• 7 months ago
Today on the flagship podcast of forced app divestiture:

The Verge’s David Pierce and Lauren Fiener discuss the latest tech policy bills floating through Congress, including a privacy bill, a generative AI bill, and the TikTok divest-or-ban bill.

David talks with Nikola Todorovic and Tye Sheridan about their company Wonder Dynamics, which is creating AI-powered production tools for filmmakers.

David answers a question from the Vergecast Hotline about messaging apps.

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Tech
Transcript
00:00:00Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of forced app divestiture.
00:00:05I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am stuck in my basement because this is the only camera and microphone that I have that works.
00:00:12So I bought this thing, the DJI Osmo Pocket 3, just to make these intros.
00:00:18I like being out in the world, I like telling you guys what I'm up to, I like doing fun stuff while we record the Vergecast, and then it broke.
00:00:26It was just sitting in my bag for reasons that I cannot figure out, just something about the gimbal stopped working.
00:00:33So now I turn it on, and it like sort of spins, but not really, and then I get this error that just says,
00:00:40gimbal protection, over and over and over again.
00:00:43And I don't know how to fix it, I think I know what's wrong, there's a spot that's a little sticky,
00:00:48but the thing about these gimbal cameras is that they're so delicate and so finicky, that's what makes them cool, that's what makes them work.
00:00:55It basically seems to have broken just because I put it in my bag and put a rolled up sweater on top of it.
00:01:03Technology, man.
00:01:05Anyway, we have an awesome show coming up for you today.
00:01:07We're going to do two things.
00:01:09First, we're going to talk about this weird sort of run of bills and legislation that we've gotten in Congress recently.
00:01:17All of a sudden there's tons of momentum again on the TikTok ban, on digital privacy legislation, on AI.
00:01:24So we're going to try to figure out if any of this actually means anything, and if any of this is ever actually likely to become law.
00:01:31Then we're going to play you a bit of a conversation I had at the Chicago Humanities Festival.
00:01:36I talked to two filmmakers who are also the co-founders of an AI startup, which I just think is a fascinating tension.
00:01:43What does it mean to be a creative person in this world we live in right now,
00:01:48while also trying to build AI tools that threaten to totally upend the way that we do all of this creative work?
00:01:56We had a really fun conversation. I wasn't planning on putting it on this show, but I really enjoyed it, and I think you might as well.
00:02:02All of that is coming up in just a second, but I just watched a YouTube video where basically the way to fix this gimbal is to shove a bunch of post-it notes in here.
00:02:11And, you know, I'll try anything at this point.
00:02:14This is The Verge Cast. See you in a sec.
00:02:17Welcome back. All right. My camera's broken, I think, forever, but my mic still works, so we soldier on.
00:02:23So we've learned over the last few years to be, let's say, skeptical anytime there's a new tech-related bill moving through Congress.
00:02:30We get all these hearings that turn out to be mostly just grandstanding and people trying to score points that they can post on TikTok.
00:02:38We get bills that don't make sense and go nowhere. We get bills that do make sense and go nowhere.
00:02:43And so it feels like, by and large, we're left with decades-old or even centuries-old laws and precedents trying to govern the Internet.
00:02:52It's not great. But recently there's a sense of momentum in Congress that feels new.
00:02:57There's a new privacy bill that has some real steam. There's a new take on the TikTok ban that is moving really fast.
00:03:03And there's even some AI legislation that seems to have at least an outside shot of turning into something.
00:03:09But is any of this for real? And if so, what's different now? Why is this all kind of happening all at once?
00:03:15The Verge's Lauren Feiner has been covering all of these bills, and she is here to help us figure out what's next.
00:03:20Lauren Feiner, hello.
00:03:21Hi.
00:03:22How are you?
00:03:23Doing well.
00:03:24Just another chill week in Lauren's life. Everything...
00:03:27Just a normal weekend.
00:03:28I like this for you. Yeah, it's really rude of Congress to continue to do things on weekends.
00:03:33Seriously.
00:03:34It feels like they need to, like, go hang out with other people for a couple of days and, like, give you a break.
00:03:38Go socialize.
00:03:39Yeah. So we have a bunch of stuff to talk about, but I feel like the place we should start is probably TikTok,
00:03:44because TikTok is, like, the thing happening right this minute.
00:03:47So where we left off, I would say, on this show is the bill sort of flew through the House subcommittee,
00:03:55flew through the House, hit the Senate, and kind of disappeared.
00:03:59There was a lot of momentum, and all the momentum died, and this was a few weeks ago.
00:04:03We have had a re-momentuming. Tell me what's been going on. Catch me up.
00:04:06Yeah. Basically, like you said, we had this huge moment in the House where they overwhelmingly passed this bill
00:04:13that could ban TikTok unless it is divested from its Chinese parent company ByteDance within six months.
00:04:21And then, you know, next it's on the Senate to move.
00:04:24And, you know, we got a lot of kind of noncommittal responses from senators who were in key positions there.
00:04:31So it kind of looked like maybe this thing is just going to, like, linger here until everyone kind of forgets about it and moves on.
00:04:38What was your read on that, by the way? Before we even get to that, I found myself wondering a bunch over the last couple of weeks
00:04:43why the Senate seemed content to just let it go.
00:04:46I mean, you have President Biden saying he would sign the law if it hit his desk.
00:04:50Tons of momentum in the House. This thing was going crazy.
00:04:53Like, lots of people, even House Democrats, were for it.
00:04:57Why was the Senate so happy to just sort of let it wither and disappear?
00:05:01Yeah, I think there's two things. Like, one on just, like, the more political side.
00:05:06You know, the House is a very different beast from the Senate.
00:05:09The Senate is kind of a more deliberative body in a lot of ways.
00:05:12The House is much larger. You can have a lot more, like, different personalities.
00:05:16That was a very kind way of putting it, by the way.
00:05:19So I think, like, things that move in the House aren't necessarily the same that are going to move in the Senate.
00:05:26So, you know, that's one thing.
00:05:28I think a second thing is that I think there were real concerns with the earlier version of the bill,
00:05:33particularly with the timeline for divestment.
00:05:35You know, I think, really, I don't think I really heard from many people at all
00:05:40who thought that six months was a reasonable timeline to have this giant asset divested from this Chinese parent company.
00:05:48So I think there were real concerns about that and, you know, potential constitutional concerns, free speech implications.
00:05:55So I think there were still things that senators really wanted to ponder
00:05:58and maybe hold hearings on and go through the regular process there.
00:06:02So that's kind of how I think that was going down at the time.
00:06:06Okay, that makes sense. Okay, so I derailed you.
00:06:08So that all happens, brief pause, what happens next?
00:06:12Yeah, so then the House is trying to pass these foreign aid bills,
00:06:17basically directing, you know, military and humanitarian aid to places like Israel, Ukraine, Gaza.
00:06:24And so obviously this is something that is high priority in Congress.
00:06:28And House Speaker Mike Johnson does something interesting and allows a new version of this TikTok bill to get into this foreign aid package.
00:06:38So, you know, I think anyone who follows Congress might understand that a lot of times when we see bills pass into law,
00:06:45it's through like a larger package that has to pass, like the National Defense Authorization Act
00:06:51or some sort of, you know, budget for the government or things like that.
00:06:55So that's kind of what happened here is it got packaged in with these bills that are really high priority for Congress to pass.
00:07:02And not only did they kind of bundle this all together, they also changed the bill a little bit
00:07:08so that the timeline for divestment was extended to basically up to a year.
00:07:13So it's really extended to nine months initially.
00:07:16And then if the president sees that there's progress on a deal, he has discretion to extend it essentially another three months.
00:07:23So up to a year for this deal to be completed, which seemed to kind of assuage a lot of the concerns around it,
00:07:30in particular from Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell,
00:07:34who previously had not said anything really definitive about how she felt on the bill,
00:07:39but afterwards said that she supported the updated text of the legislation.
00:07:43And that's significant because she leads the committee that under like a normal process
00:07:49would have been considering this bill before it hit the Senate floor.
00:07:53Got it. Okay. Talk me through the politics of the bundling of all of this a little bit.
00:07:58Because like you said, this is the kind of thing that happens relatively frequently
00:08:02that a bunch of bills that either have a little bit to do with each other or nothing to do with each other
00:08:07end up in kind of an all or nothing package.
00:08:10But what do you make of kind of the way this was packaged back together and the way it has sort of gone through this process again?
00:08:17Yeah. So I think, you know, like I said, there's kind of these two ways that a bill can pass through Congress.
00:08:24One is that it's packaged together with these other bills that, you know, Congress has to make a decision on one way or another.
00:08:31You know, they can negotiate for certain bills to get out of that must pass package.
00:08:36But, you know, there's a lot more politics there. And like, what are you really going to stake your ground on?
00:08:41And then the other way is to pass like standalone bills like we saw the first time with this tick tock bill.
00:08:46And, you know, that requires a lot of kind of resources from Congress in terms of floor time.
00:08:51There's a lot of bills, a lot of legislative priorities that are out there.
00:08:55And so for House leadership to make the time for the tick tock bill as a standalone to get a vote was a big deal in the first place.
00:09:04That's one thing, by the way, that I think I have underrated in the past with a lot of this stuff is just the sheer logistics of passing a law like this is so much weirder and more complicated than it gets credit for.
00:09:17And like you say floor time and my brain just goes like, oh, right. There's only like so many hours in the day to stand there and talk about these things.
00:09:24And everybody you've hundreds of people with wildly different priorities. So literally just to like go through the time of discussing this thing to get to a vote, you just can't do it with everything.
00:09:34Totally. I mean, think about like everything that's like most important to you politically and everything that's most important to like your parents politically and all these people around you.
00:09:43And like they could be, you know, in theory, equally important. But how do you decide what gets the time to actually get a vote?
00:09:52So that's something that, you know, Congress is always juggling. So I think that's definitely right. It's a it's a big deal. So then packaging this with the other bills, you know, when it's a standalone bill, then it's on the Senate to decide when and how to move.
00:10:06And, you know, that's really up in the air. It's pretty easy to just like throw sand in the gears of Congress and just slow things down. But with this package, it kind of forces the Senate's hand in a certain way where it makes them have to figure out, like, are we going to are we going to say, like, this is the issue that makes us not vote for this foreign aid package that, you know, a lot of senators really want.
00:10:32And, you know, you have to think like, this is a bill that passed overwhelmingly in the House. It's a pretty popular measure. So is that the thing that senators are going to kind of put their foot down on for why this like otherwise popular and wanted package is not going to pass?
00:10:49Right. Yeah, I was I was looking at it in the I think the bill I wrote this down past 360 to 58 in the House, which for the House of Representatives in the country we live in right now is like pretty nuts to get that broad vote for just about anything at this moment in time. Right?
00:11:05Yeah, exactly. And, you know, it was interesting. I think during the debate around the bill, New York Democrat Gregory Meeks, who's the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, he was saying that he had opposed the earlier standalone tick tock bill. He said, quote, out of concern that it would be a broad authorization that could be misused far beyond what we in Washington are currently debating beyond just tick tock.
00:11:29But, you know, he was supporting this package of legislation and said, quote, the bill took a step in the right direction with a more realistic time frame for a complex divestiture process. Let me say for the record that I believe this bill is about one company that additional authorities provided to the executive branch are to be interpreted narrowly.
00:11:48So, you know, he's saying, you know, look, I didn't really support this the first time around. But, you know, given that it's part of this larger package, I think it's a better bill than it was before. And if we interpret it narrowly, like, you know, I'm fine with it.
00:12:03I'm fine with it. I feel like there are two ways to read that. And I'm curious which you read it as if if either one or if there's something I'm missing. One is basically like the Senate saying, Oh, God, we've lost. Like, we're sort of forced to do this. Now, this foreign aid bill is important. We are going to have to vote on this and letting this foreign aid bill die at the hands of a tick tock ban is just not worth the fallout, which on if that is the case, fairly brilliant political
00:12:33machinations by Mike Johnson and the house like kudos to them for pulling off what seems like it might actually work. The other read is that we have now debated this out long enough. And we kind of know where it's going. And it seems increasingly clear that the endpoint is not a ban, it is a sale, which makes it specific, right, that that becomes a very unique thing, because there just isn't anything else like that out there right now. So everybody is able to just say, you know what, whatever the law actually says, it is basically only going to apply to tick tock, let's just pass the thing and move on with our lives.
00:13:03Do you have a sense of which like, is this did the Senate get sort of, you know, outmaneuvered? Or is there a sense that like, we really can solve this problem the way that we want to?
00:13:11No, I would tend to think it's more that, you know, we really can solve this problem the way that we want to, because I still go back to the initial vote on this bill in the house was so overwhelmingly in favor of this legislation, even with the six month timeline, you know, to have that kind of broad support for something like this really tells me that, you know, this is a popular measure. And, you know, the people who are leading this legislation are saying, you know, this is not a ban, we want divestment.
00:13:41That's our goal. So I think that this is something that a lot of lawmakers are really interested in. And, you know, we've seen support for this sort of thing from the Senate Intel Committee leaders. Now you have the Senate Commerce Committee leader on board, there's a lot of support for doing something on tick tock in general. And, you know, it seems like this is a way to do it that more lawmakers are somewhat comfortable with.
00:14:08Okay, I would just point out again, that still, it's been all this time. And we have yet to hear this unbelievably compelling evidence that supposedly exists for why we have to ban tick tock. But we will leave that aside. I think that there really is the question of like, should we ban tick tock? And is it going to happen? And I think I assumed those two things were sort of going to run together. But it really seems like at this point, we it might happen. It feels like the odds of this bill becoming law are pretty high at this point, like this thing is moving fast. And it seems
00:14:38like the momentum is going to be pretty hard to slow down. Right?
00:14:41I would agree with that. Yeah, I mean, I would go back to like, you know, look at what this bill is situated within it's this package for foreign aid, that's very popular. Is tick tock going to be the thing that senators say, we're gonna like put our foot down about getting this out of here?
00:14:58Right? Yeah, we don't want to help Ukraine because we don't want to ban tick tock is a is a it's a strange political maneuver for anyone to pull at this moment in time. So what's next in this one? I think last time, all this happened, tons of momentum, and then it died in the Senate, we are now kind of back at that same spot. Again, is it possible it's going to die in the Senate again?
00:15:16I think this one's really different. Because, you know, foreign aid is something that is has some time urgency behind it. And the Senate was supposed to be off this week, but they're actually gonna, you know, come in on their vacation. And they're going to start doing some like process votes tomorrow. So from what I've read, it seems like they could vote as soon as tomorrow and as late as Wednesday on this measure.
00:15:42Fair enough. Yeah, I should say we're talking on Monday morning. And it's like, we have like, a little less than 24 hours before this publishes. And Lord knows, everything could change between now and then. But okay, let's let's talk about some of the privacy stuff. Because I think the other thing that you've been writing a bunch about is this new thing, the American Privacy Rights Act. I went into the first story that you wrote about this in which you were like, there's lots of momentum, people are excited, this might actually happen being like, Oh, Lauren, you've been you've been scammed again into believing that the American government is going to pass privacy legislation.
00:16:12But it seems like there is a sense that we're going to actually maybe get a real privacy law here at some point in the near future. What is going on with this bill? Why is this the one so far?
00:16:22Yeah, look, I mean, when it comes to privacy, I'm never gonna say this is definitely probably going to happen. Because I think I've just seen this so many times over years of covering tech policy, where you get a bipartisan bill that seems like a pretty great compromise, and everyone's like, at least happy enough, and then it goes nowhere. So I think this is one where we really got to watch it till the end. But there are some promising signs in this legislation, which, you know, to be clear, still a ton of people don't know that this is going to happen.
00:16:52It's a discussion draft, it hasn't even been formally introduced yet. But I think the most significant part of it is just who's behind this bill. And that's the head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Kathy McMorris-Rogers, who's a Republican from Washington, and the head of the Senate Commerce Committee, Chair Maria Cantwell, who's a Democrat from Washington.
00:17:12Maria Cantwell everywhere right now.
00:17:14Yeah, exactly.
00:17:16Big month for Maria Cantwell.
00:17:18I think her sponsorship is the most significant here. Because last time around, when we had a bipartisan privacy bill in 2022, she was not on board. And that seemed to be the thing that ultimately kind of like slowed down momentum behind this bill that had a lot of bipartisan supporters, it passed overwhelmingly out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and then just kind of died off.
00:17:43So I think that's really what's most significant here. And what's giving people the most, you know, hope that maybe we can see something this time around.
00:17:51Okay, so I feel like, I don't know, I don't know what the what the like, least optimistic it is possible to be while still being optimistic. You know what I mean? You're like, you're like, we're at a sort of one out of 10 on the optimism scale. But we're at least somewhere. And I feel like there is there is there's possibility that this could happen. What about this bill jumps out to you? It seems like I was reading through it. And there's a bunch of stuff that sounds a lot like what we have in the EU, this idea of transparency, and you should be able to control your own data, and you should know where it's going.
00:18:20Some of the stuff that's going on in California with the California Privacy Act that went in 2018, I think it was, and then again in 2020. What's in this bill that jumped out to you? Anything particularly interesting?
00:18:32Yeah, I think the thing that stands out the most is the enforcement mechanisms behind the bill. Because that's something that Senator Cantwell said that, you know, was kind of a sticking point for her with the earlier privacy bill, the ADPPA, these all have really complicated acronyms. And so this bill basically would let individuals sue companies that they feel like have violated their privacy rights.
00:18:57But it would also give companies a chance to correct the things that they're being told they did wrong. So, you know, that's kind of a way to try and balance, you know, a really strong enforcement mechanism that also, you know, kicks in pretty quickly. Consumers can, you know, sue pretty quickly, but also gives companies a chance to correct any mistakes before getting bogged down with lawsuits.
00:19:22Yeah, that's really interesting, because in the past, a lot of the enforcement for this has been kind of hand wavy, and somebody will figure it out, we'll set up an agency kind of thing. And this seems like it was much more directed, like, who will be in charge of this and what they can do, and the penalties will be real. Like, even just reading through, there's this like eight-page summary of it. I got the sense that this felt like a real thing more than just sort of some ideas that somebody wrote down.
00:19:48Yeah, I think that's right. I think, you know, enforcement was really a key issue for Senator Cantwell. So I think it's not too surprising to see that that was an area that they seemed to spend a lot of time on.
00:19:59Yeah, okay. Is there anything we've learned, do you think, from the EU and California? Like, those are the two that I just kept seeing inside of this bill. And I went back and re-read the California one, and it even uses a lot of the same terms, right, about being able to correct info about you that's online that's wrong, having the right to opt out, they can't discriminate against you if they opt out.
00:20:22There's also just like a weird thing all of a sudden in the middle that just says civil rights and algorithms, which felt like a total sort of random detour in the middle of a data privacy legislation, but I thought that was very interesting. I don't know, does it feel like the Congress is sort of learning from what has worked and passed elsewhere? I mean, I use worked in a very kind of loose way, because none of it seems to really be working, but at least what has actually been passed into law elsewhere.
00:20:46Yeah, I think like at a high level, there's been a shift from this, like, notice and consent framework, where that's basically like, you know, we're going to tell consumers, you know, what sort of information we're collecting, and then you click yes, and then we collect it.
00:21:02Which accomplishes nothing. I really believe that.
00:21:05Yeah, or and shifted more to this idea of data minimization, which is like, let's like limit how much data is collected in the first place. And you have to have a really compelling reason for why you need this information to run your service. And so I think that's something that's reflected in this bill.
00:21:22Yeah, that's really interesting. Who are they going after with this bill? Have we gotten a sense yet? I mean, they have some basic outlines here. I think it's like, if you have more than 5 million users in the US are over $250 million in revenue. It's it's clearly a this is pushed at big companies, especially right, it talks a lot about data brokers. But it seems like companies most affected by this are going to be like the handful of big tech platforms. Like, who do you think this is really aimed at?
00:21:49I think that's right. I think, you know, there is concern in Congress about, you know, overly burdening small companies and startups. And that kind of feeds into these other questions about competition and, you know, concerns there. So I think there is an awareness that Congress doesn't want to overburden small businesses. So I think large companies are really ones that will be targeted here and data brokers.
00:22:13It seems like there's, you know, this growing awareness in Congress about how data brokers can move information around, you know, around the time of the original tick tock legislation, we saw a separate bill in the House pass around data brokers and, you know, sales of US data to foreign adversaries. So I think that's something that is really on lawmakers minds these days.
00:22:36Okay, so like you mentioned, we've we've seen this a few times bills come out that there is some enthusiasm about what normally happens, like, where in the process does a privacy bill usually die?
00:22:48In the past, it's been, you know, with the 80 PPA, which was the last time we had a comprehensive privacy bill that had bipartisan support.
00:22:57And that was two years ago. Is that right?
00:23:00Yeah, I believe that was in 2022. You know, it passed pretty strongly out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. And then that was it. So that's the point where we see these things slow down. I think what's significant here is we have both of the chairs who are in power in their committees on the House and Senate side, who are going to be able to move this bill if they want, assuming they can get the votes in their committee.
00:23:25So, you know, we could at this point see both the Senate Commerce Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee pass this bill once it's introduced. And then it will be up to House and Senate leaders to determine, again, do they give this bill time on the floor? Do they package it in some other legislation?
00:23:45So I think that will be kind of the next point to look out for. And of course, you know, before all that happens, we have to make sure that there's support, enough support in the committees for these bills. But I think there really is, you know, widespread support in Congress for comprehensive privacy legislation overall. So I think, you know, there is some, at least a good amount of political will there.
00:24:08Do you make anything of the timing connection with all of the TikTok stuff? Like, are these two things that are happening simultaneously on purpose?
00:24:17Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. I'm not sure if it's like, you know, on purpose in the sense that they were, you know, moved at this time because of the TikTok legislation. But I think, you know, all of this is kind of like percolating around Congress. And I think it makes sense in a way that we would start to see privacy legislation come out.
00:24:38You know, when we saw the House vote on the standalone TikTok bill, reporters were asking House committee leaders about, well, what about privacy? Because that's something that kind of like underlies a lot of these conversations in the first place. And I think I remember McMorris Rogers actually kind of saying, like, you know, we're still working on that. And at the time, I remember thinking like, okay, sure. Like, yeah, we're going to go back. Maybe they're going to reintroduce the ADPPA, something like that.
00:25:08And then we got this totally new bill with Senator Cantwell. And that was kind of a moment of, well, okay, maybe some of this has been really happening behind the scenes. So yeah, I think, you know, it is significant that privacy is something that kind of underpins a lot of the other conversations we have around tech policy. But, you know, I think things often in Congress just move when you can get the political will to do them.
00:25:35Well, and that's, I think, kind of the big open question still to me is, is this moment different in that respect than we've had before? Right? I think the privacy thing in general is so tricky, because there is this sort of intellectual understanding that I think most people have come to where we all kind of know there's too much information about us out there. And it's bad that there is too much access to it. And we kind of have no control over it. And it sort of feels intellectually weird.
00:26:03But knowing what that is, and what to do about it, and what the sort of downstream ramifications are, is just complicated enough that it has never really felt like anyone's first priority. It's just kind of a thing that lingers at the back of everybody's mind.
00:26:17But then part of me wonders, A, with TikTok becoming this very visceral outpouring of what it looks like when a platform knows you very well, that is one thing that I think has like maybe made it more present to people what's really going on here. But then I also just wonder if this is yet another kind of lark from people who there's just a kind of chorus of folks in Congress who are like, we need privacy legislation, and everybody goes, I agree, and then just kind of goes off to other priorities.
00:26:45But it sounds like even maybe just from like conversations you're having, that at least it's moving up the priority list. It might not be the top thing, but at the very least, it is a thing people are willingly talking about instead of just sort of waving their hands out and saying, we'll get to that eventually. Is that how it feels just to talk to people right now?
00:27:04I think basically, I think, you know, I didn't necessarily anticipate that we would get a real conversation around comprehensive privacy this year. You know, it's an election year.
00:27:15There's a lot going on.
00:27:16Yeah. So I think there is the sense that, you know, maybe, maybe this is the time. But, you know, I'm hesitant to say that because it's felt like that in the past. But I think there's a certain way you could look at this and say, maybe it would be kind of a good look for Congress to pass a comprehensive privacy bill if they're also passing this TikTok legislation.
00:27:36Since, you know, I think when TikTok CEO came to testify, some people are talking about, well, aren't all of these problems just like problems with privacy on platforms in general? And some of them are. So I think in a way, it would be kind of a good look for Congress to pass comprehensive privacy reform alongside something like that. Is that going to be enough to push them over the edge?
00:27:59You know, I think that's anyone's guess. But at least it seems like these conversations are really happening in a real tangible way again around an actual piece of legislation.
00:28:10Yeah, I agree. I think my guess is we are a ways away from having an answer to that one. But I think it's going to be fascinating, especially in an election year when so many people are talking about tech. I think it's going to come up maybe more than it has even at kind of hot moments in the past. It's gonna be really interesting.
00:28:27Before I let you go, the last one I just want to touch on briefly is the Future of AI Innovation Act, which is another thing that is sort of in the air everybody's talking about, but it's not necessarily exactly clear where we're headed with this. Tell me a little bit about the Future of AI Innovation Act. What are we doing here?
00:28:44Yeah, so this is a bill that was introduced by a bunch of senators that have been involved in AI discussions. Again, we have Senator Cantwell.
00:29:06It's basically about creating standards around AI and just spurring innovation. So it's not really dealing with some of these nitty gritty issues that we're thinking about with copyright and things like that. But it's really about just trying to create a framework for AI to be developed in a safe way and also for innovation to take place.
00:29:27Okay, so this is one of those bills that is like, let's make a plan to make a plan kind of thing. And you have to write that in a very... And that feels small when I say it, but there was that executive order from the White House, which was like a plan to make a plan to make a plan. This is at least like a plan to make a plan. So we're like inching towards a plan. It's something.
00:29:46Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's certainly a start. I mean, I think AI is such a huge issue that touches on so many different areas that it's hard to imagine just like one piece of legislation being the be all end all of this. So, you know, it's certainly it's a reasonable place to start, I would say.
00:30:01Yeah, I still remember the Benedict Evans, who the back when he was a venture capitalist always had this line that we don't regulate cars, we regulate parts of cars, which I think is very smart. And I think AI is gonna end up being the same way. Like, instead of if we try to regulate AI as a thing, it's just gonna, it'll never work. And I feel like to some extent, we've run into this with with privacy and the internet, like we try to regulate the whole internet all at once. And it's just impossible. But it's like, okay, we can regulate seatbelts, and we can regulate steering wheels, and we can regulate carburetors, and we can regulate gas mileage. And it's just impossible.
00:30:30And it's like, that's maybe what we do with AI. And this feels like, you know, setting up the what is it called the Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute, I think, is like, okay, you need a group that is like in charge of looking at this. And that's not anything, but it is a step towards something. And that I sort of appreciate as a as a way of saying like, okay, AI is too big for one bill that we shove into a foreign aid package. Let's let's start somewhere else.
00:30:56Yeah, also, I think there are certain things that, you know, the American people would probably rather see a specialized agency looking at rather than Congress, just going ahead and dictating a bunch of rules. So I think that is a significant step.
00:31:10Yeah, fair enough. All right. Well, here's hoping that you at least get a weekend next weekend. But Lord only knows this tick tock thing is just going to keep happening. So I suspect we will be talking again sooner rather than later.
00:31:20Yes, I'm sure.
00:31:21Awesome. Thanks, Lauren. Appreciate it.
00:31:22Thanks, David.
00:31:24All right, we got to take a break. And then we're gonna come back and talk AI.
00:31:34All right, we're back. A couple of weeks ago, the verge did a series of panels at the Chicago Humanities Festival all about AI and creativity. Our big question basically was, what does it mean to be a creative person in a world filled with AI? And how is AI changing the lives and livelihoods of creative people?
00:31:53We had three really fun conversations, and I just want to play you a chunk of mine. I got on stage with Ty Sheridan, who's an actor you might know as Wade Watts, the protagonist in Ready Player One, or from movies like X-Men Apocalypse and the show Wireless, along with Nikola Todorovic, who is a writer and a visual effects artist. Ty and Nikola are friends, they're collaborators. And as of a few years ago, they're co founders. They started a company called Wonder Dynamics that brings a bunch of really cool AI tools to the visual effects business.
00:32:22Basically, imagine you film a real scene. And with like three button clicks, you can comp over a regular person and turn it into an animated character, visual effects with essentially the touch of a button. It's pretty cool. So both Ty and Nikola are right in the center of this really complicated AI moment. So I wanted to talk to them about how they think about AI, how they're trying to build a company, how human creativity and AI can work together, and lots more.
00:32:50We had a really good time chatting, actually. And I learned a lot. So I thought I'd just play you a bit of that conversation. Let's do it.
00:32:58Hello, everybody.
00:33:00So I want to start by telling the story of Wonder Dynamics.
00:33:05Well, we had originally started developing shows together. So Nikola and I were both dabbling writing and Nikola had directed several films and they showed me I thought he was really talented filmmaker and obviously really smart guy. And we just became kind of pals through our mutual love of movies and storytelling. And we had started developing a series that had kind of, it was like it had an interactive element to it. And there wasn't really a technology that existed. So we just kind of built the prototype.
00:33:33And that was really the beginning of us getting into technology.
00:33:37It's really the writing that started it. We wrote a project that we wanted to say, and it's gonna sound super meta, but it was about robotics, right? So we're writing this sci-fi series that we wanted to make. And every time you write something, as an indie person, especially, you have to think about how do I cut my script to afford it.
00:33:55Because you can't go out and write Dune and hope to get it funded, right, as a filmmaker that hasn't proven itself. Especially in visual effects, most indie filmmakers in visual effects stay away from visual effects and CG because it's so expensive, right?
00:34:07Every single scene or shot you add that has a visual effects element adds so much more to your budget and you can't really afford it. So Tye and I really started like that. We wrote this and we realized, okay, this would cost about $150 million to make, and there's no way we can get that money.
00:34:23So we started looking at technology, but funny enough, we were studying technology as we were writing. And it really, this started from us going really deep in robotics and self-driving cars technology, which is all about understanding the world and space around you, right?
00:34:36That's movement of AGI, which is the computer vision. It's like understanding what a chair is, understanding how much distance I have from something. So that's how it started.
00:34:43And then we started getting deeper and deeper into it. And then we started building the tech and realized, okay, this is a bit bigger than just our movies. Let's turn it into a platform and let's really start a company to be focused towards that. And then we'll make our movies down the line. But we were lucky that we discovered it early, before generative AI was even a thing. We internally called it visual AI. There was no term at the time. And we knew it was going to be. So we built in stealth mode for about close to four years.
00:35:09Just real quick, give me the like 15 second explanation of what Wonder Studio does right now, just for folks who haven't seen it before.
00:35:15Yeah, so essentially, if you have seen movies like Avatar, you always have this motion capture suits that people perform in. And then you have a lot of equipment you need to do on set to pick up that data, performance data, etc. So we essentially sped up that process and let you extract your scene in a 3D space. So you can get your performance capture, your camera move capture, your lighting capture and get to your final VFX shot much, much quicker.
00:35:39Than traditional.
00:35:40Okay, yeah, the demo I've seen is basically it's like a person coming out of I think it's a library or something sort of coming down the stairs of the building. And then it wipes and all of a sudden it's it's a cartoon character doing the same movements in the same place the same ways. And you're essentially like automating that out of having Ty wear a mocap suit, which I'm assuming is not a lot of fun, by the way.
00:36:02It depends how sweaty you are. You're a naturally sweaty person. No, it's not that much fun. Also, those volumes, you know, they have all the infrared cameras and sensors in there. They're very warm. So yeah, and the
00:36:15extremely expensive, very expensive. That's why you have a lot of, you know, 99% of filmmakers cannot afford production side of things. But post production is really where it gets extremely, extremely expensive, right? So that was our mission is like, how do we get indie filmmakers to have access to this, which traditionally has always been reserved to
00:36:31high budgets and big studios.
00:36:33Yeah. And I think the timing that you guys were dealing with is really interesting, because on the one hand, you got this massive technical development, right? Like the state of the art and everything you're talking about has gone up exponentially over the last few years. On the other hand, we're now talking about this stuff in a cultural way, like we've been doing all day, in a very different way than we were before you have access to, you know, mountains of data that comes from, in some cases, artists who would prefer that their
00:37:01data not be there. And I'm really curious, as you guys were thinking about, like, product building, especially coming from this sort of creative background, like what, what should we build? What can we build? Like, sort of where, where does the right answer for something like this begin and end? Like, are those conversations you're having?
00:37:16Yeah, a lot. Yeah, a lot. And especially from beginning, I think we're in a different situation, because, you know, obviously, we've been super fortunate to have some leaders in this space, like Joe Russo, Steven Spielberg, the others who've been on our board, obviously, Tai is an actor. So we spent a lot of time, and I was a visual effects artist, and a supervisor. So we purposely from day one, build it with, we're not going to be generating art, which is going to extract information, we call it observing nature. So we're observing how the actor is moving and performing, it's still driven by a
00:37:46by a shot from a cinematographer, the character is still built by an artist. So we're very different than a lot of gen AI companies that you see, which are generating pixels by other art. For us, you mostly get information that 3d space. So we're not really producing art, we're speeding you up and giving you that scene in 3d space, so you can manipulate it. So, and also, you'll never see us replace the actor with another human, we only are driving characters that don't exist in the real world. So that's a little bit of a, you know, thing we had to stop
00:38:16ourselves a lot of time, because you get, you get very driven with this innovation. And you can you can go that route and say, you know, I'm just going to build, I'm going to build whatever I want, right, because I can with this technology. But I think for us, it was really important to be ethical in that. It's one of those things in a tech company, we call ourselves a story company first, because this is a technology to help storytellers, right? story will always come first for us. So, you know, it is a tough one. It's one of those things that we have a lot of our users that say, like, you're one of the, you know,
00:38:46rare, ethically built company around this. But it's tough, because you do have to pull back for innovation. There's a lot of stuff we've done research internally, right, that we had to pull back a little bit. We've been having this conversation for a long time, we've been telling people three years ago, you know, AI and visual effects is coming, you know, educate yourself, this change is going to seem extremely drastic overnight. But it's not overnight. This research has been going on in academia, you know, Ivy League schools for decades now, right? It's just that we're now seeing it extremely accelerated.
00:39:16And a lot of innovation you see that comes out gets viral. It's not from yesterday. It's been built on top, on top, on top, right, on that side. So, you know, I think the conversation is getting more serious now, about, you know, these moral issues. For us, I don't think we should see the future, where we don't have people on set, we don't have artists working on it, but just someone kind of typing away, I do think it will happen.
00:39:43We want to be a part of the good side of that story, which is you're always going to have performance artists, you're always going to, I think a lot of people underestimate how hard this thing is. Not AI, I'm talking generally filmmaking. It's extremely hard. All of these artists have incredible high skill sets of that, right? It takes decades to learn some of these things and some of these tools, how to use them properly. So I think this kind of promise, it's a one click solution promise, it's one line away. We're not there yet. I'm talking AI in general, not us.
00:40:12So I think, I don't think we're going to replace artists, all of these actors, you know, overnight. I don't think-
00:40:18I think people will try.
00:40:19They will try, but I think us as audience members, we love that human connection. I don't think all of a sudden everybody's going to be, you know, I don't have a favorite actor anymore because all the actors I watch are AI, right? I don't think that's going to happen, right? So I think that human connection is really important. Sometimes we like art we watch because of the meaning put by a person behind it, not generate something.
00:40:40So I think if you ask me where the future is going to go, I think it's going to be combination. There's going to be some prompting that's going to be a part of it. There's going to be performance art that's going to be a part of it, right? Because it's very- think of it this way, we always say this, how do you describe a performance with words? It's very hard. That's why we have directors that say cut five times or, I joke with Ty as always, 20 times with him, right?
00:41:01But some things we cannot even, even body movement, we don't have English word for some body movements, right? So I think the performance art will always be there, especially in these kind of cases. So, but let's see where we go. I always say it's important that these tools are also built with people in the industry, because if we just let it go on a tech side, it's a very different goal.
00:41:24It's a goal of, let me build a tool that's used by TikTokers in billions in numbers, so I can get higher value for my company, right? I say, we need to build it alongside artist community, because if you put an artist behind building something, they will think about it because they'll think about it from their perspective as well.
00:41:41Ty, one of the things you were saying when we were talking the other day that I've been thinking a lot about since is the question of basically, the upside of these tools is that it gives access to the kind of creative process to more people who, for reasons of money or accessibility or literally where they live in the world, they just couldn't make Hollywood movies, right? Like, Hollywood was a small group of people in a small place that did this stuff. And now we're getting to the point where these tools and these platforms and these audiences are available to many more people.
00:42:10And I think that's awesome. And I think anything that gets us there is really great. Is there a flip side to that? Like, if we democratize all of this stuff and make it all so automated that anybody can use it, I think that's very cool. And also just, it feels like it changes what that stuff is in a way that I haven't quite sorted out in my brain.
00:42:29Well, I think it increases our potential to find original voices. You know, I think what happens when you have a group of people that are surrounded by like-minded individuals, they start to think the same things. It's the same with Hollywood. You know, you have people, you know, in one place, it's a very localized industry. And if you want to get a project greenlit, that's where you have to go. You have to go to the executives that are in Hollywood. And I think...
00:42:51This is why we get 600 Marvel movies every year.
00:42:53That's right. Yeah. So, I think for us, like, you know, that was the real exciting mission with our company. And the exciting potential is that, hey, some, a group of kids growing up in the middle of, you know, some small town in Norway or Kenya can go out and make a science fiction film that, you know, today could only be made in Hollywood and do it on a budget. And that's super exciting for us because we don't know where the next James Cameron or Steven Spielberg is going to come from.
00:43:21You know, and I think giving, you know, thinking even about us, you know, not having a lot of tools growing up, I mean, we would die to have stuff like the tools like this. And I'm not even just saying what we're building, but I think the tools that are coming, you know, this next generation of filmmakers, I do think the biggest potential there is really to discover original voices and, yeah, and to kind of pave a new path for storytelling.
00:43:45And I think Hollywood traditionally prides itself on, you know, stories of inclusivity and trying to recognize certain cultures or people that are maybe misunderstood or underrepresented. And I think the way to truly do that in the best and most authentic way is to really democratize the tools and allow people from all walks of life to go and make these films regardless of their socioeconomical status.
00:44:11Yeah. It also makes me think that maybe rather than, like, you know, your close personal friend, Steven Spielberg, making tons of movies with all of these new tools very soon, what actually might happen is that, like, YouTubers and TikTokers and the people who are making this stuff who have never had access to these kinds of tools at any cost might be able to do this kind of stuff.
00:44:31Like, one thing I've been thinking a lot about is dubbing, which is a thing that AI is all over. Like, text-to-speech is starting to get really good, speech-to-text is starting to get really good. And the idea that you could have something that you make that is actually localized successfully into languages all over the world, I think, is very cool and super exciting.
00:44:50And we're a long way from the tech of that being sort of perfect, but it's already. Like, the stuff that Squid Game was a couple of years ago, where you see their mouth moving and you hear the words and they're obviously different, those two things are coming closer together. And I think that's very cool.
00:45:01Yeah. It's also from an actor's perspective.
00:45:03Wait, wait, wait. You just revealed you watched the US version on Netflix, so the Squid Game's come out.
00:45:07I did. I'm not proud of that.
00:45:08You have to watch the original with subtitles.
00:45:09Listen, I mean...
00:45:10You've got to watch the original with the subtitles.
00:45:12Yeah. I mean, from an actor's perspective, do you really want someone else in some other country dubbing your voice in a foreign language? I mean, I would rather...
00:45:22It's a whole different panel now. We're getting in a whole different panel now.
00:45:25No, I think this is the stuff, yeah.
00:45:27It's a good example. I mean, I think we can recognize where AI is starting to be used in some ways to stay true to the performance of the artist, the original artist. And I think that's awesome.
00:45:40I mean, obviously, I have a biased perspective probably being an actor, but...
00:45:44Well, and again, I've realized a lot of what I'm going to do here is just throw weird tensions at you and make you sort them out in front of me.
00:45:50But the thing that I struggle with on that one is they're doing this a lot with podcasts too, right?
00:45:54And I host a podcast and we get a lot of people who are like, I don't speak English. I would like to listen to your stupid podcast. Can I do that?
00:46:02And there are companies out there that are like, we will automatically dub you into 60 languages.
00:46:06And on the one hand, super cool. On the other hand, I don't know if they're good or I'm going to say what is right.
00:46:13Like, so it sort of crosses this invisible line where I go from like, oh, access is awesome to like, this feels weird because you're now no longer getting the thing that I did.
00:46:23And that somewhere in there, it starts to feel odd.
00:46:26There's definitely those lines. But I think what you were saying earlier is what I think is going to happen, right?
00:46:31I don't think studios are going to have issues. I think what the people don't realize, there's so much sacrifice in every project we see.
00:46:37Turning things from page to screen is really, really hard. There's always a lot of sacrifice that comes from it.
00:46:42So I think studios are just going to keep pushing things higher.
00:46:45But I think indie filmmakers, as you mentioned, like, you know, YouTubers, if you remember the days when, you know, DSLRs came out, right?
00:46:52And you have people who are saying, oh, my God, everybody's going to be able to make a movie now, right?
00:46:58But that doesn't mean those movies were necessarily great, because storytelling is still hard.
00:47:01Coming up with a good story is still extremely hard, right?
00:47:04So we're going to open access with these innovations in AI, right, across the board, which is really exciting.
00:47:10I think what YouTube did, and I always say this, YouTube is a good example of distribution changing, right?
00:47:15So we had open distribution. I think what's happening now with generative AI is that we're changing production.
00:47:22So open production, right?
00:47:23So meaning these kids could come up and express themselves and put it on YouTube.
00:47:27And if they're good, people will like them, they will find them, right?
00:47:29There's billions of people watching it.
00:47:30I think now with production, we're going to have these tools where it was going to be easier, direct line for them to express themselves.
00:47:36But again, there's no guarantee that's good, right, if you go into masses.
00:47:39On the flip side of that, what you were saying, you know, kind of mentioning Marvel movies, it's a hard thing.
00:47:45I understand both sides.
00:47:46It's a really hard thing for studios, because if you spend $250 million, you need to make $500 million to break even, right?
00:47:52And you're spending another hundred probably on marketing, right?
00:47:55So you can't really take a big risk.
00:47:57And I always say, it would almost be impossible to get 2001 Space Odyssey greenlit today.
00:48:03It's too artsy, right?
00:48:04And I think that's what for us was really exciting.
00:48:07Once you get these tools, and you bring the price down, you can take higher risks.
00:48:10And you can make, you know, visually spectacular films that a young audience would want to watch,
00:48:15but make a grounded story, really about the character, push some narrative, push some subject matter that's extremely, extremely important.
00:48:22And if you're not spending $200 million, if you're spending $20 million on each,
00:48:25you can make way more films and employ more artists.
00:48:28When we were talking before, one of you brought up Netflix as another sort of wrench in the engine of like what people think that we make,
00:48:34and how it changes what things were.
00:48:36Like we got different kinds of TV shows, because Netflix existed, and what that platform wanted.
00:48:42So to some extent, do you think AI is just sort of another in this like long series of changes that Hollywood has been going through forever?
00:48:49Or is there something different about AI?
00:48:51I think it's different because of scale.
00:48:53I think it's different because it's going to distribute it as much more.
00:48:57It's not going to be as localized.
00:48:58But I don't know, I'm optimistic.
00:49:00I think the beauty of it, the positive side is that democratization we're talking about.
00:49:05The negative side is like, how much is it going to affect it?
00:49:07But if you look at through history, Hollywood kind of always found its way, right?
00:49:11It always found its way to survive.
00:49:13You know, early days of television, people said movies were over, right?
00:49:17And now that cycle went and kind of repeated itself.
00:49:20Now, you know, 80 years later with the streaming platform, and then it's coming in a slow recovery on that.
00:49:25So I think storytelling finds its way on that.
00:49:28But I do think it's going to be a big shift.
00:49:30A lot of people in production side, especially below the line, a lot of artists below the line.
00:49:35You know, Ty and I talk a lot about like, what if shooting in person is going to be like black and white movies today?
00:49:42You don't see many of them, but you see some, right?
00:49:45But if that happens and going around.
00:49:47So it's interesting.
00:49:48Nobody really has an answer of what that's going to end up being.
00:49:51But yes, again, to repeat, like we've been telling people for three, four years, start learning these things.
00:49:56Start learning these tools.
00:49:57It's the only way to kind of survive through it.
00:50:00I think it's genius out of the bottom.
00:50:02It's really hard to stop some of this research and some of this innovation.
00:50:05So I think, yeah, I think that was the big thing during the strikes that didn't happen.
00:50:09You know, people, there was a lot of controversy.
00:50:12People were saying, oh, AI is either bad or good.
00:50:14And people were jumping on this spectrum on one extreme end or the other.
00:50:18And no one was really coming together to talk about it in an open way and say, hey, let's educate ourselves on this.
00:50:26And I think that's truly what everyone needs to do.
00:50:29It's what the industry needs to do.
00:50:30It's what artists need to do.
00:50:32Artists need to understand exactly how it's going to change the course of their careers.
00:50:36You know, what benefits it poses, what threats it poses to their careers.
00:50:39I think we really, you know, as creators have to come together and really openly educate ourselves on what it means for the future.
00:50:47Do you think there's room to influence that as creatives?
00:50:51I think to some extent that there's a version of that conversation that basically sounds like, you know, we're screwed.
00:50:57The old way is dead.
00:50:58All we can do is just sort of hunker down and try to move forward.
00:51:01But there's another way that says, and I think this is like talking to folks, especially during the writer's strike.
00:51:05There was this question of like, how can we make this better?
00:51:08Like, we agree that there are things that chat GPT can do for scripts that are useful.
00:51:13But we have to do that in a way that also works for us as people who have jobs and do creative work.
00:51:18Like, can we, my worry with a lot of things about AI is that the tech is getting better faster than we are at dealing with it.
00:51:25And so it's just going to sort of leave us behind.
00:51:27And we're going to end up at this place of all we can do is just sort of give up.
00:51:31No, I think it's not getting as fast as you would read online.
00:51:37It's flashy, but practically on film, it's still not completely usable.
00:51:43It'll get there.
00:51:45That's one of the reasons we build it that way, because we knew there's no way you can push every shot just for the AI.
00:51:49You'll get 60% there.
00:51:50So you need to give this data to the artist to be able to manipulate it all the way there.
00:51:53So it's still a bit like, you know, flashiness and excitements.
00:51:57We're kind of seeing it now in a way with some films that I think are dominating the box office.
00:52:02I think, you know, audiences are seeing films that they're not enjoying.
00:52:07And sure, you can argue that that's happened always.
00:52:10But I think ultimately, you know, people will, good stories attract people, you know.
00:52:15And people go and they see a good story and they tell someone about it.
00:52:17And then that person goes and they see it and they tell someone else.
00:52:20And so I don't think that will ever stop, you know.
00:52:23And so if you have, let's say, a studio or a production company or anyone that thinks,
00:52:28oh, we can just use AI and replace everyone.
00:52:31Well, if they're not making good stories, it's not going to matter.
00:52:34These stories won't be successful because they won't connect with people
00:52:37in an emotional, in a real way.
00:52:39And that's what artists are good at.
00:52:40That's why we need artists, you know, regardless of what tools they have.
00:52:44And that's always been true since the dawn of time.
00:52:48Since we've been telling stories.
00:52:49Since we've been, you know, telling stories through art.
00:52:52And I don't think that'll ever change, you know.
00:52:55Thinking about making a movie is like, I don't know, how many people in this room
00:52:58made a hundred million dollar movie?
00:53:00Or made a movie, right?
00:53:02How many people would like to make a movie?
00:53:04Ties to the racism.
00:53:05Just that ties to the racism.
00:53:07But I'm saying if you ask, you know, a really large group of people,
00:53:11how many would like to be able to make a movie?
00:53:13Most people say, oh, that'd be fun.
00:53:15I would like to do that, right?
00:53:16I would like to express my feeling and tell people my story.
00:53:20The amount of people that get to, like, make $150 million movie, it's handful.
00:53:24It's handful of these directors that you get to work.
00:53:26So I think our industry will just grow.
00:53:28Because it's not going to shrink.
00:53:29It will grow.
00:53:30Because it's going to be very, very global.
00:53:32We're talking Hollywood.
00:53:33And I always say, like, storytelling is extremely important.
00:53:37It should not be dependent on your socio-economical status.
00:53:41That's why we started this.
00:53:43And I think that's what's important about AI.
00:53:45But yes, you got to build it responsibly.
00:53:47Otherwise, it can hurt us a long way.
00:53:49Let's just talk about sort of Hollywood more broadly right now.
00:53:52And I'm curious, especially sort of specific AI stuff you're starting to see
00:53:57work its way into how these things get made.
00:53:59We've talked about dubbing a little bit.
00:54:00We've talked about what you're doing at Wonder with the VFX stuff.
00:54:04Are there other things that are starting to sort of appear in the filmmaking process
00:54:08and be part of the conversation in Hollywood
00:54:10that are either cool or early versions of something cool?
00:54:15Yeah.
00:54:15I think Hollywood is, it's odd because it's hypocritical.
00:54:19But Hollywood, I think, is notoriously standoffish to new technology,
00:54:22even though it's an entire industry predicated on the advent of a camera.
00:54:27And then thereafter, new stories and the best movies
00:54:32were making technological advancements.
00:54:34And they wouldn't be possible without those technological advancements.
00:54:36But I think now there are certain decision makers in Hollywood.
00:54:41And I'm not saying it's everyone.
00:54:42But there are a lot of decision makers in Hollywood
00:54:44who know nothing about technology.
00:54:46They know nothing about how visual effects work, really.
00:54:49At a very high level, maybe.
00:54:50But there are people who make a lot of decisions.
00:54:53And I think they don't understand technology at a certain depth.
00:54:57So I think sometimes it's also kind of a risk management business, too.
00:55:02You have thousands of artists working in certain pipelines.
00:55:06You can't just decide to use some AI tool
00:55:10and change that entire pipeline overnight.
00:55:12No one's ever going to go for that.
00:55:13And that's one reason why we built Wonder Studio the way we did
00:55:18so that it plugged in directly to the pipeline
00:55:20that artists were used to, that productions were using.
00:55:23It could actually utilize this tool.
00:55:25It's not a black box, right?
00:55:27So yeah, I think the industry's kind of been battered
00:55:29over the past few years.
00:55:30I mean, I think it's fair to say we had COVID,
00:55:32which was a major dent in the global box office.
00:55:36And then we had the streaming wars.
00:55:38And digital distribution has been,
00:55:41the landscape of digital distribution has been changing.
00:55:43And distribution at large has been changing.
00:55:46And now the strikes and AI.
00:55:47And so it's just, it's kind of, yeah,
00:55:50it's been a rumble tumble past few years.
00:55:53I think people are really trying to understand
00:55:56how can we come out of this?
00:55:58And are we actually on stable ground now?
00:56:01And can we go in green light films?
00:56:03And if so, how much risk can we take?
00:56:05What tools can we utilize?
00:56:06So I think it's really like,
00:56:08we're in a discovery phase right now.
00:56:10And I think people are trying new things.
00:56:11I think people are really starting to test
00:56:13a lot of things behind closed doors.
00:56:15So I do think this will be the year
00:56:17where we really start to see a lot of new use cases.
00:56:20And we've seen a few,
00:56:23but I do think there'll be more significant examples
00:56:26that we'll see in the next year.
00:56:27A lot of the tech is not there yet.
00:56:29A lot of tech is really good to push it to
00:56:32something that you can put on social media.
00:56:34But film's different.
00:56:35You gotta get it up to 8K.
00:56:36It needs to be crisp.
00:56:37And also, we said this kind of age of generative AI
00:56:41has been last year, year and a half.
00:56:42But storytelling and film is all about collaboration
00:56:46and back and forth.
00:56:47Like you turn in your shot to a director or editor
00:56:50and they're gonna give you back notes.
00:56:51And sometimes you're gonna have, they're called passes.
00:56:53Sometimes you're gonna have up to 20 of them
00:56:54and the changes are gonna be so specific, right?
00:56:57And so these generative AI tools
00:56:59just haven't gotten there yet
00:57:00that you can edit the finest pixels of that.
00:57:03And that's the limitation of 2D space
00:57:05a little bit in that side
00:57:06because you can generate something that's really cool,
00:57:08but it's a little bit off.
00:57:09How do I fix it?
00:57:09I think it will get better.
00:57:10Also, we haven't seen really performance.
00:57:12So it hasn't been used.
00:57:13I mean, a lot of these text to video,
00:57:15they don't yet know how to generate performance
00:57:18completely on that side.
00:57:19So I think a lot of filmmakers
00:57:21are still kind of exploring it.
00:57:22So the promise is big,
00:57:24but we're not completely there yet.
00:57:25I read somewhere that actors
00:57:26are starting to put in their contracts
00:57:28that they have to use VFX to make them look
00:57:31however many years younger or remove the lines.
00:57:34It's like there's a budget
00:57:35just for like wrinkle removal on Tom Cruise's face.
00:57:38I can't confirm that.
00:57:41I did used to do that early in my career.
00:57:43There you go.
00:57:43It was just removing people's under eyes
00:57:47and stuff like that.
00:57:48Yeah.
00:57:48But not Tom Cruise.
00:57:49He's ageless.
00:57:50Tom Cruise don't come after me.
00:57:51Yeah, no, never.
00:57:53Okay.
00:57:53So-
00:57:54I thought Tom Cruise was AI.
00:57:57There is an AI.
00:57:59That's metaphysics, right?
00:58:00Yeah, yes.
00:58:01That is.
00:58:01That's true.
00:58:02All right, we're gonna run out of time here soon.
00:58:05So let's take some questions
00:58:05if folks have questions.
00:58:07Hi, can you quantify
00:58:10the access that you're talking about,
00:58:12the democratization?
00:58:13What is the pricing model of your product?
00:58:16And what are the price,
00:58:18the cost savings that you promise your clients
00:58:20when you go in for a pitch
00:58:21and across what tasks?
00:58:23I'm curious about kind of the material benefits
00:58:26of the product.
00:58:27Yeah, no, that's a good question.
00:58:29When I say democratization,
00:58:31I mean AI in general where it's going.
00:58:33We're not saying we're the only player out there
00:58:35that's just gonna democratize the entire-
00:58:37We're just in it for the money.
00:58:39That's a very big promise.
00:58:40I'm talking in AI general.
00:58:42For us, we really see savings up to 60, 70%
00:58:46going in that aspect.
00:58:47The thing that we're really saving people,
00:58:49on production side,
00:58:50you need a lot of this hardware,
00:58:51not just the motion capture suit.
00:58:53You need to track your camera,
00:58:54which is additional hardware.
00:58:55You need all the sensors,
00:58:56which is more price in the hardware.
00:58:58And then in post-production,
00:58:59there's a lot of these monotone tasks
00:59:01that really take weeks sometimes
00:59:03that we brought down to hours on the side.
00:59:06We've seen quite a bit of significant change.
00:59:09Again, it really depends.
00:59:12We just spoke earlier in visual effects,
00:59:13you have something called easy, medium, and hard shots.
00:59:16Usually, when you bid a project,
00:59:17you say, okay, I have 2,000 shots.
00:59:19500 is gonna be easy,
00:59:21about 1,000 is gonna be medium,
00:59:23and then 500 is gonna be hard.
00:59:25What we did is brought down some of those hard
00:59:27to be medium and medium to be easy.
00:59:29That really where the savings come on.
00:59:31What we've seen also,
00:59:32what's really interesting is a lot of our users are-
00:59:35Because our tool goes from $20 a month to $100 a month,
00:59:40so we really build this to be affordable.
00:59:43Traditionally, if you use mocap,
00:59:44sometimes you're gonna spend $30,000 a day to do that.
00:59:47So there's a drastic, drastic change there.
00:59:49But we were talking earlier,
00:59:51it's like our goal is to open it up free as well
00:59:53as a part of that.
00:59:54The only reason, as a startup,
00:59:56you can't do that because these computers,
00:59:58we made it as a web browser so everybody can-
01:00:00Accessibility was a big one for us,
01:00:02so everybody can access it.
01:00:03But that means you have the cloud cost.
01:00:06But I would say cloud's not an actual cloud up there
01:00:08that's free.
01:00:09It's Amazon has a workstation somewhere
01:00:12that you have to pay by the hour, right?
01:00:13So that is a cost on us.
01:00:15Even ChatterJPT, they're spending millions of dollars
01:00:17a second when someone's prompting.
01:00:19Someone's gotta pay for that.
01:00:21So for us as a startup,
01:00:23we picked a route where we're not gonna go out
01:00:26to raise hundreds of millions of dollars
01:00:27just to get higher numbers
01:00:29so we can claim we have hundreds of millions of users, right?
01:00:33We did end up close to a million of users on our platform.
01:00:36But the hard part there is like,
01:00:38okay, we can't open it up yet
01:00:40until we bring the cost down for us
01:00:41so we can make sure that this can run for a long time.
01:00:45Totally.
01:00:45All right, let's do a couple more.
01:00:47Do you guys have any thoughts around the end game
01:00:51for materials being created these days
01:00:54like at the movie theater, for instance?
01:00:56Are we gonna see changes
01:00:58in how we view these new products at some point?
01:01:02It seems like going to the movies
01:01:04has fundamentally changed.
01:01:06I don't know if it was the pandemic or what have you,
01:01:08but now we are at these inflection points
01:01:11with the AI, the new ways that we inhabit spaces.
01:01:15Do you have any thoughts around that?
01:01:17Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah,
01:01:20we'll continue to see that change.
01:01:21You know, will it ever go away entirely?
01:01:23I don't think so.
01:01:24I think people will go to the movies
01:01:26and they may be sitting in a virtual cinema,
01:01:29but they might be watching movies still.
01:01:31I don't think that'll ever go away.
01:01:33I think that's a very special experience,
01:01:34but I do think with new advancements,
01:01:37you know, we will see new mediums
01:01:39that are extremely compelling.
01:01:40I especially think interactive for games
01:01:42is gonna be huge, obviously.
01:01:45Yeah, we'll continue to see new mediums
01:01:46as technology continues to evolve,
01:01:49but I don't know if we'll ever lose, you know,
01:01:51there's gonna be some form of nostalgia of like,
01:01:54well, I love going to see a movie in a theater
01:01:56surrounded by other people on a huge screen.
01:01:58I hope we'll never lose that.
01:02:01I'm wondering if you have a POV
01:02:03on like other industries outside of Hollywood,
01:02:05whether it's like Nollywood or Bollywood,
01:02:07are they embracing AI more
01:02:09and like maybe seeing that as an opportunity
01:02:11to even like skyrocket closer to Hollywood?
01:02:13Yeah, definitely.
01:02:14We've seen like one of our first users
01:02:16have been from Nollywood and different ones
01:02:19and we've seen it definitely happen.
01:02:21To me, that's exciting
01:02:23because I think we'll get more chances
01:02:25because especially in like CG and visual effects,
01:02:28a lot of these smaller markets
01:02:29really wanna do the same thing that Hollywood's doing,
01:02:31but they either didn't have the know-how
01:02:33or the budgets needed to do that, right?
01:02:35Or the production equipment,
01:02:36they just don't have the hardware.
01:02:37Yeah, exactly.
01:02:38So that's where it's really exciting.
01:02:40We've seen it a lot
01:02:42and I think there's a stat somewhere
01:02:44in Nollywood is making more films per month
01:02:47than something about like Hollywood
01:02:49and one more industry combined.
01:02:50Yeah, it's quite fascinating.
01:02:52And if you start looking into it,
01:02:54it's a crazy quantity of it.
01:02:55But again, as you mentioned earlier,
01:02:57like if we have good dubbing and stuff that comes out,
01:02:59we might probably see more of those films, right?
01:03:01Because I always joke,
01:03:03my girlfriend doesn't like to watch films with subtitles,
01:03:05which is again, terrible for me, right?
01:03:08Because I love to watch foreign films.
01:03:10I can't look at my phone and read subtitles at the same time.
01:03:12Yeah, I know, I know.
01:03:13She says she doesn't like to read movies
01:03:16and I just, I can't hear her say that every time.
01:03:19But I do think like a lot of audience
01:03:20actually doesn't like to read subtitles.
01:03:22So if we figure out a way,
01:03:23how do we bring these foreign films more
01:03:25and make people comfortable to watch it,
01:03:28it will help on that side.
01:03:30Yeah, but we have users all over the world
01:03:33from Japan to China, England, Norway,
01:03:37US, Mexico, South America.
01:03:39Yeah, we have users kind of globally.
01:03:41But I think generally outside of our platform,
01:03:44yeah, we're seeing a lot more AI usage on that side.
01:03:47Everybody's trying to figure out.
01:03:48What's exciting is sometimes you see things on YouTube
01:03:51that just some kid came up with a new pipeline.
01:03:53It's extremely promising.
01:03:54And I was like, wow, that's very interesting.
01:03:57If this kid goes out,
01:03:58you could raise $10 million on idea on a startup
01:04:01because this is a really good pipeline.
01:04:03But it's one kid sitting at the computer
01:04:05and researching things.
01:04:06I think that's the exciting part.
01:04:07And we said, it's kind of like equal starting point
01:04:10for everyone.
01:04:11That's the fear of it.
01:04:12But that's also to me, the exciting part of it
01:04:14is meaning like, oh, everybody has a chance
01:04:16to figure out how to do this.
01:04:17And obviously, the traditional kind of gatekeepers
01:04:21will be worried about that.
01:04:22And maybe at some point,
01:04:24maybe those gatekeepers even get replaced by people
01:04:27who are telling better stories,
01:04:29who are coming up with more efficient ways to tell those.
01:04:32And it's better for the world, maybe.
01:04:34Here's hoping.
01:04:35All right, I could talk to you guys about this for hours.
01:04:37And I also didn't ask you a single question
01:04:38about Ready Player One.
01:04:39So you should be grateful.
01:04:40All right, Nikola, this one's for you.
01:04:41We gotta go.
01:04:42Ty, Nikola, thank you so much for doing this with me.
01:04:44It's really fun.
01:04:45Thank you.
01:04:45Of course, thanks for having us.
01:04:46Thanks, everyone.
01:04:46All right, we gotta take one more break.
01:04:50And then we'll be back to do a question
01:04:51from the First Cast Hotline.
01:04:53We'll be right back.
01:05:03We're back.
01:05:03Let's get to the hotline.
01:05:04As always, the number is 866-VERGE-11.
01:05:07And the email is vergecast at theverge.com.
01:05:10We love all your questions.
01:05:10And we try to answer at least one on the show every week.
01:05:13Thank you, by the way, to everybody
01:05:15who keeps reaching out about the Books Palma.
01:05:17That is like the most intriguing device
01:05:19according to the Verge Cast Hotline in a long time.
01:05:21I'm getting one.
01:05:23And I'm going to have a lot to say
01:05:24with Alex on this show very soon.
01:05:26Get ready.
01:05:27This week, we have a question from Brayden.
01:05:30Hey, David, this is Brayden from Utah.
01:05:32Why has iMessage not improved?
01:05:36I mean, I remember when iOS 10 happened
01:05:39and Game Pigeon was a thing where you could play games
01:05:42through iMessage with your friends.
01:05:44It was the coolest thing.
01:05:46And I still play Game Pigeon games with my friends
01:05:49and family to this day.
01:05:50But I remember in 2016, that's eight years ago,
01:05:53I was like, dang, this is cool now.
01:05:56But think of the things people will make with this,
01:05:59how there will be other things to do in iMessage.
01:06:03And currently, the list has not grown at all.
01:06:07It is Game Pigeon, GIFs, and then weird apps
01:06:11that want to be in your messages that don't belong there.
01:06:13And it's just like, don't you feel like iMessage
01:06:16held more promises and just hasn't fulfilled?
01:06:19Does the Verge cast play Game Pigeon games together?
01:06:22What are your thoughts?
01:06:23I want to hear them.
01:06:25This is actually something I've done a lot of reporting about
01:06:27over the last couple of years,
01:06:28not necessarily with iMessage specifically,
01:06:31but with messaging apps in general.
01:06:33And I think you can look at the whole world
01:06:35of messaging apps to kind of answer the question.
01:06:38So the thing that turns out to be true about messaging apps
01:06:41is that A, you can't really build a business
01:06:44on a messaging app.
01:06:45There's just no real evidence that lots of people
01:06:48will pay you lots of money
01:06:50for a way to talk to their friends, right?
01:06:52Like the idea of a texting app
01:06:54is so commoditized at this point
01:06:56that there's really no business to be had there.
01:06:59So if you're a messaging company,
01:07:01let's say Snapchat or WhatsApp or Telegram
01:07:05or iMessage in this case,
01:07:07you have to figure out a way to be successful
01:07:10that isn't just messaging, right?
01:07:13If you and I messaging each other
01:07:15is never going to be a business,
01:07:16and I believe that it's not,
01:07:18you have to figure out something else to do.
01:07:19So you essentially have two options.
01:07:21You can either try to build stuff around messaging,
01:07:24which is like what Snapchat does
01:07:27with things like Snapchat Originals and Spotlight
01:07:30and all the creator stuff that they've been doing.
01:07:32And stories, frankly, is a way around messaging stuff
01:07:36so that you come to the app to do messaging
01:07:38and you stay to do everything else.
01:07:41And that's where all the money is, right?
01:07:42That's essentially what WeChat is.
01:07:44WeChat's whole idea was to build an entire universe
01:07:48around the place that people go
01:07:49to communicate with their friends.
01:07:51That's a real business.
01:07:52You can do it.
01:07:53It's a tricky thing to get right from a UI perspective.
01:07:55I think Snap has been through this
01:07:57in a bunch of complicated ways,
01:07:59trying to say, okay, you came here for a messaging app.
01:08:01How do we get you into all of the things
01:08:03that we can do to make money?
01:08:05But that is one way to do it.
01:08:07That's also, I would say, what WhatsApp is doing
01:08:09with things like business messaging.
01:08:11WhatsApp is really interested in getting you
01:08:13to get menus or business hours
01:08:17or things like that through WhatsApp.
01:08:18That's a thing people are doing kind of informally anyway.
01:08:21And they would really, really, really like
01:08:23to bring that into the WhatsApp ecosystem.
01:08:26That's also a way they can make money.
01:08:27They can charge businesses for those services.
01:08:29They can take a portion of money
01:08:31that gets moved around inside of these things.
01:08:33But again, all of this is kind of ancillary
01:08:35to this is where you message your friends.
01:08:38The other way to do it is to try to figure out a way
01:08:41to insert experiences into the place
01:08:43where you message with your friends.
01:08:45And this is where it gets really messy.
01:08:48I think about like Google Allo
01:08:50is probably the best example of this.
01:08:52If you remember that, this messaging app
01:08:53Google made from years ago.
01:08:55And its big idea was that you could bring an AI system
01:08:59at that time, Google Assistant
01:09:01into your chat with your friends.
01:09:03So you could say, we're planning to go to dinner
01:09:06or we're planning to go to the movies.
01:09:08Let's buy movie tickets.
01:09:09And you could actually buy movie tickets
01:09:11inside of your chat with your friends.
01:09:14Cool idea in theory.
01:09:16I think this is also where things like games
01:09:18like Brayden is talking about,
01:09:19or this idea that we can have experiences together
01:09:22inside of our chat window seems cool.
01:09:25Emphasis on seems.
01:09:27In reality, this ends up being a pain.
01:09:30It's very hard for these apps to find a way
01:09:32to sort of insert themselves or add these services
01:09:35or even make you aware of these services
01:09:37without getting in the way
01:09:38of just you talking to your friends.
01:09:40And if you think about it,
01:09:41the idea of screwing up your chat interface
01:09:44with your friends is like totally untenable.
01:09:47People just won't do it, right?
01:09:48You get to the point where I wanna have messages
01:09:51back and forth with my friends.
01:09:52And if you change that or screw it up, disaster.
01:09:56And I think in a funny way,
01:09:57Apple has been trying to almost do it
01:10:01without fully doing it for a really long time.
01:10:03There was the iMessage app store
01:10:05where you could send stuff,
01:10:06but that had an incredible discovery problem.
01:10:08Like most people I don't think
01:10:10knew the iMessage app store existed.
01:10:12It was buried in a menu in the iOS keyboard
01:10:16when you were in iMessage.
01:10:17That didn't really work.
01:10:18Now there's this new menu where you can send stuff
01:10:21that works a little bit better,
01:10:22but that menu is really slow and kind of awkward.
01:10:25But I think what Apple would really like to do
01:10:27is make messages a full-on internet platform
01:10:31in a very real way.
01:10:33You should be able to send somebody a link to tic-tac-toe
01:10:37and it just expands and you can play tic-tac-toe
01:10:40inside of the iMessage window right there
01:10:42without ever leaving the app.
01:10:43If you think about it right now,
01:10:44a lot of this stuff is just links, right?
01:10:46Like if I wanna play a game with you,
01:10:47I send you a link, you tap on the link
01:10:49and we go play the game.
01:10:50That's actually a pretty good user experience.
01:10:52So to bring that into the messaging system
01:10:55is a pretty tall order.
01:10:56And to do it in a way that doesn't disrupt anything else
01:10:59or threaten to take your data
01:11:01or break encryption in these encrypted messaging apps,
01:11:04it's just hard.
01:11:05People want private messaging,
01:11:06they want simple messaging
01:11:07and they wanna be able to talk to their friends.
01:11:09And to add things to that is borderline impossible.
01:11:12That said, they're gonna keep trying.
01:11:15They are just going to keep trying.
01:11:16There are too many people spending too much time
01:11:19in messaging apps for these companies
01:11:20to not try and find ways to insert themselves.
01:11:23And so you'll see more stuff like this,
01:11:25that inside of things like Slack and Discord,
01:11:28you're already starting to see
01:11:29these fuller web-like experiences
01:11:32you can have just inside of a chat window.
01:11:35I think that's where we're headed in certain ways,
01:11:37but I also think that's gonna make basic messaging apps
01:11:41like Signal and WhatsApp and frankly iMessage
01:11:44all the more valuable to people
01:11:45because that's where you go to just talk.
01:11:47And that is like the main thing
01:11:49we wanna do on the internet.
01:11:50Think about how annoying Gmail ads are.
01:11:53You're like, I just wanna look at my emails
01:11:54and you're showing me a bunch of ads
01:11:56at the top of my inbox for some reason.
01:11:57Add that to your text messages with friends and family,
01:12:01which are even more intimate and even more important,
01:12:03and that just sucks.
01:12:04People will run away from that.
01:12:06And if you're Apple, again, iMessage is one of the core things
01:12:10that keeps people using iPhones.
01:12:13Being a blue bubble is a very important thing.
01:12:15And so if you make people hate iMessage
01:12:17to the point where they'll start using WhatsApp,
01:12:19that's a huge, huge risk for Apple.
01:12:21So Apple is in this tricky spot,
01:12:23just like everybody who makes a messaging app,
01:12:24of saying, messaging is so important,
01:12:26we wanna build a business out of it.
01:12:28It's where people are, it's what people wanna do.
01:12:30But if we do it even slightly wrong,
01:12:33people will run away and that kills a huge amount
01:12:36of any kind of moat and advantage
01:12:38that we have to keep people in.
01:12:40That tension mostly means we get to keep
01:12:43our simple, good messaging apps,
01:12:45but that tension may not last forever.
01:12:47And I think it's gonna be really interesting
01:12:49because it is abundantly clear to everyone who makes an app
01:12:53that if you can get people to message inside of it,
01:12:55they will live inside of your app
01:12:57and that becomes very powerful.
01:12:58You don't wanna screw it up,
01:12:59but it's a powerful thing to have going for you.
01:13:01So we'll see.
01:13:02I would bet we're gonna see a lot more experimentation
01:13:06inside of these apps,
01:13:07especially these kind of just outside of messaging things
01:13:11where like I can send you a game
01:13:14in the way that I send you a GIF
01:13:16or I can send you an interactive poll
01:13:18inside of a group chat.
01:13:19That's the kind of stuff that's already coming to WhatsApp.
01:13:22And I think you'll start to see that in more places.
01:13:24But I sort of hope we never get
01:13:26these like massively interactive full web experiences.
01:13:30I do not need a chat bot in my messaging system.
01:13:33I just don't.
01:13:34This thing where you can talk to an AI chat bot
01:13:37like you talk to a person, fine.
01:13:39Do not put an AI bot in my group chats,
01:13:42Meta, Apple, Google, whoever else.
01:13:44I don't want that.
01:13:45I don't think anybody does,
01:13:47but they're probably gonna do it.
01:13:48We'll see.
01:13:50All right.
01:13:51That is it for the Verge cast today.
01:13:52Thanks to everybody who came on the show.
01:13:53And thank you as always for listening.
01:13:55There's lots more on everything we talked about
01:13:57at theverge.com.
01:13:58We'll put a bunch of Lauren's stuff into the show notes.
01:14:01She's been covering all of these privacy bills really well.
01:14:03But also just read theverge.com.
01:14:05There's a lot going on right now.
01:14:07And we are also running headlong
01:14:09into developer conference season
01:14:11with Google and Microsoft and Apple.
01:14:13Stuff's about to get nuts.
01:14:15As always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings,
01:14:17or wanna ban TikTok,
01:14:19you can always email us at vergecastattheverge.com
01:14:22or call the hotline 866-VERGE11.
01:14:24We truly love hearing from you.
01:14:26Also, again, the book's Palma.
01:14:27If you wanna know about the book's Palma,
01:14:29send us questions.
01:14:30I think we're gonna have to do a whole big thing on it
01:14:33on this show because I'm getting the clear sense
01:14:35that y'all are interested.
01:14:36So if you have questions, keep them coming.
01:14:38This show is produced by Andrew Marino,
01:14:40Liam James, and Will Poore.
01:14:41The Verge cast is a Verge production
01:14:43and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
01:14:45Eli, Alex, and I will be back on Friday
01:14:47to talk about the Rabbit R1,
01:14:49all the other news in tech,
01:14:50and all of our feelings about everything.
01:14:52We'll see you then.
01:14:53Rock and roll.

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