Apple's Intelligence beta and more AI chaos

Vitamin Water was born in New York City because New Yorkers needed a drink that can do it all. Because we can do it all. Like walk 30 blocks an under an hour follow four of the city's sports teams at once and spend all day in the Chinatown arcade. Drink Vitamin Water. It's from New York. Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast who Saturday Samsung. The show where Samsung executives who have been forced to work six days a week until they make

more money just have ideas. I'm your friend Neely. David and Alex are both on vacation, which I feel is very rude. Liam also on vacation. So this is just gonna be a wild episode. Allison Johnson's here. Hi Allison. Hello. The song is here, hey, V. Hello, let's do chaos. We've just been left for our own devices. I haven't I'm like helpless without Liam and David and Alex on this show at this point. I haven't been left to my own devices to run a

Vergecast in years. For good reason, I think. So we're just gonna see what happens. Thank you to for for joining me. We're here for the ride. I'm here for Saturday, Samsung, as the local Korean gadget reviewer on staff. I am so here for Saturday, Samsung. We're gonna get to what the Saturday, Samsung is. This I would say, you know, up until now it's been a stuff. Samsung will give you a free TV if you buy a TV is a real idea generated by Saturday, Samsung. This week's is,

I think, bananas in a different way, but we'll come to it. There's much other stuff going on. The iOS 18.1 developer beta with Apple intelligence, some Apple intelligence features hit. Allison, you played with that. V, you reviewed the Galaxy Watch Ultra or as I call it, the Apple Watch Ultra. There's some other gadget news. There's a Pixel 9 event coming up. We caused an entire furious news cycle about subscription mice. I'm sorry. And then because we have been left to

run devices, I am trying a new style of lightning round. Still unsponsored. But, you know, David, David David and Liam are not around to put me in a box. So we're gonna, we're gonna try some new chaos. It's chaos. I want to start with, we should just call it the chaos round. Although one of the topics is a little serious. I don't know if we, oh, we'll get there. We're gonna get we're doing it live, everybody. What's alright? There's big news in the week just outside of tech.

It's the Olympics. It feels like the experience of watching consuming the Olympics is very different this year than in years back. Every other year, we've run a story that's like streaming the Olympics sucks. We haven't really had to run that story this year. It's because on TikTok, baby, I have not streamed a single second of the Olympics. I'm telling you,

I have not streamed a single second of the Olympics. Normally, I'm all over the gymnastics. But everything I know about the Olympics has just come through doom scrolling my TikTok feed and just going like, oh, actually, that's kind of really wholesome. I really love chocolate muffin guy. And can't remember. She's explaining chocolate muffin guy. This is a foreign concept to me. It's it's just this Norwegian athlete who has discovered the chocolate muffin from the Olympic

Village cafeteria and he gets increasingly weird with this chocolate muffin. It just like appears in his bedroom and he's in a thong and you're like, what is happening? Oh, she really loves chocolate muffin. You know what's happening? That's true. Yeah, as a doom scrolling TikTok is a weird way to feel about America right now. This is hard to know how much American pride you have depending on what TikTok scroll you're in.

Like at this moment, it's like, I have immense pride in our gymnasts who have crushed it once again. Oh, no, he's talking again. I have immense pride in this. It's what is happening. That's a lot. We have an entire story about the Olympics in TikTok. Mia wrote it. I actually wanted to title to be the influencer Olympics. But I think that's what people think that's

Coachella. So both are there. Yeah, I thought it was good fun. But it is true that the athletes are young by and large very young except for the 51 year old Turkish man who got a silver metal in shooting with no equipment whatsoever. Great photo. But it's true that the athletes are by and large very young. The US women's gymnastics team literally after winning gold was caught on camera talking about what TikTok they wanted to make. Oh, yeah. Which is incredible. And so you just have

this like very native population to this format in this platform in particular. And then there's just the universe of piracy that happens on TikTok. Like if you want to watch clips of cool sporting events, the TikTok community has you covered and TikTok's lawyers also apparently have you covered because they don't seem to care about it. And that's like one really interesting way of consuming this, right? You're getting kind of the raw feed by people who are on the ground who speak in the

language of videos who can language of social video. And then you're getting a bunch of clips of cool stuff curated by a community that does not care about NBC's exclusive rights to stream. What I will say is the commentary on TikTok is much funnier because you just have people filming their screen while they're watching it like the the men's gymnast, Pommelhorst guy. I don't know

any of these athletes names. I know them by their memes on TikTok. But just like I was watching these two women watching Pommelhorst guy and they're like, yes, yes, Peter Parker, yes, you better work. You better work at just having this very sassy commentary about this man doing the Pommel horse. And I was just like, this is I'm watching them watch their TV screen. And they're just better than like the NBC commentary people who are just like, oh, yes, he's on the Pommel horse.

And he did the skill. So serious. It's like it's like watching it with your friends except my husband doesn't give a crap about the Olympics. So I'm just like, yeah, Pommelhorst guy, you can get it. Clark Kent of Pommel horse. So I often say that almost every experience I have a TikTok should be a PhD in media studies. What you are describing as a PhD in media studies, right? Like the layers of abstraction away from the thing itself happening.

And then the entertainment that ran his strangers in the United Appriding you all of that is just very different. And it feels new this time in a way that and two years ago, I said three years ago, at the last Olympics, it was a two years ago, three years ago. The last Olympics first. Three. There were in 2021 because of, you know, COVID events. Yeah. Yeah. That's why the Olympics just has always felt to me like this big,

serious, important thing. And like that's kind of part of the appeal. But there's something great about like, yeah, having it kind of distributed, like, you know, from people on the ground. And having more fun with it, like it doesn't have to be this like big booming voice of like NBC will deliver you the Olympics. And that is how you will watch them. Right. If you put 18,000 teenagers in the middle of France with cell phones, like something funny is going to happen. Yeah.

Right. That's it. That seems correct. You just learn more about different sports because I don't care about rugby. I love alone Amar. She's hilarious on TikTok. She's just all over my entire feed yesterday was just lesbians crying that alone Amar was not a lesbian because they were just like in love with the women's rugby team. And I was like, and that'll be it for the cast for a chance everybody. We're gonna end it here. But that, right. The idea of the different communities,

different groups can view the thing together in a different way as a community is new. Like, that just is a new thing. But even like sports Twitter doesn't accomplish. Right. It's the native video communication ability of particularly the younger generation that like is interesting and new. And that's one thing that's different about these Olympics. The other thing that's different is that actually NBC and peacock are doing a good job. I must disclose NBC is a minority investor

and box manager or a prime company. They are owned by Comcast. I've rarely said anything good about Comcast. So I must disclose. I'm saying something nice about Comcast and NBC. That's the first time I believe in history. That has happened. But they are doing a good job. It is actually like refreshing and interesting to see a big legacy broadcaster just go for it with their app. And it's not say there's not problems that random ad breaks in the middle of stuff. There's infinite complaints

about just how overwhelming it is. But it's like they had they had every idea and executed every idea. So if you want to just watch highlights of the sports, you can just watch highlights of the sports. If you want to watch the traditional gauzy 1980 style primetime broadcast with completely unnecessary human interest interludes about how the gymnast grew up knowing they would be gymnasts. Those stories are always the same. It's like when they were four they're like, I'm going to jump

on stuff every every four years. You can get that story from NBC if you want. But that's available to you. They have the gold zone, which is basically NFL red zone for the Olympics that they're doing 10 hours a day. And inside of the app, when you're watching stuff, you can just be like, I just want to keep watching this thing that we're whipping around to, which is fascinating. They have multi view, which is the more standard, just like four feeds at once. They have

out Michaels doing AI powered highlights that you can just listen to. Which is super weird. It's just weird to have robot out Michaels being like, the gymnast jumped over stuff again. It's like all the ideas. I had someone in my mentions because I was posting my own threads and I'm like, all of this is stuff that a normal company would like descope to hit the deadline. And NBC just did it all. And then on top of it, they're like, all of it's like pretty good. Like gold zone is actually

really funny. There's like very funny NFL trauma inside of gold zone. And so, you know, there's red zone where you like whip around all the games on Sundays. And there used to be two red zones. There was the one on direct TV. And there was the one that the NFL did. Google bought the rights to Sunday ticket. They took the NFL red zone and they shut down the direct TV red zone. So Scott Hansen, who does the NFL red zone is like going to do it with Google now. NBC realized

they can't just have Scott Hansen 10 hours a day, 16 days in a row. So they hire Scott Hansen and the guy who used to do the direct TV red zone to gold zone. So they're like back together, not as rivals, but as friends. Like all it's like hilarious that they did this is a PhD. But they had to do it like somebody at NBC had to be like, all right, let's like, let's do a red zone for Olympics. How will we do that? We should just get all the red zone guys. Yeah.

They like go get some contracts together like make it happen. And it all is kind of working. Like, it's working better than if I suggested to you. NBC was going to make an app full of Olympics content. Your expectations would be very low. And it's called peacock. But they're actually doing, they're doing good. I love that. I'm an Olympic lover. Yeah. I love that. You know, peacock are you? Are you like full ticked talk? So I am, I have to put an ass for a set like,

I'm a winter Olympics girl. And I don't know what it is this year. But I've been like shouted down by the summer Olympics people about how the winter Olympics is not the real Olympics. And like, I think I just like got tired of it. So I've kind of been missing out on on this year's case. There's there's Snoop Dogg like between everything and the yeah. And like the game is to have Snoop Dogg and Flavaflave here. I'm like, this is what I mean by

NBC just went like somewhat NBC is like, I'm a, is there Snoop Dogg budget? Now, like, yes. In addition to that, there's Flavaflave budget. Flavage is like, went for it. It's great. I would, you should click around it. It's like actually like fairly entertaining, just as a tech experience to be like, oh, they like tried this out. Like, what if this was all happening? You can kind of see there's news this week that venue sports, which is the big mashup

of Disney and Fox and everything. ESPN, they're going to price it like 43 dollars a month, which is crazy. And it's like, what would you get? That's a call of ton money. Yeah, only you sit around. So I actually met you worth $50 or some. But it's kind of like, oh, this is the bar. Like, if you want to be anywhere close to that much money, you've got to deliver a user experience that is at least this good. Because if it's just a, well, if it's just like a minimum viable product list of

things, we can know it knows my pay the money. All right. So that's that's the Olympics. It's going on. I'm curious how people are watching it. Send us a note. You know, there's there's more time left in it. One thing I'll say is it doesn't seem like the action is on Twitter the way it is with other life sports. It is on TikTok. And there's something happening there, though. I think it's just fascinating. All right. We should talk about iOS 18.

And you got to play you played with iOS 18.1, which is the developer beta, not the public beta yet. But I think that is getting pretty blurry and that everyone is playing with it. I mean, no one was going to stay away from our intelligence. So you played with it. What do you think? Yeah. It's it's interesting. I think my kind of big takeaway is like, well, you get, you get the like visuals of the new Siri, the like glowing border. And you can type to talk to Siri.

And there's a couple things that are new about Siri that like, it follows context better like between questions, which like Google assistance has been doing for a little while now. But so that's kind of like setting the stage. And there's these other little things throughout the UI that are like, when and if it all gets put together, like that, that could be really cool. But right now it's just kind of like Siri lights up. And then you can rewrite an email. And you'll get

email summaries in your inbox. And it was just especially funny. Like when you open the mail app instead of the like each, you know, email has the first couple lines of the actual email copy. There's just a little summary now. And that makes a lot of sense for like a long email. But most of my emails are garbage. Just like, no, stuff. So it just summarizes the promotional stuff. And it's like lunch boxes ship free. And I'm like, I didn't need a summary of that. But thank you.

That is very much like what's happening with Grock and trending topics on Twitter now. Oh no. Where like the AI just doesn't know that some things are jokes. And so the trending topics are like when I turned black relations. So like people tweeting about Trump talking about Kamala Harris. And it's like, no, that's not that's not that's not that's not that's not what people mean. Yeah, you didn't get it. Yeah.

And it's just so sincere about stuff that it just like it's funny. We have to laugh about. Um, I guess so are those the only features that are out yet? It's the summarizing emails and rewriting. Summarizing a lot of pictures of people intentionally writing very mean notes and trying to get the idea to make them nicer, which is fascinating. Oh, the one I did. Um, you know, at the end of Willy Wonka when Gene Wilder does that like fizzy lifting drink thing like you stole

fizzy lifting drink. Yeah. I put that into a note and rewrite it like friendly. And it was like, hey, just just so you know, you can't be stealing fizzy lifting drinks. Um, that's as far as I got with that very amusing to me personally. Um, yeah, there's there's little bits and bobs here and there that are escaping me at the moment. It's in the emails. No photos. Um, in the photos app, you can use like natural language search. So you can be like, you know, you could search for like

food before or someone that you've tagged in your photos. But you can be like this person wearing glasses or the food we ate in Iceland. And it's like pretty good. And it comes up with that stuff. So just getting a step closer to like, I just search for my license plate because I can never remember. So like, I have this one picture of a chicken that I saw while walking down a street in Brooklyn. So what I just be able, and I can never like, no one believes me when I told them I ran into a

chicken on a sidewalk in Brooklyn. I don't believe you now. I don't see it. One photo of it. So what I'd be able to go to like the photos app and be like, find me the photo of the chicken walking on a floor in Brooklyn with my foot in there. I think that's the most important use case of AI like at all. Or it will just generate that photo for you. Yeah, you could lie on the sidewalk and then tell people that you saw it and be a liar. So when we saw it, WBC of iOS 18

was AI everywhere, every app in every corner, it's just going to make the phone better. And then that was like a one set of ideas. And then the other idea was, and then Siri will become your all-knowing assistant. Is that the experience of 18.1 in the beta right now? Not yeah. It's like, yeah, it's just little Easter eggs kind of throughout. And then the thing that is missing from Siri is like the big stuff where it's like it'll understand the intelligence and the AI. I think, yeah,

no, they'll like, it'll understand what's on your screen. And you can ask for it, you know, you can be like, email this photo to my mom and it'll just go do it for you. Like, that is the stuff that's coming. And then the third party app stuff because developers are going to be able to hook into it and let you do Siri stuff in their apps. And that's the AI dream on our phones. And that's still the like, no, it's coming because people have to develop it.

Is the, but they change the user experience of Siri, right? So now when you open it, like flashes the thing, you can like, you can type to it now. Yeah, you double it. I learned this and I didn't know it be. What's the, how do you do this? Oh, it's, it's, it's an accessibility feature where you can type to Siri. So you can do it even if you don't have the beta. I just think it looks a lot prettier in the beta because this is another example of them going like, oh, accessibility

features. Actually, they work for everybody. Why don't we just like shine them up and make them use them? Right. Make it. It is actually really interesting how many accessibility features have just made their way into the main app operating systems. Yeah. And she benchers. There's other ones. But tap to type to series, the big one with 18.1 because it, it's the thing that takes Siri from being timers and music player to chat, bought to assistant to intelligent agent that

is taking action across all of your apps. And I, it seems like they've added the stuff, but they haven't added any of the backend to make it go yet. Yeah. Like I'm asking it questions and it's still just googling stuff for me. I'm like, oh, okay. Well, I could have typed this into a Google search bar instead of a Siri text box. And it seems they've added AI call recording and transcription, which is the feature that I want the most. Yeah. Because if you're a reporter,

not because I'm constantly spying on everyone, I'm Richard makes everyone. I'm constantly recording everyone. No, I mean, we're reporters and like AI call recording and transcription legitimately useful in our jobs. And it's been, we've just been doing either people are using their Android phones in our office, which lots of people do, or there's a set of weird third party stuff, you being able to just use my phone, which is my main phone. We're really great. So that's

here now. Has it worked out? I have not, because I didn't put my SIM card in that phone because of E-SIM because of nightmares. But I did try out. So like the voice memos app will do transcriptions now. And that's not an Apple intelligence feature like the recording at call, I think is Apple intelligence could be wrong. But the transcription is good. Like I put, I am a pixel recorder stand. I always have a pixel phone at a press event, you know, like it is just in my bag. And I put it

next to the iPhone. And it was really good. It was like up there with the pixel. So I am personally excited about that. Yeah. Yeah, I think that that's the one. It's always a grab bag of which features the one that hits. And I just know that that feature for at least our little community of reporters is going to put the hardest. They're going to be so excited. Yeah. Can't wait to cancel my otter subscription.

Yeah. I mean like I start up getting wiped out. There's like two or three that are going to go away as soon as it says. It seems like the rest of the feature is not coming for a while, right? Like Mark Irman at Bloomberg said some of these might not come until late 25 or even 26. Yeah. I think the last I'm so confused on the timeline. But the last thing I read I think was that like they would all come to developer betas by the end of the year. But then as far as like

being in the public beta, that's 2025. Yeah. It's just a really long staggered kind of roll out. It sounds like that kind of make sense that like the danger with the series that can do stuff on your behalf is quite quite high. You have to make sure it works. We're also just not sure how any of the Apple private cloud stuff is going to work. Like right now, is it clear that all this stuff is happening on the phone or in the cloud or where or is it all we know it's all

happening on the phone? There. So there's a like privacy report you can pull down now that will show you like. And I think a lot of this is in the cloud like you can't I wouldn't say that for sure. But you can you can pull this privacy report that shows you everything over like a certain time period that Apple intelligence has done on your phone. And I guess it's encrypted because it's just like govallrigate. I was like, well, this is secure as hell because I don't know what any of

this is. Yeah, still kind of unclear. Yeah, I mean, I just say the fundamental architecture of this thing is very new. And what happens on your phone versus in the cloud, there's some stuff that Apple is very clear that Apple happens on your phone like emoji and some of the photo stuff happens on your phone. So we just I'm assuming a lot of the Siri stuff is going to go to the cloud because Siri goes to the cloud right now. So it just seems like this world that's going to be a lot

slower and more deliberate than anyone anticipated based on the BWC. And it might roll all the way. I mean, late 2025 is very close to when we would expect iOS 19 to be coming out. So I'm sort of curious how that will all play. But for now, it seems like they've sprinkled in some AI in the places where you would expect it. Yeah, it's all it does seem pretty safe. It's like, okay, we've been able to it is kind of the table stakes stuff of like write me an email

that's friendly or professional or summarize this for me. And like that's all kind of they're kind of lay in the groundwork with that stuff. And then we're going to 18.0 first and then 18.1 seconds. So this is pretty far away. It seems. Yeah, it's all right. Well, they have overlords are coming whether we like it or not. All right. So that's iOS 18.1. It's interesting that's out now and they're

actually dual tracking it, right? There's iOS 18 and the public betas and 18.1 and the developer betas. And you get the feeling they wanted people to be talking about the AI stuff because the pixel line event is coming very soon. And we know exactly what Google is going to talk about pixel line event. We got to take a break. Let's do that. Come back and let's talk about the pixel line event. We'll wrap

back. Vitamin water is from New York. We needed a drink that can keep up with the music scene in the city. We got to see our favorite DJ performance. Book at 3 a.m. or St. karaoke in the village. Also at 3 a.m. Drink vitamin water is from New York. All right, we're back. So like we were just saying, the pixel line event is coming up. It's August 13th. Basically tomorrow. I'm guessing we're just going to we've already seen the phones. I assume Google is

just going to talk about the software, which is the new trend, right? The phones look the same as ever. And now we're going to we're going to just make you care about AI is how these companies are going. Yeah, just hit us over the head with AI and we've seen every color of the phone every size like it's bigger. It's smaller. I don't know. I'm I'm just in this like all the phones have turned into iPhone design, which is like fine. We've gotten to this like

the edges of the. Yeah, I mean, sure, but like I'm good with this. We've gotten to the same place with the phone design. But Google's like I think it's like Samsung. A Google are like, how do we make this not an iPhone? And the answer is like a weird camera situation. Yes. And it kind of looks like Google's really leaning into the weird camera situation. And I don't know how I still feel about it.

I think these are the Rivian headlights of phone cameras. Oh, that's it. Yeah. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Like you can love them. You can hate them. They're not changing them. They're it's you know, and you can try to convince me that they look like snake eyes. They don't, you know, just like you can try to convince me this phone doesn't have a weird forehead. It does. It does. It does.

But it's true that the colors are more vibrant, which is getting away from what Apple is doing, or at least that's what the leaks indicate. So we're expecting a new pixel line at pixel line pro pixel line pro fold my god, these names. And then watch right. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a pretty complete refresh of the pixel line. It feels like the fold should be where the action is. But I just can't tell how much Google cares about these devices. That's the question, isn't it?

It's so they moved the like the fold was on the product cycle with like it was at IO last time around, right. And then they've like scoached it. So it's more part of the like mean refresh cycle, which kind of makes sense. Like, is this a flagship phone? It's like the most expensive phone you guys sell, but it's a cycle behind, you know, with the like camera hardware and whatnot. So I think it makes sense.

Moving the fold into this position, but it's it's a lot of phones. I don't know. Do we need this many phones? Like, how do you think it'll compare to, because you know, Samsung you said like their foldables are just basically coasting at this point. So are we at a point where like the pixel fold is something that is like yay competition or is it just. It's here.

Yeah, I'm still of the mind that the one place open got it right like that is how a foldable like a book style foldable should be shaped. And then the Samsung is just committed to this like remote control shape thing.

Every year, they're like it's a few millimeter like the screen is a few millimeters wider and it still feels like a remote control to use. So I'm curious how different this new pixel fold is because there's a lot of rumors that it's like thinner and lighter because boy was the previous one heavy. But I do like that that like wider aspect ratio for the cover screen. I don't think it needs to be like quite as wide as the first generation pixel fold. So we'll see.

Yeah. And then the point of all this is going to be the software right. This is pretty iterative hardware across the board some minor camera tweaks. A wacky camera bump. But if you're not paying close attention, I think it's going to be fairly hard to distinguish the hardware from the previous generation. It's the software that's the game. So you can see they're adding Gemini sort of to the first layer of the interface.

They've got this new thing called pixel screenshots, which is basically just Microsoft recall, which everyone is scared about only manual. So instead of constantly taking screenshots, you have to manually take a screenshot. Very good. A very good differentiation. But I'm kind of into it right you take a screenshot like what is this or like save it for later. There's a chicken walking down the street just like hold on to that for me.

And then of course, there's circle the search which Google is adding to basically everything at this point. I will I will coily say that a friend of mine just puts like circle to search me in the face the other day. You might imagine who that friend is who showed me Android features. And he dunked on me with circle the search, which was pretty funny. But like this is them saying, OK, there's a new way to think about how this phone works. Right.

There's AI Gemini is like right here. And then you can just point at things or tell the phone to look at things and it will generate information for you, which is very Google approach to it. The question is whether that's enough to make people switch. Not even from the iPhone from their Samsung phones, which obviously are dominant. And of course, because it's Google, whether they'll stay committed to any of these ideas for more than 20 minutes. And I just don't know.

It's just a confusing time. I think even just circle to search like. And I use it on the Samsung phones I've been testing and the Google phones obviously, but like there's just kind of a lot of different ways to get at circle to searching or like. So is this replacing these like Google lens is still a thing. I can translate something, but like did I need to circle to search that they they just have a lot of idea.

It's like to open up Gemini and like take a screenshot of something or a picture of the insider, your refrigerator. I don't know. There's just a lot of like input methods where it just sort of could feel overwhelming. But it's like seems like they're in that position that we're kind of talking about with smarter Siri where it's like, okay, like you've made the promises.

This is going to make our lives easier blah blah blah right now. It's just a bunch of like you can switch the faces in these photos. You know, put a rain cloud in this guy behind you. And like that was all nice and everything. But like let's see something like can they get the screenshot thing sure that that would be cool.

I'm going to take a screenshot of a recipe and I have literally have the same like spaghetti and meatball recipe from America's test kitchen bookmarked in my Google photos as a like favorite as if it's a photo of my child. Like I just like that often. I'm like too cheap to pay for America's test kitchen and can't commit to writing it down. So I don't know. I think there's a there's a real use case for help me find this thing in a screenshot.

I feel like you know I work with both you very close in the audience. I know what it's like to work with you. But I bookmarked I favor it a screenshot of a recipe that I make all the time versus there's a photo of a chicken that I can never find is kind of exactly the difference. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. It's a it tells a whole story. I'm just making my spaghetti meat balls and be like chicken.

I think about the Brooklyn chicken all the time. It's been so long. I'm not sure this chicken is alive anymore. I may have the only record of this sidewalk walking chicken. Like it's important to me that this chicken lives in my memory. Please send us a note and describe how your photo storage approaches describe your personality because I think there's there's a lot in there. It's a rich zone to unpack. I have like one to chicken.

I'm just scrolling for a photo of a chicken endlessly. I swear it's here. Speaking of photos, Alison, you've been covering what can only be described as the what is a photo apocalypse. So much closely you just wrote a piece about the Samsung sketch a B and they'll put a B in the photo for you. It seems like the pixel line is just going to continue moving in extrably down this path with this feature called ad me that will just add you to photos that you're not in.

Yep. That's what it sounds like. I mean, it's only from a leak. It's it's only from a leak. It was in a YouTube video that got removed. It was like an ad and got was leaked to you to get removed. But it just feels like Google has to start communicating about how it will keep our information environment somewhat pure as it adds these features that just pollute it more than ever.

Yeah, they were really like tiptoeing up to the line. I feel like last year and it was like, well, this is just something that people have been doing in Photoshop for a long time. And now more people have the tools. And then I feel like Samson kicked the door down with sketch to images like put a chicken in your photo.

Put a blimp like whatever you want to do, you can have it. And then yeah, I feel like the the floodgates are open. And I don't know how like how aggressive Google will be like the ad me to the photo thing. It seems like there could be guardrails on it or it could just be like pure chaos and it's an election year and what could go wrong.

So many things could go wrong, but I also like it just reminds me of this one family portrait I have. So like my family half split in the US versus Korea. And so we all went to create a get this family portrait. Except for one cousin who couldn't go because he was a dual citizen and his military service time was coming up because all Korean men have to do military service before they're 30.

And he's just like I'm just not going to do it. So he had to get Photoshopped into the family photo. And if you look at it from a distance, you can't tell that he's been photoshopped in. But if you look up close, you're like lighting on his hair is wrong. Coming from a different angle, you can really like you can just he's just textually not the same as everybody else.

So you can tell you can tell and it's just like this huge family portrait and Steve who's like been photoshopped in. So like not really because we can all tell he's not there. So it's sort of like I don't know I feel like my auntie my auntie would love to have him in this sort of situation. But I also you know having aunties with the power to just add you into anything that's also it's not like an AI add me feature at least from the ad that we see.

It's like a compositing feature like a very manual compositing feature where you take a photo with us and there's you leave space for literally yourself in the photo. And then someone else holds the camera and it shows you the old photo and you like go stand where you would have been. And then you take a photo and it stitches all the photos together.

So it's it's very manual and it's why I'm sure there's AI in the background to handle the stitching and alignment and probably the textures and colors and lighting too many fingers. Yeah. But the idea that it's going to it's not like deep faking you put you in the photo. It's taking another photo of you in the in the same space. And then like making a composite this is still weird.

Yeah. It's one of those features that like as a parent now I'm like oh I completely get that like best take where it's like you try and take a picture where there's more than two toddlers in it like forget it. Nobody's going to have a good time. But then it's like oh you have all this data and you can just kind of like AI it together into one photo that looks right. The like you get to be in the photo even though you took the photo thing. I'm like yeah I'm following along with that I get that.

So basically so you never have to ask someone. Oh hey do you mind taking a photo of us. Because I know you have to ask them that. But in a much more complicated and it's in your group. It's in your group. So like yeah like you you too would take a photo and then I would I would take the photo of you to. And then I would hand one of you the phone and I would go stand next to where you had been standing.

And you would take another photo and the pixel would composite those photos together. So all three of us were standing. I hate talking to strangers and asking them to take a group photo for me and my group. So this is this is really going to help me not grow as a person and not talk to strangers more is basically. Oh see I love being asked that question because then everyone's like oh you know what you're doing which is great.

Oh people don't know what they're getting into. I'm like so you've got the pixel phone. Tell me the choices here. They're like this is lady. The second someone hands you a phone and you turn it to landscape like oh my god. We got a player. But even that's weird like even the thing I'm describing where it's pretty manual right it's not just AI deepficking you but you have to you're making a composite photo. What is a photo like it's not a moment in time.

That moment quite literally never happened and we're all going to we're going to pass it off as a photo. And I've been thinking about this parents thing because I was never time you write about it you put it in there. Like the experience of being a parent is just trying to is is like I would like a statistical average of this moment in time that makes me feel good. Right. Yeah. Is like the goal of like kid photography. Yeah the reality is too scary.

Yeah. Like I could just round off the edges and be like this felt great. Yeah. It's several moments throughout this day. Right. Like that would be fine. I don't actually need a pixel perfect recreation of this moment in time. Yeah. And it's it's kind of weird like that is sort of the goal and I understand in particular parents want that. But it's right next to are you showing somebody an image of a thing that actually happened or you just creating an illustration.

And is that illustration like in the age of influencers and Instagram is that is that illustration going to lead to all kinds of weird outcomes that what people's expectations of their own experience. It should be like because they don't know they're looking at something fake. And the entire ecosystem.

We talked about a show in the context of like the the images of the Trump assassination attempt the entire ecosystem of validating these images saying what's real what's not which ones are AI which ones aren't is just not ready. Like it it that we've talked about it a lot. There are initiatives and alliances and there's labels on meta platforms that are being applied seemingly randomly. But none of it works like no one trusts any of it.

And I just like we're just barreling towards this future of completely synthetic images coming off these phones. And I just don't it doesn't seem like any of the companies give a shit. Yeah, I feel like there's this just shared understanding we have especially with a phone camera. It's like you just pointed out a thing you were there you took a picture it happened you put it on you see it on Instagram.

It's like we just have this shared understanding of like yes, that was a thing that happened exactly you know like more or less as we saw it. There's we we all understand that people pose for photos with the hats on in front of gorgeous landscapes or whatever. But yeah, we're just like come in straight at that moment of like okay, we're going to have to start asking some different questions when you're scrolling through Instagram or just like shifting your mindset.

And it's not even like when I did the sketch to image I did you know mess with a bunch of photos added cats and pirate chips and like nonsense to them. And I posted a bunch to my Instagram like grid and a post and I went through the requirements they have for like when you need to add an AI tag. And it didn't even meet that it was like you you can you know it was like something about it was my own personal photo and I wasn't.

The way it manipulated it was like it's kind of to you you know put a tag on there don't whatever like okay. That's fine. It's all fine. The other thing I've noticed a lot of is even just the basic AI features and phones now they're over correcting and over sharpening. And this is beyond like it looks bad. It's like if you zoom in too far on a lot of modern smartphone photos now. You will see that the text is all AI wonky.

And like signs the background because AI has tried to denoise and sharpen and you've gotten some weird stuff. Like really small faces it far away and a lot of smartphone photos now look incredibly distorted and demonic. Because there's like three pixels and it's like. Well what if I put a face here and it's like I don't really know the face looks like that. So here's a face a vaguely face shaped denoised thing.

I think Samsung phones are more egregious with this than iPhones, but they're all doing it. And that is already confusing people. That moment in time did happen. And then a smartphone interpreted this demon face instead of just not having information there. It's weird when it kind of comes to the surface where what was the photo of the lady trying on a wedding dress? Yeah, in the mirror she's like making two different poses. Oh yeah.

Everybody lost their minds and it turned out to be like it was accidentally in panorama mode or something like that. But just even that is like you know this stuff has been going on behind the scenes and just sort of like doing everything it can with that data to make a photo that it thinks you will like. And then when it kind of goes sideways and is obvious then it's a real weird moment of like no. Yeah, actually your phone's been doing this.

You just it just didn't look like a demon until right this moment. Yeah, I think there's going to be some moment where the industry probably not the industry or governments, the EU, they're always doing stuff. They're going to say if you enable these features you have to like hard watermark these photos as being partially generated by AI.

Because if we don't get all the way there then we're going to end up in this extremely weird moment where only professionals with like cryptographic signatures and their DSLRs uploading directly to getty are the source of any truth. And I don't think that's that doesn't seem sustainable right like only if you buy this one like a camera and you have a contract with Reuters. Can you or photo is very trusted like $10,000 camera. Yeah, it just doesn't seem that doesn't seem like what anybody wants.

I'm hopeful that like consumers correct this first that I suspect that some government somewhere is going to have to make a rule and people are going to have to comply because we're just headed. Every time I know that Google people are going to yell at me because every time I'm like, what is a photo apocalypse is here because of some Google feature. They're like, no, this is just what people want and I'm like, people also want sugar. We want cigarettes. Like what do you want me to do?

I always does feel like they have the best case scenario in mind that humans are not goblins who do horrible things to each other sometimes. No, everyone will use it in the way that we intend, which is the nice way. And it's just like no, you only need one jerk. You only need one jerk to ruin everything. Look around. All right. Other reviews. V here. V the galaxy watch ultra this week. Yes. What kind of Apple watch is it? A good one or a bad watch?

It's Apple watch ultra. That's sure that sure is what it is. But like actually what it really is is that like if you took the Apple watch ultra and drew it from memory, that's the Samsung Galaxy watch ultra or if you took the Apple font. It's like the Apple watch ultra to but like in an Android font is just basically what you're doing with this.

There's just I was writing the review and then I was like, you know what? It's actually just expedient. If I tell you what's different and bullet point everything that is the same because there's too many things that are the same.

And then I started doing the major things that are the same and then I was like, oh, but then there's this and then there's this and then there's like all these tiny little features that only a psycho like me would know and remember are on each of the watches are there like. But you can run against your last race performance if you're a runner yet Apple did that and watch it West nine and now he's here on the Samsung and like why is it here on the Samsung because I don't know it was on Apple.

They've have an orange shortcut button that is the quick button on Samsung and the action button on the Apple watch they it's the same thing just in a different font and that's that's like you could sum up the watch is that and also it's.

It's a squircle and I don't like it I don't I was had mixed feelings about the squircle going in and then after two weeks of where I don't like the squircle it is just too chunky on my wrist I can fit three chopsticks into the gap between the watch and the and my wrist and it's just a chunker it's a very chunky it's a very chunky boy and so orange like the Apple watch ultra was orange this is.

So radio actively bio hazard orange it's a little upsetting how orange it is it's it's I don't have it on me right now but it looks like a Halloween watch I actually ended up appreciating the regular galaxy watch seven which I am wearing right now a whole lot more because I was like oh it doesn't hurt me to wear it because it's just too big it's too big for my wrist and like the Apple watch ultra is also big for my wrist I can stick a bunch of stuff in here there's like a gap.

But something about it being a square just made it a lot harder for me to wear when I was testing the sleep apnea feature it was just like nope we can't get readings from you so I actually had to wear the other one to get the readings and test that feature out.

So it was it makes it sound bad but it's actually a really great Android watch I would say it's one of the best Android watches that are available I just there's a little part of me that hurts that Samsung decided to make an Apple watch in order to get the

good to make an Apple watch in order to create this excellent Android watch it just felt wrong it felt wrong to me because I truly do love how weird and unique the Samsung smart watches have been with their rotating bezels and just Samsung being weird about how it does health stuff. The ages metric is just completely bonkers I can understand why it's there I was definitely going to ask you about this. By the way you said age in that stands for advanced location and products.

Yes they yet told you what that means so you can there's there's a whole like informational section that you can read and that and the Samsung health app about what it is and it's basically measuring compounds when fats and sugars in your blood oxidize. How is it doing this Samsung won't say it just says there's a new three in one active biosensor with more LED colors and whatnot and there's a little spectrum and it goes from low to high and if you're low I guess you're

not your middle school age you're not like a chemical sense it's like in your sweat they're just doing the thing that everyone that shining light into your skin and based on like how it reflects back they're just telling you things that have not been FDA cleared it's very experimental like I did not know

what this this actual feature was so you know when I was getting briefed on it and went up to Samsung and I'm like so what is this and they were basically like well we have this new sensor so we thought why not throw this also in here.

This is the same same answer all time and I was like oh okay so like how how do you intend people to use it and they're like actually we don't know like we're just kind of we just kind of want to see how people use it and so a lot of the new features are quote unquote AI powered and you're getting these AI and

sites and they're telling me things that I don't know what to do with because on the one hand the watch was like hey you have not been consistent with your sleep little lady you should work on that and then I refresh the app and it's like great job staying consistent with your sleep schedule and I was just like so which is it which is it which is it I just had one night where I didn't like have my sleep schedule completely perfect so I guess that's what it was reacting that's not helpful and then the ages metric they're like well if you want to improve your score I'm smack dab and I'm not going to do that.

I'm not going to score I'm smack dab in the middle so I don't know I guess that means I'm my age. Medi-ballically who knows wait I just wait I can I just stick with the age thing for one second so they have a metric hold age which I think most people know what a metric hold age that's a measure yes that's a well known label for a thing and then it measures first of all let me just quote your own review back to you V.

Yes meanwhile the age metric is baffling is what you have written here yes it is baffling so then it it's shining a light through your wrist and then somehow from what it the reflections of that light it is tracking how protein and fat are oxidized by sugar.

And then telling you whether that's low medium or high and then they're saying that is something called age and I just want to point out how deeply meaningfully confusing that is it's your metabolic age yes it is a metric that exists in the literature is a metric that exists in research and scientists are studying it but in a consumer watch it means nothing it means absolutely nothing in a consumer watch.

So it tells me that I'm like kind of in the medium neither low or high in the yellow section so to speak and it's like okay so to improve your age is metric here's a little you are. Yeah you do I did put my like demographic information so presumably if you're it's.

Is it it all related to your actual age it's like if you're green is your metabolic age younger than your actual age yes that's basically what they're telling you this is the idea it's so much this is the idea it's okay and then I'll say it's not messed up it means nothing it means nothing so you don't have to be messed up it's just baffling it's just no sense I like you I like new metrics I just trying to understand this one so somewhere

is like a 25 year old has a metabolism of X and if you tell us for 25 by shining a light from a smart watch and you're wrist this is kind of a new thing that they're doing in wearables it's not just Samsung like basically aura recently did a thing where it's like we can tell you what your cardiovascular ages and whether it's aligned with your physical age or not

and so there's just like this obsession with telling you whether you are like physically speaking aligned with expectations for your actual age or whether you're quote unquote physical physiologically younger than your actual age or there's a lot of people in Silicon Valley who are drinking the blood of the young in order to live forever and I'm not trying to

draw straight line to the galaxy watch ultra I'm just saying there's a path perhaps a winding path there is but I do it's I do not want a smart ring to tell me if my heart is dying faster than I am what do you listen listen listen there are there are health nuts who want this information I don't necessarily think it's actually good for their mental health

to have this information but the app was just basically like hey so here's how you can improve your ages index of metric that means absolutely nothing and you'll never guess what the advices because it's to eat healthy sleep well and exercise song just like all thanks like all Samsung devices this all this works best if you're in the galaxy

ecosystem yes assuming none of it works not fun it what gets worse if you have a pixel or you have a one plus well D would you like to have your EKG's and eat a fifth detection you will not get that unless you have a galaxy phone would you like to know if you have sleep apnea you will not get that unless

you have a galaxy phone because that requires the Samsung health monitor app which is separate from Samsung health meaning you're just not going to get that and some of the AI features are galaxy phone like only as well which actually I think that's great for you because the AI was very

nervous for me and all the advice at cafe it would be like hey your ages is not ideal exercise more and then the AI is like you're exercising a little too much you should rest because it's affecting your sleep and also you're sleeping well and not well at the same time so it's like cool great thanks I feel like it's a big ask to be like where you need a new watch and a new phone and a new ring and all of that stuff.

So I did last week we asked listeners to send us a note if they were all in on the Samsung ecosystem I would just going to guess and say that if I asked listeners to send us notes about why they were all in on the Apple ecosystem we would crash the internet right like we would just get a lot I I like say in a breath like I don't think our place very good and we emails for days all day long people like how dare you we ask for galaxy ecosystem users we got two emails

just putting out there so one person Sean thank you Sean for emailing they wrote in they're upgrading from a fold four to a fold six which is you know great they're doing it because the fold four broke the warranty on the devices cashed and they found a way through the cell phone warranty to get a fold six. Yeah right they like they try to use this in licensed Samsung repair company you break I fix that cost money so then they tried to use their annex warranty they were tonight.

And I called Samsung they said no and then they went to sell phone insurance which they had in that replace the not the full six. So that is one way to stay in the Samsung ecosystem is a nightmare repair journey because your fault the seals are fold four broke I would not say this is the type of email we get when we ask when people stand in the Apple ecosystem. So that's one we got another one thank you so much for emailing from Israel.

This one says you asked to hear from a galaxy ecosystem user I am that user which is so great. Truly appreciate that one they wrote to us I'm typing this in my galaxy tab S8 ultra I upgraded from Z Fold four to Z Fold six I use the tablet form factor much more than the phone fold factor which means I have both a galaxy tablet and they are constantly using their phone in tablet mode. This is the most Android tablet usage I've ever heard of the mind to live.

Whatever you do everyone's like that's 90% of the usage and they have a galaxy watch five pro and they're waiting on their galaxy watch ultra and then they have four TVs including a frame TV their washer and dryer Samsung they have the air dresser the fridge the oven a robot vacuum a smart things hub a blue ray player you're my people and then it says and something else I'm forgetting I'm sure. And then are they career and then at the end it says my husband uses a knife and I'm not.

Oh wow there's a case study so like so I just want thank you I love this I'm just I'll I'm gonna write back but you you've neglected to say why you chose. I would love to know why and if anyone else is out there wants to send us a note with with their list and why I'm dying to read them because we know so much about the Apple ecosystem and how people feel about it trust me I we know so much you are not quiet I'm dying to know how people other ecosystem is feel about it and it's like really

interesting to get this these notes so keep right in I'm very curious that said my husband is an iPhone iPad is very funny like deeply funny yeah that's there's something going on. I love it someone is very excited about RCS. Oh my gosh. Oh that's so good. Yeah I mean look there's bunch of Samsung devices and somehow I've ended up in the LG think you ecosystem because that's our Washington dryer and fridge.

God only knows why and I'm like man I better I got an update the other I got a notification of the new songs for summer were available for the Washington dryer and I was like yes this is the dream. Oh my god wait wait songs for your Washington dryer to play every quarter LG sends new little icons for the seasons and then issues new like songs.

They couldn't make phones anymore they like we have to divert those resources to the whole there's 50 engineers of the Casio keep working like didn't like and once a quarter they send them to me and it's great I truly I truly love it. We can't wrap up the Samsung conversation without talking about Saturday Samsung Saturday. So if you don't know this is what we have started calling Samsung's relentless attempts to sell more products which are all born of the company losing some money.

Sales are flat and they issued an edict saying everyone had to come to work six days a week until they were covered. Crazy and it's a corporate employees which means a bunch of suits are sitting around Samsung headquarters on Saturday being like summer. But not making the right there the suits they that they what are they going to do so that it's only weird promotions so we have covered you get a free TV if you buy a TV which is amazing.

We have covered you get a free TV if you buy a phone also amazing you would think it would continue in this vein but no last Saturday I guess burst of creativity and they decided that the best way to market the galaxy Z Flip in America. Would be to say that. The Z Flip it's a folding phone a little flipy guy is ideal for busy police officers to wear a spot again. That's so Samsung it's very good.

So bad I have put a folding phone on my shirt I think I'm safe to say I'm one of the few people who tried that outside of these police officers it's a dumb idea. It's not a good idea that it just doesn't seem secure also like where are they don't they wear this. They worked so they didn't just like issue them like team mobile phones. They partner there's a there's a post on Samsung's website it's titled Samsung technology is helping police authority protect the public safety.

Which is a lot. They partnered with a company called the visual labs which is quote a leading body camera solution provider. Capitalism and then two police departments in Missouri did a pilot program with all of this they have a customized Z Flip. That has like slightly different buttons. The phones can be set to automatically begin recording the phone to text a pursuit. Or if you're in the car when the emergency lights are turned on and then the video footage is sent to the visual labs.

Okay. This is all very good. Looking at this. That's ridiculous. That is so well get ready V because 25 more police departments are going to start wearing the Z Flip is body cams. Oh lord. Oh, when I was wrong it there's a partnership with team level. So they are team of. Like what do you what do you need the rest of the phone on your person for like you just need a camera. I just like the idea that people are going to like flip it open and then like make it take time.

Yeah, they're going to start doing some dances and yeah. No, I'm good. It's not okay. There's a there's a there's a whole this whole process is great but on. There's just like other benefits which are basically like this phone has a camera in it. So one of the benefits is in addition to their uses body worn cameras. Z Flip devices can help improve evidence gathering and transparency. No, no, no, no, no. By clearly documenting details of arrests and other interactions. Absolutely.

There's literally a feature on this phone camera. There's a lot of stuff that wasn't there. I do not have that. This is such a bad idea. Draw in the drugs. Put the cocaine here. Put the cocaine here in the dash. Yes, the galaxy's E flip, quote, the galaxy's E flip additionally functions as a digital camera needed for taking pictures of crime scene evidence. An audio recorder for witness interviews and a personnel locator for tracking the officer's location to GPS.

This is just a phone like I just want to be very clear what they have described is a phone. I can be fine by using a phone. This is body camera. It's very good. Draw the suspect in the bushes. I just want you all to imagine the high fives this Saturday afternoon. There's like, you know, there's like one slice of pizza left in the box. The cheese is getting a little weird and they're like, what if we just gave it to cops? Like you know, it was a lightning bolt moment.

They were out the door in their cars like we did it. Daydover. Sales are up. So 25, 25 police departments. They still have 25 war phones. Oh, God. It's very good. It is truly very good. Saturday, Samsung. It never, never gets old. All right, we should take a break. We are cruising our way. We're going to take a break. We'll grab back. There's a lot of things you might say when your small business has a problem. You've got to be kidding me. Come on. Well, I didn't see that one coming.

But that won't get you the help your business needs. What you should really say is something that can help. Like a good neighbor, state farm is there. State farm agents are ready to help you with your claim to help you get back in business. On the phone or in person, your state farm agent is there to help. Like a good neighbor, state farm is there. All right, we're back. It's time for lightning round. As ever, unsponsored.

I feel like the rudest thing David did was leave for the week and not pay a sponsored lightning round. You can't say. You're going to leave me hanging, bro. Like, sponsored by David Pierce. And I'm saying, like, set the tone. Sadly, still unsponsored. We're still in the market. We get a lot of weird emails from people who are like, I'll do my crypto startup. We're not going to let you do that. Sorry. That's just that happened. But if you have a real company and a lot of money, we'll talk to us.

Some will talk to you. Not me. That's the other side of the house, but someone will talk to you. All right. Here's how I want to do that here in this week. We have like three topics. Two of them just have a lot of headlines. So I'm just going to read all of the headlines and then we'll like figure out what's going on. The first one though is just one headline and it's our fault. Logitech's new CEO, Hanukkah Faber, was on Dakota this week. She's the new CEO. She just started like late last year.

We had the old CEO, Bracken Darrell on several times. I like one of my ideas with decoders. There's more than five companies in the world. And so we should talk to all the companies and pay attention to them. That generally goes well. The Logitech is one of those companies. I think it's undercovered. Right? They're just around. You don't think about them very much. And it turned out under Bracken Darrell, like how Logitech worked was bonkers. Like he's like, I have 23 direct reports.

Everyone's just allowed to do whatever they want. I buy companies. I leave them alone. There's no overlap. It's like everyone have a good time, which is how you end up with them buying like 50 headbound companies. And then I'll just kind of do their thing. I wonder if they have a strategy. The answer was they do, which is leave everybody alone, which worked just to whatever extent. Bracken leaves Logitech. He now works for, I think it's called the VF brands.

They own vans and Supreme and the North Face. So the guy you ran, Logitech is now the CEO of Supreme. Incredible. We're going to see how that goes. I'm going to try to get him back to being so supreme. That's the whole thing. And they have a new CEO, Hanukkah, who came from like Unilever and Procter and Gamble. She's just back on the consumer goods and like marketing. Really interesting. And I was like, are you going to change this wacky corporate structure?

And that was what I thought Dakota was going to be about. Truly, that's what I thought we were. And then we did talk about that for a while. And then she's like, I want to build a forever mouse. And this keeps happening to me on Dakota. Where I'm like, what? Explain. And she's like, I want to build a really beautiful mouse. It's like very heavy, very premium. And we'll just do software updates forever. And that will be your forever mouse. Like you'll just have it for.

And I'm thinking, well, I've had this mouse forever. Right. It's same. Right. It's like 10 years old. Are people replacing mice? No. Yeah. So very confused. Very confused. And I, you can hear, if you listen to it, the transcript reads one way. You've actually go and listen to Dakota. It's very, you can, I'm just laughing. Like I'm like, what are you talking about? I'm like, there's only two ways to monetize hardware over time. It is subscriptions or it is ads.

And she's like, yep, those are the two ways I'm like, so you're going to do a subscription mouse. And she's like, I am. And I encourage you to go listen to this because I'm just like losing my mind. Like, what am I subscribing to with the subscription mouse? Right. So we, it's an AI software. No. What is AI software for my mouse? Yeah. So you're going to change the DPI based on what I'm doing? No, no, no, no, no, it's not even, it's not even that. Like you were like, that, here's an idea.

No, no, it's worse than that. They're putting the buttons on the mouse so that when you see a field, like any text field in your computer, the mouse will do the prompting for you. Absolutely not. So they've already rolled this out in options, in options plus. No. This is like a thing, this is a thing in logic mice today for like newer mice. Why older mice are not allowed to have the software? I didn't even get to because I was just what? Right?

Like you can listen to me, like D.Y. or my brain in this conversation. So I was like, so a mouse and she's like, yeah, this is how our video conferencing software works. And I was like, but it's, that's a service. This is a mouse and she's like, yeah, a mouse, like a beautiful, and I believe she said diamond and cross the mouse. So that was decoder. These things happen to me and decoder all the time.

Like what I was not expecting was the idea of the subscription mouse has just like, it's a news cycle. And it was just like the new CEO riffing, but now there's a full news cycle. A lot of stuck to subscription. Oh, no. And I will tell you not since like HP was like subscription printers have people been this unhappy about any idea that I've ever heard. I mean, there are YouTubers for making YouTube videos about it. I've seen TikToks about, it's like crazy.

It's like it is, it's living its own little life. People are throwing away their logitech mice. Like, no, no, we're not throwing away. This is really going to be my forever logitech mouse now. I'm never giving it up. Yeah, I will say that mouse and my other computer there is easily 15 years old. Yeah, like you just get one out of the box. It's kind of gross. I'm not saying it's not a little gross. They get disgusting, but like you're just in an office.

You find one out of a box, someone put it there 10 years ago. You see my thumb sweat. You can see my thumb sweat on this mouse. These stops, it's a radio show. Stop showing people your thumb sweat. It's just, you know. Describe it for the audio listener. I will tell you, I rarely, rarely get deeply surprised by what happens on decoder. It's mostly show about work charts as the listeners now.

And then every now and again, these past couple of months, the Zoom CEO came on and was like, we're building AI clones of everyone to put in Zoom meetings. And again, I just encourage you to go, you can just listen to me try to, try to respond to that in real time. And look, I'll take the heat under code or people are like, you're too nice, whatever. Like, I'm always trying to be better. I'm always trying to ask harder questions.

Just imagine what it's like in real time to be faced with someone being like, the future of Zoom is AI clones and meetings. And you have to like acknowledge that, like not die and then formulate a series of follow-up questions that make any sense. Like tell a little story. It's harder than it looks, is all I'm trying to say. And you have to keep them there. And you have to keep them talking. It's just much more challenging and subscription wise, you can hear me just, what are you talking about?

I'm not sure it's trash. So I was not intending to cause a full news cycle about mice. It was truly not my intent. But I hope that this doesn't do subscription mice. I try it very hard to be like, I don't think that's a good idea. Please don't. But you know, a lot of you guys just really interesting, it is interesting to think of their big problem. Which is if you believe that AI is going to be important. And we've talked about it in this episode.

It might be that you just talk to your phone a bunch more. Right? And it just like does stuff for you. It might be that natural interfaces, natural language interfaces using the cameras interface, all this stuff starts to take over from traditional PCs more and more and more. This has been the dream for a long time. There's a reason that Google and Microsoft have a real call AI platform shift. And if that happens, like my sales go down. Right?

If you use desktop computers left and we talk to our phones more or whatever, maybe the PC sales will go down and then my sales go down. And then we just like, if you're a log check, you're like, well, how do I preserve the revenue? And you're like, gold plated diamond and trusted subscription mice. And like, maybe that's not the right solution. But you can see that pressure. It was it was a good conversation that I was not expecting just that little bit to resonate as much as it does.

That said, we have to find the brother laser printers of nice. Oh, I will be the other thing. There were tick talks about subscription mice and that put me into like people complaining about subscriptions tick talk. And then I got to one where a very nice like young woman was like bitching about her. A very nice woman. And it got me to one where I think an influencer, she was just complaining about her subscription printer. And all the comments are like, buy a brother laser printer.

And I was like, I did it. But the verge is accomplished. It's cool. One thing we stand for. Yeah. Yeah, buy one piece of harder last forever. I think the version is bad. All right. So that's like in around one. It feels like we're on a consensus that we're not going to do AI powered subscription mice. No, I like it. Don't want to know. Absolutely not. The idea that your mouse is the one that creates the prompt for open a. It's bold. It's bold. It's an idea that sounds like a mouse wrote it.

Yeah. If you're a die hard options plus ecosystem person. Right. It's a note. All right. So, okay. Here's the other two where I'm just going to read a bunch of headlines for lightning round. The first very much related to what we've been talking about with photos. There's just a bunch of deep fake news this week. Everyone knows it's a problem. We know we got to stop it. And then some people are like, screw it. We're doing it anyway. And by some people, I mean Elon Musk, who posted a deep fake.

They have common hairs that violates X's own policies about deep fake that were implemented. Under his ownership. This isn't like there was an old rule that disagrees with and he's bulldozing it. He made a rule about deep fake. So everyone knows the problem. And then he posted this ad with Harris. It's like Harris's campaign ad with the Beyonce song. But they replaced the voiceover with her saying Biden is too old. Okay. In many ways, this is just standard political parity.

If I hired a common Harrison personator to do this, would it be a problem? I don't know. But if you already have the rule that's like, don't do this. You should not be the owner of the platform do it. So he doesn't care. He doesn't give a shit. But that's where we are. It's like already happening. There's already these weird moments occurring because of just bad faith actress on both sides. On in particular one side. But it's already happening. Then here's the rest of the headlines.

Microsoft wants Congress to outlaw AI generated deep fakes. Google tweaks search to hide explicit deep fakes. So if Google. D ranks your website or knocks your website for having deep fakes on it, especially especially explicit ones. Search won't show them to people anymore. They're just going to go away from search. And Congress wants to carve out intimate de AI deep fakes, which is basically what you would. There's a language conversation here about what you should call these.

So you might call these like AI revenge porn. Oh, revenge porn is like a very loaded word for a lot of reasons. So now we're going to try AI intimate AI deep fakes. So you carve that out from section 230. Right. So that means right now you post stuff to platform like Facebook or X or Instagram or whatever. Those platforms are not liable for what you post. That's section 230. It makes you not go around.

And they're saying, no, actually, if you allow intimate AI deep fakes, you are not liable for them. But you was and that basically means you have to moderate them. So that's one idea. And then the copyright office. Just issued a huge report on AI and copyright, which they've been working on for quite some time. And their first chapter of this report was about deep fakes. And they're they're you can read. It's very long. It's very good. It's very easy to read.

We'll link to it in the show notes here. But they're basically like, yeah, copyright law can't do this. We need a new law. This is a disaster. Here's how we think the new law should work. So we're just at this moment where everyone is seeing the problem very clearly. And then lastly, in the Senate, the no fakes act has been introduced. It's not close to passing, but yet another bill to bandy fix. So regularly defects. So we're at this point now where everybody sees the problem, right?

Google as a platform is doing some stuff to stop it. Microsoft as a company is asking Congress to outlaw it. The government is like, we don't have the laws to do it. Some parts of the governments are saying we need to do it. It feels like this is the first big AI regulation that's going to happen. It feels like it's also the first one that has to happen. Deep fakes bad. Deep fakes bad. So yeah, I yeah. It's like the spider man pointing at spider man meme. We're like, what's going on?

Who is in charge here? Elon Musk is making rules about deep fakes and then not following those rules. Not following them. The government is like, yeah, we don't know. I agree. Deep fakes bad. Especially the ones that are being used to harass people and intimidate people in bully people. Like those are, I think fully bad. And if you read that copy, I'd often report that like a lot of our law right now is set up to protect famous people.

Like the patchwork of state likeness laws and publicity laws are all basically like if you're a celebrity and Samsung uses you to sell refrigerators. You can't do that. And I say that because that is a real case that happened in our justice system where Samsung made a robot that looked like vanna white to sell refrigerators and vanna white suits Samsung and one. I like that. Because the robot looked too much like vanna white. Real case. This is a real thing that happened. Oh my god.

And that's like all of our law right now is set up to deal with that problem, which is wonderful. But it's all for famous. Like you have to be famous enough so that people can be confused about it. But regular people have no protection because none of them are famous. So the government office is saying, no, this problem is going to affect regular people. It's going to affect teenage girls in schools. It already is. It's going to affect teenage boys in schools. It's going to affect everybody.

It's, if you don't like your teacher and you can depict that like all of this bullying that can happen with deep fakes is real. It's happening now. We don't have the loss to stop it. So then you say we could stop it. But that brings you all the back around to what if I just hire a Trump impersonator to look at a camera and be like, I'm bad. You know, like that is straight forwardly like political speech. It should be protected. The line there is really blurry.

And I think we're we're in for maybe a pendulum swing pretty far in the direction of all of that is not allowed. And then over time we're going to swing it back to you. You should probably be allowed to hire the all of a some person. Right. He's dead. Right. But should the should the Taylor Swift impersonator at the one casino be allowed to act like Taylor Swift? Like probably. How are you going to draw that line? It's pretty unclear right now. What will S&L do at that point?

Because then that whole thing is just like, man, I don't envy the people at the copyright office already. We're just trying to like proactively think about how to deal with this because it's a lot easier when it's reactionary when you're like, oh bad thing happened. We need to do something, but then to actually think of it in a proactive manner and be like, how are people going to use this? Well, I don't know.

We're only as good as the we're only as good as the most unhinged teenage boy in the classroom just thinking up of the most crazy way to use these things. Like I was that boy. And don't allow me to have access to computers. It was a real mistake the whole time. Alison, you mean we talk about photos and cameras and device makers all the time. You know, Google is changing search to hide explicit defects. Microsoft wants regulations.

Do you see that expressed in the products that they're making at all? It's like, it's funny that they're kind of like asking for someone to make rules on what they can and can't do. And if they don't have the rules, they won't stop themselves. Yeah, it's a weird thing of like, they're all sort of like, well, we definitely agree that, you know, fake bad stuff is bad.

So, but here draw a chicken into your photo or you know, it's sort of like there's no agreement between like, and we're going to slow down and wait till we've figured this out or, you know, like have some kind of industry standard that these things are like, a biting by it's just sort of like, well, we're just going to run as fast as we can over here. And then like, some people will figure out the laws.

See it, Alison, I told you the blurry bumblebee it absolutely can destroy the fabric of our society. You said it wouldn't use for it can it all started with the bumblebee. Well, it's like the, I'll just like use the no fake act, which I think by the time you listen to this should be in the Senate. This is basically a reaction to open AI and Scarlett Johansson. You know, the new voices out with open AI, it's actually really impressive in like very cool ways.

But obviously they made a voice that sounded a lot like Scarlett Johansson, she's really mad she might see them. Oh, kerfuffle. That's a great time for politicians to act. Be like a kerfuffle. Here's some stuff that I'm doing. So they had a discussion graph last year, they updated it, they have this year. And now the goal is to give people a federal property right to approve the use of their voice appearance or likeness and create liability to people who use their voice appearance or likeness.

And voice appearance or likeness without permission. Okay, that's like a lot, but again, SNL exists. Again, like Trump impersonators exist. I sometimes do British accent. I don't know if I saw a British person who's real like there's, there's, I think we're probably in from a moment where the pendulum swings way, way too far. And that might be fine, but we just need to like be alert for it because that pendulum swing too far might be appropriate given how damaging defix to be.

Especially for younger people, especially in these non-concentral intimate ways. But it's also like, oh man, like you might go, you might just a lot of impersonation along the way. And we just like don't know the answer yet. But there's a lot of that action happening. It seems like the company. So that's lighting around one lighting around two servo to this. And last week, last week, David, I'm just going to call David Fis.

He titled the episode the end of Google as we know it and I was like, bro. You just being searched generally is like, yeah, I'm going on vacation. I changed. So we changed it. But we were we were we're basically at a moment. And that was the real thesis. A lot of sweet steps said is that the entire like web and search market is changing. And we keep that off of Reddit getting Google to pay it for to index the site and then blocking everybody else. So there are some backlash to that, right?

That's the closing of the open web. So suddenly the only way to search Reddit with a search engine is Google weird. That's a weird new outcome that we didn't have before. Microsoft has been blocked. Proplexity is blocked. Reddit, Steve, I've been talked to our own Alex heath this week. He's like everybody needs to pay me. He's like being anthropic. Proplexity we've all been at after them. And then the big quote is it's a real pain in the ass to block these companies. So he just wants money.

And this looks like the future, right? We just want money if you want it. If you want to build a iPod search engine in a crawler site. Similarly, proplexity, which has gotten itself into a lot of trouble, especially showing pay world content without paying anyone. They're just scraping sites in a lot of trouble about scraping sites, even though it's blocked, which they keep saying like you don't know how the web works. And I'm always like tell me tell me how you think it works.

And they won't say. But proplexity has started cutting checks to publishers. Time to speak to a bunch of big German publisher and fortune are in the first batch. I assume there will be more. If I get any disclose of open IPs are company of OX media for its search GPT product. You can just put that on the list, right? Open IP is paying the Atlantic and a bunch of other publishers as well. New York Times is suing open IP because it wants more money than it's presumably been offered.

So like this thing that's like you've got to pay search engines have to pay to index our content on the open web is not just like a blip. It's the thing that's happening. Like it is the change that is happening across the industry. Everybody wants to get paid, especially from the new breed of search engines because everybody made the mistake with Google where they didn't ask for money. And now Google's like we're doing a anyway and no one can turn Google off.

Right next to that, we I mentioned circle to searches everywhere. Desktop Chrome is getting something that looks a lot like circle to search. So you see Google's building AI search ish experiences right into the browser. And then Chrome is also getting an AI product comparison mode where if you have a bunch of products open in tabs, Chrome will just synthesize the tabs and build a comparison for you, which is legitimately very cool.

And at least you get to have to load the web pages, which is like a good step. We love that. Yeah. But you see the web is just fully changing like whatever you think AI is doing to productivity or workers or whatever right now at this moment, how we think about the web and in particular search on the web. It's already the past is past like it's gone. It's in the rearview mirror. We might only be a little bit far away from it, but it's not coming back.

Like we're just in a mode where you're going to sign up to use a search engine and maybe we'll have a different set of sources than the next search engine based on the deals they have made, which is going to be really weird. It's just strikes me every time you know reddit comes up is that like we're racing to have you know Google wants to answer your question without you clicking on anything.

Chat bots want to answer your question or like robots can answer your question, but then also like reddit is incredibly valuable and it's just people talking to people like that's the thing that you know we want to get to in search now where I'm like

you know I have a question about my plant or whatever it's like I don't want the AI generated answer I don't want whatever blurb like I wanted to read an answer from a person and it's just strange to me that that's at the center of this like what if you could just talk to robots.

But the robots need to listen to a person who knows the answer yeah I mean in reddit is itself being polluted with a I generated text so that's the next turn and then on top of it all the new information is a bunch of kids talking to tick tock.

And we found out this week that tick tock is one of the biggest customers of opening I because they're using all that for the recognition of the insorting and like and you're like oh this is a weird little circle where it's there going to be more silos in the internet that ever before because the open web did not make enough of the people who make the original content enough money. And so I know when wants to repeat that so now it's like you got to pay us.

And like whether that actually comes back to individual redditors for contributing remains to be seen but read it itself see weapons like I'm just gonna block you like I got my money from Google and everyone else's blocks unless they pay up and I think you can do it because he just needs Google like Google is going to send read it a lot of traffic and that's fine you can block being like pay up or you're dead.

And I think eventually they're all going to end up paying because if you have an AI search product that can't look at reddit I think a lot of people are like what where's the good stuff. And you're just going to end up in a weird loop. We've been covering this a lot like we over a year now we covered sort of the end of the SEO industry and what that did to the web and all the stuff because we wanted to mark like this is what it looks like now.

And I didn't I honestly did not expect it to feel as different as fast as it feels today like the end of the search error that we knew is I think just firmly here and you can see even this week is just like here's six more headlines that are just like here's how it's changing. I keep thinking about a friend who she was buying a new mattress and she's like I just asked Claude yeah Claude did it for me Claude like yeah which is the which one is not perplexity it's anthropic yeah oh God.

And it's just like my eyes get wider I'm like put the little mattress review dot com that it was scraping you know I don't know that's a whole my field too.

Now my husband does it my husband is like an avid chat GPT as a search engine user before it even had this project and it keeps been using Gemini and all the other stuff and he'll be like oh yeah I just asked that this is how I built some code for this and this is how I like because he just Google just doesn't give him the answers that he needs anymore and so like I've just been watching them just completely shift how they use the internet over the last year and I'm just doing the same things that I have always done.

And I just am like this this this feels like getting left behind maybe I should try using it maybe I should try using it more in the ways that they do but I just run into the same problem as you do I listen where I'm just like I just I don't like the source that they pull from and these in these things I'm just like I don't trust rando blog site dot com give me.

Hey I started rando blog site dot com. Hey that was my first website. I've been using a chat to be for Olympics trivia because I assume that you know like what's this cable on the fencer is like that answer has been the same for a long time.

Right. I have to be mapped the action button on my iPhone 15 pro and it works like it just delivers an answer to you and you're like I don't know that's right right it's like close enough yeah it's like it's for you yeah it's like the scoring system I hope that's true you know you're not like judging the fencing like.

Judges are not using that actually we have a big feature we are in this week about AI being used to judge gymnastics you should read that it's very good I mentioned that because we are way over thank you. We got we got around this up thank you for indulging in chaos for a chance to be announced and that was great. It was fun it was good times.

If you're listening to me you never come back. So I got this goldfish over here. All right that's it that's a very fast that was really fun thank you for listening to rock and roll. And that's it for the bird's cast this week. Hey we'd love to hear from you give us a call at 866 bird's one one the bird's cast is a production of the virgin box media podcast network. Our show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James that's it we'll see you next week.

On September 28th the global citizen festival will gather thousands of people who took action to end extreme poverty watch post Malone doja cat Lisa jelly roll in Rao Alejandro as they take the stage with world leaders and activists to defeat poverty defend the planet and demand equity. And download the global citizen app to watch live learn more at globalcitizen.org slash box.