Signal: Google Had, Lost, and Found AI 📧
I'm only about an hour into Acquired's 3 hour and 15 minute deep dive into Google's history with AI (here's episode 1), but my god it's full of stars. It's easy to get lost in the day-to-day insanity of AI news, but the history of just how central Google was – from the "Transformers" paper, and actually even before that with SAIL and all the characters that passed through there – is truly remarkable. And it's remarkable both in how they let some of these people and ideas slip through their fingers, but also how they've been able to come roaring back despite – perhaps even because of – doing that.
Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal seemingly talked to everyone for this episode – including, I should note, me.
Take Two...
📹 Sora: Bigger Than Jesus – Always a grain of salt with third-party app numbers, but the comparison here between ChatGPT and Sora is interesting: the two apps saw nearly identical download numbers in their first week of availability (with Sora hitting 1M downloads even faster). There are caveats (ChatGPT was US-only, while Sora includes Canada, but Sora is invite-only, while ChatGPT was open), but it gives you a sense of how big of a hit the app is right now. That doesn't mean it will last as ChatGPT has, of course. but it's still #1 in the App Store right now. Anecdotally, I'm seeing some of my original cohort using it less (or, at least, creating less often), but I'm seeing more people I know start to use it. Phil Schiller is quite active! (And we're probably days away from an influx of actual celebrities – the Mark Cuban memes have started.) The biggest complaint – far bigger than even rate-limiting or generation speed – is just how many creations get flagged for content violations. That's the tricky balance OpenAI needs to navigate here, pronto. I also continue to think that even more people would create if they could easily post to small groups. [TechCrunch]
🎬 CAA Takes a Shot at Sora, Disney Opts Out – Not all good news at Camp Sora though, as Hollywood is starting to coalesce around the notion that the service is an IP problem, potential a "significant risk". This follows the MPA lobbying group issuing their own warning a few days ago and WME telling their clients to opt-out. But the good news there is that none of these groups are (yet) suing, but rather open to talking about it, and/or seeing how it plays out it seems. And per the above, OpenAI is clearly scrambling to lock the app down further with regard to Hollywood IP. I'll note one CAA client: Scarlett Johansson, might we hear her weigh in here? [Reuters]
I Wrote...
Some previous thoughts on Hollywood and AI...
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
Below, members of The Inner Ring will find thoughts on:
• Microsoft Trying Health as a Consumer AI Inroads
• Netflix Takes On the Gaming Consoles
• Jensen Pissed About OpenAI/AMD?
• "AI Is Not Your Friend"
• and more...