Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson - Emergency Pod: Instant Reactions to MetaAI Vibes

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

Ninety minutes after they wrapped a conversation about YouTube, Google and the future of AI video, Ben and Andrew reconvene to make Ben eat his words about Meta's inability to ship and react to Vibes — a new feed in the Meta AI app for short-form, AI-generated videos.

and welcome to an emergency episode of Sharp Tech, complete with fake tornado sirens. I'm Andrew. I'm honored is what I am. The fake siren from Goat has made it to Sharp Tech. Oh, that's right. What are it? It's an emergency.

I'm Andrew Sharp. Ben, we finished recording about an hour and a half ago. You ordered me back into the studio so that we could reconvene. Tell me why we're here. What's the emergency? see as we record today. Well, number one, before I get to that, meta, stop watching stuff on Thursdays. You do it all the time. It drives me bonkers. We could wait. Two weeks in a row, two weeks in a row throwing a wrench into our schedule. We could wait till next week, except that what I

want to talk about is directly applicable to the podcast we just recorded. And I might have to eat some of my, eat some of my words. And so you know what? If you have to, to eat your words, do it sooner rather than later. That's sort of some life advice right there. A good max of her life. Yes, Freddie Bue, who hasn't listened to the full episode, Ben and I just recorded. There was a period in there where we talked about Netas languishing AI efforts and the sort of rudderless ship over there with respect to AI and particularly the delay in shipping, but it does appear that they just shipped a new AI product that is directly relevant to what we were discussing. So at the same time that I had that weird interview with Mark Zuckerberg, they released

like the meta AI app. And I used it for about 90 seconds. It wasn't very like the big thing was they went to voice first instead of chat or whatever. I downloaded it. Yeah. I used it very much. That's right. The meta A app has been relaunched. You opened it up and you are immediately in a Reels slash TikTok style video feed. That video feed, turn on the sound. If you don't have it, read update your app or delete it, reinstall it.

I think that will get it to work. And it is all AI generated video with bangor tunes. I think what's in there now is probably all meta put in there. There is a user generated content component. So I'm, I'm speaking as it's literally what met like, what they launched and put out there. Yeah.

It's awesome. It's so good. I had a hard time tearing myself away from it in a way that I net like reels in TikTok are insanely addictive. They're insanely addictive in a lot of the like the Twitter sense that we were talking about earlier or I was talking about it. You like there's just stuff in there that's compelling and you're flipping through like a bunch of crap.

Yeah. Like passively addictive, not necessarily engrossing, but you just find yourself. scrolling and scrolling. This was, so again, it's launching with what was there to start. The UGC is going to be ramping up probably the time you heard this. It's going to be mostly UGC stuff.

All AI video and all, it was, it was gripping. And number one, this is a good product. I'm making the ruling right now. So number one, they shipped a good product and it's better and more compelling video AI product.

than anything I saw from YouTube. Wow. Number two, I think right off the bat, it seems obvious this is the right route in that there's not real content in there. You know exactly what you're getting. It's not mixing stuff together. It is, this is an AI product. First and foremost, it's right up there. And I actually, I like that.

Like, I'm not in there. Oh, is that an AI product or is that real? It takes away an uncertainty in my mind. didn't realize existed when going through content and some's AI and some's real. I know I'm going in to get AI content. And that actually lets me enjoy it much more. That is a really interesting distinction. Yeah, I'm not getting tricked, right?

Or not worried about that. That was a cognitive load I didn't realize I had until I experienced this app. Mm-hmm. Number three, and this is the big thing. My immediate feeling and response here is this is the first VR product. Wow. Okay. It is virtual reality. It's all made up and it's engrossing and you're in this little world and going different places.

And again, the tuning is what they wanted up front. What do you mean by the tuning? What does that mean? Well, just the sort of images that in there. It's like futuristic. It's very beautiful. It has a strong point of view. And you can definitely there's that mid-jorney partnership that was announced a little bit ago.

You get a mid-jurdy aesthetic. Mid-Journey is similar. It's a product with a strong point of view. We mentioned it sort of in the podcast we just recorded. They kind of just stuck on Discord. They didn't want a big, big company. And you feel like this is meta's like, if you don't want to take this to the world, we will do it.

Yeah. And the images I saw are the videos I saw, they are, they're highly stylized. It does feel like AI, but it's very cool. And it's leaning into it. It's leaning into AI. That's right. It's leaning into being AI.

And the reason to re-record here is, number one, like I was insulting meta a lot and barely they just turned around and dropped this amazing product. So sorry, meta. Number two, it is a total affirmation, I think, of the whole thesis around AI and video. Now, again, we already talked about in the last podcast. I'm the weirdo. I'm the Twitter obsessive. I like texts, all that sort of thing. I found this so much more engrossing than I ever have TikTok or Reels.

Like just like it was hard to tear my tear myself away. And again, that this is the danger with trajectory I've worn, I usually get myself in trouble when I do emergency writing and like respond to something right away. I should stop and think about it. So take all what I've said with that caveat and that great assault. Well, that's what makes the emergency pots fun just for the record. This is like a 24 hour reaction that we're hearing here. But I think the distinction between AI.

content merged with regular user generated content, human content, let's call it, because there will be, when you say user generated content in meta's AI. Oh, sorry, you're right. So there's user generating content where they're filming them. It's real world filming from a camera versus what I'm talking about is users typing user generated prompt. Yeah, that's right. User, user prompted content.

Maybe it should be UPC. Yeah, yeah. But that is the distinction that I think is going to be resident because that makes more sense than asking people to go to one app and then sit there trying to figure out whether they're watching humans or AI the entire time. A great product is one where it comes out and seems so obvious. And in this case, the obviousness is, yes, I don't want it mixed. That was a cognitive load that was actually diminishing the quality of the. experience with the reels or a TikTok because like every few seconds or minutes you're wait is that real or not and then like it takes you out of the the entire sort of you know like

Instagram at its best I comped to Twitter in the past where Twitter is a lean forward experience you're at war yeah you're on there you're engaging Instagram is a lean back experience and that's why it's great for advertising you're just more ready to sort of absorb new information and in retrospect mixing these two meant you kept having a link forward wait is that real or not or is it whatever. This is a, I can lean back knowing it's all fake and just enjoy the amazingness of it. And what's in there is so good. Again, it's the seeded content. So we'll see what happens with the, what do we call it? User prompted content, UPC. Yeah. But this is the worst it's going to be. Like this is my definition, all this is going to get better and better.

Can I ask a question as a user? As a meta user, I can't see I'm a Facebook user, but I'm a daily Instagram user, is it possible that there's a future where this is a tab in Instagram as opposed to me having to go to a completely separate app to access this TikTok adjacent product? Oh, definitely possible. Meta will do anything that's necessary to make sure that it succeeds. That's one of their strengths is they will just go for it. So the yeah, yeah, but I mean, this bit about VR too. Like I mentioned it. I was so puzzled why Mark Zuckerberg didn't bring this up in our interview. And then, like, I think because I prompted him, he brought up the earnings. He's talked about it again about AI being the key to VR.

This is VR. This is what I'm talking about. You can, you can fast forward from this to having a headset on and being in fantastical worlds and exploring them. And it's just happening. And right now, it's great for this product because to have the computer horsepower and the capabilities to do virtual worlds is not there. but what is there is five, ten second clips, which are really good. And the path is illuminated.

You can see where it's going. It's pretty unbelievable. And I mean, was there any indication that this was coming? Because that's part of what's unbelievable to me. No, well, it was. So it was the journey. I hadn't thought about the meta AI app in like months,

probably nine months since they first announced it. That's why I ask about maybe putting this in, Instagram. I don't think most people even like know the app exists. So it's sort of an interesting. That's probably a good thing because I can't imagine the computational load this takes. Like, well, I don't know. It's interesting because

it's not like it's generating it on demand all the time. Like people are generated at once and then it's in the feed and they're like, they can use the content. So what regardless, I'm sure they're going to, you know, scaling slowly will be a good thing, not a bad thing. I would guess meta's preference would be this is so good it actually establishes meta AI as a standalone app. That's possible.

And if that didn't happen, then yeah, this could be a tab in Instagram in the future. But I think the play right now is to establish meta AI app. Everyone listening should go download it just to experience it. Exactly. Because most people listening probably haven't been in the meta AI app for nine months, but get in there and check it out. Be clear, if you open the app and it's immediately in video, then it's the right version or you've been updated.

If you don't, you try deleting and reinstalling it, see how it works. But I saw like a meta shell here, but like this, it's, no, it's really funny because you texted me and we're like, download the meta app. And I downloaded the meta app or redownloaded it. I deleted it and then downloaded it to try to get this update. And then Ben has not updated on my phone yet. And so then Ben put it on the screen share of a Zoom call so that I could experience the new meta AI app because that's how enthused you are by this development for meta and we'll see

where it leads I suppose. Yeah. Basically, immediately, one, this is real VR for the first time ever and two, this cognitive load bit about what this makes it so much more enjoyable. And it feels like if you watch a product and you immediately just have total clarity on a couple of points, like there's something real there. Yes. Well, one other question.

We talked a lot about the monetization for YouTube. This is essentially just an attention machine for meta. Is that right? And this splice in AI ads. They don't have no. I mean, the AI sort of meta playbook, which I think I've talked about this.

I think I wrote this out ages ago, but it's like now the Dr. where it's talking point in like every earnings call. First you build the app. You get product market fit. grow the user base, you get large, then there's a multi-step process only at the end you monetize it. This is all definitely monetizable, right? You can have products that are AI generated videos and the products in there and it's clickable. Like, like, we're already in the world of user-generated

ads, not user-generated ads, but like AI-generated ads. So, yeah, there's a path here, but that's a path they, I'm sure, wouldn't tread for, you know, years. Yeah, the only reason I ask, because we were talking about YouTube and Google, and you were juxtaposing where they are today with the meta article you had written about nine months ago saying meta has the opportunity to become the most valuable company on earth if they take advantage of X, Y, and Z opportunities. And here's the thing.

This is why this is, okay, this is the app just launched. Okay, I don't want to like, usually, you know, part of the reason why I should wait. It's all part of the fun here, yeah. One of the big concerns about meta is in why the AI bits about ads is so important is you need growing inventory. That's because you have more inventory. It decreases the price per ad, which makes it more accessible and gives you huge runway for growing in the future. We've talked about the context of stories in the context of reals. Both times investors didn't understand this.

They bailed and actually it led to massive amounts of growth going forward. The reason why they will try to make this its own app is, well, actually, even if it's a tab on Instagram, it's a new feed. New feed means new inventory. So that's been like, where's their new inventory going to come from? And yes, if an AI video feed is totally separate from the regular feed, not only is that actually a better user experience, it's dramatically better for monetization. It makes both feeds much better.

Yes. For me as a user, I'm more likely to click into reels knowing it's all going to be humans. And then with the AI videos, we'll see where it leads over the next couple of years here. But where they're starting out is already very impressive based on what I saw on the Zoom call where you insist. Even your, wow, even you are endorsing it. Amazing. Yes. It is pretty interesting that it's already as far along as it is.

This is like the Cisco and Ebert. If there's a new product that both Ben and Andrew are enthused about, we're going to to find out. Does that mean, is that a bearish sign or a bullish sign? It could be a bad omen. If there's a lot of, do you have any final thoughts before we sign off on what I think might be our first ever emergency episode of Sharp Tech? Well, I said we're going to do some experiments with video. Maybe being able to generate a new one, uh, at the drop of a hat. I just got to say one more thing. I am going to, I think UPC user prompted content. It's going to be a term. go. Newly mentioned on this emergency episode. All right. Well, on that note, I would pretend that a warm was actually set to end this emergency podcast. Perfect. Great synergy. On that note, people can listen to the full episode of Sharp Tech that Ben and I finished recording earlier today. Ben, we will be back next week. If people have takes after they experience the new meta AI app, please email us. Email at SharpTech.com.

and we'll keep the fun going next week. I can't wait to hear what people have to say about the app that clearly blew your mind this afternoon. It's very exciting stuff. Betta. Stop shipping on Thursdays, please. Yeah, I do. I love it.

All right. Sounds good, Andrew. I'll talk to you later.