Dispatch 028
We're clearly nearing code freeze at many companies as releases are coming fast and furious. Beyond the latest (bigger than usual) update for iOS, and OpenAI's 12 Days of 'Shipmas' (more on both below), Google seemingly just cleared out the pantry of anything and everything AI they've been cooking up for a while. A lot of it isn't even live yet, so I'll take the time to read up on it and report back tomorrow.
I Think...
🏄♂️ iOS 18.2 is Here with New Apple Intelligence Features – The three highlights are Image Playground, Genmoji, and ChatGPT integration. In using the betas for several weeks now (though not on my main iPhone yet), I'd probably put them in the reverse of that order in terms of usefulness. ChatGPT is clearly a great addition to Siri as it gives her far more capabilities when it comes to answering queries. No surprise that OpenAI put a limit on free usage given how often Siri prompts you if you want to send your question to ChatGPT (a prompt that is on by default but you can disable). This is going to have huge upsell potential. Genmoji, as expected, is fun. Will it be the new Blue vs. Green Bubble war in how they're presented on non-iPhone devices? Image Playground is far too restrictive for my tastes and compared to what else is on the market. But we all know why that is, hopefully Apple opens it up more with time. I'm also not that impressed with the outputs, but maybe that's just because I always look bad 😄. Overall, these are nice, fast upgrades for Apple Intelligence, which they need to keep up! [Engadget]
😶🌫️ Google Asks FTC to Kill Microsoft’s Exclusive Cloud Deal with OpenAI – Now this is an interesting maneuver. Forget web browsers, AI and cloud deals are a competitive dynamic that is still being sorted and as such, can still be guided. The question will be if the market can do that itself. Microsoft, of course, will point to all the competition in AI. Google, of course, will have to sort of awkwardly note that OpenAI is dominating the market which is hurting cloud competition. We already know the DoJ doesn't like deals such as the one where Google pays Apple to ensure their search engine is the default on iPhones. This is different, of course, but there are similarities. And actually, it's worse in a way because competition isn't "just a click away"™ – you have to use Microsoft's Cloud if you wish to use OpenAI's technology. As this report mentions, that means that places like Snap, one of Google Cloud's historic strongholds, has to use (and pay) Microsoft because they want to use OpenAI's models. Under the current administration, this seems like it would be a big problem. But under the future one... we'll see (see: below)! This is coming to light because the FTC is investigating Microsoft and it's undoubtedly going to put their OpenAI deal under a lot of scrutiny and pressure given the spotlight on AI at the moment. [Information 🔒]
💸 Trump Picks Andrew Ferguson to Lead Federal Trade Commission – Speaking of the FTC... thus ends the reign of Lina Khan. It seems that she'll stay on until Ferguson is confirmed and then another new Trump appointee, Mark Meador, will fill her seat, creating a Republican majority on the commission. But it's also seemingly not great news for Big Tech, as Ferguson has said that he intends to keep the pressure on the largest companies – especially those with closer ties to social media. But the M&A environment looks set to thaw, which is a good thing and will have major trickle-down effects, especially within tech, given how acquisitive the industry had been before Khan. This might be the end of the "hackquisition". Perhaps Amazon will even be able to buy a robot vacuum company now. But hey, Khan did manage to stop Big Grocery. [NYT]
🚙 Cruise 'Blindsided' by GM – There was a moment in time when it felt like Cruise had all the momentum in the self-driving space. Waymo had been around for a decade but in typical Google fashion, was being a bit timid around a big roll-out. Cruise, by then long-owned by GM, was acting much more like a startup. Unfortunately, slow and most importantly steady did ultimately seem to win the race here. Cruise tried to overcome their safety setback last year, but clearly could not. Still, this feels like a pretty foolish long-term move by GM. They've invested billions and years into a space that everyone from Elon Musk on down thinks is the future of the industry. In 2016, when GM bought Cruise, their market cap was around $40B. Tesla's market cap back then was around $30B. Today, GM's market cap is just over $50B. Tesla's? $1.3T. Yeah, yeah, not exactly fair – certainly in this political environment – but again, Tesla's big bet on the future is the one GM is shutting down. Regardless, what a poor way to handle this situation internally. Back to being a 116 year old company... [TechCrunch]
I Wrote...
Some quick thoughts on Sora and a look back at two years of generative AI...
M.G. Siegler
I Link...
- The WordPress v. WP Engine saga continues, with a court ordering Automattic to restore access to Wordpress.org. [TechCrunch]
- Microsoft's head of AI, Mustafa Suleyman, seems to be rebuilding the AI health initiative he was working on at Google – including pulling team members from DeepMind. [FT 🔒]
- Probably not the best time for Google to lose their top lobbyist – especially considering his deep Republican ties. [Bloomberg 🔒]
- At long last, the Oscars will be streamed (both live and on-demand), but not on Disney+, where Disney slowly seems to be moving everything, but instead on Hulu (alongside being shown on ABC as usual, of course). [Variety]
- I joked above about Big Grocery, but it is sort of wild that just four companies – Walmart, Kroger, Costco, and Albertsons – account for roughly half of all grocery sales in the US. Notably, none of those are Amazon, despite their myriad efforts. Also, even Kroger + Albertsons would equal about 13% of the market, still far behind Walmart at 22%. [NYT]
- Microsoft keeps trying to make consumer Copilot happen by constantly tweaking the way it is presented within Windows – no matter which keyboard shortcut toes they step on in the process. [Verge]
- Everyone knows that with the benefit of hindsight, Tiger Global picked the exact wrong time to aim their cash firehose at startups in 2021. New public data now backs that up with large (paper) losses to date – far worse than their peers included in such data. [TechCrunch]
- Day 4 of 'Shipmas' sees OpenAI giving the 'Canvas' feature to all users. It's becoming fairly interesting as an initial writing tool given you can have ChatGPT right there on the side as your assistant. One thing it doesn't have though: hyperlinks. [VentureBeat]
- It sure sounds like another Beatle has been cast for Sam Mendes' upcoming films about the band. Paul Mescal, fresh off of Gladiator II may indeed be playing Paul McCartney as... Ridley Scott may have let slip. [THR]
- While Moana 2 continued its massive wave with over $50M in its second weekend of release, Interstellar – yes, the (excellent) movie that is 10 years old – beat out a bunch of newer films for sixth place on the list with $4.4M. And while Moana 2 played on 4,200 screens, Christopher Nolan's film was on just 165 IMAX screens. [AP]
- So much for the sale of Infowars to The Onion – for now, at least. A judge decidedly they didn't like the process by which it was sold. [NYT]
- SpaceX officially hit the $350B valuation with a secondary sale. That puts it back above ByteDance as the most valuable startup – a company which may either lose a big chunk of that value, or be forced to recognize it soon. [FT 🔒]
I Quote...
"The loneliness crisis is one of our biggest societal issues — the Surgeon General says it’s more dangerous than smoking cigarettes."
-- Avi Schiffmann, talking to Kylie Robison for a deep dive into Friend, his expensive-domain chatbot + AI wearable startup.
I wrote about the service back in July around their part-interesting part-yikes wearable. Now the service itself is live and still part-interesting and still part-yikes, it seems. Schiffmann doesn't seem to be doing himself any favors in these write-ups. But also doesn't seem to care all that much as he goes head-on into two (highly) controversial worlds: companion chatbots and wearable AI.
His pitch against loneliness is compelling enough, but it seems negated by several other aspects of the service, including the potential for using said companion to hawk products at you so Friend can monetize. It is interesting that they refuse to use the term "AI" on their site and marketing. How very Apple of them. Less Apple? Comparing these bots to Ozempic but for curing "the friendship recession".