Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - The New Siri is here! (Kinda)

Episode Date: August 2, 2024

This week, we have a nice mix of gadgets and software to talk about. First, Andrew tries to convince Marques and David why a pair of $4,500 pants might be worth the money before everyone gives their thoughts on the new Friend AI wearable. After that, we talk about Apple Intelligence (or lack thereof) in the new iOS Beta before talking about the launch of SearchGPT from OpenAI. To wrap it up Marques gives his quick thoughts on the new Nothing Phone 2a Plus before getting into trivia. Hope you enjoy! Links:  Verge Skip x Arc'teryx Pants: https://bit.ly/3YMlp51 Friend: https://bit.ly/3SyLYXh Verge SearchGPT: https://bit.ly/4cfDhrH Shop the merch: https://shop.mkbhd.com Socials: Waveform: https://twitter.com/WVFRM Waveform: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Marques: https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd Andrew: https://www.threads.net/@andrew_manganelli David Imel: https://www.threads.net/@davidimel Adam: https://www.threads.net/@parmesanpapi17 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin TikTok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for this show is brought to you by Nissan Kicks. It's never too late to try new things, and it's never too late to reinvent yourself. The all-new reimagined Nissan Kicks is the city-sized crossover vehicle that's been completely revamped for urban adventure. From the design and styling to the performance, all the way to features like the Bose Personal Plus sound system,

you can get closer to everything you love about city life in the all-new reimagined Nissan Kicks. Learn more at www.nissanusa.com slash 2025 dash kicks. Available feature. Bose is a registered trademark of the Bose Corporation. Have you guys ever lucid dreamed before? Oh, yeah. Hard left.

The first... It's related. Okay. For those that don't know, lucid dreaming... I'm not promoting this as... No, it's great. ...a thing that you can, like, train yourself to do, because I don't know.

Oh, it'd be awesome if you could. I tried, and it never worked. Anyway, I have been able to lucid dream three times, and it's basically when you realize that you're dreaming, but it doesn't wake you up. And then you're able to take control of the dream when you're basically a superhero. And it's sick.

You can do whatever you want. You've never lucid dreamed? I'm not trying to make this a goop podcast, but we're close. Yo, what is up, people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques.

I'm Andrew. And I'm David. And it's actually Friday this time. I promise. It's Wednesday. Sorry. You really confused me. No, no, no.

For the people, do you remember last time? Yes, I know. We were saying it's Friday, but it wasn't because it was a bonus episode. But if you haven't seen the bonus episode, go back and watch it. It wasn't a Friday when that went up, but we made a joke about how it was Friday.

Now it's actually Friday. Just so we're clear. Unless it's the future for you. True, you could be late. In which case, it was Friday. Anyway, we have a bunch of stuff to talk about because there is somehow a lot of tech news, a lot of new things going on in the tech world

from our first look at Apple intelligence with a little bit of new Siri stuff and some confusion about what will happen with the next iPhones. The Nothing Phone 2A Plus, OpenAI's new search product. But first, two weird ones. We have to decide which to jump into first. Would you rather jump into a necklace that's always listening to you

that costs $100 and is a standalone AI product or... No, don't do that. Thank you. Or a $4,500 pair of pants augmented by technology. It's $5,000? Yes. Dang. I wanted this and i'm not sure anymore which one speaks to you more i think that you should go through the pants first you want me to go through pants yeah because i don't know how long i'm gonna talk about those pendants okay that's fine i will try and do the pants pretty quickly here but i'll tell you what

they are and then why i think they're actually really you've got some explaining to do i do have a lot of explaining to do and i understand that okay um so there were some tech articles this week uh the verge is the one that really popped off but there's another really good one on tech crunch and essentially it is a 4500 pair of hiking pants and that's the early bird special so it's actually a five thousand dollar pair of hiking pants um made by a company called skip in partnership with a company called arcteryx which i'm sure everyone understands as pricey their own extremely pricey pair of hiking pants expensive company exactly um and they have an exoskeleton on them with a motor that helps you make quote 30 pounds lighter while hiking so off the bat when you hear this i feel

like when everybody's thinking about hiking and feeling lighter you're thinking about backpacking where everybody's main goal is to shave off like every ounce possible and pay exorbitant exorbitant amounts of money yeah to do that pay pay way too much money to shave a couple ounces off of your backpack. Carbon fiber, everything. Exactly. These are carbon fiber, I believe also. But because backpackers are willing to spend bonkers amounts of money to take that weight off. Down to the wilderness.

Exactly. And then when I was reading more into this, I was like, yeah, I guess that makes sense. People might want to do something like that. But then realized it has a three-hour battery life and they weigh seven pounds themselves so this feels kind of pointless per leg uh no together okay but so let me explain kind of what they are first yeah it's imagine a pair of arcteryx hiking pants so lightweight now from the outside on the outside of both of your legs, you'll see essentially two carbon fiber sticks with a joint in the middle. And the way this works is you have a cuff that goes around both quads and both calves. And then through that, there's a little buckle.

And like, do you guys know what a boa adjustment is? It's this boa constrictor. I believe it's either BOA or boa. I'm not sure what people call it it got really popular with like snowboard boots but it's essentially a a system that can just tighten and loosen by turning okay there's some golf shoes that have yeah yeah so you're the cuffs has have that and that part comes through yeah helmets have it as well and then there's two little uh like hooks it's not hooks but like places to attach to so okay so you have your cuffs under

your pants you pull your pants over it and then these exoskeleton motor joints go on the outsides of your legs and then there's a battery pack that tucks in behind your belt damn oh right the battery because you do get two battery packs with this three hours each. Oh, okay. So what this does is there's a motor in the joint that as you're walking, it learns the body's natural movement and essentially is helping produce, I don't know what they're called, like support or extra muscle movement

to the muscles in your quad and your calf. So you're taking weight and stress off of your knees. And because of this now, as you're walking, especially at higher inclines, it'll just be easier on your knees, it'll make you feel lighter, it'll overall make hiking a tad easier. It also, just wanna say, has regenerative braking.

As you go downhill, you do charge the battery with the motor, which I think is kind of awesome. That's hilarious. That's awesome. Okay. But the main company behind this is Skip, and weirdly enough,

they messaged me on Reddit like a few months ago because I complained about having knee problems on the podcast, and they were like, I wonder if you'd be interested in this. Yeah. What I was saying, it wasn't quite what they were talking about yet.

Okay. But I do think, while this sounds absurd might be interesting for someone like me and i'm sure a lot of people out there as uh something you would do if like you get older you have a lot of arthritis you have knee issues you have like a bucket list hike that you might want to pull off and you just can't really pull up a single day hiking not backpacking not anything yeah um these could help you out on that although it's five thousand dollars they are offering programs where you can rent them for a day for like 80 bucks and i think that's so much more like reasonable if like if you're if you're older you're playing

ultimate too like i did you're you're messing your knees and you're oh i know everything up yeah imagine in like 20 years you're retired from ultimate you take a trip to yosemite or something you want to do half dome hike would you spend 100 bucks to potentially do something to make it easier i think for some people it would be to just make it possible. Right. In 20 years, my knees are going to be shot. I think that's where the line is. I think it's, I think it, when you see the ad and the commercial, it looks like, oh,

it's for the enthusiast who's going to reduce his 150 pound backpack to 110 pounds. I don't think it's for that. It's, it's more, you know what this reminded me of? Because it's so first gen. It reminds me of when we all saw Back to the Future and the self-lacing shoes, and we were like, self-lacing shoes would be cool. And then the first self-lacing shoes were like a foot and a half tall,

like these moon boots, and you put your foot on them and they go. Like, I bet these make some sounds. I bet these are not the lightest version, not the most strong version. Three-hour battery life. They have been working exoskeletons for like a while. This is actually, this team met at Google X. Okay. not the most strong version, three-hour battery life. They have been working on exoskeletons for a while.

This team met at Google X and were working on exoskeleton robotics and then met there, joined together, created Skip. I forgot to say that. I also didn't even say the name of the product. It's called MOGO, which stands for mountain goat because they're good alpine hikers. That's clever. Why is everyone obsessed with the letter X?

Google X, you mean? Google is. They didn't name it that. They're deprecated now, basically. No, I know, but Google X, then there's X, the social network now. Well, okay, but a long time ago, X, like Ingredient X and Powerpuff,

like X was just ambiguousness. X-Men is cool. It was cool. Yeah, yeah. It was. Someone ruined it. I feel like it is kind of rude. Anyway, cool. Yeah, yeah. It was. I feel like it is kind of rude. Anyway, continue. Yeah, sorry.

I also didn't explain that. The reason I think this is awesome, I've had three ACL tears, four knee surgeries to fix those. My knees are like 60 years old on a 30-year-old body. And I know in the future, I'm going to want to go on some really cool hikes with my kids or stuff like that. And something like like this renting it for a day would be awesome um i totally

understand that five thousand dollars is absurd i'm pretty i'm assuming from what i've seen what they're saying that this is like we need to market this to somebody with money if you're buying arcturus pants you might actually think about buying five thousand dollar pants because they're already a couple hundred bucks as they are okay i was gonna say these pants are two hundred dollars normally i looked them up but you said that you can rent this can't you yeah i would spend 80 bucks for a day on this easy yeah um i have a question yeah as someone who hikes with like an 80 pound backpack with 12 cameras in it. Is that actually, is that going to help at all? Or is it mostly just like if your knees are already kind of shot?

I think this still would help. Okay. The question is how far, because like what you have to think here is how far are you hiking? What's the battery life on this? Because the reason this wouldn't be great for backpackers is if you negate 30 pounds for three hours,

then after that though, now they are seven pounds by themselves. Yeah, so now you're just carrying more weight. Even with the swappable battery, you're still adding weight for that then. So that's why I think this is way more of a single day. You have a bucket list hike that you might have or a bucket list place you want to go to that involves some steeper inclines. And maybe you're just not as young as you used to be.

That's where this seems cool. I do want to say they also are trying to get covered by the FSA, which could help bring down price for some users. And they have been testing this with people with parkinson's i believe to see if it could help but to it is not officially labeled as a medical device because that involves a lot a lot of work so that's more why this feels like a hey proof of concept let's bring this out as the super expensive thing right rentals as well i could see an outdoor shop buying a couple of these and renting them for 100 bucks a day and maybe being return on investment kind of thing potentially yeah i think it's kind of cool i remember a long time ago and i don't remember if this was ended

up being like a scam but there was i don't remember it was a kickstarter or not but i remember some sort of negative weight backpack coming out. Yes. Do you remember that? It wasn't negative weight. It was on a system, so it counteracted your steps to go up and down. It felt like it was less of the

up and down movement. It didn't really pull you up, but it didn't have the momentum of your heavy bag falling down on you all the time. I don't think it did very well. Yeah, I can't even find anything about it, so I think it was probably... There's also a short of a guy with a weather balloon

filled with helium on his back. I've seen that. It works awesome until the wind blows. Well, at the end of the year, I am going to Patagonia, and I'm going to be backpacking through Patagonia with very expensive camera gear. May I suggest those shoes that you strap on that make you walk three and a half miles an hour faster?

I don't think those are off-road capable. Those plus the skip, the mogo. Right. Moon shoes plus mogo. That would be the same combo. Arcteryx. Skip, skip. Skip. I mean, Arcteryx also, if you same combo. Hey, Arcteryx. Skip, skip. Skip.

I mean, Arcteryx also, if you want to. Slash Arcteryx. My knees could use studio video. Your knees are perfectly fine. We would be more than happy to test this. I will tell you, there's this rumor that goes around that's real, that the closer you get to 30, like right when you turn 30, everything just starts falling apart. I think you talked about this when you turned 30. Yeah. closer you get to 30, like right when you turn 30, everything just starts falling apart.

I think you talked about this when you turned 30. Yeah. I'm not quite 30. I'm getting close, but my 29th year of life has by far been like, what is happening? Yeah. You know that like little nagging injury

that like is a couple of months long and you're like, what is that? Why isn't that going away? And then it finally goes away and then a new one pops up and you're like, what's going on? When you turn 30, they just don't go away. Yeah, they just don't go away.

So it's kind of, yeah, that's a fun time. Marquez says this while this year he's playing on three of the most elite Ultimate Frisbee teams in the world. And it hurts. And it hurts. I will say the Nike self-lacing shoes do have subsequent generations

that have gotten more and more regular shoe-like. So there is hope. I have a pair of those. Do you really? Do you have the third HyperAdapt? Yeah, because Google, when they cared about Google Assistant way back in the day, during 2020,

they sent me a pair because they added some integration to Google Assistant and MyFitnessPal where you could tell Google Assistant to add food to MyFitnessPal. And for tell MyFitnessPal or you could tell Google Assistant add food to MyFitnessPal. And for some reason, they also sent over the Nike Adapts as well as like some other training equipment.

So I still have them and they're like $300 shoes. I think they're like more. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, they're cheap. They were like more. But it's funny because I actually saw an article recently

that I think that they just killed off. Like they have a button button that can do it but you could also do it via an app and they just removed the feature from the app that will do it because nobody was using it somebody out there is he was using the app and now he's permanently laced in his shoes and now instead of taking 15 seconds to tie your shoes you have to just hold the button on the side and let it go. And watch it the whole time. Yeah. Because we're totally moving forward in technology.

Yeah. But yeah, these are scheduled for late 2025, I believe. Late 2025? Yeah, that's what it just looked like in the article. Well, if you're willing to give me a one year early sample, I'll try them. Can I throw one other hiking related story really quick? Yeah. Did you see all the wildfires in western Canada

I heard about this I saw two different videos and or articles about people using their satellite SOS buttons that saved them from those fires wasn't that from the California one the Chico one the two that I saw were in British Columbia and in

Jasper which I think also is in British Columbia. But one was four people camping, saw the... When they say saw the fires, apparently the embers were falling on their tent. And they noticed how close it was, ran up to a ridge, called it. The helicopter pilot said that, like, they just went exactly to the ping that they got on the iPhone satellite SOS.

And they said it was perfect. They were right there, picked them both, all four up and left. Then there's another woman who took a video of her noticing the fires on where she was and that they were coming close to her Garmin watch SOS, stood by a river where she had to cross it and got picked up by a helicopter.

Then flying away it's just like bright orange everything up yeah it's pretty wild but um what are the odds that one of these stories ends up in the keynote next year in a hundred well in apple's keynote only one because the other one was with the garmin but okay well that was in person. Very solid chance. You'll hear about it. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. I did get to use the SOS, or not the SOS, the satellite texting feature when I was in Wyoming, which is cool. Like, it was cool seeing how it worked and how you did this.

Yeah. It actually worked pretty well. Was it RCS? No. They apparently have iMessage over satellite, but they don't have RCS over satellite they said they compressed the iMessage algorithm to work over satellite but it didn't work for me and maybe just because I was the only one on the beta and the other person wasn't on the beta a couple weeks ago I was on a flight at night and the pilot pointed out that there was a Starlink

constellation like a chain of Starlink satellites passing by. And I looked out and I saw the chain of Starlink satellites. What do you mean passing by? Kind of just like a line of like 12 dots all straight through the sky. And then we were just like, oh, interesting. Have you seen it like in person yet? That was it.

That was me seeing it in person. Oh, well, okay. Have you two seen it in person yet? I've seen it on like- The Starlink chain? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, yeah. Because it's pretty crazy in person. Oh, well, okay. Have you two seen it in person yet? I've seen it on like Starlink chain. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Cause it's pretty crazy. It is kind of weird. Yeah. Being a kind of weird. That was a great one.

Nice. There is a product that, uh, well it's not out yet. It was sort of teased and unveiled on, I guess on Twitter and various other socials. Can we preface this by saying there's a lot of people who get mad when we're negative about things. I don't think there's gonna be a ton of positivity going forward. I'm gonna give it a fair chance.

Okay. But I'm gonna only speak facts. Potential trigger warning alert if you're not into... I promise only facts is what I promise. Okay. So it's called Friend, right? I'm just gonna tell you what it is.

And you can watch a video. It's like a 90-second video or something like that. But essentially what it is and you can watch a video it's like a 90 second video or something like that but essentially what it is it's a standalone ai device it is a wearable it's a necklace this time it's a it's like a little white glowing orb the size of like a like two air tags it feels like a big air tag a big air tag and you walk around and according to this video because this is kind of all we have to go by, it's an AI friend that is always listening to you and that will send you text messages, it appears, or some sort of messages at various times based on what it has heard.

Kind of like how a friend would. It lives in your pocket. Have you ever seen the red flag guy on TikTok? No. Just this guy who runs by with a giant red flag whenever you're, everything you described there was like standalone AI assistant and I'm just imagining by with a giant red flag whenever everything you described there is like standalone ai assistant and i'm just imagining the guy with the red flag running by and so it's a it's a minute and 44 second video and yeah so there's a girl going for a hike and then she's

just kind of talking to herself and then she gets a message on her phone from the ai friend that says well at least we're outside. So it's just kind of a, it's like you have a friend with you. She's talking to the pendant. She's, yeah. Well, she's kind of just talking out loud. Oh yeah, this one, she's talking to the pendant.

So she touches the pendant and then grabs her phone and then reads the message. Okay. The next example is a guy in a basement playing video games with his friends. And to himself under his breath, as he's getting slaughtered in the game, he's like, oh, man, I'm getting crushed here. And then he gets a message on his phone that says, Jackson, you're getting thrashed. Thanks. That does sound like my friends.

It's so embarrassing that's so funny because like there's so many times i've been playing valorant and i'm on the the verge of like wanting to throw my mouse and like getting a text being like you suck like you are getting destroyed right now and getting talked in chat yeah why do i need chat talk me too? So your friend can talk. Then there's another one of this girl who's kind of like having a lunch on break or something watching a show on her phone and as she's watching the show, she gets

a message saying, this show is completely underrated. So it just knew what she probably heard the show she was watching or knew about it. The biggest red flag there is she was watching it without headphones in a public space. This is true. She was watching without headphones. That one also,

the next thing it says is, how's the falafel? Because it knows she ordered falafel because it was listening before. Right. And then she says, it's dank. Yeah.

So that was- So it asked her a question. It said, how's the falafel? This is, okay, if you've ever used a carrot weather, there's like a little persona inside,

a little AI that just gives you some commentary with the weather. And you can turn it up or down in like snarkiness and sassiness. So there's like six levels. And at the very lowest level, it's always PG. It's like beautiful day we're having. Oh, looks like it'll rain later.

You can turn it up. I have mine at the second highest level. So I'm just gonna look at whatever it says for today. I maxed mine out. pg it's like beautiful day we're having oh looks like it'll rain later uh you can turn it up i have mine at the second highest level so i'm just gonna look at whatever it says for today i maxed mine out you can go all the way to suicidal but oh geez yeah the second highest level is uh it says if we take this to its natural conclusion in the last marvel movie robert downey jr will play every single character it's true what does that mean i don't know. Robert Downey Jr. was just announced as Dr. Doom. Yeah, but what does that have to do with the weather? It just commentates on things remotely related

to the current events and the weather. Sometimes not even with the weather at all. Because that's not always like the weather. This I refreshed, and there's a heat advisory here. It's 98 real feel right now. It says, heat haze can make you see things that aren't really there, like a family who loves you.

Wow. So, yeah. So there's a level of dialing it up or dialing it down. Crazy. I suspect that they will have something similar with this product because if my random AI assistant texted me to ask me questions about the food I was eating, I would just be annoyed by that. I would just say, hey, don't ask me questions, please.

Anyway, it's called Friend. It's a $99 pre-order. We've heard about it being a sort of a stealth startup that raised $2 million and then spent $1.8 million of it on the friend.com URL. Don't name me. Like a boss. Which is a move, you know? It's a thing you can do these days.

I don't know. Like I said, I'm only giving you facts. These are the things that were in the video. These are the things that it can do. It's $99. It is a standalone AI device. Now this is shifting to opinion time. I think this is not that cool or great i

understand that there's a small fraction of people who goes oh what a very unique interesting thing that has not been done before true you can say that it's unique and hasn't been done before but does that make it good that you're encouraging people to have a friend that is an ai device i told you i watched her, right? On the plane. Finally. Have you guys seen that movie? Has anyone seen that movie? It's really relevant. Please watch

to the end. Very relevant. Very relevant from 11 years ago. There used to be chatbots on Instant Messenger that felt like this, that if you just wanted to talk to someone and you got bored of them really fast. So yeah, I have a lot of thoughts about this i read about this a lot last night um just because i was feeling feelings about it you say you read about this a lot did you read

like twitter what else so or the website there's multiple articles about it there's multiple interviews with abby the guy that is making it um and just like what he says that he sees as the future for this product. Sure. He says that he sees it sort of as a Tamagotchi, which if you remember Tamagotchis, some of the younger audience might not remember, but they're basically these little Japanese keychain things that had pets on them. You had to feed them every now and then, and you

basically had to keep checking in on them and taking care of them. And you did form some form of digital relationship with your Tamagotchi. They're still very popular in Japan, actually, and they've come out with newer models models since then but that's sort of like the old school analog version of this now that said the reason he said it's kind of like a Tamagotchi is because if you lose the pendant your friend is dead like you never see it again like you don't it's not like an app it's not an app it breaks you're screwed again. Like you don't, it's not like a- It's not an app. It's not an app. What if it breaks? If it breaks, you're screwed. It's not, you don't get the same friend. That seems not great.

Which is interesting. They said they did it on purpose, which I kind of find interesting. Yeah, I don't know. I have a lot of thoughts about this. Another thing that they said was basically like, you are a combination of the five friends that you spend the most time with

that's what they say that's what they say yeah and he said now in the future one of those friends might be an ai i just think here's the thing people are real right so real people have real feelings and real emotions and you have to learn how to interact with human beings that are all very complex and diverse. The way that AI language models work is that they are a net average summation of all these things. They're hyper positive, right? You want them to be.

And maybe to give them the benefit of the doubt, in some environments, if you're a person that needs to sort of like work up to more social interaction with people in the real world, like having a soft, easy way to interact with a human-like thing in order to get there could be good. I could see far-reaching environments in which certain people with mental health conditions could utilize this. However, when we interact with people in the real world, everyone is complex and is not just going to be a hyper-positive, I'm your BFF, I don't have any problems, and the only thing I care about is you, mentalities. And it feels a little bit dangerous to me to get people attached and addicted to virtual human beings that are not human beings and don't have the same complexities as human

beings we have seen this with there's a replica ai uh which is an app that you basically log into and you have this virtual ai bFF that people started digitally dating. Oh, that's a thing. You can go on the subreddit for this. Dating. And it's really uncomfortable. But these people get very attached to these digital personas.

And if something happens to them, they get very upset. And I don't know. I just think, you know. There's a movie about this. I know. There's a movie about this. I know. There is a movie about this. Yeah.

I completely agree. I feel like I totally understand. I guess part of my thing is with this release video, and maybe it's just the release video, I think there's some space for like, there are people out there who are lonely. Everyone at some point has been in a position where they're like,

I wish I could talk to somebody right now. Whether that's just like a conversation lonely there everyone at some point has had a been in a position where they're like i wish i could talk to somebody right now whether that's just like a conversation that makes you feel not so by yourself that is a 100 normal thing for everyone to go through they don't market it like that at all they market it so far as just this like like multiple one guy's with other people and somebody's just telling him he's trash at like Call of Duty or whatever. And I don't know if it was just a, yeah, a text.

I also think that's weird where it's like I speak out loud and then get a text message. Why is it not just a phone thing? Why is it not a huge red flag that it's listening all of the time from this company that we've never heard of and even if it's a company i have heard of i don't want them listening all the time

there's just a lot of red flags in this that i don't really and i just don't really get the point of it overall yeah i think i have three main takeaways and look i we don't know if this product is actually going to come out or not we just see this video and we're reacting to it. That's how far we've gotten so far. My number one is kind of along the lines of what you were saying, which is I guess I don't really see this being, like, okay, it's got to listen to you all the time to do what it says it's doing, right?

So they're going to probably say, okay, it's always encrypted and it's stored locally and we have no access to it and all this stuff to make it acceptable that it's always encrypted and it's stored locally and we have no access to it and all this stuff to make it acceptable that it's listening all the time and it still needs to go through their servers and send you a message on your phone. Why don't I just have an app on my phone

that I talk to once in a while when I need that service? Does it have to listen to me all the time? That's my first thought. Can I throw a question out there just on that? And maybe you read this. It says listening all the time. And I think it said storing locally. What?

It uses Bluetooth to connect to your phone. To connect to your phone? I'm assuming this sends the message. I don't know. What I'm wondering is where are we, how long in context are we talking about? Are we overwriting stuff of like context of what it's listening to that point can because in that it's like she's eating the falafel and it mentions the

falafel are we talking about the last hour are we saying like oh man i what was that thing i did yesterday morning and it's gonna know what i'm doing or is it only knowing within the last hour or so right yeah which takes the difference between I hate that it's storing a day's worth of audio that I have to also what good is this if it only knows the last 30 minutes? It feels damned both ways on that. If it's just reactive based on your most recent interactions.

Super in the moment. Right. I mean, Avi is pretty back and forth on twitter and stuff about this you could always we could always ask um sure but yeah yeah yeah well my second take is the wearing of a device like this that's so i guess unnatural looking kind of makes it a a target you're the guy with the ai friend i can see it on your you're wearing it that's that's the first thing target for bullying and yeah or just being stolen or whatever and then the third thing that i thought is this feels very twitter and i know i've it

feels very bubble like very much like people who are speaking about this or care deeply about this are all in one place. And I just looked it up real quick. This launched everywhere. Like there's friend.com, there's Instagram, there's Twitter, there's whatever. So they put the YouTube video out this same exact YouTube video got 131,000 views, 800 likes 700 comments. 700 comments. They launched it on Instagram, brand new. Has 693 likes and has 800 followers on their account. And they launched it on Twitter. And on Twitter, it has 18.2 million views, 9,200 retweets, and 3,600 comments. Dang.

So there's a type for this. Right. And I just wonder, how local is this type? Is this very, very AI positive type of person who's willing to give it a shot versus the general public? Because I first watched this and it felt kind of like a sketch, like a parody. And I think a lot of people watching it may feel the same way. But in a certain group of people, this is much more hard hitting. I was just gonna say,

I think part of those numbers are inflated by Twitter also being the easiest place to dunk on things. Facts. So I think there's definitely some of that of people on Twitter enjoy retweeting and commenting to dunk and make fun of things. I have a question. Well, it's not really a question. It's more, well, it's kind of a question.

Anyway, my kind of a question is that if you're selling something for $99 and it costs money per query, to me, that says we don't expect people to use this long-term because there's no subscription and if they did use it long-term, it would cost us money.

It says something totally different to me. That says we are definitely selling the data we're collecting from this. Wow. Because that's the only way it will make money. To me it tells me that they're trying to get bought. Like immediately? It doesn't need to be long term. Yeah. Wow.

Three totally different takes. Interesting. Yeah. Because I agree with you not like the way queries work 99 would run up if that's all the money if you actually use this for like a couple of years i'm pretty sure your query costs would be above and that's not including hardware and any of that which probably costs three bucks, but it's a microphone with a video. Necklace is kind of necklace option. Could it not be a keychain or a belt buckle?

It's probably just where is the most of the sound. Belt buckle is wild. Keychain I guess you could have put on. Necklace you can always do it on. Yeah. You gotta be able to tap it at any time. You definitely need a certain fashion style to be able to wear a necklace every day with a little AI assistant on it. Yeah. Yeah. You got to be able to tap it at any time. You definitely need a certain fashion style

to be able to wear a necklace every day with a little AI assistant on it. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's a battery life.

Yeah. That's a great question. How do you charge it? I think it has a USB-C port on it. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. I think it will be interesting to see how this plays out,

but a lot of just, I know that I sound negative a lot around a lot of the AI stuff it's just that it feels like there's this gold rush and everyone knows that they can make a lot of money but no one is thinking about like does anyone actually want this or does this may actually make anyone's life better or a society better because parasocial relationships already exist on youtube and all of these things and having a parasocial relationship with a robot which is literally a prediction machine it feels very very dystopian and bleak i sent this to my sister who is way younger and cooler

than me and more of a normal person and she replied and said that she felt like she was watching a horror movie and was waiting to get jump scared with that video. There's a really funny parody video of it already by the way called Enemy Instead of Friend

and each thing that texts back is just like Voldemort saying like after the guy gets beat in the video games is Voldemort saying like wait till they fall asleep and light their house on fire. I also think that there's a little bit of a hyper positivity on Twitter

specifically around like AI and tech. What? No way. Yeah because look it's cool if you're like gonna create a product and like make something and that you're putting a lot into it and actually like trying to make something.

That's very cool. Not a lot of people do that. But the Silicon Valley way is just like make it even if nobody wants it. Just has to be unique. Just make money. And it sort of feels like to be unique just make money and it sort of feels like a let's just make money kind of thing so i don't know well that's my take but um i'm willing to give it a shot once they actually come out i'm not yeah i don't want it i'll probably in the

perfect world i mean this doesn't look like for me maybe it's for someone else i can't see myself for the amount of time that I feel comfortable using it. Which I don't even know if I do because like no one else is consenting to their voice being stored. That's another great point. Is that even legal in a lot of states? Yeah. Can you just be recording all the time and not tell people? There's a difference between phone calls and recordings.

I don't know the rules, but that is another good question. If you're just recording everything all the time, then what do you do? Also, he said that he eventually wants to add a camera to it, in which case I'm like, no, don't do that. Do not do that. This is already far enough. This is already too far, in my opinion. People would see a camera and just, that would be it.

Assuming this works perfectly as advertised, I still don't think it's useful. Like why do I want someone else to text me random things throughout the day? It does. The commercial is always random things. I was trying to think of useful things it could do. Like if you were like, where did I put my keys down? And then because it could hear the last time your keys jingled,

they could tell you what room you were in or had a camera. But like maybe it could help you answer questions or maybe you tell it to remember stuff like i when i was testing the meta ray bands you could have it remember stuff for you things like that could be a utility if it's always listening maybe it's not that doesn't sound like what they're going for though it's not in the commercial no i i think it's just super dystopian that that guy was playing video games with his friends and real friends interacting with his friends he was real friends. And instead of interacting with his friends he was in the same room with,

he decided to text, not even his new love interest, but a robot. Mm-hmm. It's already rude to get on your phone when you're with your friends and text someone else, but to text a robot when you're with your friends? Bro.

It's a choice. What is this? Anyway. I don't really get this. It was very well shot, though. It was pretty well done. The video was pretty well done. What is this? Anyway. I don't really get this. It was very well shot though so whoever shot it. It was pretty well done. The video was pretty well done.

Yeah. Even if it was dystopian. Maybe the product is well done. Who knows? I, you know, we'll see. We'll see.

We shall see. We shall see. We got to take a break. We got much more to talk about with AI and a couple other products as well but before we take a break we got to take a trivia break

trivia dude so we spoke about Google X earlier which was famous for its crazy projects such as Project Loon and Waymo even Glass so because Ellis

is away on vacation, I have a multiple choice in his honor. Which of the following was not a Google X project? Project Glare, a project that used exclusively solar energy to charge hot swappable e-bike batteries. Project Dandelion, a project that sold geothermal energy systems to consumers.

Project Flux, a project that made a tool for designing eco-friendly buildings. Project Mineral, a project that used machine learning to scale sustainable agriculture. Man, they got a lot of projects going on over there, man. Yeah. Just project after project. Well, they did. They killed a lot of them. Yeah, they had projects. Yeah. Just project after project. Well, they did. They killed a lot of them. Yeah, they had projects.

Or they spun them out as their own companies. That's a great way to not kill a product is just call it a project so you can just stop doing it at any time. It was just a project. We count those. Well, the subheader for Google X was Google X, the moonshot factory. They were basically saying like most of the stuff. We're going to shoot for the moon and if we miss, then we land amongst the stars or gravity brings us back down to earth crashing and

burning either way we'll have the answers at the end like we usually do and we'll be right back Thank you. easy targets for hackers. And Huntress wants to give businesses the tools to help. Huntress is where fully managed cybersecurity meets human expertise. They offer a revolutionary approach to managed security that isn't all about tech. It's about real people providing real defense. When threats arise or issues occur, their team of seasoned cyber experts is ready 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for support. They provide real-time protection for endpoints, identities, and employees, all from a single dashboard. It's because their cutting-edge solutions are backed by experts who monitor, investigate, and respond to threats with unmatched precision.

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And what's weird about that is we were just on iOS 18.0 beta. And so this is already a.1. Again, any of it is is pushing to regular people's phones so we're 18.1 and it's the first beta with apple intelligence features turned on a couple of them anyway there's some writing tools there's the new siri and some of the improvements coming with that there is a new notification mode that's just like priority notifications only um a couple of the small things lots of things are also still very much missing uh including the image playgrounds and a bunch of other stuff but it's there and one of the questions that came with this update is okay wait a minute only some of the apple intelligence features are here. It's 18.1 already.

The phones that launch in September, iPhone 16, what is going to launch on those phones? Will that be iOS 18.0, 18.1, some of the AI features, all of the AI features? Like we got a lot of announcements at WWDC. And it seems with the current trajectory of timing, WDC. And it seems with the current trajectory of timing, like many of those things will not be in the brand new iPhone that launches in September. Seems kind of odd to me, maybe a little bit confusing. It'll probably eventually get to the iPhone, but I just thought that was interesting. I think it's interesting. I guess the first thing is, do you think these new AI features are going to be one of the larger selling points of 16? What I heard was that they are because there's not going to be that many changes to the hardware.

They are going to be the bigger feature. Well, considering Apple Intelligence requires the A17 Bionic Pro, whatever it's called, or above, you'd need either a 15 Pro, 15 Pro Max, or 16 series at all. The reason I ask is I think we've all made it clear that we, at this point, expect every phone launch to have something in the event that we don't see until later, which is really annoying.

Does this seem like one of the bigger features of that? Because what was it? What was the Apple diffusion one? Oh, yeah, what was the Apple like diffusion one? Oh yeah. It was the camera one. Apple does a lot of camera ones that are like not the big thing you need, but something that makes good marketing material.

And it ended up making zero difference. Yeah, yeah. I think it also like wasn't cinematic mode like two months late. Yeah. Almost every day camera feature was. Those are really good marketing things for the event, but ones that maybe you don't buy the phone for.

Because like you've said for a very long time, don't purchase something based on future promises. 100%. This feels like one of the biggest selling points for this and to be a future promise. If so, that's why I think this one feels weirder than other ones. Also, so in the 18.1 beta that they gave to us this week,

it doesn't offer any of the Siri features that I actually think are going to like foundationally change how you could possibly use your phone. Yeah. And that is what makes it hard to sort of like test this out and have any idea whether or not Apple Intelligence is actually going to move units. Because we don't even,

it doesn't include any of the deep app integration for Siri. Yeah, so for those who are seeing this turned on for the first time, we've posted some videos of it and there's some screenshots of it, but you upgrade to the new iOS 18.1 developer beta and then you go into the settings and there's an Apple Intelligence tab

and that is in beta. And that you have to join a wait list to get into because they're managing server capacity because obviously some bigger queries go to servers. So it's like a beta of a beta inside a beta. And it's very tightly managed, and it seems like a small fraction. And like you said, parts of Siri are there.

Parts of Siri, like in app actions i feel like that's the part that i'm waiting for that i really want to test that could be really interesting i could set it apart that's the rabbit replacement yeah and so as of right now if you just go and ask siri a bunch of things new siri versus old siri it's pretty similar yeah honestly there's not a huge ton of differences it's just a functionality difference yeah I can type to Siri more easily now things like that but yeah it's uh have you gotten the like prompt to send it to chat GPT yet no that's not

built into this one that's one of the things that's not yeah not here yet as well so um we're able to evaluate what we've seen a little bit this is a developer beta they're very early it's not coming to the public just yet maybe that'll be soon slows down my phone by a lot yeah engages but you know i played with it a bit

and it's yeah it's it's very few things yeah very few things yeah i mean we were a little behind the scenes here had videos ready for this week saw the 18.1 developer came out we were like let's make a video on it and then you guys looked at it and were like, there's way less than we thought. Yeah, I almost halted everything. I was like, wow, Apple Intelligence is here. Time to review it. And then, oh, it's just a third of this stuff.

And then made a short instead. Yeah, so we'll wait. Honestly, two things. One, the most impressive parts of it are the animations. I gotta be honest. I've seen a lot of them. Which is so depressing. The new Siri animation is so slick.

The new writing tools animate in a super cool way. When you're typing in the keyboard, there's the suggestions for like auto-reply. They like pop in nicely, but they look so cool. I know. Oh, you're saying the actual suggestions. The suggestions are bad. I've yet to see a good auto-suggest.

And I hate when you accidentally press the whole funny. So honestly honestly that's number one to me is like the animations are very pretty but number two what you said earlier i think is a really great point the difference between the iphone 15 and the iphone 16 we don't think it's going to be that much like there we might have slightly better cameras and slightly better performance and slightly better battery life but we're not expecting this dramatic massive change like the way we might in some other form factors or some other phones. And so I think the AI has

to be one of the biggest differences between everyone who just bought an iPhone 15 and will not get these features and what we're about to see in these new phones. So yeah, you know, if this is the Pixel we're talking about, maybe there are some other things like a way bigger, brighter screen or some other stuff that would make you upgrade that isn't just the AI. But I think because it's Apple and they are so safe about their hardware changes, I think the AI has to be the thing that people are looking forward to with the new phones. And so that's why it's kind of confusing. Yeah. Was it Apple's tagline that was AI for the rest of us? Or was that? It was was that i have a few

primary thoughts on this um so okay we obviously have the new animations which as you said are pretty well done but then i was surprised to see all of these new writing tools built in in ways that i didn't really anticipate um one of them is when you're in messages it will constantly just give you like message reply suggestions very similar to gmail gmail has been doing this auto reply thing for a long time oh like as you type it'll like no no that's google docs no good gmail too well gmail too yes no more like um more like just auto auto replies like if you get someone saying blah you could say great thanks you just press that and it'll send yeah uh so it's similar to that and then it shows you like two options and you can keep going but they're glowy because they're apple intelligence but so far they have

been so bad for me so bad for me i had a friend that was like david you need to drink water. You're not super young anymore. And then the two options were yes, no. I was like, okay, okay. And then- Was that a real friend or? Yeah, it was a real friend. Oh, okay. Yeah, a real friend. And then I've been having some old person's stomach pain

for the last few days that I was also telling a different friend about. And I said, I hope it clears up over the next couple of days. And they said, I pray. And then it just suggested, thanks for praying! And I'm just like, can you? This is the thing. You should have sent this.

All the AI, all these large language models are just super basic, positive, but not complex in any way. And in an email context, generally, you're being a little more formal so it makes more sense. But when you're texting people, it just doesn't work. It's funny because in a text,

it's overly positive, but at the same time, so minuscule that it feels like blunt. Right. So like if you respond just like, yeah, like, thanks. It just feels like, oh, I just typed like a pretty well thought out thing and you just said thanks.

It just feels like you kind of need to be more. Or that they're just blowing you off. It does exactly what it kind of is doing, which is I don't care enough about this message that I'd rather just click one of these. Very passive aggressive. In an email format, nobody really cares that you're being super blunt that way. But in a text the context is different the one thing that has been useful though is when

you get multiple messages either in a group chat or from a single person the notification has this new like summary summary thing i've seen this go well and poorly in my own case yeah yeah and it can also recognize images though, which is cool because previously if you would get a text with an image, it would just say like one image. And now I got a text, I got four texts from a friend. One of them was a photo

and it said photo of a fire escape and she's also interested in this. Does that work with just iMessage or was it working with like Telegram? I have not tried it on other apps because I've only been using this for a single day oh okay um but I thought that was interesting and for group

chats especially because I'm in a couple like photography group chats where people are just talking about cameras all the time I generally don't need to be like to the minute caught up you know seems interesting yeah I wonder if I'm in a group chat and iMessage with like 10 people and 40 new messages what it would say I'm curious if it would work.

But yeah, I have gotten that working as well. I would love it if it was just like, you probably don't need to read these. Like you weren't part of the context of this. I would appreciate that. You're good skipping this one. I would really like that. That would be fire. But colloquially, I sent a friend that article about the friend because I wanted to talk about it last night.

And she sent me back this really long message, but just summarized it to questions wearable devices value in AI context, which was effectively the summary. And it's ironic that it was summarized by an AI. But, you know, here we are. That's deep. Anyway, that's my thought. In my group chat, we have a lot of voice notes that we send each other yeah i wonder if this will summarize the voice notes because like you get the transcript has to listen to them then well there's the transcript can it just like

get the transcript give me the summary so i don't have to listen to like a 10 minute voice memo because we all have one friend that lives 10-minute voice notes. I don't. I have two. Really? I've made the right decisions in my life that I do not have that person. Well played. One of my best friends sends 10-minute voice notes all the time, and I'm like, can you stop?

I'm sure they are all great people. I forget what you were talking about in the first half. Yeah, if I had that person, I'd be like, play, and then I would just be like, huh, huh. I have to take notes. Just like anything else would distract me in that process. I love that we started with phones as phone calls, developed texting to be easier,

created longer phone calls and text messages, and now we're summarizing back into smaller text messages. We have like piecemeal phone calls back and forth that are not connected, and we're just going to land on phone calls and text messages and now we're summarizing back into smaller text messages. We have like piecemeal phone calls back and forth that are not connected. We're just going to land on phone calls again. It's going to be a feature. Someone's going to launch a device and the primary feature is going to be a live audio connection to another person. You mean like Clubhouse?

And it's going to be revolutionary. Like a walkie talkie. Like we've never seen before. Okay, question. So you're saying on the next iPhone, like what is it going to launch with could they have they already for sure announced everything that's going to be with ai could they do like camera upgrades or like video stabilization using new ai and make that like the selling point of the next iphone yeah but if it's with the new ai i'm assuming it's going to come out

at the same time as this AI, and it seems like that's not making it. I don't know. Well, this is more like language stuff, isn't it? Yeah, I feel like when I see Apple Intelligence, the way they seem to be branding it, they're like packaging together all of their models, whether it's their diffusion models or their language models.

And I guess camera stuff is kind of in its own bucket until you're editing the image and using the diffusion models or their language models. And I guess camera stuff is kind of in its own bucket until you're editing the image and using the diffusion models. So I don't know. It feels like that could be a separate. There could be an iPhone 16 specific camera AI feature in theory. That takes advantage of some new powerful neural cores on a chip or whatever.

I think Apple intelligence is generally language and image generation. Yeah. Yeah. Watch, this will be the year where all the camera stuff comes out on launch day and all of the other stuff is a three month later. It's backwards.

It's upside down. Yeah. I'll just be super interested if the main part of the keynote is Apple intelligence and we don't get it as it comes out. It's a wait till the fall kind of thing. That would be kind of crazy. It would be really strange and very unlike, well, very like Apple, but unlike Apple at

the same time. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just curious, like what is going to be the big selling point of this phone? Here's the thing. If that is what we would argue the number one thing about selling the phone and it doesn't come out till November,

can you not recommend that phone right off the bat? Well, if it's just the same phone as last year, then it's the same phone as last year. Then that's all I can say about it if the stuff's all coming soon.

Yeah. And if you already have a 15 Pro or 15 Pro Max, you really don't need it. Don't buy it. It's the same phone as last year. Yeah. Yeah, but most people, they're It's the same phone as last year. Yeah. Yeah, but most people, like,

they're coming from three or four years ago anyway. Yeah, sure. In which case, you can probably recommend a 15 Pro as the 16 comes out because the 15 Pro comes down in price and should have all the same capabilities. And I think it's easier to recommend, like, you're still not recommending that for a four-year difference

based on the thing that's coming soon all the other things are still an upgrade from that four year thing so like it's less bad and then maybe a good bonus later but but then there's the awkward thing where next year there's supposed to be the slim and possibly the flip so now you're like there's nothing new

can you wait another year yeah this could be a skip year yeah well that's kind of what I was getting at is there any chance that there could be some big surprise this year? Are you saying specifically like hardware-wise? Yeah, like a hardware change. I doubt it. Highly doubt it. I hope.

I like events where we're actually surprised. I do too. That would be cool, but I doubt it. I trust our boy Mark Gurman, you know? I trust him. What was the last skip year? iPhone 13? I mean, every S year, but...

There was the one where basically the Pro almost wasn't worth getting because it had one extra camera and they made the normal so good. I don't know. Probably the 11. I feel like it was 11 or 12. iPhone 12 mini was definitely worth a skip.

Yeah. Yeah, no one should buy the 12 mini. You're fuming right now. At least there was a 13 mini. That's true. All right, moving on. This actually launched last Thursday because of course it did

because that's the day after we record every single freaking week and it always freaking happens. Tech companies, can you stop? Lay off. Stop it. Lay off. Launch things on Tuesday.

Friended? That's true. Friend.com. I got the memo. They know, yeah. You know, thanks, Javi. Thanks. All right.

We missed this last week. It was OpenAI's launch of SearchGPT, which is sort of their competitor to perplexity, and also kind of a competitor to Google's response to ChatGPT, which is an interesting place to be in. But there was this rumor a long time ago before, well, not really a long time ago, very recently, because this stuff moves so fast, when they were about to launch GPT-4.0, which is their Omni model, which had the Scarlett Johansson drama,

that it was going to be a chat GPT search engine. That ended up not being the case at the time, but they were actually developing their search engine. Because if you can displace Google, then you make all the money in the world. If you could displace 1% of Google, you would make a crazy amount of money.

Exactly, and that's why Google is terrified of. So they took the veils off of search GPT, which is kind of a search engine, kind of chat GPT. They do interestingly say they're eventually just going to integrate them together and there won't really be a difference, which is kind of weird. But effectively what this looks like right now is you have a big text box going to integrate them together and there won't really be a difference. Just kind of weird. But

effectively what this looks like right now is you have a big text box that you type stuff into and you talk to it. And right now when we search things on Google, we search things in sort of like an SEO language. We've talked about this before. There's a way to Google that will get you your answer faster because you learned how to write in SEO. We're all little prompt engineers. Exactly. We all know what to type to get Google to give us the thing. A hundred percent.

Yeah. And so the idea here is we're trying to get people used to speaking in natural language to chat GPT. Now you theoretically should be able to speak in natural language to a search engine. That's sort of the future that they're trying to move people towards, which makes sense because, you know, there's a reason that my parents are really bad at Googling things.

And I'm always like, can you just look it up? Because they just use natural language. Because for people that don't understand how to speak in SEO, it's actually hard to look up information. That's why I feel like this could either be amazing or horrible. This could be amazing for mom, dad, grandma, grandpa,

who just type, where do I buy the, like just asking like a person a question and it actually understands it and gives them a correct answer. That could be amazing for them to use instead of Google. It could be horrible if it hallucinates or gives them the wrong answer to an important question. Which happened in their demo.

Because that evergreen. Every single time it is impossible to have an AI demo without it hallucinating. AI demo with only real facts challenge. Impossible. It's like hire a fact checker, a human fact checker. It won't be too hard. so one of the searches that they did was they wanted to find music festivals happening near them and it suggested this

appalachian summer festival that said it's running from july 29th to august 19th uh because they just said music festivals happening near me and basically the way this looks and we can show it on screen but i'll try to describe it for audio listeners is it is sort of like a big excel spreadsheet that looks a lot nicer and on the left hand cells there are actually links if you open up the page and on the right hand is kind of like this uh pag this paginated list where it shows an image. It'll show the answer and the actual event that's happening if you search for events. And then it'll show a link. And they are very, very specific about trying to make the links very out there because there's been a ton of blowback on perplexity for just scraping people's information and technically

linking, but like really small and not being obvious about it. And I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago. There was an interview on Neely's Decoder podcast with Nick Thompson, who runs The Atlantic. And he's very deep in working with OpenAI on like, if this is the future and we cannot avoid it, how can we work together to make this okay for both of us? and that was the one thing that they were really pushing was like make our links more prominent um so yeah at the moment it kind of looks like this big thing anyway that the

hallucination that happened was in the demo they asked for these music festivals that were happening nearby and the first one that was listed was an Appalachian summer festival that's running from July 29th to August 19th but then if you actually go to the website uh it's actually running from June 29th to July 27th and it said the box office is closed from July 20 is closed from July 29th to August 19th whoops so here we go again uh whoops Yeah, you just can't rely on the answers that a large language model serves you. Underlying massive problem, people still need to double check everything they do.

Which is another skill. Which is another skill. Like the prompt engineering was one skill, but then you also had to learn how to verify that the answer that you got was correct. Yeah. Checking your sources, double checking checking just making sure you got the right thing yeah

the frustration is just that we keep being told that we're that the hallucinations are getting we're almost there we've almost solved the hallucination problem for the last number of months you know and it's like we keep being told that and every single time there's a demo they don't even catch yeah a hallucination that shows up um do you remember when chat gpt

came out and then google frantically panicked and released gemini and made ai like their whole thing do you think they're going to frantically panic with this as well i mean perplexity has been out for a while they have been panicking. The strange thing is that I think they realized they released the AI overviews too quickly because they've really reeled back how much they show you overviews. I never see them anymore. I get them on my phone

all the time, but never on the computer or anything. Interesting. I can never figure out exactly why, and every time it pops up, I just start scrolling because I'm like, I can find this link faster than you can populate this overview. I'm just curious because I'm looking at this screenshot of what search GPT looks like. And it did get that thing wrong.

But this doesn't look bad. No. And I'm like, could Google just redo their UI? I wouldn't. Because they can already search the websites themselves and get the information correct like they could do half and half you know like it is funny because i think it's the way they like show things is it's almost not even like the the prompting we're doing is just to get the more precise answers in these set of links because it wants to sell you absolute garbage first and like so we prompt

things to try and get like typing reddit and at the end to try and get a reddit thread or like typing something a little more trustworthy that we know inside of the search term to get that faster because we know google is usually the best search engine for any website that we like even though it's not even that website and that website has a search function already right but so like right king is it does google need to change their ai or not their ai their ui and what it serves you so when it's a more simple term it doesn't just serve you like the the trash seo crap i think it should however i think that directly conflicts with how much money they've made yeah over the years they've just slowly degraded the experience at a speed that you don't notice by putting more ads,

more sponsored links, more clips on the sides of the page. And now they're so deep that if they were to reel it back and try to be more like search GPT, they would just stop making money. Open AI doesn't need to worry right now about making money. That's, that's always how this happens is some new

company comes in, releases a product that doesn't make any money but has a great user experience. Disrupts. Yeah, disrupts the market so they can gain user traction and then eventually they're like, time to turn on the money mill and then they just... And they became what they sought to destroy. It's what threads will become

and we're hanging on now but it'll get worse. Don't mention that. Don't remind them. Threads? Threads is going to turn into Twitter and then a new Fediverse is going to come out. Yeah, so right now they are releasing it to 10,000 beta testers of people that pay for GPT Plus

and they do want to eventually integrate it into ChatGPT. Is this my turn to beg for an invite so arcteryx arcteryx get to them okay and open ai hit me up i'll take five thousand dollar pants over i'd like to search engine i would also any day i'm not gonna be hiking anytime soon so let's talk anyway it's interesting because there's all these different ways that you can look at search, and I think that Perplexity has this one direction that they look at it in, and they've been under a ton of fire recently for just stealing information from people,

and now they're going to have to try to thread that needle. But separately, they also now just announced that they're finally starting to roll out their GPT-4-0 Her-like voice model that is like back and forth really quickly and kind and whatever weird. I think they kind of swept that under the rug for a while while the Scarlett Johansson drama was happening. And now they're just like, okay, it's out.

They just wanted a couple months for people to stop talking about it. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, okay. Yeah. We'll have to try this stuff. Yeah, I would like to get it.

I mean, I don't have access to it, but I see the screenshots and I would like to. So. Yeah. Okay, well, we should take another quick break. A little more to talk about. But before we do that, one more trivia question. All right, fun fact tamagotchi is a portmanteau of two japanese words the actual translation is egg watch which i found hilarious Yeah. When was it released? When was it released? In Japan or the US?

Worldwide. I don't think they're the same. So then Japan. The first one? That's what you're saying? Yes. Can I ask? Oh, that's what you're saying.

Yeah, the first time it was released. Oh, okay. I got it. You may search GPT. I'll give you an extra point if you get the day, by the way. I mean, sure. Yeah. Was it a special day?

Yeah, it was the day the Tamagotchi was released. Tamagotchi Day. No, but I will give you a hint because that year it got Toy of the Year for Christmas. So it came out on Christmas? Well, how did it come out before Christmas? To be Toy of the Year.

I don't know but I'll I'll guess for sure after the break stay tuned for our guesses yes

yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

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of over 30 hotel brands around the world. Find the unforgettable at autographcollection.com. You want to know something cool? Wait, I should intro it first. I thought that was the intro. It might as well be. hey hey you want to know something cool a new phone came out it's called the nothing phone oh that's shiny nothing phone 2a plus i'm holding it in front of a gray part of the background and it's blending in

i noticed it's just the two camera bumps like yeah so basically whether you're an audio listener or a viewer you have no idea what's holding up right now. No, okay, so it's a slight bump from the Nothing Phone 2A. The word plus would suggest it's bigger. It's not. I think I should make that clear. The Nothing Phone 2A Plus is the same size as the Nothing Phone 2A. What it is is it's slightly faster.

It has a Dimensity 7350 Pro 5G processor. It has a slightly bumped up camera. Yeah. It's, yeah, and it's silver now. And it also charges five watts faster for some reason. 45 watts to 50, which I don't think anyone's going to notice. It's been four months since the 2A came out.

Yeah. So this is like a weird four months later version of the same phone, but a little bit more updated. And it's $50 more. It's $400 instead of $350. But it's now the newest A phone from nothing. The design is the one thing that I have not gotten everyone to agree on with. I think it's just an excuse to charge more.

And I think it's just slightly different from the previous phone, but it's a little bit shiny, and I don't think it's better than the previous design, but it's different enough that you can say it's a different phone. Did you guys have thoughts on this design? I don't actually think it's that cool. Like how it looks? Yeah. I kind of dig the silver. It's a brushed that's the thing people say metal and it looks like metal and all the ads look like metal but when you have the phone in front of you it's very

clearly still plastic i mean obviously you think oh you don't think it's metal underneath the plastic i can't it doesn't it almost doesn't matter because I can't feel it. Like the back of the phone is still plastic. The sides are still plastic. I think metal has a look though. And that's what I care about here. They also released the special edition of the regular 2A just two months ago.

Right. I like that better. With multicolor. I think that's the reason why it feels like even less than four months is because we just did this again recently and then so how long ago was just the nothing phone 2 4 of 2?

a long time ago and how far away are we from the nothing phone 3 I don't think they're doing it this year I doubt July 2023 so we're over a year out we're expecting a nothing phone 3 sometime soon. I don't think they're doing that this year.

I don't know. Interesting. I don't mind that. Me neither. At all. That's good. So a year plus since the Nothing Phone 2 and No Nothing Phone 3. But we got three Nothing Phone 2As in the last four months.

Got it. Correct. They all just seem like variations of each other though. Yeah. They had all these working internally and they were like we'll just release them two months apart yeah 400 bucks i like the silver have you been using it is your main sim in there uh no my main sim i recently moved back to the pixel uh 8 pro 8 pro in anticipation of comparing it to the 9s when they come out so my sim has skipped the nothing phone entirely

I don't suspect I mean I reviewed the 2a I think it's a really it's a good phone by the way it's a good inexpensive big screen great software nice phone so I'm sure this will be very similar but I don't feel the need to like go through that week and a half long review process for myself to verify it because we're around the corner for some much more interesting phones.

Can we talk about the News Reporter widget? I was just going to ask that. Okay, sure. Yeah, I do have that. Okay. Can we talk about that? Is that non-bargoed? No, it's not embargoed.

Okay. Yeah. So there is one interesting new piece of software called the News Reporter Widget. You might see it on my home screen here. It is a circle with eight bars. And that is intentional because the News Reporter Widget is, I want to get this exactly right, it is summarizing a bunch of new news articles

from various sources from subjects that you have checked so i checked um what did i check here science sports and technology but you could also check health or entertainment or business and then it translates them to audio and reads them to you in an ai voice well it is tim holbro's voice which is the the CFO of Nothing. So it's trained on this man's voice. It sounds very human-like to me. It sounded very good. And I'm going to play my latest news story from today, Wednesday, July 31st. Okay.

Welcome to Nothing News, where the only thing we're not short on is bad news. I'm Tim, the CFO, and I'm stuck reading this stuff out every day. Guess that's what I get for investing in nothing. It's a real nothing venture. It's funny because that's AI and not him. Kicking off today's episode, the Pentagon has finally achieved a significant milestone by breaking free from its reliance on Russian rocket engines.

So it sounds like a human. I can pause because a widget on Android you can interact with, but I can't seem to skip or anything. And then when I hit it again, it picks up where it left off. So it's like a bad media player. Can I describe what this feels like to me? NPR.

I think this is Spotify DJ, but for the news. For NPR. It's like, yeah. I found the media player controls. They just show up like you're playing a Spotify song in the media player. And you can play, pause, and scrub up here. Can you jump to different topics at all?

You can fast forward. But are there markers for different topics? Yeah, each track is one topic. Oh, really? Or one, yeah, story. Interesting. So there's eight stories from those topics you selected.

I have some, I have questions. Yeah. Okay, so theoretically, it is synthesizing the biggest news stories in different categories across the web. Mm-hmm. I don't know how it's deciding which stories to pick.

I also... Me neither. What, like, is it just gonna, like, What, like, is it just gonna, like, read off of, is it just gonna, like, summarize a bunch of stories that were written by actual journalists

and then not quote or reference anything? Version? Correct. Sick. So this is... Would you expect anything less? Like, if you went to a...

Guys! If you went to a webpage that had a 10 paragraph news story and just asked Copilot, Gemini, GBT, whatever, to summarize it and you got those bullet points, I think that's what you're getting here. It's just a super short summary, a one minute long summary of that news story

and no source, nothing else, and then just moves on. And it's read in an interesting AI voice, and that might be the most impressive part is how human-like that voice sounds. Well, I have a question. Have you gotten to the end of a story recently? Yes.

And it definitely does not source it. It doesn't say, like, this story comes to you from blah, blah, blah. Let's get to the end of this Boeing story and hear what happens. The program remains uncertain, with scheduled flights potentially being further delayed that was it okay coming up next the new york meds have sounds so bored i would it sounds so bored i would never agree for them to use my voice for this because now i am the one potentially screwing up news stories and tossing out this information.

But what if you had investments in the company? What if you were the CSO? Don't use me. This is basically like the Daily from the New York Times, but generated by an AI that could be just hallucinating information. Or just, yeah. It could even be reading correct information from unreputable news information. Or just, yeah. It could even be reading correct information

from unreputable news sources. Or that, yeah. Do you know what's funny? I would like something like this. And knowing an article gets in there. Yeah. But I would like something like this that wasn't summarizing

and I picked the news stories I wanted of the day. So then I could be in the morning like, oh, here's a couple things I would find interesting. But now you can read them to me while I'm in the day. So then I could be like in the morning like, oh, here's a couple of things I would find interesting. But now you can read them to me while I'm in the car with like a nice sounding voice. I believe, so the New York Times uses some service that does this for their articles. And I think you can just have,

use that service and use it to read a bunch of articles. Even non-New York Times articles? Yeah, yeah. Oh. There are services out there that you can tell to read certain web pages to you and it will read them that'll be cool but if it was just like a widget on my phone and if it even said like here's a couple news articles you might find interesting today

and i'm like oh yeah pick those four read those to me today i guess this is like the this is like the lowest effort possible version for on the user part. I just wake up and just tap the widget and off I go. There's an NPR podcast called Up First that's basically 15 minutes of the biggest news stories and that's actually fact-checked by journalists.

Is it an entirely human process or is it AI curated and then human fact-checked? It's entirely human. What if it wasn't? Well, then they've been doing AI for a long time. Up First has been around for a very long time. Yeah, a really long time.

They're great, yeah. Yeah. All the tech companies, I think, just are fine with stealing. And I just... There is a small disclaimer at the bottom. Oh, great. There we go.

That'll fix everything. That'll fix everything. When you go into the widget settings and then you go to adjust them at the bottom it says the news content is curated from third-party sources period nothing is not responsible for the accuracy or opinions expressed in these articles nice lawyers killed that statement we should throw that at the end of all our podcasts Adam Molina has curated yeah there isn't much else to say there it just kind of reads you AI

news well if you're willing to have a second up first that might be lying to you try this out yeah super easy yeah that might be look I'm always happy to have more podcasts but this guy also sounds really bored he does and i wonder like if they have other voices that they tried or if they wanted to add other options for voices if they'd be like more excited or other

i think he requested to be i doubt it i have no idea i mean the voice i don't know do you think he requested or carl was, you're doing this? I think behind the scenes, nothing is probably pretty pumped that they're able to try this level of weird stuff and kind of just get away with it. Yeah. Like if they had announced this separately, like obviously we already are familiar with the NPRs

and like the early morning podcast news shows of the world. And if they wanted to just jump into that ecosystem and offer an AI curated one, the reaction would be very one-sided. I think everyone would go, that's a little weird. We like the human touch. We need it to be fact-checked.

Having an AI generated version of this in this ecosystem, not ready for that yet. But instead it's just a widget on a nothing phone where the users of this phone, they're already kind of curated. It's people who are buying these nothing phones. They'll try it. And if they like it, they like it.

If they don't, they don't. But that allows them to play with a very forward, almost radical idea and see how it goes. And so now that's how we end up with this really crazy AI-generated news radio show that the radio shows probably aren't even really

paying attention to. What is the app called? This? Yeah. It's called the... Let me double check. The Nothing News or something. The News Reporter Widget.

Okay. Because there's no app on the phone. Nothing had told us that there was going to be an iOS version of this widget. Yeah. But I don't know if it's out yet or if that's actually happening. Also, to be fair, I joke about it being the CFO, CTO? CFO. CFO. If there's a company pulling it off with one of

their people nothing makes the most sense because in general nothing is pretty good at getting their executives and people on their company out there for their fan base and their fan base seems to like that so this does make the most sense for them yeah also interestingly i believe carl had said that he was he made this whole thing about how he's interested in how ai is going to change the way we interact with smartphones and from what i understand that's the main reason they're not like planning on releasing a phone 3 this year is they want to like kind of re-engineer the ui for smartphones and release it on the nothing phone three, like next year,

which sure. Sure. Which to me feels like the nothing phone three might as well be basically the same as a nothing phone too, just with a bunch of up-to-date specs and a ton of AI stuff. that's what the nothing phone to a plus is. Exactly. Nice. It's the world we live in.

It's the world we live in. It's the world we live in. I heard Adam has a rant to finish this off my rant is something i have been asking for for at least a decade at this point and wow it is basically 2k quidditch for those that don't know this is something else nb like nba 2k like sports game but just quidditch there has been a new game that's coming out harry potter quidditch champions coming out as september 2024 or whatever i've been asking for this for so long but i have so many questions about it because first of all it looks just like

it did in the ps2 game or whatever that we used to play way back in the day. Wait, there was a Quidditch one? There was a Quidditch section of a Harry Potter game on the PS2 or PS1, I think, years ago. And it's like the same mechanics, which is a little weird. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on PS2. It wasn't this Quidditch World Cup? There was also a Quidditch World Cup game.

I never played that one, though. I wish I did. But that brings me to my next point. I'm just curious curious how they're gonna do this because the game mechanics and everything like Quidditch inherently makes no sense the author has said multiple times that she was like making it she made this game for the stories intentionally to make fun of people that like sports so at one point in a game you can can catch the snitch, get 150 points, and basically that guarantees victory. So it's like, what's the point of playing the game? It's like playing Exodia.

Yes, sure. Yeah. Exodia. Obliterate. Obliterate. It makes no sense how the game mechanics work in itself. So I'm just curious how this game is going to work because there's like an online multiplayer game. Like, am I just going to coast the whole game

and then last minute just try to catch the snitch because it's worth it. I mean, in my PlayStation 1 version of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, you could play Quidditch and I didn't beat the game for so freaking long because I just played, I played that game as if it was a Quidditch game. Nice.

It was so good. It was so fun. And so if they had mechanics in that, they'll probably build it out. Yeah, I'm just curious how they're going to make it, like, I don't know, fair. I think they want this to be FIFA, but for Harry Potter fans.

I hope, maybe not hope, but it would be funny if there were game packs, like the, right, in like FIFA and NBA, where you like open packs to get players and gamble all your money away with DLC so you can get the gold messy card. I want the gold Nimbus 2000 and I want to spend $800 trying to

open it. Yeah pay to play baby. It's coming but I will report back when this game comes out because I am 100% playing it. I'll play it with you. They made something called Seeker VR, but I feel like Quidditch VR would actually make sense because you can move in it because flying, you

don't need to move your legs. Don't feel your body moving though. You don't feel your body moving, but it's way better than just walking in VR, which makes no sense. So you could fly around, catch the golden snitch. Have you guys ever lucid dreamed before?

hard left the first, it's related for those that don't know lucid dreaming, I'm not promoting this as a thing that you can like train yourself to do because I don't know I tried and it never worked

anyway I have been able to luc awesome. I tried and it never worked. Anyway, I have been able to lucid dream three times. And it's basically when you realize that you're dreaming, but it doesn't wake you up. And then you're able to like take control of the dream and you're basically a superhero. And it's sick. You can do whatever you want. You've never lucid dreamed?

I've not tried to make this a is hilarious I'm not trying to make this a goop podcast but we're close but basically the first time I ever lucid dreamed I was able to ride around

on a broomstick because I was super into Harry Potter when I was a kid that's awesome and I was like flying around it was super sick

and my dad walked in I was like look I can ride a broomstick and he was like okay but anyway it was super fun and cool.

So I think that this game will be interesting. In VR. In VR. In VR, right. That was the point. VR would be sick. That was the point. That'd be cool.

Was that if we could get to my childhood lucid dreams in real life, I would appreciate it. We're working on it, David. But before that, we also have trivia. Trivia, dude. So quick update on the score. Google with negative three. Ellis carrying the one.

Thank you. Marquez with 14. Andrew tied with 14. And David with 15. Let's go. 5% battery. Nice. You don't need it anymore.

Yeah, now we're done. It's fine. That's true. First question. Which of the following was not a Google X project? A, Project Glare, a project that used exclusively solar energy to charge hot swappable e-bike batteries. B, Project Dandelion, a project that sold geothermal energy systems to consumers. C, Project Flux, a project that, you know when you

say a word too many times it doesn't feel real anymore, that's project right now for me. A project that made a tool for designing eco-friendly buildings. Or D, Project Mineral, a project that used machine learning to scale sustainable agriculture. Marques, are you erasing and rewriting, or are you drawing? I thought about drawing, but I'm just sticking with the writing.

David, you don't have to write that much. It's just one letter. It's just a letter. It's like in SpongeBob. Yeah, when he's like... V. All right, flip them and read. What do you got?

David? B, dandelion. B, dandelion? Wrong. Dang. Andrew? A. I forget if it was flare or glareion? Wrong. Dang. Andrew? A. I forget if it was flare or glare.

Glare. Correct. Really? I also put A, glare. You're telling me. Because anytime I see a project using solar energy to charge batteries, I know it's not going to work. Really?

Yep. It would make more sense that bikes need way less charge. And wait, you're saying, because look, you know the e-bikes that they have in the city? Yeah. They swap out those batteries every night, basically, to keep them at 34 miles or however far they can go. If they put solar panels along the docks not nearly

enough probably not but something right i mean i i don't know i just this was a moonshot project geotherm selling geothermal energy to consumers that was the only a lot less likely than charging bikes you would think so i'm surprised i'm i applaud you guys yeah for being smarter than me today you remember the prius guessing better with the solar panel on top the what the prius with the solar panels like seven miles a day exactly think about yeah i thought they always said that was it takes care of the like infotainment system and air conditioning controls that's mainly what it does think Think about that, though. The entire surface area of the top of the Prius,

not the entire, but the whole roof, can power that thing in ideal conditions, sitting in the sun on a sunny day, outside for an entire day for five miles. That's more than enough for a bike, though. Yeah, but you know what? But the bike has a much smaller surface area. I was never saying it was on the bikes.

It was for the bike. Oh yeah, I assumed it was like a station that had the... Yeah. Oh, like a carport with like a covered like 100 bikes under it. Have you seen the city bikes in New York City? There's usually like a kiosk. The docks are super long. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you could put like a strip of solar panel on it. I guess considering they are already powered because they light up green or red when you put them in and stuff. If they could figure out how to charge

the battery by just docking it, they would have already done that, but they're probably just afraid of electrocuting people. Safety first. Question number two. By the way, fun fact, everyone is tied up right now. 15. Lost my lead. Since we're all going to get this wrong...

You don't know that. Assuming we do, can we do closest gets the point? It's like the Tamagotchi date. The question is, when was the tamagotchi release go this is according to history of tamagotchi no tamagotchi-official.com history okay david why don't we just add search GPT? Yeah, okay. Extra point if you get the day.

Wait, like day of the week? No. Thursday. We all have a better chance. Flip them and read. I put Thanksgiving 1987. Wrong. I put May 26th, 1995. Wrong.

And I put July 31st, that's today, 1989. Oh, it probably is today. Wait. That, first of all, that's Claire's birthday, like to the day. What? Which is really funny. Sick.

Which also relevant, Harry Potter's birthday is July 31st. Correct. Which also relevant Harry Potter's birthday is July 31st. Correct. Which we were just talking about. That's cool. Damn. I did not know that either. What is the snitches birthday?

Well we're all wrong. So what is the actual date that the Tamagotchi The actual date was November 23rd 1996. Oh wow. Andrew was closest

so Andrew gets the point. I remember it being really popular when I was a kid, so I feel like it had to have come out sometime. I thought it would have gotten more popular in Japan and then taken over for us. Which it did, actually. I also thought it was in the 80s. It would still make sense because I had one

and I was born in 95. I recently, as in in the past month, got my first Tamagotchi why wait i'm just gonna leave it at that nice wait oh yeah next story time do you say clara clara's born 96 989 oh jesus hey hey hey hey what it's fine anyway it's still by the way the tamagotchi is not open it's fine anyway it's still by the way the Tamagotchi is not open

it's still in the plastic it's new new in box are you gonna use it nib is it a kith collab I would like to I would like to pick

a not busy time because you have to like keep it alive and like pay attention to it I would like to pick a not busy time to turn it off I have to know

why you bought you have to tell us I didn't buy it I got it as a gift oh so are you gonna use it you plan on when you were I have to know why you bought you have to tell us. I didn't buy it. I got it as a gift. Oh. So. Are you going to use it?

You plan on seeing how long you can keep it going? I don't know how I don't really know how active I have to be with it. Like how attentive it's been a while.

If you ignore it if it's the original one it dies. If you ignore it for half the day it will die. It has like dysentery. Like six hours

or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Does anyone remember Poop so you have to clean that up? I feel like Neopets was the next step. Does anyone remember that?

And then you'd log on to your Neopet like three months later and it had flies and garbage around it. Quick story about Neopets. Wait, that's just an AI friend. It was an AI. It was way cooler. Yeah, it was cooler. Quick story about Neopets.

At the time, you had to be 13 year older technically but there was a loophole well it wasn't really a loophole it was a legal legal thing where if you could give your child permission to sign up for an account being under 13 and when i was like nine i didn't know you could lie on the internet oh you did crime so no i didn't do crimes this is the thing I printed out a document that I had my parents sign that I mailed to the Neopets headquarters to enable them to let me have an account before 13. Wow.

And it worked. My sweet summer child. I know. I hope that letter is framed somewhere. I'm probably the only child that did not just overtly lie on the internet. Wow, all the characters are exactly the same. There's some new ones.

That is crazy. I'm trying to find like... While they nostalgia over here. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening to this episode of Wayform. It's been a lot of fun. Hopefully by next week, we'll know some more things

about the things we talked about this week. Because you know, a lot of mysteries still out there. Catch you guys in the next one. Peace. Waveform is produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Roven. Come on, man. Waveform is produced by Adam Molina.

You're doing great, sweetie. Waveform is produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Roven. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. And our intro and outro music is created by Vain Still. Bingo! I have 19% battery left. Do you think I'll make it?