of have to wait for something like this to come out, where they're like, oh, this is quite serious. And, and it's not like it just sprung up overnight.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Right.

[Leah Nylen]

We've been building up to this for so long. These, these platforms have been collecting our data for so long. And so the, you get a piece of tech like this and, you know, it's not just about the glasses. Right. People are concerned about what glasses can record and capture, but it's about everything that it's able to access and what that bigger picture looks like. So, yeah, I think, you know, we, who are in this space, whether we're, we're reading or writing these tech stories, we know what the privacy implications are. We understand the dangers, but we still engage in it. Right. And so imagine if you don't necessarily know everything that's at stake. And, and yeah, I think a lot of it is just very much in the dark.

[Micah Sargent]

Yeah, yeah, it's, I, I celebrate this, this use of the technology as a means, because very clearly, you know, they're not making it available to people. They're literally showing you look at this thing that you can do with it. It's not great that this can, this can happen. And so going back to the question that I asked you, answering it for myself, I will say that I have seen, which I've been happy about, an overall increase in awareness of one's sort of data value and one's privacy. And I like that that has happened, but it only reaches to a certain extent, extent. And that's been the fascinating thing for me is while I have seen more people showing concern about an app, say, tracking them, I specifically brought up the TV example because that is so far down the line for people that again, anecdotally, I've explained that in the past and they just, that's just one that they don't really care about. And there are a few out there where it's, that's like, oh, that's doing that. That's fine. That makes sense. And it's not to the level that we have. And the awareness, I think that we, and by we, I mean those who study this stuff every day and who do in different ways, read through terms and conditions and understand the implications therein. It's not there yet. And I'm curious if it will get there or in if. Because I almost saw there, there used to be a whole heck of a lot of, of apathy about privacy and especially the phrase you would always hear, I. They'd always kind of joke, I don't care if the CIA is looking at my stuff. I'm not doing anything wrong. If somebody wants to look at my stuff, I mean, I'm just boring. So who cares? That was the refrain. I used to have that, that used to be my refrain. And then, and I remember the day that it changed because a good friend of mine convinced me that that apathy was only making things worse. And then I, you know, so I became kind of hypersensitive to it, at least in awareness of it. And I saw a decrease in that apathy, an increase in that concern. But I'm wondering if it's tanking again a little bit because it can feel a little overwhelming, right? When you just were at a place where you kind of have to accept, and this is the thing that I kind of struggle with saying that. But do you, you almost do have to accept that it's going to be out there. We're all having not just our phones now, but also our little, you know, lenses on our face and all this other stuff. And given that that technology is there, you either exist in society or you Don't. But we don't really have. Have the option to not exist in society. So, yeah, it's just kind of there.

[Leah Nylen]

I do think we've kind of grown numb to it because think about all the times that we hear about all of our most personal data being leaked. Right, by whatever it was, whether it's a corporation or whether it's a product that has been violating our privacy. I do think it's so hard to still feel shocked or angry by it when it happens all the time. And so that's just kind of a disappointing reality. And then on the flip side side of it, these companies clearly create a product that is valuable for people, and so they're not gonna walk away from it if it's a tool that helps them connect with people or makes their lives easier. And it's just a really unfortunate cost that you have to pay. I mean, that's, that's the price that you pay for something that you want to use and find it difficult to remove yourself from. And even if you don't, you know, even if you're not on social media, again, there are ways that your, your information is going to be compromised anyway. It is so hard. Privacy. I don't think it exists anymore. And I just think that's, it's a. To pill to swallow, but that's kind of where we're at right now.

[Micah Sargent]

Thank you again, Abrar Al Heati, for all of your great work this year. A couple of interviews to round things out. The inimitable Leah Nylan of Bloomberg joined me twice this year to talk about the Google antitrust case. This was my first conversation with Lee Nylan, and I learned so much and was honored and overjoyed to have her back again later to kind of give us an update. So I plan to see her again in 2025. Let's just kick things off with the big question. Can you help us? Can you explain the significance of the doj? Considering a breakup of Google? How does this compare to past antitrust actions against tech companies? And, you know, is it. Is this novel or have we seen something like this before?

[H]

Yeah. So this is a pretty historic recommendation. The Justice Department hasn't recommended breaking up a tech company since Microsoft, which happened 25 years ago. And the US hasn't actually broken up a company since 1984, when they did it with AT&T. So this would be something that hasn't happened in 40 years if it actually does go through.

[Micah Sargent]

Wow. Okay. Yeah, that's. That is huge. That is huge. I'm sure, I'm sure. For you. Actually, I want to ask you, does, as an antitrust reporter, were you, you know, waiting with bated breath, just wondering what was going to happen next? How did, how was that experience for you in hearing about a breakup? Was it kind of like, you know, sound the alarms, light the lanterns, something wild is happening? What was that like?

[H]

Yeah, it was pretty fun, actually. You know, because we're the antitrust nerds. We. There are very few of us, but we're mighty. But this is like a historic event for us. As I said, this hasn't happened in my lifetime, so it's sort of like a once in a lifetime event. Especially because they haven't done it in so long. As I said, they tried with Microsoft and they ended up eventually accepting a settlement that didn't require a breakup. So we haven't seen this in a very long time.

[Micah Sargent]

Wow. So in the article, you talk about how there are multiple potential remedies rather than going the way of a breakup like couples counseling. No. What are some of the other options that the DOJ is considering and how would those impact Google's business versus something like an actual breakup of the company?

[H]

Yeah. So the Justice Department's filing, they described it as sort of like a menu of options that they're giving the judge who will ultimately make the decision as to what to do. So the breakup is sort of like on the one side, the most extreme. In the middle, we have another one that they had recommended, and that would be to require Google to sort of share its index, which means sharing all of the data that it collects on the Internet to help make its search results and also help make some of its AI products. And the Justice Department says that they think that is a good option because it would help rival search engines, but it would also help small companies that are trying to get started in the AI business. Because one of the big things that hampers folks is getting access to the data to build the models. And this would help with that. Then they had a couple more options that were more minor. Of course, those are the ones that Google has said that they really like. And that's just to unwind a couple of these contracts that they had with other companies. Like they were paying Apple and Samsung and some other companies billions of dollars a year to make Google search the default on web browsers and phones. And so Google says, you know, we can just get rid of that requirement and sort of move from there. The Justice Department doesn't just want to do that because they say, you know, that was the illegal conduct. We're going to get rid of that. But we also need to do something to sort of remedy what has allowed Google to maintain or to gain its dominance and then maintain it over the years.

[Micah Sargent]

Okay, yeah. This is interesting that there are, are several different options here, but that there's, it's, it's cool, I guess, to see that it's not just about where we've seen kind of, I, I feel law rulings in the past, it's been about slaps on the wrist or bigger slaps on the wrist. I don't know what you would call those, but breaks of the wrist, I guess. But this is about not just sort of, you know, making a company behave by, by threatening it with something, but about actually getting at the root of something and pulling it apart, figuring out what needs to change so that it doesn't continue to happen or happen again. And you did write that Judge Mehta ruled Google broke antitrust laws in online search and search text ads markets. Can you kind of talk about the key issues in those findings in particular?

[H]

Yeah, so search, everyone knows what search is. You go to the thing, you type in your thing, it gives you the results. The search text ads are the ones that sort of appear at the top of the page. Advertisers pay billions of dollars a year for those advertisements. And Judge Mehta found that Google has sort of carte blanche over how much it charges those advertisers because they really feel that there's no other option. When you go to a search engine, you are often, oftentimes looking for information. You might be looking for information about a specific purchase. So advertisers really want to get in front of you right then because you are thinking about buying something and there's really, in their view, sort of no substitute for these advertisements. And that, you know, this is actually Google's core business. This is where it makes two thirds of the money that fund the company. So the Justice Department was pretty happy with the finding that not only had they monopolized search, they had monopolize these ads. Because if you want to change a company's business, you really do need to get at where it's getting its money from. And so some of the suggestions that they made in this also do relate to the advertising market. They made some specific recommendations there, such as giving advertisers a lot more information about where it is that their ads are actually appearing. When advertisers go and buy stuff from Google, Google doesn't actually give them a detailed list of you appeared in this many searches and this is what people were searching for. They give them sort of an overview of where they were spending the money. But the Justice Department said you really should be giving people a receipt like we appeared in this many searches and things like that and allow them more controls over which ads they appear in and which they don't. So there are some proposals in there that would get towards this side of the market it as well.

[Micah Sargent]

Interesting. Now this isn't Google's only set of ongoing issues when it comes to actions. So tell us about kind of the other stuff that's going on. Will, with your experience, do you think this is going to have an impact on those other cases like the one it has with Epic Games and the display ads case? That's a completely separate thing.

[H]

Yeah. So in the US there's there are the three sort of big cases. The one is this one that's focused on search. The second one is the one that you mentioned involving Epic Games and a bunch of state attorneys general who also sued over related things. And that one involves Google's Play Store. In that case, a jury found that Google was illegally monopolizing the market for Android apps because it had been paying manufacturers to ensure that Google Play was the only store that was pre installed on devices. And then they were also paying a lot of major developers to ensure that they would only debut really important games in the Play Store as opposed to other places. And they were paying again billions of dollars to various companies for this privilege. This is a smaller side of Google's business. It's only $14 million a year. It's very funny when you say only and it's still that large amount of money. So in that case, the judge has already made his ruling. He has now forbidden Google from entering into these kinds of deals for the next three years. And he's also ruled that Google has to allow third party app stores to be downloaded through Google Play. So sometime in the near future, you may be able to download other app stores within Google Play onto your Android device to make it easier for you to get apps without going through Google Play's billing. So you might be able to start paying for things using things like Square or PayPal so that they don't have to. The merchant then doesn't have to pay the 30% fee that Google charges them to use the Google Play billing services. So Google has already said it's going to appeal that one. That one is largely done. The other one that we mentioned involves ad tech. So ad tech tech is this sort of complicated technology that you as a consumer never see, but it helps buy, sell and serve all of the display ads that you see across the web. So those are like, you know, the banner ads that you see when you're reading a news or a blog or a sports site. Google has also, according to the Justice Department, monopolized the market for that kind of technology through a series of acquisitions and conduct over the years. That case just had a three week trial that wrapped up two weeks ago. It's going to have closing arguments in November. And then the judge said that she will rule before the end of the year. That's another one where the Justice Department has actually explicitly said that they want a breakup. So if they win, they have said that they think that Google should be required to sell off some of the tools that it has bought and owns that relate to online display ads.

[Micah Sargent]

Yeah, yeah. Now in it, you note that as you would imagine, Google does plan to appeal once these, once everything's kind of figured out, it's just the Google's like, look, we're already ready. So based on your reporting, what do you think this is going to look like timeline wise? Will it be reminiscent of what we saw with Microsoft? Do you think it's going to be a whole new ballgame game? Is there a shift kind of in the overall way that, that the justice system looks at big tech companies? What are, what's your crystal ball here?

[H]

So the appeals process, as I said, it's starting now in Epic. It won't start in the Google process until the remedy is imposed, which the judge says he's going to impose a remedy by next August. So that's sort of our timeline for when this search case will be done and then that appeal starts. Appeals generally take anywhere from one to two years. Depends on how busy that court is at that point in time. And then there's always the possibility of a Supreme Court appeal. But the Supreme Court really doesn't take antitrust cases very often. They didn't take the Microsoft case. They don't take these very often because they're boring from their point of view. So it's, it could go to the Supreme Court or it could just go back. So, you know, Google has to wait until the end of the whole process, both the liability and the remedies phase, and then it gets to appeal. It is going to, of course, ask that it not be required to do anything while that appeal is pending. The Justice Department is probably going to oppose that and say, well, you should at least have to change, make a couple changes while that is pending, in particular in the search case, because some of these changes have already started taking place in Europe. So they feel that, you know, in their view, you're already doing it elsewhere, you might as well start doing it here. So we'll, we'll sort of see. Google has been emphasizing that we're still years away from a resolution, but we're probably more like two to two and a half years out.

[Micah Sargent]

Understood. And then one more kind of crystal ball question here. And really, every, every time I bring up a question like this, there's, there's a little bit of, of understandable hedging involved, but it's an honor to get to talk to people who are very versed in the work that they do specifically. And so more I'm asking from your perspective as an antitrust reporter, as someone who focuses on this stuff regularly, given the complexity of Google's business, what challenges do you foresee in implementing a potential break, breakup, or other structural changes to the company if one of these other remedies plays out and the appeals process doesn't work out in Google's favor?

[H]

Yeah, I mean, Google has already actually started talking about some of the things that it thinks would be sort of technical challenges if it would be required to be broken up. For example, you know, Android and all of the App Store and stuff. These are like software, but they run on Google's machines. So if it's required to divest it, you're going to need somebody else has a lot of servers that can devote to this. And there actually aren't that many other companies in the world that have the sort of computing power that would be necessary to sort of host all of this stuff. I mean, you have Microsoft, you have Amazon, but do we really want to be giving them this other major business? They've also in some cases been accused of being monopolies as well. So it's a little bit complicated about who might be able to buy this or if it were spun off into a new company. Company. Like, how much of Google's existing stuff does it get to take with it? That is pretty hard to figure out. I mean, the other thing is, we were talking yesterday with analysts and they said Google's future is a lot in AI. The Justice Department is looking at putting some of the limitations on what they can develop with AI because so much of the data underlying its AI models came from search. And their argument is, you know, if you monopolize this market, you shouldn't really get to take the fruits of that illegal behavior and move it to a new place. So it could be pretty, I guess, catastrophic for Google, depending on what the judge rules. If he does place limits on their development of AI.

[Micah Sargent]

I do want to ask a little.

[Jason Howell]

Tiny favor from all of you, not just Club Twit members.

[Micah Sargent]

Every year, you may remember, we do.

[Jason Howell]

A survey of our audience. We want to get to know you a little bit better.

[Micah Sargent]

It helps us with sales because we.

[Jason Howell]

Can say, you know, as we often do, 70% of our audience are it decision makers, that kind of thing. It's a very quick survey.

[Micah Sargent]

Shouldn't only take you a couple of minutes. Twit TV survey this is the new 2024, 2025 survey.

[Jason Howell]

We're starting a little bit earlier this year than we usually do.

[Micah Sargent]

It just helps us and it would.

[Jason Howell]

Be a be doing us all a favor if you, if you did it. So in between shows, maybe. TWiT TV survey thank you so much.

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[Micah Sargent]

I was hoping that in talking about this credential portability, we can talk about breaking down the kind of key problem that these new specifications are trying to solve. Why has credential migration between providers historically been such a challenge?

[Amanda Silberling]

Yeah, David, take it away.

[Jason Howell]

Well, the problem is that everybody keeps it in their own ecosystem. And while that works really great within the ecosystem, there are a lot of challenges when you try to shift ecosystems. If you want to go, say, between Apple and Android, or even if you have reason to move between different passkey providers. There are barriers to doing that and the solutions that are out there tend to be very insecure. You basically save things to text files to your, to your local machine and that's a really bad thing to do with, with important credentials. And on the mobile, on mobile devices there's largely no way to do that at all. So it's kind of solving two parts of the problem, making it more, the capabilities more broadly available to the industry and at the same time making it a very secure way to exchange the data.

[Amanda Silberling]

Yeah, right now the kind of default across the industry is to export a CSV. It's unencrypted, unformatted. It's generally a pain in the butt not just for users, but for companies in the credential management space to, to marshal and format these files and sometimes that data gets lost. So there's no guarantees right now that your credentials, when they move from A to B, you know, when you get a new phone and potentially a new credential manager, say you're moving, you know, from, from an iPhone to an Android device, that those credentials are going to be all be able to be imported or exported properly. Additionally, you know, it's. Credential exchange is not just about import export migration, it's about shareability. Right. If, if you have one password today and someone else has Dashlane and you want to share a credential, well there's, there's no great way of doing that. So if I want to share something with, you know, my mom who's actually Dashlane user. Yeah, well it, it, it's, I, I use a few so I'm, you know, I'm not picking favorites, but the, the, the process is, you know, she has to go either download one password or, or, or the credential manager that is, I'm trying to share with, or she needs to copy paste the credential or I need to copy it to her, you know, in a separate chat, which undermines the whole reason for having a manager in the first place.

[Micah Sargent]

Now, something that stood out to me, the specifications mentioned 12 billion with a B online accounts that can now be accessed with passkeys. You know, the narrative seems to be that there are still very few accounts out there that support pass keys, but that's quite a few. So how significant is this standardization effort for accelerating actual passkey adoption across the industry?

[Jason Howell]

It's critical. I mean, when you look at, you know, Google's already announced 800 million users have access to passkeys and Microsoft's rolled it out to all their MSN users and you know, Amazon's announced like 175 million people. When you start adding up, that's three. And then Apple and their ecosystem is about 1.5 billion users. That's already, you're at two and a half, 3 billion. And that's just three accounts. Everyone always talks about the number of accounts they've got there. And an effort like this requires standardization because if you, if you only have one, of course it's useless. But even if you just have two vendors involved, it still has little value. What you really need is it to be as available and as well integrated as the rest of the ecosystem, because that then removes the barriers to adoption. You know, anytime you're trying to use a new technology, there's the technology itself and then there's how do you use, use the technology. And the ability to move the passwords around is an important part of this whole ecosystem. And so having a secure way to do that is a really, really important key to get, getting this more broadly deployed.

[Micah Sargent]

Something a little nerdy. The specifications address both secure protocol CXP and standardized format cxf. I was hoping you could explain why both components are necessary for this credential exchange to work as it needs to.

[Amanda Silberling]

Yeah, absolutely. So the credential exchange protocol just defines how we can securely and privately move credentials from A to B. But what's really critical, right, is that that same thing I was talking about earlier on, right, is we all need to be able to speak the same language once the credentials move because we may get dropped data. This is really critical and kind of new to the space of being able to move credentials, right, is that we're going to start defining formats for how credentials should look in code or really just in JSON for how they should be moved, stored and securely backed up. This doesn't just help with exchange itself and sharing, but you know, for the long term format and storage of credentials and data related to identity, this is necessary. You know, there's other standards like SCIM2 that exist for managing and formatting identity information about users. The same needs to exist for credentials angels.

[Micah Sargent]

Now you look at the list of participating companies and it's, you know, Apple, Google, password managers, like 1Password, which is the password manager I use, bit warden, was it. How difficult was it to get these companies on board? I guess more what I'm asking is, did everybody kind of go, this is something that we really just need to make make happen? And so it was just easy to Kind of get everybody on board, or was it a little bit like pulling teeth? If you can answer that.

[Jason Howell]

Yeah, I can tackle that one. So pretty much everyone in the press release is already a member of the FIDO alliance, where we define, you know, the infrastructure and such for passkeys. And so we already have all of those people having conversations about making pass keys work. They're already invested in the ecosystem, ecosystem. And so it wasn't a big leap and it was. Was a pretty clear step to say, yeah, we need to be able to move this stuff around. So it. For the people that we were already engaged with, who were already members, it actually wasn't a big step because as I said, they're already doing this work. They already know what their customers need and quite frankly are asking for. And so, you know, yeah, there's always battles about what's in the spec and how does that fit within an ecosystem and so on. But at the conceptual level, we had pretty much everyone on board pretty quickly and it's been a very positive collaboration, which is always great to see.

[Amanda Silberling]

Yeah, I think that's one of the things I love about working in the Fido alliance the most, is I've been involved in Fido for eight years and I've been in standards for 10 as a whole across a lot of different bodies. But it's a really collaborative nature. We don't come at it from a competitive angle, legal, and we're there to make credentials and passis specifically in the Fido alliance, work for users. One of the things that I feel like we managed to really get ahead of is I think early on this year you saw a lot of press come out saying that passkeys are going to be a walled garden. They're a way to lock people into platforms and keep people from moving off of where they keep their credentials. And that's really not the case. We, we just really wanted there to be a secure way for credentials to be moved because unlike passkeys, if you lose the private key to these credentials, then that's a higher security concern because we're putting a lot more trust in these types of credentials than we are passwords.

[Micah Sargent]

In the past, definitely. Now, the protocol does emphasize secure credential exchange in both online and offline offline scenarios. I think the question is a little obvious, but at the same time, I'd love to hear these nerdy details of why it was important to support different network conditions. Because you've got some services that use the cloud for a lot of things, but then there May be times when you don't. So what led to the choice there?

[Amanda Silberling]

I'm really glad you called this out. Saying the Dave, right before the call I was like, this is a really nerdy question. I'm really glad to get like the good ones. Yeah. So we really wanted to make Credential Exchange work in a variety of scenarios right now, as we said. Right. The default is a CSV that you have to kind of hope that users delete. And if you want to make sure that users are going to do this securely, well, not only do you need to support these consumer cases where I'm just trying to move to a new provider, but you need to support these business cases, these more high assurance cases where, you know, being online may be, may not be available. You know, you may be in a secure environment or you may be trying to move credentials from, you know, your laptop in your office to a rack in your data center. And you may, there may be a firewall in between or some air gap where you need to, you need to be able to move those credentials with different network conditions or in cases where they can't reach out to the same services and backend. One of the things that we, we really explored in, in Credential Exchange and are going to continue to develop is these enterprise specific flows, these high assurance, high security flows where the business actually has a lot more authority around the movement of credentials and could potentially apply things like policy or authorization, certificate, certificates and signing that could say that, you know, yeah, this user is allowed to use to move these credentials and only these types of credentials from this provider to this provider. And then in the case of these certificates, being there, you know, being online or offline may be an optional thing, but the business still has the ability to authorize this movement. And that's something that's, you know, brand new and I think pretty innovative in the space that we worked on a lot in fido.

[Micah Sargent]

One of the key features of course is the ability to securely move passkeys between providers. And I think from the outside looking in, you hear one company supports passkeys, another company supports passkeys, password management platform supports pass. It seems like if we all have, if we all have the same little key, then moving my key from this place to this place and that place to that place should be easy. But there were clearly and are clearly challenges. Challenges. What were the specific challenges or maybe maybe the biggest one or the biggest few that needed to be addressed for this credential exchange to be as simple as I imagine you all Intend to make it.

[Amanda Silberling]

Yeah, I think. Oh, sorry, David. Go for it. Yeah.

[Jason Howell]

Oh, no, I was just going to say that it. In my mind, it. And it's not. This is not a geeky answer, but it boils down to being able to do it securely. Right.

[Micah Sargent]

That.

[Jason Howell]

Right off the top, if we're going to move stuff between two points, important stuff, it's got to be done in a very secure, trusted way. The second is the data formats vary wildly. You try and move stuff between password managers today and you get nominal levels of success because the way they define all the elements of a password versus, say, credit card information, it's not the same same. You get some of the data coming over you miss pieces. And so the value of having agreed upon data structures is actually of, as, you know, a huge value as well, so that we get a much better quality of information exchange. And it's easier to say at a whole level, I recognize this credential type, or I don't, in which case you can be really clear that, all right, the ones I recognized, I brought them in, but here are the ones that I didn't. And so you can give the end user a clear indication of what worked and what didn't work. Whereas today, yeah, some of the stuff might roll in and you really don't know what did and what didn't.

[Amanda Silberling]

Yeah, behind the scenes on a lot of these credential managers, the plumbing is very different. So being able to, you know, have this protocol in place that is going to standardize how we communicate these credentials was the biggest first step. I think there's still a lot of work being done on, you know, behind the scenes and in 1Password, Dashlane, Bitwarden, and a lot of these orgs that we're working directly with and we'll, we'll, you know, have a beta rollout of CXP with shortly of. Of just like making sure that we're able to behind the scenes, get these credentials in the format they need to be exchanged and work like we say they're going to work.

[Micah Sargent]

Understand? Now, let's talk about the future. You know, these specifications, at least. When I heard that this was coming through the pipeline, I thought, okay, this is it. Now I can get excited about passkeys without seeming like I am, I don't know, thinking the earth is flat in the sense that people will actually believe me and be excited that this is the future. But I wanted to ask you both, you know, do you think this is the last big hurdle for making pass keys a more common form of login or other, other type of authorization authentication. Excuse me? Or do you still have some boxes that you're looking to check? In terms of, of getting my cousins and my uncles and everybody else who's not super steeped in technology on board with wanting to use them.

[Jason Howell]

From a technology standpoint, it's a big one because that lock in notion or fear of lock in was, as Nick said earlier in the year, being discussed quite a bit out in the wild and. But what's interesting is awareness is a big part of it too. It's not just the technology. There aren't just technology gaps, there's just awareness gaps. People see passkey, they don't know what that is, they don't know if they should trust it. The notion of doing things without a password on the surface sounds scary to people, even though it's more secure. So the deployment is dependent on a variety of factors, not just the technical ones, but absolutely, this is a big, big step forward in the technical side.

[Amanda Silberling]

Yeah, I think the, I mean, with regards to cxp, right. The first step is allowing for passkey portability and we're actually, you know, going to come out. I mentioned that a few of us in the credential manager space, including Bitwarden, Dashlane, Google 1Password, are going to work on supporting passkeys, passwords and some other information, usually I think addresses, credit cards, pretty, pretty soon. Like we want to be able to support a broader range of credentials and we see credential exchange protocol really being the first step in a broader conversation about where credentials are headed, especially as we start seeing more Digital Credentials and MDLs, mobile driver's licenses become more widely available. We want to be able to support the movement and management of these credentials and allow for that user to have sovereignty over their credentials and making them more portable. So I think this is a huge leap for passkeys. Especially as David said, we're kind of moving away from that fear of lock in. We're moving away from users feeling like they're going to, if they're moving from new devices or moving to new apps, the passkeys are going to be a risk to accessing things that they need. We're just going to make them more available. They're going to be available across, you know, more credential managers. And I think that's sort of a future that we're also planning for. I think especially as we start talking about mobile driver's licenses and having digital wallets become more widely used, it's going to, we're going to be entering sort of a future where you're not just going to have one password or dashlane or one credential, credential manager. You're going to have multiple sources of credentials and we're all going to be able, we're all going to need to talk to each other. And we see CXP as a way to enable that, which is, you know, like the FIDO alliance. We're starting with pass keys, but we're seeing, we're building for the future.

[Jason Howell]

Yes, two things to that at the consumer level, this notion of, well, they tell you you're not supposed to do it, but everyone does. Sharing your streaming service account password password with a family member, you know, at this point it's like copy it down or send in a text message and you still gotta, you know, enter it in this way if you can give someone, and I won't name a particular service because they'll get mad if you, you share the, the account information with them, it's in their password manager and it will simply work. So the usability of that scenario is actually much simpler. The same with, you know, shared bank accounts. Some of my bank account or some of some accounts with my wife, we can only have one, right? Well, so I have to share, we have to share. So again, this makes it simpler and some of the password manager tools actually give you some control over that as well so that that can be managed. In addition, you actually have regulatory requirements in the European Union, the eu, they're doing developing digital wallet infrastructure, if you will. And one of the key requirements is portability of data. That's a really big requirement. A lot of the EU cybersecurity and data areas is to make sure that end users aren't locked in to any one platform, any one product. And so this is the kind of tool that enables that capability again in a way that regulators will like it, as opposed to, again doing it an insecure and unreliable way.

[Amanda Silberling]

I don't think this is like the end of the line too for what needs to be done on passkeys by any means. And a lot of that work is not just being done in FIDO, it's being done in the W3C and the WebAuthn working group, which I'm also a part of and David's involved with. We've been working on this for seven or eight years and the work continues. And we're due to publish the next version of Webauthn and the Webauthn API in the next month. Or so. And that's going to include a lot of improvements around usability of passkeys and the underlying APIs, which is defined by webauthn in there. So we're really interested in handling scenarios for, I'd say the more high security holdouts in the space, being able to make these more usable. While usability for people is great, usability for your bank is also important. Banks and other high assurance payment service providers that experience a lot of fraud really want to make these credentials a stronger replacement for passwords, not just for them, but for their regulatory needs, as David mentioned. So we're adding a lot of things to support better, I'd say, usability, better signaling between applications and your credential managers. Being able to handle things like passive enrollment and registration of passkeys is something that's coming down the line. So being able to go to a site, log in with your password and then having 1Password pop up and say, hey, we saw you just logged in. Do you want to enroll a passkey? And we can just seamlessly make a passkey right after login with this site. So we think that's going to be a huge step forward in terms of usability and adoption if we just, just make, if we, if we make that process easier and easier to just roll over to something more secure. Because you know, right now I, I, a couple sites are, have, have a pretty great flow. But if you want to roll a passkey today, okay, well you log in, you go to your security settings, you go to, right, add a passkey, you add the pass, you name the passkey and it, it just becomes this, this certain amount of friction. And we really want to bring that friction down and, and, and make it just as seamless as you, you know, registering an account with a password.

[Micah Sargent]

Absolutely. Well, David Turner, Nick Steele, I want to thank you both so much for taking the time to join me today to talk through this update. I'm very much looking forward to seeing how this progresses. Is there a place where folks should go to kind of stay up to date with what's making its way down the Fido pipeline, as it were?

[Jason Howell]

FidoAlliance.org is our website and that's probably the best starting point. You know, there's, there's, from the top level, there'll be links down to both the passkey related documents themselves, but also credential exchange information too.

[Amanda Silberling]

And you can follow me at Kaiju on Bluesky. I post there and have a couple lists of other folks like Matthew Miller and Tim Capalli. Who post a lot in the space and we'll keep you updated on where the spec's at.

[Jason Howell]

Actually, one other quick thing to add is that there are a lot of open source initiatives in the same space trying to do this kind of transfer. And so we've taken a unique step with Fido and set up a repo in GitHub specifically to get feedback on these specifications. So there is a place, a direct place, to provide comments. It's a public available repo and again it's on our Credential Exchange download page. I don't remember off the top of my head the name of the repo, but if anyone has been looking at the specs and they have comments or feedback, we do have a GitHub repo for that.

[Micah Sargent]

And then lastly, I was pleased to be joined by both Nick Steele and David Turner from the Fido alliance who came on to talk about how passkeys are fiddling, finally getting portable. Will 2025 be the year of pass keys? You'll have to tune into Tech News Weekly all this year to find out. Well, next year, thank you so much for this year of Tech News Weekly and I will catch you again on the other side of the calendar. Bye everyone.