Sora 2 & AI’s Slop Era, Death Of The Creator Economy?, Apple’s SmartGlasses Roadmap

0:00The gates of content hell are open as OpenAI's Sora 2 debuts with ultra realistic AI slop. And Apple has elevated its smart glasses plan, and they could be coming soon. That's coming up on a Big Technology Podcast Friday edition with TechCrunch senior AI reporter Max Zeff right after this. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday edition, where we break down the news with our traditional cool-headed and nuanced approach. Today, we have TechCrunch senior AI reporter Max Zeff joining us to talk about everything AI slop. There's so much slop, but maybe it turns into something. We'll talk about how it might challenge the creator economy.

0:41We'll also talk about Apple's smart glasses and the fact that it's speeding it up in the roadmap and plenty more. Max, great to see you. Welcome to the show. Great to be here. Long time listener. Definitely. Well, we are we always talk about your stories on the show. Here is a hint for listeners and viewers. When you hear me cite a TechCrunch story, it's almost always Max's. And Max, we're going to get into yours because you have some new reporting on the state of OpenAI after this Sora 2 launch and how some of the employees there are trying to figure out what it means for the company. But let's start off talking about Sora 2.

1:20For those who don't know, Sora 2 is OpenAI's new video generator, which they've now included in an app called Sora, which is basically meant to rival TikTok and YouTube. This is from the Wall Street Journal. OpenAI is squaring up to TikTok, Google's YouTube and meta platforms with a new social media apps for its AI video generator that allows users to create high definition video clips with audio from text prompts. Users can upload short clips of themselves and insert them into Sora generated worlds describing the idea, style and scene they want to see. They can also connect with other users watching and commenting on their content.

2:02Max, just first question for you. We're now a couple days into this Sora madness. It's the number one app on the App Store. How big do you expect this to get? Yeah, I mean, I could see this taking off quite significantly. I think in the last year, we've really seen AI-generated images and videos really take over regular social feeds. And I think the idea here from OpenAI is let's capture some of that growth on one of our own platforms. and while it sounds terrible and you know at first it kind of makes you cringe at the idea of a completely ai-generated feed it's been surprisingly compelling i think to a lot of people as as you can see by the growth on the app store and just my own personal experience you go on there and it's like this is terrible and i it's like you can't take your eyes away it's like watching a car crash on the side of the road yeah i think it's worth pausing just to talk about how realistic these videos are.

3:02I watched one of Sam Altman on the release day, running around opening headquarters with a bullhorn telling them to get to the live stream. In the first few seconds, this was like one of my first Sora 2 videos that I had seen. I was just like, that's real. And I was like, wait a second, that's not real. And then I really got mad at myself this week because a friend of mine posted a video of Jake Paul coming to their book signing. And, you know, my friend signing a book and handing it to a very happy Jake Paul. And these videos are so good that your brain doesn't process the fact that they're AI slop at first.

3:40And I was like, you know, when you see this stuff, you go through these machinations in your mind of like, how did that happen? And I didn't know that he had a book. And then I was like, oh my God, that's Sora. Like, is crazy. Yeah, there was a really interesting take from a former OpenAI employee, Miles Brundage, who kind of came out and said that, you know, we're getting into this era of AI-generated video feeds. And it's worth noting that not all AI slop is created equal, which I thought was a surprisingly thoughtful take about something that seems at its face really kind of scary. But I think he's right.

4:20I mean, I think as we saw with Meta's Vibes app last week, that's Meta's TikTok competitor that's full of AI-generated videos. And that product doesn't let you make videos of yourself or your friends. And I think the reaction was people were like, well, what is this? What do I do with this? Whereas with OpenAI's product, it's immediately become really compelling because people can see themselves in it. They can see other people they know. And that seems to be a really key detail here that is a big differentiator. You get the sense that two things happen. First of all, Meta thought that Meta must have gotten word that OpenAI was going to release this and then rushed out Vibes.

5:05And I think the other broader picture is people started to question why Mark Zuckerberg was sinking so many billions of dollars into AI research and recently going on this hiring spree of AI researchers. I think it's worth noting that a lot of the researchers that he poached were working on multimedia formats, audio, video, images. And you see, I think this week is the first time it's really come into focus that this could actually challenge the standard human created content feeds. and that's why it's like a nine alarm fire inside Meta HQ right now. Yeah, I mean, I think that this is the change that people have been talking about for a long time.

5:50I think it was hard to see for a while why a company like OpenAI was threatening to Meta. And I think this week you see why. I mean, I think that this is very clear evidence that there is something here. I don't think that, you know, this product is necessarily the final version of it. I'm not sure if it has going to have a great impact on society at its, you know, at the net. But I do think that this is compelling. And a lot of people spent a lot more time on the Sora app in the last week than they did on Threads or Blue Sky. And there's something to be said for that alone. We had a celebration for five years of Big Technology podcast this week in collaboration with Human Ventures.

6:33They hosted here in New York and we gathered a bunch of people around. and we were talking about this and what the future is going to look like. And Ron John Roy, who's usually here on Fridays, told the story that he tells on the show so often about how his Facebook feed had become just a feed of AI slop and people commenting on it. And I think there had been some questions about why Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook were allowing the feed to fill with like shrimp Jesus. And again, this week is like bringing it into focus that it is something that is going to be, maybe already is, very engaging content format.

7:13And if you are the engagement app, which is, or the engagement company, which Meta is, you can't really let another company run away with it. And maybe they already are seeing OpenAI run away with it. Yeah, I do have real concerns about what the impact is on people who use social media and society for something like this. I think that there's a sense to me of, you know, these apps really at the core are supposed to be about connecting you to other people. And I think we've seen all the ways in the last two decades of how that's not really the case and how they really are optimized to keep you on the platform.

7:54I think there's a big question for OpenAI here of what they really choose to optimize for in this experience. I think we've seen some good players emerge in the social media space like a blue sky that doesn't seem to be focused on getting people to, you know, just spend as much time as possible on the platform all the time. That said, I think it limits their growth. And I think OpenAI is a very ambitious company. I think there's a real chance here that, you know, they are pushed by some of the incentives that social media companies have been pushed by for, you know, the last 20 years. But it is different.

8:32And I think it's worth taking this moment to just pause and talk a little bit about the underlying technology and how impressive it is. And why, to me at least, this is not just OpenAI creating a frivolous, vapid social media app, but how this might be the next point along the line of research that needs to get done to improve this technology. So there's been so much talk about AI's need to understand the world. And people have talked about world models, the understanding of physics, understanding of what happens beyond the LLM. And there was an interesting point here that a user on Twitter or X made that sort of puts opening eyes lofty ambitions into contrast with what it shipped.

9:21Sam Altman two weeks ago, we need$7 trillion and 10 gigawatts to cure cancer. Sam Altman today, we are launching AI slot videos marketed as personalized ads. Sam Altman chimed in. He said, I get the vibe here, but we do mostly need the capital to build AI that can do science. And for sure, we are focused on AGI and with almost half, sorry, with almost all of our research effort. It's also nice to show people cool new tech products along the way, make them smile and hopefully make some money given all the compute that we need. When we launched ChatGPT, there was a lot of who needs this and where is AGI.

9:59Reality is nuanced when it comes to optimal trajectories for a company. Just this line about the launch of ChatGPT, who needs this and where is AGI. I just think it's important. I mean, this is sort of the key part of Sam's statement. And I'm not here to be like Baghdad Bob for Sam. but I will say that when you get this stuff starting to understand physics, you're just a step closer to, I think, the end goals. And ChatCPT, of course, seemed like a little toy at first, but obviously has emerged into something more. And I get the criticism, but I tend to side with Sam on this one. What do you think, Max?

10:41Yeah, I think it's a tough call. I think I agree with Sam in some ways that he's right that ChatGPT, it wasn't really understood at first how this really was going to be a vehicle for a lot of people to use AI and a lot of people to actually get the benefits of AI. And I think we've completely seen that play out in the last few years. I think it's a little less clear to me how Sora gives people the benefits of AI world models in the same way. I totally agree that the underlying technology is really impressive. I mean, when the first Sora came out, I think last year, it blew people away just with how realistic the videos were, with how accurate it could get certain details.

11:25And this one is objectively better. And I think it's impossible to argue that there hasn't been a great leap in performance of the AI video models in the last year or two. but ChatGPT at its core is about helping people. I do actually take OpenAI at its face when it says that it optimizes ChatGPT to be helpful and not to just keep users in these engagement loops. I do think that I go to ChatGPT all the time to get an answer. I get it and then I get off the app. I think with Sora, it does feel to me like it is, I mean, he said it pretty plainly. It's It's about entertaining people. It's about, you know, it's supposed to be fun.

12:09And I think that these are very different products. And while I agree that there's something to be said for OpenAI's ability to make products, to fund, you know, its AGI efforts, I think that it's worth noting that he's venturing into a very different space than he's been in before. Okay. Let me talk a little bit about what grounded my comments, and then we're going to actually talk a little bit about your reporting that has OpenAI employees basically expressing similar concerns. To me, the thing that I've heard from AI researchers is you really want AI to be able to predict what's going to happen in the world, because when it can predict, then it can plan.

12:50And predicting and planning are core parts of intelligence. Now, the thing about text is it's somewhat easier to predict the next word than it is to, let's say, and this is a Jan LeCun example, hold up a pen and drop it and predict where it's going to go because there's seemingly infinite possibilities. So when this technology gets better at understanding what a person walking on a sidewalk does, then that's a step forward in its ability to predict and then plan. And so the underlying, maybe not the social app, but the underlying advances that they're working on here, to me, seem like an important step forward.

13:30But I could be getting over my skis here. So what's your thought on that, Max? I think you're right. I mean, I agree that world models are an important next step for AI. There was just a viral podcast where a famous AI researcher, Richard Sutton, went on the Dwarkesh Patel podcast. And there was this really fascinating argument about how LLMs today, they don't have a model about the world. I mean, they can predict the next word, but they can't, you know, predict the state of the world. And, you know, they can't predict, they can't update their mental model about the world based on interacting with it.

14:09And I thought it was a fascinating conversation. I would encourage people to check it out. But it was really, I think, you know, this is something that Jan LeCun has been, like you mentioned, talking about for a long time, which is that, you know, world models are really a key to kind of a greater intelligence and greater ability to predict the world. So I do think that it's important for OpenAI and these AI labs to advance the world models. But yeah, I think the application is really the key part here. Okay. um so briefly so your your perspective is the advances in video that we're seeing might advance world models or does advance this concept of a world model but just the feed is is where you start to feel a little queasy yes a hundred percent i think it is like you know you can take a good technology and use it for the wrong thing i think is my feeling And I just wonder if this is that.

15:10Okay. Yeah, and you had some reporting that shows that even people within OpenAI are concerned there. And I think this is a great place to focus and stop for a moment. Here's your story. Several current and former OpenAI researchers are speaking out over the company's first foray into social media. AI-based feeds are scary, said OpenAI pre-training researcher John Holloman in a post on X. We're going to do our best to make sure AI helps and does not hurt humanity. I mean, where have we heard that before? You had actually multiple current OpenAI employees being like, I don't know about this. That doesn't happen too often in a major launch.

15:49So talk about the significance of that. Yeah, I think the level of kind of concern expressed by a lot of OpenAI researchers at the launch of this product felt very unique to me. in a way that you don't usually see. Usually when an AI company launches a product, everyone is very gung-ho about it. Everyone is really excited. And I think this time just felt a little different. I think a lot of researchers at OpenAI were very aware that their company was not just launching a new product. It's not a new feature in ChatGPT. This is a social media app. This is uncharted territory for OpenAI. And I think that raised a lot of concerns for people.

16:30I mean, something, you know, I've heard over and over from AI executives, and I'm sure you've heard the same, Alex, is just, you know, they all talk about how we don't want to repeat the mistakes of the social media era. And I believe a lot of the researchers working at these labs don't want to do that. I think a lot of them grew up in an era where people were addicted to social media. And I think a lot of them don't want to create the same kind of dynamic with the products that they built. But I do think that just the incentives of running a social media platform are sometimes going to be very intoxicating and strong.

17:12And, you know, I don't think Meta exactly set out to build, you know, addictive platform. But that's what you do when you need to make the user count grow up and you need to make the ad revenue grow up. So I think that that's what I heard from a lot of employees. It's just like we have to be really careful here. Right. And I think it's we should note head of product at Anthropic, Instagram founder, head of product at OpenAI, former head of product at Instagram. Person who's running what all consumer applications at OpenAI is also someone who's come from Facebook. it i definitely it's interesting to me to see these two cultures merge right which is like the typical silicon valley growth culture and this newer research-oriented ai culture and effectively you know we can see the conflicts happening within the companies as they go yeah i mean this is something that's come up with open ai time and time again where there's this tension at the company where it is the world's fastest growing consumer business.

18:27And it is also an AI research lab where a lot of the people joined to chase this lofty mission of developing AGI that benefits humanity and make sure that all of that goes safely and goes well. And I think those things have constantly been just kind of pushing at each other for the last several years. I mean, when Sam Altman was fired a few years ago, that was kind of a key consideration there. And I think that what I heard from a former employee that was really interesting was they said that OpenAI, really, the consumer business funds the mission. I mean, that's how a lot of people see it, where it's like building ChatGPT into this massive product makes billions of dollars that can go towards AI research that otherwise wouldn't.

19:20And I think that's true. You know, to build AGI, you probably need to be an enormous company. But I think there's a real question of at what point does OpenAI say no to a money-making endeavor? At what point does OpenAI reject the idea of, you know, adding more users to its platform for the sake of its mission? I think that it is my take about the store app is I don't think that OpenAI is setting itself up for success with this because they are opening themselves up to, you know, the kind of incentives of a social media app. Right. Yeah. You asked that question in your story. At what point does OpenAI's consumer business overtake its nonprofit mission?

20:03And I think it's already there. So but anyway, we can leave that open since you left it open as as a question in your story. I won't put you on the spot on that one. But yeah, it's a valid, valid concern. And I think we can both agree that this is not just a video generation technology. It's a social app. And it does sort of then put forth this really interesting question, which is what's going to happen to the creative. economy. I'm writing about this in big technology this week. It'll probably come out right before our episode comes out. But you have this, you know, creator economy is kind of a misnomer.

20:44There's only a small amount of people that are able to work full time creating content on the internet. That being said, some of the people who have watched this have said basically like this puts creators right in the crosshairs of AI. And in fact, I had a, I guest hosted the Twit podcast over the weekend and I had a great quote from one of our panelists, Ari Paparo of MarketExture Media. He said, the creators are all high on the hog right now, but I would be thinking they're one of the first things that could be totally annihilated by AI. I think it's worth taking a minute to talk about this because you have this new technology, a new app.

21:20It's obviously very engaging, number one in the app store, but instead of the painstaking process of creating content online, you can just prompt it. So what do you think this means for the creator economy, Max? Yeah, it's really an interesting question. I mean, I think that people said some version of this for writers when ChatGPT came out that, you know, why would I hire a freelance journalist to write something if I could just ask ChatGPT to write it? And I mean, certainly there are countless websites out there with articles written by ChatGPT now. So to some extent, that's proven to be true.

21:57And yet, Alex, we still can make a living doing what we do. So I think what have we learned from the text version of this story that's already played out is that people value the human touch and the human taste and judgment. And they value kind of a professional's opinion, you know, on certain topics that has become actually, I think, more valuable in the AI era. And I think that was something that a lot of people missed when ChatGPT first came out, which is that it actually made really high quality human content more valuable. I wouldn't be surprised if a similar thing happens with the creator economy.

22:36I think that we will see just more content in general as a result of these AI video models and Sora. And I think that it probably does make it harder for content creators to stand out. It probably, you know, advertisers are looking at these AI video models and going, huh, that's pretty interesting. Should I, you know, maybe put some of my revenue or my ad spend towards that instead? But I think that there's creators out there who have a real relationship with their audiences and the audiences care about what they have to say in the same way that people care about what journalists have to say, their favorite ones at least.

23:15And I think that that's kind of how I expect this to go in all of the industries that AI will touch. But I don't know, Alex, I'm curious to hear what you found talking to some people in the space. Yeah. So I actually have this like list that it's basically my outline for my story of all the reasons why the creator economy won't go away. And I think you've touched on a couple of them. It will change though, in some ways, but I would say like the first thing that I put on the list, which is somewhat corny and cliche is just the word authenticity. And I think that when people are saying the creator economy is going to go away, they might be thinking of these like adventure videos on YouTube or like some others, I don't know.

24:00But I think they are missing the fact that the reason why the creator economy or whatever it is emerged is because people wanted a more authentic alternative to, let's say, the mass media. And so they were able to have this connection in some ways with online creators and that powered the creator economy. So I think that you cannot replace that authenticity with synthetic media. Just can't. It's impossible to create. I think I could be proven wrong over time. But I think that's impossible to create. The other side of it is that that basically the reason why you would tune into someone is for new insights or ideas or information.

24:49And even if you could generate amazing videos, you're just recycling what exists and you lose that potential to gain those new insights and information or even unique new entertainment. I think so. So to me, that is that is two of the main reasons why I think the creator economy is not going away. Now, I do think it's going to change because there are some things that are just going to be commoditized. and i'll just say it i think that if you're a creator that's making money on good looks you might be in trouble uh you might now see an ai there already are ai versions of people who are doing like thirst trap uh content and they're gonna they're gonna commoditize that so also this just sort of like um there's a lot of like amorphous uh mid content out there that maybe if you filled a niche, you can make a living, you probably won't be able to do that anymore.

25:55So that's kind of my read on it. I mean, I think that's a fair point. I mean, I think that that's kind of the flip side of what I was just talking about with the journalism conversation of, you know, I think that a lot of the websites that made a business on aggregation of just taking other reporting and kind of repackaging it without adding some unique analysis or, you know, new reporting to it, that largely can be done by AI. And I think that that's what, you know, that kind of, I'm not trying to say that's lower quality. I mean, I've done that fair amount of that in my career. But like, I think that that is a part of journalism that is kind of going away in the AI era.

26:39And, you know, I think I could totally see a similar thing happening in the creator economy. I will say, I'm curious what you think about kind of, you know, obviously, I mean, the creator economy is not held up by TikTok and Instagram paying out these creators. It's held up by like AG1, like these like, you know, massive advertisers that like will, you know, just like dole out money to the creators. And I'm not sure if they're, you know, going to want to put their ads in Sora or something, you know, like I think that that kind of source of revenue seems pretty stable if you're a creator. But I'm curious what you think.

27:15Oh, I disagree on that one. I think advertisers are very simple animals. If there's attention, they will pay for people's attention. So even if it's a feat of AI slop, if OpenAI can somehow win millions and millions of users over, then AG1 will be right there and work out some deal to sell their very healthy supplements and all the other things. So AG1, if you're listening, technology is open for business, so we'll be human until we're not. So let's talk. But that's basically my take on that. No, that makes sense. I mean, you totally could be right. And I mean, Mark Zuckerberg has his idea about automating all AI, the whole ad process with AI that, you know, it's been talked about a few weeks ago.

28:02And, you know, I think a lot of advertisers ears maybe perked up and maybe they cringed a little bit at that thought. But, yeah, I guess we'll have to see. I do think that there is some value in like your attention is deeper when you're watching a creator that you love. So maybe that will, you know, prove to be resilient in this era. But I guess we'll see. Yeah, I don't want to be the gloom and doom on the creator economy ad thing. But ultimately, like they the advertisers back it out like they're smart. They will see like what's leading to sales, what's not. And then just keep investing more in that.

28:42Maybe, who knows, the meta can tune feeds in ways or opening eye will tune feeds in ways that will make people more susceptible to this type of advertising. It's an interesting world. And by the way, speaking of automation, I want to bring this point up before we move on from this. There's a concept in artificial intelligence called reinforcement learning where like you give the AI a goal and sort of makes a bunch of attempts and then, you know, basically tries to accomplish that goal and then realizes what to optimize for. I had a thought that could we end up seeing so so while I think the creator economy is going to stay do we end up seeing AI creators emerge where companies basically give bots this goal of like being mega influencers allow them to create lots of accounts and then just sort of reinforce based off of the comments and likes and shares and follows and so we end up seeing a an AI creator force that will crush any human attempt to be better than it just because of its ability to basically create unlimitedly and in an unlimited fashion and optimize that way.