FCC Rules AI-Voiced Robocalls Illegal & Elon Musk Wants You to Sue Disney

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0:26Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Elon Musk is channeling his inner Disney villain and escalating his beef with Bob Iger. Then stay tuned because Neil and I are making our 100 % accurate lock of the century Super Bowl predictions at the end of the show today. It's Friday, February 9th. Let's ride.

0:53Happy Friday, everyone. You know what? Let's bring back our classic Friday small talk tradition, fast week, slow week. The question you will no doubt be asked around the office today. for me fast week because i am so ready for the super bowl to be over so we can start talking about what really matters and that is pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training next week toby fast week or slow week for you that was such a neil answer okay weirdly i had a slow week this week because i spent an inordinate amount of time looking at the orders come in for our morning brew daily hoodies i got fully sucked into an e-commerce analytics black hole and you guys I don't regret a single second of it.

1:33It was so cool watching these orders come in. So I got to end my slow week with one final plug. If you haven't gotten your hands on a hoodie yet, head to shop.morningbrew.com right now. We also linked it in the show description and on YouTube. Neil, people are calling the hoodies the best cure for a slow week because even if you're stuck in the doldrums, at least you can look stylish while you're doing it. Always be selling, Toby. And always be closing, Neil. Before we jump into the show, we have a quick word from our good friends over at Veeam. All right, I have another story to tell about Veeam this morning.

2:05A Morning Brew employee was at a bar in Wyoming the other weekend, and the bartender was a Morning Brew Daily listener. Shout out, Wyoming bartenders. Yes, shout out, Wyoming. Our coworker works on the brand partnership side of things, and when she told the bartender that, he goes, oh, like Veeam. The people love Veeam. The people of Wyoming specifically love Veeam. Makes me happy to know that we are spreading the good word, Neil, and that people far and wide want to protect and recover their data with the best of the best. So if you want to see what all of the Veeam hype is about, you don't have to go to Wyoming, though Wyoming's very lovely.

2:38Just head to Veeam.com today to learn more. That's V-E-E-A-M.com today. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from EBCLIS. After an initial dosing phase, about four in 10 people taking EBCLIS achieved its relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. EbGliss, LibriKizumab, LBKZ, a 250 milligram per two milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema.

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3:44First up, Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, published a two-hour interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday on X and his website. This was a historic and controversial conversation. It was the first time that Putin had given interview to a Western-based media figure since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. In the lead-up to the interview, Carlson explained that no Western media had bothered to interview Putin to hear his side of the story. But that was contradicted by many Western outlets who said they had reached out repeatedly and had been rejected by the Kremlin. Carlson's claim was also refuted by Russian officials themselves, who said they received many requests for interviews with Putin.

4:22but don't do them because they think the Western media is biased against Russia. In Carlson, they saw someone who is more sympathetic to Putin. And in the interview, he did little to challenge the leader's claims that the U.S. and its allies are to blame for his invasion of Ukraine. Not to mention, this interview comes during a major crackdown on the foreign press in Russia, which has jailed an American Wall Street Journal reporter, Evan Gershkovich, since last March on espionage charges, which the outlet says are bogus. yeah if we want to kind of zoom out to who the winner is of this if there is a winner in this scenario it's definitely x the platform because if you're trying to make video on x a thing tucker carlson is kind of your guy right now he has leaned fully into the platform he has embraced this as the mouthpiece for his new kind of independent uh media streak and so x has been trying to paint itself as this place for video this place that creators can monetize and make living.

5:19And Tucker Carlson in conducting interviews like this is a big win for X in that book. It is. I'm not sure this particular interview was the thing that will catapult him to, you know, in particular fame on this platform specifically, because, you know, we could barely get through it. The first 20 to 30 minutes was Putin going off on a Russian history lesson dating back to the ninth century. So I don't know if this was the most compelling interview that Carlson could have published and he got a lot of flack for doing it because of the crackdown on the foreign press in Russia. And he but he did bring up what was going on with this with Evan, who's been jailed since March.

5:57And Putin did say that that there was back channel talks going on and that there could possibly be a prisoner swap. Yeah, this was one of the things that on the paper, it seemed more exciting than it ended up actually being the the interview itself was not very compelling. It was very long. There was a lot of, I mean, Putin talked for 20 minutes straight at one point. So again, it wasn't super compelling, but drew a ton of interest to this platform. I mean, we have been seeing a lot of different experimentation with video going on that platform. Mr. Beast has kind of come out and pooh-poohed it a little bit saying, listen, I don't make even a quarter or barely any as much money on X as I do on YouTube.

6:37His videos have been being posted here. So we are seeing this gradual maturization of this platform in real time and seeing if they can figure out how to court these influencers. Yeah. Meanwhile, this comes as a pretty pivotal moment for Ukraine. I mean, there's a$60 billion aid package that's getting stalled up in Congress that would supply Ukraine with aid and weapons. And Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, also did probably the biggest shakeup since the war started by kind of sacking his biggest general. So there's a lot going on in the Ukraine, in the X world. And so we'll just see what happens of this interview.

7:15But I don't think it's going to leave a huge lasting impression. Yeah. Let's move on. Artificial intelligence and robocalls are the worst duo since Michael Bay in an unlimited production budget. But lucky for you, the Federal Communications Commission is on the case. Yesterday, they invoked a 1991 Telephone Consumer Protection Act to prohibit AI-generated unsolicited robocalls effective immediately. This is coming right on the heels of a rash of AI phone calls mimicking President Joe Biden's voice, trying to discourage people from voting in the New Hampshire primary last month. Feels like a no-brainer for the FCC to jump on this.

7:52Consumer protection law already bans telemarketers from using pre-recorded or artificial voices. and AI generated voices certainly fall into that category. Even though we got a lot of AI news yesterday, Google renamed its AI chatbot and added it to its suite of apps. Chip designer Arm is seeing their stock rip on good AI forecasts. But this FCC ruling hits the closest to home for most listeners because we've all had one of those annoying robocalls. Yeah, I think everyone's probably like, hey, why can't you ban all robocalls, not just AI generated ones? Some truly shocking robocall numbers. People get 4.3 billion robocalls just in January alone.

8:32And, you know, over the course of the year, you get 55 billion robocalls. Obviously, with AI and synthetic media, they become and around elections, they become even more dangerous. So the FCC is taking this step. It's not going to lead to the full elimination of these, but it just kind of expands the toolkit, the legal toolkit with which prosecutors can go after these people. and they found out who did the Biden one. It was this guy in Texas and a couple of his companies there. Yeah, you're never going to fully be able to stop bad actors, but you can disincentivize it. You can face fines,$23 ,000 per call, which if you're sending out a lot of these calls, that's a hefty fine.

9:10So they are trying to discourage it. Let's zoom out to some more of the AI stuff that happened yesterday. I want to talk about Arm, which remember, Arm isn't a chip maker. Arm is a chip designer. They license their design out to these firms to build chips. And obviously, as these chips have become more and more highly sought after during the AI boom, ARM has profited for this. It absolutely has been ripping the past few days. And remember, SoftBank owns 90 % of ARM. So this is a major win for SoftBank as well. Yeah, yesterday it was up 48%. It added$38 billion to its market cap. Last year, it definitely was one of the biggest IPOs that happened.

9:46Hasn't been doing well. But I think it's caught this wave of AI. And people are realizing that these AI chips are actually selling. The hype is actually turning into reality and actual dollars and cents. The final AI thing that happened yesterday that I want to touch on was that OpenAI decided to start adding watermarks to the metadata of images generated using their DALE E3 platform. This is kind of a movement that's happening in the industry right now. Now, a bunch of companies led by Adobe are kind of trying to push these C2PA certification standards that are meant to regulate AI. And adding watermarks to pictures generated by AI to show that they are AI generated feels like an absolute.

10:32That was a tongue twister right there. It also feels like a no brainer for a lot of these companies because, yes, you should be able to see at some point that this was generated by AI. Yeah, they said it's not a complete fix because actually when you take a screenshot of the image, that watermark goes away. And also when you upload it to social media, the watermark goes away. So there's a long way to go. But this was one of the top directives of the executive order issued by the Biden administration last year about ways to regulate AI. There had been a groundswell this week specifically. Meta, Google, OpenAI all added watermarks to their images.

11:10We'll see whether those are going to be effective or not. I think this is just the beginning of marking AI images. Going to our next story, Elon Musk, not a Disney adult. In fact, it seems he hates Disney with a passion. And this week, he significantly escalated a feud that had been simmering for months. Musk is funding a legal challenge by actor Gina Carano, who sued Disney and Lucasfilm on Tuesday for wrongful termination and discrimination. In 2021, Carano was booted from her role in The Mandalorian over a social media post where she compared being a Republican to being Jewish during the Holocaust, which came after a string of other conspiratorial posts that Disney said denigrated people based on their cultural and religious identities.

11:52Carano said that she was defamed and harassed for not conforming to Disney's political viewpoints, and she pointed out that her male colleagues, such as the actor Pedro Pascal, compared former President Trump to Hitler. Carano's attack on Disney is being enthusiastically cheered on by Musk, who yesterday told the public he would pay for the cases of not just Carano, but anyone who wants to sue Disney for discrimination. Yeah. A law professor and director at Fordham talked to the Wall Street Journal, and he said he couldn't recall another instance in which a CEO backed litigation against a company when their own business wasn't involved.

12:25So this is not a normal thing for an active CEO of another public company to support litigation against another company without, you're not even involved in this at all. This is a completely different thing. It's not something that Iger can just shrug off either because remember Elon has called very publicly for Iger to be fired and Iger is actively fighting off activist investors right now who want his head. So he's Elon's thrown in support behind Nelson Peltz, who is the activist shareholder trying to shake up Disney and looking for a board seat. So this is a big, big headache for Bob Iger. This goes back to last fall during the New York Times Dealbook Summit.

13:03Iger was talking about why Disney and a bunch of other advertisers had left X, Elon Musk's platform. Elon Musk gets up there. He tells advertisers infamously who left the platform like Disney, go F yourself. And then he singled out Bob Iger saying, hey, Bob, if you're here in the audience, I'm sorry. That's how I feel. So he singled out Bob Iger. Disney has been one of the leaders in leaving X. I think all of this bad blood relates back to that moment in the fall. Yeah. I mean, it's not out of left field either for Musk or X, because remember, he said last year that X would fund lawsuits for people who claim they were unfairly fired for their posts on social media.

13:43So again, this is kind of a theme developing here. Obviously not great for X as an advertising platform, though, because you burn bridges when you do stuff like this. Ad agencies don't want to have their clients sued by the platform they introduced you to. So, again, he is going a little scorched earth here, but he's got to beef with Disney. All right, before we jump into the next part of our show, we're going to take a quick break.

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15:08It is Friday, so let's dive into our stock of the week, dog of the week, where Neil and I break down one stock who is looking absolutely fire tonight, Pookie, and one stock who doesn't understand that reference. As always, we are just humble and stylish podcasters. Go buy an MBD hoodie, not financial advisors. So do not take any of this as financial advice. Neil, you nabbed me in the pre-show competition of who can dice a bell pepper faster. So you're up first. What is our stock of the week? Our stock of the week is an iconic fashion company that apparently has not gone out of style. ralph loren beat profit expectations for the 14th straight quarter sending shares up 17 to their highest level in nine years what's working ralph loren with its cashmere sweaters coats cocktail dresses seems to have been one of the main winners of that quiet luxury trend that became popular last year was also the rugby shirt of choice for chinese shoppers with sales in china growing more than 30 toby it has never been cooler to wear a sweater tied over your shoulders absolutely i I can't believe a lot of the themes that we were seeing that propelled Ralph Lauren to this great quarter, strong luxury sales in China, that's something that you're not seeing from a ton of brands.

16:19It kind of feels like a narrative violation in some words. The quiet luxury wave, like the succession kind of pushed it. It is interesting that Ralph Lauren is considered quiet luxury these days. That, to me, is almost in the luxury category. Do you think it's quiet enough? I don't know their suite of products enough. I know they have some with very loud logos, but I think a lot of their product suite is more understated and just classic luxury. 14th straight quarter of beating profit expectations. That is a company that is ripping right now. Another big theme of Ralph Lauren is they're going direct to consumer.

16:52They are pulling back out of department stores and selling on their website and in Ralph Lauren stores specifically. That's been a huge boon for them. So they're getting out of the wholesale business quite dramatically. Let's move on to our dog of the week. And it is poor New York Community Bank. Neil, this bank is going through it. It's down nearly 60 % over the past week. Moody's downgraded its credit rating to junk status on Tuesday. And everyone, rightfully so, is wondering, is it the next bank that it's going to go under? Now, never say never, but outside of its plunging stock, it looks like it's not in a fully sinking boat.

17:26Its executive chairman said that they had seen virtually no deposit outflow from our branches, which means for the time being, there isn't this big bank run. Remember, this was the bank that picked up the pieces of Signature Bank in the aftermath of it failing last year. Those assets and liabilities called NYCB's balance sheet to swell and put it in unfamiliar territory as a big bank. It also set aside$552 million for future loan losses to potentially cover for losses in the struggling commercial real estate sector as well. All in all, a no-good, dirty, rotten week for New York Community Bank.

18:00No, the fear here was that problems at New York Community Bank would spill over to not just other banks in the United States, but smaller lenders exposed to commercial real estate in Japan and Germany. And you saw some of those tremors happen. A German bank shares kind of plummeted as well. But it seems like the damage, you know, we've said this before. It's almost one year since Silicon Valley Bank happened. But you're not seeing the crazy run on the bank. You're not seeing the deposit outflows. New York Community Bank seems exposed to a particular one type of building, which is rent-regulated apartments in New York City that have just been crushed in value.

18:37So it seems like this is a New York Community Bank problem. It's not a wider banking sector problem. Janet Yellen appeared on the Hill yesterday and talked about what was going to go on in this commercial real estate. And she said, look, yeah, some banks are going to suffer. There's going to be some significant losses. But overall, the banking sector is well capitalized. So I don't see a huge, huge crisis developing. And then one final point on New York Community Bank, around 40 % of their total deposits are uninsured. Remember, uninsured depositors are customers with more than$250 ,000 in a single account.

19:08And while 40 % seems high, it's nothing close to what Signature Bank or Silicon Valley Bank was. So that bank run that happened to those banks, this bank appears to be a lot more stable because it's a lower amount of uninsured depositors. Cool. So very cool. Very cool. OK, moving on. Have you had a family dinner interrupted by a call from your boss and thought, I wish this were illegal? Well, in Australia, soon it will be. Australia's Senate passed a bill that would give workers the right to ignore calls and messages outside working hours without the fear of repercussion. It's expected to sail through the House of Representatives next before becoming the law of the land.

19:50The point, according to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, someone who is not being paid 24 hours a day shouldn't be penalized if they're not online and available 24 hours a day. In other words, you shouldn't have to work during hours you aren't getting paid for. Toby, do you support this? I support it. My first thought, and I don't know what this says about me, is that this is perfect for people kind of like me who like to ghost. And listen, I'm friends with a lot of people at Morning Brew and some of my bosses as well. and I sometimes don't want to go to the company happy hour or something like that.

20:20So if they text you about, hey, you want to hang out, grab a drink or something, you can say, listen, I got my, I'm exercising my right to disconnect. So that was my first thought. But then also this law is a little interesting to me because it places the burden on employees, not employers. They're saying that employees, you have the right to protect your rights, but it's not telling employers to not contact employees after hours. So that was a little bit of an interesting thing and potentially not as effective or achieving the thing that this law wants to achieve. But it is interesting in the context of this broader push for what's called the right to disconnect.

20:57Europe did this first. France, Germany, Italy, Belgium have all instituted laws over the past few years that make it illegal for your bosses to call you after work hours. Kenya also did it. And Australia is just riding this wave a little bit. I have no idea whether it's going to wind up on our shores. I heavily doubt it based on our workaholic culture. But yeah, overall, there's been this right to disconnect. It's been going all over the world as I think it's been fueled by the pandemic and remote work and flexible work as the lines between your work and your leisure time have become blurred. These laws want to protect the integrity of that.

21:36Also, Australia does seem like a great place to work. 20 days of paid annual leave, mandatory paid sick leave. They have a long service leave of six weeks that if you've remained at a single place for more than seven years, they say you got to take six weeks off, 18 weeks of paid maternity leave in a nationwide minimum wage of about$15 an hour. Plus the beach. I was going to say you're never too far from a beach. Yeah, exactly. All right. Super Bowl Sunday is so close. I can already taste the Buffalo wings and the tears of 49ers fans everywhere. But this is not just a big year for the teams and players involved.

22:09It's also a big day for Vegas and the millions of people gambling on the game. Remember, it's only in the last few years that the NFL has fully embraced gambling. As recently as 2017, Commissioner Roger Goodell insisted that, quote, we strongly oppose legalized sports gambling. Since then, 38 states have jumped on the sports betting train. The NFL has seven official gambling partners from DraftKings to Caesars, while another major partner, ESPN, has its own sports book now. 200 million adults are expected to tune into the game, and one out of every four of them are expected to place a wager on it.

22:46Insane numbers. It's quite the 180 for the league that it's now welcoming its gambling partners with open arms. I mean, you have to say this is the climax of a lot of different trends going on in sports right now. Gambling, Las Vegas being the sports capital of the world, hosting F1 and now hosting a Super Bowl that was almost unthinkable a few years ago. NBC did not air a promo of its show Las Vegas against Sunday Night Football out of fear of NFL retribution because they hated gambling so much. This has been a complete one idea, as you said. It's also the maturation of Las Vegas as a sports market.

23:23It's also the maturation of legal gambling. It's just a lot going on. Yeah, absolutely. NFL sports partners are paying around a billion to be part of the official partners to the NFL, but also by embracing sports gambling, the NFL has just unleashed this new profit stream. So you can see why they eventually, I don't know, maybe sold their soul. It is a little tough, though, because gambling addictions at an all-time high definitely spurred by how easy it is now to place a bet from their phones, affecting a lot of people, especially young men seem to be especially vulnerable. So, again, did they embrace gambling too much or should they have done it at all, which is funny because we're about to tell our prop bets for the game.

24:04Neil, ask me about the game. Let's do some prop bets. Yes, we're not wagering any money on this. This is all fun and games. Okay, let's go. Prop bets are the sort of unconventional bets you can place on the game. Some are not available on U.S. sports books, and some you have to go to some offshore books to find. But either way, let's do it. Heads or tails for the coin toss. You know the mantra, tails never fails, so I'm riding with tails. Tails actually never fails because over the 57 previous Super Bowls, Tails has come up at a rate of 53%. That's my analytics guy right there. All right. So moving on, Reba McIntyre is singing the Star Spangled Banner.