Morning Brew Daily - Celebs Take On AI Deepfakes & Ads Coming to Prime

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

Episode 245: Neal and Toby explain why certain members of Congress are going after Zyn nicotine pouches. Plus. Amazon Prime Video is adding ads to their streaming and which celebrities are going after AI deepfakes. The guys share their winners of the weekend and tax season is here! Finally, here is what we are watching for this week. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Terms and conditions apply. Good morning, Brew, Daily Show. Phil Freyman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, why your Amazon Prime video experience will never be the same. Then politicians are coming for nicotine pouchmakers Zinn. It's Monday, January 29th. Let's ride. Okay, everyone, Toby and I need to come clean with you. We hadn't seen Oppenheimer until this weekend when we both saw it separately. It was so funny, I texted Toby, hey, you want to see Oppenheimer tonight? We probably should see it. And he responded, I actually watched it last night. So we are both fashionably late to the Opi party. But Toby, I have to ask, when this movie came out,

there was a lot of discussion around the parallels between the development of the nuclear bomb and our current environment with artificial intelligence, this idea that we are building a technology so destructive and powerful that maybe we shouldn't even build it at all. Was that going through your mind as you watch the movie? I'm not going to lie. I was not thinking about that at all. I was just trying to keep track of all the characters that were popping up on screen. There were so many characters in that movie.

Every time Einstein came on screen, I immediately started applying. I'm like, I know that guy. I know him. So I thought it was a great movie. What also was interesting to me is that when I prep for the show, I listen to music on Spotify. And the soundtrack that I've been bumping was Oppenheimer.

So I was going, oh, oh, oh, I know that. So that was my two takeaways from the movie. It was a great movie. I saw it luckily on the 70 millimeter IMAX in Lincoln Center, which is the way Nolan intended. and it just was a kind of full sensory experience, and I can totally see why he was like, you should go see IMAX,

and I totally understand too because it was $30. It was a lot of money. It is interesting, though. This movie came out in July, but we're saying we're doing our due diligence because, you know, it's Oscar nomination season. We got to do our due diligence. Before we jump into the show today,

we have a quick word from our sponsor, Vime. I lost my AirPods last week, which was no bueno because I'm doing a lot of running these days. Can't be alone with your thoughts? Obviously, not, Neil. But anyways, I found them on Friday in this very studio, and it got me thinking, that feeling of euphoria I got, that's how VIM users must feel. I see what you're saying. VIM provides fast and secure data recovery, so even if something goes wrong, you can get your data back. Exactly. Your business's data equals my AirPods, both essential to keep things running.

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Download the Priceline app or visitpriceline.com and book your next trip today. There is a war going on right now over the fate, of Zins, the ultra-popular flavored nicotine pouches. Senator Chuck Schumer called for the FDC and FDA to investigate these tiny bundles of controversy last week for their marketing practices and health effects, and now a full-blown culture war has also broken out. As smoking and vaping have fallen out of favor, nicotine pouches have more than taken up the mantle.

Nationwide sales rode dramatically in the past few years with 808 million pouches sold in the first three months of 20. 222 alone. They've become synonymous with the young kind of college age males who pop in a zinner or two during everything from a night out to a study session at the library. But Schumer is scared that zin is going down the jewel path and targeting youngsters with their marketing. Zin is for 21 plus only, but a CDC survey last year found that one and a half percent of middle and high schoolers had a zin in the past 30 days. While the rise of so-called zin influencers on social media also has health officials concerned.

Some politicians have fireback saying this is a massive overreach by Schumer, while Marjorie Taylor Green tweeted, this calls for a Zinn resurrection. Neil, Zin's cultural importance has been surging and now battle lines are being drawn. I don't think Chuck Schumer knew what he was getting into when he called out Zinn, because this has become very popular since the start of 2023 and particular online circles. I know when we scroll TikTok, we see some of these influencers promoting the product, but especially in right-wing conservative circles. Zinn has become a symbol of a pick-me-up during the day and also a health alternative to tobacco. You have people as big as Tucker Carlson promoting Zinn, and he had this big collab with these YouTubers called the Nelk Boys and a video that promoted Zinn. They flew in a huge Zinn package on a helicopter. That video has gained tens of millions of views. So I don't think

Schumer realized how much Zinn is popular in these particular worlds, and that has kind of sparked this culture war. It is interesting because Zinn has come out and say, hey, our marketing practice prohibit the use of social media influencers. They don't pay anyone to promote their product, but that doesn't mean that Zin isn't reaching younger people. There are plenty of accounts that go all in on Zin content. It is interesting because these nicotine patches are less harmful than cigarettes. Nicotine is not considered a carcinogen, but it's, still addiction is no joke. It is still a very addicting substance, especially when you are talking about teenagers whose

brains are still being developed, they can just easily kind of fall victim to this addiction. Yeah, I mean, this is a crusade by Schumer against nicotine against marketing towards kids. I remember last year he took on prime, which is this energy drink with a lot of caffeine that probably kids should not be having. And that came from also social media influencers KSI. and Logan Paul. So he is taking on the tobacco and nicotine industry. The pushback on that is saying, look, you want to go after nicotine, but you're also

at the same time legalize, want to legalize weed. How do you square that up? And that's been also a one of the, you know, one of the counterpoints that conservatives are pushing him back on. Yeah. And Zinn also for its maker, Philip Morris International, huge, huge moneymaker. I mean, they partially attributed, they brought in $9 billion in quarterly net revenue. and they literally said it's due to quote the exceptional growth of Zinn in part.

So it is definitely like this moneymaker. It's not just a flash in the pan thing. Like this is a very robust growing segment of kind of like the nicotine market and it's not going away anytime soon. Philip Morris and a bunch of other tobacco companies saw the writing in the wall that, you know, tobacco cigarettes are kind of on the way out and they've invested a lot in acquisitions for vapes and these nicotine pouches. So it bought Zinn in 2022.

It's hoping to add $2 billion in revenue for. from this particular segment. So this is kind of like they're staking their business on this. Okay, when you log into Amazon Prime Video tonight to catch up on Reacher, you may notice something different. Commercials. Today, Amazon is turning on ads for all its prime video users, and if you don't want to watch commercials, you have to fork over $3 a month.

And because of Amazon's sheer scale, the inclusion of ads is expected to upend the streaming landscape and add billions to Amazon's top line with the flip of a switch. Analysts are estimating that Amazon could add $5 billion a year in revenue by putting commercials on Prime. And that estimate doesn't even include the people who want to avoid seeing ads. About 15% of subscribers are expected to pay up to stay commercial free, adding another $500 million in sales each year. Amazon is late to the ad game here. Netflix, Disney Plus, and other streaming rivals have already launched ad tiers, but Amazon has something they don't.

mountains and mountains of data on you from your prime shopping account, which it can use to target you with very effective ads. In fact, we have never seen anything like this before in history, a company with the content and reach of television paired with the hyper-specific targetability of a tech company. Toby, if I'm Netflix or Disney or Peacock, should I be scared? Amazon is going to swipe some of my advertisers. Yeah, I mean, you've got to be a little nervous. I mean, remember, Amazon is Loki one of the biggest advertising businesses in in the world. Their revenue top 12 billion in the third quarter of last year. They only trail meta in Google in terms of the advertising. You don't even think about Amazon as this advertising

behemoth. I think people, when they log into the Amazon marketplace and see all the ads, I mean, I don't know if they're thinking, oh, Amazon is making $12 billion a quarter from this, but I think they understand that Amazon has a big ad business, but they also, you know, reach, they have 168 million prime subscribers. If half of those watch Amazon Prime video, then that's equivalent to the US subscriber base of Netflix. Yeah, it is just a massive, massive customer base. You mentioned should they be nervous. I do think that there is some drawbacks to Amazon's Prime foray into this world because a lot of these brands, not necessarily, they don't want performance marketing. They don't want someone to see their products and immediately go buy it on Amazon. There are other

brands that are looking for more just awareness, stuff like Chipotle or Allstate like these insurance companies, they don't want someone to go buy insurance, they just want to be top of mind share. And these advertisers have kind of stayed away from Amazon a little bit because they don't have the premium content offerings that some of these other brands do. I mean, Reacher has done well, the boys have done well, but Amazon still is kind of lacking in terms of like premium A1 content. So that is something that industry or vets have kind of said.

All right, maybe they're not going to take over as much of a market share as we think they might. Yeah, someone wrote this in The Hollywood Reporter, and I thought this was probably the best way of encapsulating what's happening in the broader streaming landscape is if the past few years were about seeking subscriber scale, which is acquiring all these subscribers as fast as possible, losing a lot of money. The next five may be defined by who can build the biggest streaming ad business. I think we're seeing that with Netflix getting into ads, with Amazon flipping on a switch and turning on ads that these companies saw what happened in television.

They're like advertising-supported cable TV for so long. Why don't we bring that over to streaming? And we're seeing the two TV worlds kind of become ever closer together. I mean, the jokes write themselves. We are reinventing cable once again. Let's move on. AI deep fakes were in the headlines once again over the past few days. This time, a crop of AI augmented fakes targeting Taylor Swift and legendary comedian George

Carlin popped up around the internet, demonstrating the complications that come along with diving headfirst into the AI age. X started restricting searches for Taylor Swift on the site after a series of explicit AI-generated images of her began circulating last week. Prior to X taking action, Swifties had actually called on each other to flood the platform with real pictures of Taylor to overwhelm search results and bury the graphic ones. Eventually, accounts spreading the images were suspended or banned. Meanwhile, the estate of George Carlin sued a podcast last week after they used what appeared to be AI to impersonate Carlin's voice for a fake comedy special. The podcast host allegedly trained in AI on five decades of Carlin's work, then released the special called George Carlin, I'm glad I'm dead, and posted it on YouTube. Neil, here are back-to-back instances of AI deepfakes being used without the consent of parties involved. This problem is not going away anytime soon.

No, let's start with the Taylor Swift thing. And I think the main takeaway for me was that this is happening to regular people every day. And it only comes to our attention when someone like Taylor Swift is being subjected to it. But a 2019 study of deep fakes found that 96% of the AI generated fake images were pornography and 99% of them targeted women. This is happening every single day across the country, across the world, targeting women. and no one, you know, we don't really know about it. When it happens to Taylor Swift, it calls, you know, there's obviously a huge spotlight on it. People rallied to her defense.

But there were a bunch of lawmakers who came out after these all went viral on X and said, like, this is nothing new. This is nothing new. This is just because we're seeing it because it's Taylor Swift. But this is happening all around the world. Right. The more insidious side of this is when it happens off of social media, not in like the public eye in group chats. We've covered high schoolers on this show before. their classmates were making explicit images of them, so you're absolutely right that that's

happening. I think the issue in these particular instances, which differs from the issues we spoke about last week when remember, robocallers were using AI to impersonate Joe Biden and meddle with the New Hampshire primaries, that was an issue where people didn't know that they were being duped. They didn't know they were being tricked. In this instance, people understand, like, they are aware that these are fake, but how do you stop the distribution of them? So it's kind of like a two-sum. thing. How do you initially train people to recognize, then how do you eventually stop the distribution? And it's very, very hard to stop the spread on these platforms. It does call to mind that when Elon Musk bought X a couple years ago, he kind of gutted the content moderation team,

and that was certainly pointed out in this instance where X said, you know, they were certainly behind the ball. These images racked up tens of millions of views in 17 hours, and the swifties say, look, X wouldn't have even done anything if we didn't, rally our army to to kind of make the statement and and figure out a way to stamp these photos out and bring attention to it. X was like completely behind the ball. Behind the ball. So I think, you know, certainly people will point to Elon Musk's gutting of the X staff to say like, yeah, it's already hard to stamp out deepfakes. And then when you cut 80% of your workforce and take out all of the content moderation teams, it makes it that much harder. All right, before we jump

to the next part of our show, we're going to take a quick break. It's time to refresh your during spring backyard days at the Home Depot. Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills starting at $179, like the next grill three-burner gas grill, or get $50 off a select Weber Spirit grill and bring big flavor to your backyard. Then set the scene with Hampton Bay string lights

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insuring millions of unique small businesses. When it comes to your small business insurance. Thank you. One size, absolutely, does not fit all. Get a quote or find an agent today at thehartford.com slash small business. Welcome to our winners of the weekend, our Monday tradition where Toby and I pick two people are things that are waking up feeling extra refreshed this morning. I won the pre-show air guitar competition, so I will go first.

And my winner is Boeing. Yes, I know. Odd choice. It's been a rough go for Boeing to start the year. Earlier this month, a door plug flew off a 737 Max 9 Alaska Air Flight resulting in the grounding of that plane and turning Boeing into a punchline. Still, the company did take the first step in putting this debacle behind it because the 737 Max 9 is back in the air again. After getting the all clear from the FAA last week, Alaska flew its first max nine since the incident on Friday and United sent its first one from New Jersey to Vegas. on Saturday morning. In a show of confidence, Alaska's COO was on that first flight back and sat in the seat next to the door plug that had come undone. Boeing still has a lot of work to do to repair its reputation and regain trust from the aviation industry and the public. I'm sure many people have become a lot more familiar with where on an airline's website you can find the plane your schedule to be on, which is understandable. Boeing is hoping that anxiety will dissipate over time

as these things start flying more regularly. Yeah, the big winners here are a lot of because remember the groundings of these planes impacted 20% of its fleet. Also, United, they had a fleet of 79 Boeing 737 Max 9. So these two airlines are just probably happy that they can have their full strength fleet back. Also remember, though, that Boeing 737 Max 9 may have gotten clear to resume flight, but the FAA has still not approved it for increasing the rate of production. So this was supposed to be like their big moneymaker, their big plane that was going to fuel profitability. and they're still kind of being hamstrung with how many they can produce.

Yeah, so people are definitely wondering, should I get on a 737 max 9? How can I find out? And I just want to be clear that Alaska and United are the two carriers in the United States that fly it. That said, aviation experts quoted in the articles we read said, look, you may be nervous about the max 9, but it's probably super safe considering it's the plane that was inspected the most recently of any plane in the world. Like someone did a full body scan of the 737 max 9 probably a few days before you flew on it.

So they tried to caution people and say, I know you're nervous. But literally, this is the most recently inspected plane in the aviation universe right now. Yeah, that's a good way of looking. That made me feel better. So thank you for that. My winner of the weekend is the color red because the red San Francisco 49ers and the red Kansas City Chiefs won the respective matchups and are now heading to the Super Bowl where a certain singer with a famous album called Red

will once again be in the spotlight. All I can say to everyone at home is get ready. American Airlines has already announced new flights between Kansas City and Las Vegas where the Super Bowl is taking place. The flight numbers, one is listed on the site as AA-1989 in reference to Taylor's album, while the return flight is AA87,

Travis Kelsey's jersey number. Neil, are we ready for the two monocultures of America football in T-Swift? to collide on the biggest possible stage, or is Brock Purdy and the 49ers going to rain on the parade? I think a lot of people kind of want to bury their head in the sand a little bit right now. I know most of America was rooting for Detroit. It was such a good story.

They had never been to a Super Bowl decades of playing. And it was very interesting to see how their Detroit lines run. It was kind of revitalizing the city that went bankrupt in 2008, 2013, I'm sorry, very notably. And it was providing this jolt and enthusiasm. so I'm very more than happy for these two teams. I'm more sad for Detroit because that would have been such a good Cinderella story and maybe drove some of the storylines that we all have to bear for the next two weeks ahead of the Super Bowl.

I feel so bad for the lines because transparently I had a whole segment prepared about exactly what you said, how it was revitalizing the scene and all this, and then slowly as like the 49ers came back and won, like I said, oh no, we're going to have to change it up here. But I mean, the real winner is, I'm sure we're going to talk about this. Even though people are saying that they are tired of this Super Bowl already, they don't want to see these two teams, this is going to rip in terms of viewership.

I mean, remember, Chiefs versus Bills in the divisional round, 50.4 million viewers. So I'm going to call it now. We are setting an all-time viewership record. I think so. Well, what's surprising? First of all, Niners get no credit, but they're an amazing team.

And the Chiefs are going for their second straight Super Bowl. No team has won the Super Bowl back-to-back since the 2004 Patriots. The Chiefs have been in the Super Bowl for, out of the five past years. They are an absolute juggernaut, but they aren't getting any respect this year because I check the Vegas line this morning. The 49ers are favored by two and a half points. Thanks for getting up to date. Statistics on that, Neil, Huey Talon. Chiefs. He said it here first. Let's move on. Tax season starts today. So little PSA out there for everyone listening, who might have blocked this day from their minds. But we're not here to ruin your Monday. We actually

want to talk about the IRS's new tax filing site called Direct File. Initial reviews are in and it's already got two massive advantages. One, it's way better than dealing with paper tax forms and two, it's free. But is it a turbo tax killer? Probably not yet. The main issue is that it's not widely available this year. It's only open to a very small group of test users in 12 states this filing season. But the eventual goal is to provide a free government run alternative to the for-profit behemus run by TurboTax and H&R Block. Right now, the software is good for only the most basic of tax return. So think more first full-time job in Florida unless owns multiple shell companies in the Cayman Islands. You know, this is the first year of a

potentially game-changing piece, a free government design software. Should people be excited for this? It's tough to say. This is such a small pilot. And I think people are excited because they look at what happens in other countries and the tax filing system is so much easier than it is here, where often you have to go through third-party services that charge you a lot. So, but I just want to I just want to say that there's a very sort of rudimentary pilot test, 12 states only for public sector workers. So in my mind, I would just kind of make believe like it doesn't exist and focus on how to, you know, maximize your returns with the existing system, but just and understanding

sort of what's different this year, what has changed and kind of just leave that to be. And maybe, you know, you'll get a little birthday surprise in the few years. Yeah, stuff it can't really deal with as of now. Gig income can take into account, retirement account, distribution. It doesn't, it's not live in most states. So like Illinois or in all these other states, and also if you've attained one dollar through dividends or capital gains income, can't deal with that. So again, it has a lot of shortcomings. I also just want to zoom out onto some of the other things this tax season that might impact your return. Remember, there's this big tax package making

tax package making its way through Congress right now. If it passes, the child tax credit could be expanded, temporarily enables lower income families to claim more of their credit on their 2023 returns. That same package would increase how much small business owners can write off the purchase of new equipment. So this tax package actually will have long-reaching impacts if it does pass. Right. So, yeah, lawmakers wanted to get it done before today, but clearly that did not happen, which is not a surprise. So they're saying if you think you might qualify for any of these new tax exemptions or refunds that lawmakers are considering, you might want to hold off because they're going to make it retroactive to the 2023 tax year, and it will apply to this year.

And as we know, you know, tax season extends until April 15th, which I'm sure a lot of people will avail themselves of. So they're saying, like, take a look at what this bill might include. If you think it applies to you, maybe just hold off a little bit longer. But I would say if you don't, if this doesn't apply to you, don't hold off because the faster you file, the faster you get your refund, about two-thirds of Americans got refunds last year. The average came out to more than $3,200. And the IRS says it will process your, it will give you your refund if you select direct deposit and file electronically within 21 days. It's news you can use, Neil.

Don't wait, yeah. Don't wait. But I did find this thing funny. So April 15th, as we know, is tax deadline day. But it's not in Maine and Massachusetts because Massachusetts, as we know, has Patriots Day. And Maine has Emancipation Day, so they delay it a little bit. You don't grow up in Massachusetts. Yeah, I didn't know that.

Patriots Day is Marathon Day and when the Red Sox play at 10 a.m. With the Red uniforms. Okay, moving on, it is Monday, which means all run through the biggest events you should know about this week. First, a couple of big tests for the stock market, which hit multiple all-time highs last week. The first test is this busiest earnings week of the season with more than 100 of the S&P 500 reporting. That includes five of the magnificent seven stocks, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, meta, and alphabet. And I advise you against taking a shot every time AI is mentioned. Boeing, maybe the company under the harshest spotlight right now, as we talked about, will also report earnings as will Starbucks, Pfizer, GM,

and big oil companies like Exxon and Chevron. I'm not that excited about big tech because AI is not the show. shiny new thing anymore. So like last year, it was kind of fun to hear about new advancements. This year, it's a little passe. I'm interested in big oil because just to see how they feel about all these trade disruptions, geopolitical instability. So that's who I'm actually most eager to see their earnings. That's a good point. The other test for the market are the first Fed meeting of the year on Wednesday and the first jobs report of the year on Friday. As of the Fed meeting, Chair Jerome Powell is expected to keep interest rates unchanged this time around. And investors will be more focused on

whether he thinks a rate cut will come in March. And on the jobs front, U.S. employers are expected to have continued hiring at a brisk pace in January, despite all the high-profile layoff announcements we've discussed on the show. Man, can you imagine if Jerome goes off book and cuts rates? Absolute boondoggled right there. He doesn't. It's not going to happen. The whole point of the Fed is to be like as signal, you know, as clear as possible about their signals.

But I think, you know, whether a rate cut will come in March or after that will definitely determine in the course of the markets, because as we know, the markets have hit all times highs and are surging primarily because of the expectations that were about to cut rates. And that would be sort of the end of the soft landing question and be like, yeah, we did it. Okay, next, all those next strengthening exercises are about to pay off because Apple's first Vision Pro headsets will be available in stores on Friday. Apple began accepting pre-orders for its $3,500 spatial computing devices earlier this month, and they sold out almost immediately.

analysts expect Apple to ship between 300,000 and 400,000 units this year in a major test of demand for high-end metaverse hardware. Toby, this is Apple's first product launch in about a decade. It's hard to overstate how high the stakes are. I hope that they come to Apple stores and allow you to go there and put them on and try them on. I've heard that they're just so heavy. Like you mentioned the neck exercises, and it's not even a joke because people say after 20 minutes, 15 minutes, their necks are actually hurting. But I'm certainly going to go and try.

That was the best part about Applesaurs. You could play with all the new devices. Now we've got a new one to play with. Toby's got a new playground. All right, February and Black History Month will start on Thursday. Remember, it is a leap year. So February is 29 days. It's Groundhog Day on Friday.

God, I swear it was Groundhog Day already. The 12th and final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm premieres on HBO on Sunday. And I love the show, but I think it's time for it to go. Should I start watching now? It seems like a pretty good time. Absolutely. All right, let's do it. Great show.

Okay. It's also. Groundhog Day on Friday. God, I swear it was Groundhog Day already. All right. Award season rolls on with the Grammys on Sunday. I did not know this, but they will take place in the sphere in Las Vegas. First Sphere Award show. I am

so pumped. Let's go. The first of many. Okay, we have to wrap it up there. Hope you all have a great Monday and start to the week. If you have any thoughts on the show or just want to say, good morning. Please write to our email Morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our editor and producer.

Raymond Lou is our associate producer. Uchenawa Ogu is our technical director. Billy Minino is on audio, hair and makeup is setting an example for assault and has already filed their tax return. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show day, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.

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