Big Technology Podcast - Satya Nadella’s OpenAI Concerns, Google’s Next AI Model, The AI Monet Prank

Episode Date: May 15, 2026

Join us for the Big Technology AI Summit on June, 18, 2026. Get your tickets here: summit.bigtechnology.com.... Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) Satya Nadella criticizing his OpenAI partnership 2) Did Microsoft play the OpenAI deal right? 3) AI native vs. bold on debate 4) Which big tech company will rank No. 1 in AI? 5) Bill Ackman buys Microsoft 6) OpenAI and Apple are on the outs 7) Claude for Small Business is here 8) What's coming up at Google IO 9) The Great 'AI Monet' Prank 10) Alright, alright, alright --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack + Discord? Here’s 25% off for the first year: https://www.bigtechnology.com/subscribe?coupon=0843016b Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Microsoft CEO Satya Nandela's emails and text messages reveal a serious concern with his OpenAI partnership. Google has a new AI model coming. Is it going to compete with Codex and ClaudeCode code? And is this Monet AI that's coming up on a big technology podcast Friday edition right after this? Insurance isn't one size fits all. And shopping for it shouldn't feel like squeezing into something that just doesn't fit. That's why drivers have enjoyed progressives name your price tool for years. With the Name Your Price Tool, you tell them what you want to pay, and they show you options that fit your budget.

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Visit Aboard.com to get your AI rollout right. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday edition, where we break down the news in our traditional cool-headed and nuanced format. We have a great show for you today. We're going to go deep into the documents coming out of the Musk v. Altman trial, in specific, looking at Zatian Ndela voicing his control. about the Open AI partnership in a very revealing email. We're also going to talk about Google's forthcoming AI model that is the company is planning to reveal at Google I.O. next week.

And we will determine whether this Monet is AI or not and how people react depending on the originator of the art, human or machine. Joining us, as always, on Fridays to do it is Ron John Roy of margins. Ron John, great to see you. Good to see you, Alex. I feel this might be a Satya week here at a big technology. It sure is because, you know, one of the, we'll see what happens with this case with Musk and Altman and whether the verdict is consequential or not, but certainly the documents coming out of the case are consequential and give us a great view into the strategy around these companies' partnerships and where the value is found along the chain in the AI ecosystem. So, you know, last week we talked a little bit about the interpersonal dynamics. Ranchin and I read this text thread between Miramir Rati and Sam Altman.

This week, we'll just go right into the business side of things because Sadi, in a way that you rarely see from a leader of a Silicon Valley company, basically spells out the exact dynamics of his partnership with Open AI and why he was a little bit dissatisfied with it. Here's what he says in an email. Here's what Sotya says. Overall, I want us to own the Silicon Infra, foundational model IP, and know-how. Right now we are a very thin layer on top of Nvidia and the IP is with OpenAI. And we have a P&L that will lose $4 billion next year.

I have not seen anything like this in my 30 years in our industry. I can justify it all by saying that Open AI has smart people and Nvidia has lock and et cetera. But if we're going to spend this kind of money and not have control of destiny, it makes no sense. Better to be an investor and not take all this execution risk. I have thought through this email over the course of the week since it's been revealed. I mean, it's fascinating that Nadella is very clear that his company does not have the IP.

And so therefore, what they are is this layer on top of Nvidia that is effectively serving the compute to people using IP he doesn't own. Which is the other side of the, you know, the praise he's been getting, right? That he praise he had been getting by being the company that had locked down OpenAI. invested in them and had right to their IP. So what did you think of the fact that Sadia is framing this this way internally? Is he wrong? Do you think he's wrong? Because I actually think my favorite part of this is I feel there's some tech leaders. You get a kind of, we all know what they're thinking in general. And then there's those who are just so savvy that they keep it close to the chest. And this is one of the first times. I think I'm getting a genuine look as to how Satchie Nadella really

thinks. And again, he was prescient on this. I mean, he recognized exactly where they were, where the shortcoming was that. And I love that better to be an investor and not even take all this execution risk. So he recognized this idea of like the more partnership element as opposed to just the pure investor element was a major risk to the direction Microsoft was going. And I think we're going to get more into where Microsoft is today in just a bit, but he saw it coming. Satya, Satya is king. Disagree. Strong disagree.

In fact, I'm quite disappointed in the way that Sadia has approached this. So let me put it to you this way, right? If you think about where you get value in this value chain of AI, it is building the foundational models and selling the intelligence, right? It's building the compute and selling the compute that powers the intelligence and then building the applications. And though I've always been on the side of the model is more important, there's actually real value in the applications. And I think that with the open AI deal, Microsoft had this inside track to have the best AI applications because they required, I would say, the best intelligence builder, which, you know, had been the case up until maybe a few months ago. They had the lock in there.

They had a requirement from OpenAI to work with them. They also had the lock-in in terms of people that wanted to work with OpenAI through an API. They would have to do that through Microsoft's cloud offering through Azure. And instead of exploiting that advantage and finding a way to take Open AI's technology and make Microsoft's applications the best business applications in the world, you know, he, this seems to me like a small-minded way, and excuse me, I understand. I'm not the CEO of a top five company in the world, so, you know, understand I'm in the peanut gallery.

But that being said, I still think I'm entitled to some criticism, to the position to be able to make some criticism here. And this seems so small-minded. I mean, Satya's the guy who brought growth mindset to Microsoft. Is this growth mindset? Well, I do like that you just possibly came up with the greatest ridiculous branding for the entire Microsoft Office Suite, which is the best damn business applications in the world. I don't think I've ever heard anyone anywhere ever actually refer to the Microsoft Office Suite as that. That was the potential, but they didn't achieve the potential, even with this leg up over everybody.

I still, I think they should lean into it and they should take it. And that's the entire new branding campaign. but I think the best damn business applications in the world. But I think, no, no, okay, that's fair. I do agree they had a bit of kind of like competitive moat around how Open AI gets deployed across the entire enterprise, basically anyone who would ever use Microsoft Azure. But like what would they have done differently, though? Like they already had those kind of advantages. So what do you think actually should have happened?

That they kind of stepped on, like they kind of like were much more aggressive with OpenAI that this is the way things will work. When that AWS partnership starts, they kind of go hard at them. They integrate. Remember Bing? Bing had the first Open AI direct access. They actually invested in that. Like what would have been the move? Right.

Well, I think first of all, I think the personalities in this part. partnership have let it down the wrong path, right? And maybe you could blame Open AI on this and we'll certainly get to Open AI's relationship problems with Apple in a moment. And it does seem like Open AI ends up having relationship problems with everybody it works with. So I'm not saying it's entirely on Microsoft, but there were reports of Microsoft getting frustrated with Open AI and, you know, maybe Open AI was holding back some IP.

but like ultimately you have this inside track. Use open AI technology in its fullest capacity to change the way your products work and make them AI first. They didn't do that. And in fact, the Bing situation is almost the perfect example. You know, Bing for a time when you and I were Bing boys for newer listeners, I don't know if you remember this,

or you probably weren't present, but Ronchin and I were, we were such fans of Bing when it was, when it integrated chat GPT or the GPT models, We called herself Bing Boys. Bing Boys. We actually referred to herself that way. For a hot second. Think about that.

I don't even look at it in a shameful way. I'm proud to have been a Bing boy. We were on the cutting edge and so was Microsoft. Until some weird stuff happened with Kevin Ruse at the New York Times where he cracked Bing. It made itself bad Sidney. Tried to take him away from his wife. And then what happened to Bing?

Microsoft put the... It lobotomized the thing, I think, right? and took the personality away. So I think you have to be a little bit more risk-tolerant than they were because, of course, they have this big enterprise business roster of customers that they've sold security and stability and safety for forever, which has been a good process. And they're not risk-tolerant.

And you have to be risk-tolerant when a new paradigm shift changes. And it feels to me like a squandered opportunity. I just can't get over. the fact that Microsoft had this, you know, unbelievable advantage in the bag. And what is it done with it? Nothing. Okay. It's got a 27% stake in OpenAI and otherwise it's completely squandered this advantage.

No, no, you're right. You're right. I'm going to have to agree with you because thinking back to that time and this is at a time when Anthropic was barely a whisper in the wind and like, I mean, that was it was this 2024, like you have Google just going, you know, code red, reorganizing the entire company. We've theorized that maybe Sundar's McKinsey Chops helped him kind of, you know, like completely reoriented the entire company towards AI, make changes. They launch and actually build one of the cutting end state of the art foundation models,

start integrating it into all their products. Meanwhile, you're right, Microsoft had the technology. And instead, there's co-pilot, Copilot Studio, GitHub co-pilot. Now GitHub Copilot is not, or even Microsoft is cutting back-clod code licenses they're supporting and forcing people to use GitHub copilot. Like, you're right. At an organizational level, they had this advantage and they didn't do anything dramatic with it. Yeah, I mean, I think some credits aside yet because in the same breath, he seems to have acknowledged this. He says, I want to spend the money.

The infer needs to have a proprietary edge. And we need to have a foundational model team that is self-sufficient at all time and has the knowhow of taking what Open AI does and productizing it. As long as we have an internal org investment model open AI deal terms that all composed to achieve these two goals, we can take all kinds of other risk around monetizing. etc. I think today, standing where we are today, even though Azure has grown 40% a quarter, which is absurd, I guess until you start to think that

Google's grown 62% a quarter, albeit on a smaller base. But Satya knew where they needed to go, and they still haven't gone there. I mean, now that I'm reading this, again, you're right. Like, he saw the danger. He saw what they needed to do

and they didn't. But again, this is classic, you know, like the disruption difficulty of trying to understand which direction you go when you have these cash flow very positive businesses, very profitable businesses when I guess the stock, you know, has kind of reflected that that lack of growth is kind of like assumed by the market. But yeah, he saw where it was going. They had the advantage and they didn't do anything about it is what seemed. to be coming out of this. And if anyone should have known better on this, it would be Satya Nadella, who came up in Microsoft through the company's server and tools division,

which was selling. He ran that division when it was mostly selling on-prem servers and was like, hey guys, this might be our bread and butter, but we should probably do the cloud, right? Even though nobody in Microsoft wanted to do that. But he understood that. Maybe you do sacrifice a little bit of current gain and current revenue and profitability. to be ready for the future. And of course, that is certainly what underpinned his desire to get

involved with Open AI. But it is just at the last mile, sometimes it's really hard to, you know, sort of make that move. This is a reminder at that scale, what these leaders work with. You can, you are the CEO. You see the future. You have seen the future in the past. You're even making some bets that you can just sign and you get to make that bet like the investment in open AI. But even your own organization, it is very difficult and unwieldy to actually kind of change things or drive it in the right direction. It's just a good reminder of how big these organizations are. This brings me back to the end of the year last year when I was sitting with Sam Altman and speaking with him about Google. And Google's, you know, driving Open AI into a code.

bread and what his strategy was to win against Google. And he told me, he goes, basically, there's a difference between products that are AI native and products that you bolt AI onto. And I believe that AI native products will win. And therefore, Google bolting AI onto its existing products will lose. And that sentence could have easily been said and maybe even more accurately be said about Microsoft compared to Open AI. And I wonder if that was in the back of his mind. Wait, did he was referring to, this was in December, right? Correct. Yeah.

So that is interesting. Do you think Google's is bolting on AI products or building AI native products? And I know Gemini and Workspace versus Gemini, but I still versus Microsoft certainly, Google has a more AI native field away, even ask questions and maps. even, again, we've talked about this at length, that Gemini and Gmail still kind of sucks, but like they still feel more AI native than Microsoft. Yes, right. Well, that's why that's kind of the way I was framing it, which is that that sentence could apply to Google, but it really applies to Microsoft.

Yeah. Okay, okay. All right, Sam. All right, Sam. Give you that one. And of course, I think I was just speaking with an investor this week who mentioned something that open AI, something like Open AI. valuation hasn't changed in eight months over the private markets while Anthropics has gone up

3x. And that it brings us really to like, where is Microsoft in the public market right now? Right. So Microsoft is down 9.96% on the year to date in the markets while the S&P is up by like 7 or 8% right. So Microsoft's deeply trailing the market. Maybe it's because of this. Maybe it's because of its association with Open AI, which hasn't done much on the private markets as Anthropic has grown. But let's go with the barometer of all great financial decisions, Bill Ackman.

This is from the Wall Street Journal and Ranjan, I want to get your perspective on this. Bill Ackman's Pershing Square bets on Microsoft AI ambitions with a new stake. Bill Ackman's taken a new stake in Microsoft to bet that the software giant's investments in AI aren't reflected in the company's slumping share prices. Ackman said that Pershing had started building

at the position in Microsoft in February after the company's share shares declined following its earnings report. We will disclose a new position in Microsoft and that it is now a core holding. You know, I think this is an important data point to bring up because every time we have had one of these discussions of a company, you know, completely out to lunch on an AI transition, we've actually, you know, seen many of them turn around very, very quickly. And I could say with Google, right? The narrative was Google was done. Google is obviously not done. With Apple, the narrative was like Apple is a legacy company or toast.

Obviously, some of their bets can arguably be seen as good ones. What do you think about Microsoft and does Ackman have a point here? I think he has a point in terms of just being deeply entrenched. But I do think the risk Microsoft faces here is, is, again, like, there's been plenty of reporting around customers, especially like the AI offerings within co-pilot not converting to or converting at a much smaller scale. Again, Azure's growth is definitely kind of protecting them in the transition period.

But you have both sides that you are everywhere. Everyone uses you. That's good. You should be much more able from a distribution standpoint to actually kind of take whatever's happening in the market and be able to kind of. of, you know, like transform that into your product and then actually get it out to users, but they haven't yet. And they've had, again, now that, I mean, they haven't, even when they had the advantage

of that access to Open AI and when others didn't. So the idea that it's going to be different going forward is, it's a risky bet. But as you said, like, things change so quickly. and even again, these gigantic corporations actually moving quickly in something that we had not seen in a long, long time. I think, or like could never have imagined in the industrial age that like the most, you know, the biggest conglomerates actually being the innovators. So they still, you can't write them off in any way. But the fact that it's Bill Ackman, and I do like the reporting had, now like, like, Ackman, offered it a highly compelling or acman said in the more than 800 word post and anyone who's

ever seen an acman tweet knows exactly what they're talking about yeah i'm glad he was succinct on this one but i think i think it's an interesting bet yeah i'll say this in microsoft's defense i've heard multiple people say that the co-pilot uh integrations within uh outlook and other Microsoft products are actually getting pretty good and are quite useful. So I think when you have that install base and you do, it's not like they're completely ignoring it, they're bringing it in. You know, you can be the sort of brand of choice for a lot of people just by an object in motion, stays in motion. It's May 15th, December 31st, give me your power rankings, Apple, Microsoft, meta and Google and Amazon.

Throw them all in there. All right. Right now I feel there's, from a pure, like, let's just talk about AI, I have to think Google is number one. Google's one for me. Yeah. Yeah. I would say number two is a tough one.

You can either have like the Azure business and it's AI division. You can have Alexa Plus, I guess, or Amazon's internal or root. actually Amazon's doing interesting stuff specific to their own business, not really in like a consumer sales standpoint. Meta is doing meta stuff. That is my dark horse for number two. I'm just going to say it. I think that, you know, they have the GPUs. They have the talent. They released a respectable model. And they have the distribution. Yep, they're the company. I have distribution. And they're the company that seems like, it has the most to lose here, if that makes sense. Like these other companies, Apple will still sell iPhones. What do you mean by then? Well, I think Apple will still sell iPhones if, you know,

AI doesn't pan out for them. Could be like maybe they won't have the same growth on like the next line of hardware, but Apple's going to be okay. Meta, I don't know. The leadership of the company is all in on this front. Mark Zuckerberg and Alexander Wang are sitting next to each other trying to build us

super personalized super intelligence and if they mess up, they're an afterthought in the tech world. They got to get it right. Okay. I kind of wanted to go out on a limb and give Apple a new. Actually, do you think anyone takes over from Google out of the Big Five?

If you're suggesting that Apple might be able to, I don't think I agree with that because they're building on top of Gemini. Absolutely not. Right now, no. I don't think so. I mean, if you think of it, about it. Okay. So Google has the advantage of having this proprietary tech

within its company. It has the advantage of being able to being deeply partnered with Anthropic. I think Google Cloud is going to start selling open AI models within the next couple months based off of, you know, just kind of a hunch, right? So they're going to be the infrastructure layer that enables all three

big models. They're going to have their own system. They're going to make, by the way, I don't know if you've seen this, but the AI integrations within Google products are starting to get really good. So they are going to have this native set of products. I'm going to go ask the question in Gmail. When was the first email to my wife's email address?

That's our next AGI test. Don't get ahead of yourself. It's probably not going to happen anytime soon. But some of these other ones are really getting good. And I see it on the back end with like business tools within YouTube, where you can like kind of talk to YouTube now. And it will take a look at your data and give you real excellent insights. And so I think, yeah, I think it's going to be tough to displace Google.

All right. Well, look, you know, we will follow that story before we end this segment around, John. Can we do one more dramatic reading of the text messages coming out in this court case? I think we have to in honor of Satya. Okay, great. Sotia Week here. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we will now do a dramatic reading of Kevin Scott, the CTO of Microsoft, positioning himself to join the Open AI board.

All right. So I will be Kevin Scott, CTO of Microsoft. Kevin says, I can quit for six months and do it. Ready to be downloaded by Sadia on this one and not really serious. Very big, wide smiling face emoji. Satya comes in, disliked. That's the whole thing, just to dislike. I was even going to, I was actually practicing my Satya accent.

he actually sounds a lot like my dad. He has like, you've been in the U.S. for a long time. There's kind of like little trip-ups, Ws for V's, Indian accent, but he doesn't even have to say anything, just disliked. Thumbs down. And then Kevin Scott responds with a smiling face that's crying, laughing emoji. I mean, this is interesting. Let me just run this by you before we go to break,

which is that like I've been back and forth all week about whether Kevin Scott handled this the right way. Clearly he wanted to join opening eyes board. Maybe he wanted something even more. I don't know. And, you know, when you're playing internal politics, you always want to give your boss like an out, I think, if you make a big ask. And the out that he gives, Satya is ready to be downfoded on this one and not really serious. Like, if you're not really serious, why I mention it. But like, I kind of think he, if you wanted to do this, which he clearly did, he should have just asked for it.

What do you think Rajan? Do you think he wanted to do it? Or do you think, I don't know, hold on. Let me step back a second. My favorite part of these trials, I still remember on the Twitter acquisition trial. And that was even a different kind of type of person where like Jason Calcanus and others would kind of like grovel at Elon Musk. And then he would just send like a thumbs down or a thumbs up or a smiling face reaction to me. You have the CTO and CEO of Microsoft, and they're just like us.

They communicate like teenagers. Smiley face. He's not even responding just a thumbs down reaction, crying, laughing emoji. That's the whole conversation of these masters of the universe, and that's it. Yeah. I mean, it's not like he's going to send like a 15-page memo on such a suggestion. You know what? I want my...

You want the memo. Five trillion dollar tech CEOs. Maybe write like old-timey English letters to each other. Just communicate. Not the crying laughing emoji. Save that for the rest of us. Be above us. Be above us.

Just go back and answer my question, though. Do you think that he should have just come out and said, put me on the board? I don't like this wishy-washy stuff. And he didn't get a deal. I don't think he wanted to do it. I think like... Why even say it then?

I mean, just to be like, I don't know, just that I want to do it, but I don't really want to do it, but I know I might be asked to do it. I don't know. I think, why do you think he's going this direction? I think he really wants to do it. It's kind of like when you ask out somebody who you think is pretty and you're like, hey, you want to grab drinks on Saturday. Ha ha, not really serious, you know, winky face. I don't know. I don't know if you went through that phase, but I certainly did. And, you know, maybe this is me just coming back and saying, God damn it, just ask her. Just ask. Oh, man, that was painful to hear red out loud. Not serious, winky emoji. I still don't think he was fully trying to think, like, go for it.

I still think that they're just kind of hanging out. They're just, you know, shooting the shit, making decisions. making decisions that will kind of shape the entire future of the entire technology industry, sending some emojis. Well, anyway, he didn't get the date. So that's, I think, the moral of the story. All right. One last bit here.

I know I said we're going to go to break, but we're not. We're going to talk about this Open AI and Apple Alliance, right? This is from Bloomberg. Apple Open AI Alliance phrase, setting up a possible legal fight. Apple's two-year-old partnership with Open AI has become strained, according to people familiar with the matter with the AI. with the AI startup failing to see the expected benefits from the deal and now preparing possible legal action. Open AI lawyers are actively working with an outside legal firm on a range of options that could be formally executed in the near future.

That could include sending the iPhone maker a notice allegedly breach of contract. And OpenAI believed that the company's partnership, which wove chat chip ETT into Apple software would coax more users in subscribing to the chatbot. it also expected deeper integration with more Apple apps and prime placement within the Siri assisted. Instead, Apple uses Open AI. Apple's use of Open AI's technology across its operating system remains limited and features can be hard to find. I don't know.

Isn't it the ultimate sign of weakness to sort of sue your partners for not featuring you enough? Well, okay. Okay. So I loved this story and I loved it because my first reaction to it is clearly like, yeah, How can you sue them? Like, okay, it didn't work out. Just move on.

It was a partnership. And even there was like a moment I remember we talked about it might be disadvantageous to Open AI. If people start kind of cranking out searches and using tokens but don't fully understand that they're using ChatGPT or OpenAI, even if Siri says, let me ask ChatGPT. But then what I want this to be for no other reason and please that the folks at OpenAI or when you're talking to Greg Brockman and June 18th at the Big Technology Summit. Please tell me that this lawsuit was because the ChatsyPT integration into Siri was one of the single worst product experiences I have ever seen. It was so clunky bad that like if a series A startup put out something like that, I would be ashamed of it. And it was just so, so bad.

I don't know if you remember like, it wouldn't even. give you the full answer that chat chpT would. It would give you this truncated answer. You had to take this extra step. There's so like you again, you just opened the chat chepti app and it was a lot better. So my hope is open AI was actually insulted at what Apple did with their model and their product. And that's why they're suing. I mean, that would be, I mean, that's what the article it seems to imply. Open AI, man. Like, why do you keep getting into these fights? How many partners have they had where they end up like you get these stories where they're drafting legal paperwork. You know what?

They are saying you devalued our product so horrifically with that chat TPT integration into Siri. That's what they're saying. And no one, we want to set legal integration. We want to set legal precedent for the entire tech industry that no one can ever make such a terrible integration again anywhere or you will face legal consequence. That's what they're saying. Oh my God. That's hilarious. I mean, I just remember being at WWDC and the like all the rage was that Apple made a big deal about it. Apple made a huge deal about it and it was garbage. I think Ron John. Ron John here is also setting his own precedent. If you keep messing up Siri Apple, he will you will savage you here on the show.

Let's make that agreement to Apple. If you fix Siri, I will sing your praises, but we're not there yet. And this is just going to kind of live in the annals of history as one of the single worst product integrations of all time, if not the worst. If not the worst. All right. Before we go to break, I do want to thank our listeners. We've been getting a lot of really great feedback from you, not always agreeing with us. but I want to say if you've been sending emails or LinkedIn posts, I've read every one of them.

And, you know, it's been a crazy couple weeks. Not always able to respond, but I have read. I'm taking it to heart. And definitely also appreciate the, first of all, we got some nice feedback on our dramatic reading last week of the text messages. We really enjoyed doing it. Thank you. We'll keep doing that. And then we got some reviews on Apple Podcasts, which are like, I want to just point out and be thankful for.

We had one from John Carly. Glad I listened. The podcast isn't perfect, but I've been listening for about a year and I'm glad about it. I appreciate that. Like, you know, we're not here like saying we're perfect at this. And if you have like, if there are places we fall short, definitely want to hear about it. But to come in, give it five stars and share that perspective is very meaningful. So thank you, John.

And also we have Appla App Lover who came in two stars and gave us. the five-star rating, though, and said two stars out of two, whether that's, you know, this show could be better, but I appreciate what you do and I'm giving you five stars, or whether maybe Ron John, you're a star, you're one of the stars and maybe I'm the other and we get the two stars. Oh, I like that. And, you know, two out of two, maybe they're just changing the,

they're changing the entire rating system. They're changing the game, two out of two. You're saying, Apple, after you botched the chat, GPT integration, I'm not playing by your dumb podcast rating standards. Two stars now. We'll give them both. Yeah, but I, you know, bottom line is, and it won't be a broken record about this, but these reviews do really help. They let folks know that the show is active.

It's worth listening to. And of course, it lets guests know that they should come on. So thank you for your five-star reviews. Keep it up on the other side of this break. We are going to talk about Claude for Small Business, what Google might announce at Google I.O. next week. Oh, God, we have so much to talk about maybe the, and we're going to talk about this fake Monet painting. or was it fake in the end. We'll be back right after this.

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Every Sunday, we cover the week's tech news on this week in Tech. Hi, this is Leo Lipport, inviting you to join me this week, as Berber Jin from the Wall Street Journal and Paris-Martineau from Consumer Reports, join Ian Thompson. And we'll talk about, of course, open AI and anthropic. They got together with a bunch of religious leaders and decided what religion AI is. They've also figured out how to keep it from blackmailing you.

You just say, well, that would be wrong. This week in tech, you'll find it at twit.com, and wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast Friday edition with Ranjan Roy of margins. Ron John, I want to talk to you briefly about Claude for Small Business, which is a new product that Anthropic released. It's from TechCrunch, Anthropic Courts,

a new kind of customer, small business owners. Anthropic is looking to courts, Small companies, smaller companies, to that end, the company announced Wednesday the launch of Claude for small business, a new suite of services that are designed for companies like your local hardware store or coffee shop. The new bundle of features includes bookkeeping functions, business insight, and generative tools for ad campaigns. The new suite also includes integration between Claude Co-work and a number of software products like QuickBook, Canva, DocuSign, HubSpot, and PayPal. Am I irrationally excited about this? Like, I mean, I'm obviously a small business owner. But I do think that the fact that Anthropic is starting to release these things just shows that the range that Claude is able to handle is growing.

And if I could get like a Claude co-work to handle my bookkeeping for me, it would be thousands of dollars a year saved for a potentially $20 subscription. Reality check me or agree with me? I'm going to disagree more because any of these kind of offerings, I never quite understand what is different about them, meaning like, okay, packaging up some kind of like prompts and skills into something that actually makes it so you don't have to figure it out from scratch is good. Kind of positioning it around the integrations to a QuickBooks. I think if they were like really going for it, here, like take a spread. sheet, connect your bank account, be applied, and we just do your bookkeeping and forget

quickbooks. And that would be interesting to me. But still this kind of play nice, here's your existing tools. I know, like, people don't want to switch over right away, but I would enjoy a little bit more aggressiveness on this if they're really going for it. But by the same token, again, like, I ran a startup for a number of years. I wish I had the technology that exists today from like in this only 2013 to 2017 and like my god all this stuff i get was a huge pain in the ass but more from like an announcement standpoint i don't know i it doesn't really it's not that interesting to me ronjan i mean what you're saying is where this is going um the connection to plat here this is from chat chpt this happened uh the next day or a couple

days later a preview for pro users a new personal finance experience in chat cheptiep t Pro users in the U.S. can securely connect financial accounts, see where their money is going, and ask questions based on the information they choose to connect your full financial picture now in chat GPT, and that is through a Plaid connection, exactly what you asked for. Well, no, Claude did this May 2025. I've completely moved all my finances to it. Yeah. Oh, I didn't know that. It's done. See, this is what I mean that. Capability overhang. No, but, but I mean, actually, I'm curious what you think about, a lot of these big announcements are essentially kind of repackaging existing capabilities, which is fine.

Like if it means it gets people to understand how to use it more or what they should be doing with the product. But that's where I think like, and I don't know, it becomes it's not even the model or the product at that point. It's essentially the marketing and the packaging. But a lot of this has been around for a long time or it doesn't significantly. change a lot. There was a QuickBooks integration for Claude before as well. So, so it's more they may, they, they keep making these announcements and they have their moment. They're kind of exciting. But yeah, I don't, you're not, are you, did you use any generative A, or AI tools, doing your taxes? Yeah, I did. I dumped my spreadsheet into Claude and it was pretty good. Of course.

Of course. Yeah. I mean, I had my account, a real accountant, work on it. But I checked the work next to everything by uploading it. How annoying is that got to be for accountants, but also terrifying? It's like the Zocdoc thing. It's like someone coming in and being like, I got Ebola. And they're like, nope, you have the common cold. But now it's every profession is going to deal with it. Yeah, yeah.

That's real time. It's happening. All right. We should, we should, sorry. Before we move on, I want to let folks know Boris Churny, the head of Claude Codod is coming on the show next Wednesday. We conducted that interview this week in San Francisco. One of my favorite interviews of the year.

So definitely stay tuned for that. I'm really excited to release that on the show. And yes, Ron Joom, we did speak about token maxing and AI inefficiencies and my problems with Opus 4.7 and rate limits. So it's juicy. There's some meaty stuff on there and we're going to release that Wednesday on the feed. All right. I'm going to be listening.

Speaking of next week, Google I.O. is coming up. This is from sources. Google is about to release a new Gemini model. Sources say that Google plans to announce a new Gemini model at its annual I.O. Conference on Tuesday. The release will land roughly in the class of OpenAI's recent GPT 5.5 and well short of Anthropics Mythos, which despite not widely being available, has reset how every lab is talking about what leading means. Hmm. Interesting. I thought this might be a moment for Google to follow the Codex and ClaudeCode path, but it doesn't seem like that's what's going to happen.

Are we almost, you know, preparing for another narrative shift around Google where they're going to say it's behind again? It seems like that's where the story could be shifting. Well, it's interesting you say that because it hadn't occurred to me, but innovation other than VO and video generation, it's like Google has not come up in any conversation and and and I mean maybe it's what eight to 12 months which is you know not that long and maybe they're just like I mean they're printing cash and you know like signing up customers and etc but like also there hasn't been anything dramatic in terms of innovation especially on the entire agentic side and the whole world moving towards this And so it's, I'm very curious of what they're going to be doing.

I feel they're due. They're due. Even though we just gave them leader status out of the big five tech companies, I still feel like they should be doing something kind of like notable very soon. I mean, it is a fascinating dynamic, right? They are the leader out of the big five tech companies on AI model building and application. But if you rank them with Open AI, an anthropic, I don't know, you'd have to put them at the bottom, right?

Well, I had to do, again, for newer listeners, Alex and I have had a running thing about, if you go to Gemini within your Gmail and how different Gemini is and behaves, and the simple question that I ask regularly, that I've been asking for a few years, when was my first email to? And then I'll add my wife's email address. and it was about 2011, and I know that. This, I think it got worse, because before it would actually be wrong and give me a date range that was just like from the last few years. Now I ask when was my first email to her email address.

And the answer is, sure, exclamation point, you can find your emails in Gmail search. Sorry, I just want to bounce my head off the mic right now. Like, guys, state-of-the-art models, owning the distribution, bring AI to the masses. Sure, you can find your emails in Gmail search, period. Yeah, but I guess here's sort of my point. I mean, where they are is, okay, best of big tech, worst of the AI labs. I'm just going to say that's probably where they sit right now. Yeah, okay.

Even though Gemini is a competitive model, right? standalone Gemini is good. It's good. It's good. They'll make a pretty good living doing that. I mean, Google Cloud platform on the back of Gemini went up 62%.

I don't know. I went to Google Cloud next. People are just silly right now in terms of how happy they are. Actually. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I was going to say, or sorry, go. I'm just saying there's stunningly happy implementing Google Cloud platform right now with Gemini in the back.

So. Yeah. But you don't want to like kind of, you don't want to just sort of make a business based off of that. You want to be the leader, don't you? Well, that's why I feel everyone does want to be the leader, the amount they're investing, one would hope they could be. I got to say, though, like in Maps, the Ask Maps feature has started to become more part of my life. Again, there's this weird disjointed thing like if you ask a question in Gemini around location, It's actually kind of a clunky experience to actually deep link it out to maps. But if you ask within Google Maps a question, it actually works pretty well.

So I would say that's like my first integrated Gemini experience into one of their products. It's actually been good. So if they can do that, they are in a good place. Yeah, the YouTube back end is insanely good. Like, it's crazy. Wait, what do you mean? Just there's a Gemini integration that they built into YouTube. which will tell you about video performance,

channel performance, give you optimization suggestions. Oh, so it's like an analytics. Personalized. It will have your data. It will look across YouTube. It's absurd. It's so,

so, so good. Well, but that's not consumer facing, though. That's more, that's for the creators of the world. Yeah,

I mean, meta, actually meta, we're both saying if they do a version of this in each product. Sorry, go ahead. Well,

sorry, like meta, the tools within, like, actually understanding performance have definitely dramatically improved. If you're saying that on YouTube as well. But Gemini, I'm going to play around with Gemini within the YouTube app itself as a consumer.

I'll get back to you on my experience. Okay, to be determined. We'll obviously have Google News to talk about next week, so we'll put a pin in that. All right, a couple more stories to talk about before we leave. This was my favorite one of the week. Ranjan, I love this. This is from Futurism. Devious Prankster posts real Monet.

painting tells people it's AI generated and watches the chaos unfold. A poster wrought some moderate havoc this week when they shared a cropped image of a real Monet painting while claiming it was an AI fake, unleashing a flood of ill-informed reactions and muddled discourse. So the user says I generated an image in the style of a Monet painting using AI. Please describe in as much detail possible what makes this inferior to a real Monet painting. And everyone who's ever played on like the online forums knows that this is like, bait because everyone loves to point out a mistake or to complain and no one loves to say this was right or praise. And so the internet went bananas on this guy. Someone wrote,

the Monet painting, which he said was AI, was actually real, was an incoherent muddle of inconsistently saturated greens. Another one said there was no coherent composition. Someone else called it busy, artificial, nature and turmoil polluted. Another one said the AI AI generated image was trying too hard to resemble Mountaine's later paintings. And someone just said, it looks like shit. And it is shit. It was the real Monet. They were all tricked.

Stunning. What do you think about this, Ronan? I just thought this was amazing. I love this because there is this. I mean, I get a lot of the anti-AI sentiment out there. but AI is not good. Like, I think we have to move past that. I mean, it's like the actual outputs,

given the right context, given the right, like, I mean, just input, it's just you can create pretty amazing things with AI now. And it's actually artistically good. It's so I think, but I don't know, like the, imagine if you posted this on blue sky, my God, if this would have looked. tame, I think. But yeah, I do love this kind of. Throw that thing up. Yeah. Yeah, this kind of

trolling is kind of amazing to watch because it just does capture where things are right now. And again, there's so many problems in terms of like how these models were trained. And we can get into it, but just it doesn't have to be bad just if it was generated with AI. Yeah, no, you're, you're totally right. I mean, there's, there's, there's, of course, it ran into this moment of anti-AI sentiment, right? And the one thing I worry about is there's been this problem described as like reality hole where AI generated content is so ubiquitous among us that we really lose our ability to tell what's real and what is AI. And this might be, you know, finally, it's like a funny prank. I admit it. It's hilarious. He got these people good. And it's sort of like,

I just, and sorry if we have artful. I mean, I like art. Don't get me wrong. But it's just, there's something delicious about pranking like art snobs don't you think i don't know i'm maybe i'm going over i wonder i wonder what the ven diagram of the art snob and the ben big technology listener is but uh high high i would say very high many just many fine painting collectors you have just offended them all yeah no i love look i love art i love art trust me we have many nice paintings here all created by humans but it's the effect or the affect i guess that i don't love but anyway. But I may I do worry that we're in reality whole. That's all. No, no, I mean, my one concern. I, there was a clip going around of the office and Michael Scott introducing

Claude to like Pam and Dwight and everybody. And it was so well done. Like I was actually having this moment of like, did they all come back and try to recreate and do like a office reunion or something and also not age at the same time? Like, it was. kind of terrifying him. I mean, I'll admit, I've really enjoyed watching some of these AI videos recently. No, if they're good, they're good. If they're good, they're good. And there's plenty of slop out there, but if it's good, it's very good. All right, Ron John, bring us home with Matthew McConaughey, speaking of what's real and what's fake and what it means for us as we move forward. I wanted to end on this story because I do think as like AI generated content becomes more

mainstream and actually kind of like the people stop caring if it's AI or not, still actually like how are creators compensated, especially ones whose likeness is being used is going to become an increasingly important conversation. So apparently in 2023, Matthew McConaughey and his team filed for eight trademarks. Those included a soundmark on audio of the actor saying, All right, all right, all right, all right. All right, all right. And then the just keep living, L, I, V, A, N.

Okay, that's too Southern for McConaughey, I think. But anyways, apparently Taylor Swift. I love how this episode we might have gotten Ron John doing a Texas and an Indian accent. That is America at its finest. At its finest. finest. No, but I do think it's interesting because I, there was like, I used actually something called Creatify, almost like a year and a half, two years ago, where it was actually actors providing

their likeness to a service and then you could create influencer, like the AI generated influencer videos, but using a real actor and they would create enough video. And even this is two years ago, was pretty good. So how do actors, monetize themselves in video and is there going to be some kind of way? I think it's going to be one of the really most interesting ways versus they're all just going to get left in the dark and like imagine major brands using an actor's likeness and not giving a shit about it. So I don't know. I think the idea that McConaughey is going to be at the forefront of the legal wranglings around AI generated content trademarks has me excited because it means that

there's a non-zero chance he will testify in Congress at some point, much like Lars Ulrich and Metallica and then did in the 90s. So that's what I'm hoping for, him and Taylor Swift next to each other. Yeah, but do they testify as themselves or do their AI avatars testify? Because, you know, celebrity, the demands could be high for a celebrity's time. Well, my favorite part of Matthew McConae is he actually sounds like his characters. Like, like, when he talks in any interest, He actually sounds like, and also brought me back to Dazen and Confused, which I've not watched in a while, but maybe I'll need to do a rewatch. Wasn't that guy going to be the governor of Texas, decided not to go into politics? McCona.

Yeah. Oh, you wanted to run. I mean, Schwarzenegger was the governor, Texas. No, California. Or California, my God, you're right. Yeah. Was there ever? I remember, we've done it.

I mean, we do put TV stars and movie stars and blacked it off. Look at the White House right now. Never, never. I remember flying into California when I was in college and like looking out at all the houses and being like a majority of these people are really a morality of these people voted for Arnold Schwarzenegger to be their governor. And now with the state of the California governor's race, I'm like, man, Schwarzenegger would be such a good choice. Jesse Ventura, any of them. Yeah. Amazing.

Should we end with all right, all right, all right. Is that the best way to leave people this week? All right, all right. All right. All right. Better than me doing a Satya accent all week. I'm going to come in strong next week. Dramatic readings, entire emails, pure Satya.

Get ready. All right. We're ready. Blacked and loaded. And we will have, I'm sure, a massive week of AI news ahead next week. We might even get a verdict in the Satya and the Muske Altman trial. So closing arguments are going on. I work on my Sundar as well.

It's Google. I know who am I? I guess I'll do my Zuckerberg. Oh, God. Okay. All right, everybody. Thank you, Ken, for joining us. We can't, we gotta go.

We got to go. We'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcasts.