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Big Technology Podcast
Sora 2 & AI’s Slop Era, Death Of The Creator Economy?, Apple’s SmartGlasses Roadmap
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- [00:00]
Alex Wilhelm
The gates of content hell are open as OpenAI's Sora 2 debuts with ultra realistic AI slop. And Apple has elevated its smart glasses plan and they could be coming soon. That's coming up on a Big Technology Podcast Friday edition with TechCrunch senior AI reporter Max Zeff right after this. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition where we break down the news with our traditional cool headed and nuanced approach. Today we have TechCrunch senior AI reporter Max Zeph joining us to talk about everything. AI slop. There's so much slop, but maybe it turns into something. We'll talk about how it might challenge the creator economy. We'll also talk about Apple smart glasses and the fact that it's speeding it up in the roadmap and plenty more. Max, great to see you. Welcome to the show.
- [00:50]
Max Zeff
Great to be here.
- [00:51]
Alex Wilhelm
Longtime listener, definitely. Well, we are. We always talk about your stories on the show. Here is a hint for listeners and viewers. When you hear we cite a TechCrunch story, it's almost always Max's. And Max, we're going to get into yours because you have some new reporting on the state of OpenAI after this Sora 2 launch and how some of the employees there are trying to figure out what it means for the company. But let's start off talking about Sora 2. For those who don't know, Sora 2 is OpenAI's new video generator, which they've now included in an app called, uh, Sora, which is basically meant to rival TikTok and YouTube. This is from the Wall Street Journal. OpenAI is squaring up to TikTok, Google's YouTube and Meta platforms with a new social media apps for its AI video generator that allows users to create high definition video clips with audio from text prompts. Users can upload short clips of themselves and insert them into Sora generated worlds describing the idea, style and scene they want to see. They can also connect with other users watching and commenting on their content. Max, just first question for you. We're now a couple days into this Sora madness. It's the number one app on the App Store. How big do you expect this to get?
- [02:13]
Max Zeff
Yeah, I mean, I could see this taking off quite significantly. I think in the last year we've really seen AI generated images and videos really take over regular social feeds. And I think the idea here from OpenAI is let's capture some of that growth on one of our own platforms. And while it sounds terrible and you know, at first it kind of Makes you cringe at the idea of a completely AI generated feed. It's been surprisingly compelling, I think, to a lot of people, as you can see by the growth on the App Store and just my own personal experience. You go on there and it's like, this is terrible. And I. It's like you can't take your eyes away. It's like watching a car crash on the side of the road. Yeah.
- [02:59]
Alex Wilhelm
I think it's worth pausing just to talk about how realistic these videos are. I watched one of Sam Altman on the release day, running around OpenAI headquarters with a bullhorn, telling them to get to the live stream in the first few seconds. This was like one of my first Sora 2 videos that I had seen. I was just like, that's real. And I was like, wait a second, that's not real. And then I really got mad at myself this week because a friend of mine posted a video of Jake Paul coming to their book signing and, you know, my friend signing a book and handing it to a very happy Jake Paul. And these videos are so good that your brain doesn't process the fact that they're AI slop at first. And I was like, you know, when you see this stuff, you go through these machinations in your mind of like, how did that happen? And I didn't know that he had a book. And then I was like, oh, my God, that's Sora. Like, it's crazy.
- [03:53]
Max Zeff
Yeah. There was a really interesting take from a former OpenAI employee, Miles Brundage, who kind of came out and said that, you know, we're getting into this era of AI generated video feeds, and it's worth noting that not all AI slop is created equal. Which I thought was a surprisingly thoughtful take about something that seems, at its face, really kind of scary. But I think he's right. I mean, I think, as we saw with Meta's Vibes app last week, that's Meta's TikTok competitor that's full of AI generated videos. And that product doesn't let you make videos of yourself or your friends. And I think the reaction was people were like, well, what is this? What do I do with this? Whereas with OpenAI's product, it's immediately become really compelling because people can see themselves in it. They can see other people they know. And. And that seems to be a really key detail here. That is a big differentiator.
- [04:54]
Alex Wilhelm
You get the sense that two things happen. First of all, Meta thought that Meta must have gotten word that OpenAI was going to release this and then rushed out vibes. And I think the other broader picture is people started to question why Mark Zuckerberg was sinking so many billions of dollars into AI research and recently going on this hiring spree of AI researchers. I think it's worth noting that a lot of the researchers that he poached were working on multimedia formats, audio, video, images. And you see, I think this week is the first time it's really come into focus that this could actually challenge the standard human created content feeds. And that's why it's like a nine alarm fire inside Meta HQ right now.
- [05:46]
Max Zeff
Yeah, I mean I think that this is the change that people have been talking about for a long time. I think it was hard to see for a while why a company like OpenAI was threatening to meta. And I think this week you see why. I mean I think that this is very clear evidence that there is something here. I don't think that this product is necessarily the final version of it. I'm not sure if it is going to have a great impact on society at its, you know, at the net. But I, I do think that this is compelling. And a lot of people spent a lot more time on the Sora app in the last week than they did on Threads or Blue sky. And there's something to be said for that alone.
- [06:28]
Alex Wilhelm
We had a celebration for five years of big technology podcast this week in collaboration with Human Ventures they hosted here in New York. And we gathered a bunch of people around and we were talking about this and what the future is going to look like. And Ron John Roy, who's usually here on Fridays, told the story that he tells on the show so often about how his Facebook feed had become just a feed of AI slop and people commenting on it. And I think there had been some questions about why Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook were allowing the feed to fill with like shrimp Jesus. And again, this week is like bringing it into focus that, that it is something that is going to be maybe already is very engaging content format. And if you are the engagement app which is, or the engagement company which meta is, you can't really let another company run away with it. And maybe they already are seeing OpenAI run away with it.
- [07:26]
Max Zeff
Yeah, I do have real concerns about what the impact is on people who use social media and society for something like this. I think that there' a sense to me of these apps really at their core are supposed to be about connecting you to other people. And I think we've seen all the ways in the last two decades of how that's not really the case and how they really are optimized to keep you on the platform. I think there's a big question for OpenAI here of what they really choose to optimize for in this experience. I think we've seen some good players emerge and in the social media space, like a blue sky that doesn't seem to be focused on getting people to just spend as much time as possible on the platform all the time. That said, I think it limits their growth and I think OpenAI is a very ambitious company. I think there's a real chance here that they are pushed by some of the incentives that social media companies have been pushed by for the last 20 years.
- [08:32]
Alex Wilhelm
But it is different. And I think it's worth taking this moment to just pause and talk a little bit about the underlying technology and how impressive it is and why, to me, at least, this is not just OpenAI creating a frivolous, vapid social media app, but how this might be the next point along a line of research that needs to get done to improve this technology. So there's been so much talk about AI's need to understand the world, and people have talked about world models, the understanding of physics, understanding of what happens beyond the LLM. And there was an interesting point here that a user on Twitter or X made that sort of puts OpenAI's lofty ambitions into contrast with what it shipped. Sam Altman 2 weeks ago. We need $7 trillion in 10 gigawatts to cure cancer. Sam Altman Today we are launching AI slot videos marketed as personalized ads. Sam Altman chimed in. He said, I get the vibe here, but we do mostly need the capital to build AI that can do science. And for sure we are focused on AGI. And with almost half, sorry, with almost all of our research effort, it's also nice to show people cool new tech products along the way, make them smile and hopefully make some money given all of the computer that we need. When we launched ChatGPT, there was a lot of who needs this and where is AGI? Reality is nuanced when it comes to optimal trajectories for a company. Just this line about the, the, the launch of ChatGPT, who needs this and where is AGI? I, I just think it's, it's important. I mean, this is sort of the key, the key part of Sam's statement. And I'm not, not here to be like Baghdad Bob for, for Sam, but I will say that when you get this stuff, starting to understand Physics, you're just a step closer to, I think, the end goals. And ChatGPT, of course, seemed like a little toy at first, but obviously has emerged into something more. And I get the criticism, but I tend to side with Sam on this one. What do you think, Max?
- [10:42]
Max Zeff
Yeah, I think it's a tough call. I think I agree with Sam in some ways that he's right that ChatGPT, it wasn't really understood at first how this really was going to be a vehicle for a lot of people to use AI and a lot of people to actually get the benefits of AI. And I think we've completely seen that play out in the last few years. I think it's a little less clear to me how SORA gives people the benefits of AI world models. In the same way, I totally agree that the underlying technology is really impressive. I mean, when the first SORA came out, I think last year, it blew people away just with how realistic the videos were, with how accurate it could get, certain details. And this one is objectively better. And I think it's impossible to argue that there hasn't been a great leap in performance of the AI video models in the last year or two. But ChatGPT at its core is about helping people. That is, I do actually take OpenAI at its face when it says that it optimizes ChatGPT to be helpful and not to just keep users in, you know, these engagement loops. I do think that I go to ChatGPT all the time to get an answer. I get it, and then I get off the app. I think with sora, it does feel to me like it is. I mean, he said it pretty plainly. It's about entertaining people. It's about, you know, it's supposed to be fun. And I think that these are very different products. And while I agree that there's something to be said for OpenAI's ability to make products to fund, you know, its AGI efforts, I think that it's worth noting that he's venturing into a very different space than he's been in before.
- [12:28]
Alex Wilhelm
Okay, let me talk a little bit about what grounded my comments, and then we're going to actually talk a little bit about your reporting that has OpenAI employees basically expressing similar concerns to me. The thing that I've heard from AI researchers is you really want AI to be able to predict what's going to happen in the world, because when it can predict, then it can plan, and predicting and planning are core parts of intelligence. Now, the thing about CHAT is, or Text is. It's somewhat easier to predict the next word than it is to like, let's say, and this is a Yann Lecun example, hold up a pen and drop it and predict where it's going to go. Because there's seemingly infinite possibilities. So when this technology gets better at understanding, like a person, what a person walking on the sidewalk does, then that's a step forward in its ability to predict and then plan. And so the underlying, maybe not the social app, but the underlying advances that they're working on here to me seem like an important step forward, but I could be getting over my skis here. So what's your thought on that, Max?
- [13:35]
Max Zeff
I think you're right. I mean, I agree that world models are an important next step for AI. There was just a viral podcast where a famous AI researcher, Richard Sutton, went on the Dwarkesh Patel podcast and there was this really fascinating argument about how LLMs today, they don't have a model about the world. I mean, they can predict the next word, but they can't predict the state of the world and they can't update their mental model about the world based on interacting with it. And I thought it was fascinating conversation. I would encourage people to check it out, but it was really, I think this is something that Yann Lecun has been like, you mentioned talking about for a long time, which is that world models are really a key to kind of a greater intelligence and greater ability to predict the world. So I do think that it's important for OpenAI and these AI labs to advance the world models. But yeah, I think the application is really the key part here.
- [14:41]
Alex Wilhelm
Okay, so briefly, so your, your perspective is the advances in video that we're seeing might advance world models or does advance this concept of a world model, but just the feed is where you start to feel a little queasy.
- [15:00]
Max Zeff
Yes, 100%. I think it is like, you know, you can take a good technology and use it for the wrong thing, I think is my feeling. And I just wonder if this is that.
- [15:10]
Alex Wilhelm
Okay.
- [15:12]
Max Zeff
Yeah.
- [15:12]
Alex Wilhelm
And you had some reporting that shows that even people within OpenAI are concerned there. And I think this is a great place to focus and stop for a moment. Here's your story. Several current and former OpenAI researchers are speaking out over the company's first foray into social media. AI based feeds are scary, said OpenAI pre training researcher John Holloman in a post on X. We're going to do our best to make sure AI helps and does not hurt humanity. I Mean, where have we heard that before? You had actually multiple current OpenAI employees being like, I don't know about this. That doesn't happen too often in a major launch. So talk about the significance of that.
- [15:53]
Max Zeff
Yeah, I think the level of kind of concern expressed by a lot of OpenAI researchers at the launch of this product felt very unique to me in a way that you don't usually see. Usually when an AI company launches a product, everyone is very gung ho about it, everyone is really excited. And I think this time just felt a little different. I think a lot of researchers at OpenAI were very aware that their company was not just launching a new product. It's not a new feature in ChatGPT. This is a social media app. This is unchartered territory for OpenAI. And I think that raised a lot of concerns for people. I mean, something I've heard over and over from AI executives and I'm sure you've heard the same. Alex is just, you know, they all talk about how we don't want to repeat the mistakes of the social media era. And I believe a lot of the researchers working at these labs don't want to do that. I think a lot of them grew up in an era where people were addicted to social media and I think a lot of them don't want to create the same kind of dynamic with the products that they built. But I do think that just the incentives of running social media platform are sometimes going to be very intoxicating and strong. And I don't think meta exactly set out to build addictive platform, but that's what you do when you need to make the user count, grow up and you need to make the ad revenue grow up. So I think that that's what I heard from a lot of employees. Just like we have to be really careful here. Right.
- [17:33]
Alex Wilhelm
And I think it's, we should note, head of product at Anthropic Instagram, founder head of product at OpenAI, former head of product at Instagram, person who's running what all consumer applications at OpenAI is also someone who's come from Facebook. It's interesting to me to see these two cultures merge, which is like the typical Silicon Valley growth culture and this newer research oriented AI culture. And effectively we can see the conflicts happening within the companies as they go.
- [18:16]
Max Zeff
Yeah, I mean, this is something that's come up with OpenAI time and time again where there's this tension at the company, where it is the world's fastest growing consumer business and it is also an AI research lab where a lot of the people joined to chase this lofty mission of developing AGI that benefits humanity and make sure that all of that goes safely and goes well. And I think those things have constantly been just kind of pushing at each other for the last several years. I mean, when Sam Altman was fired a few years ago, that was, you know, kind of a key consideration there. And I think that what I heard from a former employee that was really interesting was they said that, you know, OpenAI, really the consumer business, funds the mission. I mean, that's how a lot of people see it, where it's like, you know, building ChatGPT into this massive product makes billions of dollars that can go towards AI research that otherwise wouldn't. And I think that's true. To build AGI, you probably need to be an enormous company. But I think there's a real question of at what point does OpenAI say no to a money making endeavor? At what point does OpenAI reject the idea of adding more users to its platform for the sake of its mission? I think that it is. My take take about the Soar app is I don't think that OpenAI is setting itself up for success with this because they are opening themselves up to, you know, the kind of incentives of a social media app.
- [19:58]
Alex Wilhelm
Right? Yeah, you asked that question in your story. At what point does OpenAI's consumer business overtake its nonprofit mission? I think it's already there, so. But anyway, we can leave that open. Since you left it open as, as a question in your story. I won't, you know, put you on the spot on that one. But yeah, it's a valid, valid concern. And you know, I think we can both agree that this is not just a video generation technology, it's a social app. And it does sort of then put forth this really interesting question, which is what's going to happen to the creator economy? I'm writing about this in Big Technology this week. It'll probably come out right before our, our episode comes out. But you have this, you know, creator economy is kind of a misnomer. There's only a small amount of people that are able to work full time creating content on the Internet. That being said, some of the people who have watched this have said basically like, this puts creators right in the crosshairs of AI. And in fact, I had a, I guest hosted the Twit podcast over the weekend and I had a great quote from one of our panelists, Ari Paparo of marketexture Media. He said the creators are all high in the hog right now, but I would be thinking they're one of the first things that could be totally annihilated by AI. I think it's worth taking a minute to talk about this because you have this new technology, a new app. It's obviously very engaging, number one in the App Store, but instead of the painstaking process of creating content online, you could just prompt it. So what do you think this means for the creator economy, Max?
- [21:34]
Max Zeff
Yeah, it's really an interesting question. I mean, I think that people said some version of this for writers when ChatGPT came out, that why would I hire a freelance journalist to write something if I could just ask ChatGPT to write it? And, I mean, certainly there are countless websites out there with articles written by ChatGPT now. So to some extent that's proven to be true. And yet, Alex, we still can make a living doing what we do. So I think what have we learned from the text version of this story that's already played out is that people value the human touch and the human taste and judgment, and they value kind of a professional's opinion on certain topics. That has become actually, I think, more valuable in the AI era. And I think that was something that a lot of people missed when ChatGPT first came out, which is that it actually made really high quality human content more valuable. I wouldn't be surprised if a similar thing happens with the creator economy. I think that we will see just more content in general as a result of these AI video models and sora, and I think that it probably does make it harder for content creators to stand out. It probably, you know, advertisers are looking at these AI video models and going, huh, that's pretty, pretty interesting. Should I maybe put some of my revenue or my ad spend towards that instead? But I think that there's creators out there who have a real relationship with their audiences, and the audiences care about what they have to say in the same way that people care about what journalists have to say, their favorite ones at least. And I think that that's kind of how I expect this to go in all of the industries that AI will touch. But I don't know, Alex, I'm curious to hear what you found talking to some people in the space. Yes.
- [23:31]
Alex Wilhelm
So I actually have this, like, list that I. It's basically my outline for my story of all the reasons why the creator economy won't go away. And I think you've touched on a couple of them. It will change, though, in some ways. But I would say, like, the first thing that I put on the list, which is somewhat corny and cliche, is just the word authenticity. And I think that when people are saying the creator economy is going to go away, they might be thinking of these, like adventure videos on YouTube or like some others, I don't know. But I think they are missing the fact that the reason why the creator economy, or whatever it is emerged is because people wanted a more authentic alternative to, let's say, the mass media. And so they were able to have this connection in some ways with online creators and that powered the creator economy. So I think that you cannot replace that authenticity with, with synthetic media. You just can't. It's impossible to create. I think I could be proven wrong over time, but I think that's impossible to create. The other side of it is that basically the reason why you would tune into someone is for new insights or ideas or information. And even if you could generate amazing videos, you're just recycling what exists and you lose that, you know, potential to gain those new insights and information or even, you know, unique new entertainment, I think so. So to me, that is two of the main reasons why I think the creator economy is not going away. Now. I do think it's gonna change because there are some things that are just going to be commoditized. And I'll just say it. I think that if you're a creator that's been making money on good looks, you might be in trouble. You might now see an AI. There already are AI versions of people who are doing like thirst trap content and they're gonna, they're gonna commoditize that. So also, this just sort of like, there's a lot of like amorphous mid content out there that maybe if you filled a niche you can make living, you probably won't be able to do that anymore. So that's kind of my read on it.
- [25:58]
Max Zeff
I mean, I think that's a fair point. I mean, I think that that's kind of the flip side of what I was just talking about with the journalism conversation of. I think that a lot of the websites that made a business on aggregation, of just taking other reporting and kind of repackaging it without adding some unique analysis or new reporting to it that largely can be done by AI. And I think that that's what that kind of. I'm not trying to say that's lower quality. I mean, I've done that fair amount of that in my career. But like, I think that that is a part of journalism that is kind of going away in the AI era. And, you know, I think I could totally see a similar thing happening in the creator economy. I will say I'm curious what you think about kind of, you know, obviously, I mean, the creator economy is not held up by TikTok and Instagram paying out these creators. It's held up by like AG1, like these like, you know, massive advertisers that like, will, you know, just like dole out money to the creators. And I'm not sure if they're, you know, going to want to put their ads in SORA or something, you know, like, like, I think that that kind of source of revenue seems pretty stable if you're a creator. But I'm curious what you think.
- [27:15]
Alex Wilhelm
Oh, I disagree on that one. I think advertisers are very simple animals. If there's attention, they will pay for people's attention. So even if it's a feat of AI slop, if OpenAI can somehow win millions and millions of users over, then AG1 will be right there and work out some deal to sell their very healthy supplements and all the other things. So AG1, if you're listening, big technology's open for business, so we'll be human until we're not. So let's talk. Okay, but that's basically my take on that front.
- [27:49]
Max Zeff
No, that makes sense. I mean, you totally could be right. And I mean, Mark Zuckerberg has his idea about automating all AI the whole ad process with AI that, you know, it's been talked about, you know, a few weeks ago, and you know, I think a lot of advertisers ears maybe perked up and maybe they cringed a little bit at that thought. But yeah, I, I guess we'll have to see. I do think that there is some value in like, your attention is deeper when you're watching a creator that you love. So maybe that will, you know, prove to be resilient in this era. But I guess we'll see.
- [28:25]
Alex Wilhelm
Yeah, I don't want to be the gloom and doom on the creator economy ad thing, but ultimately like they, the advertisers back it out like they're, they're smart, they will see like what's leading to sales, what's not, and then just keep investing more in that may, maybe, who knows, the meta can tune feeds in ways or OpenAI will tune feeds in ways that will make people more susceptible to this type of advertising. It's an interesting world. And by the way, speaking of automation, I want to bring this point up. Before we move on from this, there's a concept in artificial intelligence called reinforcement learning, where you give the AI a goal and makes a bunch of attempts and then basically tries to accomplish that goal and then realizes what to optimize for. I had a thought that could we end up seeing. So while I think the creator economy is going to stay, could we end up seeing AI creators emerge, where companies basically give bots this goal of being mega influencers, allow them to create lots of accounts and then just sort of reinforce based off of the comments and likes and shares and follows. And so we end up seeing an AI creator force that will crush any human attempt to be better than it, just because of its ability to basically create unlimitedly in an unlimited fashion and optimize that way.
- [29:54]
Max Zeff
Oh, God. I think that's going to be Meta's next AI benchmark. And their next model releases. How well can our AI grow its platform on social media? Honestly, a terrifying kind of example, but I could totally see that happening. I mean, RL has proved really good at doing specific tasks. Social media is a place where there is so much data coming in. It honestly is probably a pretty easy place to do something like that, but wow. Yeah, rl, I mean, RL like social media influence.
- [30:27]
Alex Wilhelm
Great. Yeah, yeah, it's great at playing games. Social media is a game. The retweets are the are, the are or the reshares. That's the points. So. So maybe we see it. All right, in the second half, we're going to get into how Meta is going to use our. So our. Our chat data or our engagement with its LLMs for advertising. And then we're going to touch on the launch of Anthropic's Sonnet 4. 5 model. And. And we will also cover the fact that Apple has seen what Meta is doing with its AI glasses and decided to accelerate its own smart glasses roadmap. So, you know, as I kicked a break, I'm just thinking to myself, wow, like, you might want to bash Meta, but it's in the conversation all across the board. Whether it's hardware, advertising or content feeds, something will work for that company. It always does. All right, we'll be back right after this. Did you know your credit card points and miles can lose value to inflation? Credit card companies often reduce the redemption value of your points and miles. Now imagine a credit card with rewards that can grow in value. With the Gemini credit card, you can earn Bitcoin or one of over 50 other cryptos instantly with no annual fee. Every swipe at the store or gas pump earns you instant rewards deposited straight to your account. Plus sign up now for a 2,200bitcoin bonus to kickstart your rewards, visit gemini.com card today. Check out the link in the description for more information on rates. Again, if you're looking to invest in Bitcoin but don't know where to start, the Gemini Credit Card makes it easy. The Gemini Credit Card is issued by Web Bank. In order to Qualify for the $200 crypto intro bonus, you must spend $3,000 in your first 90 days. Some exclusions applied to instant rewards in which rewards are deposited when the transaction posts this content is not investment advice and trading. Crypto involves risk. The Gemini Credit card cannot be used to make gambling related purchases.
- [32:29]
Katie Drummond
What the hell is going on right now and why is it happening like this? At Wired, we're obsessed with getting to the bottom of those questions on a daily basis. And maybe you are too. I'm Katie Drummond, the Global Editorial Director of Wired, and I'm hosting our new podcast series, the Big Interview. Each week I'll sit down with some of the most interesting, provocative and influential people who are shaping our right now. Big Interview conversations are fun.
- [32:56]
Max Zeff
I want a shark that that eats.
- [32:58]
Katie Drummond
The Internet, that turns it all off, unfiltered and unafraid.
- [33:02]
Alex Wilhelm
So in a lot of ways I try to be an antidote to the unimaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see online. To the best of my ability, every.
- [33:11]
Katie Drummond
Week we're going to offer you the ultimate luxury of our times. Meaning and context. True or false? You, Brian Johnson, the man sitting across from me, one day, at some point as of yet undefined in the future, you will die. False. Tell me more. Listen to the Big Interview right now in the same place you find WIRED's Uncanny Valley podcast. Subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.
- [33:39]
Alex Wilhelm
And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition with special guest Max Zeff. He is the senior AI reporter at TechCrunch. Max, you had a story this week talking about how Meta is going to use our AI chat data to target ads. And this has been something we've long worried about here on the show. Not the fact that it's going to happen, but the fashion with which it could be done. Because people are pouring their hearts out to these bots. They're using them as therapists and lovers. And is there an expectation means a tech product? Is there expectation of privacy? I don't know. But now it's going to be put into the Meta ad machine. So what can you tell us about this?
- [34:22]
Max Zeff
Yeah, I mean, it was funny. I was talking with someone at Meta about this earlier this week and they said, I'm sure a lot of people already thought we were doing this, but we're just announcing that we're going to start doing this, this. And I thought that was a really telling comment about how people view privacy on Meta's platforms. But yeah, I mean, Meta has basically announced that, yeah, we're going to take everything you say to an AI chatbot and we are going to basically have it affect the kind of ads that you see on Instagram and Facebook. Of course, there are some exceptions. If you are talking about really sensitive issues, Meta has kind of called out a couple ones. Like if you talk about religion or politics or kind of sensitive health issues, then it's not going to suggest you ads based on that information. But this is, I think, a really kind of fascinating moment where the AI companies are coming out and saying this, and it is really, I think, revealing of their playbook in the coming years. Maybe these AI chatbots were once free products on their platforms that we've gotten to use for the last couple years. But I think we're increasingly seeing that there are strings attached to using these free products. They are going to take your data and serve you ads on them. They're going to train more models based on everything you tell it. I think it might make a lot of people think twice about how much info they share with these AI chatbots. And I'm curious to see if it really affects how people use them as therapists and friends and whatnot.
- [36:00]
Alex Wilhelm
Right. It's good to see that there are some exemptions, but I can just imagine that the next scandal is going to be like, I've used the Meta AI chat, Someone's saying, I've used the Meta AI chat as my therapist and now I'm getting ads in my feed for Prozac. Talk to your doctor about Prozac or something like that. Like that would be right. Ad.
- [36:20]
Max Zeff
It does seem bad. Yeah, I think that there is also. Oh, yeah, I was just going to say I think that there's also this kind of really, it's an incredibly valuable data stream for Meta. And I think that this has probably been the plan all along in some sense, is to take this profile that they've built via the AI chatbot and monetize it in some way. And we've been talking for so long about how, you know, you could put ads in a Chatbot. But I think that people maybe have spoken less about just how valuable all that information is to serve you ads elsewhere. And Meta's probably the best positioned company to do that.
- [37:02]
Alex Wilhelm
The economics of this AI boom, do they make sense if they just boil down to serving us better ads? Or does it have to be something more?
- [37:10]
Max Zeff
I think that ads have been the biggest business on the Internet for a long time now. And I have. No, I don't think that's going to change. I think that that is going to continue being the case. I think it could probably be a bigger business than it is today. I think you could probably get more specific kinds of ads and AI. I mean, I and other people, everyone share so much more information with an AI chatbot than you do with your Instagram feed with Google. And you have to think that these companies that already have this great profile on you, if they could fine tune it even more to show you just the exact product that you want in the moment, that you want it even better than they can today. There's clearly a lot of value there. I do think that even if it just boils down to ads, that's gotten Google and Meta pretty far. So I wouldn't doubt that.
- [38:10]
Alex Wilhelm
Max. I'm, I'm getting depressed anyway. I, I, so my take on this would be ads will be part of it, but it has to be substantially more than ads. They have to end up automating a good chunk of white collar work to make the valuations work. But certainly the companies are going to be much more sustainable if they can use it to be much more effective in advertising. So I think you're probably right there. I'm, I'm curious what the vibe is inside of Meta right now, given, well, the state of Vibes and the new talent and the, the pivot or the, the move towards commercializing its AI technology. This is from the Information. A Meta change on publishing research causes a stir in its AI group. In recent weeks, Meta platforms made a change to its fundamental artificial intelligence research lab that rubbed members of the group the wrong way. Fair, as it's known, would have to undergo additional review of its research before publishing it. The new policy was a tough pill to swallow for some members of fair, who perceived the change as a new restriction on the freedom that they had previous that they previously had to share their research outside of Meta. Meta has spent much of this year remaking its broader AI efforts and it has pushed FAIR to contribute to Meta's products and spend less time, less time on sharing research externally. The Change. The changes so bothered Yann LeCun, an AI pioneer who co founded FAIR in 2013, that he mused to colleagues in September that perhaps he should quit as FAIR's chief scientist. Max, what's your read on what's happening here? And do you think that we're just at the beginning of massive tumult within meta's AI division because of the focus on products and because of this talent situation that they have?
- [39:57]
Max Zeff
Yeah, I mean, this is a great report on the state of META right now. I think it lines up with things I've heard from people inside of Meta in previous weeks, that basically the level of bureaucracy inside of Meta, specifically in its AI division is really a problem for a lot of people. I think that this is something that new employees that have come in from OpenAI and scale and whatnot have complained about, but it also seems to be leaking into fair. What's interesting is that FAIR has been for a long time now allowed to kind of operate independently very, you know, they could kind of work on these lofty long term goals, you know, that sometimes wouldn't, you know, produce anything for, you know, five to 10 years. But they were allowed to kind of operate independently and they've produced a lot of great work over the years. I think that is increasingly in jeopardy as AI just becomes too important to meta, where, you know, as this report states, I mean, they like, we need to be really careful about what we put out. We don't want to give, you know, our competitors an edge. And yeah, I think that there is a lot of moving pieces inside of MSL right now and people are coming, people are going almost every week it seems. I don't think that this will be the last story we see about, you know, the kind of tumult inside of msl.
- [41:33]
Alex Wilhelm
Yeah, meta, msl, meta, Super Intelligence Labs. And it is interesting because I've written a lot about the formation of FAIR back in the early 2010s, and Zuckerberg was absolutely right in seeing how important AI was going to be. And it is interesting that, you know, they didn't have a high opinion of LLMs within fair for a while. And he probably feels behind the eight ball and trailing OpenAI or he definitely feels that way, which is why he's spending this much money on talent. But question is now that now that that bet has sort of proved really smart, how much you let a lab that's focused on future stuff continue to think about that as opposed to going full speed ahead on the present. So speaking of the present, we have a new model from it went completely under the radar. This week anthropic launched Sonnet 4.5, its best model for AI coding. You write in TechCrunch, it's capable of building production ready applications rather than prototypes. A leap in reliability from previous AI models. And also I think it can go autonomously for like 30 hours. So Max, you wrote about this. What's the significance of Sonnet 4.5?
- [42:46]
Max Zeff
I think the story of Sonnet 4.5 is really just Anthropic needs to get back in the lead in the coding space. I think that for a long time, as you've talked about on the show before, Anthropic's models are really a favorite among developers and they have been for the last year or so. It's because they're very good at coding, they're very good at agentically working on their own in apps like Cursor, in these vibe coding apps. A lot of people use them and it represents a huge part of Anthropic's business right now. GPT5, the model OpenAI released a month ago, at this point, I believe two months ago, it really changed that. People I've talked to at Cursor say that it completely leveled the usage between OpenAI and Anthropic's models in a way that they hadn't seen for a long time. I think that anthropic for OpenAI coding models are just a small piece of their business. ChatGPT is kind of the big tuna for them, but for Anthropic, I mean this is existential, like they need to lead in coding and this is their attempt to do that. And whether Claude Sonnet 4.5 does that, it's on benchmarks. Very impressive. But I mean I've heard mixed things from people saying GPT5 is really strong. It's still my go to. So I'm curious to see if this puts Anthropic back in the lead.
- [44:15]
Alex Wilhelm
I was speaking with the CEO this week who unprompted, talking about like backwards compatibility with AI and said hey, all all my engineers, you know, went from Anthropics models and we ran towards GPT5 when that came out and then everybody ran back to sonnet 4. 5. So it is one of those things where you now you see this competition and if I was an engineer working with AI code, I'd be thrilled because you have these two heavyweight multi billion dollar companies just trying to make my life easier at every possible turn.
- [44:47]
Max Zeff
Yeah, I mean it is an insanely competitive space right now. I mean you basically have to ship a new model every couple months to stay ahead of the competition. I think that this is a really tough business for Anthropic to be in where it just has to execute at a very high level for the foreseeable future. It can't really take a break here. It can't miss a step. I am curious to kind of see if this really changes the way people use AI coding models. I mean, Anthropic says that it's capable of building these production ready applications that you can vibe code up an app and it'll set up a database and it'll become SOC2 compliant and all of these things. And I'm curious to see if this actually enables everyday people to start using AI coding models more or if it just makes a developer's life easier. I lean towards the latter.
- [45:45]
Alex Wilhelm
I think the latter probably is it. Listeners and viewers, we have Mike Krieger, the head of product at Anthropic. He'll be on the show next Wednesday for our Wednesday show, so stay tuned for that. We'll talk to him all about Sonnet 4.5. All right, final story this week. Let's talk about the Apple forthcoming smart glasses. This is from Bloomberg. Apple's smart glasses are so important to it that it's shelving the Vision Pro headset. This smaller one. Oh, actually, actually no. I'm going to Let me read the story. This might be bigger than I expected. Apple Inc. Has hit pause on a planned overhaul to its Vision Pro headset to redirect resources towards a more urgent effort developing smart glasses that can rival products from meta platforms. Smart glasses have emerged as a critical arena for tech companies which are racing to develop AI centric devices. Future designs could eventually challenge smartphones as a must have technology and Apple wants to be ready. The company is working on at least two types of smart glasses. The first one, dubbed N50, will pair with an iPhone and lack its own display. Apple aims to unveil this model as soon as next year, ahead of a release in 2027. Apple is also working on a version with a display, something that could challenge the just released Meta Ray Ban display. The Apple version had been planned for 2028, but the company is now looking to accelerate development. This is this is a massive story thanks to Mark Gurman from from Bloomberg to report for reporting it out. But it's fascinating to me that Apple, looking over at Meta, now sees glasses as so important that it's shelving a big redevelopment of the Vision Pro, reportedly to Go after this. What's the significance, Max?
- [47:27]
Max Zeff
Yeah, I mean, I think that honestly, Meta's Ray Ban display glasses were so impressive to a lot of people. I mean, if you try to book an appointment in the Bay Area to go demo these, it's basically booked out for the next two or three months. I mean, you basically just can't even. Yeah, you can't even get an appointment right now, so. And you have to demo them to buy them, which is a weird detail about them. But the demand for them, I think, has been incredible. I think people were really fascinated by this new computing form factor. I think it's a lot more compelling than putting a pair of big goggles like an Apple Vision Pro or a Meta Quest on your face. I don't know about you, I can't stand the headsets, to be completely frank. I think they get hot. I think they're kind of uncomfortable, but the glasses are very comfortable to slide on. And I for one, am really excited about this development. I think this is like a much better direction for Apple to go in than making a better Vision Pro. But of course, Apple is in a much better position to win here. I mean, they can connect it to imessage, they can connect it to all the apps on your phone. So I'm not sure what claim Meta really has besides being first to market here. Right.
- [48:47]
Alex Wilhelm
It is interesting because you have these two things going on at the same time. Meta being first. Like, it's kind of. I'm sure Mark Zuckerberg is loving the fact that Tim Cook is running after him in product direction. Like he calls the company Meta. Then Apple develops Vision Pro, he builds glasses, Then Apple builds glasses. You know, it's like, he must love that.
- [49:06]
Max Zeff
But you're right.
- [49:07]
Alex Wilhelm
I mean, Apple has this tendency to be last and best and are not, maybe not last, but it releases when it's ready and it's. And it's often best. The one thing I would say with Apple, it's these are. These are effectively AI devices. Right. These wearables become interesting because of the ability to integrate AI into everything. And at the risk of saying the same thing I've said on the Show for like 5 years already, its entire existence, if Apple's going to play here, it's got to get better at AI.
- [49:37]
Max Zeff
It definitely does. I mean, I think that this product, more than any iPhone that Apple releases, will be an AI first product that probably requires you to talk to an AI model to use it at all. So it does need to get a lot better. I have Been hoping that Apple would just partner more seriously with OpenAI and anthropic and just opening up their platform so that other AI, other AI models can really just, you know, power some of these features that Apple clearly just can't develop. But Apple has a lot of pride, so I'm not sure if they'll go down that route.
- [50:19]
Alex Wilhelm
I just want to give a quick shout out for Apple. Apple, I know I've been tough on you on the show. No apologies. But I will give you credit where credit's due. I recently picked up a pair of the new AirPods 3 Pro model, and I've never used better headphones in my entire life. They are crazy. The sound is amazing. Even though they're earbuds, the thing can really noise cancel. And it's now my favorite new tech thing I've had in a while.
- [50:47]
Max Zeff
Wow. Have you tried the. There's like the AI translation feature in them. Have you tried that?
- [50:55]
Alex Wilhelm
Not yet. I need to figure out how to set that up. I think you need to get the Translate app and probably I'm on the 15 Pro for my phone, but my wife's family, or my wife and her family, they're all European. So I think that it'll be really nice for me on our next visit out there to be able to turn this mode on and be able to communicate with their grandparents. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.
- [51:22]
Max Zeff
This is the brilliant part about Apple, is that when it does release an AI feature, it immediately has millions of people who are so excited to use it and interact with their daily life. This is the thing I can't get over, and I'm sure Meta is acutely aware of that. The smart glasses may take a couple years to come out, but when they do, I mean, that thing is going to sync up right to your iPhone. It's going to have all of your contacts in it. And I don't know, I just think that Meta has to really innovate in the next couple years and race ahead to have a lasting chance here. Yeah.
- [51:56]
Alex Wilhelm
But the thing is, I guess it's now it's in the game. Um, I, I, the. So I've had a chance to sit with Zuckerberg a couple of times, and the thing that I saw him the most frustrated about in our conversations was, was the fact that he has to go through Apple and Android in order to deliver his services. He hates just being an app on the phone, so I think he'll take the fact that he's in the game, but it's not going to be easy to run away with. So. All right, I. I want to end here on your desk. If I'm not mistaken, right now you have the Friend pendant. Folks, I don't know if you've seen it, but friend.com is this AI wearable device that a company, they, they listen to your conversations, they give you updates, and on your day, they're running a massive ad campaign in New York right now. Everywhere you look, there's these Friend signs. As, as Ari Paparo said last week on Twitter that this is chaos. Marketing signs meant to be defaced because it's just like these white signs and, you know, unclear slogans. Long story short, you have one and I'd love to hear your experience with it. Max.
- [53:03]
Max Zeff
Yeah, I do have one of the Friend devices. I got it a few days ago and I think that it is a really fascinating experience to try out an AI wearable. I will honestly say that there's a lot of things that Friend is doing, I think really well right now. I think that their marketing is honestly like one of the smartest marketing campaigns I've seen in a long time. Even if it is rage bait. I mean, it's getting so many people talking about this, it's incredible. And then the actual product itself, I think the packaging, I think the design, the experience of getting one of these things is very thoughtful. It does feel kind of like an early Apple product in the way it's packaged, at least. And I know that the CEO Avi definitely puts a lot of attention into that. The experience of actually using it is a little bit unsettling in some ways. I mean, the device is, you know, it kind of has a snarky personality, kind of like you're talking to a 22 year old. It kind of has, you know, this, I mean, it has this always listening feature where it is. You can't turn it off really easily. Like, I mean, I've had some sensitive conversations with sources that I've just literally had to disconnect the device from my phone completely and like, toss it in another room because. And you also have to sign this like, crazy privacy agreement with Friend, where you basically have to agree that, you know, they can use your data for whatever, you know, that you can't sue them, you can't do a class action lawsuit against them. I mean, I think there are a lot of, a lot of strings attached to using a Friend device. It does make me wonder the whole experience about how can there be a good version of an AI wearable like this. Like, this is a pretty strong starting point, I think. But what is OpenAI going to come out with? Is everyone going to feel the same way about OpenAI's device as this, or is there some way to make people feel a little more comfortable about it?
- [55:06]
Alex Wilhelm
And the output that it gives you.
- [55:08]
Max Zeff
Useful, I think the out. Yeah, it gives you summaries of. Of your day. It'll sometimes just text you. Like, it's designed to be like a friend. Like, so it'll just, you know, like, you could. You could be like, I was talking to someone and it texted me something about, like, something he said. Like, like, man, like, I can't believe Finn said that. Like, like, what. What is this guy talking about? And it does feel like it is trying to just get you to engage with it more. Like, it is. I almost feel like I'm being rage baited by this, like, AI chatbot that's always listening to me. And it is interesting. Avi has said that early users of Friends send like an average of 200 messages a day to it, which is a lot. And yeah, I mean, I have, like, a lot of thoughts about using this device. I'm not sure if this is something that I will, you know, I'm going to be a power user of or I'm going to use forever, but I think that it's fascinating to get, you know, a first experience with an AI wearable like this.
- [56:11]
Alex Wilhelm
Very cool. You're the first person that I've spoken with who's used it and can give us some insight into what it's like. And I have to say I'm not running towards it right now, but I will eventually. I'm sure I'll eventually use one of these things, but. But I'm not running towards it. All right, Max, before you head out, why don't you tell folks where they can find your work and where they can find you online.
- [56:31]
Max Zeff
Sure. So you can find my work@techcrunch.com my name is Maxwell Zeff and I'm on X at Zeffmax. And you can also find me on Threads and BlueSky under the same handle.
- [56:45]
Alex Wilhelm
All right, well, Max, as I mentioned, big reader of your work, and this is the first time we've gotten you on the show, and I hope we are able to have these conversations many more times. So thanks again for all the great work.
- [56:58]
Max Zeff
Thanks for having me. Would love to come back.
- [57:00]
Alex Wilhelm
All right. All right, everybody. On Wednesday, Mike Krieger, chief product officer at Anthropic, is going to be here to talk about Sonnet 4.5. So we hope to see you then. If you haven't checked it out, I have an interview on the feed with Scott Guthrie, the head of AI and Cloud at Microsoft, who did have some things to say about the AI build out and why Microsoft seems to now be taking what he might call a more careful approach than some of the others out there. So definitely encourage you to check that out. All right, that'll do it for us here today. Have a great weekend and we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.
- [57:33]
Katie Drummond
What the hell is going on right now and why is it happening like this? At Wired, we're obsessed with getting to the bottom of those questions on a daily basis, and maybe you are, too. I'm Katie Drummond, the global editorial director of Wired, and I'm hosting our new podcast series, the Big Interview. Each week I'll sit down with some of the most interesting, provocative and influential people who are shaping our right now. Big Interview conversations are fun.
- [58:00]
Max Zeff
I want a shark that that eats.
- [58:02]
Katie Drummond
The Internet, that turns it all off, unfiltered and unafraid.
- [58:06]
Alex Wilhelm
So in a lot of ways, I try to be an antidote to the unimaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see online. To the best of my ability, every.
- [58:15]
Katie Drummond
Week we're going to offer you the ultimate luxury of our times, meaning and context. True or false? You, Brian Johnson, the man sitting across from me, one day, at some point as of yet undefined in the future, you will die. False. Tell me more. Listen to the Big Interview right now in the same place you find WIRED's Uncanny Valley podcast. Subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.