Rapid Response: Will.i.am is using AI to re-make radio

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1:17Because I love radio so much, I want to innovate and help out the realm that changed my life. radio.fyi is the dawn of intelligent media and year and a half two years radio.fyi will be in every single cars dash no small aspirations for this huh yo bro let me tell you something about aspirations you can't spell ambition without am and you can't spell will I am without am

1:58That's Will.i.am, the musician, investor, and entrepreneur. Will's company, FYI, recently launched an app called Radio.FYI, offering curated radio stations with AI hosts that users can interact with in real time. I wanted to talk to Will to understand how Radio.FYI plays into his wider view on the future of AI and how AI might impact music, media, and commerce. Will's getting his MBA at Harvard right now, and so he shares why the lesson that stuck with him most is a case study about spinning lollipops. He also talks about how a musician's early influences are like AI training data, how AI developers are like rappers, what's behind his partnership with Mercedes, and so much more.

2:46In classic Will fashion, I never knew quite where he was going next. Let's get into it. I'm Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.

3:01I'm Bob Safian. I'm here with Will.i.am. Will, thanks for joining us. Oh, man. It's great to be here. You've been on Master of Scale as a guest, as a guest host, sharing lessons from your career. For this show, I want to ask you about right now about how you're managing in this crazy world of ours. You've been on tour with the Black Eyed Peas, but at the same time, you recently launched Radio.FYI to reimagine radio as a media experience. Can you explain what Radio.FYI is? Radio.FYI is, you know, text to station. Right? So we know what text to action is. And in this case, the action in our architecture is the format of radio.

3:52So I could ask any question about any topic that is presented to me where, you know, this AI host is speaking over this mood music, then throwing to song, then grabbing information as information is unfolding in the internet and then presenting it back in the form of radio and then throwing to song and then asking you along the way if I have any questions on anything that is presented and then answer those questions. It's part AI assistant and part listening experience. It's like this blend of information and entertainment. It's what we call the dawn of intelligent media where the media itself is interactive, engageable media rather than a passive lean-back experience.

4:44It's a lean-in, dig-in, dive-deep media experience. Where does the information come from that you're getting? I know you've said you have a team of journalists, but, like, are you citing news sources? I'm going to pull up politics right quick. If you go to the politics station on radio.fyi, it's... doing its radio thing from our curation. So we curated these stories. Right. The same way that a radio station would decide what they're going to tell you about. Or write about. Right. So we have our who, what, where, and whys. And then we have the essential information. And the essential information has come from, you know, the embargo feeds that these entities have pushed to journalists to write about.

5:40So we receive the same type of feeds that everyone receives their stuff from. And then our journalists write about those. But we write about them to be presented. We look at this, our station, like a new type of magazine. But instead of reading it and then having questions about it, we then allow for a deeper dive and promote engagement to ask questions about what was presented. So I don't have to just read it. I can have a conversation with the DJ, I guess, about the things that are there, right? Exactly. What we've been able to do with our architecture is allow for human-like banter. If you were to be on a radio station and you could call in and talk to a person.

6:27You're able to talk to the information itself. And that's pretty profound to be able to say like, yo, what do you mean you're able to talk to the information? That sounds freaking ludicrous, bro. You could talk to the information, bro. You could literally have a conversation with silicone and freaking lithium now because of the technology that we live it in. And now there's also, there is music on there, right? Like, are you linked into like Apple Music or Spotify? Like, how do you get or pay for the music rights? Like, do you like a radio station does again? Like, is that the model? I mean, the app is free to download.

7:07I just want to say that to everyone, but yeah. So this is the project that politics is playing from, right? And so if I go to the folder, these 40 songs, like top 40, there's the 40 songs that it's playing from. It's human curated. So you've got your library that you have curated from other places. And you're paying for the rights to that as opposed to through a separate streaming service. Yeah, we're not a streaming service like Spotify. it's it's like radio like radio right you can't you can't like um fast forward or rewind or most you could do is pause it's not it's not streaming it's not on a la carte it's not on demand like like that it's like radio and because i love radio so much i want to innovate and help about the realm that changed my life.

8:05And what changed my life is radio. What changed Lana Ritchie's life is radio. What changed Stevie Wonder's life is radio. And so innovating around a space that urgently needs innovation, you know, for our community of music, the artists that make it, radio, radio, radio. Is there a moment where you like this passion you had for radio and this experience, you were like, I got to build something around this? I have a radio show on Sirius XM. I didn't want to have my own radio show. Someone was like, yo, Will, you'll be great doing a blog or your own radio show. I'm like, the only way I'll have a radio show if my co-host was an AI.

8:51I mean, I think that'd be dope. I've been doing TV in the UK for 12 years. there's one thing I cannot do. And that is be available for anybody to ask me questions unlimitedly. If somebody had questions on what I said on TV after broadcast, maybe I could talk to like a couple of people on Twitter or Instagram stories. And that's it. I'm a tap out. I'm like, yo, I need to go get some meat. We hit a ceiling on engagement. But if I had a co-host, It could do it all day, all night, a million people at once. And so when I started doing my show on SiriusXM, I was like, yo, every person that has a radio show or a podcast needs to be able to have a co-host like me.

9:38I need to build that. If I can make a system that automates going from segment to song, yo, that would be freaking awesome. this means I could create a whole new type of ad unit wait a second what is a commercial when I could ask the commercial more about the product wait a second this means the product could speak for itself get out of here we got to do this fast we got to build this oh my gosh this is going to change everything. This is a whole different way to engage. This is a whole different way to have commerce. Because a commercial is not a commercial. If I could just buy it from the radio, get out of here.

10:31When's the last time radio actually sold? Wait a second. I know that Mercedes is one of your investors. I was wondering whether the idea that FYI radio would be installed in the dash of every Mercedes. Yo, wait a second. Wait a second. Were you not on our freaking Mercedes call this morning? Wait a second. Yo. And a year and a half, two years, radio.fyi will be an every single car's dash as the preferred radio experience. No small aspirations for this, huh? Yo, bro. Let me tell you something about aspirations. You can't spell ambition without AM, and you can't spell will I am without AM. Yo, I'm ambitious, bro.

11:27If you're going to dream it, make it real. If you're going to ideate, you want to materialize, and you need to find partners that help you with your ideation and materialization to deployment. this has been a three year journey working with Mercedes finding ways to you know to aim my brain at you know identifying issues like yo yo let's fix this I can make a system to be able to play music that's based on the drivers driving and they can recompose reimagine reconfigure songs just driving So that product's called SoundDrive. That will be launched in September. I'm really excited. You were on Jimmy Fallon recently.

12:18You talked a little bit about the MBA you're getting from Harvard. Your first degree, no high school, no undergrad. But clearly, you've had plenty of education in your life, and you're hardly a novice in the world of business. Like, are there any surprises that you've learned at Harvard? Like, has it changed how you run your company or how you think about your career? Yeah. Yeah, so the things that are the valuable lessons from Harvard are the case studies from people's failures. That's valuable lessons because as an entrepreneur, you know that really good entrepreneurs, they bounce back. And they're not afraid of failing and falling because the whole premise of entrepreneurship is learning and applying.

13:03And if you can learn from someone else's trials and errors and then apply that, you know. It's like how planes are able to detect turbulence. Part of the reason why they know turbulence is coming is because there's a plane that went before them. Is there a specific case that hit home for you? So not a failure. There's this one case study that we learned about this guy that created, you know that spin pop? Uh-huh. It's like a spin pop. this dumbass lollipop that spun anyways this dude like sold that shit right and the architecture was something that went around this way and then he sold that architecture I think to Hasbro or Mattel and then he took the architecture instead of it spinning he had to go like up and down and then he sold that to freaking Colgate for a toothbrush and he was like okay then he took that same architecture and instead of going up and down and spinning, he had to go left and right.

14:08And then he sold that shit to Tide for like washing clothes. I'm like, yo, this cat took his architecture and slanged it three different times because a lot of times when it comes to innovation and creative people, they think that every idea has to be a brand new idea rather than just reimagining their last idea. Their arrogance and their ego tells them that, you know, you know, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta really take it to the next level when really taking it to the next level is reimagining the last level. Will is an unconventional thinker connecting dots that others don't see, but he's also practical that impact and change don't have to come from the next new thing.

14:54You can redefine an old thing too, even radio. After the break, we go deeper into old and new as Will compares James Brown's music to AI training data, AI developers to rappers, and his own business team to the Golden State Warriors. Stay with us.

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16:47So if you're scaling, make it simple with Deal. Go to deel.com slash mos and get up to three months free. Before the break, Will.i.am shared the inspiration behind his new Radio.FYI app, which he describes as the dawn of intelligent media. Now we talk about the legal battles facing AI music generator Udio, which he uses Radio.FYI to explain, plus how Prince and Michael Jackson relied on training data just like AI does, why everything in life is math, and why AI can't write music like Will yet. Let's jump back in. You were the first one to tell me about Udio, which is this amazing AI-based music generator that you're investing.

17:37I mean, you prompt it, creates an original song for you. It's amazing. Now, the record labels are suing it for infringement. How do you think about squaring this sort of awesome tech for creative work and the kind of creative work that underlies it, that trains it? How do you think about those things fitting? Hold on a second. At some point in time in the past, did the record company sue Spotify?

18:09Yes, record companies have had legal disputes with Spotify in the past. One key early legal tussle was with the National Music Publishers Association, an MPA in the U.S. Cool. Thanks. Yeah, I mean... That's one of our personas. So, say for example, Spotify had no users. The record companies wouldn't have sued them. So the reason why they sued them is because there's like growth. The reason why they sued Udio is because Udio has growth. So it's a good thing. Because that means they're going to come to some type of agreement faster. And artists and how they trained their stuff on is going to be resolved.

18:56But we're in tricky grounds now. For example, let's say, for example, Prince was alive. and you went to Prince and said, hey, Prince, who's your inspiration? Prince is going to obviously tell you James Brown, Sly and Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix. If you would ask Michael Jackson, hey, Mike, who's your inspiration? Michael Jackson is going to say James Brown, Fred Astaire, Sammy Davis Jr., and Gene Kelly. What they both have in common is James Brown. And it's clear that James Brown is their big inspiration. You could see it. So in this case, from human to human, we call it inspiration. machines call it data set and training what you trained on if you would ask like an artist be like yo who's your inspiration it's the same shit because we have a neural network and that neural network was based off of our neural network so now we're in a touchy ground here because last time I checked Prince did not give James Brown royalties because he was inspired by him.

20:05His pathways were a part of his data set. So that's where it gets blurry, where we are now. Do you use Udio? Is there something you use it for in your songwriting, in your process? No, because Udio doesn't do Black Eyed Peas right. Well, you should be able to help him with that. yeah but I don't want to help him with that the way I write music the AI doesn't write music like that is what I mean by that it doesn't do fusion right it can do like yo give me like trap it does that awesome it can do like jazz great but if the moment I'm like yo give me give me samba with a little bit of blues and a little bit of rock and a little bit of calypso it's not going to do that right like it's better with pure flavors right like more more subtle flavors or creating new flavors it just doesn't do that as well yet does that what people like most misunderstand about AI, the yet?

21:27Like, that, you know, like right now it can't do black eyed peas, but maybe it will be able to? This is the worst it's ever going to be because it just gets better from here. And that's being optimistic in every sense of the way. Ethically, morally, business practice, legally, you know, compensation-wise, this is the worst it's ever going to be. Being optimistic. Let's be optimistic that the greed that we don't lead, that the powers that be don't lead with greed. This is the worst it's ever going to be. That sentence is it. Let's be optimistic that the powers that be don't lead with greed. This is the worst it's ever going to be.

22:21It's always awesome to talk to you, Will. You're straddling these sort of multiple careers in music, in tech, you do TV, you know. And I wonder how you manage all that, whether Harvard gave you any hints on that. Like Jack Dorsey was CEO of Twitter and Square at the same time, and he had designated days for each company, right? Like, how do you prioritize all the different things that are part of your world? it's really on the teams you build the premise is to build a warriors topic team you want a stephen curry but then you need dream on green you need the squad so the same is here for fyi where my squad allows me to to go out and hunt and find other partners that complement the things that we're trying to do when i'm working with mercedes Mercedes needs to know like, you know what?

23:18We thought Will was just a musician, but he's more than that. He's doing, he's great in our workshops. He always has good ideas. And then when I'm there, I can't flood them with my idea faucet. I have to be super strategic and like aim it. Ideas, you could drown somebody with, and then, and then, and then, and then. You don't want to, and then people. Hmm. So you have to go in there with being super like focus with what and then is the one you want to leave them with. I was going to say, like, I worked for somebody once who had like a ton of ideas and I felt like my job was like to say, no, no, no, no, no.

24:03Yes, that one. Like, do you do that for yourself where you're going through your own ideas? You're writing them down, you're putting them down and you're saying, no, no, no. Oh, yes, that's the one to sort of strategically push? Or do you use other people around you to help you do that? You have to have a different sounding board. And I have a great sounding board outside of FYI. Because if it's FYI, a lot of times you could get lost on your own sauce. And what's grounding, you need an outside team of trusted truth tellers. and you have to be super careful. We're going to call you on your own bullshit, right?

24:47Yeah, like, I don't know about that one, bro. Yeah, yeah, okay. Why, though? Why don't you know about that one? Well, here's why. All right, okay, okay, okay, okay. You bring up some good points. And then you take those points, you go to a different person. Like, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo. What do you think about this? Do you think this point is valid? Oh, yeah, now that you say that, yep. Okay, cool. Then you go to seven other people, nine other people. And then after you corral that, you go back to your team. Be like, hey, I got this idea. Here's the flags that are circling around it. Do we want to implement it?

25:28So because if you just come with an idea, then you're just a dictator. If your idea is not grounded in like plausibility, networkability, and you can do all that even before somebody then asks like, who's your target audience? Like, okay, bro, somebody got in your head and now you think you're supposed to ask that for everybody. For example, let's say this is 1980 and somebody got a turntable and went, was that the target audience for somebody to get a turntable and scratch on it? if somebody was like, yo, I want to make a needle that doesn't jump, somebody would be like, yo, who's your target audience?

26:15Well, turns out there's a few kids over there in New York that are scratching on the record. They're like, why are we going to make that? There's like 10 people doing that shit. Fact is, someone did that. And the target audience was a small group of people. But if they were just basing it off the target audience... From that perspective, it's like, what does that target audience do? Who else do they impact? So sometimes your target audience is a very small group of people that impact a larger group of people. But let's ignore the larger group of people just to focus on these impactors that sound really small and pointless at the time.

26:59But trust me, I've done my research and the flaggers have flagged the theory to be optimal. And this is humans, not AI. You have to ask humans this because the AI is only aggregating known stuff. And we have this other method of knowing that's emotional, that's connected to like reason and like it's connected to like just human experience. And AI hopefully will never, ever have that type of insight. You go to people for your business ideas. Do you do that for your creative ideas, for your songwriting, your music too? No. Usually the ideas come from, I ideate. It's a gift and sometimes a curse, the ideation.

27:55The curse is, they're all my children. And which one do you love the most? because if you're making an album you got to pick one like you're not doing every idea on the album oh no no i'll record every idea and just because it's not ready for today that doesn't mean it's not going to be ready tomorrow there's a song that we recorded with i wrote and recorded with shakira called girl like me in 2008 that song going to come out to 2021 so not everything thing is ready and made for right now i aim to love and breathe life into every idea and so some people can say like you know i chase shiny objects yeah i do i do but i also know how to delegate and uh and have other folks sit on the egg and and and hatch it you know yeah i can make music by myself, but that's like tickling myself.

28:58I ain't gonna laugh. Like anybody that tickles herself that laughs like, I don't know, maybe they're kind of like weird. Anyhow, my point of what I'm trying to get at is I like collaborating and making and collaborating is team building. Whether you're team building to make music or you're team building to make, you know, experiences and technologies like radio.fyi it's still the same type of like we're missing somebody what do you mean who we're missing so i know how to like identify what's missing and hunt and through my rolodex of all the people that i've ever networked with and met in my path i'm able to either find developers whether they're developers in bangalore or chennai or Israel or Ukraine.

29:45You know a lot of developers. Yeah, developers is like, it's the 1980s. I'm trying to find rappers. Like if AI is hip hop, you got to find the lyricists. And so, you know, a developer, a rapper, they're dealing with large language. Turns out when they used to say music was math, Udio, bitch, it is math. Like, God damn it. if I only would have known that it truly is math and algorithms could really compose. Wow. They were right. Music is math. Everything's math. Damn. Everything, everything, everything is math. With just a little bit of heart in there. Just a little bit of heart though. No hearts math too.

30:35If you would have asked what, is the trajectory of what type of organs are going to be printing 20 years from now? They're going to be printing hearts. And that's math. Are you talking about heart like physical heart or like emotional? Emotional heart. Boy, I thought you were talking about like, you know what I mean? Yeah, no, yeah. Yeah, yes, right. You're right. emotional, spiritual. Yeah, you know, a little bit of it. Just a little bit to keep us on the right path, man. You know? Yeah. Soul. Soul. Soul. I'll give you that. I'll give you that. Well, this has been great. Thanks so much for doing it.

31:25Thanks, Bob. Appreciate it. Talking with Will is a blast. One of my favorite moments was listening to him compose that mini rap on AI organically. Let's be optimistic that the powers that be don't lead with greed. This is the worst it's ever going to be. Optimism is at the core of so much that Will preaches. We need to stay focused on what might be possible to bring about progress, whether we're talking about radio, commerce, or the human heart. As a song and video we'll produce back in 2008 said, yes, we can. I'm Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.