A Different Way to Lower Your Grocery Bill

Summary

Podcast Summary: Everybody's Business

Episode: A Different Way to Lower Your Grocery Bill

Hosts: Stacey Vanek Smith & Max Chafkin
Date: May 29, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode explores innovative responses to the affordability crisis in grocery shopping amid persistent inflation in the U.S. The centerpiece is a deep dive into Azalea Fresh Market, a state-supported grocery store in Atlanta designed to combat food deserts and make fresh food more accessible and affordable. The show also pivots to the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and storytelling in filmmaking, discussing where technology fits into creative industries and how it changes both process and product.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Affordability Crisis and State-Supported Grocery Stores

• Inflation’s Impact on Groceries
  • U.S. consumers are increasingly struggling to afford basic groceries due to inflation.
  • Recent polls suggest 61% of Americans are changing their grocery shopping habits to cope with higher prices.
    “A new CNN poll found that 61% of people have changed what they buy at the grocery store because food costs rising so much right now.” (02:44 – Stacey Vanek Smith)
• Emergence of City/State Supported Grocery Initiatives
  • New proposals and actual openings of city/state-run or city-supported grocery stores are appearing nationwide.
  • New York City is planning a city-run grocery; Atlanta’s Azalea Fresh Market opened in 2025.
  • These stores challenge the notion that affordable groceries constitute a form of socialism.
• Azalea Fresh Market: The Model
  • Located downtown in Atlanta’s "food desert." (05:28 – Jada Marai)
  • Primary clientele: Georgia State University students and the surrounding neighborhood.
  • Renovated from an old Walgreens, the store now offers a full grocery experience with a made-to-order restaurant and soon its own branded coffee shop.

Notable Quote

“Access to fresh food is not, it's not socialism. It's a bare necessity need for any human being... this is not a handout. This is just a helping hand."
— Paul Nair, CEO of Azalea Market (00:58 & 07:07)

Timestamps & Segments

• (04:23 – 05:52) — Azalea Market’s day-to-day operations and transition to an in-house coffee shop.
• (05:28 – 06:24) — Food deserts explained; the scale of the issue is national, not just local.
• (07:07 – 08:30) — Addressing criticisms and explaining the public-private financing model.

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2. Affordability, Community Impact, and Business Model

• How Azalea Keeps Prices Low
  • Focuses on essential items: bread, milk, eggs, chicken.
  • Examples: Dozen eggs for $1.69, half gallon milk for $2.85, chicken breast for $4.99/lb.
  • Implements “Paul’s Price Promise”—select items remain low-priced regardless of cost (09:06 – Jada Marai).
• Financing Model
  • Not a city-run store; it’s a private retail operation with a small city grant and low-interest loans.
  • “This is capitalism at best... the city is acting more like a bank.” (07:07 – Paul Nair)
• Customer Feedback and Community Reception
  • Initial demand was high, with over 700 visitors at opening. Locals were eager for access even before launch (14:50 – Jada Marai).
  • Store adapts to shifting consumer purchasing, noting an increase in food stamp/EBT payments to around 40% of purchases (13:39 – Jada Marai).

Street-Level Perspective

• (10:07 – 11:30) — Compilation of street interviews from Chicago revealing widespread concern over prices, changed buying habits, and the use of debt/credit to manage food costs.

Notable Customer Statement

"Grocery prices at the moment are absolutely ridiculous. You can't walk into a grocery store and buy anything for less than $5. What used to cost you a week's worth of shopping—$100, $120—is now well over $200... I truly don't know how families can afford to eat."
— Street interviewee (10:20)

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3. Pricing, Profitability, and Retail Realities

• Low Margins & Shrinkage
  • Traditional margins hover around 20%, but retail “shrink” (losses from theft or breakage) typically forces higher markups; Azalea Market avoids this and tries to keep prices minimal.
  • The aim is to break even or achieve profitability through diversified services, including coffee sales and food service (13:55 – 14:44).
• Community as the Priority
  • Store strategy ties low pricing directly to investment in community well-being, at some short-term sacrifice to margin (09:30 – Jada Marai).

Notable Quote

"Our goal would be to not lose more money than we're spending. But the investment is in the community."
— Jada Marai (09:30)

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4. AI’s Disruption of Hollywood and Storytelling

• Interview with AI Filmmaker Matt Zion
  • Discussion shifts to AI-generated filmmaking and the blurred boundaries between “art and slop.”
  • Zion’s motivation: AI enables the telling of stories impossible to make under traditional production constraints.
  • Example: Zion’s short newsreel-style film "The Relic" (20:00 – 20:54).
  • Initial reactions ranged from “cool” to severe online backlash: "There was someone who really... told me to kill myself. And I was shocked." (23:20)
  • Zion explores AI’s collaborative potential by leveraging chatbots’ ability to provide nuanced emotional insight, informing works like the song “Forgive the Haters.” (25:36)

The Art vs. Slop Debate

• Hosts and Zion debate if AI storytelling can match human creativity, or if it simply generates disposable content (“slop”).
• "When you use it to tell stories that otherwise could not exist, people don't really care that it's AI if they like the story."
  — Matt Zion (27:24)
• Human-made and AI “slop” both flourish online; success comes from engaging stories more than production methods (29:19).

Notable AI Quote

"This is a new medium entirely that can do different things... When you use it as a replacement [for traditional filmmaking], audiences don’t really respond. When you use it to tell stories that otherwise could not exist, people don’t really care that it’s AI."
— Matt Zion (27:24)

Timestamps & Segments

• (19:45 – 24:12) — Genesis of AI filmmaking and the backlash.
• (24:12 – 27:24) — Exploring AI collaboration and public/public backlash.
• (30:29 – 33:11) — Technical process of creating compelling AI characters and cultural resistance to AI art.

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5. Viral AI Collaborations and Pop Culture Oddities

• Sunshine and Silliness: The “Puerto Rico Song”
  • Discussion about a viral AI-generated song written by a comedian using the AI tool Suno.
  • Stacey and Max debate its cultural merit and catchiness; Max is not impressed (“This song sucks, Stacey... It is not the song of the summer.” – 37:11).

Timestamps

• (35:38 – 38:04) — The rise of person-AI collaborations, using the “Puerto Rico Song” as a case study.
• (38:16 – 39:53) — Brief discussion of the “Enhanced Games” (so-called ‘steroid Olympics’) as a story of tech- and hype-driven disappointment.

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Memorable Quotes

• “Access to fresh food is not, it's not socialism. It's a bare necessity need for any human being... this is just a helping hand.” — Paul Nair, CEO of Azalea Market (00:58 & 07:07)
• “Grocery prices at the moment are absolutely ridiculous. What used to cost you a week’s worth of shopping—$100, $120—is now well over $200.” — Chicago street interviewee (10:20)
• “Our goal would be to not lose more money than we're spending. But the investment is in the community.” — Jada Marai (09:30)
• “When you use [AI] to tell stories that otherwise could not exist, people don't really care that it's AI if they like the story.” — Matt Zion (27:24)
• "This song sucks, Stacey... It is not the song of the summer." — Max Chafkin, on the Puerto Rico Song (37:11)

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Highlighted Timestamps

• Food/Affordability

  • 02:44 – 03:42: Food cost crisis & introduction to Azalea Fresh Market
  • 05:28 – 06:24: Context of Atlanta’s food desert & purpose of Azalea Market
  • 07:07 – 08:30: Funding model and rebuttal to socialism framing

• Customer Perspective

  • 09:06 – 09:30: “Paul’s Price Promise” and essential food pricing
  • 10:07 – 11:30: Chicago street interviews on grocery bills and strategies

• AI & Creativity

  • 19:45 – 24:12: Matt Zion on early AI filmmaking and public backlash
  • 27:24 – 28:10: Distinction between AI “art” vs “slop”

• Viral AI Content

  • 35:59 – 38:04: “Puerto Rico Song” and the AI-human summer anthem debate

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Tone and Style

The episode blends sharp reporting with lively, informal banter. Guests are direct and passionate. The hosts trade wry jokes and incredulity, especially when dissecting the cultural impact of AI.

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Summary Takeaway

This episode tackles two vital fronts: the economic pain at the checkout line and the disruptive but potentially democratizing arrival of AI in the creative arts. The story of Azalea Market demonstrates how targeted, practical innovation—public-private partnerships and community-focused pricing—can offer real relief. In the second half, listeners are left to ponder the meaning of creativity, value, and authenticity as tools like AI Suno and Runway crash tradition’s gates. Let the debate on art vs. slop, and socialism vs. community support, continue.

Transcript

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[Paul Nair]

Access to fresh food is not, it's not socialism. It's a bare necessity need for any human being. So this notion of socialism is not, and this is not a handout. This is just a helping hand.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

I'm Stacey Vanek Smith.

[Max Chafkin]

And I'm Max Chavkin.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

And this is everybody's business. Your group chat's favorite financially oriented podcast.

[Max Chafkin]

Indeed.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Well, you know, we have to find our niche.

[Paul Nair]

I love it.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Today on the show we have two really interesting stories. The first one is a big one. It is affordability. We take a look at a state run grocery store. There are more and more of these around the country. We are going to take you inside one in Atlanta.

[Jada Marai]

When you highlight the key necessities people need like produce, milk, eggs, bread, stuff like that. I think that we are, we're beating our competitors.

[Matt Zion]

And then it's a totally new category when you use it to tell stories that otherwise could not exist. People don't really care that it's AI if they like the story.

[Max Chafkin]

I sat down with filmmaker Matt Zion about how AI is changing Hollywood or might change Hollywood in the future. One of the big questions that will hang over this segment that I'm talking about with Matt Zion, but also other parts of this show is I think what is the difference between art and slop? Where does slop become art? Where does art become slop?

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Question for the ages.

[Max Chafkin]

It's a question should I think about all the time.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

So, Max, one of the things that we've been talking about for as long as this show has been a show has been inflation. It's been one of the biggest economic stories of this moment. And affordability. All the affordability problems that inflation is causing, people are struggling to afford the basics. More and more. We just got Savings numbers out, those are near the lowest levels they've been. And a new CNN poll found that 61% of people have changed what they buy at the grocery store because food costs rising so much right now.

[Jada Marai]

Right.

[Max Chafkin]

And that is both obvious because prices are high. Obviously people are going to change what they buy, but also very bad economically.

[Miles J. Herzenhorn]

Right.

[Max Chafkin]

That's it. That is a warning sign. And, and here in New York, this has been a big issue. Mayor Mamdani, part of the way he got elected is talking about affordability. And one of his solutions is the idea that the city will operate grocery stores. This has been super controversial. A lot of people on social media and elsewhere saying it's tantamount to socialism. But the plan is to have a city grocery store opening next year. And again, lest you think that this is some kind of crazy fringe New York thing, this is happening in other places in the United States too. In fact, one in Atlanta just opened last year. It's called Azalea Fresh Market.

[Paul Nair]

Jada, did you log in?

[Jada Marai]

Hey, I'm on the phone with the espresso people now. So do I put them on pause?

[Paul Nair]

Yeah, just put up, just put them on hold.

[Matt Zion]

You come back?

[Jada Marai]

Yeah, okay, Give me one second so

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

I can tell you we're very lucky today. We've got the general manager of Azalea Market, that's Jada Marai and the CEO and president, Paul Nair. Welcome.

[Paul Nair]

Thank you, thank you for having us.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Thank you. And Jada, you just got off the phone apparently with an espresso company because you are trying to negotiate. This is apparently the day to day workings of what you do. Can you tell us a little bit about what you were asking them about?

[Max Chafkin]

Sure.

[Jada Marai]

So right now we are going through a transitional period for our upstairs area. On the first floor we have a full fledged grocery store where you have your fresh food, your produce, your meat, your frozen. And it's in a very compact space. So the previous location here was a Walgreens. So if you can imagine the size of a Walgreens and take the entire floor and turn it into a grocery store, that's the space that we're dealing with. We've renovated it completely. We have our own made to order restaurant. So when we opened up the facility there was a coffee shop that we tied in with and then high roller sushi. And the coffee shop has decided that they are relocating. So we are trying to transition into our own coffee branding. So right now I was on the phone just trying to make sure that we have all the proper machinery Because I do have a barista up there training right now. So we're just trying to make sure that we can get on the ground running for next week. That way we're not missing out on too much money.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

I read that you had more than 700 people come to this grocery store.

[Jada Marai]

Yeah.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Can you talk a little bit about what the store is and why so many people showed up?

[Jada Marai]

The store is for the neighborhood. We're in a downtown area and there's really not many areas around in the country that have a grocery store in the heart of downtown. And then on top of that, we're also in Atlanta. We have gsu who, they're our main customer base. We, we really serve the students. It really, it is a food desert down here. And our goal is to be able to supply the food desert with a fresh food resource.

[Paul Nair]

This is a huge initiative from the mayor's office in west Atlanta to address this food desert issue. Now when you hear about this word food desert, people think that hey, it's a racial. It is. You know, it's a divide. It's not. I mean, it's actually every. In fact, I was having discussion with somebody from New Jersey. They have 59 full deserts. So that means that 59 areas where there's some two to three mile radius, there's no grocery stores at all. So this is a big task to be taking.

[Max Chafkin]

This is a public private partnership. You know, we're dealing, we're talking about some of this in New York as well with this plan of Mayor Mamdani's to open a city run grocery store or maybe more than one city run grocery store. And I don't know if you know this, but many people out in the world find this very upsetting. Right. They see this as the first step in the, in the slide towards communism. I for one, I'm surprised that you all are not wearing your Chairman Mao outfits or what you seem like normal capitalists as far as I can tell. Can you talk about exactly what you know, exactly what the relationship is and kind of like what your reaction, like kind of how you see this conversation around city owned grocery stores?

[Paul Nair]

Sure. You know, and that is a beautiful question and I do like to address it head on. You know, when this, when we were in the thick of building this, we actually had a call from Mayor Mamdani's office asking how we did what we did. And we made it very clear it should not be a city ran operation because city employees doesn't know how to run retail outlets. So we've actually discussed that now talking about socialism, access to fresh food. It's not socialism. It's a bare necessity need for any human being. So for us for someone to claim. And by the way, just on this one, this is not a handout from the city. What we have is a small grant and the rest, everything else is loan that we are supposed to pay back. So this is capitalism at best. So we are making sure that this becomes sustainable and pay back the loan. So the only difference in this is the city is acting more like a bank. So the underwriting is a little bit more easier and it's a low interest so we can make it affordable to the people who shopping. So this notion of socialism is not, and this is not a handout, this is just a helping hand.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

How does your pricing and I guess

[Jada Marai]

your selection compare when you highlight the key necessities people need like produce, milk, eggs, bread, stuff like that. I think that we are, we're beating our competitors. I have half a loaf of white bread, $1.79. I sell chicken breast for $4.99 a pound. We have a half gallon milk for $2.85 and a dozen egg.

[Max Chafkin]

That's a good deal.

[Jada Marai]

169 flying.

[Max Chafkin]

It might be worth it to fly to Atlanta from New York.

[Paul Nair]

We would love to host you.

[Jada Marai]

It's, it's crazy. We were selling a dozen eggs for 1 69. There's, there's not many areas where you can get fresh products for that price. And we go by Paul's price promise, so it's under his name. But we do have key items in the store where we're guaranteeing a price no matter what our cost is. Now obviously our goal would be to not lose more money than we're spending. But the investment is in the community.

[Max Chafkin]

Before we go any further on on the grocery prices and, and because the context here, and one of the reasons we want to talk to you is there was a poll that showed that a lot of people are changing their buying habits because of rising prices. It's a huge issue not just around the politics in New York, but in the country. We wanted to get a quick sense of how our listeners were feeling. And our producer Miles J. Herzenhorn was in Chicago. He went out on the streets to ask people how they were feeling about grocery prices. Let's all listen together and then we can talk about this. What is the last thing you bought at a grocery store that gave you pause?

[Street Interviewee]

Oh, ground beef, sweet peas that used to be 49 cents a pound. Are now a $19 wanted to cook

[Paul Nair]

a ribeye one day. One ribeye was like 29.

[Max Chafkin]

What do you think about the current level of grocery prices at the moment?

[Street Interviewee]

Grocery prices at the moment are absolutely ridiculous. I mean, you can't walk into a grocery store and buy anything for less than $5. You know what used to cost you a week's worth of shopping? $100. $120 is now well over $200. I truly don't know how families can afford to eat.

[Max Chafkin]

Do you currently budget for food?

[Street Interviewee]

Yes, I do. Before I used to go in and just go shopping and buy whatever I wanted to buy. And because that's what I wanted, now I find myself shopping for what's on sale, what's the house brand, which is costing less than everything else, which is not a way I used to shop.

[Paul Nair]

I get groceries and enough items to

[Max Chafkin]

cook that'll last for a few days. So normally I'm cooking like maybe twice a week and making the meal stretch. And how do you think other families around the country are managing the affordability crisis? What do you think they're doing?

[Jada Marai]

I honestly feel that families across the

[Max Chafkin]

country, they're budgeting, they're trying to plan

[Jada Marai]

out their meals, they're no snacks, no junk foods.

[Paul Nair]

Things that are actually going to last

[Jada Marai]

for a good bit of time.

[Street Interviewee]

Honestly, I think they're charging it and getting deeply in debt.

[Max Chafkin]

Scary.

[Jada Marai]

It is.

[Street Interviewee]

It is.

[Paul Nair]

This is. I actually, I hear this just about every day. Even, you know, the other day I was outside Walmart just kind of talking to people about the similar kind of questions. And it is strange. I mean, it is bad. And you know, and again, this, the fuel pricing, it's a combination of different things, right? I mean, it's not just one thing that attributes to this, the situation. So I believe once the gas prices comes down, I think things may level off. But unfortunately the issue is Covid has changed a lot of things. How the pricing has been set and you know, is that a lot of profit taking into these things? I can't say no to that. So it's a combination of different things and this is something that needs to be addressed.

[Max Chafkin]

Are you seeing, you've been open for a year or so, have you seen shifts in how. In what people are spending money on or are you seeing sort of those efforts to save in terms of like what people are buying, passing up, choosing or not choosing in kind of your stores?

[Jada Marai]

I think you do see shifts. I think that the biggest thing in grocery is if people think that they're Saving money, you have a bigger chance that they're going to make that purchase. I could mark up the price of Cheez Its and I could do buy one, get one 50% off. And just off of the thought that, oh, I'm saving money on Cheez Its, then that's. That's the more likely purchase than the ones that are not discounted. So you do see people that are attracted more to advertise sales, the private brands like they mentioned in the video, just speaking on the options that are the cheapest, you do kind of see a trend. But I do think the biggest trend that I've seen is the payment method. So instead of paying with credit or cash, my electronic benefit charges are starting to go higher. They're about 40% of our purchases.

[Max Chafkin]

So electronic benefits, that's food stamps.

[Jada Marai]

Yeah, yeah, food stamps.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Nat, how does your business model work? Do you make a profit? Do you not? Because you're charging really very low prices.

[Paul Nair]

So traditionally, you know what happens if there is low pricing and let's say the margin is 20% and the shrink is 2%. So what happens is you mark it up 22% to make up the difference.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

What is the shrink? What does that mean?

[Paul Nair]

Shrink could be theft or breakage.

[Max Chafkin]

Oh, okay, that doesn't.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

So just losses.

[Paul Nair]

So you mark up the 22% to make up the difference. You know, we're not doing that. And so our to answer the question, are we want to be profitable? Yes, that's exactly what we are gunning for. So we are looking at different other sources. What else can we do, what other services we can bring in? So that's the reason Jada is aggressively negotiating with different coffee companies. We are hoping to be profitable pretty soon, so at least at a minimum, break even.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Well, what do you hear from your customers? Like, what feedback have you gotten from them over the last year before we

[Jada Marai]

opened, we had some lapses in the opening time, so we ended up pushing it until September. But we had a defined opening day, I believe in late August, and then had to push it back, push it back, push it back. And our first upset customers were the ones that weren't able to come into the door. We had people that were leaving us Google reviews already about, oh, you guys open at this time and you're not. We want to shop. So our first customers were people that were demanding to be able to take advantage of our facility. So now that we're here, we're, we're here to stay and we're here for the community.

[Max Chafkin]

All right, Jada And Paul, General manager and CEO of Azalea Market. Thank you so much for being here. Stacey and I will definitely come visit and buy.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Max is threatening to get on a

[Max Chafkin]

plane some of that espresso once you get the supply chain all worked out.

[Paul Nair]

Well Max, we're going to hold you to that. We're waiting. I love it for a month long shopping.

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[Paul Nair]

add it all up.

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[Max Chafkin]

Stacey 2 weeks ago or so I had a conversation, fascinating conversation on stage at the Artist and Machine Conference. This was an event in in Brooklyn about AI and creativity with this guy, Matt Zion, who is an AI filmmaker. You and I, we've talked all about AI and how it's changing things. I haven't talked, I don't think that much about the entertainment business. That's kind of where this conversation is located. There are obviously lots of people who are using AI in Hollywood right now to sort of like touch up scenes or make crowds look better or whatever. Matt's thing is, like, using only AI. I mean, it's like the most sort of out there version of this. I mean, in fact, so out there that the kind of central question in this conversation is sort of like, what is the difference between AI art and AI slop? Like, at what point does it become art when you're just, you know, prompting a computer to generate something? And then the other reason I think this is a cool conversation is because, like, I. Matt is really good at prompting AI at basically asking AI questions. And I found, even though, as you know, I'm somewhat skeptical of this stuff, I actually found this conversation somewhat useful in terms of, like, how can somebody get the most out of their experience with AI because he is really. He's pushing these things, you know, kind of to the limits.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

I'm excited to hear the conversation.

[Max Chafkin]

Let's give it a listen. And I thought to start, we could just see a short clip from. What is this? This is like your first ever AI movie.

[Matt Zion]

2024.

[Max Chafkin]

Wow. Going way back.

[Matt Zion]

Runway Gen 3.

[Max Chafkin]

Okay. This is called the Relic. Daring expedition in the Far off land. The cadre of the Bravest allied podcast. We're seeing a shot from a plane. What could possibly drive these men? Military guys?

[Paul Nair]

Why?

[Max Chafkin]

None other. It looks like an old newsreel. Now we see some guys and restore peace walking.

[Paul Nair]

Hello, little monkey.

[Comcast Business Announcer]

Our heroes are not alone in their quest.

[Paul Nair]

But this relics has been guarded for thousands of years by a noble tribe, the keepers of this ancient wonder.

[Max Chafkin]

All right, so for people who didn't watch that whole thing, it's like a sort of newsreel style report from World War II. How did you come to be a person who made this? Like, what's the story that led you to make that film?

[Matt Zion]

At the time, I had just discovered midjourney, which had just moved out of Beta and Runway, and I was trying really, really hard to get into Runway's Beta and it was like, okay, what can we make that is actually watchable? With where the tech is now and those old newsreels, I was like, they're all. The footage is already really grainy and Bad. So maybe we could sell it. But the thing that was the hardest was to make them walk. Like, it was really, really hard to make them walk. And when they kind of started to walk, usually they'd become glitches very, very quickly. And it's kind of amazing how far and how quickly it's come since being super excited that they could walk and not become, like a glitch. Monstrosity.

[Jada Marai]

Yeah.

[Max Chafkin]

I mean, we'll see some of the more advanced clips that, like you said, it's been very quick. Just matters of months or a year. Just take us back to, like, what caused you to get interested in the space in general, coming from a sort of more traditional. I mean, you'd been basically producing what, documentaries.

[Matt Zion]

Yeah, nonfiction series and documentaries for over 10 years. And nonfiction is a very entrepreneurial, scrappy part of the business with lower budgets than scripted. Much lower. And the thing that bothered me the most as a development executive was we'd have these meetings where we came up with ideas, and there were all these ideas we'd fall in love with. And we knew our friends at the networks would love them, and we knew the audience would love them, but we had to throw them away right away. We couldn't even spend because they cost too much. We would never get those budgets. And as I saw this improving rapidly, I thought this would solve the problem that has bothered me the most through my whole career, which is incredible stories that deserve to be told but could not be told otherwise.

[Max Chafkin]

You were like, let me. I'm in this world of documentary and nonfiction. Let me take the most synthetic thing. No, I'm just kidding.

[Matt Zion]

Yeah, no recreations. I mean, epic scale things set in the ancient world or the beginning of time, following Neolithic humans as they developed language. There's. There's so many incredible stories that would be just so much fun to watch. But there is an archival for them.

[Max Chafkin]

So what was the reaction? You put this on YouTube. Is that how you showed it to the world?

[Matt Zion]

Started on TikTok.

[Max Chafkin]

Okay.

[Matt Zion]

I put this on TikTok. And there's a lot of, like, cool. But then there was someone who really. They told me to kill myself. And I was shocked.

[Max Chafkin]

Well, I want to get into that and into the. Into the way that people have been reacting and. And I think it's super easy to be in a place like this and. And. Or in, you know, a corporate boardroom where there's also a lot of AI enthusiasm and. And miss the fact that if you poll people about this stuff, a lot of people will be the Opposite of enthusiastic, right? They're going to be the. They're. They're in the kind of hater camp. So you've been dealing with this, right? Putting stuff out there that is really cool on a sort of technical level. Like, my God, I can't believe that you can make this with a computer and getting some blowback. And you've been responding to that. And let's watch the next clip. This is called Forgive the Haters.

[Miles J. Herzenhorn]

Good old Marcus mortgaged everything for film school debt Seven years around the world ain't paid it off yet his professors promised if he learned the rules Master composition Lighten all the tools He'd a value no computer could replace now he watches prompts put wonder on her face Forgive the hater they're not not what they seem they're watching the death of their American dream Forgive the haters See

[Max Chafkin]

them true now we're seeing some of the comments, including slop, garbage, crap that I assume that's a real.

[Matt Zion]

Those are real comments.

[Max Chafkin]

Not an AI generated one. No, that we know of. What was. Talk about the motivation to make this. And I'm curious about the composition. Like, are you. For people who are just listening to this, what we saw is sort of like an 80s rocker, like an arena rocker singing that song and some 80s style workers who are reacting to AI.

[Matt Zion]

This actually ties back to the collaborative way of working with AI That I mentioned before to get to this song. I told Claude I was. I pretended. I tricked Claude into thinking I was the haters.

[Max Chafkin]

Okay.

[Matt Zion]

And I compiled my worst hate comments and was like, help me, like, get this AI filmmaker. Like, this is what I wrote to them. And Claude, like, built a case against me. Because if you just ask it straight up, like, if I was like, hey, these are my haters, it'd be like, oh, they're idiots.

[Max Chafkin]

Right? Because it wants you to keep using it. The sycophancy problem.

[Matt Zion]

I reversed the sycophancy. So I was a hater. And then I was like, whoa. And it really broke down. What people were angry about and fearful of that hit me. And I was like, this is a real disruption. And I understand where these emotions are coming from, and I want to make art about it.

[Max Chafkin]

The characters. There's a visual effects artist, there's a film professor screenwriter. There's a bunch of people who are dealing with the kind of economic fallout or confronting it in various ways, emotional ways, economic ways. The song is talking about these complaints. The idea of a screenwriter can't find work or something like that. And for the Most part, that isn't true. I was on a panel here earlier where on the stage, people are saying, actually, and this comes up in other domains around AI, you think it's gonna lead to massive job losses. But it hasn't yet, and it may never. But in your work it is, right? I mean, it is just you. There is no AI Screenwriter. That that singer is a bot. There's no actor being paid is in some sense taking away those jobs. Does that give you any kind of pause?

[Matt Zion]

But, yeah, the thing is, I don't know if it is. I don't know of any production that was using people before and has now let those people go to use AI I can't think of one. Maybe that will happen in the future, but I haven't seen it yet. When people look at AI filmmaking, they think it's a replacement. They immediately think it's a replacement for practical production or animation. But the way I see it is it's a totally new category. It is a new medium entirely that can do different things than either of those mediums. And when you use it as a replacement, audiences don't really respond. When you use it to tell stories that otherwise could not exist, people don't really care that it's AI if they like the story.

[Max Chafkin]

When you hear your colleagues in the entertainment world, like Guillermo del Toro saying, like, I'd rather die than use AI, I mean, like, so these are not just randos on the Internet slinging at you, right?

[Matt Zion]

I'd be really honored if he's slang at me, really, And I respect him. But it's also very easy to say, I'd rather die than use this. When you're sitting on 130 million doll budget, when you're trying to climb your way up as a filmmaker and the industry's already contracting, you're going to do what you got to do to get your story in the world.

[Max Chafkin]

You used the sort of distinction between art and slop. I can't remember if it was when we were backstage or just now, but there's a lot of what I think is more clearly like, AI slop. That is doing very well on the Internet. Like, I was not even going to bring this up, but so many people have brought it up when I said, oh, I'm doing a panel on AI filmmaking. These Fruit Love island videos, it's like a very successful TikTok where it's like a parody of Love island, but they're fruit. The visuals are. So we're gonna put one up, but the visuals are so Garish. We kind of. We're worried about offending people. What do you make of that and the success of it?

[Matt Zion]

I think the thing that's doing really well that is an AI in practical production is human slop too. Everyone's talking about real shorts and these like one minute like, like absolutely horrible soap operas, these vertical soap operas. And that's cr. It like human slop and AI Slop are both doing really well in terms of numbers.

[Max Chafkin]

We. We talked about the slop end of the spectrum. I want to play one last clip of your work. A recent piece that is, I think maybe, and maybe you. You correct me if I'm wrong, but it feels like the most fully fleshed out, like film. It's a 12 minute short film. It's called djen. We're going to watch a short clip and then talk about it.

[Arm and Hammer Announcer]

Men, they still just dropping loneliness, huh? They die of loneliness.

[Max Chafkin]

What?

[Arm and Hammer Announcer]

They cured everything except the part where they can't talk to nobody, can't say they're sad, so their bodies just quit.

[Max Chafkin]

Okay, so that was a shot of a few characters in a car, three women. They're like agents of some sort. They're going into this futuristic nightclub. I'm not going to spoil the whole story, but I wanted to ask you, Matt, you've talked about casting these actors. What do you mean by that?

[Matt Zion]

AI Is a probability cloud. When you ask for an image, it's going to give you the most likely image that it can make from the probability cloud. But interesting characters, you have to wrestle with the machine. You have to put constraints in. I like to use paradoxes that force the model into the edges of its training data. So it gives you people that are not the most statistically average output. And then it's really just a human judgment thing. You look and see if that person is compelling. And if they're compelling enough, you move them to the next stage where you design a voice. You design a voice for each character and make sure the voice matches. And then you put it into video and you audition your own creations until it's something that you feel holds the screen. They're compelling enough to hold the screen.

[Max Chafkin]

Where are we in this culture battle? Like, do you think the intensity of this debate is gonna have we hit the peak? Is it just starting? What are you.

[Matt Zion]

Well, I'll tell you what I saw last night on Reddit that kind of shocked made me really worried for a minute.

[Miles J. Herzenhorn]

It.

[Matt Zion]

There are subreddits that are all about AI hate. And one came up on my feed that was a photo for a billboard of a small Mexican restaurant in a 400 person town in Washington state. And the caption was look at this cringe AI slop on the billboard. And the thing I thought immediately was oh no, this family restaurant is about to get brigaded. I looked at the Yelp expecting to see hundreds of like horrible reviews, but I just saw five star reviews and it was like the best Mexican food anyone had ever had. But I was and the person who drove by and posted that would never try that.

[Max Chafkin]

But that's the kind of thing you're worried about.

[Matt Zion]

That's the thing I was worried about

[Max Chafkin]

spilling into the real world. Yeah, we've seen that, of course, with some attacks on some AI industry executives and so on. Last question, real quick. Do you worry about your own, the role that you're playing, about disrupting yourself or whatever? Like the idea that this could get so good that like that artist vision wouldn't be needed.

[Paul Nair]

Not.

[Matt Zion]

Not at all.

[Comcast Business Announcer]

No.

[Matt Zion]

This is so much fun. The community that does it is the warmest community I've ever found in film. This is not going away and it's only going to get better. We say all the time this is the worst it will ever be.

[Max Chafkin]

Matt Zion, thank you so much for being here. Thank you all for listening. Great conversation.

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[Max Chafkin]

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[Stacey Vanek Smith]

right, Max, so in the spirit of the conversation that you just had and this idea of creating art with AI, there has been sort of a summer song moment that we have had that is is a collaboration between a person and AI.

[Street Interviewee]

So.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

So it's called the Puerto Rico song. It has totally blown up in the last few weeks. It was written.

[Max Chafkin]

Are you saying this is the underrated story?

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Yeah, I think it is underrated, yes.

[Max Chafkin]

Because even though it's blown up over

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

the song of the summer, it's been on TV like it's on Spotify. Like this has like become this thing and how it happened was there was this comedian and he likes to travel and when he comes back, he takes his travel notes and likes to write writes song lyrics and then he feeds them into this AI tool called Suno. And Suno creates a little song around the lyrics. He's done this on a bunch of places that he's traveled and he went to San Juan and he wrote a song with AI and it has become this big hit. Are you ready to hear the song?

[Max Chafkin]

I'm ready.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

All right, here we go.

[Miles J. Herzenhorn]

First time in San Juan, Mijo capital of Puerto Rico.

[Max Chafkin]

This song sucks, Stacy. I'm sorry. It is a bad, bad song. It is not the song of the summer.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Puerto Rico is flying him out to become. This is going to become the promotional song.

[Max Chafkin]

I hope it doesn't of Puerto Rico. People love this bad bunny is from Puerto Rico. There are. I mean this is not even the song. You gotta get off the Internet. I think honestly. Cause this is. This is not the song of the summer.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

This is blowing up. People love this song. It's very fun it's very sweet. It's. I don't know. You didn't even listen to it for 10 seconds.

[Max Chafkin]

I listened to. I have to say, and I have to admit this. I feel like I failed as a podcaster, which is that I listened to this beforehand. So I think I went into the listen with a little bit of bottled up rage that I.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

That.

[Max Chafkin]

That unfortunately may have.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Rage about what?

[Max Chafkin]

I feel like we're like, grading AI on a curve. We're like, oh, like, it's so. This is. It's so catchy. But is it catchy, though? Like, I'm not totally sure. Is it the same?

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

I think it's catchy.

[Max Chafkin]

All right, well, speaking of people who need to get off of the Internet, I have been following the Enhanced Games, which is the quote, unquote, steroid Olympics. Stacey, you and I have talked about the Enhanced Games before. It was this kind of, like, Silicon Valley attempt to, quote, unquote, disrupt the world of sport by giving elite athletes drugs. Okay, you're familiar with the Enhanced Games, right?

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Yes.

[Max Chafkin]

Okay. So I've been following this closely because, as I said, I've been spending too much time on the Internet. And. And everyone was sort of expecting that it would be this, you know, like, oh, my God, like, world records are gonna fall and so on. Do you wanna know what happened?

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

What happened?

[Max Chafkin]

The athletes not using the drugs were the ones who won. Oh, in many cases.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Okay.

[Max Chafkin]

And it was kind of. It was kind of a letdown. And the Enhanced games in the 100 meter, in the men's hundred meters, they were talking about taking down Usain Bolt's record. The guy who won was. Was not number one, not on drugs, and number two did not run very fast. There was in swimming in the men's 50 meter, but it's sort of unclear whether it was the drugs or whether it was one of those suits. Do you remember those suits that that Olympian. Olympic swimmers were wearing for a while and then.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Speed suits.

[Max Chafkin]

The speed suits. He was wearing one of these speed suits. And so it's like, maybe it was a speed suit, maybe it was a drug. But they did set a record there. Anyway, Wall street has been unimpressed. The stock basically went public right before this, and it has. Has not been. Well, the last I checked, it was down 70% from its high about a month ago.

[Bethenny Frankel]

Huh.

[Max Chafkin]

So a bit of a dud. This show is produced by Jasmine JT Green, Stacy Wong and Miles J. Herzenhorn. Magnus Henriksen is our supervising producer. Ken Militzer handles engineering, and Dave Purcell fact checks. Special thanks to Jeff Muskus, Julia Rubin and Maria Ling. If you have a minute, please rate and review the show. It'll mean a lot to us us. And if you have a story that should be our business, email us@everybody's bloomberg.net that's everybody with an sloomberg.net thank you for listening and we will see you next week.

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Literally.

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