Handle and the Morning Crew on a Taco Tuesday.
May twentieth.
Then, since it is our eight o'clock hour and it is a Tuesday, that means we have our Tech segment with Rich Dumurow, kfi's tech Guy. He's on KTLA TV every day every Saturday here eleven am to two pm with Rich on Tech Instagram, at rich on Tech Website, richontech dot TV and Rich you are at a Google AI event right now?
And where is it?
This is Mountain View, California, at the headquarters of Google.
It's called Google Io.
And the best way to describe it is sort of like a circus or carnival atmosphere for folks that are into technology, mostly developers that are making anything related to Google apps and things like that, plus press like myself that are looking forward to seeing what Google is working on next.
Are these serious events or are they just riproaring great parties where Google serves you great food.
Great question.
I think the steaks have never been higher for Google at this very moment in time. They have been on top of the tech world and especially search for the past twenty years, and that was all upended with the introduction of chat, GBT and Google's entire business was turned
upside down overnight, which is namely search advertising. So I think the steaks have never been higher for them to prove that they are still on top of the world when it comes to search and AI, as much as that is evolving for everyday folks.
All Right, an important question, how is the food.
I have not gotten to the food just yet. I just made my way in. That was about a half an hour process. There are people from you know, there's thousands of people here from all over the world that come to this event, but they do a nice job. Typically, Bill and I will investigate. I apologize I was not able to investigate the cinnamon bonds before I got on air here with you.
Yeah, that's very very important, as you know, in terms of what Google is bringing in the table, is there any indication of what you're going to see.
I think there's a couple of things that they're gonna I mean, I think they're trying to make search more accessible with AI to the everyday person. So right now, search Google was always sort of a proprietary.
Eponym, right I'm going to search that, I'm gonna google that.
Now chat gybt.
Has really taken over the idea of anything you're doing with AI. I'm chat gybt. You know, I'm using chat gbt for that, right. And so Google has something called.
Gemini, which they've done a pretty good job of building into a lot of their products like email and also their docs and things like that. The problem is nobody really identifies AI with Gemini, and that's a problem for Google. So they've come out with a lot of useful tools, but none of them have sort of well, there's one actually, I want to tell you about it, Bill, It's called
Notebook LA. This is probably their standout tool that sort of has gone viral and basically it allows you to take any sort of information.
Pop it into this tool, and it will spit out.
A personalized podcast specifically about that information. So they just came out with an app for Android and iOS. It's called Notebook LM. If you are into new ways of learning things, if you always have to study about a topic, this is probably one of the most useful things to come out of AI in the past three years.
How does Google uh? How does Google uh? In terms of AI? Are they going to have a problem keeping the verb to Google because that's what everybody thinks I mean, now at this point it's a default where everybody thinks that's the case.
Uh, is that when it happened.
Yeah, I'm concerned about their their traditional search. The idea of going on the Internet and getting a result of ten blue lengths and clicking through those is just no longer the reality for a majority of people. They are now going to a service like Perplexity or chat gybt or even Gemini, and they're typing in a topic and getting a summary of that topic.
So it's basically reaching out.
To all those web pages that you might have gone to as a human before, and the AI is just taking that information, summarizing it and presenting.
It to you. Now, Bill, we all know.
The problem with that is that sometimes there are mistakes inside that information, but there could also be mistakes.
On websites that people go to. And so I think that Google has.
To show a way that they can make this AI search, which they already have.
It's called AI mode.
It's really good and it rivals what chatchybt does, but they have to figure out how are they going to monetize that side.
Of the business, which is really really tricky. At this point, I think.
How far behind is Google in the world of AI.
That is so interesting because Google. This is what's so interesting about Google and AI. They have been using AI and machine learning way before it was a buzzword. The problem was bill, how do you monetize? And I think that's why they never came out with a flagship product until their hand was forced. And you've got to think about what chatgybt is. It's open AI. It's a very highly funded startup. They do not need to make money right now. Now a lot of people are paying them
twenty dollars a month to use their search product. Right they're chatgbt. But the thing with Google, all of their stuff was free. They never charged for search. And if they came out with an AI product that suddenly is amazing, but there's no money behind it. That's a problem for a giant company that is publicly traded, and I think
that's been the biggest issue with Google. Is this idea of how do you pivot in a way that keeps stockholders happy but also stays up to date with the trends that are happening in the world, which is you know, AI for free for everyone.
Yeah, I'm a little confused here because isn't the monetization model simply hundreds of millions of people using it for the most part for free, and that data mining then goes to an advertiser, knowing, for example, that I'm using it, I shop at Costco, I just bought my burritos yesterday.
Don't they know that? And isn't that saleable?
Well?
The problem is, Okay, think about traditional search, right, Okay, you go online, you're looking for new patio furniture. You go to Google, Google dot com, you search patio furniture. The first five links are sponsored by an advertiser that is targeting patio furniture, right, and so you click on one of those because you look at the second link, you say, oh, that's cool, Umbrella, whatever.
The company is. You click that link.
Google now just made eight dollars or whatever they did on that search, right, And that happens probably millions of times a day, I don't know, if not billions through Google. Now, think about an AI search, the way that chat gibt is doing AI search with shopping nothing sponsored. They're literally going out to the reviews website summarizing what people say is the best patio furniture and presenting that as the first link, and now that is not sponsored, you click
on it, nobody made money in that transaction. Now in the future they may charge, but Google has to figure out that same thing. All of their shopping results in the past have been sponsored, and of course people don't want that anymore. They want to know like who reviews these products and says they are the best. So I think the problem is those organic links that don't make
any money. You know, the non sponsored stuff is really what's happening with AI versus Google's traditional search, which the first five links or three links whatever at the top were always sponsored and people would click those and make a ton of money in the process for Google.
All Right, I'll go to be talking about that a whole lot. By the way, next week. Just keep in mind you're going to do the taste tests also of the food, because that's the most important thing I'm interested in. All Right, we've got some sag Afternoons twenty three and me has been sold.
We've got tons to talk about. Don't go away, We'll be back with the rich.
We continue on with Richard Murrow, or tech guy, who is currently up north at the Google event reporting live. A couple of stories that I want to get into rich and that is twenty three and me has been sold. Has business declined dramatically? Do people not care anymore? I don't care. If I'm eight percent Inuit doesn't bother me at all, and I'm certainly not going to spend any money doing that.
So what's going on with that?
Well, this was a company that was hot for a couple of years. I mean, probably one of the top selling DNA testing kits and gifts for the holidays and especially Amazon Prime Day for many years. This was a company that was once worth six billion dollars and they went bankrupt because I think the combination of privacy concerns and they were never able to fully monetize what to do with all of that DNA data that they collected.
And so now they were sold for two hundred and fifty six million dollars to this biotech company out of New York called Regeneron. And the big question.
Here is what are they going to do with all this data?
Is it going to be kept private? And you know, will it help this company develop new drugs for biogenetics.
So we'll see what happens.
But the main thing they're saying right now, is that they are going to keep twenty three and mes privacy rules and regulations in place even through the acquisition.
Yeah.
I can't imagine how they wouldn't keep privacy in place unless it's non identifiable in terms of the individuals. If you're looking at population demographics, I can't see a big problem in terms of drug use, et cetera. The people who are x percent, for example, Germanic or French I have, but tend to have this kind of a syndrome or tend to go in another way.
I can see that. But how do you get rid of the how do you get rid of the privacy?
I mean, you know, I want you to know how much you know French background I have, which I have none by the way.
No, And I'm not even sure it matters to personally identify people in this manner because think about it, they've got the profiles now of fifteen million people DNA profiles. That's you know, the full sequence or I guess you know, I don't know if they got the full sequence or the partial sequence, whatever it is, it's enough to help them figure out, hey, is there a pattern here? And if we use a drug to do this? Or if we change these the genes on this person, does it help?
And so I think that's really what they're going to use as data for They want to return on their investment, and they just got a whole bunch of fresh DNA info that would have taken them years to collect. And so hopefully we'll see some good drug come out of this that will really help people. But again, I think that the idea of just knowing what rich DeMuro specifically has versus you know, here's what twenty million people with
this DNA profile seem to have as a problem. I think that's much more important here to this company than knowing what I specifically have.
Have people just stopped using the product that sales collapsed, I mean you're talking about bankruptcy, you're talking about going out of business.
Well, I think it's a one time thing. So it's like you're not taking a DNA test more than once in your life. So again, what is the business model after that? You sell a bunch of these things on prime day and then what you're not you know, the idea was to upsell people on these subscriptions to you know, gene monitoring whatever, Like, hey, you have this, you can tap into more details about what may happen.
To you in the future. I don't think a lot of people did that.
They bought these kids for sixty nine to ninety nine dollars, they took the test, they said, okay, I'm forty percent, this sixty percent. That that's cool, and they never thought about it again. So I think the business model was pretty tough for twenty three and me, especially when you layer in the privacy concerns.
All Right, something that hits close to home that you and I are both part of, and that's sag Aftra Suing by the way, sag of course, Screen Acters Guild merged with after the American Federation of Television Radio Artists.
For some reason, they call us artists. Explain that one to me, and it's suing. Epic Games explain.
That well, So I guess they filed a complaint against Epic Games.
Some people were reporting that it was a suit, but it is.
It seems to be a complaint, and it's over the use of for Fortnite. I guess they used James Earl Jones. You know, you remember him, the famous actor. He died in twenty twenty four, but they had his voice from all the movies he did, and they made an AI cloned voice of him for players to interact with in Fortnite.
Now here's the interesting rub about this bill is that the family Disney Fortnite, they all say that they have permission to do this from the estate and from James Earl Jones, but SAG is saying no, no, no, hold on. This still has to go through us because this is
a union issue. Because think about it, Bill, If everyone in the world just says yeah, it's fine to use it SAG for bargaining in the future, that is not a very good thing because they lose a lot of their bargaining power if their members are not covered by any sort of AI agreement. And we know that that's kind of like the biggest growth area. Again, it's like the DNA test. You get cloned once with your voice or your likeness, and Hollywood could keep using you forever.
That would be a very bad proposition for a big union like SAG AFTRA.
But it's if you're talking about permission.
You know, for example, you and I both have a contract with Premiere Radio correct maybe you don't, maybe you don't, I do, and part of the union if I allow. Part of my contract is that iHeart can use my name, my likeness during the course of my contract virtually anyway they want, and not AI.
I don't think AI's in their bill and that Look, I mean, I'm not siding with psych Aster or not. I'm just saying that this is they're saying this is a union issue because they want to protect the people in the union from saying, Look, you can sign this contract, you can say whatever you want, but at the end of the day, this is a union issue. We are we are negotiating on behalf of our members for these protections, and if companies can just override that, what's the point
of the union? And so I think that that's what they're arguing very because they want to make a statement.
Yeah, but just for your information, I've got about six or eight video game companies that are bidding from my voice to be used.
Did you know that.
No, that's incredible. What do they want to do with your voice? Yeah?
I didn't know that either, but it sure sounds good. We're done, Rich, You have a good one. Rich Ktla Every single day the TV show or on TV our Tech Guy, eleven am to two pm on Saturdays, Instagram at rich on Tech website, richontech dot tv.
Enjoy the Google event and eat your brains out. Catch you next week.
I'm gonna go check out I'm gonna go check out the Diy Bagel bar with the smoke salmon.
That's yeah.