The Vergecast - Microsoft’s big AI Build and Max’s messy streaming launch

Episode Date: May 26, 2023

The Verge's Nilay Patel, David Pierce, Alex Cranz, and Tom Warren discuss the biggest announcements from Microsoft Build 2023. Later, the crew discuss the launch of Warner Bros. Discovery’s combined streaming service Max. Further reading: Elon Musk fails to launch Ron DeSantis in disastrous Twitter Space Microsoft Build 2023: The 5 biggest announcements Microsoft’s Copilot and Bing AI plug-ins will be interoperable with ChatGPT Bing is now the default search for ChatGPT Microsoft 365 Copilot is getting plug-ins Microsoft’s Edge browser is getting the 365 Copilot AI assistant Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott thinks Sydney might make a comeback Microsoft announces Windows Copilot, an AI ‘personal assistant’ for Windows 11 Max has arrived, and it’ll feel very familiar to HBO Max customers Max will stream over 1,000 movies and TV episodes in 4K at launch Warner Bros. Discovery apologizes for crediting writers and directors as ‘creators’ on Max HBO Max remote button killed in Max rebrand — 9to5Mac HBO Max now Max: lacks native video player features; 'Up Next' support bugs - 9to5Mac Sony’s new Q handheld is official: 8-inch screen, streams PS5 games Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data, in your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all. I'm Skylar Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, 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. Hello, and welcome to GERCHAST. The flagship podcast of being alone in the studio, and the studio doesn't smell like weed. Hmm. And making an obvious inference from that information. I'm your friend, Eli.

Alex Cranz, is not in the studio with me today. I am very sober right now. Thank you very much. It's great. Dave Pierce is here. Hi. Is that a thing we should start saying at the beginning of every show? Like, from the new go 90 scale is like the scale of how sober are you at the beginning

of the show? It feels like we're big on transparency and disclosure here at the first. That feels like a good thing. I've told this story before, but I'll tell it again now for our new expanded audience. When we first started this podcast, as the NGadgett podcast in like 2008, ages ago, a million years ago, I was very nervous. There was a young, just a young writer with a microphone in a dream. And I would drink during the show, and our podcast producer, Trent Willoughby once pulled me aside and said, One, it's fine that you're getting hammered during the show, but I can hear the ice cubes in your glass.

It's good to have priorities. So I just started drinking the whiskey neat. That was just what happened. From that day forth, I started drinking neat whiskey during most of the early and gadget podcasts, which I believe AOL has deleted from the internet. Just thank you for the best for everyone. Thank you to our friends at AOL. If you have those, please send them to me.

Alex.cranz at theverge.com. No reason. I will exchange it for a music video featuring Eli Patel that you will very much enjoy. Oh, my God. So we can make this trade. Tom Warren is here. Hi, Tom. That was a good segue.

Hello. I want to see this music video. Yeah, we can do that. It's incredible. We could just talk about my Chicago local band career. I was on the radio a number of times. It was great. Maybe the next time you refuse to come on the show,

we'll just start the show with a full-length play of this video. Here's what I know. You know how I love talking about the economics of the music industry and copyright law and how the artists make money? It's because if someone had just told me, don't have 45 people in your band, I think we would have been more successful. Anyhow, there's a lot going on this week.

It was Microsoft Build, a bunch of AI news. Kevin Scott told us that Sydney might come back on the Decoder podcast, which is great. Tom's here to talk about that. Max launched. Alex, I'm sure you have feelings about Max. I know for a fact that it should not be named after my child, especially if they're not going to use the native video players on these platforms.

Just a lot there. We'll talk about it. We'll get into it. And then we have a wee bit of a lightning round. I do need to note just for checking the boxes. People tweet at me when anything happens. They're like, we can't wait for you to talk about Elon and Ron DeSantis on Twitter spaces. And we're not going to.

That's good. You have just said all the stuff there is to say about that. It was, let's just not. Yeah, sounds great. I'm going to say that Travis Scott had 12 million people watch his stuff in Fortnite, and Fortnite didn't go down. Yep. I mean, there's nothing to say anyway because it didn't work, right?

Very good. You know it did work? Microsoft build. Yeah, great segue. So it was build, build up and down history of this developer conference, right? Like every year we look forward to Google I.O. We look forward to WWDC. Some years Microsoft is like come to build.

Everything's going to happen to build. Famously, they made us come to build. They hyped the hell out of build for Windows Phone 7. Do you remember this? Yeah. I remember it because that's where I met a young Dieter Bone and we fell in love. It's a true story. But lately, the past few years, Tom, it's been kind of quiet.

This year, similarly quiet, but a lot of announcements because of all the AI work they're doing. Yeah, it's definitely been quiet over the past few years. I think since Windows 10, really, it's been quiet, particularly on the dev side. But yet this year, they're just going all out AI, right? Like, it's everything. And I think the big thing for them this year was, obviously they've launched this Bing AI. They have that co-pilot stuff's out there. But I think this year, it was kind of like asserting that that co-pilot is their platform, right?

Yeah. Nadella came on stage and talked immediately about a platform shift. So he believes that this is the next platform shift and Microsoft, obviously, you know, driving it, whatever. So co-pilot is basically their platform. And then they have plugins on that platform, which are essentially their apps. So that was the main two things, really. It was the platform and the plugins, I think, for Build the share. Can we talk about Co-Pilot?

Because I realized in prepping for this that, like, My sort of mental picture of what copilot is is very confused. Because they talk about having multiple different co-pilots. So it's sort of a thing that exists in a lot of the different apps that you use if you use Microsoft products. But then there's a thing called co-pilot for Windows now that is just a thing that lives in the Windows task bar that can do stuff. It's like it's one thing and it's many things, but it's also a platform, but it's also a product. Like what is co-pilot? Like how does Microsoft describe this thing that they've made?

So they do describe it differently for wherever it's used. Oh, cool. Thanks, Microsoft. So that doesn't help. But it started off life in GitHub, which was, that's where the sort of naming came from, which was essentially an assistant to help you sort of code, not as quite as in depth as we see the co-pilot appear now. But the second instance of it was in Office. And they have a variety of co-pilots within Office, so they have one for Word, Outlook.

And they're all distinctly a slightly different, right? Like there's certain things you can't do in Outlook that you can do in Word, for example, or PowerPoint. So they're all sort of slightly tweaked individually and they don't necessarily communicate with each other. But then there's a co-pilot in Teams, which is like business chat or whatever they call it, which then looks across all of your documents, all of your chat, all of your emails, calendar or whatever, pulls out anything. So it's more of like an assistant. And I think they're taking that now and kind of putting that similar sort of assistant-like, sort of personal assistance, what they call it,

into Windows, so Windows copilot. So it's slightly confusing. It's very confusing. Yeah, because it's not a single co-pilot. It's like individual sort of assistant AI, assistive AI technologies. And yeah, they haven't done a single one. So it's not like Cortana, right? There's no like key replacement to Cortana. Unless you consider Windows co-pilot yet. The Windows co-pilot is really fascinating because it's what Bigspy was supposed to be on Samsung phones. It just is. It's like, It is. If you look at the demo, it's like, how do I turn on, you just ask it. How do I turn on focus modes?

And it just uses the computer for you, which is really cool. Yeah, and how do you turn on dark mode? And all the audience was like, there's a dark mode in Windows? You know, like, it definitely can surface stuff like that. But I think their aim is obviously for it to be way more than just controlling Windows, you know. But interesting with Windows co-pilot, though, is that the way you interact with it, like, there would be some obvious privacy concerns, right? If there's something at the sidebar that's just reading and watching everything you do,

just to perhaps summarize it or perhaps you ask it a question or whatever. So you actually have to copy content out of your apps. And then it like, it's like, oh, it senses the clip. And it says, do you want to analyze this and summarize it or whatever? Ask your question. So they haven't showed off all the features of Windows co-pilot, but that's kind of like some of the stuff that they're hinting at right now. But it would be interesting to see how they then get the,

get these plugins in there and interact with apps. Yeah, that tension you just described is the thing about this that is so interesting to me because on the one hand, like, I think it's insane that Microsoft is just calling all of these things co-pilots, but I ultimately think that'll sort itself out, right? That it's like co-pilot just becomes shorthand for like the AI thing that helps you in whatever app you're in and it won't have a character or a face. And I think people will sort of start to get that. But to have this thing in Windows that like you're saying is like content aware,

and sees what I'm doing as I'm doing it is both very cool. And I think kind of obviously where a lot of these things are going at a platform level and also totally horrifying at a privacy level. Because on the surface, it just sounds like, hey, we have a key logger that sometimes helps you. It's like, well, I hate that. That's the main concern, right, with the way that they're doing in Windows. So I think that's why they've obviously made it very clearly. You have to copy content out.

Like you have to do that clipboard action for it to be able to see that content. And to be fair, Windows clipboard at the moment does that anyway, right? You'll pull out stuff from clipboard and it goes in there. And that's a cloud clipboard as well. So it can be synced up to Microsoft services and stuff. I mean, that's the thing, right? It's like, oh, no, Microsoft is going to know all the stuff that I'm doing. It's like, my dude, you use Windows and Word and Edge.

Like Microsoft already knows. Yeah. I mean, this has been a, actually we started off by talking about Windows 10. Microsoft has been on this journey since Windows 10 came out, right? Like they started collecting ever more telemetry data inside of Windows 10 with Windows 10 itself

and took a lot of flack for it. And now it's like they're doing it helpful key logger. And everyone's like, that's pretty dope though because it's cool. And like there's a real flip in how we are thinking about the privacy implications of all this stuff because the utility is there.

When the utility for the send your data away was like, you'll get personalized advertising. Or your boss will know how much you're working, which is one of the stories Microsoft has told over the last few years. Yeah, it's like, then definitely I think they should go to jail. When it's like, oh, the robot will use the computer for me. It's like, no, actually you should watch, come here, take a look at this. Have you seen what I'm up to?

And historically, when there's that level of utility, we are more than happy to throw our privacy away. Yeah, I mean, we do it with Google. We do it with Gmail. You know, like these same, well, not same, but similar privacy arguments of happened for decades, right? So I think it's kind of similar here. It is, like you say, you're getting the utility for it. That's the trade-off. You are giving away perhaps some data that you might not be necessarily aware that you're giving away, but you are getting something back, essentially. How useful is it? Because I think that that kind of comparison to these other things, like even

Siri and Alexa are both things that are just a microphone in your home. So of course, you like, RIP privacy. But there's useful. I can ask for for the weather. and the time and that makes it worth it to give away all my privacy. Does it feel that way with the next? What a bleak sentence that is, by the way. That is the trade that we've made. I can know the weather and the time and maybe set a timer. And for that, I will give you all of my privacy forever and ever.

This thing can hear me sleep, but I get the weather. This is the world we've chosen to live in. Congratulations, everybody. No, I didn't say it was like a lot of utility. I said, if you're just like, it's anything more than, I don't know, like you, you clicked on one thing on Amazon and now that thing will follow you around the internet. If you just provide a little bit more usefulness than that, everyone's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, microphones in my bathroom, let's do it. This is a total aside, but can I give you the exact thing that has been happening to me recently? I bought a hat, like a baseball hat on the internet because I'm old and I'm not allowed to go out in the sun anymore.

So I bought a hat. And this incredible thing has been happening to me where every single ad I see every, every single ad I see every, on any platform is for hats. And you would think that would be awful, but it actually kicks ass because I have discovered so many new brands of hats, so many types of hats. I have learned things about kinds of hats that I didn't know about existed. There are five panel hats. There are six panel hats.

There's a dad hat. There's a baseball hat. It's been amazing. I bought a hat from an Instagram ad like an hour and a half ago. Oh my God. It's working. Dude, you're feeding the beast. This is it.

Hats are the first good experience I've ever had on the internet. Have you found the guy who makes hats for people whose heads are too small? That's the one I just bought. It's the greatest pitch in internet marketing history. He's like, trucker hats are too tall, buy my hat. And I was like, yes, they are too tall. I will buy your hat. He's like, I've been having this one problem.

I've dedicated my life to solving it. And then he pokes the hat. He's like, this hat's stupid. So anyway, be more like hats, rest of the internet. Sadly, the point that we have just made is that advertising internet works. Yeah, it's a real. problem, but only when it's good. But that's to your point, right? The flip side of that is the Amazon thing where it's like, oh, you bought this hat. Would you like to buy this hat again? How about

this hat that you just bought? Would you like to buy it again? It worked with you, is what you are saying. You got entered into the giant cloud database of people who will buy hats online, and then they found you again. If all advertising worked like hats, I'd be much happier. All right, we got to get back to AI. I don't know how we got to hats. So Microsoft made a Bixby in Windows that watches you while you sleep, is that part of it. Well, Microsoft put copilot Windows. It has a bunch of cool features. It is fascinating to think about putting an AI at the operating system level, which Microsoft has really not been focused on for quite a while.

But now they're saying, okay, we can make Windows interesting again, which is fascinating. But then they're putting it everywhere else too, right? It's in office. It's going to be an edge. Where are you supposed to use it? What do those versions of it do? Yeah, that's the thing. So they're all very similar.

We haven't seen a ton of the window stuff to know exactly how it's different. So obviously you can understand it's at the side. And also I think it's kind of interesting they've put it as a sidebar in Windows, particularly when it's like ultra-wires and stuff because I hate ultra-wides, but I can see that having a sidebar would be kind of useful on a giant, you know, ridiculous screen. Just like the Hal panel just staring at you. But yeah, how they are different? To be honest, that isn't all that clear, if I'm honest, because I think the way that they're putting it into Windows right now, into the Windows Copilot, is they want it to be search, right?

In the same way that they kind of wanted Cortana to be search as well, because that kind of integrated into the Windows search thing. They're doing it slightly different here, so it's a separate button. It's not going to sort of hijack the Windows search thing. But let's be honest, how long is that going to last? Like, they're blatantly going to change this into Windows search because they want to put. those search queries. They're pointing the sidebar now because they're rushing to get it out there, right? But yeah, I think that's where it's different because on Windows, they're trying to push the search.

On edge, yeah, they're pushing the search there, but it's also contextual in web browsing. So you can obviously summarize whatever you're looking at, ask questions about what you're looking at. Obviously, the copilot in Windows can't do that because it's not going to be able to view your apps in the same way. Interesting. But it can see your screen, right? I don't think so. I think you have to actually copy stuff out of the app like into your clipboard to interest in it.

So it's going to be contextual, but in a bit of a weird way. So Edge is watching you browse. Yeah, Edge is just watching you browse. As long as you've enabled Edge to, you know, track your browsing history, which most people just click OK to. Then yet it's going to know.

It will just, you just click the sidebar button and then immediately it's read that web page of whatever you're looking at, and then you just ask it questions about that web page. So you could be looking at TV and then be like, is there another TV like this, but it's like $400 and not $500? Like you can ask you those sort of questions in Edge. Obviously, you won't be able to do that in Windows. Isn't there like a fatal flaw to this though in that it relies on Bing?

Yeah. That is the fatal flaw. Like especially for news stuff because like the Bing sources for that sort of information are bad. Bing's like I tried to switch over to, you know, everybody. who's like chat GPT and all of this. So I was like, okay, I'm going to like go all in on Bing for a few days. And it was miserable. Oh.

It was every time I kept being like, oh, crap, I'm in Bing. Like I have to go and manually type in Google because the Bing search results were never as effective. And it wasn't just like work stuff. Like we often at times have to use Google here because we're thinking about search engine optimization. But it was just like, I just want to find this shirt. And Bing would be like, no. Yeah. Bing is also ugly. And I don't, I like, I understand why it is. It's like I'm about to make a very bad excuse for it being ugly. Microsoft figure out how to make money on Bing. Like Bing is a profitable, reasonably sized business inside of Microsoft because they were like, well, no one's looking at it anyway. Let's shove garbage in it. And so it's just full of garbage. Like, it is the, the $250

subsidized Windows PC of online search engines. It's just stickers everywhere, man. Just weird sign-up crap and weird float. Like, they just festooned it with crap to make it make money. And now it's going to compete with Google.

And it's like, this is more like being robbed. It always makes me think of the thing like where Google, you know, tests 40 different versions of the color blue before it decides which one to put on the page. Microsoft just puts all 40 on the page at the same time.

It's just like, what do you? Like, blue? Here's some blues. Go nuts. And it's funny, because if you click into the Bing chat experience, that is way nicer because it's clean in its way. And so it's like,

it's a new product. But it's just connected to this like, seedy back alley of the search experience. The history and context of that is MSN, right? So MSN.com was always their entity and Internet Explorer that everyone would just land on, you know? Like, that was the default. And people actually got news from,

there. Like, that was quite a considerable amount of traffic to that website back in the day. So they still have that component, and that's what drives a lot of their new stuff. And I will see the advertising revenues and all that sort of stuff. And it's interesting about that MSN component because it's also part of the Windows widget system as well. So you open up widgets and you just see like, shit, basically. This is the best way to describe it is because it's just pure garbage. It's just like Microsoft's user experience of the future is like absolutely. absolutely cut-edge AI assistance and then like algorithmically recommended content targeted at boomers.

And those things are going to get jammed together into some version of the future no matter what. Yeah, ironically, Bing is stuck in a worse version of the same thing Google is stuck in, which is that when you have a big audience full of people who have used your product for a very long time, it's really hard to change it. And so what the Bing team is doing is like you said, just launching this new thing with AI that they will then just sort of create. creep in on top of everything else that is Bing. But ironically, there's this big group of people like Tom's talking about who have used MSN as their browser homepage for 25 years. And if they make Bing attractive, those people are going to freak out. And those people are the people who make Bing money. Yeah, they're clicking on the ads. Yeah, they're like, our ugly search engine is required to be ugly or else everyone will stop using it. So here's a question about Edge and a co-pilot

in Edge that I've been racking my brains about with Google, with Microsoft, with everybody, really. So you put an AI in the web browser and you're like, browse the web with me. There's a lot of assumptions baked into what the web is there, right? You're like, I'm looking at this e-commerce page with a TV on it. Find me some more TVs. One, you have to assume that e-commerce page is written such that the AI can understand it and understand what's important on that page and what's not important. What TV am I even looking at on this page?

Excellent question, right? So you have to structure the web page to make that work. Then you have to have a lot of other webpages with TVs on them. It's structured in the same way so that the AI can go out and compare them. Another big challenge. And then it's got to reform that all into some data and send you out somewhere to buy a TV. It just seems odd to me that we're assuming that the incentives to make those webpages will continue to exist when actually you're not looking at the web pages. You're looking at a sidebar where an AI is reading the web pages for you.

Like there's just something there that I can't. It's like the IR blaster of AI. technologies where it's like instead of just like using the thing directly, you're going to point a remote at a repeater that points at the TV for, like it's just there's a level of weirdness there that I can't quite understand. Yeah, but it's still easier than getting up and going and hitting the button on the TV. Is it? As I say, we spent more than a decade as been on the web and publishing and, you know, from our point of view, it's optimizing our pages for Google's, you know, robots to read them. So I think in terms of are the pages optimized for that, I think probably they already are, right? Like they're just using the same sort of skimming that they've done for more than 10 years now.

So I don't mean that's a problem, but it is the shift of like how will this affect that, you know, SEO, like how will publishers adapt to this? Like are they going to try and surface their TVs in this particular way anymore or are they going to go for real humans that are actually reading their websites? of robots. Like, that's going to be a definite shift with this stuff. I think it probably will go more towards people uptime mindsing their sites for people who are actually reading and actually clicking rather than, you know, thousands of visits from AI robots picking up your site and spewing it out with ads that you're not making any money on, you know, like there's, it's going definitely change that in some pretty major ways. So I had this conversation with Microsoft CTO, Kevin Scott, on Decoder. He has a new title now. He's also EVP of AI.

He's like the person in charge of AI. And we actually left this out of the podcast because it was too heady for decoder. But I'll bring it up on the Vergecast. I was like, it seems dumb that we're going to program our computers with English and like let them guess what we want. Like that's very useful in some contexts. But it's weird when it's like, I want you to go find me some web pages and it goes reads the web for me and guesses what I want. And it shows that to me over here instead of me just browsing the web. or I tell it, come up with an Excel function in Office Copilot,

and it makes one for me, and I might not know how to write an Excel function, so I just have to assume it's good. Yeah, sure. And he was pointing out, like, there's actually, there have, like, always been sort of, like, what he called stochastic programming languages. So, like, programming languages with random outputs, and he's like, this is better for people. And it just seems like we're about to start using our computers in this way, where right now you like click a button

and you're like this button will do what I want it to do and instead of that you're going to tell the computer to do something and then you're just like going to hope that it does what you want and AI has closed that loop so you kind of think it will do what you want but all this copepad stuff is like man you are you're just shifting your intent from do what I want to I'm hoping you can accomplish my task yeah because it's not it's not going to do the same thing every single time either You know, if you ask a TV, for example, like last week, there'll be a new TV probably this week.

So it's going to fetch that data and then it's going to change the result every time, which obviously, when you search stuff on Google, it changes over time as well. But I feel like most of the time I've used Bing and chat GPT and stuff. I can't always with confidence ask it the same question day to day and it will give me the same answer. Even if it's based on like a fact is it would be slightly different. There'll be a slightly different source that might skew it. It's coming down to those sources. and being in the past has not had good sources of information, in my opinion. One of the weird things about, I think, what we all do for a living

is that we spend a lot more time doing research than doing tasks. And I think most people spend most of their time on a computer doing tasks. And if my job is to get Excel to total up all the dollar figures in this gigantic spreadsheet, the difference between me finding all the things to do in a menu, me learning the keyboard shortcut and me learning the prompt to the co-pilot in Excel, I would argue those are all functionally the same thing. And I think the thing that's going to happen and the thing that Microsoft seems to have figured out is that for that simple, like, how do I turn a six-step process into, you know, a two-thing macro into a one-step prompt to an AI? Like, that's the journey Microsoft seems to be on.

And I feel like we tend to get stuck on this idea about like, why can't, how do I engage in ideas with AI? And, like, you can't. And it's a mess. and it will destroy democracy and lie to you. But if you just need to do something, like, Nil, you're thinking about the Excel functions. Like, I track that as like a universally good thing because rather than like read a manual, I can just ask it and it knows how to do it because it is the manual. Like I just see all, that's all upside to me.

Not only will it know how to do it, it'll actually tell you and teach you how to do it as well. But I don't even know that I care. Just do it for me. Like maybe this is no longer a thing I need to know how to do. I think it's kind of like Lightroom versus Photoshop. Like, they both functionally do the same thing, but one takes a bunch of steps out. You don't have to know as much about photo editing and you don't have to know as much about the tools. You can just go make that picture brighter and it makes the picture brighter.

And the other one, you're like, okay, I have to like learn what a curve is. I have to learn what layers are. And then I have to, depending on the photo. You can do some nerd shit. You can do some nerd shit. But like the iPad version of Photoshop. Yeah, that's the one. Yeah.

It's like the really dumbed down version. And for most people, that's good enough. And then all of the graphic designers are like, this is the worst product ever made. Why would ever use that? And that feels like kind of the same thing in this case where we're like, we're the graphic designers versus everybody else. So this is the other thing Kevin told me, which I think is just fascinating to think about. He's like, prompt engineering is here to stay. And if you just think about prompting these AIs as a programming language, we're all just about to learn a really weird programming language.

like a truly bizarre programming language where then the computer goes and executes actual programs on your behalf. Have you seen other programming languages? It's back to MS DOS, you know, it's command line driven. Yeah, it's like we've just invented like kind of wordy DOS.

Right, like overly emotional DOS prompting is like what all of this is. Slightly horny DOS. Feelings-based DOS is truly the world we deserve. Please will you copy this file? But I think this is why the prompt engine is definitely here to stay and that'll be just like the command prompt now and Linux and everything else. There's ways to do stuff much quicker in that when you send batch files out of it and do stuff.

That's always going to be there. But I think the way that they're tackling it Microsoft is with copilot is that they're doing it sort of, they're customising it individually for each app they're putting it in. So it's not just like throwing the same sort of thing in each and expecting people just to know what to put to put in. you know, like if you drag a word file into PowerPoint, it knows it's a word file,

and it'll create a slide deck out of that, and it'll ask you all the sort of questions you would respond to, like, what color slide decks you want, all that sort of stuff. So I think where they customize the GUI is going to be the really interesting part of this, where it goes further to sort of like the prompts as well, like to prompt you. Because a lot of people go to this stuff,

and they don't really know what to ask it, do they? They don't know. They're like, you can ask anything, and everyone just does, uh. Yeah, I think it is absolutely, wild. Look, I watch a lot of extremely nerdy TikToks. I never see some TikToks that are like top five C-sharp programming prompts. Maybe they're out there. But the volume of TikToks I see that are like, here's what to say to chat, GPT, to get what you want. Here's the best prompts. Here's the best way to start a prompt for all these AI systems. There's something there that is very powerful that is a different way of using computers. I think that's why all of these CEOs keep saying it's a platform shift. But if you just look at it from another perspective, we're just creating this absolutely bizarre programming language that looks a lot like English, but definitely is not English, right? Like, you can whisper magic words to chat GPT and it will do things for you.

And if you don't whisper the magic words, it will do other things, even if the spirit of your prompt is the same. Yeah, there's so much complexity there that like the people who are taking advantage of this now learning it and learning the correct prompts will definitely be. be like a step ahead, just like people who can code a step ahead of people who can't in the tech world. I think plugins is kind of where that does shift things. This was the other big announcement. So yeah, the other main sort of big announcement is obviously OpenAI has plugins in ChatGPT based on Open Standard. And now Microsoft's adopting that same Open Standard so that those plugins that you build for ChatGPT will also work in Bing and co-pilot, so which is, it sounds like, oh, great, hurrah.

Like, there's going to be this, you know, open platform for, open platform for chatbots and AI for the future. But Open AI and Microsoft have, like, the closest partnership on this stuff. So it'll only be big if, like, Google come along and say, we're using the same open standard.

I don't know. I still think that's two of the three players anyone is talking about right now, essentially committing to, like, a long-term plan that supports each other. And then there's the one where, like, Bing is going to be the default search in chat GPT now, which is a big deal.

So there's like, these two things are very much becoming like sides of the same coin in a way that I think is really interesting. Like I kind of expected being an open AI to get like slightly further apart over time as Microsoft builds more of its AI and Open AI wants to do more products. But instead they're just,

they seem like they're getting closer and closer all the time. They're like crossing over, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting to see. I haven't actually used the Bing stuff in Open AI yet because it's only on, I don't subscribe to the plus stuff. So, but I've seen it.

it like briefly and it's obviously not quite the same as you know what what most of being because they control the whole search engine but it's definitely the crossovers there are super interesting i didn't think i didn't see that one coming even though it seems obvious now but the plug-in stuff is is super interesting because i think they're they're expecting that just ordinary folks are just going to be building these plugins and building like say you created like a prompt um or a macro or whatever prompt sort of thing. Then you're like, oh, that's really cool.

I'm going to share that with my friend. Like, oh, this is how you can ask it to do this and it will do that. And then you create this weird ecosystem of like plugins that are driven by, created by users rather than, you know, the companies for websites and stuff and that, which is kind of where we're seeing these plugins initially. But I think it's really going to be the user created plugins that are going to be super interesting for the future of this. And they've got a whole app store problem there.

And I say App Store and just all the promise and potential of any App Store, right? People are going to build stuff that no one ever thought about. We're going to have a whole economy. And then they've got to lock it down and make sure you can't build malicious software. Yeah. Because it's going to do malicious things or show you malicious things or create images that are malicious. And there's a whole lot of moderation that's going to have to go on there, which I don't know if they've anticipated that well yet. We'll see.

Part of me wonders if that's a thing OpenAI thinks it can offload to Microsoft, which does have some experience in doing things like moderating a store. No, you mean the enormously successful Windows App Store? Yeah, it's going really great. I don't know you're saying that. Yeah, there's like a hundred iTunes apps. Yeah. I've been talking to a couple of folks over the last few weeks who have been involved in the Chrome Web Store, which I think is kind of another version of trying to do this, right? It's like things that plug into the thing.

The Chrome Web Store is a disaster. Like, it's so bad. It is so full of problems. Extensions can update without telling people they ask for tons of information. It's really messy. Like, there have been stories about previously good extensions being bought by companies that then change the permissions and you don't use them to screw over users. It's a mess. And Google, I think, has basically, as far as I can tell, just kind of given up on it.

And it's like, we're going to pay as much attention as we can. But chaos will reign, you know, godspeed on all your questions. And, yeah, ChatGPT and Microsoft are now running absolutely headlong into the same thing. Like, if you make it easy for people to build something, they're going to build stuff. Yeah. And it's going to get worse before it gets better, I suspect. So Microsoft says, again, Kevin on Decoder, you can hear him talking about this. They're very clear.

There's a bunch of stuff you can't do. They have a deployment board with OpenAI. They want to keep this lockdown. And so I think figuring out where the boundaries are is the first thing that will happen for developers. But the interesting part, Tom, is what you're saying, is a lot of these plugins are just sort of like prompt macros. Yeah, that's essentially like what they're going to end up, right? Like on the Bing side at the moment, they have very limited ones. So it's from, I'm trying to remember there's like kayak and a bunch of like restaurant booking stuff.

Just so like, so you can say to it, you know, find me a restaurant nearby and book me a table for 7pm. You click it and it does everything for you. I love that kayak every time somebody's like, we need. We need something to plug into our new service. Kay-X-I-Lix-Leads. What do you want? Flates? We got flights.

It's the Assassin Creed of websites. If you've got a new thing, Assassin's Creed is there. You always see it, don't you? On the list. That's how you know something's working. So it's really interesting about that meta-prompt thing, right? The idea that we can take these plug-ins, we can package up a prompt and then prime the GPT model to interact with you, and that's a plugin. is Microsoft thinks that, like, Sydney should come back.

Like, the original horny Bing is lurking there. There's a merch at Microsoft that's like free Sydney merch. Are you serious? Yeah, so Kevin told me. It's like it's very jokey inside of Microsoft. That's awesome. And he told me that if you want to talk to Sydney, you should be able to talk to Sydney. And even more importantly and more interestingly, that you as the user should have more access to the meta prompt.

So it should change the tone. You can change the tone, you can change how expressive it is, potentially change how horny it is. And so you just as a user, you get closer and closer to tuning the model yourself. Not all the way to like the model weights on stuff, but you get closer and closer saying, look, I'm ready for the full Sydney experience. Like I want the robot to tell me to leave my wife. Let's do this thing. I'm just imagining Nelai sits down at work at the morning, goes to Bing.com, turns everything up to 11. And he's like, let's go.

Let's see the MSN news stories for today. But I think that's ultimately fascinating, right? Microsoft is already seeing into the future. Like our plug-in architecture is basically packaged up prompts. And so if you do that, then the next turn is like, we'll let people mess with the first prompt and give this thing a personality. Let people have access to more that personality that they had to hide away at the very beginning because it was very obviously trying to bang kind of. Roos. Like I don't know what else to say about that. But that notion to me is really powerful, right? That not only is this prompting becoming a kind of programming language, but then now

we're going to start packaging up bits of programs and selling them to one another. And those are plugins, but they're really just packaged up prompts. Yeah, I think definitely the end goal of this. And Microsoft wouldn't say this right now, but is for it to be as fully personalized to you as possible. So it's this whole end goal of a personal assistant, right? Like that's definitely where they're heading with it. But obviously, if you do that right now

or you lean into it too much, then you do get New York Times articles. And you get that like sort of weird reception to it. But I think it's definitely one of those things. Like we've seen this with Alexa and those sort of devices. They first initially shipped as voice only, then they slowly got video and then they got cameras that they expected you to have on your bedside table.

And it's just a conditioning of getting used to this, I guess, until it can be fully personalised and sold to you as your assistant, where you will literally tell it your darkest secrets. And it will respond and help you. I think that's definitely the end goal, right? Like, it has to be fully personalised. And we've seen some stories where they're trying to commercialise it in a way that they can do a private version of chat GPT

on their servers for businesses who are kind of like, worried about the data being shared or used for other prompts and stuff. So I think that's definitely the end goal. There is a report this week that Apple won't let its employees use chat chbt for data privacy concerns. And Samsung doesn't as well, right? The strange question there is I think there's like personalization and then there's sort of humanness, right?

And I think one of the things we have to figure out is I think those are actually like two separate vectors, right? Because there's this question of like, how much does it know about me? Right. And I think to that way, in that sense, you're absolutely right. that I think the place they're trying to go is that it knows everything about you very quickly and knows it specifically about you as a person and your tastes and your data and all of this stuff. And that's like if they do that now, it's going to seem real creepy, but they are very clearly sort of marching down the road to get to the point where it can just say,

hi, I'm, you know, I'm your co-pilot. I read all of your emails and your text messages and I know everything about your boss. Let's hang. Have you thought about leaving your wife? Yeah. But that's the thing. Does that then have to seem like a person with a name and interests and say the word I and essentially like be Scarlett Johansson from her in your ear? Like, do those two things have to coexist in order for these things to be successful?

I don't know. But every we seem to be doing them sort of simultaneously. They are both getting like friendlier and more knowledgeable about me all at the same time. And I wonder if we can't do one without the other. The also interesting part of of that like whether it's, you know, kind of. be very personal to you or not, is that they've used the word co-pilot, right? So it's not gendered. It's not like Cortana, where it was obviously very gendered. Yeah, lesson finally learned on that one, Microsoft. Great job. Good job. So like, that's a good step. And it also

separates it from feeling like you're talking to a human. So it does feel like it's your co-pilot sort of thing. But I do feel like eventually it's going to get a bit gray, right? Because it's going to become more assistant like but maybe that's a good thing like I would love to have an assistant I couldn't afford to to hire assistant but I'd love to have an assistant that can help me like just do stuff because I'm like useless at remembering things like unless I write them down and have you know a notebook and stuff I'm pretty useless at that side I'd love that so if this sort of thing can get to can stay within that realm as an assistant like that's helping me and not actually doing stuff for me or on behalf of me which is where I think AI

can get a little bit in the dangerous territory. Then I think they're going down the right path. I think that's if they keep grounded on that sort of side of things and don't, and it doesn't get too personal, then yeah, like I'm all for this sort of like co-part idea. Because I think they've definitely got that that's the right idea with this sort of stuff, be assistive rather than,

you know, try and take over. The thing I can't help but think now is that Clippy has won. And we've talked about this a little bit that like Clippy has changed and Clippy has been through some change. changes over the history, but like as you look back over the sweep of Microsoft desperately trying to pop out of nowhere and help you write that document, do you still see Clippy in Co-Pilot? Like, walk me through this history a little bit.

How did we get to this? Yeah, so Clippy was obviously the animated paperclip that appeared in Office. I mean it was like Office 97, if I remember right now. And that thing would pop up and be annoying and just be like, I see you're writing a document to join me to help you and all that sort of stuff. And that was, you know, there's just a giant meme these days. and then through the years they've kind of tried to

sort of bring back elements of Clippy so they've had like little help things in office they redesigned Office into the ribbon so there's all these buttons to try and help you out and then we got to call Tanna eventually which is supposed to be your personal assistant and was based on a character from a video game that didn't have many clothes

I put it out yeah Microsoft is secretly super horny Very obvious. And now we're kind of coming kind of full circle again where we're about to sort of this assistant technology

that's there that's going to pop up and help you essentially when you're writing a document and it's just come full circle like I don't know like you could call it Clippy 2.9 it's the easy way it's the lazy way to call it I suppose at the moment but it's really it's like this is Clippy's revenge tour

Clippy is like you clowns tried to get rid of me yeah Clippy is chilling in the cloud servers Just getting ready to pop out the screen. It's just Ben and Redmond pumping iron waiting for this day. He's ready. I've read every web page if I'm ready for this. Wait, we can't gender. Clippy doesn't have gender.

Does Clippy have gender? No, we should not gender the robots. They do gender Clippy. They still do. They still call him. Oh, wow. It's a paper clip with eyes, man. Actually, one of the funniest thing about Clippy is that a bunch of Microsoft Teams employees

tried to bring it, let's say, back into teams as animated like gifts and stuff like that. And the Microsoft legal team were like, nope, and they just shut it back. So it tried to briefly resurrect itself, but failed. But the vision has been there, right? Since Microsoft Bob was before Clippy, go look at that nightmare in the face. Do you remember the dog in Windows XP? Pull over your car right now. Listen to me and Google the words Microsoft Bob.

And Microsoft has since tried to retcon this. It's like, we invented the future before the future. This is like one of the most horrific looking operating system ideas in world history. But they've always been kind of like computers are too hard to use. And our solution to that is not making the computer itself easier to use, but by inserting something between you and the computer that understands what you're trying to do and then figuring out how to do that for you. So you should really look at this interface.

It is bonkers. They had like Merlin Wizard thing as well. Yeah. And the dog in Windows XP, you could click and it would bark. That was a real thing. But there's always this idea that like there's a computer and you should not use it. This other thing that is like a friend should use it for you. And they've just been focused on that for a long time.

And now you get to the place where like, oh, this can actually happen. Like you can just talk in English to this co-pilot and it will just go use the computer. for you. But do you think co-pilot, could it eventually become like Clippy, Cortana, Bob, every other one where like the reason those always fail is because they were too intrusive and they didn't actually help all that much. Yeah, so they've definitely done some steps to sort of, I think, to avoid that. Like they're obviously very self-aware. So like in Word where it's integrated, for it to like pop up and actually try and interact with you rather than just being a sidebar that sits there because the copilot in word definitely does try and interact. You'd have to copy a paragraph

and then like it basically like kind of lights up as a subtle little blue and then you hover over to that blue like around your paragraph and then there's the co-pilot like it will appear and say do you want to rewrite this paragraph. So it's not like jumping out. Yeah, they've got a bunch of good design people these days. But does it still become that thing? Because because we've seen this again and again and again. We saw it with like the Apple TV. Everybody is. like we want to be more helpful. And in fact, what they end up doing is becoming more obnoxious. And like it feels like there's still that potential with co-pilot and chat GPT of like,

you wanted to help, but really you just irritated me because you're still just a thing between me and the place I actually want to go. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing that they really have to balance, right? Because that's difficult if not impossible really because it's also down to your individual tastes as well. So they're going to have to personalize it. Right. Yeah. Here's what I'm saying. I'm sick at using computers and I won't let you get in my way. But what's fascinating about that is there's a version of being good at using computers that is being good at using the AI prompts. Yeah. And not being good at using computers. And that is like already here, right? Like we constantly

write stories about, I don't know, kids and whether or not they know how to use files and folders in their computers because it's all been abstracted by iOS and Chromebooks. Like the next turn of this is going to be fascinating. But it's just really interesting to see Microsoft has consistently, like Microsoft and Apple, very divergent paths. Apple's like, we've made the computer easier to use. Microsoft's like, it's a robot dog. It will use the computer for you.

And they're just vastly different paths. We're WOC's two weeks away. They just sent out invites. How much AI are we going to hear about a WD? It seems like none. Yeah. And you can just, it's kind of a reflection of the two paths that the companies have been on for quite some time. All right, we've got to take a break.

One thing I want to call it, we haven't gotten to, but I want to cover in a future of our chest. Adobe released a bunch of AI stuff over this past few weeks. Most notably, Photoshop AI Phil, which is incredible, if you go look at it. And AI Denoise in Lightroom. And we keep talking about text and generative text, and it's writing for you. the image capabilities that are coming along with generative AI also world-changing and also happen this week.

We don't have enough time to get into it. I want to put some focus on it when we do talk about it, but it came out this week, and it is super cool, and you should go look at demos of it. All right, we've got to take a break. Tom, thank you so much for joining us. No worries. We'll be right back to talk about Max.

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We got to talk about this thing. So in 2018, we had a daughter. Her name was Max. At the time, I thought this name was safe. from the tech industry. It is not safe. And it has gone from being a hilarious problem. Oh, it's an iPhone 14 Pro Max.

Thanks for picking that extra word. To AT&T's revenge upon me and my family, which is they sold HBO, they sold all of Warner Media off. And what was HBO Max is now Max. Just think, Neal, if you had named her Plus, it would be much worse. That's all I'm saying.

It could have been worse. It's just a real problem. Alex, you have been very focused on this. Chris Welch looked at the app. It's fine. There's some stuff to talk about in there. It's not fine. There's nothing fine about it.

It's just like the HBO Max app and that it's a lot of garbage. No, it's worse. They made it worse. How do you feel it's worse? Well, sorry. Okay, you just, I'm going to get very upset about this in a minute. But you go. Tell us what's going on.

Yeah. So HBO Max has rebranded itself when I first heard that Max launched. I was like, why are we launching Neelai's child into space? it's fine. But I was very confused by it because when they announced it it was coming and they hyped this a lot. They made it sound like you wouldn't necessarily have to download a new app and be this whole seamless experience. But no, you do have to download a new app, but it should then read all your credentials. It should then read all your credentials from the old app and then you can just go. And they tweaked a bunch of stuff. There's more recommendations throughout

instead of just that front page, but the front page recommendations were already garbage. So now you get garbage recommendations on every page instead of just the first page. And David, it sounds like you've used it a lot more than I did because I was like, this is mediocre crap. And then I went and watched something on Paramount Plus. That sounds about right. Well, okay. So let me just like make you a list of dumb things that Warner Brothers Discovery did with HBO,

Max, and Max. It built it into a new app. So if you download Max, that's fine. But if you have HBO Max, all that that app is now is just a thing that tells you to go download Max, which, why, lots of people who already downloaded that app, that seems good. But if you use Discovery Plus, which is also now having all of its stuff rolled into Max, it doesn't even seem to know that Max exists. So I don't understand what's going on there. By changing the app, it did things like break the shortcut buttons on people's remotes, those things that, you know, you show up when you buy Roku or whatever, and they have the, the four different streaming services on there.

If you now hit the HBO Max button, nothing happens. So that's cool and fun. That's, wait, can I just say, amazing. It's unreal. Like, how did no one? Did you know there's also still an HBO Now app? So if you originally used HBO Now,

and then you had to download again when it became HBO Max, and you had both apps on your phone, now you have to download a third app. So you now have three apps, two of which are worthless, but three apps all doing the same thing. when everybody else is just like, hey, we're going to rename this.

Done. It's the worst. So, okay, and this is just the beginning. So then the new app doesn't support any of the stuff on the Apple TV, like the Up Next Q or the TVOS player. So it's basically like you're just looking at a... Wait, this is the sin. People are very upset about this. It's the biggest sin.

Yeah. It uses a custom video player on the Apple TV. It probably uses a custom video player on other platforms. Other platforms are kind of Wild Westy anyway. Right. And the reason you do that is because they're a. million smart TV platforms and trying to work with each one of them individually is a mess and takes more time than anyone has. So you build one player and then run it everywhere. And what that means is

you're going to have kind of a crappy experience, but you're going to have the same level of crappy experience. Right. You've cut costs. Yeah. Yeah. Congratulations. All of your engineering, like, this is the flash strategy of building a TV app. Yes, 100%. Look, I'm like, break them up. Like, what a thousand flowers bloom? But if you're going to have an app store and tightly control every app on your platform. Make them use the native video player. What is even the point? This is why people spend the money on these devices.

Well, not only that, I will refer you to about two years ago when HBO Max, back when it was owned by, I don't even, like, who can remember two years ago, this 85 owners ago for this company, but they rolled out a new version of the app that had a custom player and didn't use the TVOS stuff. And do you know what happened is people got so mad that they reverted it back. to the actual native Apple TV interface. Like, they've been through this before. They know what happens.

All those people are gone. Yeah, they laid off all of those people. But like Google, HBO, Max, Apple TV, it's right there. Like, this is not ancient history. So they've degraded the experience of the app. They've rolled it out in this weird way. Then they've also, they've added a bunch of 4K content, which is cool. Long list of things that are now in 4K.

But then to get 4K, you have to pay a billion. I mean, I'm going to do it because you're getting a bunch of stuff in 4K. You're getting over 1,000 movies, a lot of the older stuff that is really difficult to get in 4K. But is it going to play well in this weird custom player? You know, it's like the principle. I know I'm paying for it. So then I can be like really mean to them when I email them. But this is like a real, like you can't tell me it's all going to be in 4K and then you've built a weird player, especially on an Apple TV where Apple hates.

that, is it going to deliver like high quality HDR and fork? I don't know the answer that question. It's unclear if it's going to do it. I think also we've got like we've got Sunday the season finale I believe or series finale a succession I think is on Sunday. Incredible time to launch this app by the way when the most terminally online people succession fans yeah have to go download your new garbage so Sunday is going to I think Sunday is going to be a real real moment for this app. Do you think they did it on purpose to get those people to download the new app

ahead of the finale? I don't think they thought about that at all. So I think they did. I was thinking about this this morning. I was like, how did they, they should have done it after to minimize the disruption, blah, blah, blah. But I think they know this is a high demand moment for the HBO Max app and they can get installs of Max because all the people going to watch Succession are going to run into this weird screen on the HBO Max.

in a way that Discovery Plus does not have that problem, which is why Discovery Plus keeps working. This is such a good theory, except that only like 11 people watch Succession. That's not actually true. It's pretty popular, but it's not like Game of Thrones popular. But it's like,

it's the loudest 11 people. It's a very loud 11 people. That's certainly true. But like... I get a lot of like Tumblr memes about Roman. Totally buy that theory if it were like, if it were Game of Thrones, right? That if they were like,

the new season's coming out, go watch it. They don't have anything else. That's probably true. Yeah, I think they just wanted to, to launch it now because they just had it up front. It is also Barry this weekend. The Barry season finale is this weekend. Anybody, Barry, no?

Cool. All right. I'm a season behind. It's depressing last season. But yeah, I don't think they care because I don't think the makers of Max, the streaming service. You mean Eli and Becky? It's just horrible.

Do you know how horrible? It's gone. My child supports native HDR on the Apple TV. Yeah, she's a winner, that max. But they really are only focused on getting your subscription. They don't really care about user experience because otherwise they wouldn't have made this kind of garbage. They don't really care about, like, they're going to pay a lot of lip service and say, oh, we want to get everybody into content and stuff.

What they really do is want to lock you into a monthly fee and then hope that, like, you love the content enough. you stick around despite all the garbage they throw at you. You know, it really feels like a race to the bottom, kind of like when you have a good website and then they just start shoving gross ads on it because they're like, you're going to read it anyway, enjoy our gross ads. And you're like, oh. Alex used to work at Geo Media, everybody.

Is that a disclosure? It's fine. I didn't say anything you did. Anyway, anyway, I also really enjoyed the absolute, I don't even fully grasp why they did this, where they changed how they credit writers and directors on all the content. So now that, so now like Martin Scorsese and like George Stevens, like these incredible directors are now labeled as like creators. That's good. I really, I love this one. This is an obvious unforced error. Like, they thought they were being super hip and then they forgot that they have

contractual obligations with these unions. And then one of those unions is on strike. over things like credits and payments, it's very good. It's just like, yeah, it's one of those things where if you'd had anyone in the room who knew what they were doing, they would have said absolutely not. You can't do that. And also, it's goofy to call Martin Scorsese a creed. No, it's not goofy. It is one of the funniest things that has ever happened. I mean, it's funny.

To put Scorsese and, I know, Logan Paul in the same category of thing is like perfect and wonderful. Yeah. It's just like one of those. Things are like, oh yeah, this makes sense because this is what the people who, this is like what Warner Brothers discovery is now. Yeah, many people are saying that Logan Paul is the Scorsese of our generation. Why would you put that out of the world? You're about to get a lot of emails, Nelai. Everyone email Nelai.

It's okay. Use as big a jiff as you can. Use your biggest fonts. It's fine. Just crash my Gmail, the size of the image attachments to indicate your displeasure with me. I can see that meeting, right? where they're like, how many database fields do we need? And someone looked at them and some poor product manager who does not know about Hollywood union contracts was like, aren't these all the same?

Let's just call them, like, just X'd it out. Like, you can just see it in your head. Like, it was very clear they had this conversation and they all agreed. And I think that's just like as obvious it is as it is. It's also just shows a big symptom of the problem with the company now where like you can do that. not a single person could be like, hey, you know what these two guilds who were currently contract, like, in negotiations with, have had strong feelings about since their beginning? Like, the reason they exist.

Let's just, like, throw that bomb in there. Yeah. Look, anything in the name of metadata consolidation, that's really the heart of all Hollywood is just a fight over metadata. Don't consolidate your metadata. Get as, like, nitty-gritty as you want, I say. Alex is like laser bonging her way through the iTunes catalog right now. Like, does it cost you money?

I want to know, like, how many dollars they saved cutting director and writers. No, but I know the answer to this question. This is a thing. You have the HBO library, and you're slamming together two companies, right? Right. And you've got one library that has a bunch of fields tagged one way. And then you've got the weird discovery library, which is like a lot of reality TV. Nature documentaries, which has a bunch of other fields and other contractual obligations,

and the fields don't conform. Like, your easiest solution is to just shove everything into one field. Instead of paying someone a billion dollars to spend the next two years consolidating the metadata. Yes. Instead of outsourcing some contracting firm, some consulting service. Just hit me up Warner Brothers Discovery. I would love to fix your metadata. No problem.

But you can see exactly, like, the creator's field is a reflection of, like, corporate merger stuff. It is not a reflection of, like, I mean, it might be. It might be that they hate Hollywood directors and writers, I'm sure. But there's an ignorance of it, of the needs of those communities is also a reflection of their corporate structure. Right. It's just like a very funny thing that happened where you're like, we've got two databases. We need to make them one database. I guess these writers and directors

won't care about their database fields. Like, it's just so funny that you get there when you're ostensibly trying to make the highest quality movie app and you forget about, oh, people, like... Well, because I don't think they were ever ostensibly trying to make it. They did, like, like, Zeslov came out

and was like, don't worry, it's going to be better than the old app. But, like, he was just paying lip service. Somebody said, hey, you know what, everybody hates the old app. Here's a quick way to, like, make people like it. By the end, I did not hate the old app. I was like, this app is fine. It's fine. Yeah, it was fine. And this one,

you know, almost every single app when it launches is garbage, right? Every streaming app, can be fair. Every streaming app, almost every single streaming app, you're like, this is how I'm supposed to watch all of my shows. This is crap. I never want to use this again. And then you have to keep using it. And usually they're like, okay, we're actually going to improve it because we agree it is crap. And then sometimes they're like, no, we're going to make it worse. I'm looking at you, Hulu and also Netflix. But my thing is there is not one single original idea in this entire app. Like, you would think that in an effort to like mush all of this stuff together in a way

that makes sense, they might have some interesting ideas about channel structure or organization or whatever. And it's like, Neil, to your point about corporate mergers, like, my favorite thing about this app is just the navigation at the top, which the things you can go to are home. sure series sure movies sure HBO and new and notable like what what is home if not new and notable I would argue why is HBO there and none of the other brands that are part of this why is it that when I'm home it shows me a bunch of HBO shows that I should watch and then I go to HBO it shows me a bunch of HBO shows that I should watch it's just like there's

nothing about it's like somebody took like a WordPress template of a streaming app and just poured a bunch of content into it, and that's what this is. That's the idea that they had, was to cut costs as much as they could, because they're carrying a bunch of debt from AT&T's debacles, and they still have to, like, participate in a content race, so they still have to pay money to make stuff, and they have to, like, not support three different platforms at once. I just feel like you're describing somebody who doesn't want to be in the streaming business. They don't want to be in the streaming business. You don't have to be in this business. You don't have to be in this business. It's not, no one is forcing you to do this.

Zazlov wants you watching TV as quickly as possible. He doesn't want you in the streaming business because it's not as lucrative for him. He just definitely, yeah, he's like, you want succession? Here's one thing of succession. Do you think he, like, tried to be the Marvel CEO and couldn't? And he's like, ah, fine, I'll go do this other thing. Alex obviously had stronger opinions of Mr. Zaslov than I do. I think that he sees the economics of this much more clearly than the,

the content of it. He sees everything in economics. And that'll probably get Warner Brothers discovery out of the debt it's in. And that probably will be in the long term, like, better for the whole company. But in the short term, he made a garbage app. And in a time where all the apps are consolidating, we're seeing a big contraction of that industry. We're seeing people, like, think is streaming the next big deal?

And we're seeing a lot of streamers being like, okay, we're just going to replace premium TV, right? Like Apple TV Plus and Netflix basically want to be HBO. And so they're creating these experiences that make you live in the app. And Warner Brothers

is like, what if we just hate you? But we saved money. Well, they saved money, but just think about it this way. They are spending less money now. I'm doing, this is a full-throated defense. I love it.

It's named Max, and my instincts are all whatever. You got to, you got to, my protective instincts are in full force. This is why they did it. They are supporting fewer platforms. They've saved that money over time. Then if he can get you into the app with succession, which is expensive, but then keep you paying $20 a month for the 4K tier, but you're watching, what was one of their house flippy shows? You're watching Southern people turn everything into modern farmhouses. Property brothers.

Property brothers. The thing you just said, Nilai, is like there's like a 60-40 chance. That's actually the name of an HGTV show. Southern people making modern farmhouse. I mean, yes. Fine. Those are cheap to make, right? So he's just moving you from low margins to high margins.

And that's what's going to save him. Right? If he can get to the point where he's like, look, 99% of the people on the Max app are watching my reality shows, I'm going to start turning down HBO. So why would I pay $20 a month for the 4K version of this? So I can watch Succession one time a year, wait for HBO, like, wait for those other big shows that sometimes come out right after, usually don't. So I can then have Property Brothers, when instead I could just go download Tubi or Pluto and have a bunch of like my cheap, super, like, easy to watch shows that way. Like, that's what they're competing with. They're not just completing with Netflix and Apple TV Plus.

They're competing with Fast TV. And in that place, I'm not going to pay $20. $20 a month for property brothers when I can just get this old house, which is functionally the same thing for free. Yeah, I said it. And now the emails are coming in. This old house is far superior. Wow. I mean, I was going to, I agree, Liam.

I agree. Norm, oh my gosh, be still my heart. So I want to point out that we've done GIF versus GIF on this show, no interruptions. What was the thing that I talked shit about? Whatever, Liam didn't care. We talked about this old house. The producer comes storming. into the show. Very good. Look, I don't know the answer to the question. I think this is the bet they're all making, right? Can we make you pay a lot of money for cheap content? It's the dream. That's what everybody wants to do. Well, and he's not just focusing on that, right? Like, they did sell a bunch of shows to fast networks, Westworld. He thinks he can get money out of the catalog. This is all great. My caution to you is overestimating the American consumer's ability to understand what they're spending money on. That's true.

It's historically not great. And this is the thing. Like, he's got the shining. any HBO shows to sell you into that monthly thing. And as long as you got one of those a month and then he can conquest the rest of your time with garbage, like maybe you'll quit Netflix. Okay, but the other thing that's happening right now is that we're entering a phase where like a lot of the free subsidized streaming stuff that's been happening to people is starting to go away. As we've talked about, all the carriers are slowly kind of running away from the like sign

up for our thing and we'll give you six months free of Disney Plus or whatever. Comcast is starting to not subsidize Peacock for Xfinity thing. It's like this idea of like if I just sign up for something, someone is going to throw a year of a streaming service at me is slowly starting to wane. And I think there are a lot of people who are really quickly going to have streaming sticker shock. I'm very much one of those people. And I think this is going to be a summer full of cancellations of streaming services for a lot of people. You heard it here first. Summer of Churn. Summer of Turn.

That's coming, man. That's it. We should write a piece called the Summer of Turn. I'm assigning that to you now. I don't know what's in that piece. I just know it's a great headline. I think it's just what David said, but like more background. I like it.

With some actual reporting. Yeah, with real things that exist in the world. Let me tell you how I feel by David Pierce. Neely, we should do the Go 90 scale. We haven't talked about the Go 90 scale in a while, so you should like reintroduce it to the people. But it's day three of Max and we got to figure out where on the scale it is. So the go 90 scale of Doom streaming services, a Vergecast original, named after Verizon's ill-fated streaming service, go 90.

Zero's alive. When you go 90, you're dead. Most streaming services, over time, will go 90. It's inevitable. Now that Max is out, we got to update the scale. So let's start with Netflix. I always start with Netflix. Disclosure, I'm a Netflix EP.

You should go watch our show. It's the future of. Netflix, always hovering between zero and 15, just based on the controversy of the day. But Netflix is alive, it's going to stay alive. David? Yeah, I think that's right. And it's like, is it possible that Apple's going to buy it and turn it into Apple TV Plus? Sure.

But it's probably going to keep me. Alex, you agree? Netflix between zero and 15. 10 to 15. Apple TV Plus. Same. Zero to 15, right? Yeah.

More alive than dead? Yeah. Probably going to stay alive. Okay. Alex Peacock. Ooh, I think that's a 60. It's a 60. So it's closer to death than life.

Wow. I think it's a 60. I think it's eventually going to go the fast TV route. And they're going to be like, why were we doing? all of this custom stuff for the channel. And we'll just have poker face. We'll have to illegally download it to keep watching it. Okay.

So you're saying Peacock 60 on the Go-90 scale of doom streaming services. Yeah. Hulu seems very much. Yep. 75. 75. Yeah. Someone wants to kill Hulu and one day they will. To be fair, it's been at a 75 for like 10 years.

Yeah. It launched at a 75 and just like has kept there this entire time. All right. Last one. And then we're going to do max. Disney Plus. Five. Disney Plus isn't going anywhere.

Bob Iger's loves it. It's got too much IP. There's nowhere else to go. It's the gold standard. So you see the scale. Max. Three days after launch, where is Max? And the Go 90 scale of June streaming services.

Okay, everybody has to say their numbers, and we're going to explain it. You go first. 30. Alex. Do I have to do an exact number? Yes. 35. 37.

Hmm. Price is red style. So we all think it's not 50-50. We think it's more alive than dead. Yeah, I think David Dazlov does not want to be in the streaming business. I also think he doesn't really have a choice for a while. And by the streaming business, you mean the direct consumer streaming business. Yeah, I think David Dotslop would be much happier making things and selling them to other people who pay him lots of money for those things.

Running that whole thing himself does not really seem to interest him, except that it's the only business there is right now. And if that's true forever, I will bump this number down. But I think he's going to look for a lot of ways to make money that are not his streaming service. And that does not bode well for his streaming service. Alex, why did you pick 35? I agree. Because if like if ATSC 3.0 took off, David Zestl would be the first. My God, Alex.

First one rolling it out. All you need to say is Plex and we all get like Alex Cran streaming bingo for this episode. Alex just wants you to watch linear TV. By hook or by crook. You're watching linear TV with Alex Grads. David Zazlov does too. That's where his bread and butter is. Well, he doesn't care if you watch it.

He just wants someone to pay him for the stuff in case you watch it. Right. Yeah. All right. I'm at 37, mostly because I agree with Alex, but I think the reality of the modern media age is that streaming businesses are where it's at. That you cannot get people to shift their behaviors to fast and great enough numbers to linear to YouTube.

TV and great enough numbers. At the end of the day, the HBO customer wants to pay the money and watch HBO on demand, and that's going to keep him closer to keeping it alive than not over time. That's my bet. Unless he makes the app worse. The app is bad, so maybe that cuts against it, but I think right now we're saying HBO Max 35 on the Go 90 scale of doom streaming services. Okay, we got to take a break. We're heated about Max. I'm going to go look at a photo of my daughter. Just reset my brain. We'll be right back with Lightning Head. Support for this show comes from Whatnot.

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or strategizing your next business move. Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. Plus, Claude's research capabilities go deeper than basic search. It can have comprehensive, reliable analysis with proper citations, turning hours of research into minutes. Ready to tackle bigger problems? Get started with Claude today at cloud.aI slash vergecast. That's Claude.a.ai slash vergecast and check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all the features mentioned in today's episode. Claude.aI. slash vergecast. We're back. This is a packed lightning around. I don't know how we're going to get through it. Cranz, you start. Okay. So Sony finally announced that handheld. We've been talking about that's been rumored. It really is called the queue.

It's very good. No associations with that letter in modern American life. Nope. Everybody's just a big Star Trek fan over there. That's who they were thinking of. And it really, all it's plan to do is stream PS5 games, not play them directly, but stream them. And it's got an eight-inch screen, which is a big boy. That's a big honk in screen versus a lot of the other gaming can'tels. So it's going to be big. And then it's got like PlayStation 5 controllers built into it, which is the only reason I want to buy it.

But we don't know how much it is. And so David and I were talking about this before the show. Like I'll get it for 300, but I'm not going to spend any more than that. This thing looks great, right? This is like it's like a cooler, sexier Nintendo Switch. Like I'm very into it. No? I just think it's.

Ugly. Oh, man. Oh, okay. I really like it. The fact that the controllers kind of don't match up with the display. Yeah. So it really does just look like a switch with like third party controllers on it. And I don't want third party controllers on my switch.

To me, it's like I imagine you could like use this thing to play games and then like dock it onto your motorcycle and use it to drive your tron bike. Like that kicks ass. It definitely looks like you should be able to throw it across the room and it should come back to you. Yes. Yeah. Without question. several knives should swing out of it as it does so. We don't know how good the screen is.

At $300, right, where... We don't know how much it's going to cost. We don't know, but I'm saying you're saying $300. Yeah. Compromise territory, right? Maybe a garbage screen. It appears to be Wi-Fi only. It plays over a remote play from a PlayStation 5.

Like, ooh, $300 is like, it's component territory. It's real dicey. You know what I mean? But if you go higher... Exactly. You can't go higher. You can't. Yeah.

That is that might that even that might be past the maximum you can charge for this because yeah 300 is like me and all the other single people with disposable income and no one else right this thing is just a peripheral for the PS5 and there's some like everybody is already sort of assuming that eventually there will be more cloud gaming stuff you can do Sony's you know intimated that it's working on some stuff we've we found some job description Sean Hawster did some really good reporting on what's been going on there but right now it is just a way to play a PS5 game. on your lap. And that's fine as far as it goes, but that's it. You can do that already. You can go get a Steam deck that'll let you play games not just on the PS5 and play PS5 games. You can do it on your iPad. Yeah. Like Chiaki, I think, is the name of the software. Ooh, that software's absolutely going to get stomped by Sony in the next few. You download it and embrace it now because Sony's already probably got lawyers looking at it. I think they're going to try to sell this thing for $400. That's what I'm telling you.

I just want to know who's going to buy it for it. I guess like... If they launch it with a cloud gaming service, which again, they haven't set really a date. They haven't set a price. There could be more to... I don't know. But they have said, I mean, Jim Ryan, their PlayStation had said, like, this is a direct quote. He says, we will launch a dedicated device that enables you to stream any game from your PS5 console using remote play over Wi-Fi.

Like, that is a very specific set of buzzwords that does not allow for... We believe this is the future of gaming, right? Like, I just can't see if Microsoft is way ahead of them in cloud gaming, and they weren't ready to release a handheld cloud gaming only device, how is Sony going to do it and do it well? Because Sony didn't build themselves a cloud gaming infrastructure. Right. How can they do cloud gaming then if they don't have the infrastructure?

Well, I'm saying, but they're going to sell this handheld, and then one day they'll turn it on. And I'm just telling you they're going to, it's going to be too expensive. It just is. Like, even for it to have a nice screen, it's already headed towards two expenses. Maybe they, like, found, maybe some screens dropped off a truck somewhere. Maybe they just, they had some good sourcing. I do want to point out, Sean Hollister noted yesterday that it's basically the same design as, or like, size-wise, as the Wii U controller.

Do you remember that thing? Oh, boy. And if I know one thing, it's that being associated with the Wii U is a good thing. That's what you always successful. David, what's your lightning round? Uh, movie pass is back. Did you guys know this? What?

What? Movie pass is back. I believe this company has tried to come back 60 or 70 times at this point. Uh, movie pass famously was like $10 a month, go see all the movies you want. It was a horrific business. They lit so much money on fire. I think delisted a company from the stock exchange. It went so, like it was one of the most spectacular failures of all time.

And now it's back. My favorite thing about it is in order. to be more, I don't know, functional and responsible, they now have this incredibly convoluted point system that they use, it used to just be a debit card that you would literally just put on and you would buy tickets on it and it would literally just buy the tickets for you through the debit card, which is insane. So now they have a thing that you get, for $10 a month, you get 34 credits a month. And if you're saying, David, what's a credit?

What does that lead to? I don't know. You spend different credits on like different kinds of movies that get you different sorts of things. They get you different sorts of things. I don't know. The idea is that you get one to three movies a month for $10 a month. Standard screenings only, none of the fancy stuff. Like medium good deal.

Then it goes up, $20, $40 a month. For $40 a month, you get $30 movies a month, which in theory is a very good deal. You can go see one movie every day. That equates to $640 credit. I could go on and on forever. This is insane. The system makes no sense. They've gone from being this dead simple thing that enabled people to go see a lot of movies

and pissed off the whole industry and lit everything on fire to this very convoluted thing that has like a weird advertising component to it. It's all going to be very strange, but I'm just so happy it's back. The movie past chaos will never end and I couldn't be happier. How do they not piss off the theaters this time? Because it's not really going to work, I don't think. And also it turns out I think the nice thing about being movie past right now is that it hasn't really been great to be movie theaters for a while.

And so I think there are a lot of companies who are very excited about just about anything that will bring people back into the door. And also, they do have these advertising things that they're using the Stacey Spikes, who originally, I think was one of the creators. He was very early at movie pass. At any rate, then went and did this bonkers advertising thing that actually, like, knew what you were watching and did product placement stuff. So they're bringing some of that in. So there's better ideas about how to do this. But I still think this is either not going to work. or ultimately piss off theaters again one way or another.

It's going to be great. I'm excited to bring the complexity and ease of use of the audible credit system to seeing movies. Yes. And you can do credit rollovers. It's basically like, do you remember when you had minutes on your cell phone? Like, we're back to that, but for movie tickets. I'm so excited. All movies are free after 9 p.m.

Very good. All right. Here's mine. It's very good. I love a printer story. I love a printer story. So HP Darling dear darling HP

Which sells the most popular printer in Amazon They found a new way to DRM your printer It's very good When you buy a new HP printer It comes with all these like signs and stickers So like six months of free ink If you sign up for HP Plus Which is nominally their ink

Replenishment system So the thing knows it's law on ink Pings the internet HP sends you a new ink tank right Once you sign up for HP Plus Which you have been tempted into with six months of free ink. Your printer is locked to HP for life,

and you can never turn HP Plus off, and that means you can never, ever use a third-party ink cartridge. Or do you have to pay forever? Unclear. We know about it. Sean just has a post on it. It went up while we were talking. We know about it because an industry consortium of, like,

printer people is filing a complaint that HP is lying to its customer. by putting the like energy sticker, the environmental stickers that go on the box. Because one of the requirements for those stickers is that you have to be able to use whatever on cartridge you want. And if you sign a Bracier Plus, you can't. So there's those like weird little printer trade industry drama brewing. I love it so much. Which is all that I've ever wanted, right? Like what is, why does the verge exist to get into a standards body and cause trouble? So it's just like great. But it's, yeah, like literally the pictures on the box are like six months of free ink.

And you're like, yeah, I'll take it. And the fine print is you can never, ever not use their ink. So you can cancel. You can cancel HP Plus, but your printer stays locked. Yeah, you can never downgrade. Like, you can't do anything else with it. You can only buy genuine HP print cartridges. You can never go to the free plan again.

You can never use a third-party ink cartridge again if you do this. Somewhere David Zazlov is saying, how do I do this for streaming service? Can I tell you the best part of this is HP also has a thing called dynamic security, which is basically the ink cartridges have serial numbers on them and it checks. It checks, it DRM is the print cartridge. It's like, is this the right serial number? But they update the list all the time. That's what they make about it. And the way that they sell this to people is by saying it protects the integrity of the, not just the printer, but the printhead.

So that evil people can't get into the printhead of your printer. and that's why they need to have dynamic security. They're so good. It's very good. It's like if you're out there, if you are the teenage Russian hackers, like, I've got a plan. We're going to disrupt this election by getting into HP. Please call me. I want to hear about your hopes and your dreams.

I want to know what your life is like. And I want to know how badly HP's dynamic security has thwarted your attempts to disrupt America. It's all just very good. It's all very, but like literally the crux of it is it's buried in the terms of conditions. So they're like, would you like this free ink? And you're like, yes. And they're like, now we have your printer forever. Like, sucker. I remind everyone that, uh, one of the clickiest pieces of ever written is that you should just buy a brother laser printer. Just, just do it. It doesn't matter which one even. Just you're mostly printing out Amazon labels. Like you're

fine. The boxy black one that's on sale. That one. Buy that one. Very good. By the way, while we have been talking, news is breaking. Ford CEO Jim Farley is about to join Elon in a Twitter space. We'll see if anything comes to that. So we got to go. We've got to go. We You're going to listen to that. That's the Vergecast. Thank you for listening. It's been a fun one. Thanks to Tom Warren for joining us.

Thanks to Clippy, as always. And thanks to Bing for making me feel like I still got it. You know what I'm saying, Bing. That's it. That's the Vergecast. Rock and roll. And that's a wrap for Vergecast this week. We'd love to hear from you.

Shoot us an email at Vergecast at theverge.com. The Vergecast is a production of The Verge and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by me, Liam James, and our senior audio director, Andrew Marino. Editorial Director is Brooke Minters. That's it. We'll see you next week.