X’s $1M Sweepstakes, Ben Affleck’s viral take on AI, Elon sues OpenAI for $134B | Diet TBPN

Summary

TBPN Podcast Diet Recap

Episode: X’s $1M Sweepstakes, Ben Affleck’s viral take on AI, Elon sues OpenAI for $134B
Hosts: John Coogan & Jordi Hays
Date: January 20, 2026
Duration: ~30 minutes

Episode Overview

This episode dissects the latest in tech–from X’s (formerly Twitter) aggressive push into long-form content with a $1M articles sweepstakes, Ben Affleck’s now-viral and surprisingly nuanced take on generative AI (from a Joe Rogan interview), the insider revelations at XAI, to Elon Musk’s colossal $134 billion lawsuit against OpenAI. The hosts, John and Jordi, guide the conversation with their signature irreverence and insight, mixing in live chat input and personal anecdotes.

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1. X’s $1M Sweepstakes & the “Article Apocalypse”

(00:02–13:30)

The Announcement

• Nikita Beer’s $1M Bounty: Nikita Beer announced a $1M reward on X to the top article posted in two weeks—an explicit growth hack inviting a surge of new content.
  • “Ladies and gentlemen, we are giving $1 million to the top article posted on X. You have two weeks…” (John, 00:02)

Concerns & Observations

• “Article Apocalypse” / Timeline Slop: There’s concern about a deluge of low-quality, AI-generated essays flooding the timeline.
  • “Let's do it. Why not make AI generated essays lottery tickets.” (Tyler, 00:37)
• Platform History: Reflecting on Twitter’s bumpy journey with long-form content:
  • Review acquisition flopped, long post limits jumped from 280 up to 25,000 characters in 2023-24.
  • “Why do articles exist if long posts are so long that you can put 4,000 words there? ... Articles are first-class citizens in the algorithm and there's really no downside.” (John, 04:00–04:46)
• Crossposting & Monetization:
  • Hosts see X as an additive distribution channel, not a replacement for Substack.
  • “I don't think X needs writers to go all in. I just think that they want more copies of the best writing to make their way to X.” (John, 10:08)
• Data Value Theory:
  • Some speculate the $1M is less about content and more about training data for XAI.
  • “So there's this idea that... the data is worth 10x more than $1M.” (Tyler/John, 07:13–07:29)
• User Experience & Substack’s Moat:
  • Substack’s edge is creator ownership of the email list—a true relationship rather than a platform-locked audience.

Notable Moment

• “Lottery Tickets” Analogy
  • “Let's turn them into lottery tickets.” (Tyler, 00:47)

Timestamps

• Growth hack analysis & platform history: 00:02–05:36
• Data value & user experience: 06:39–11:23

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2. XAI Whistleblowing & Unusual Openness

(13:33–17:07)

Insider Interview Fallout

• Leaked Details: Suleiman Khan Gory, previously at XAI, appeared on a podcast detailing internal processes, bottlenecks, and wild predictions—like “one million human emulations” running on Tesla owner compute.
  • “Did a podcast... talking about what it's like working at XAI... Bootstrapping off the Tesla network, how Elon deals with fires...” (Tyler, 13:36–14:10)
• Culture Note: XAI’s PR and HR are described as informal, explaining how such internal revelations got aired—possibly leading to the employee’s quiet exit.
  • “Good intentions... No one tells me no a little bit too far.” (John, 15:42–16:03)
• Technical Bombshell: Use of idle Tesla chips for running digital agents/“Optimus” digital twins.

Timestamps

• Podcast content: 13:33–15:46
• Human emulations/Optimus: 16:03–17:07

Notable Quote

• “That’s an interesting development... lease compute from Tesla owners when the car is parked and charging.” (John, 16:03)

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3. Ben Affleck’s Viral AI Take

(17:08–27:55)

Main Argument

• Affleck’s Skepticism:
  • He asserts that LLMs average out, producing bland, uninspired text—not breakthrough scripts or films.
  • “It's really shitty and it's shitty because by its nature it goes to the mean, to the average... It's not reliable, and... I just can't stand to see what it writes now.” (Ben Affleck via Guest Analyst, 17:38)
• Human Element in Storytelling:
  • The emotional value—the “lore”—surrounding art and content is something AI can’t replicate.
  • “People like a Van Gogh because they know about him... and all this history... the storytelling behind the art piece is a lot of it.” (John, 20:43)
• Legal/Practical Limits:
  • Laws around name/likeness and copyright will prevent, for instance, AI-generated Dwayne Johnson movies without permission.
  • “You can watermark it. Those laws already exist. I can't sell your fucking picture for money. I can't. You can sue me, period.” (Guest Analyst, 22:52)
• AI as a Tool, Not a Creator:
  • Affleck predicts AI will be like VFX: a studio tool, not a replacement for creatives.
  • “And really what it is, it's going to be a tool, just like sort of visual effects…” (Guest Analyst, 22:52)

Pushback & Nuance

• Host’s Counterpoint:
  • The hosts note that AI-generated content is already “pretty good,” especially for niche, community-oriented stories or fanfic.
  • “You will [generate films], but it won't be a film in the sense that it won't be Titanic. It will be a lot of films that are for different people.” (John, 26:35)

Timestamps

• Affleck’s skeptical case: 17:08–21:49
• Human “lore” and storytelling: 18:43–20:43
• Laws, use as a tool, and pushback: 21:37–27:01

Memorable Exchanges

• “Sell a screenplay then. Sell a screenplay. ...Yeah, but why would I sell a screenplay? I could just make the whole movie myself.” (John & Industry Insider, 25:51–26:05)

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4. Elon Musk's $134 Billion Lawsuit vs OpenAI

(27:59–End)

Case Summary

• Musk’s Claim: Argues his early contributions entitle him to a share of OpenAI’s value (now $500 billion+), seeking $134 billion in damages for alleged profit shift and breach of founding promises.
  • “Musk's legal team argues that his early funding and involvement materially contributed to OpenAI's rise, which is now valued at 500 billion. And he wants a slice.” (John, 28:30)

Market & Industry Reaction

• Kalshi prediction markets: ~60% chance Elon wins.
• OpenAI internal stance: They estimate worst-case damages are $34 million, far below Elon’s ask.
• What If Elon Wins?: He could become a large, disruptive shareholder, but it likely wouldn't give him control and might turn into a costly, distracting victory.
  • “If he gets that, it's like over 25% of the company, something like that...” (John, 29:31)

Timestamps

• Lawsuit background and analysis: 27:59–30:41

Closing Thought

• “He could win the battle, but lose the war. ... Even if he gets $100 billion, he's worth $700 billion. It's like a drop in the bucket.” (John, 29:49)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On User Incentives:

  • “It's hilarious when you see like a Fortune 500 CEO post an article because ... are you really down? And you need a mil?” (John, 07:55)

• On AI Content Quality:

  • “It's really shitty and it's shitty because by its nature it goes to the mean, to the average...” (Ben Affleck via Guest Analyst, 17:38)

• On the Real Value Proposition:

  • “The value of Substack ... is that you own your email list so you have a direct relationship with your audience and you could take that anywhere.” (John, 05:39)

• On the “Lore” of Content:

  • “The lore and the storytelling that happens outside of a piece of content is as important as the actual content in many cases.” (John, 19:43)

• On Musk Litigation:

  • “I've lost a few battles over the years, but I've never lost a war.” (Elon Musk, via John, 29:01)

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Final Thoughts

This episode explores the collision of platform incentives, the human aspect of creativity, and the high-stakes maneuvers in AI’s business landscape—with the hosts exchanging sharp takes that ground the buzzy news in real industry dynamics. Affleck’s viral comments and the speculative AI-fueled future of Hollywood, X’s never-ending product pivots, and Elon Musk’s latest battle with OpenAI all serve as lenses to question where tech and culture are headed next.

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Recommended Segments to Listen

• X's $1M sweepstakes, data value & platform strategy: 00:02–11:23
• Ben Affleck’s take on AI and storytelling: 17:08–22:36
• Musk v. OpenAI lawsuit analysis: 27:59–end

Skip: Intro, ads, and outro.
Tone: Conversational, informed, irreverent.

Transcript

[John]

We're talking about the article apocalypse that's happening on X. Will it slop up the timeline? Will the algorithm handle the flood of AI generated content that will be slopped up in the timeline? We will see, we will dig into it, we will discuss it. We'll also try and understand what is going on with Nikita Beer strategy. What's the strategy at X? Will this growth hack work? So, so this all started with Nikita Beer on X. He said, ladies and gentlemen, we are giving $1 million to the top article posted on X. You have two weeks and very, very different structure.

[Tyler]

I thought there's already. There's so much AI generated essays on X. Let's do it. Why not make AI generated essays? Lottery tickets.

[John]

Lottery tickets.

[Tyler]

Let's turn them into lottery tickets.

[John]

I like it. I mean they're definitely paying out more than a million dollars in creator payments across all the little $100 thousand dollar checks that go out to folks. You have to imagine. But running a sweepstakes, I mean, that's time honored. What's not to like about a sweepstakes? It's great. Nikita's kind of taking two sides to this. He says it's time to write, but also he tells everyone else, please bear with article Armageddon. My question was, what's the strategy here and what will the outcome be? The Elon taking over felt like, okay, it, it's an entirely new day. Everything's moving way faster now. Some of those projects had actually been in the works for months or years before. I think Community Notes was the big one where the Twitter team had been building that infrastructure for a while, but they were moving forward.

[Tyler]

5,000 people working on it for over.

[John]

Five years, probably something like that. 2023 was a big year for expanding character limits. They'd also previously acquired this Dutch startup review, which was a direct competitor substack. But that product was shut down in less than two years. Like January to January. They only made it two years. Never really got it off the, off the ground. And I think it was because it was sort of counter positioned with Twitter. It was kind of like always, oh well, if we get people on the review platform, they'll leave or they'll take their audience elsewhere. It never really felt, yeah, and I.

[Tyler]

Don'T know that a lot of people had some incredible faith that hey, I want to build my business on, yeah, like a Twitter.

[John]

I mean even pre Elon, there had been companies, startups that had built on the Twitter API, which had gone through a number of version changes. Elon made some More extreme changes to that. But there were plenty of times when people would build businesses like too closely to any platform really. And then they get steamrolled, whether you're Zynga building farmville on Facebook, and then they change the algorithm or they change the integration and all of a sudden your growth engine's just gone. This happened with Teespring. They were selling custom T shirts. They've been working making X a more literate long form platform for a while.

[Tyler]

2023, we need to teach our users the English language. We need them to read more than, you know, 80 characters.

[John]

So they've obviously done a ton in video. They've never really leaned into a video library like YouTube. Like I used to cross post my YouTube videos on X. Sometimes there were length limits for a while, then they got rid of those. So I could just actually copy a 25 minute YouTube video, put it on X and it was cool. People wouldn't watch nearly as much as they did on YouTube and there was no catalog value. That was like the really weird thing was that on YouTube, like my old videos that I haven't uploaded in over a year and my old videos are still probably getting like, I don't know, half a million views a month. Just because people are every day they search like, what's the history of Anderil or what's the history of Ramp or what's the history of Xi Jinping?

[Tyler]

Well, and they're evergreen content, so just continuously get served.

[John]

Exactly. And then once someone watches one of my videos, they watch five more.

[Tyler]

Well, and part of that, if you want to be a serious video platform, you need to be like actually incentivizing people to watch on TV. Like so much of YouTube watch hours happen on TV and X, I think has a streaming TV app, but it's certainly not. Doesn't get a lot of love.

[John]

Continuing with the long post journey that X has been on. 2023 was a massive year. February took it from 280 characters to 4,000 characters. That's more than I need for most of my posts. I don't think I've ever posted anything longer than that. April expanded it to 10,000 characters and finally in June they maxed out at 25,000 characters. That's longer than most blog posts. That's around 4,000 words, maybe a little bit more. And you can still thread these posts together. So I was always wondering, why does articles exist if long posts are so long that you can put 4,000 words there? And now I think that essentially articles are first class citizens in the algorithm and there's really no downside.

[Tyler]

Zach Vole had a great idea. He said, grok, summarize this article in 280 characters or less. Don't make any mistakes. Thanks. So if you, if you really yearn for the days the pre article era, just respond and tag Grok and post and have it turn it back into.

[John]

Just regular old fashioned 140 characters, even shorter. So when articles launched in March of 2024, it didn't really hit for me like I was not like, oh, I gotta jump on this, I gotta post. You know. We started doing The Newsletter In 2025 mid year we started cross posting. We articles were available. I think we might have tested one or two as an article. Didn't really see a difference. So just kind of stuck with the long posts. So my pieces are usually around 5,000 characters. They fit fine in a long post. Oh yeah, we're getting 10x more views now that we're using articles. It's kind of the same thing, but it does seem like an interesting format that maybe they will surface on the hand.

[Tyler]

It's a better experience as a reader.

[John]

If you take advantage of the formatting. Maybe, but. And you're doing bullet points and bolding and italics like you can write embedding posts. Yeah, embedding posts is cool. And also images in the. I saw one that graphics and it read almost like a stratecherie piece. It had embedded images and stuff. It was cool. So strategically this big article push, it feels like another shot at Substack. But I don't know that anyone's gonna be rushing to get off of Substack based on this. Because the value of Substack, the value prop is that you own your email list so you have a direct relationship with your audience and you could take that anywhere. You could leave at any time. You can even take your Stripe account with you, which is a craz thing. It's so creator friendly. And Substacks made that their brand and they built a great business around it. And long term, I think Substack should probably figure out how to build some sort of ads product that can run across all of the different substacks.

[Tyler]

Because that would probably be a total TVPN victory.

[John]

It would, it would.

[Tyler]

They've been very, very anti ads.

[John]

Anti ads. But I just see like what does it take to get Substack into the Snapchat Pinterest, Reddit category? Sort of like DACA corn category. And you imagine that for a lot of these, like if you're they're clearly trying to push people into the substack app. But even just embedding ads here and there, it could be done tastefully. I think it could be done in a way that's not too abrasive, but I think just from a business perspective it would make sense and really open. Open them up to some big, big dollars.

[Tyler]

You had kind of a rough theory that, that maybe there was some logic to doing this just for having new training data.

[John]

Yeah. So. So there's this idea that somebody.

[Tyler]

Untitled YouTube chat says the data is worth 10x more than 1.

[John]

There were a few people that were. That were mentioning this.

[Tyler]

Talk about a company that feels very immune to vibe coding. You don't want the. Somebody comes to you and they're like, I got plat, but I'm gonna charge you half as much.

[John]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

It's like, well, I'll take the, I'll take the real one for storing and processing my customers financial information.

[John]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

Anyway, Noah in the chat says, I don't want to read substack without ads. So that's.

[John]

There we go. Thank you.

[Tyler]

That's advertising strongest soldier.

[John]

So the question is like, you put out this million dollar bounty, how many people will show up? How many articles will actually get posted? I am seeing a lot of articles in the feed. It's also hilarious when you see like a Fortune 500 CEO post an article because you're like, oh, damn, are you really down? And you need a mill, like, what's going on, buddy? And it's like, no, they're just like, they're just posting news and they just need to get something out. So they use an article. But it's funny to imagine that they're like, oh man, the million would change everything for me. It's what I need. It's what I need.

[Tyler]

But Tim Cook starts ripping articles. He's just like, he's like, I need to. I can't be like within the same.

[John]

We're not going to do a keynote this year for the new iPhone. We're dropping an article and we're releasing it nine months early. The question is, is the data valuable? So a million dollars, how many people will show up? How many people will play the game? How many people will buy a lottery ticket, buy writing original articles that go viral.

[Tyler]

I mean, I've been seeing, I've been seeing so many people quoting articles, sharing them and say, you need to read this. It's incredibly well written. And then I tap in and it's just obviously slop.

[John]

Doesn't seem like anyone's going to be bailing on Substack today to move over. But there is just valuable. And then there's also the question of like. So you're probably not going to get your own audience list on Axe, but will you even be able to monetize with subscriptions? X does have subscriptions, but Substack has a way more like built out.

[Tyler]

I wonder what the monthly revenue is for the person that's utilizing subscriptions the best, right? Oh yeah, that's the highest earning subscription driven creator.

[John]

But the interesting thing is that Substack offers more than just a one time subscription monthly. You can pay annually, get a discount, participate in a live stream, get the chat. And then there's also like business plans, group plans. So they just have a way more mature product catalog when it comes to monetizing a customer list or an email list. And then obviously you can take them elsewhere if you're like, look, my newsletter product has grown so much that I have like enterprise level needs. I have to be off substack. You can go and build something from scratch that does exactly what you want.

[Tyler]

How did you conclude? What was your takeaway?

[John]

My question was, so I don't see anyone who's a writer online who's on substack being like, okay, now's the moment. A million dollars on the table. I'm shutting down my substack and I'm going over to X exclusively. But a lot of people cross post. That's what we do. I think a lot of people, if you have a free. If you have a substack that's part free, part paid post, the free part on X, why not? It's all upside. It's just more attention that can actually get you into funnel. I believe that the posting of the articles on X has been additive to our substack list. I think this has been net growth. I don't think people have been like, oh, I'm unsubscribing from TVPN's newsletter because I'm getting it on John's random Twitter feed that may or may not surface to me in the algorithm. So I don't think X needs writers to go all in. I just think that they want more copies of the best writing to make their way to X. And so if you have a great YouTube video, they want you to share it on X as well. So then they can surface that to people. If you have a great piece of writing, put it on X as well. And I think this does that. And I think they'll be successful there.

[Tyler]

Yeah, the question, I mean if they're really successful and you have like YouTube for long form writing, like the UGC platform for long form writing, it's probably a solid business, but it's not going to be a juggernaut like YouTube specifically because it's not going to monetize nearly as well.

[John]

I want your take on whether on the actual article experience. I was chatting with some folks who really, really big on Twitter. A little group of folks who are all well over 100k. I've gotten there back in like the thread era they were like thread guys basically and they were saying like I don't think naval's how to get rich without getting lucky throw thread would have worked as an article. That the fact that it was all these bite sized pieces like that's, that's, that was what was special. I think personally that meta has sort of died and we haven't seen that work.

[Tyler]

What do you think coming back and just unironically ripping threads?

[John]

Why not? I'd zig.

[Tyler]

Zack, do you miss threads?

[John]

You mean just like, do you miss.

[Tyler]

That error at all? Is it. Can you remember any iconic threads other than Lulu's and Naval's?

[John]

Naval is the main one that I remember. I probably scrolled a few threads. I actually did have a thread that actually blew up my account. So I was at 10,000 followers.

[Tyler]

Is this the Alaska one?

[John]

No, that was not that. That got me unfollows because I posted about bringing tech. You know, I was early on the let's leave California train. I said we got to go to Alaska. We're not going to Miami, we're not going to Texas. We're going to Alaska. Because if you have runaway global warming, it's going to be beachfront property up there, baby. It's going to be 72 and sunny.

[Tyler]

Every day in Alaska palm trees.

[John]

Alternatively, if we solve global warming, we will have unlimited nuclear power. You will be able to heat air condition, do whatever you need in your Alaska compound because you will have a 1 megawatt nuclear reactor dropped on your doorstep and you will have unlimited power. And you'll be lounging in a beautiful scenic mountain retreat, perfectly temperature controlled.

[Tyler]

Alaska did not like that.

[John]

They did not like that. I got a lot of DMs from a lot of people showing me their guns, saying if you come up here, California boy, there will be consequences. And it was a rough day on the Internet. I had to lock my account. So I closed out saying that, you know, maybe there's a You know, article apocalypse. I'm not really seeing it. I think the algorithm is pretty well equipped to handle stuff like this. People always seem grumpy with X generally. And honestly, Nikita specifically, a lot of.

[Tyler]

Times we should talk about xai.

[John]

Oh, yes. What's going on with xai?

[Tyler]

So, Ty Morse.

[John]

Yes.

[Tyler]

Did a podcast with Suleiman Khan Gorey.

[John]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

Who was previously at the time when the podcast was done.

[John]

Yes.

[Tyler]

He of course was working at xai. Came in, he talked about WTF is happening at xai? Predicting bottlenecks, bootstrapping off the Tesla network, how Elon deals with fires, what it's like working at xai. Cybertruck bet with Elon, how they built Colossus, how XAI hires experimentation, how Elon recalibrated his timeline estimates. No one tells me. No, that's important.

[John]

Wild one.

[Tyler]

Why the fuzziness between teams is an advantage. Testing human emulators as employees biggest blunders. What a meeting with Elon is like. How Elon gives feedback. Figuring out what is truth for Grokopedia. What happens when Elon sees wrong Grok outputs on X. Massively viral, by the way.

[John]

4 million views just on X. I'll.

[Tyler]

Start by saying that this is fantastic content, beautifully shot. Well that very well done and great content. Right. People are so curious about what's happening in xai. Right. We want to understand, you know, how they're approaching different problems.

[John]

Elon talks about it in such high level. He's talking about AI AGI, super futuristic. And then he'll give little details on like some massive build out that he's working on.

[Tyler]

But he's not one nitty gritty, one small problem.

[John]

Yes.

[Tyler]

Usually a $200 billion company likes to control who's going to go out and do a tell all about the company. And specifically with Elon companies, if you hadn't noticed, there's not a lot of people that work for Elon companies that go and do the podcast circuit, go talk about everything going on. The funny thing is I didn't catch all the interview, but they talk about how HR in general is not super formalized at the company. And so you can also imagine that PR and the media relations team is not super active. Maybe nobody in HR said, hey, don't go do it. An hour long podcast. What happened? Ultimately, Suleiman, he said he's laughing, he left.

[John]

We don't actually know what happened, but it is odd to go do a. To go do an hour long interview.

[Tyler]

And then quit anyway, so. So I think like good intentions Potentially took the concept which he talks about in here. No one tells me no a little bit too far. I posted earlier you can't even share the internal secrets of your AI lab on a cinematic podcast in this country anymore.

[John]

The speculation is that this is the result of the interview he gave where he said XAI intends to run one million human emulations a digital version of Optimus for online work which will be powered by leasing compute from Tesla owners when the car is parked and charging. That's an interesting development that we actually haven't heard about before. This idea that you have the, you know, a pretty advanced AI chip doing self driving in the Teslas. They're just sitting there overnight. Why not do some inference and lease that back.

[Tyler]

Why is it a digital version of Optimus? Is it going to be sitting there in the corner like flippy?

[John]

I mean I think realistically it's probably just like agentic rollouts. So if it's for online work it's like what are a bunch of tasks that you could turn grok loose on? Everything from the classic order doordash simulation, try and buy something on Amazon in a simulation. All these things that require moving around on a screen, doing computer work, using Excel, building stuff, writing code. So a life lesson there.

[Tyler]

Let's go over to Ben Affleck.

[John]

Ben Affleck, he went on Joe Rogan and gave some very good takes on AI. There's some discussion over how good of takes they are but I ran into somebody that said that they met Ben Affleck, they were like a proper AI researcher and they said that they met Ben Affleck and he used compute as a noun and they were like yeah, that was impressive. Like he's talking about like scale and compute. He's actually very very deep in this. Ben Affleck is not a doomer. He's actually pretty white pilled and it seemed like a really good interview.

[Tyler]

Ryan says what if he's just trying.

[Guest Analyst]

To get ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini to write you something? It's really shitty and it's shitty because by its nature it goes to the mean, to the average and it's. And it's not reliable and it's, I mean I just came stand to see what writes now it's a useful tool if you're a writer and you're going what's the thing? I'm trying to set something up. Or somebody sends someone a letter but it's delayed two days and gets. And it can give you some examples of that. I actually don't think it's very likely that it can. It's going to be able to write anything meaningful or. And in particular, that it's going to be making movies like from Holcomb, like Tilly Norwood. Like, that's bullshit. I don't think that's going to happen. I think it's. I think it actually turns out the technology is not progressing in exactly the same way they sort of presented it. And really what it is is going to be just like, sort of visual facts.

[John]

There was a line in here where. Yeah, there was a line in here where I was like, that is a Carpathy line. Like, he definitely heard this from Carpathy. He's listening to Door Cash for sure for money.

[Guest Analyst]

I can't. You can sue me, period. It kind of feels to me like things on earlier where there's a lot more.

[John]

The whole idea of, like, these models being made, that's not quite true. I mean, it's hard with, like, to develop a reinforcement learning environment with a verifiable reward for, like, a great script that will break through. Because even the great script writers have flops that are unexpected. Literally everyone thinks it's great, and then it goes out and it just is a box office bump. Later, he actually makes a stronger case, I think, because they're talking about Dwayne the Rock Johnson in the film the Smashing Machine. And Matt Damon is recalling an interview that he did with Dwayne Johnson about, you know, one of the most climactic scenes in the Smashing Machine. It's very impress. Emotional. And he asks Dwayne, you know, how did you pick this, you know, motion? He pulls up a sheet because he's sad. And, like, what were you conjuring? What were you drawing on to create that experience as an actor and bring that emotion to the screen? Because Matt Damon saying, like, I love that. I love that scene. I loved your performance. Where'd that come from?

[Tyler]

Because you're thinking about content without ads in order to draw on the sort.

[John]

Of, like, deep, sad emotions that might be what does it for you. But, I mean, Dwayne Johnson gave, like, a very emotional response about a family member who was diagnosed with cancer. And he was in the room when she got the news. And so her reaction, he was, like, channeling that. It was very emotional. And then the other one was, I think, about another family member who had substance abuse issues. And so it was just this very unique blend of human experiences that he was able to bring to bear. And I continue to think that the lore and the storytelling that Happens outside of a piece of content is as important as the actual content in many cases. This was the same thing with art and the NFT boom. It's not the scarcity is important, but the storytelling behind the art piece is a lot of it. Like people like a Van Gogh because they know about him cutting off his ear and all this history and he's in all the history books and everyone just knows Van Gogh.

[Tyler]

And yes, you can go even with cars, right? It's a car is worth more if the previous owner was significant in some way.

[John]

Yes, yes, yes. Steve McQueen is going to sell for more. And I think that for certain storytelling elements, for certain stories, that lore of like who this person is and their likeness. And then he also makes a really good point that it's like, yes, you can, I mean you can obviously generate something that looks exactly like a Van Gogh right now. You can paint it with someone who knows exactly how to paint like Van Gogh. It's not going to have anywhere near the value. And when he gets to the idea of just AI generating a Dwayne Johnson movie, it's like, well, he'll sue you immediately. And that's very easy. And you've been able to Photoshop Dwayne Johnson into marketing materials for years and we've had a system for counteracting that. Like you have to pay licensing fees and that will happen. So he has a good balance.

[Guest Analyst]

And it's. And it's. Don't think it's very likely that it can. It's going to be able to write anything meaningful or and in particular that it's going to be making movies like from whole cloth, like Tilly Norwood, like that bullshit.

[John]

You pause this. He doesn't think that like an iconic, amazing movie is going to be generated by AI And I sort of agree with that. But I think it's important to consider like what are we defining as a movie? Because we don't really watch movies anymore anyway. People watch content and, and if you think about it like you know, decades ago people might see one movie a month or one movie a week and that's like two to eight hours a month of screen time. Well, now people are doing two to eight hours of screen time a day, but it's these fragmented pieces. And so if AI seeps into the cracks of within the cracks within the cracks. And it's. The goal is not to create the experience of a two hour movie that you show in a theater and you get everyone to come and buy tickets.

[Tyler]

Joe Rogan's really turned Into Dwarkesh for a list. Come on and talk about AI.

[John]

Right. It's really.

[Tyler]

McConaughey is talking about wanting this, like, personal LLM.

[John]

Oh, yeah.

[Industry Insider]

Where you can log some data in.

[John]

Yeah, that one was a little bit rougher than this.

[Guest Analyst]

I think. It's not. I think it actually turns out the technology is not progressing in exactly the same way they sort of presented it. And really what it is, it's going to be a tool, just like sort of visual effects and. Yeah. It needs to have language around it. You need to protect your name and likeness. You can do that. You can watermark it. Those laws already exist. You can't. I can't sell your fucking picture for money. I can't. You can sue me, period. I might have the ability to draw you, to make you in a very realistic way, but that's already against the law.

[John]

Yeah.

[Guest Analyst]

And the unions are gonna. I think the guilds are gonna manage this where it's like, okay, look, if this is a tool that actually helps us, for example, we don't have to go to the North Pole. Right. We can shoot the scene here in our parkas and, you know, whatever it is, but then make it appear very realistically as if we're in the North Pole. It'll save us a lot of money, a lot of time. We're gonna focus on the performances and not be freezing our ass off out there and running back inside.

[Tyler]

Small chance that AI saves Hollywood as a place, Right? You're getting claps as a place.

[John]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

And the reason for that is one of the issues right now is filming is so expensive in la, there's so much red tape that people have to go to Atlanta, Canada, Europe, whatever, international. But all the talent, the writers, directors, producers, the platforms, they're still here. It's very depressing. It's a bad vibe. All the restaurants are shutting down. Everything's cooked. But if you can start to generate the content here just on your computer, there's a chance that you see a kind of resurgence in Hollywood, the place. Right.

[John]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

And I think that realistically, that is the strategy that. That the industry should take, because, like, having this concentration here, there's already so much talent keeping it here, and actually embracing AI is much more likely to revitalize the city.

[John]

Ben Affleck on AI software. I suspect many AI native software companies are misrepresenting their growth and quality of revenue. Use of credits, annualizing proof of concept revenue and lack of annual contracts lowers the overall quality of revenue and ultimately the multiple.

[Tyler]

I mean, it's not that. I mean, this is a joke.

[John]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

Actually say that. But he's not that far off from what this great template.

[John]

I hope this meme runs way further because it's so good.

[Guest Analyst]

Early AI the line went up very steeply and it's now sort of leveling off. I think it's because. And yes, it'll get better, but it's going to be really expensive to get better. And a lot of people are like, fuck this, we want ChatGPT4. Because it turned out like the vast majority of people who use AI are using it to, like, as like, companion bots to chat with at night. So there's no work, there's no productivity, there's no value to it. I would argue there's also not a lot of social value to getting people to, like, focus on an AI friend who's, you know, telling you that you're great and listening to everything you say.

[Tyler]

And let's give rebuttal, defend AI.

[Industry Insider]

I think most of these takes are, like, pretty outdated.

[John]

Okay.

[Industry Insider]

Like, writing is actually AI writing. You can still tell that it's AI but it's like, it's good.

[John]

Okay, okay. Sell a screenplay then. Sell a screenplay. Yeah, yeah, Shop a screenplay.

[Tyler]

Do it.

[John]

Do it.

[Industry Insider]

Yeah, but why, why would I sell a screenplay? I could just make the whole movie myself.

[John]

Okay.

[Industry Insider]

Like I said, so just make the movie. He has this idea, like, make the finished movie.

[Tyler]

Call Netflix instead of.

[John]

And get a million dollar advance for your movie.

[Industry Insider]

Instead of filming in Antarctica, you can just get in the parkas and film it here.

[Tyler]

Right.

[Industry Insider]

You don't need the Parkers either, because you can just have them be in normal clothes.

[John]

That's true.

[Industry Insider]

And then it's like, well, you don't actually need the people, right. Because you can just maybe fine tune a model so you get consistent characters and then.

[Tyler]

Yeah, I will say, I will say just in the last two weeks, I am getting served AI content. That's pretty good.

[John]

Pretty good.

[Tyler]

Pretty good.

[John]

There's some pretty good stuff out there.

[Tyler]

I would, I would push back a little bit on Ben saying, like, you're not just gonna be able to generate a film.

[John]

You will, but it won't be a film in the sense that it won't be Titanic. Won't be something that everyone goes to the movie theater, sits down, watches the same film. It will be a lot of films that are for different people. I don't think there'll be anything.

[Tyler]

Yeah, but I'm just saying, like, people are gonna. People are gonna create, like, insane Fan fiction style, hero's journey, kind of standardized plot. But for a specific sub community, you'll have like one subreddit where everyone totally.

[John]

And I mean, there is a lot of just slop movie content on streaming platforms right now. You can just go and watch Gap Year.

[Tyler]

Tyler put Aflac in the truth Zone.

[Industry Insider]

In Hollywood at least. Like, I like a lot of movies. Like there are certain writers that I like, but.

[Tyler]

Okay, you like movies. Wait, you said you like movies. Name every film. Name every film on the TVPN chat. Best film list, Movie list.

[Industry Insider]

Okay, but you always hear about like certain writers, they have a hard time getting their films made because maybe it's like kind of a weird concept or something. Like it's, it's hard to market, but this is like AI is actually much better for them, right? Because if you have someone who's like, actually has some like unique look at the world or they're like very creative or something, like AI is like super good for them, but kind of only for them, right? So maybe in the industry it's not super great, but for the people, like if there's a certain director that I like, really love, they're going to be, you know, they're going to be able to make way more of their movies or whatever, you know, instantiate all their ideas.

[Tyler]

Chad is calling Tyler based Zoomer.

[John]

He's Zoomer. It's good, good times. There's an update to The Elon Musk OpenAI lawsuit, which is sitting at about 60% chance that Elon wins on Kalshi right now on the prediction market. So on the day that the Brockman files went out, started going viral, OpenAI put out a release. They countered some of the narratives, added some more context, but they also sent out a letter to their investors saying, hey, look, we think it's going to be $34 million or something at worst.

[Tyler]

We think this is the most, but it could be more.

[John]

It's going to be $134 billion in damages is what Elon is seeking. Musk's legal team argues that his early funding and involvement materially contributed to OpenAI's rise, which is now valued at 500 billion. And he wants a slice. The lawsuit says OpenAI has become a for profit company, entitling Musk to compensation tied to the value created from his early contributions. When asked about the lawsuit, Elon Musk responded, I've lost a few battles over the years, but I've never lost a war.

[Tyler]

So great line, yes, but I don't think this lawsuit Is the war?

[John]

Yes.

[Tyler]

I think it's a battle in a longer war.

[John]

Yes.

[Tyler]

And I think that it may play a role in how this sort of, like, war between Xai and OpenAI or Elon vs Sam evolves. But ultimately, like, this judge is not going to make, you know, the judge and jury are not going to make a decision that just, like, decides the war. The war is going to be won by overwhelming domination in the categories that they compete.

[John]

If he gets that, it's like over 25% of the company, something like that.

[Tyler]

And that's going to be. And that's going to be hard again, depending. I'm sure it'll come out how much Sam owns exactly in the case. But it's going to be hard to justify that he deserves more than Sam, given their.

[John]

And also just play out what happens if Elon does get all 134 billion. It's like, you're not CEO, you don't have board control, you don't have super voting shares, but you're a massive shareholder that can just constantly do shareholder lawsuits. And so that's going to be incredibly annoying and very bad, but at the same time, like, maybe a distraction. How do you actually get to control if that's what Elon's going for? We will see what the judge thinks of the. And where the damages land. If he wins, which is still, you know, not guaranteed by any means, it could wind up being a fear of victory for Elon. It could be something where he wins the battle, but he loses the war in the sense that, like, it's a distraction. There's going to be a ton of discovery. It'll be ultimately, even if he gets 100 billion, he's worth 700 billion. It's like a drop in the bucket. We'll see you tomorrow.

[Tyler]

See you tomorrow, folks. Have a great MLK day. Thanks for hanging out.

[John]

Goodbye.

[Tyler]

Cheers.