Interviewer (2:47)

In your piece, you mentioned that these trademarks might not protect some forms of AI content that circulates because they mostly affect commercial work. Can you explain the difference between that and explain what kind of complications that might represent with the trademarks?

Ben Fritz (3:04)

Sure. If you put up something that has no commercial value whatsoever, there's no advertisements on it, it's not selling anything, and you can make the case that it's an interesting creative work that you've made and it's not likely to confuse anybody in a meaningful way about what Matthew McConaughey is doing, that you're just doing it for fun. They would have a very hard time exercising these trademarks. On the far other end, if you create a fake version of Matthew McConaughey who's advertising the new McDonald's value meal, clearly that would be illegal and there's a lot of stuff in the middle between those and that gray area is where actors are concerned. His lawyers want to try to exercise his trademarks and we'll see what the courts say.

Interviewer (3:45)

Are there other actors or performers considering these types of ways to push back against AI video generation?

Ben Fritz (3:53)

Matthew McConaughey is, as far as I can tell, the first actor in the US who's had trademarks like this approved and for this purpose. But many, many actors and musicians are very concerned about AI fakes. And we've seen tons of examples of them. And people like Tom Hanks and Taylor Swift have spoken out publicly when they've seen AI fakes created of them. And there's a big push by the actors and performers unions and Hollywood media companies to get federal legislation that would help clarify these issues.

Peter Ciampelli (4:25)

That was Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Fritz. Coming up, Netflix wants to reinvent live tv. But why is it so challenging? That's after the break.

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Peter Ciampelli (5:16)

In 2022, streaming giant Netflix made big changes in order to keep growing their subscriber base. They cracked down on password sharing and introduced more tiers and they expanded into sports and live events. Wall Street Journal reporter Isabel Busquette joins us to discuss her exclusive interview with Netflix's CTO and other executives. Isabel, who are Netflix's main competitors when.

Interviewer (5:40)

It comes to streamers handling live broadcasts.

Peter Ciampelli (5:44)

And how does their strategy compare to those competitors?

Isabel Busquette (5:46)

You're seeing a lot of the streamers do this now, right? You're seeing YouTube making a deal to stream the Academy Awards. You're seeing Amazon Prime. They have a big deal with the NBA. This is an area that all the streamers are sort of moving into. But at the same time, none of them are having an easy job with this. They're all realizing that the technology needed to deliver live events, live streaming, over the Internet to millions of people. The same level of audiences that would watch on traditional TV is a really hard thing to do.

Interviewer (6:18)

So the streamer has had some ups and downs with its live broadcasts. What was the live event that posed the biggest challenge for Netflix?

Isabel Busquette (6:26)

That was definitely the Jake Paul, Mike Tyson boxing match that happened in November 2024. It wasn't their first event. They had had a few events before that. Some had gone okay, some had been a little glitchy, but they went into that feeling good. But what happened was there were just so many more viewers for that than they ever could have anticipated. Suddenly, they were handling 65 million concurrent viewers, and that was just more than they ever thought they would have to deal with. So, you know, a lot of people struggled to access the stream. It was glitching, it was slowing down. People logged out and then were trying to log back in because they thought that would make it easier. But that actually put more stress on Netflix's systems.

Interviewer (7:10)

Have they had anything on the flip side, any major successes with live streaming?

Isabel Busquette (7:14)

They have done more than 200 live events at this point, and that includes weekly. They bought the rights to the WWE Monday night broadcast, so they've been doing that. A lot of these are fairly seamless, but also not attracting an insane peak level of viewership. But they've gotten pretty good, pretty well practiced at the type of events where, like, 20, 30, maybe 40 million people tune in.

Interviewer (7:41)

Your breakdown of the technical obstacles that come with live streaming over the Internet was really fascinating. Why is this more complicated than traditional TV broadcasting? And how does Netflix work through those bugs?

Isabel Busquette (7:54)

With traditional TV operators, they basically have their own closed networks. So they have the signal from the live event and they push that out across their own network. And that can only get picked up by the receivers in their network. So, you know, that goes to someone's home via antenna via cable box, and then you get it on your tv. And so they own that network, they operate that network, and they don't have to Worry about competing for capacity with other signals on that network. When you're trying to do something over the open Internet, it's a totally different ball game. So the way that Netflix streams content basically is that if you're trying to watch Netflix, your device, be it a laptop, a tablet, a phone, will send a request to a nearby Netflix appliance that'll basically be in a data center, hopefully one close by, because the closer it is, the sooner the stream will get to you, the less laggy it'll be. And then once that appliance receives the request, it will initiate what they call a session. And so it has to handle as many sessions as it has viewers. And each session might be optimized differently depending on what kind of dev you're on and also how good your Internet connection is at that time. It's just a huge challenge for them. Like, they can sort of get around it by pre planning, but there's only so much pre planning you can do when you're sort of entering a new domain. This is something they don't have a huge history in doing. So it's hard for them to know, like, how many people in what geography might be tuning in for this.

Interviewer (9:35)

And did the executives that you talk to speak to what's next for Netflix?

Isabel Busquette (9:40)

Netflix feels really good about where it is now. It's made a lot of improvements over the years, and now what's next is they're looking to do more international events. So they will be doing a stream later this month of somebody scaling a skyscraper in Taipei, which is terrifying to be watching live, but I'll be tuning in. And they have now a live events operations center in their headquarters in California, which is where they can sort of monitor how things are going in real time, jump on any issues as quickly as possible. And so this year, they're actually gearing up to open two more live operations centers. One is going to be in the UK and one is going to be in Asia, and that's where they're looking to handle more international events from.

Peter Ciampelli (10:30)

That was Wall Street Journal reporter Isabel Bousquet. And that's it for Tech News Briefing. Today's show was produced by Julie Chang with supervising producers Katie Ferguson and Melanie Royce.

Goldman Sachs Markets Podcast Host (10:40)

Peter.

Peter Ciampelli (10:40)

I'm Peter Ciampelli for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back later this morning with TNB Tech Minute. Thanks for listening.

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