Tech News Weekly 338 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

0:00:00 - Mikah Sargent
Coming up on Tech News Weekly. Emily Dreibelbis of PCMag is here and we start out by talking about that ScarJo OpenAI kerfuffle. We talk about what led to Scarlett Johansson complaining about OpenAI's assistant sounding like her, and also the New Washington Post piece that claims that no, OpenAI did not use Scarlett Johansson's voice. It doesn't matter, we get into all of that. Then I talk about the Amazon virtual assistant and how it reportedly is getting an AI overhaul which could come with a monthly subscription. After that, Emily Dreibelbis sticks around so we can talk about how the Biden campaign is on the hunt for someone to post memes and make sure that the campaign is up with the meme culture. Then, finally, an interview with Daniel Rubino of Windows Central, who joins us to talk about Microsoft's new line of Copilot+ PCs All of that coming up on Tech News Weekly. Stay tuned.

0:01:18 - VO
Podcasts you love. From people you trust. This is TWiT.

0:01:17 - Mikah Sargent
This is Tech News Weekly, with Emily Dreibelbis and me, micah Sargent, episode 338, recorded Thursday, may 23rd 2024. Would you pay for a Gen AI Alexa? Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where every week, we talk to and about the people making and breaking that tech news. I am one of your hosts, micah Sargent, and I am joined on this very episode by Emily Dreibelbis. Welcome back to the show Emily.

0:01:47 - Emily Dreibelbis
Thank you very much, happy to be here. We've done a couple of these now. It's been fun.

0:01:51 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, we're settling in. It feels like you know we've got it. We've got it figured out and hopefully all of our listeners out there have it figured out as well. You know what's about to happen. We're about to do some stories of the week.

0:02:07 - Emily Dreibelbis
Emily, tell us about your story of the week. All right, so I wanted to talk about the Scarlett Johansson open AI drama which I have been thoroughly eating up. I don't know if you've seen that.

0:02:16 - Mikah Sargent
Oh yeah, Lots of popcorn for me, for sure.

0:02:19 - Emily Dreibelbis
Lots of popcorn, yeah, so where do you want to begin?

0:02:22 - Mikah Sargent
So let's start, let's have you. For the folks who may not know what's going on, this show ends up being a lot of time because AI is so much in the tech news space a show where a lot of people learn about what's going on in AI. So if you could start by kind of explaining what's happened up to the new Washington Post report we won't mention that yet. I think we will have you explain, we'll play a little clip, we'll chat and then we'll talk about what's happened most recently.

0:02:54 - Emily Dreibelbis
Okay, excellent. So last Monday opening, I had this big event. They hyped it a lot on social media. It was on a Monday, google's big event was on a Tuesday, so a little bit of a dig there, kind of getting ahead at Google and the whole AI race. And so they get on the live stream on Monday and they unveiled this new model, which is a more advanced model for free users and plus users, people who are paying for ChatGPT and the showstopper of the demo you could call it was this thing called voice mode, where OpenAI employees are sitting there and they're talking into the phone like this with chat GPT, and it's like super quick conversation, crazy human-like. It was really impressive and which was cool to see.

And then I don't know the timeline. I actually wrote the dates down. It's a little investigation, but basically Scarlett Johansson comes out later and is like you guys use my voice because Sam Altman is obsessed with the movie Her, where Scarlett Johansson is the computer voice who falls in love with Joaquin Phoenix, which is such a funny plot. That movie came out in 2013. So on the same day as that demo, sam Altman tweets just the word her, so he's making the connection to the movie. He's like tech is so good, now we can have these conversations.

And then she comes out later with a statement like yeah, you ripped off my voice. That sounds exactly like me. And she claims that Sam Altman had contacted her nine months prior and asked her if they could use her voice and she said no. Then they reached out to her again like three or four days before the more recent launch, and she also she hadn't said no, she hadn't responded. But they expressed interest in her twice and clearly Sam Altman has a fascination with this movie, so I think that definitely happened.

But basically she turned them down and then they just went with it anyway and she said all her friends and family think it sounds exactly like her. She was shocked, it was an SNL skit, her husband is on SNL, and so it's just this big moment where everyone's like wow, they ripped off your voice. And so she comes out with a statement about how she was like quote like shocked and angered and in disbelief, and the issue of deep fakes is very serious. And then OpenAI comes out with a statement that's basically the direct opposite and is like we didn't use your voice, it was a different actress and I don't know.

0:05:22 - Mikah Sargent
Kind of like kick rocks, like I don't know, they were just like it was summarized that way. Yeah, yeah.

0:05:29 - Emily Dreibelbis
And I mean they posted a more lengthy, like kick rocks blog post, kind of like this is what happened and why. You know, that's their thing, they like publish these blogs. So yeah, that's the gist and, like I said, I launched an investigation. I wrote on a physical piece of paper.

0:05:46 - Mikah Sargent
There is a real piece for those who are listening and not watching.

There's a real piece of paper with notes on it for this and one of the things, one of the things that stood out about this and then we will play a little clip as well, so that people can kind of make their own judgment that there was I believe it was even in Scarlett Johansson's statement, but somewhere at some point someone said that OpenAI, and more directly Sam Altman, sort of hoped to work with Scarlett Johansson because of the ongoing conversation and controversy surrounding the use of AI in creative fields.

And there's this idea that if movie scripts start being generated in AI and the artwork in movies is generated with AI and the computer graphics are done completely with AI, that it's shoving humans out of the creative process. And so OpenAI thought let's try to bridge the gap, let's make this all feel a lot better because you, Scarlett Johansson, who are a well-known creative, who also happen to be the voice of an AI, if you come in and you be the voice of this, it's a happy, sweet moment where we're all working together and you can show how humans can still be at the forefront of AI products. So for that to take place and for this conversation to even exist at all, after this was supposed to be a bridging the gap moment, kind of adds salt to the wound, fuel to the fire and a number of other metaphors that work in that spot.

0:07:28 - Emily Dreibelbis
Very good point. And so she said they reached out to her nine months ago. So that would be August 2023. I don't remember where the Hollywood strikes about SAG and AI and all that. Was that last August.

0:07:41 - Mikah Sargent
I think so yeah.

0:07:43 - Emily Dreibelbis
Feels like it was around that time, so she declined at that moment. They say they reached out to her in September, but then the beta mode of voice mode. I guess the beta product of this voice product came out in September and now what we just heard last week is a more advanced, fully-fledged product that's going to be launching soon. So that's the timeline. I think we should play the clip and I think people can decide for themselves. Do you think it sounds like Scarlett Johansson or not?

0:08:12 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, so here is a clip that's a little bit of a clip, of a demo that OpenAI put out of GPT-4.0. Hey, how's it going.

0:08:24 - Emily Dreibelbis
Hey there, it's going great. How about you? I see you're rocking an open AI hoodie Nice choice. What's up with that ceiling, though? Are you in a cool industry style office or something?

0:08:35 - Mikah Sargent
Well can you take a guess at what I might be doing based on what I'm showing you here and for folks?

0:08:41 - Emily Dreibelbis
listening is moving around the camera I can see it looks like you're in some kind of recording or production setup with those lights tripods and possibly a mic.

0:08:50 - Daniel Rubino
It seems like you might be gearing up to shoot a video.

0:08:54 - Mikah Sargent
All right, that's, that's plenty. So, yeah, in this video you hear this voice and look. So I think, due to the nature of my job and also some strange fixation I have, I am kind of I've had people tell me this that I'm kind of overly sensitive to voices. In general, I can usually tell when someone has a cold or something's going on where their voice has shifted, even subtly. I pay very close attention to voices for some reason, and I will say that when it is played on its own and I go to my recall of the movie Her and even recent recollections of it it does sound a lot like her. However, we have seen like her and like her. We have seen clips where they do side by side they'll play the one and they'll play the other and I feel like that results in me not feeling it as much that they are the same. I will say this they are similar, and more important than the sound of the voice is the sort of cadence and delivery of the voice. That is where I think that it sounds a lot like it and where there's that conversation of what's going on.

Just as an aside, though, something that's kind of interesting to me is I in all of my different smart assistants I always choose a male-coded voice, and so I actually had never heard this voice other than whenever it has shown up in presentations, because I always go to the kind of pitch shifted lower voices, mostly because I kind of think like I have a bone to pick about choosing women as assistants in the first place, because we did plenty of that in real life and so it's like let me boss a dude around. So I hadn't really heard this voice outside of this in the first place, and so now that this has all come up, I'm like, oh, I'm kind of seeing what folks have been talking about. But yeah, I'm curious because you've heard them side by side and you have been researching this. How are you feeling about it after all of this news has come out, and does it matter necessarily if the voices are exactly the same?

0:11:36 - Emily Dreibelbis
Well, first of all, I'm honored to be talking to a voice connoisseur and also feminist, so this is great. We have the right people in the room. So I think it sounds like a computerized version of her voice, so pretty much it sounds a lot like her, but these are words she's never spoken. It's never meant to be a recording of her. It was meant to be. They take her voice and they can make her kind of talk and say words she's never spoken before and I think it sounds very similar to that. I feel like they intentionally cast an actress they claim they cast an actress, by the way. So they came out with this post that says they searched for 400 people. They picked five and this is one of those five voices. It seems very clearly like they tried to find someone who sounded as close to her as possible, especially because he tweeted her.

0:12:29 - Mikah Sargent
Right, that doesn't help.

0:12:31 - Emily Dreibelbis
No, he made the connection. It's very clear he has a fixation with this movie and I think he kind of needs to like come off it.

That's what the lawyers are telling him. It's like that movie came out a long time ago. No-transcript. This feels bad and I feel like anyone would agree with that. I mean, I've seen my own articles summarized by AI, chatbots and stuff. It's kind of like huh whoa, yeah, that's interesting feeling and so I think it's probably not legal, but I do think it matters. I think it's disrespectful to people, I don't think it feels good and I don't think we should be building tech that doesn't feel good. And it's not necessarily more useful if it sounds like Scarlett Johansson or anyone else that is the big point.

0:13:41 - Mikah Sargent
Right, it doesn't make it more useful just because it sounds like Scarlett Johansson. And on MacBreak Weekly earlier this week, even though the show's ostensibly about Apple, we did start it by talking about this situation and in it we had two people, leo himself and Andy Anotko, who were playing the lawyers on the show, and they looked up a lot of case law and found some precedent where in the past I believe it was Bette Midler was one of the people who was it and Tom Wait. They were asked to do some ads and they said this is and this listen to how I'm about to say this. There was a company that wanted to work with them to voice some ads. So they reached out to them and those two people said no thanks. So they went out and they found people who sounded like them and then they got the ads and they found people who sounded like them and then they got the ads.

And then precedent was the case that because well, let me rewind a little bit when they went to court for it, bette Midler and Tom Waits won because there was a clear and direct comparison between the two and even though it was a different person, if they were trying to sound like those people, then that was an issue. So it doesn't even necessarily need to be, or it doesn't matter necessarily that it's another person, according to how things have been ruled in the past. Now, I think that is interesting and I think that that is one more reason why Sam Altman should not be tweeting her, because I can just see all of this print. It's printed out on a big old piece of poster board and laid down in front of the judge. Post Democracy Dies in Darkness. That says OpenAI didn't copy Scarlett Johansson's voice for ChatGPT records. Show what's going on there. What did Tiku's newest article show and does that impact things for you personally and kind of the story as a whole?

0:16:05 - Emily Dreibelbis
things for you personally and kind of the story as a whole. Yeah, so you found that article, which was a great find, and basically they contacted some unknown agency that claims and showed the paper trail that they definitely didn't copy Scarlett Johansson's voice. Did you think there was anything new in there?

0:16:22 - Mikah Sargent
No, no, that's the thing, right, is that open? Ai itself kind of already came out with this and said look, this is what we did, and so, even though the records show that it wasn't scarlet joe true, yes, it was not scarlet johansson's voice that was literally physically taken and used, that that isn't enough for this. Well, I have something yeah.

0:16:50 - Emily Dreibelbis
So what was new for me and I think is, I hope continues to go in this direction is a spotlight on who the heck this like agency was that basically procured these voices, and why they're not saying the agency's name Because any what is it? Caa, uta, all those big Hollywood talent agencies are always showing up in articles and I'm like I don't care the agency name, but it's always in there. For some reason, now it's not in here. There's no article in Deadline about this and that agency that did this really sophisticated casting process that OpenAI is saying Also fishy, whoever is the voice, that woman why don't they just say who it is? Like we knew who did, yeah, we knew who did like Siri, I think there was a woman, like Apple came out with that. That was a while ago. That woman if I was her, I would totally disclose myself. This is your moment. This is your time to shine. This is where you're going to get fame. Come on out if it's you right.

So I feel like there's some fishiness both in the fact that this is some murky, unnamed talent agency. Why don't they just say who it is? I feel like there's who knows what the heck happened. They could have taken someone else's name and asked the tech, make it sound more like Scarlett Johansson, which is exactly what their technology does, by the way. So that article, though not totally new, it seems like the Washington Post talked to this unnamed agency and now we're spotlighting on that whole thing, and that is also what OpenAI focused on in their KickRox blog post. Post was like we worked with an agency and so it's like okay, so who is it?

0:18:28 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, come on, just put it out there, come on.

0:18:31 - Daniel Rubino
Out with it.

0:18:32 - Mikah Sargent
You know what? The reason why it's not come out yet is because that person's going to end up writing a book that may be generated by AI.

0:18:40 - Emily Dreibelbis
Or it's like some content farm in Moldova that put out a post and was like I don't know, maybe it's not an agency and maybe they. Just because I don't think they. I don't think the process was that sophisticated, because they reached out to her just a couple days before the launch and are like do you still want to do it? Which suggests that they can turn this around in a couple days.

0:19:01 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, that's the thing that really stuck out to me is that that alone is kind of like oh, one last chance to get our ducks in a row, yeah. And then I feel like it was a situation where, you know, again, this is all speculation, but you see, kind of these patterns play out and it feels a little bit prideful at that point, Like well, since it wasn't her voice at that point, Like well, since it wasn't her voice. Who cares?

0:19:30 - Emily Dreibelbis
And we can prove that it's not her voice who cares. Whatever, so more to come, hopefully.

0:19:32 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, more to come, and hopefully more to come kind of from an external factor. We should take a quick break before we come back with my story of the week, surprisingly also about AI, but I do want to take a moment to get creative. This week's episode of Tech News Weekly is brought to you by Wix Studio and, yes, it is time where I get to do literally anything I want with this ad spot. Wix Studio is giving me creative freedom because that is exactly what the Wix Studio platform gives to web designers. So with that in mind, I decided today I'd do a little bit of practice Articulation exercises. For actors like high roller, low roller, lower roller, I need a box of biscuits, a box of mixed biscuits and a biscuit mixer. He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists. He sees the ghosts, the jolly collie swallowed a lollipop, the six sisters, zither ceaseth. Therefore, she suffocath us.

Friday's five fresh fish specials. Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager. Imagining managing an imaginary menagerie oh, I almost messed that one up. Twixt this. And six thick thistle sticks. Of course, the classic red leather, yellow leather and the other classic. She sells seashells by the seashore and the shells she sells are seashells, and our favorite, peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers A peck of pickled peppers, peter Piper picked. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

Now I'm going to take a breath while you think about the full creative freedom that you, too, can get when you build your next project on Wix Studio, the platform for agencies and enterprises, because creative freedom is super cool and sometimes it's a tongue twister. Go to wix.com/studio or click on the link on the show page to find out more. And our thanks to Wix Studio for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly. I'm a high roller, a low roller and an even lower roller All right back from the break, and now it's time to talk about Amazon's plans to reportedly give A-L-E-X-A there are many things we can call it today, Emily Anything but saying that word.

So Amazon's voice assistant, or I have learned to just spell it out quickly, because it will trigger people's devices and they will get upset about it. But this voice assistant is reportedly going to get AI to make it more powerful. But it comes with a little wrinkle in the form of a subscription price. According to CNBC, that is Amazon's plan, and what I find the most annoying about this is that, reportedly, it's not going to be included in my rather expensive Amazon Prime subscription. I will be honest, it's one of my favorite subscriptions that I have. I look at that every year. It's now like $139. And I go, yeah, that's fine. And every year it comes through and I go, no, I'm okay with that. But the idea that I would maybe have to pay more to be able to have an ALEXA who does more than just I don't know what it does, which we'll talk about, is kind of frustrating.

0:23:18 - Emily Dreibelbis
I don't know what it does, which we'll talk about, is kind of frustrating. So, yeah, first and foremost, when I sent you this story, you said that you had actually what the heck I'm not going to pay for that? Or like, what do you mean I have to pay for that? Like, what are we talking about here? So, and I actually we had covered this news at PCMag in January as well so I was like I basically emailed and was like A, is this new? And B, b, what features would it have that would entice subscribers? And so I'll look at his response from Amazon. He said thanks for reaching out. Basically nothing new to comment, but he did point out it's not new.

They included this in the September 2023 blog post and also in the fall, bloomberg ran a peeps on it. And basically more recently, in the annual shareholder letter, which was last month, they said that they are building a quote even more intelligent and capable A-L-E-X-A. I'm getting that the ground rules here. I'll spell it out, and so, basically, they're trying to. They say they're going to make it worthwhile, but they don't know what it is and for some reason, they keep getting press about this. Some reason they keep getting press about this, like since they came back, started in september and I think like little junctures since then. It's like come up and people think it's news and it's not. But really the question is like, where is amazon, where's amazon's voice tech? And we just talk that whole thing about open ai and talk about google ai. They also released a voice demo and it's people just want amazon to be in the mix, I think. So they keep dredging it up.

0:24:46 - Mikah Sargent
So yeah, yeah, I think it's that and it's also just producers out there looking for every bit of AI news, and so it's almost like a cascade effect where somebody came across that blog post finally and was like, oh, we got to write about this. And then three other people saw that and were like, oh, we got to. And then it just kind of spreads out from there. Ultimately it's I think the sort of story here is the fact that Amazon was kind of first to, in my mind, exciting people with voice computing, because you, because we had seen some iterations of voice-first technology, but by the nature of those original Echo Towers that Amazon made, there was no screen and so you couldn't fall back to I'm sorry, I couldn't find that. Here's a link to a website Go, look on your phone. You had to do as much as you possibly could over voice and I think that that hurdle made for a really powerful early voice computer where Google and Apple kind of did have that fallback where they could just go. Here's what I found on the web for you and unfortunately, as Amazon has added new products like the shows, the Echo shows, it's kind of gotten away from that early voice computing ideology where they can now fall back to. Let me just show you this. Let me just show you this, and that has kind of, I think, made it less powerful. But, yes, at the same time, OpenAI coming out with its technology, google really rushing forward with its technology, microsoft, who uses OpenAI in a big way, showing off so much of what it can do, apple being rumored to be working on its own generative AI system and improvements to its voice assistant. Yeah, amazon kind of needs to. It had such an early lead and now it does need to iterate on that.

And I was reading in the CNBC piece that something troublesome is that ALEXA was apparently reportedly a Jeff Bezos kind of passion project, um, kind of passion project and, uh, because of that he put a lot of attention on the team. So the team got a lot of money and it got many people working on it and, as it has kind of ballooned and not brought in a lot of money for the company, now that, um, jassy is in charge, now that Jassy is in charge, it is kind of what's the phrase? Up a creek without a paddle and Amazon assistance to set timers, to tell jokes occasionally, I guess, to do quick calculations, especially in the kitchen how many ounces in a pound? That kind of thing. What Is there anything that Amazon could offer that would be worth it to you specifically, that you would want to pay for it?

0:28:33 - Emily Dreibelbis
I don't know. I don't know if it's the kind of thing where customers don't know what they want and I'm just in that boat. I will say the only thing I use it for and I am thrilled to use it for this reason is when I'm in the kitchen cooking. I just say I use it for and I am thrilled to use it for this reason is when I'm in the kitchen cooking, I just say play music, basically. And my big pet peeve is when it plays Amazon music instead of my Spotify and it makes me want to burn light the thing on fire and I'm like how many times do I have to tell you Just play my stupid Spotify playlist. But that's pretty much where I'm at.

With voice tech, I don't like. Alexa in cars also makes me crazy, like it just doesn't work properly. So, um, I do. I do like though it's kind of like a time capsule a little bit where, like, I bought the device, the device does the thing and I don't have a monthly subscription and I'm like just nostalgic for that world. I feel like everything is a monthly subscription. Now, um, I cover EVs as well. It's like content subscriptions in the car. Now you're going to have a streaming platform in the car you're paying for, you're paying for Netflix at home and you're paying for other things on your phone, and now you're paying for something on your Alexa. It just makes me tired thinking about it. It makes me sound like I have to review my credit card bills like a crazy person and I don't know. So they're coming out, they're saying okay, you have to pay a subscription for this AI thing and you don't know what it is, and it's kind of like hard to get excited about it without further information.

0:29:53 - Mikah Sargent
I'm with you, yeah, without further information, first and foremost, and maybe even with further information why it's funny that you said the thing about Spotify no-transcript to amazon music when you don't want it to, which is frustrating in and of itself. I don't like how, as it stands the I mentioned this to you the device will recommend the weirdest stuff that I should buy, and usually it's stuff that is related to stuff that I already purchased, so I don't need the stuff that it's recommending, and I am a little worried that the generative AI system could be used in such a way that it gets a little more like Instagram, in that it will recommend things that I actually do want and I'll end up spending more money than I intend to. But as far as it goes, I think that I've just been hurt too many times by being disappointed by the way that these assistants have worked up to this point that I don't really know if my behavior is going to change all that much. That I will trust that, because I have multiple Amazon Echo devices of different types, right, and there are only. I maybe have like five or six. I only have two at this point plugged in. The rest are in a drawer and the two that I have plugged in are literally just there so that I can see the time, and that is because I want to have a clock in the rooms that they are in.

The only other thing that I maybe use it for is occasionally it will suggest the joke of the day, and I do have a fun time trying to guess what I think the answer is going to be to the joke. Like the other day it said what does Han Solo call his twin? And I was like definitely Han Duo. That's got to be what it is. Han duo, like that's gotta be what it is. I should report that I didn't actually ask it because, again, I don't like talking to it. So I've just decided that's the punchline for the joke. But yeah, outside of that, I just I don't. I do pay for open AIs, chat, gpt and use that regularly, but I'm not talking to that either. I type to it. I don't like talking to things that aren't real. Into that either. I type to it.

0:32:45 - Emily Dreibelbis
I don't like talking to things that aren't real.

I think, even if they sound like Scarlett Johansson, I agree, and we love Scar Jo who doesn't? But I think even I'm in the same boat. So, even with that big OpenAI demo last week and they had this, it was an incredible demo they walked around, they showed it homework and asked it what could I do to solve this problem, and it nudged them along without giving the answer and it was just so conversational and it was nice. And then the Google one. They walked around the office and they showed it a lamp and were like where is this from? Or they walked around and they were like, oh, google, where are my glasses? I forgot them. They're like oh, we saw them last on your desk.

And the person went back and looked at the desk and it was very impressive. But I fully intend to use my own brain and eyes for those functions. I don't know, it gets impressive, but I definitely am just going to try to remember where my glasses are and where I bought the lamp. I don't know it's cool, but can it get from the cool bucket to the useful bucket?

is what all of these companies are trying to do and no one has been successful. I would say.

0:33:45 - Mikah Sargent
I agree, I don't think they've gotten there yet. I'm not ready to outsource my glasses, no, just yet. Who knows? See, and that's the thing is that so, outside of the accessibility and inclusion aspects of these, where there are a number of reasons where that technology could be helpful, and so I do want to acknowledge that, as you know, a possibility, if someone has low or no vision, to have something that could help them, I see that, for those of us without those concerns, these companies always try to say that what it's doing is freeing us up to do the things we want to do and, you know, be the creatives we want to be. But I don't know, I feel like it's going to leave me just kind of bored out of my mind, not knowing what to do, because everything is being kind of taken care of for me. So, yeah, I'm trying to avoid it. Yeah.

0:34:47 - Emily Dreibelbis
It's also a little unrealistic. It's unrealistic Like tech is just one input to our lives. Like I find my little things I do on Alexa you have your little things. I have my little things I do on chat, gpt, and then I have a bunch of other things I do, and so I don't expect that any of this tech would fully replace my day-to-day functions, at least from what I'm seeing.

0:35:05 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, all righty, let's take another quick break and surprise, Emily is joining us still for our little conversation after our next sponsor, that is, Lookout, who are bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly Today. Every company is a data company and that means every company is at risk. There are cyber threats, there are breaches, there are leaks. These are the new norm, and cyber criminals grow more sophisticated by the minute. At a time when boundaries no longer exist, what it means for your data to be secure has fundamentally changed. What it means for your data to be secure has fundamentally changed. Enter Lookout. From the first phishing text to the final data grab, Lookout stops modern breaches as swiftly as they unfold, whether on a device in the cloud, across networks or even working remotely at the local coffee shop. Lookout gives you clear visibility into all your data, at rest and in motion. You'll monitor, assess and protect without sacrificing productivity for security. With a single, unified cloud platform, lookout simplifies and strengthens reimagining security for the world that will be today. Visit lookout.com today to learn how to safeguard data, secure hybrid work and reduce IT complexity. That's lookout.com. Thank you, Lookout, for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly and, of course, for keeping a lookout.

All right, we are back from the break and that means it's time for our next story of the week. This one actually comes from another co-host of the show, Amanda Silberling, who's always on the lookout for these great social stories Turns out. According to TechCrunch's own Amanda Silberling, the Biden campaign is currently looking to hire someone who will focus on memes, or, as Amanda puts it, a seasoned meme lord. So there's a job listing for President Joe Biden's re-election campaign, and the job is for someone called Partner Manager, Content and Meme Pages who will quote, initiate and manage day-to-day operations in engaging the internet's Top Content and Meme Pages, and the job pays up to $85,000. So I thought it'd be a good time to talk about, first and foremost, kind of meme culture, social media, the fact that every single entity online kind of needs to have some level of social cultural awareness, and currently our technical director is applying for the seasoned meme lord role.

For those of you who are listening and not watching, uh, that information is now being typed into the form, but, um, I find this interesting because, well, a, okay, there's, there's a lot here.

Emily, the, the. The fact is our presidents, um, seem to be kind of getting older and older, and part of that has to do with the fact our presidents and presidential hopefuls getting older and older, and that seems to do in part with the fact that our understanding of and ability to impact health and longevity has changed over time and so people are living longer and are able to continue living, and that does play a role. But when you are an older individual and you kind of have solidified who you are as a person, it can be a little difficult to, as they say, reach the youths, difficult to, as they say, reach the youths, and so you do need people who understand how to do that and can attempt to do it without entering into the cringe or can attempt to do it while leaning into the cringe. There's so many little bits and pieces to this and I'm just curious kind of your general thoughts on a meme lord role for a presidential campaign.

0:39:27 - Emily Dreibelbis
Yeah, I guess memes make the world go round the message, but I actually think this is one that isn't as much about his age. Just because I think this is something companies do, they always hire young social media managers. I mean, I couldn't make memes for Gen Z. I don't know what the heck they think is funny, right, that's true.

Sometimes I think we talk too much about the age and it distracts from other topics. This is like my personal pet peeve, but it is true that it's like how do they connect with the youth? It's hilarious that they decided that memes are the way to do it, and it's also scary that memes can influence elections. Yeah, that's the big thing right.

They're not nuanced, they're jokey, they're coding crazy messages. It can be wildly inappropriate. I think there's a lot of problems with memes, but I guess the administration has just decided we got to do memes, hire the meme guy, the meme woman, I don't know. So that's where we're at, is where social media is really really changing people's perceptions, and it's just if anyone disagrees with that.

0:40:43 - Mikah Sargent
I would be interested to hear their argument. Yeah, no, I feel that and I know that this is from the perspective of someone who's worked in journalism for quite a while now sort of early on looked to TWiTter as my kind of main source of making sure that I was keeping up with things. And TWiTter has changed so much over time and is now at a place where, due to the changes that have taken place and everything that's been involved, more so than I've ever felt, I've ever felt social media is just scattered, and I don't know if the same thing applies to Gen Z. From my own understanding and again, this is, for me, just not being a part of it. So, not being sure, it does seem like TikTok is one of the main places that they go, and so perhaps theirs doesn't feel as scattered as mine does, because when I saw this, I'm thinking like where are they going to be posting these memes?

0:41:54 - Emily Dreibelbis
It's a good point, because TikTok is not very meanie.

0:42:00 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, Are they going to be doing videos there? There's a lot that I'm kind of curious about and I feel, for any social media manager in general, given the fact that it is a job that requires some sort of like I don't even know multiple brains or something how can you be aware of all of the places that you need to be, understand the nuance of all of these places? Because when I think about you know if I, because there are a few places that I post X, formerly known as TWiTter, rarely Threads, which is a meta product, what's the one? Mastodon, and all of them have their own unique set of rules that are unspoken rules and there are cultural differences, and having to know all of that stuff and making sure that you're not putting your foot in it and all of those places, is kind of scary, particularly, as you said, when it comes to that potentially influencing a campaign. That's just wild.

0:43:04 - Emily Dreibelbis
It is wild.

I think also, when you think about any government entity creating content to change perceptions, it starts to feel weird, like are they only going to post those from government accounts or are they going to create like fake accounts and post memes and try to subtly influence the culture with the memes? And I know that's something that you know. I think both presidential candidates probably do. It's also something that you know, like Russia does to influence us. They create accounts, they post memes, they post fake pictures. You know they sent people to Trump rallies with in Hillary Clinton costumes, like masks, with with jail costumes. They took pictures of those Russian people in those costumes who were not identifiable and they just put them up on the internet to try to influence our elections. And so it's like all this internet content is very dicey and it's really hard. I mean I don't think I don't know what these memes are going to be. They're probably going to be very cringy, so maybe we shouldn't worry about them. Government creating social media content and that's how we make our decisions is kind of sad.

0:44:15 - Mikah Sargent
I agree I originally had planned for us to talk a little bit about how maybe meme lords are lucky because generative AI still seems to not quite understand the nuance of meme jokes. Those systems take it very literally, but I'm just going to leave that as a thought experiment for our listeners out there as we are running out of time. Emily, I want to thank you so much for being here today, for sticking around for an extra story. Of course, folks can check out some of your work over on PCMag, but if they want to follow you on whatever social media platforms you're on or wherever else, what's the best way to keep up to date with what you're doing?

0:45:01 - Emily Dreibelbis
So on TWiTter or X, and also Tik TOK, my handle is electric underscore humans. I write a lot about EVs, um, so you can find me there. My email is online If you have any comments about any of my work or just want to get in touch. So yeah, that's how you can find me. Thank you for having me.

0:45:18 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely. Thank you so much for being here and good luck with everything, and we will see you again next month.

0:45:25 - Emily Dreibelbis
Perfect, I'll be there.

0:45:26 - Mikah Sargent
All right, bye-bye, all righty folks, we will have an interview in just a moment, but I do want to take a quick second to tell you all, actually to invite you to join Club TWiT at twit.tv/clubtwit. When you join the club for $7 a month, you're going to get some pretty cool things. First and foremost, all of our shows ad free. It's just the content. You'll also gain access to the TWiT Plus bonus feed that has extra content you won't find anywhere else behind the scenes before the show, after the show, special club to events get published there, and by joining that, you kind of get this huge catalog of stuff that you wouldn't otherwise have. On top of that, you'll gain access to the members only discord server a fun place to go to chat with your fellow club to members and also those of us here at twit, and access to the video versions of our Club TWiT shows, including iOS Today, hands on Mac, hands on Windows and a few other programs. All of that available for just $7 a month. And you can't forget that warm, fuzzy feeling you get knowing that you're helping us continue to do the things we're doing here on the network. twit.tv/clubtwit. Can't wait to see you in the club.

All right, we are back from the break and, can you believe it, we're going to continue with an AI conversation. This time it's all about an exclusive secret event that was not live streamed to the world, but luckily we've got somebody who knows what's going on. It's Daniel Rubino from Windows Central who is here with us. Welcome back to the show, Daniel. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you join us. So Microsoft held an event where they introduced kind of a new I would say. Well, it's not a new concept, but a new category for the company. It's my understanding these are called Copilot+ PCs. Can you start by kind of giving us an understanding of what a Copilot+ PC is, and then we can talk about some of the hardware that was announced at the event and afterward.

0:47:34 - Daniel Rubino
Sure thing. So you know at first, these are basically in a broader category of AI PCs, a term introduced last year and applies to things like Intel Meteor Lake computers, the ones that are on shelves now. Basically, you go buy a new Dell XPS 13 or 14, that is an AI PC. The reason is they have an NPU built onto the processor. So what is a Copilot+ PC and how does it differ? Well, think of these as the second generation of AI PCs. The reason is is to be a Copilot+ PC. You need to have not only an NPU, you need one that could do at least 40 trillion operations per second, or 40 tops, all right. So the new Qualcomm processors, the Snapdragon X1s, actually hit 45 tops. So why is Intel or AMD not included in that? Their current processors, though they have an NPU, are much weaker around between 10 and 15 tops. Oh wow, all right. So they can do stuff like blur the background, gaze correction, what it's called minor things like that, but they fail compared to what Qualcomm's chip can do. So is Intel and AMD out of this picture? No, intel right now is already gearing up to launch Lunar Lake, so we just got these new chips that are on shelves right now. Meteor Lake, lunar Lake is coming later this fall actually fall going into the holiday season You'll be able to buy some new laptops with it. It's a completely new architecture, again on a different node. It's supposed to be very efficient. But their big thing is they too will have an NPU capable of 45 tops and even higher, because they can combine their CPU, gpu and NPU to hit over 100 tops.

So the question is why do you need the processing power in the NPU to do this? It has to do with localized AI processing. So we know of large language models that live on the web. So when you go to chat GPT, you type in your question or you ask an image generator, make me this. It goes to the internet, goes, uploads, waits in a queue, goes to some massive server, a bunch of GPUs processes your request, sends it back down.

All right, that's nice, but it can take a while, it can be slow, there could be queues, it uses a ton of energy. When you have a localized NPU, at least 40 tops, you can start to do that type of AI on the device while achieving human-like answers for your chat GTP, basically, or image generation. You can generate an image on one of these laptops within seconds after the prompt, and it's going to be a big, big change for that. You combine that with the fact that Windows 11 operating system now has AI woven throughout it, including new features like recall or the new co-creator feature that's coming to paint, and it's going to allow you to do many more functions that have never been possible on a personalized, your own personal computer, which is really impressive, and I can go into more detail about what those things are.

0:50:43 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah. So one thing that kind of stood out to me about this you're talking about you know the 40 tops, right and that and I think even Microsoft said something along the lines of being the most powerful devices that they're shipping or most wanted to do something like edit video or edit photos or play games, and I wanted to do it on a laptop. I'd have to get a huge, hulking device that had a bunch of fans on it. Does the stuff that the NPU is providing, which I know is, you know, focused on being this AI thing? Can that apply to what I'm doing otherwise? Like? Is this a future where we're seeing thinner laptops that I could sit down and play Baldur's Gate on eventually?

0:51:46 - Daniel Rubino
Yeah, so it's a great question. So AI technically can live on different things or be processed differently. You could just brute force and use a CPU. You could also use a GPU, which is what NVIDIA does, and, to be fair, nvidia's GPUs with Tensor Cores are built to run AI and they're extremely powerful. The problem is, yeah, you need a thicker, heavier, more expensive gaming laptop to do that. Those still have a place here. Those still are going to be your top end devices for gaming. The GPU that's available with the new Snapdragon X processors. They're also very good. They're technically as powerful, if not more powerful, than an Xbox Series S. So not the X, but the S. They're very powerful, but they do need to leverage natively compiled ARM apps to really kind of take advantage of that. Luckily, they announced DaVinci resolve. Uh is going to be arm powered, which means, yeah, you can do full-on video editing with this mpu, with this gpu, on one of these laptops, as if it were a 15-inch workstation with a powerful gpu. Um, when you come to you know, for image generation, it's like one of the cool features they announced.

I think this is genius. It's and, uh, it has to do with Microsoft. I believe it's Microsoft Paint, but it's called Creator. It might be even a separate app. I'm terrible at drawing, but I have ideas.

I think a lot of people are probably, in this case, like man. I wish I could make this image. You can go in with your pen or even your mouse, start drawing an image of like whatever you want Put a sun in there, maybe a teddy bear, and you want some grass and then you can move this slider about how much you want the AI to take over. The AI will then take what you have drawn and recreate it using the same generative engines we see right now online for generating images and make that a photorealistic type image. So it's like asking a real artist. You know it's like hey, I'm looking for a turtle playing baseball, it's sunny out and it's raining, right, it's like I could sketch that. But then a real artist will be like okay, I'll, let me do that, and it's going to do that kind of based on what you're doing, and I think that's absolutely remarkable. That's just one thing.

The other one is a little controversial is recall. Although this is funny, it shouldn't be controversial. There is an app already on Max that does this. It's a third party one, but what it's doing is it's snapshotting your screen every couple seconds. It then indexes them and uses AI to scan it. This is all done locally on your device. It never leaves. It goes to Microsoft. They're also completely encrypted and only accessible via your account, that you logged in using your face or a password.

And then what it means is if I saw, if I was like damn on the internet this morning, I remember I saw something. It was some kind of red car and say you weren't looking up red cars, you just saw it like in the background or something like that. You can just type in red card, just they would go and find it for you, because this what you're talking about. So it's literally a way to go back and find things even though you didn't see it, write it, seek it out, and you can do that for all types of work you're doing. Of course, you can disable this. You can have control over it. It's off by default, I believe, during your setup of a Windows.

0:54:55 - Mikah Sargent
Now let's talk about the hardware that actually was announced, this first line of Copilot Plus PCs. Did this mean kind of a refresh of the Surface lineup?

0:55:29 - Daniel Rubino
Yeah, so this is the first time. Usually, we get one, maybe two ARM laptops a year. I've counted just below 20 that were announced or will be announced in the coming weeks, and they're all from the major manufacturers. Yeah, microsoft has a Surface Pro 11. They call it Surface Pro 11th edition or Surface Laptop 7th edition or Surface Laptop 7. These are, at least internally, completely redesigned around these new ARM Snapdragon X CPUs. They're built from the ground up to leverage that. They have better screens now, including options for OLED, slightly bigger batteries. They bring haptic touchpads.

Surface Pro has a really cool keyboard. It's an optional keyboard. The old one still works, but you can buy this new one which has Bluetooth built into it, has its own battery in it and you can pull it away from the device and it'll still work. It also kind of rolls around, so it creates an angle on the keyboard when you're typing. Plus, it now keeps the pen always exposed instead of being hidden when it's mounted. These look like to be incredible devices, especially when you combine that the fact that the performance of these, especially the Surface Pro, should rival that of the MacBook Air, with the M3 processor, sorry, and the battery life is supposed to be 20% higher than M3. Now we need to test all that. I don't think companies here are lying or going to be off by a lot right. The bottom line is these are going to be well within the ballpark of an M3 CPU, which is amazing for a first-gen CPU, especially for us, since we've only had Intel and AMD available, which these are going to crush that in terms of battery life and performance.

0:57:18 - Mikah Sargent
And when are these going to actually be available for people to start purchasing?

0:57:24 - Daniel Rubino
Yeah, so you can actually go to most of these websites Acer, asus, lenovo, hp I would go to you go to Best Buy or Microsoftcom as well to buy them. If you go to Best Buy or Samsung, I can tell you that Best Buy is running a deal where you can pre-order them now and you can get a free 50 inch TV, which is kind of insane to me, and if you order a Samsung device, you'll get a free Samsung 4K TV at 50 inches, which is pretty wild, so you can pre-order them now.

They actually hit store shelves, though, on June 18th, and so they all should be available around that date.

0:58:02 - Mikah Sargent
Nice. Now, when it comes to Copilot Plus PCs, something that really kind of surprised me in general and I found very impressive was how quickly Microsoft not only kind of what is it you shoot, something about shooting moving to where the puck is heading right, you get there before the puck gets there. And I really feel like from the time that generative AI took off in the last couple of years to now having these Copilot plus PCs where software and hardware have all come together, that is magnificent to me, the scale and the movement that Microsoft has done. I was just kind of wondering your thoughts on that as a whole. Do you find that impressive that Microsoft has been able to pull this off? And it's like surprise. Not only did we rebrand, we've got this thing called Copilot and it's across all these different things and who even knows about Cortana anymore? But now we've got hardware that goes along with it. It's kind of cool.

0:59:04 - Daniel Rubino
Yeah, no, I agree 100%. I wrote an article talking about how this is and I still stand by this. This is the biggest change in the Windows PC industry in the last 30 years. I think the only thing that matches this was the advent of the internet and PCs being connected to it via Windows 95, which was a driver of adoption of the internet in the home. It was because Windows 95 was the first online operating system. It is remarkable how quickly they pivoted, and you're right. So there is in this article I wrote.

There is, you know, these are two things coming together. One you have Qualcomm's new processor, which the only reason they were able to do that was because they bought a company called Nuvia, which is made up of ex-Apple in 2019. We're going to build server chips and then Qualcomm bought them for $1.4 billion and then, within the last couple of years, came out with this new processor. That new processor also happens to be fast enough to do this AI stuff, which only came out about in the last two years. And so you're right.

The companies. So you have Microsoft that pivoted to release Copilot. They pivoted to update further, optimize Windows 11 for ARM as well as AI. You have all the OEMs on board making new PCs that are built around AI. And then you have Qualcomm's new processor, which is a game changer. Right, this is going to finally give at least parity to where Apple is with its MacBook Lite, give at least parity to where Apple is with its MacBook Lite. You put that all together and I don't think people quite appreciate the power of AI and NPUs. I'm telling you, when you start seeing these apps coming out and these abilities, you're going to be like, oh I kind of get why this is a big deal. I can tell you, business and enterprise definitely sees the value here with these devices, absolutely.

1:00:54 - Mikah Sargent
Daniel Rubino, I want to thank you. I know it's been an incredibly busy week with Build underway, and so to take the time to join us here to talk about the Copilot Plus PCs, I'm grateful. Of course, folks can head over to Windows Central and keep up with what you're doing. How about those social media? Where can folks you're doing? How about those social media?

1:01:16 - Daniel Rubino
Where can folks stay following with what you've got? Sure, I'm on TWiTter, or X as the kids call it. Daniel underscore, rubino, r-u-b-i-n-o. I'm also on threads at the same address and we sometimes I regularly do a podcast. We will be doing one tomorrow covering all this as well, so you can listen to myself and Zach Bowden talk about all the announcements and even more detail there. So there you go, beautiful, thank you, so you can listen to myself and Zach Bowden talk about all the announcements and even more detail there.

1:01:36 - Mikah Sargent
So beautiful, thank you, thank you. Thank you, we appreciate it. Thank you, all righty folks. That brings us to the end of this episode of Tech News Weekly. The show publishes every Thursday at TWiTter TV slash TNW. That's where you go to subscribe to the show in audio and video formats.

I mentioned Club TWiT during the show, so I'll just do a brief little plug here. twit.tv/clubtwit $7 a month and you get a lot of great stuff. I would love it if you joined the club. Would love to see you in the Discord. If you'd like to follow me online, I'm at Micah Sargent on many a social media network where you can head to chihuahua.coffee. That's C-H-I-H-U-A-H-U-A.coffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. Please check out Hands on Mac, which we'll publish later today, as well as iOS Today, which we'll publish later today, and on Sundays you can watch Ask the Tech Guys, the show I co-host with Leo Laporte, where we take your questions live on air and do our best to answer them. Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you again next week for another episode of Tech News Weekly. Bye-bye.