X's CEO Speaks, AI's Real Impact On Hollywood, The Streamflation Crisis — With Julia Boorstin

0:00An all-star CNBC correspondent and author joins us to discuss ex-CEO Linda Yaccarino's first big interview whether AI will really change Hollywood, and plenty more of this week's news right after this. The truth is AI security is identity security. An AI agent isn't just a piece of code, it's a first-class citizen in your digital ecosystem, and it needs to be treated like one. That's why Okta is taking the lead to secure these AI agents. The key to unlocking this new layer of protection, an identity security fabric. Organizations need a unified, comprehensive approach that protects every identity, human or machine, with consistent policies and oversight.

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1:17Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday edition, where we break down the news in our traditional cool-headed, and nuanced format. We have an amazing guest joining us today. Julia Boorstin is here. She's a senior media and technology correspondent at CNBC and the author of When Women Lead, What We Achieve, Why We Succeed, and What We Can Learn. We're going to talk about all that and more. Julia, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. It's always so fun to talk to you on CNBC. Now I'm talking to you on your turf.

1:49Yeah, it's so great to have you on the show. It was really great catching up with you at CNBC's CEO Summit a few months back. And I think the podcast has like a parade of guests that have come on from that event. So I really enjoyed that. And I'm glad to have a chance to speak with you at length here. I know. I'm so happy to be here. A big fan of the podcast. Always happy to interview you on CNBC. So glad to have the tables turned. Awesome. Great. Well, let's turn those tables then. So to bring everything together, CNBC had Linda Yaccarino, who's the CEO of X, formerly known as Twitter, on for an interview this week.

2:21She explained whether, you know, she was actually running the show or Elon was running the show. She talked about the business model. She talked about the strategy. Okay, I came away a little bit confused, not because of Sarah Eisen's questioning, but because of Linda's answers. And generally, she comes from the ad world. I started my career in advertising. I'm willing to hear what she has to say. But there was a little bit of confusion in the fact that she talked about X being an everything app and X being this place for real-time communication. And it's like, you can be, that's my perspective.

2:52You can be an everything app. You can be the real time app. It's really tough to be both. I'm kind of curious what your reaction was to her comments. Well, I thought the interview was great. My colleague Sarah Eisen did a great job. And I agree that there are various points of confusion to come out of this. I saw that CNN had criticized Linda's comments as not being effectively accurate. Though it's hard to say it's a private company. We don't have the numbers. We don't know exactly what's going on there. I thought the everything app thing is interesting. The reality is, is that we just don't have everything apps in the U.S.

3:26the way they have them in Asia. And I think that Elon Musk has made it pretty clear that he'd love to have an everything app. But we just we don't have a model for that in terms of U.S. use cases. So it's incredibly ambitious. She talked about how the X rebrand was part of that ambition. It separates them from their legacy. They're going to be able to do more things if they're not tied to that very familiar brand of Twitter, which by the way is an incredibly valuable brand and that was the the question she faced like why ditch something so iconic and valuable and it really came into this idea of being an everything app um linda to me sent a very clear message to advertisers right her job is to to she has a had a great run at at nbc universal cnbc's parent company my parent company you know bringing advertisers on board infusing the company with technology in the way it targets and measures ads and her job at Twitter, I see as being first and foremost, reassuring advertisers that this is a safe, effective platform and a place where they can confidently put their money.

4:30And I think she was very consistent in that message. I mean, Elon Musk is a live wire. He's so unpredictable. And she was speaking very slowly, very intentionally. Even her tone to me was trying to communicate this is I'm someone you could trust and this is a platform you could trust. Do you think advertisers are going to hear that message and believe her and respond? I mean, also, like, I'm curious what you think. I'm going to ask a two-parter here because part of the reticence of advertisers to get on board with Twitter is the fact that the tech doesn't work so well. So it is kind of interesting.

5:03I mean, I guess they've lost. They don't really have those bottom of the funnel advertisers. And they had, like, some success with the branding advertisers. So, you know, now those branding advertisers, I don't know if there's been a real pullback or they're just like in their own year of efficiency and trying to spend where the money works best. But I am curious how you think this will land with Madison Avenue. Everyone's in their year of efficiency, right? It was. Yeah, totally. Mark Zuckerberg said it first, but everyone's in it. You know, I was at the Cannes Advertising Festival in June and I was asking people, you know, obviously Twitter was not there.

5:34Lindy Akron was not there for the first time in over a decade. made. And I said, Are people gonna respond to her? Like, what's what's the word on the street? And I actually asked this question, both of Twitter and also of Tick Tock, because both have these, you know, different, slightly different concerns. Twitter, to me, the question is brand safety. Is this a place where you want to have your brand? Are you worried about hate speech? Are you worried about that? The reported dramatic increase in hate speech. And ultimately, people said people will spend money on ads if the ads really work. exactly and i think there was this period and it doesn't really they're like hate speech yes that's problematic but the ads won't work if they're next to hate speech um tick tock china concerns if they're working we're going to be on the platform on tick tock until tick tock gets shut down if it does get shut down so i think fundamentally what this means for for twitter is that there was this question of whether the ads were working and they and especially with brand advertising it's much harder to measure that efficacy direct response advertising is so much easier to measure.

6:34And I think that Linda Yaccarina, who did a lot on measurement at NBC Universal, is going to try to do the same. The fact that she announced that they're going to bring back this ad council indicates to me that she's really trying to engage with advertisers. So I think that's going to work. I think advertisers did not like that Elon Musk so publicly derided them and said he didn't care about their perspectives. And I think that people People remember Linda's power and NBCUniversal and would like Twitter to work. That's the other thing is advertisers want these other platforms. There's the digital duopoly.

7:11One thing I heard a lot about in Cannes and I continue to hear about is that they would love to have more options. They're thrilled that TikTok seems to be so effective. They want to have options other than Meta and Google simply because those are the two platforms that have dominated the digital landscape for so long. And it's better for the brands if they have more places to go, especially as TV advertising sees a shrinking, you know, sort of a shrinking market. Yeah. One of the things Twitter's done recently, I think it's been sort of underappreciated is that they've changed the sponsored label to one that you could hardly find, which is ad.

7:45And I know a lot of people who've like come to me and been like, I'm clicking on Twitter ads accidentally now because the ad label is now in the top right corner. And I guess that's one lever that you can pull is you can just totally Yeah. But does that, does that, I don't think it's a wise move. Short-term gain, but long-term challenges. Probably. And then also our consumer is going to be frustrated and be less likely to engage on the platform. I mean, there's so many times when it comes to Twitter, I wish that it would sort of go public again so I could read its S1. You know, I, I'm a huge dork who loves to read S1s and I would love to read the S1 of this company right now.

8:21You know, obviously the, yeah, the risk, factors, all of those different things. But yeah, I think there are different levers to pull. And I think right now the one that that Linda Yacrino is pulling is like getting the advertisers to sit down with her and make and making them feel like she's listening to them, which is something that has been gone for the past nine months. So do you think it's going to work? I can't predict. Too many wild cards. Yeah. I mean, do you think that Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are going to fight in the Coliseum? Like, I don't even know how to ask that question. I'm starting to think that their egos are so large that they, at this point, the one, it's like a game of chicken, right?

8:57The one that pulls out is all of a sudden going to be the loser. So I think they're just like their animosity towards each other. And the fact that like people are encouraging them to do this, we'll bring them to whether it's the Coliseum or the Octagon. They're going to go for it. That's my prediction. We live in an unpredictable world. So if that's happening, it's hard to predict whether or not the Twitter, otherwise known as X, will thrive as a platform. But one thing's for sure, Lindy Acarino, if that does happen, we'll use that cage match as a marketing opportunity. No doubt about it. You know, one thing that I think is also being underappreciated about Twitter, they have now lowered the threshold to pay creators from 15 million impressions over three months to 5 million impressions over three months.

9:39Basically, it means if you're tweeting and you're getting a decent amount of reach, 5 million impressions is tough to reach, but not impossible. I feel like we've both done it or do it consistently. like then you will get a cut of the ad revenue coming in and these platforms now you see there's twitter there's threads there's you know blue sky whatever there's uh um you know all the ones on the right um and you you know cutting in creators is i think a brilliant move because it's ultimately going to keep people posting on this platform and and ultimately the platform is all about the people and that's an issue that that twitter has not really learned hadn't really learned under previous leadership.

10:17And I don't know, it seems like they're going to have a more vibrant platform because all these people are getting cut in on the deal. I totally agree. I mean, I think this fight for creators is what we're seeing play out, whether it's with YouTube, we'll see it with threads. It's obviously key to what's going on right now with Instagram and TikTok. And I think what's interesting about Twitter is that they hadn't really fostered that creator ecosystem. system. And now maybe it's in light of the writers and actors strikes or all of these different factors. But I think that's where the attention is shifting.

10:49And it needs to be a safe place for those creators also. I mean, I think when you talk about trust and safety and all these teams that were fired under Elon Musk and now Lindy Akron is trying to bring back, you need a safe environment, not just for premium content, but also for creators. And I think that monetization piece is what will determine which of these platforms succeed. Absolutely. And I think the threads piece is interesting too. I mean, it was fascinating to see the rush of people onto threads. I was one of those that first night just like watching the threads be posted and feeling like this was a real moment.

11:22And then you see the numbers drop off and you have to wonder what is it going to take to keep people there? Not just the big brands, not just following the tweets from the New York Times, but what's it going to take to keep the real content generators there who are maybe doing more than just posting headlines from newspaper articles. Absolutely. So my perspective on this is that it has to be the algorithm. And that's the thing that really confused me about what Lindy Acarino was saying in this interview. By the way, I agree, great interview. It's interesting to hear them kind of come out and talk about what matters to them.

11:54And I heard the words real time, like maybe 10 times in the first five minutes of that conversation and how like you're going to get 24 7 FOMO if you're not on Twitter but the algorithm really has shifted away from news away from real time and more towards chat GPT influencers which I'm sure you've seen and other sort of meme content and threads threads made a very interesting decision when they said and I think this is a terrible decision that they made that Facebook made when they said we don't really care or want news actually the news and real time information is going to be the way that these companies win.

12:29That's just my perspective. They added a following tab, but it's all about how you adjust that for you algorithm that both of these platforms have. And I think the company that decides, okay, we're going to go all in on news, real-time information. We want to be the next platform where there's, let's say, the plane that lands in the Hudson or the assassination of Bin Laden. If you find this type of magnitude of news out first on our platform, that's going to be the one that ends up winning. What do you think about that? Yeah. And I think it, but it's like an expanded definition of news, right?

12:57I mean, I remember there was like a little earthquake in LA and my first instinct, and this is years ago, my first instinct was like, I'm going to go to Twitter. That's where I go to find out if there was an earthquake or if a bomb just went off, what the hell is happening here? You go to Twitter. And I think that my perspective has changed over time. You know, then I started following the US geological thing to announce it, you know, to let me know where the earthquakes actually were. And so it actually became a better place to follow expert sources. But then it just became so crowded with other things.

13:26And this definition of what is news like there's only so much that to me feels meaningful as news. And I think the noise that Threads is trying to avoid is the opinion and anger that can be attached to pieces of news. And so there's a big difference between saying, like, what's actually happening right now to who's angry and yelling about what's happening right now. And I think that Twitter has become a lot more of the latter, which is just a lot less enjoyable to engage with. And I think that Threads is trying to be something a lot more adjacent to Instagram, which is more pleasant and less angry.

14:00Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And we'll see if it works and either could become more like the other. Totally. And when that earthquake happens, you know, you want to see the news of it. Like you mentioned, you don't want to see like how to be great at ChatGPT or the latest duck that tied. But I actually only really want to follow. I just really want to get the information from whatever the the local, you know, measurement agency is from an actual government agency and not from someone speculating about it. Yeah. So speaking of earthquakes in L.A., there's a big labor dispute going on in that part of the world with Hollywood writers and actors on strike.

14:37And, you know, you've been covering this pretty in depth and I've really been pumped that we were going to speak about it. And I've been waiting to have you on the show to discuss this. First of all, the talks are resuming today. Yeah, perfect timing for us to be talking. Yeah. I wonder if it's like a distraction from like the actual core of what's going on. But the undercurrent has been whether AI is going to replace Hollywood actors and writers. And I don't know, when I hear about that, like I kind of think that like it's a issue that the actors and writers are using to sort of rally support to say we're going to be replaced and you're going to be replaced if you don't support us.

15:15And the studios are saying we are going to use this technology to replace you if you don't cave to our demands. But the technology isn't there yet, not anywhere close, at least from what I've seen. So it seems like they're just it's a lot of talking about this issue, but the real issues are basically the same as they've always been in every labor dispute, which is pay and working conditions. What do you think? Well, I would actually disagree with you on that. And I'll address the AI piece. But I think fundamentally, this writers and actors strike is about technology. And it's about the technological innovation of the past 15 years since there was the last writers strike, which is in the last 15 years, we've seen the rise of streaming and a total transformation of the entertainment industry, really because of streaming.

15:59So the first issue that's at the heart of these negotiations, and there are really three main issues for the writers. The first issue is compensation for streaming. A lot of streaming compensation is flat fee payment and writers and actors do not get paid in success. In TV, it's very different. If a TV show is syndicated and it plays over and over and over and there are ads attached to it, then you get paid more the more people see your content. It makes sense, especially if the platforms are making more revenue from advertising. Up until very recently, there was no ads on Netflix. There were no ads on Disney+.

16:35So it makes sense to me that writers or actors are saying, hey, you profit more, not just on a flat fee basis, but also on an advertising basis if our content is more successful and we want to be paid more in success. So I think that the first and key point here is payment based on the technological impact of the streaming revolution and adjusting compensation on streaming to match that. So I think that's the first technological revolution. So that's the last 10 years. Looking at the next 10 years, the question is AI. And I think that it makes sense that this is about how tech is going to change people's jobs, consumption of content, and how should you be paid fairly based on that.

17:17The AI piece is really interesting to me because, yes, there are so many unknowns. And what they're negotiating over in many ways is to set a regular cadence of evaluation of this, because we don't even know what the capabilities are going to be in two or three years. And these contracts have an impact not just on this generation of writers, but even on writers who are just starting their careers right now. And if you go back to the 1988 writer's strike, the issues that were negotiated then still have an impact decades later. To me, the AI piece has a couple of elements to it. One is, if you're a studio, part of the AMPTP, and you employ writers, you have to employ Writers Guild writers and you have to pay them based on certain rules.

18:00They want to make sure that AI is not being used to rewrite their content and that their content is not being used to train AI. So this is one of these complex things is they want protections around it. And basically they're saying until the AI is part of the Writers Guild, you have to treat me as a Writers Guild writer, not let this effectively non-WGA entity, which is AI, rewrite my work. I actually don't think it's totally irrelevant because people are already using AI to brainstorm. So many writers I know use it as a brainstorming tool if they're trying to, you know, sort of like a thesaurus in many ways, like trying to come up with another word for something or another way of describing something.

18:42So I don't think it's totally irrelevant. And then on the actor's side, I did an amazing story, which I want all your readers to go check out with NBC Nightly News showing it how the visual effects technology is being totally transformed by AI. And this was back in, I think, April. So before the strike started, we worked with these companies that did an AI scan. I did a 3D scan of my face. And then they basically created a mask of my face that someone could wear by standing in front of a camera. So you could clone me. And we were joking about how, like, I'm going to have to wake up at four in the morning because you just someone else can wear my face and do my report.

19:19But the reality is, is that this is great technology that studios want to use for things like stunt doubles. If you could scan an actor's face, then you could have a stunt double do the stunt with the actor's face on them and the like. Or we did another demo of turning me with a company called Wonder Dynamics walking down a movie set. You could turn me into a robot or an alien and save literally hundreds of hours of work that needed to be done previously. So I think there's the piece of this where this AI technology is going to accelerate processes and help cut costs. And that is something that's true across many industries.

19:54But there is a sort of protection issue where when I was doing this scan of my face, the company had to reassure me that they were going to get rid of all of the data and not use it or license it out and have them able to profit from it. luckily takes up a lot of space, so they would be happy to delete it after the fact. But writers want to make sure that they're not going to be rewritten without their consent by non-WGA entity, and actors want to make sure that their image and likeness is not going to be used without their permission and without them profiting from it. So I think it's complicated, and no one knows where this is going to all go.

20:34But if technology is the driver of change in the industry, it makes sense that these are key sticking points right now. Totally. So here's the pushback to the writers and the actors. And maybe there's somewhere in the middle, but I want to at least pose it to you and hear what you think about this, thinking about their perspective. So we've had a number of conversations on this show with people in the tech world, investors and CEOs talking about the impact on jobs. And almost every one of them says this will lead to net addition of jobs and net addition of creativity. So for instance, Aaron Levy, who's the CEO of Box was here a couple of weeks ago and talked about this from a creator's perspective, where if you're a director, you waste a ton of time figuring out what shot, what angle, when you're going to do it.

21:21And then you're effectively, your creativity aperture is limited because you spend all this time working on the logistics. And he talks about how maybe generative AI could, for instance, let the director pick from those hundred different shots, and then they go shoot the best one. We also like, this week in big technology, and it's going to be syndicated in the Boston Globe, which I'm pretty stoked about. We wrote a story, Doug and I, about how looking at various different industries and how this AI threat has impacted them. One of them is the legal industry. And there's already technology out there that can scour documents and you can converse with them.

21:59It could do, you know, basic discovery for you. It can highlight differences. And the firms that are using this stuff have not actually, you know, fired lawyers. Same with radiologists, by the way. I mean, there's some interesting studies coming out about whether AI is actually helping radiologists, but for organizations like the Mayo Clinic, which have AI in place, detecting different structures within the body, they're actually using this to make up for staffing shortages. and they're using this to be more effective as you know in the radiology work so i'm curious and and this is kind of why and maybe i'm fighting the losing battle here but this is why i'm curious about whether this is like you know how big of an issue this is going to be in the future because ultimately it seems like in most industries this is something that augments versus replaces or even minimizes the amount of work that creative people need to do what do you think Well, look, I think what you're effectively talking about is AI being an efficiency tool.

22:56And I've been doing a series for CNBC and that visual effects story I did for NBC Nightly News was part of it. We're calling it AI Impact. And what I fundamentally believe is that separate from the chat GPT's of the world, AI is going to have an impact on every single industry, whether it's advertising or the legal field or medicine. It will offer new tools. Many times that will be sort of dramatically enhanced capabilities, whether it's for a surgeon in the operating room looking for real time guidance or whether it's for lawyers getting the power of a million paralegals at their fingers at the touch of a button.

23:30So I have no doubt that efficiency is going to be a key benefit of of AI. I think the creative fields are a funny thing, in part because of this question of whether art is all derivative in some way, shape or form. And you could go back to sort of those iconic Shakespearean narratives to think about sort of the underlying narratives that inspire every writer or director or creator. But I think there's this question of whether it makes sense to have my content as a creator train AI to create content at a lower cost. And in debating this with a lot of people, because I love to talk about AI, it's all I think about on many days.

24:12I think the shift is going to be away from whether or not it's a good thing or a bad thing, but more towards this question of attribution. And I think that writers and actors would be more OK. I don't say they would be OK. I can't speak on behalf of them. I'm neither a writer nor an actor. But I think that there is a sense that AI would be more fair if attribution is given. So, for instance, for actors, if their images and their performances are being used to train AI, why not give them a cut of payment on that? Or for writers, if their script is being used to train AI, they should get a percentage royalty anytime part of their work is used in the creation of content for something else.

24:56So I think the rise of focus on attribution is going to be the real conversation in the next couple of months. And I think that the commentary that we got from News Corp in their earnings yesterday, I don't know how much you caught of this, but the CEO Robert Thompson said that they see AI as a great opportunity, not just in driving efficiency, but also from a monetization standpoint. Barry Diller, he's been leading the charge with a bunch of publishers saying they're going to make sure they get paid if their content is used by AI. So I think that, yes, it can be a great tool. Yes, all content is in some way inspired by something else.