The Vergecast - Congress takes on TikTok, privacy, and AI

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

Today on the flagship podcast of forced app divestiture:  03:07 - The Verge’s David Pierce and Lauren Fiener discuss the latest tech policy bills floating through Congress, including a privacy bill, a generative AI bill, and the TikTok divest-or-ban bill. TikTok ‘ban’ passes in the House again TikTok divest-or-ban legislation could suddenly be fast-tracked in the Senate Lawmakers unveil new bipartisan digital privacy bill after years of impasse  A real privacy law? House lawmakers are optimistic this time  New bill would create public datasets to train AI and incentivize innovation. 34:17 - David talks with Nikola Todorovic and Tye Sheridan about their company Wonder Dynamics, which is creating AI-powered production tools for filmmakers.  1:09:16 - David answers a question from the Vergecast Hotline about messaging apps. Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Forced App Devasture. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am stuck in my basement because this is the only camera and microphone that I have that works. So I bought this thing, the DJI Osmo Pocket 3, just to make these intros. I like being out in the world. I like telling you guys what I'm up to. I like doing fun stuff while we record the Vergecast, and then it broke. It was just sitting in my bag for reasons that I can.

not figure out, just something about the gimbal stopped working. So now I turn it on and it like sort of spins, but not really. And then I get this error that just says gimbal protection over and over and over again. I don't know how to fix it. I think I know what's wrong. There's a spot that's a little sticky. But the thing about these gimbal cameras is that they're so delicate and so finicky. That's what makes them cool. It's what makes them work. But it basically seems to have broken just because I like put it in my bag and put a rolled up sweater on top of it. Technology, man. Anyway, we have an awesome show coming up for you today.

We're going to do two things. First, we're going to talk about this weird sort of run of bills and legislation that we've gotten in Congress recently. All of a sudden, there's tons of momentum, again, on the TikTok ban, on digital privacy legislation, on AI. So we're going to try to figure out if any of this actually means anything, and if any of this is ever actually likely to become law. Then we're going to play you a bit of a conversation I had at the Chicago Humanities Festival.

I talked to two filmmakers who are also the co-founders of an AI startup, which I just think is a fascinating tension. What does it mean to be a creative person in this world we live in right now while also trying to build AI tools that threaten to totally upend the way that we do all of this creative work? We'd a really fun conversation. I wasn't planning on putting it on this show, but I really enjoyed it and I think you might as well. All of that is coming up in just a second, but I just watched a YouTube video where basically the way to fix this gimbal is to shove a bunch of post-it notes in here,

and, you know, I'll try anything at this point. This is the Vergecast. See in a sec. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct-taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools

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Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Welcome back. All right. My camera's broken, I think, forever.

But my mic still works, so we soldier on. So we've learned over the last few years to be, let's say, skeptical. Anytime there's a new tech-related bill moving through Congress. We get all these hearings that turn out to be mostly just grandstanding and people trying to score points that they can post on TikTok. We get bills that don't make sense and go nowhere. We get bills that do make sense and go nowhere. And so it feels like by and large we're left with decades old or even centuries old laws and precedents trying to govern the internet. It's not great.

But recently there's a sense of momentum in Congress that feels new. There's a new privacy bill that has some real steam. There's a new take on the TikTok ban that is moving really fast. And there's even some AI legislation that seems to have at least an outside shot of turning into something. But is any of this for real? And if so, what's different now? Why is this all kind of happening all at once? The Virges Lauren Feiner has been covering all of these bills.

And she is here to help us figure out what's next. Lauren Finer. Hello. Hi. How are you? Doing well. Just another chill week in Lauren's life. Everything.

Just a normal weekend. I like this for you. Yeah, it's really rude of Congress to continue to do things on weekends. Seriously. It feels like they need to like go hang out with other people for a couple of days and give you a break. Go socialize. Yeah. So we have a bunch of stuff to talk about, but I feel like the place we should start is probably TikTok

because TikTok is like the thing happening right this minute. So where we left off, I would say on this show is the bill sort of flew through the House subcommittee, flew through the House, hit the Senate and kind of disappeared. There was a lot of momentum and that all the momentum died, and this was a few weeks ago. We have had a re-momentiming. Tell me what's been going on. Catch me out. Yeah, basically, like you said, we had this huge moment in the House where they overwhelmingly passed this bill that could ban TikTok unless it is divested from its Chinese parent company bite dance within six months. And then, you know, next is on the Senate to move. And, you know, we got a lot of kind of non-committal responses from. senators who were in key positions there. So it kind of looked like maybe this thing is just

going to like linger here until everyone kind of forgets about it and moves on. What was your read on that, by the way? Before we even get to that, I found myself wondering a bunch over the last couple of weeks why the Senate seemed content to just let it go. I mean, you have President Biden saying he would sign the law if it hit his desk. Tons of momentum in the House. This thing was going crazy. Like lots of people, even House Democrats were for it. why was the Senate so happy to just sort of let it wither and disappear? Yeah, I think there's two things. Like one on just like the more political side.

You know, the House is a very different beast from the Senate. The Senate is kind of a more deliberative body in a lot of ways. The House is much larger. You can have a lot more like different personalities. It was a very kind way of putting it, by the way. So I think like things that move in the House aren't necessarily the same that are going to move in the Senate. So, you know, that's one thing. I think a second thing is that I think there were real concerns with the earlier version of the bill, particularly with the timeline for divestment. You know, I think really, I don't think I really heard from many people at all who thought that six months was a reasonable timeline to have this giant asset divested from this Chinese parent company. So I think there were real concerns about that and, you know, potential constitutional concerns, free speech implications. So I think there were. still things that senators really wanted to ponder and maybe hold hearings on and go through the

regular process there. So that's kind of how I think that was going down at the time. Okay. That makes sense. Okay. So I derailed you. So that all happens. Brief pause. What happens next? Yeah. So then the House is trying to pass these foreign aid bills, basically directing, you know, military and humanitarian aid to places like Israel, Ukraine, Gaza. And so obviously this is something that is high priority in Congress and House Speaker Mike Johnson does something interesting and allows a new version of this TikTok bill to get into this foreign aid package. So, you know, I think anyone who follows Congress might understand that a lot of times when we see bills pass into law, it's through like a larger package that has to pass like the National Defense Authorization Act or some sort

of, you know, budget for the government or things like that. So that's kind of what happened here is it got packaged in with these bills that are really high priority for Congress to pass. And not only did they kind of bundle this all together, they also changed the bill a little bit so that the timeline for divestment was extended to basically up to a year. So it's really extended to nine months initially. And then if the president sees that there's progress on a deal, he has discretion to extend it essentially another three months. So up to a year for this deal to be completed, which seemed to kind of assuage a lot of the concerns around it, in particular from Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, who'd previously kind of not said anything

really definitive about how she felt on the bill, but afterwards said that she supported the updated text of the legislation. And that's significant because she leads the committee that would, that under like a normal process would have been considering this bill before it hit the Senate floor. Got it. Okay. Talk me through the politics of the bundling of all of this a little bit. Because like you said, this is the kind of thing that happens relatively frequently that a bunch of bills that either have a little bit to do with each other or nothing to do with each other end up in kind of an all or nothing package. But what do you make of kind of the way this was packaged back together and the way it has sort of gone through this process again? Yeah. So I think, you know, like I said, there's kind of these two ways that a bill can pass. through Congress. One is that it's packaged together with these other bills that, you know, Congress has to make a decision on one way or another. You know, they can negotiate for certain bills to get

out of that must-pass package, but, you know, there's a lot more politics there and, like, what are you really going to stake your ground on? And then the other way is to pass, like, standalone bills, like we saw the first time with this TikTok bill. And, you know, that requires a lot of kind of resources from Congress in terms of floor time. There's a lot of bills, a lot of legislative priorities that are out there. And so for House leadership to make the time for the TikTok bill as a standalone to get a vote was a big deal in the first place. That's one thing, by the way, that I think I have underrated in the past with a lot of this stuff is just the sheer logistics of passing a law like this is so much weirder and more

complicated than it gets credit for. And like you say floor time and my brain just goes like, oh, right, there's only like so many hours in the day to stand there and talk about these things. And everybody, you've hundreds of people with wildly different priorities. So literally just to like go through the time of discussing this thing to get to a vote. You just can't do it with everything. Totally. I mean, think about like everything that's like most important to you politically and everything that's most important to like your parents politically and all these people around you. And like they could be, you know, in theory equally important. But how do you decide what gets the time to actually? actually get a vote. So that's something that, you know, Congress is always juggling. So I think that's definitely right. It's a big deal. So then packaging this with the other bills, you know, when it's a standalone bill, then it's on the Senate to decide when and how to move. And, you know, that's really up in the air. It's pretty easy to just like throw sand in the gears of Congress and just slow things down. But with this package, it kind of forces the Senate's hand in a certain way where

it makes them have to figure out, like, are we going to, are we going to say like, this is the issue that makes us not vote for this foreign aid package that, you know, a lot of senators really want? And, you know, you have to think, like, this is a bill that passed overwhelmingly in the House. It's a pretty popular measure. So is that the thing that senators are going to kind of put their foot down on for why this like otherwise popular and wanted package is not going to pass. Right. Yeah, I was, I was looking at it in the, I think the bill, I wrote this down, passed 360 to 58 in the House, which for the House of Representatives in the country we live in right now is like pretty nuts to get that broad vote for just about anything at this moment

of time, right? Yeah, exactly. And, you know, it was interesting. I think during the debate around the bill. New York Democrat, Gregory Meeks, who's the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, he was saying that he had opposed the earlier standalone TikTok bill. He said, quote, out of concern that it would be a broad authorization that could be misused far beyond what we in Washington are currently debating beyond just TikTok. But, you know, he was supporting this package of legislation and said, quote, the bill took a step in the right direction with a more realistic time frame for a complex divesture process. Let me say for the record that I believe this bill is about one company that additional authorities provided to the executive branch are to be

interpreted narrowly. So, you know, he's saying, you know, look, I didn't really support this the first time around, but, you know, given that it's part of this larger package, I think it's a better bill than it was before. And if we interpret it narrowly, like, you know, I'm fine with it. I feel like there are two ways to read that. And I'm curious which you read it as if either one or if there's something I'm missing. One is basically like the Senate saying, oh, God, we've lost. Like, we're sort of forced to do this now. This foreign aid bill is important. We are going to have to vote on this. And letting this foreign aid bill die at the hands of a TikTok ban is just not worth the fallout. Which on if, if that is the case, fairly brilliant political machinations by Mike Johnson and the House like kudos to them for pulling off what seems like it might actually work. The other read is that we have now debated this out long enough and we kind of know where it's going.

And it seems increasingly clear that the end point is not a ban. It is a sale, which makes it specific, right? That becomes a very unique thing because there just isn't anything else like that out there right now. So everybody is able to just say, you know what, whatever the law actually says it is basically only going to apply to TikTok, let's just pass the thing and move on with our lives. Do you have a sense of which, like, is this, did the Senate get sort of, you know, out maneuvered? is there a sense that like we really can solve this problem the way that we want to now? I would tend to think it's more that, you know, we really can solve this problem the way that we want to because I still go back to the initial vote on this bill in the House was so overwhelmingly

in favor of this legislation, even with the six-month timeline. You know, to have that kind of broad support for something like this really tells me that, you know, this is a popular measure. And, you know, the people who are leading this legislation are saying, you know, this is not a ban. We want divestment. That's our goal. So I think that this is something that a lot of lawmakers are really interested in. And, you know, we've seen support for this sort of thing from the Senate Intel Committee leaders. Now you have the Senate Commerce Committee leader on board. There's a lot of support for doing something on TikTok in general. And, you know, it seems like this is a way to do it that more lawmakers are somewhat comfortable with. Okay. I would just point out again that still, it's been all this time and we have yet to hear this unbelievably compelling evidence that supposedly exists for why we have to ban TikTok.

But we will leave that aside. I think there really is the question of like, should we ban TikTok and is it going to happen? And I think I assumed those two things were sort of going to run together. But it really seems like at this point, it might happen. It feels like the odds of this bill becoming law are pretty high at this point. Like, this thing is moving fast and it seems like the momentum is going to be pretty hard to slow down, right? I would agree with that. Yeah, I mean, I would go back to, like, you know, look at what this bill is situated within. It's this package for foreign aid that's very popular.

Is TikTok going to be the thing that senators say, we're going to, like, put our foot down about getting this out of here? Right. Yeah, we don't want to help Ukraine because we're. we don't want to ban TikTok. It's a strange political maneuver for anyone to pull at this moment in time. So what's next in this one? I think last time all this happened, tons of momentum and then it died in the Senate. We are now kind of back at that same spot again. Is it possible it's going to die in the Senate again? I think this one's really different because, you know, foreign aid is something that has some time urgency behind it. And the Senate was supposed to be off this week, but they're actually going to, you know, come in on their vacation.

and they're going to start doing some like process votes tomorrow. So from what I've read, it seems like they could vote as soon as tomorrow and as late as Wednesday on this measure. Fair enough. Yeah, I should say we're talking on Monday morning and it's like we have like a little less than 24 hours before this publishes. And Lord knows everything could change between now and then. But okay, let's talk about some of the privacy stuff because I think the other thing that you've been writing a bunch about is this new thing, the American Privacy Rights Act. I went into the first story that you wrote about this in which you were like, there's lots of momentum. People are excited. This might actually happen being like, oh, Lauren, you've been, you've been scammed again into believing that the American government is going to pass privacy legislation.

But it seems like there is a sense that we're going to actually maybe get a real privacy law here at some point in the near future. What is going on with this bill? Why is this the one so far? Yeah, look, I mean, when it comes to privacy, I'm never going to say this is definitely probably going to happen. And because I think I've just seen this so many times over years of covering tech policy where you get a bipartisan bill that seems like a pretty great compromise and everyone's like at least happy enough and then it goes nowhere. So I think this is one where we really got to watch it until the end. But there are some promising signs in this legislation, which, you know,

to be clear, is still a discussion draft. It hasn't even been formally introduced yet. But I think the most significant part of it is just who's behind this bill. And that's the head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Kathy McMorris Rogers, who's a Republican from Washington and the head of the Senate Commerce Committee, Chair Maria Cantwell, who's a Democrat from Washington. Maria Cantwell, everywhere right now. Yeah, exactly. Big month for Maria Cantwell. It truly is. And I think her sponsorship is the most significant here because last time around when we had a bipartisan privacy bill, in 2022, she was not on board. And that seemed to be the thing that ultimately kind of like slowed down momentum behind this bill that had a lot of bipartisan supporters. It passed overwhelmingly out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and then just kind of died off. So I think that's really what's most significant here and what's giving people the most, you know, hope that maybe we could see

something this time around. Okay. So I feel like I don't know, I don't know what the like least optimistic it is possible to be while still being optimistic. You know what I mean? You're like, we're like at a sort of one out of ten on the optimism scale, but we're at least somewhere. And I feel like there is, there is, there's possibility that this could happen. What about this bill jumps out to you? It seems like I was reading through it and there's a bunch of stuff that sounds a lot like what we have in the EU, this idea of transparency and you should be able to control your own data and you should know where it's going. Some of the stuff that's going on in California with the California Privacy Act that went in 2018, I think it was, and then again in 2020,

what's in this bill that jumped out to you? Anything particularly interesting? Yeah, I think the thing that stands out the most is the enforcement mechanisms behind the bill, because that's something that Senator Cantwell said that, you know, was kind of a sticking point for her with the earlier privacy bill, the ADPPA. These all have really complicated acronyms. And so this bill basically would let individuals sue companies. that they feel like have violated their privacy rights. But it would also give companies a chance to correct the things that they're being told they did wrong. So, you know, that's kind of a way to try and balance, you know, a really strong enforcement mechanism that also, you know, kicks in pretty quickly. Consumers can, you know, sue pretty quickly, but also gives companies a chance to correct any mistakes before getting bogged down with lawsuits. Yeah, that's really interesting because in the past, a lot of the enforcement for this has been kind of hand wavy and somebody will figure it out, we'll set up an agency kind of thing. And this seems like it was much more directed, like, who will be in charge of this and what they can do and the penalties will be real. Like, even just reading through, there's this like eight page summary of it. I got the sense that like this felt like a real thing more than just sort of some ideas that somebody wrote down.

Yeah, I think that's right. I think, you know, enforcement. was really a key issue for Senator Cantwell. So I think it's not too surprising to see that that was an area that they seemed to spend a lot of time on. Yeah. Okay. Is there anything we've learned, do you think, from the EU in California? Like, those are the two that I just kept seeing inside of this bill. And I went back and reread the California one, and it even uses a lot of the same terms, right, about being able to correct info about you that's online, that's wrong, having the right, they can't discriminate against you if they opt out. There's also just like a weird thing all of a sudden in the middle that just says civil

rights and algorithms, which felt like a total sort of random detour in the middle of a data privacy legislation. But I thought that was very interesting. I don't know. Does it feel like the Congress is sort of learning from what has worked and passed elsewhere? I mean, I use worked in a very kind of loose way because none of it seems to really be working, but at least what has actually been passed into law elsewhere? Yeah.

I think like at a high level, there's been a. shift from this like notice and consent framework that's basically like, you know, we're going to tell consumers, you know, what sort of information we're collecting and then you click yes and then we collect it. Which accomplishes nothing. I really believe that. Yeah. Or and shifted more to this idea of data minimization, which is like, let's like limit how much data is

collected in the first place and you have to have a really compelling reason for why you need this information to run your service. And so I think that's something that's reflected in this bill. Yeah, that's really interesting. Who are they going after with this bill? Have we gotten a sense yet? I mean, they have some basic outlines here. I think it's like if you have more than 5 million users in the U.S.

or over $250 million in revenue, it's clearly this is pushed at big companies especially, right? It talks a lot about data brokers, but it seems like the companies most affected by this are going to be like the handful of big tech platforms. Who do you think this is really aimed at? I think that's right. I think, you know, there is concern in Congress about, you know, overly burdening small companies and startups. And that kind of feeds into these other questions about competition and, you know, concerns there. So I think there is an awareness that Congress doesn't want to overburden small businesses.

So I think large companies are really ones that will be targeted here. And data brokers, it seems like there's, you know, this growing awareness in Congress about how data brokers. can move information around, you know, around the time of the original TikTok legislation. We saw a separate bill in the House pass around data brokers and, you know, sales of U.S. data to foreign adversaries. So I think that's something that is really on lawmakers' minds these days. Okay. So like you mentioned, we've seen this a few times.

Bills come out that there is some enthusiasm about what normally happens. Like, where in the process does a privacy bill usually? die. In the past, it's been, you know, with the ADPPA, which was the last time we had a comprehensive privacy bill that had bipartisan support. And that was two years ago. Is that right? Yeah. I believe that was in 2022. You know, it passed pretty strongly out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. And then that was it. So that's the point where we see these things slowed down. I think what's significant here is we have both of the chairs who are in power in their committees. on the House and Senate side, who are going to be able to move this bill if they want, assuming they can get the votes in their committee.

So, you know, we could at this point see both the Senate Commerce Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee pass this bill once it's introduced. And then it will be up to House and Senate leaders to determine, again, do they give this bill time on the floor? Do they package it in some other legislation? So I think that will be kind of the next point to look out for. And of course, you know, before all that happens, we have to make sure that there's enough support in the committees for these bills. But I think there really is, you know, widespread support in Congress for comprehensive privacy legislation overall. So I think, you know, there is some, at least a good amount of political will there.

Do you make anything of the timing connection with all of the TikTok stuff? Like, are these two things that are happening? simultaneously on purpose? Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. I'm not sure if it's like, you know, on purpose in the sense that they were, you know, moved at this time because of the TikTok legislation. But I think, you know, all of this is kind of like percolating around Congress. And I think it makes sense in a way that we would start to see privacy legislation come out. You know, when we saw the House vote on the standalone TikTok bill, reporters were asking, House committee leaders about, well, what about privacy? Because that's something that kind of like

underlies a lot of these conversations in the first place. And I think I remember McMorris Rogers actually kind of saying, like, you know, we're still working on that. And at the time, I remember thinking, like, okay, sure, like, yeah, we're going to go back. Maybe they're going to reintroduce the ADPPA, something like that. But then we got this totally new bill with Senator Cantwell. And that was kind of a moment of, well, okay, maybe some of this has been really happening behind the scenes. So, yeah, I think, you know, it is significant that privacy is something that kind of underpins a lot of the other conversations we have around tech policy. But, you know, I think things often in Congress just move when you can get the political will to do them. Well, and that's, I think,

kind of the big open question still to me is, is this moment different in that respect than we've had before, right? I think the privacy thing in general is so tricky because there is this sort of intellectual understanding that I think most people have come to where we all kind of know there's too much information about us out there and it's bad that there is too much access to it

and we kind of have no control over it. And it sort of feels intellectually weird. But knowing what that is and what to do about it and what the sort of downstream ramifications are is just complicated enough that it has never really felt like anyone's first priority. It's just kind of a thing that lingers at the back of everybody's mind. But then part of me wonders, A, with TikTok becoming this very visceral outpouring of what it

looks like when a platform knows you very well, that is one thing that I think has maybe made it more present to people what's really going on here. But then I also just wonder if this is yet another kind of lark from people who there's just a kind of chorus of folks in Congress who are like, we need people. privacy legislation and everybody goes, I agree, and then just kind of goes off to other priorities. But it sounds like even maybe just from like conversations you're having that at least it's moving up the priority list. It might not be the top thing, but at the very least it is a thing people are willingly talking about instead of just sort of waving their hands at and saying, we'll get to

that eventually. Is that how it feels just to talk to people right now? I think basically, I think, you know, I didn't necessarily anticipate that we would get a real conversation around comprehensive privacy this year. You know, it's an election year. I mean, there's a lot going on. Yeah. So I think there is the sense that, you know, maybe, maybe this is the time. But, you know, I'm hesitant to say that because it's felt like that in the past. But I think there's a certain way you could look at this and say maybe it would be kind of a good look for Congress to pass a comprehensive privacy bill if they're also passing this TikTok legislation since, you know, I think when TikTok CEO came to testify. Some people are talking about, well, aren't all of these problems, just

like problems with privacy on platforms in general? And some of them are. So I think in a way, it would be kind of a good look for Congress to pass comprehensive privacy reform alongside something like that. Is that going to be enough to push them over the edge? You know, I think that's anyone's guess. But at least it seems like these conversations are really happening in a real tangible way again around an actual piece of legislation. Yeah, I agree. I think my guess is we are ways away from having an answer to that one, but I think it's going to be fascinating,

especially in an election year when so many people are talking about tech, I think it's going to come up maybe more than it has, even at kind of hot moments in the past. It's going to be really interesting. Before I let you go, the last one I just want to touch on briefly, is the Future of AI Innovation Act, which is another thing that is sort of, in the air everybody's talking about, but it's not necessarily exactly clear where we're headed

with this. Tell me a little bit about the future of AI Innovation Act. What are we doing here? Yeah. So this is a bill that was introduced by a bunch of senators that have been involved in AI discussions. Again, we have Senator Cantwell. Carewell, man. We have Senator Todd Young, who has been involved in some of the bipartisan work with Senator Schumer around AI. So this bill would be. basically it's basically about creating standards around AI and just spurring innovation. So, you know, it's not really dealing with some of these like nitty-gritty issues that we're thinking

about with like copyright and things like that. But it's really about just trying to like create a framework for AI to be developed in a safe way and also for innovation to take place. Okay. So this is one of those bills that is like let's make a plan to make a plan kind of thing. And you have to write that in a very. And that feels. small when I say it, but there was like, there was that executive order from the White House, which was like a plan to make a plan to make a plan. This is at least like a plan to make a plan. So we're like, we're like inching towards a plan. It's something. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's certainly a start. I mean, I think AI is such a huge issue that touches on so many different areas that it's hard to imagine just like one piece of legislation being the be all end all of this. So, you know, it's certainly it's a reasonable place to start, I would say.

Yeah, I still remember the Benedict Evans, who the backman who was a venture capitalist, always had this line that we don't regulate cars. We regulate parts of cars, which I think is very smart. And I think AI is going to end up being the same way. Like, instead of if we try to regulate AI as a thing, it's just going to, it'll never work. And I feel like to some extent we've run into this with privacy and the internet. Like we try to regulate the whole internet all at once and it's just impossible. But it's like, okay, we can regulate seatbelts and we can regulate steering wheels and we can regulate carburetors and we can regulate gas mileage. And it's like that. that's maybe what we do with AI. And this feels like, you know, setting up the, what is it called the artificial intelligence safety institute, I think, is like, okay, you need a group that is like in charge of looking at this. And that's not anything, but it is a step towards something. And that I sort of appreciate as a way of saying, like, okay, AI is too big for one bill that we shove into a foreign aid package. Let's start somewhere else. Yeah. Also, I think there certain things that, you know, the American people would probably rather see a specialized agency looking at rather than Congress just going ahead and dictating a bunch of rules. So I think that

is a significant step. Yeah, fair enough. All right. Well, here's hoping that you at least get a weekend next weekend, but Lord only knows. This TikTok thing is just going to keep happening. So I suspect we will be talking again sooner rather than later than later. Yes, I'm sure. Awesome. Thanks, thanks, Lauren. Appreciate it. Thanks, David. All right, we got to take a break and then we're going to come back and talk AI. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Every thriving, successful business has to start somewhere. A good place to start is a relatively simple question.

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That's W-H-A-T-N-O-T dot com slash sell. What-N-O-T-com slash sell. All right, we're back. A couple of weeks ago, The Verge did a series of panels at the Chicago Humanities festival all about AI and creativity. Our big question basically was, what does it mean to be a creative person in a world filled with AI? And how is AI changing the lives and livelihoods of creative people? We had three really fun conversations, and I just want to play you a chunk of mine. I got on stage with Ty Sheridan, who's an actor you might know as Wade Watts, the protagonist and Ready Player 1,

or from movies like X-Men Apocalypse and the show Wireless, along with Nikola Tadorovich, who is a writer and a visual effects artist. Tai and Nikola are friends, they're collaborators, and as of a few years ago, they're co-founders. They started a company called Wonder Dynamics that brings a bunch of really cool AI tools to the visual effects business. Basically, imagine you film a real scene

and with like three button clicks, you can comp over a regular person and turn it into an animated character. Visual effects with essentially the touch of a button. It's pretty cool. So both Thai and Nikola are right in the center of this really complicated AI moment. So I wanted to talk to them about how they think about AI, how they're trying to build a company, how human creativity and AI can work together,

and lots more. We had a really good time chatting, actually, and I learned a lot. So I thought I'd just play you a bit of that conversation. Let's do it. Hello, everybody. So I want to start by telling the story of Wonder Dynamics. Well, we had originally started developing shows together. So Nicol and I were both dabbling around. writing and, you know, Nicola had directed several films and they showed me. I thought he was really talented filmmaker and obviously a really smart guy. And we just became kind of pals through our mutual love of movies and storytelling. And we had started developing a series that had kind of, it was like an interactive element to it. And there wasn't really a technology

that existed. So we just kind of built the prototype. And that was really the beginning of us getting into technology. It's really the writing that started. We, We wrote a project that we wanted to say, and it was going to sound super meta, but it was about robotics, right? So we're writing this sci-fi series that we wanted to make. And every time you write something, as an indie person especially, you have to think about how do I cut my scripts to afford it? Because you can't go out and write Dune and hope to get it funded, right, as a filmmaker that hasn't proven itself. Especially in visual effects, most indie filmmakers in visual effects stay away from visual effects and CG because it's so expensive, right? Every single scene or shot you add that has a visual effects element, add so much more to your budget and you can't really afford it.

So Tyana really started it like that. We wrote this and we realized, okay, this would cost about $150 million to make. And there's no way we can get that money. So we started looking at technology. But funny enough, we were studying technology as we were writing. And this started from us going really deep in robotics and self-driving cars technology, which is all about understanding the world and space around you. right? That's movement of AGI, which is the computer vision. It's like understanding what a chair is, understanding how much distance I have from something. So that's how it started. Then we started getting

deeper, deeper into it, and then we started building the tech and realized, okay, this is a bit bigger than just our movies. Let's turn it into a platform. And let's really start a company to be focused towards that. And then we'll make our movies down the line. But we were lucky that we discovered it early. Before Gen. TV, I was even in a thing. We internally called it visual AI. There was no term at the time. And we knew it's going to be. So we built in stealth mode for about close to four years. Just real quick, give me the like 15 second explanation of what Wonder Studio does right now, just for folks who haven't seen them before. Yeah, so essentially if you have seen movies like Avatar, you always have this motion capture suits that people perform in, and then you have a lot of

equipment you need to do on set to pick up that data, performance data, et cetera. So we essentially sped up that process and let you extract your scene in a 3D space. So you can get your performance, capture, your camera move, capture, your lighting, capture and get to your final VFX shot much, much quicker than traditional. Okay, yeah, the demo I've seen is basically, it's like a person coming out of, I think it's a library or something, sort of coming down the stairs of the building, and then it wipes, and all of a sudden it's a cartoon character doing the same movements in the same place, the same ways, and you're essentially like automating that out of having tie wear a mocap suit,

which I'm assuming is not a lot of fun, by the way. It depends on how sweaty you are, you know. If you're a naturally sweaty person, no. It's not that much fun. Also, those volumes, you know, they have all the infrared cameras and sensors and they're very warm. So, yeah. And the, extremely expensive. Very expensive.

That's why you have a lot of, you know, 99% of filmmakers cannot afford production side of things. But post-production is really where it gets extremely, extremely expensive, right? So that was our mission. It's like, how do we get indie filmmakers to have access to this, which traditionally has always been reserved to high budgets and big studios? Yeah. And I think the timing that you guys were. dealing with is really interesting because on the one hand, you got this massive technical development, right? Like the state of the art and everything you're talking about has gone up

exponentially over the last few years. On the other hand, we're now talking about this stuff in a cultural way like we've been doing all day in a very different way than we were before. You have access to mountains of data that comes from, in some cases, artists who would prefer that their data not be there. And so I'm really curious, as you guys were thinking about like product building, especially coming from this sort of creative background, like what should we build, what can we build, like sort of where, where does the right answer for something like this begin and end? Like are those conversations you're having? Yeah, a lot. Yeah, a lot. And especially from beginning. I think we're in a different situation because, you know, obviously we've been super

fortunate to have some leaders in a space like Joros or Steven Spielberg and others who've been on our board. Obviously, Ty is an actor. So we spent a lot of time and I was a visual effects artist and a supervisor. So we purposely from day one build it with, we're not going to be generating art, which is going to extract information. We call it observing nature. So we're observing how the

actor is moving and performing. It's still driven by a shot from a cinematographer. The character is still built by an artist. So we're very different than a lot of Gen. AI companies that you see, which are generating pixels by other art. For us, you mostly get information in that 3D

space. So we're not really producing art. we're speeding you up and giving you that scene in 3D space so you can manipulate it. And also, you'll never see us replace the actor with another human. We only are driving characters that don't exist in the real world. So that's a little bit of a thing we had to stop ourselves a lot of time. Because you get very driven with this innovation, and you can go that route and say, you know, I'm just going to build whatever I want, right? Because I can with this technology.

But I think for us it was really important to be ethical in that. It's one of those things in a tech company. We call ourselves a story company first, because this is a technology to help storytellers, right? A story will always come first for us. So, you know, it is a tough one. It's one of those things that we have a lot of our users that say, like, you're one of the rare ethically built company

around this, but it's tough because you do have to pull back for innovation. There's a lot of stuff we've done research internally, right, that we had to pull back a little bit. We've been having this conversation for a long time. We've been telling people three years ago, you know, AI and visual effects is coming. You know, educate yourself. This change is going to seem extremely drastic overnight, but it's not overnight.

This research has been going on in academia, you know, Ivy League schools for decades now, right? It's just that we are now seeing it extremely accelerated. And a lot of innovation you see that comes out and gets viral. It's not from yesterday. It's been built on top, on top, on top, right? On that side. So, you know, I think the conversation is getting more serious now about, you know, these moral issues. For us, I don't think we should see the future where we don't have

people on set. We don't have artists working on it, but just someone kind of typing away. I do think it will happen. We want to be a part of the good side of that story, which is you're always going to have performance arts. You're always going to, I think a lot of people underestimate how hard this thing is. Not AI. I'm talking generally filmmaking. It's extremely hard. All of these artists have incredible high skills sets of that, right? It takes decades to learn some of these things and some of these tools how to use them properly. So I think this kind of promise, it's a one-click solution, promise, it's one line away. We're not there yet. I'm talking AI general, not us. So I think I don't think we're going to replace artists, all of these actors,

you know, overnight. I don't think people will try. They will try, but I think us as audience members, we love that human connection. I don't think all of a sudden everybody's going to be, you know, I don't have a favorite actor anymore because all the actors I watch are AI. I don't think that's going to happen, right? So I think that human connection is really important. Sometimes we like art we watch because of the meaning put by a person behind it, not generate something. So I think if you ask me where the future is going to go, I think it's going to be a combination. There's going to be some prompting that's going to be a part of it. There's going to be performance art that's going to be a part of it, right? Because it's very, think of it this way. We always say

this, how do you describe a performance with words? It's very hard. That's why we have directors that say cut five times or, I joke, Tyler, is 20 times with him, right? But some things we cannot even, even body movement, we don't have English word for some body movements, right? So I think the performance art will always be there, especially in these kind of cases. So, but let's see where we go. I always say it's important that these tools are also built with people in industry. Because if we just, Let's let it go. On a tech side, it's a very different goal. It's a goal of, let me build a tool that's used by TikTokers in billions in numbers so I can get higher value for my company, right? I say we need to build it alongside artist community. Because if you put an artist behind building

something, they will think about it because they'll think about it from their perspective as well. One of the things you were saying when we were talking the other day that I've been thinking a lot about since is the question of basically the upside of these tools is that it gives access to the kind of creative process to more people who for reasons of money or accessibility or literally where they live in the world, they just couldn't make Hollywood movies, right? Like Hollywood was a small group of people in a small place that did this stuff. And now we're getting to the point where these tools and these platforms and these audiences are available to many more people.

And I think that's awesome. And I think like anything that gets us there is really great. Is there a flip side to that? like is if we democratize all of this stuff and make it all so automated that anybody can use it. I think that's very cool. And also just it feels like it changes what that stuff is in a way that I haven't quite sorted out in my brain. I think it increases our potential to find original voices. You know, I think what happens when you have a group of people that are surrounded by like-minded individuals, they start to think the same things. It's the same with Hollywood. You know, you have

people, you know, in one place, it's a very localized industry. And if you want to get a project, greenlit, that's where you have to go. You have to go to the executives that are in Hollywood. And I think... This is why we get 600 Marvel movies. That's right. Yeah, so I think for us, like, you know, that was the real exciting mission with our company and the exciting potential is that, hey, some group of kids growing up in the middle of, you know, some small town in Norway or Kenya can go out and make a science fiction film that, you know,

today it could only be made in Hollywood and do it on a budget. And that's super exciting for us because we don't know where the next James Cameron or Stevens Pilbork's going to come from. And I think giving, you know, thinking even about us, you know, not having a lot of tools growing up, I mean, we would die to have stuff like the tools like this. And I'm not even just saying what we're building, but I think the tools that are coming, you know, this next generation of filmmakers, I do, I think the biggest potential there is really to discover original voices and, yeah, and to kind of pave a new path for storytelling. And I think Hollywood traditionally prides itself on, you know, stories of inclusivity and, you know, trying to recognize certain cultures or people that are maybe misunderstood or underrepresented. And I think the way to truly do that in the best and most authentic way is to really democratize the tools and allow people from all walks of life to go and make these films, regardless of their socioeconomic status. Yeah. It also makes me think that maybe rather than, like, you know, your close personal friend, Steven Spielberg, making tons of movies with all of these new tools very soon, what actually might happen is that, like, YouTubers and TikTokers and the people who are making this stuff who have never had access to these kinds of tools at any cost might be able to do this kind of stuff. Like one thing I've been thinking a lot about is dubbing, which is a thing that is AI is all over. Like text to speech is starting to get really good speech to text is starting to get really good. And the idea that you, you could have something that you make that is actually localized successfully into languages

all over the world, I think is very cool and super exciting. And we're a long way from the tech of that being sort of perfect, but it's already like the stuff that Squid Game was a couple of years ago where you see their mouth moving and you hear the words and they're obviously different. Those two things are coming closer together and I think that's very good. Yeah, it's also from an actress perspective. Wait, wait, wait, you just revealed, you watched the US version of Netflix, so the Squid Games come on. I did. I'm not proud of that. You've got to watch original original to stuff that. Yeah, I mean, from, from an actress perspective, do you know, do you really want someone else in some other country dubbing your voice in a foreign language? I mean, I would rather...

It's a whole different panel now. We're getting in a whole different panel now. No, I think this is the stuff. Yeah. It's a good example. I mean, I think, you know, we can recognize where, you know, AI is starting to be used, you know, in some ways to stay true to the performance of the artist, the original artist. And I think, I think that's awesome. I mean, obviously I have a biased perspective, probably being an actor. But, and again, this is like, I've realized a lot of what I'm going to do here is just, like, throw weird tensions at you and make you sort them out in front of me. But the thing that I struggle with on that one is, like, they're doing this a lot with podcasts,

too, right? And I host a podcast, and we get a lot of people who are like, I don't speak English. I would like to listen to your stupid podcast. Can I do that? And there are companies out there that are like, we will automatically dub you into 60 languages. And on the one hand, super cool. On the other hand, I don't know if they're good or I'm going to say what is right. So it sort of crosses this invisible line where I go from like, oh, access is awesome to like this feels weird

because you're now no longer getting the thing that I did. And that somewhere in there, it starts to feel odd. There's definitely those lines. But I think what you were saying earlier is what I think is going to happen, right? I don't think studios are going to have issues. I think what people don't realize there's so much sacrifice on every project we see. Turning things from page to screen is really, really hard. There's always a lot of sacrifice that comes from it.

So I think studios are just going to keep pushing things higher. But I think indie filmmakers, as you mentioned, like, you know, YouTubers, if you remember the days when, you know, DSLR came out, right? And you have people who are saying, oh, God, everybody's going to be able to make a movie now, right? With it. But that doesn't mean those movies are necessarily great. Because storytelling is still hard. Coming up with a good story is still extremely hard.

Right? So we're going to open access with these innovations in AI, right, across the board, which is really exciting. I think what YouTube did, and I always say this, YouTube is a good example of distribution changing, right? So we had open distribution. I think what's happening now with generative AI is that we're changing production. So open production, right? So meaning these kids could come up and express themselves and put it on YouTube, and if they're good, people like them, then will find them, right? There's billions of people watching it.

I think now in production we're going to have these tools. were, it was going to be easier, direct line for them to express themselves. But again, there's no guarantee that's good, right, if you go into masses. On the flip side of that, what you were saying, you know, kind of mentioning with Marvel movies, it's a hard thing, I understand both sides. It's a really hard thing for studios, because if you spend $250 million, you need to make $500 to break even, right? And you're spending another 100 problem in marketing.

Right. So you can't really take a big risk. And I always say it would almost be impossible to get 2001 Space Odyssey Greenland, late today. It's too artsy, right? And I think that's what for us was really excited. Once you get these tools and you bring the price down, you can take high risks and you can make, you know, visually spectacular films that the young audience would want to watch, but make a grounded story really about the character, push some narrative, push some subject matter that's extremely, extremely important. And if you're, and if you're not spending $200 million, if you're spending

20 on each, you can make way more films and employ more artists. When we were talking before, one of you brought up Netflix as another sort of wrench in the engine of like, what people think that we make and how it changes what things were. Like, we got different kinds of TV shows because Netflix existed and what that platform wanted. So to some extent, do you think AI is just sort of another in this long series of changes that Hollywood has been going through forever? Or is there something different about AI? I think it's different because of scale. I think it's different because it's going to distribute it as much more.

It's not going to be as localized. But I don't know. I'm optimistic. I think the beauty of it, the positive side is that democratization we're talking about. The negative side is like how much is we're going to affect it? But if you look at through history, Hollywood, it always found its way, right? He always found its way to survive. You know, early days of television, people said movies were over, right?

And that cycle went and kind of repeated itself now, you know, 80 years later with the streaming platform, and then it's coming in a slower recovery on that. So I think storytelling finds its way on that, but I do think it's going to be a big shift a lot of people in production side, especially below the line, a lot of artists below the line. You know, Ty and I talk a lot about like, what if shooting in person is going to be like black and white movies today? You don't see many of them, but you see some, right? But if that happens and going around. So it's interesting.

Nobody really has an answer of what that's going to end up being. But, yes, again, to repeat, like we've been telling people for three, four years, start learning these things, start learning these tools. It's the only way to kind of survive through it. I think it's, genius out of the bottom. It's really hard to stop some of these research and some of these innovation. Yeah, I think that was the big thing during the strikes that didn't happen. People, there was a lot of controversy. People were saying, oh, AI is either bad or good, and people were jumping on this, you know, spectrum on one extreme end or the other.

And no one was really coming together to talk about it in, you know, in an open way and say, hey, let's educate ourselves on this. And I think that's truly what everyone needs to do. It's what the industry needs to do is what artists need to do. Artists need to understand exactly how it's going to change the course of their careers, you know, what benefits it poses, what threads it poses to their careers. I think we really, you know, as creators have to come together and really openly educate ourselves on what it means for the future. Do you think there's room to influence that as creatives?

I think to some extent that there's a version of that conversation that basically sounds like, you know, we're screwed. The old way is dead. all we can do is just sort of hunker down and try to move forward. But there's another way that says, and I think this is like talking to folks, especially during the writer strike, there's this question of like, how can we make this better?

Like, we agree that there are things that chat GPT can do for scripts that are useful, but we have to do that in a way that also works for us as people who have jobs and do creative work. Like, can we... My worry with a lot of things about AI is that the tech is getting better faster

than we are at dealing with it, and so it's just going to sort of leave us behind, and we're going to end up at this place of all we can do is just sort of give up and drive. I think it's not getting as fast as you would read online. Okay. It's flashy, but in practically, practically on film, it's still not completely usable. It'll get there. That's one of the reasons we build it that way because we knew there's no way you can push every shot just with AI. You'll get 60% there, so you need to give this data to the artist to be able to manipulate it all the way there. So it's still a bit like, you know, flashiness and excitements. We're kind of

seeing it now in a way with some films that I think are dominating the box office. I think, you know, audiences are seeing films that they're not enjoying. And sure, you can argue that that's happened always. But I think ultimately, you know, people will, good stories attract people, you know, and people go and they see a good story and they tell someone about it. And then that person goes and then they see it and they tell someone else. And so I don't think that will ever stop, you know, and so if you have, let's say, a studio or a production company or anyone that thinks, oh, we can just use AI and replace everyone. Well, if they're not making good stories, it's not going to matter.

These stories won't be successful because they won't connect with people in an emotional and a real way. And that's what artists are good at. That's why we need artists, you know, regardless of what tools they have. And that's always been true since the dawn of time, since we've been telling stories, since we've been, you know, telling stories through art. And I don't think that'll ever change. You know, thinking about making the movies, like, I don't know,

how many people in this room made a hundred million dollar movie or made a movie, right? How many people would like to make a movie? Tie should of a racist hand. Just that tie should a racist. But I'm saying if you ask, you know, a really large group of people, how many would like to be able to make a movie? Most people say, that would be fun. I would like to do that, right?

I would like to express my feeling and tell people my story. The amount of people that get to like make a $150 million movie, it's handful. It's handful of these directors that you get to work. Because I think our industry will just grow because it's not going to shrink. It will grow because it's going to be very, very global. We're talking Hollywood. And I always say, like, storytelling is extremely important.

It should not be dependent on your socioeconomic status. That's why we started this. And I think that's what's important about AI. But yes, you've got to build it responsibly. Otherwise, it can hurt us a long way. Let's just talk about sort of Hollywood more broadly right now. And I'm curious, especially sort of specific AI stuff you're starting. to see work its way

into how these things get made. We've talked about dubbing a little bit. We've talked about what you're doing it. One or with the VFX stuff. Are there other things that are starting to appear in the filmmaking process and be part of the conversation in Hollywood that are either cool or early versions of something cool?

Yeah, I think Hollywood is, it's odd because it's hypocritical, but Hollywood, I think, is notoriously standoffish to new technology, even though it's an entire industry predicated on the advent of a case. camera. And then thereafter, you know, new stories and the best movies were making technological advancements, you know, and they wouldn't be possible without those technological advancements. But I think now, you know, there are certain decision makers in Hollywood, and I'm not saying

it's everyone, but there are a lot of decision makers in Hollywood who know nothing about technology. They know nothing about how visual effects work really, you know, at a very high level, maybe, but there are people who make a lot of decisions, and I think they don't understand technology at a certain depth. So I think sometimes it's also kind of a risk management business too. You know, you have thousands of artists working in certain pipelines. You can't just, you know, decide to use some AI tool and change that entire pipeline overnight. No one's ever going to go for that. And that's one reason why, you know, we built Wonder Studio the way we did so that it plugged in directly to the pipeline that artists were used to, that productions were using. It could actually

utilize this tool. It's not a black box, right? So, yeah, I think the industry's kind of been battered over the past few years. I mean, I think it's fair to say, you know, we had COVID, which was a major dent in the global box office. And, you know, then we had the streaming wars and, you know, digital distribution has been, the landscape of digital distribution has been changing, and distribution at large has been changing, and now the strikes and AI. And so it's just, it's kind of, yeah, it's been a rumble tumble past few years. I think people are really trying to understand, like, how can we come out of this? And, you know, are we actually on stable ground now? And can we go in Greenlight Films? And if so, how much risk can we take? What tools can we utilize? So I think

it's really like, we're in a discovery phase right now. And I think people are trying new things. I think people are really starting to test a lot of things behind closed doors. So I do think this will be the year where we really start to see a lot of new use cases. and we've seen a few, but I do think there will be more significant, you know, examples that we'll see in the next year. A lot of the tech is not there yet. A lot of tech is really good to push it to something

that you can put on social media, but film's different. You've got to get it up to 8K. It needs to be crisp. And also, you know, we said, like, this kind of age of generative AI has been last year, year and a half, but, you know, storytelling and film is all about collaboration and back and forward.

Like, you turn in your shot to a director or editor, and they're going to give you back notes. And sometimes you're going to have, they're called passes. Sometimes you're going to have up to 20 of them. And the changes are going to be so specific, right? And so these generative-Aid tools just haven't gotten there yet that you can edit the finest pixels of that. And that's the limitation of 2D space a little bit in that side

because you can generate something that's really cool, but it's a little bit off, how do I fix it? I think it will get better. Also, we haven't seen really performance. So it hasn't been used. I mean, a lot of these text video, they don't yet know how to generate performance completely on that side. So I think a lot of filmmakers are still kind of exploring it.

So the promise is big, but we're not completely there yet. I read somewhere that actors are starting to put in their contracts that they have to use VFX to make them look however many years younger or, you know, remove the lines. There's a budget just for like wrinkle removal on Tom Cruise's face. I can't confirm that. I did used to do that early in my career. It was just removing people's under eyes and stuff of that.

But not Tom Cruise, he's age list. Tom Cruise, don't come after him. Yeah, no, never. Okay. So, I thought Tom Cruise is AI. There is an AI. That's metaphysics. Yeah, yes, that is.

That's true. All right, if let's, we're going to run out of time here soon, so let's take some questions if folks have questions. Hi, can you quantify the access that you're talking about, the democratization? What is the pricing model of your product? and what are the cost savings that you promise your clients when you go in for a pitch?

And across what tasks? I'm curious about kind of the material benefits of the product. Yeah, no, that's a good question. When I say democratization, I mean AI in general where it's going. We're not saying we're the only player out there that's just going to democratize the entire. You're just in there for the money. Yeah, that's a very big promise.

I'm talking in the AI general. For us, we really see savings up to 60, 70%, going in aspect. The thing that we're really saving people, on production side, you need a lot of of these hardware, not just the motion capture suit. You need to track your camera, which is additional hardware. You need all the sensors, which is more price on the hardware. And then in post-production, there's a lot of these monotone tasks that really take weeks sometimes that we brought down to two hours on the side. So we've seen quite a bit of significant change. Again, it really depends, you know, and we just spoke earlier in visual effects, you have something called easy, medium, and

hard shots. And usually when you bid a project you say, okay, I have 2,000 shots. 500 is going to be easy, about 1,000 is going to be medium, and then 500 is going to be hard. So what we did is kind of brought down some of those hard to be medium and medium to be easy. So that really where the savings come on. And what we've seen also, what's really interesting is a lot of our users are, because our tool goes from $20 a month to $100 a month. So we really build this to be affordable. Traditionally, if you use mocap, sometimes you're going to spend $30,000 a day to do that, right? So there's a drastic, drastic change there.

But, you know, we were talking earlier. It's like our goal is to open it up free as well as a part of that. The only reason as a startup, you can't do that because these computers, you know, we made it as a web browser. So everybody can, accessibility was a big one for us. So everybody can access it. But that means you have the cloud cost. But I would say cloud's not an actual cloud up there that's free.

It's, you know, Amazon has a workstation somewhere that you have to pay by the hour, right? So that, that is a cost on us. You know, even Chad GPT, they're spending millions of dollars a second when someone's prompting. Someone's, you know, someone's got to pay for that. So for us as a startup, we picked it in a route where we're not going to go out to raise hundreds of millions of dollars just to get higher numbers so we can claim we have, you know, hundreds of millions of users, right? We did end up close to a million of users in our platform.

But the hard part there is like, okay, we can't open it up yet until we bring the cost down for us so we can make sure that this can run for a long time. Totally. All right, let's do a couple more. Do you guys have any thoughts around the end game for materials being created these days, like at the movie theater, for instance? Are we going to see changes in how we view these new products at some point? It seems like going to the movies has fundamentally changed. I don't know if it was the pandemic or what have you,

but now we are at these inflection points with the AI, the new ways that we inhabit. spaces. Do you have any thoughts around that? Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, we'll continue to see that change. You know, will it ever go away entirely? I don't think so. I think people will go to the movies and they may be sitting in a virtual cinema, but they might be watching movies to film. I don't think that'll ever go away. I think that's a very special experience, but I do think with new advancements,

you know, we will see new mediums that are extremely compelling. I especially think interactive for games is going to be huge, obviously. Yeah, we'll continue to see new mediums as technology continues to evolve. But I don't know if we'll ever lose, you know, there's going to be some form of nostalgia of like, I love going to see a movie in a theater surrounded by other people on a huge screen. And I hope we'll never lose that. I'm wondering if you have a POV on like other industries outside of Hollywood, whether it's like Nollywood or Bollywood, are they embracing AI more and like maybe seeing that as an opportunity to even like skyrocket closer to Hollywood?

Yeah, definitely. seen like one of our first users have been from from notllywood and different ones and we've seen it definitely happen to me that's that's exciting because i think we'll get we'll get more chances because especially like cg and visual effects a lot of these smaller markets really want to do the same thing that holly was doing but they either didn't have the know-how or the budgets needed to do that right for the production equipment they just don't have the hardware yeah yeah exactly so that's where that's where it's really exciting we've seen it a lot and i think there's a stats of our Hollywood is making more films per month than something about like Hollywood and one more industry

combined. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's quite fascinating. And if you start looking into it, it's a crazy quantity of it. But again, as you mentioned earlier, like if we have good dubbing and stuff that comes out, we might probably see more of those films, right? Because I was joke, my girlfriend doesn't like to watch films with subtitles, which is, again, terrible for me, right? Because I love to watch foreign films. I can't look at my phone and read subtitles at the same time. Yeah, I know. I know. She said, she's at. says she doesn't like to read movies and I just I can't hear her say that every time but I do think like a lot of audience actually doesn't like to read

Sabatililes so if we figure out a way how do we bring these foreign films more and make people comfortable to watch it it will it will help on that side yeah but our we have we have users all over the world from Japan to China England Norway US Mexico South America yeah we have users kind of globally but I think general outside of our platform yeah we're seeing a lot more AI usage on that side. Everybody's trying to figure out. What's exciting is sometimes you see things on YouTube

that just some kid came up with a new pipeline. It's extremely promising. And I was like, wow, that's very interesting. This is, you know, if this kid goes out, you could raise $10 million on an idea on a startup because this is a really good pipeline. But it's one kid sitting at the computer and researching things.

I think that's the exciting part. And we said it's kind of like equal starting point for everyone. That's the fear of it. But that's also to me the exciting part of it, is meaning like, oh, everybody has a chance to figure out how to do this. And obviously, you know, the traditional kind of gatekeepers will be worried about that. And maybe at some point, you know, maybe those gatekeepers even get replaced by people who are telling better stories who are coming up with more efficient ways to tell those.

And, you know, it's better for the world, maybe. Here's hope, man. All right, I can talk to you guys about this for hours. And I also didn't ask you a single question about Ready Player 1, so you should be grateful. All right, Nicole, those ones are you. We're going to go. Ty, Nicola, thank you so much for doing this with me. It's really fun.

Of course, thanks for having us. Thanks, everyone. All right, we've got to take one more break, and then we'll be back to do a question from the first cast hotline. We'll be great. Support for the show comes from MongoDB. If you're tired of database limitations

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it's trusted by so many of the Fortune 500. And that's because it's a platform built by developers for developers. MongoDB. It's a great freaking database. Start building at MongoDB.com slash build. buzzwords like progressive and affordability are thrown around all the time in politics. But what do they actually mean? For me, being a progressive means at least two things. One, being willing to unite lots and lots of people, all of the folks that are getting screwed over against the powers that be that are making your life worse. And then second, being progressive is essentially a hopeful enterprise that you think,

I think that the world can be much better that we don't have to settle for crumbs or settle for the status quo. And is there a difference between what it means to the elected officials and what it means to the people? So money is essentially the root of everything. I don't care if you're gay.

I don't care if you have all that. That's like secondary. Third, like that doesn't, that's not a priority. That's this week on America actually. Let's begin. Complex and unprecedented, the Spanish authorities are calling it. Before the disembark, asymptomatic.

Passengers who'd been stuck aboard the Hanta or maybe Hanta virus-stricken Dutch cruise ship disembarked in the Canary Islands this weekend, prompting the highest stakes game of where are they now since maybe COVID. Some of the evacuees, American and French, have since tested positive for the virus. And yet public health officials seem remarkably calm. We do have one individual who was taken to the biocontainment unit early, early this morning. And we assessed that individual. they are doing well.

Possibly because this is not the one to freak out over. Today, Explain drops every weekday afternoon. We're back. Let's get to the hotline. As always, the number is 866 Verge 1-1, and the email is Vergecast at theverge.com. We love all your questions, and we try to answer at least one on the show every week.

Thank you, by the way, to everybody who keeps reaching out about the book's palma. That is like the most intriguing device, according to the Vergecast hotline in a long time. I'm getting one, and I'm going to have a lot to say with Alex. on this show very soon. Get ready. This week, we have a question from Braden. Hey, David, this is Braden from Utah.

Why has I Message not improved? I mean that, like, I remember when, like, Iowa's 10 happened, and game pigeon was a thing where you could play games through I Message with your friends. It was the coolest thing. And I still play game Pigeon games with my friends and family to this day. But I remember in 2016, that's eight years ago, I was like, dang, this.

is cool now, but think of the things people will make with this, how there will be other things to do in iMessage. And currently, like, the list has not grown at all. It is game pigeon, gifts, and then weird apps that want to be in your messages that don't belong there. And it's just like, don't you feel like IMessage held more promises and just haven't fulfilled? Does the Vergecast play game pigeon games together? What are your thoughts? We'll make your room. This is actually something I've done a lot of reporting about over the last couple of years, not necessarily with IMessage specifically, but with messaging apps in general. And I think you can look at the whole world of messaging apps to kind of answer the question.

So the thing that turns out to be true about messaging apps is that, A, you can't really build a business on a messaging app. There's just no real evidence that lots of people will pay you lots of money for a way to talk to their friends, right? Like the idea of a texting app is so commoditized at this point that there's really no business to be had there. So if you're a messaging company, let's say Snapchat or WhatsApp or Telegram or I message in this case, you have to figure out a way to be successful that isn't just messaging. Right. If you and I messaging each other is never going to be a business and I believe that it's not, you have to figure out something else to do.

So you essentially have two options. You can either try to build stuff around messaging, which is like what Snapchat does with things like Snapchat originals and Spotlight and all the creator stuff that they've been doing. And stories, frankly, is a way around messaging stuff so that you come to the app to do messaging and you stay to do everything else. And that's where all the money is, right? That's essentially what WeChat is. WeChat's whole idea was to build an entire universe around the place that people go to communicate with their friends. That's a real business. You can do it. It's a tricky thing to get right from a UI perspective. I think Snap has been through this in a bunch of complicated ways trying to say, okay, you came here for a messaging app. How do we get you into all of the things that we can do to make money? But that is one way to do it. That's also, I would say, what WhatsApp is doing with things like business messaging.

WhatsApp is really interested in getting you to get menus or business hours or things like that through WhatsApp. That's a thing people are doing kind of informally. anyway, and they would really, really, really like to bring that into the WhatsApp ecosystem. That's also a way they can make money. They can charge businesses for those services. They can take a portion of money that gets moved around inside of these things. But again, all of this is kind of ancillary to this is where you message your friends. The other way to do it is to try to figure out a way to insert experiences into the place where you message with your friends.

And this is where it gets really messy. I think about like Google Allo is probably the best example of this, if you remember that, this messaging app Google made from years ago. And its big idea was that you could bring an AI system at that time, you know, Google Assistant into your chat with your friends. So you could say, you know, we're planning to go to dinner or we're planning to go to the movies. Let's buy movie tickets. And you could actually buy movie tickets inside of your chat with your friends. Cool idea in theory, I think. This is also where things like games like Braden is talking about or this idea that we can have experiences together inside of our chat window seems cool.

Emphasis on seams. In reality, this ends up being a pain. It's very hard for these apps to find a way to sort of insert themselves or add these services or even make you aware of these services without getting in the way of just you talking to your friends. And if you think about it, the idea of screwing up your chat interface with your friends is like totally. untenable. People just won't do it, right? You get to the point where I want to have messages back and forth with my friends. And if you change that or screw it up, disaster. And I think in a funny way, Apple has been trying to almost do it without fully doing it for a really long time. There was the IMessage App Store where you could send stuff, but that had an incredible discovery problem. Like most

people, I don't think, knew the IMSage app store existed. It was buried in a menu in the iOS keyboard when you were in iMessage. That didn't really work. Now there's this new menu where you can send stuff that works a little bit better, but that menu is really slow and kind of awkward. But I think what Apple would really like to do is make messages a full on internet platform in a very real way. You should be able to send somebody a link to Tick-Tac-Tow and it just expands and you can play Tic-Tac-toe inside of the iMessage window right there without ever leaving the app. If you think of it right now, a lot of this stuff is just links, right? Like, If I want to play a game with you, I send you a link, you tap on the link and we go play the game.

That's actually a pretty good user experience. So to bring that into the messaging system is a pretty tall order. And to do it in a way that doesn't disrupt anything else or threaten to take your data or break encryption in these encrypted messaging apps. It's just hard. People want private messaging. They want simple messaging. And they want to be able to talk to their friends. And to add things to that is borderline impossible.

That said, they're going to keep trying. They are just going to keep trying. There are too many people spending too much time in messaging apps for these companies to not try and find ways to insert themselves. And so you'll see more stuff like this, that inside of things like Slack and Discord, you're already starting to see these fuller web-like experiences you can have just inside of a chat window. I think that's where we're headed in certain ways. But I also think that's going to make basic messaging apps like Signal and WhatsApp and frankly I message all the more valuable to people. because that's where you go to just talk. And that is like the main thing we want to do on the internet.

Think about how annoying Gmail ads are. You're like, I just want to look at my emails and you're showing me a bunch of ads at the top of my inbox for some reason. Add that to your text messages with friends and family, which are even more intimate and even more important. And that just sucks. People will run away from that. And if you're Apple, again, iMessage is one of the core things that keeps people using iPhones. being a blue bubble is a very important thing. And so if you make people hate iMessage to the point where they'll start using WhatsApp,

that's a huge, huge risk for Apple. So Apple is in this tricky spot, just like everybody who makes a messaging app, of saying messaging is so important, we want to build a business out of it. It's where people are. It's what people want to do. But if we do it even slightly wrong, people will run away, and that kills a huge amount of any kind of moat and advantage that we have to keep people in. That tension mostly means we get to keep people in.

our simple good messaging apps, but that tension may not last forever. And I think it's going to be really interesting because it is abundantly clear to everyone who makes an app that if you can get people to message inside of it, they will live inside of your app. And that becomes very powerful. You don't want to screw it up, but it's a powerful thing to have going for you. So we'll see. I would bet we're going to see a lot more experimentation inside of these apps, especially these kind of just outside of messaging things where like I can send you a game in the way that I send you a GIF or I can send you an interactive poll inside of a group chat. That's the kind of stuff that's already coming to WhatsApp and I think you'll start to see that in more places.

But I sort of hope we never get these like massively interactive full web experiences. I do not need a chat bot in my messaging system. I just I just don't. This thing where you can talk to an AI chatbot like you talk to a person, fine. Do not put an AI bot in my group chats, meta, Apple, Google, whoever else. I don't want that. I don't think anybody does, but they're probably going to do it.

We'll see. All right, that is it for the Vergecast today. Thanks to everybody who came on the show, and thank you, as always, for listening. There's lots more on everything we talked about at theverge.com. We'll put a bunch of Lauren's stuff into the show notes. She's been covering all of these privacy bills really well,

but also just readtheverge.com. There's a lot going on right now, and we are also running headlong into developer conference season with Google and Microsoft and Apple. Stuff's about to get nuts. As always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or want to ban TikTok, you can always email us at Vergecast at theverge.com or call the hotline. It's 66, Verge11. We truly love hearing from you. Also, again, the book's Palma. If you want to know about the books palma, send us questions.

I think we're going to have to do a whole big thing on it on this show because I'm getting the clear. sense that y'all are interested. So if you have questions, keep them coming. This show is produced by Andrew Marino, Liam James, and Willpore. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Neelai, Alex and I will be back on Friday to talk about the Rabbit R1, all the other news in tech, and all of our feelings about everything. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.