Google's AI Redo to Challenge ChatGPT & The Year of T-Swift

0:00Tonight on NBC, Jimmy Fallon and Bozma St John host the highly anticipated new competition show. I hired 10 creatives from all walks of life. They will be battling it out to see who can impress the world's biggest brands. This is a huge opportunity. This is the battle for the next big idea. This is not play play. We're spending millions of dollars. I'm so excited to embark on this adventure with all of you. Make the best idea win! On Brand with Jimmy Fallon. Series premiere tonight on NBC. Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. On today's pod, Google takes its biggest swipe yet for ChatGPT's crown.

0:39Then McDonald's just brought back a cult fan favorite menu item, and it ain't the McRib. It's Thursday, December 7th. Let's ride.

0:51Neil, happy Hanukkah. Thank you. Today is the first day, but I have a question for you. As a non-Jewish person learning about Hanukkah growing up as a kid, I was always so jealous because it's eight days of celebration compared to Christmas's measly one. So my question is, do you actually get eight presents growing up? It definitely depends on the family. I think younger kids probably get more presents. And as you get older, you don't get as many. I think many parents who are giving out all those presents when their kids were young probably thought, I wish I were a dink at this moment. But do you only get one present on Christmas?

1:23No, right? That's true. It's true. So it just depends. It's just the one-day aspect versus spread out over eight days. But I also want to talk about this because latkes are the most popular food around Hanukkah. And there's a raging debate about whether you eat it with applesauce or sour cream. And I know you have a lot of thoughts on this. My thoughts are they're both absolutely fantastic. I absolutely love latkes. I'm a sour cream guy, though. Me too. I love the contrast of those flavors right there. All right. Before we jump into the news, quick shout out to our friends over at Yahoo Finance.

1:54I don't know about you, Neil, but I only really feel like checking the markets when things are trending upwards. So given that we're coming off one of the best Novembers ever, I've been all up in Yahoo Finance recently. I'm the exact same way. Show me black. Show me green. Those colors pair much nicer with Yahoo's purple than red does. But it's not just the real-time market data that makes it fun to cruise Yahoo during bull runs. It's also the trusted news updates and suite of innovative tools that sets it apart. So whether you're like us and can only look at the market when it's up or you're a bear market kind of fellow, check out finance.yahoo.com today or download the Yahoo Finance mobile app to get it directly on your phone.

2:32I'm Christian McCaffrey, pro running back, and Abercrombie is an official fashion partner of the NFL. I'm not kidding when I say NFL by Abercrombie broke the Internet last year, and I think this season's lineup is even cooler. And so does my wife, who keeps stealing all my hoodies. Stay fit for the season and Abercrombie's newest arrivals. Shop NFL by Abercrombie in the app, online, and in store.

3:00It may be Sagittarius season, but at Google, Gemini is rising. Yesterday, Google revealed Gemini, its most advanced large language model yet, and its most significant effort to date to topple ChatGPT for the top spot on the AI leaderboard. When OpenAI released ChatGPT back in November, Google was caught flat-footed and has scrambled to come up with a worthy competitor. In March, it released its own chatbot called Bard, but that hasn't impressed neither the name nor its capabilities. Bard's user base is eight times smaller than ChatGPT's. Enter Gemini. Google says Gemini is able to power a better version of Bard, and it outperforms OpenAI's GPT-4 in certain areas.

3:39One of its coolest party tricks is that it's able to analyze both images and sounds, which is becoming only more important as people use chatbots for more things than just typing questions. The recent leadership turmoil at OpenAI has reminded us that the AI pecking order is far from settled, and Google appears to be using the opportunity to say, hey, remember us? We're Google. This isn't amateur hour. You've spent some time with the new Bard, Toby. Is this a worthy competitor to ChatGPT? I was playing around with it yesterday and this morning. It is so great because, remember, the big thing that Google has that OpenAI doesn't is that it can integrate AI into its broader suite of tools.

4:15You can look up flights using BARD. You can scan your email using BARD. That's always been Google's main selling point. But now let's remember how kind of embarrassed Google was when OpenAI came out. Google's called itself an AI-first company for over a decade, and all of a sudden OpenAI comes and eats its lunch. But now you can see that when Google released this, they made a point of comparing it specifically to GBT4. They ran 32 of those benchmarks, and they won 30 out of 32 of them. So they were clearly taking aim at the top spot and saying, hey, listen, not only are we going toe-to-toe with OpenAI now, our model's better than them in a lot of different ways.

4:54We've talked a lot about various terms. We've thrown out a lot of terms. Gemini, Bar, GBT4, Chap, GBT. Kind of want to take a second to explain the relationship between those. You have the large language models, these algorithms that are trained on a lot of data, and those are Gemini and GPT-4. And when those are productized, those are the engines that power products like BARD and ChatGPT, which are the chatbots. So I just want to make that clear when we throw around Gemini and BARD. But Gemini powers BARD and GPT-4 powers ChatGPT. Thank you for breaking that down, Neil. I also want to highlight that multi-modality that you spoke about in the intro.

5:32because whereas ChatGPT built its image and audio add-on separately, remember that's Dolly and then their audio version is called Whisper. Google included them all in this multi-sensory model and they eventually want to break into the physical world as well, adding things that like action and touch, which can translate into robotics type things. So again, Google is really, really going, trying, they're cramming a lot of things into one specific feature rather than spreading it out across multiple ones, which I actually think is smart from just a consumer branding perspective. Instead of having to remember that GPT is for text and Dolly is for images, it's just all barred.

6:11Meanwhile, Elon Musk is entering the chat here because as I said at the beginning, the leaderboard is far from solidified and Elon Musk thinks he can weasel into the AI race now. There is a report from Axios that said that Elon Musk is kind of lessening his focus on X or Twitter and putting more focus on XAI, which is his AI company that's under the broader ex-corporate umbrella. I'm not really sure how it works. But there was an SEC filing that came out this week that ex-AI is looking to raise$1 billion. And there are reports that it has actually raised$1 billion to fuel more chatbots that come at OpenAI, Microsoft, Google.

6:52So Elon Musk is not sitting out this AI revolution at all. I'm sure that since it's Elon Musk, he will be able to raise the billion dollars. But if I'm an investor, why are you choosing Elon's vision of AI over Google's, over OpenAI? It just seems like those are the ones that have been working on this for longer. Elon seems like he's playing catch-up at this point. So, I mean, never count him out. It's always Elon. But why give him a billion dollars when Google is obviously advancing this very advanced model? So, I don't know about the whole XAI thing. All right, Neil. After seven interminable, painful years, the McDonald's snack wrap is back, baby.

7:32With its chicken business growing to rival its burger business, McDonald's announced the decision to bring back the cult classic snack wrap yesterday in order to sate that growing demand. According to the company, chicken is a$25 billion business for them, and the new McCrispy wrap is here to meet all your chicken desires. It's a year of change and growth in general at McDonald's. Ahead of its investor day yesterday, mcdank set a goal of opening more than 8 800 locations and adding 100 million members to its loyalty program by 2027 they also unveiled plans for its first new restaurant concept in the u.s and it's more than 60 year history called cosmic it's a smaller drive-through only concept focusing mostly on customizable iced drinks so yes mcdonald's is bringing back the snack wrap introducing a starbucks competitor and looking to aggressively expand in the next few years What's gotten into McDonald's?

8:23I don't know. They're growing like a weed. There's a lot to tackle. They made so much news. I guess what I want to talk about first is the real estate footprint, because you're probably thinking to yourself, McDonald's needs more locations. This would be the fastest period of growth in its 60-year history. But they think that they're not going to rest until there's a McDonald's on every single block on Earth. The CEO said that their current real estate footprint reflects population demographics based on 20 and 30 years ago, and people have moved. People are growing in certain other countries. So it thinks that it needs to put more locations in certain areas, not only for getting people to come to the restaurants, but also for faster delivery as delivery becomes a bigger growth driver in the fast food business.

9:08So by 2027, McDonald's wants a global footprint of 50 ,000 locations. Just for comparison, Starbucks wants to reach 55 ,000 by 2030, up from its current 38 ,000. and i mentioned the comparison to starbucks because i want to talk about cosmic too super interesting no burgers no fries mainly just drinks and ice drinks at that like flavored lemonades turmeric spice lattes pear slushes churro frappes it's all those high sugary really complex drinks that starbucks has just absolutely dominated recently so i think mcdonald's took a step back and saying starbucks is eating our lunch on these drinks what can we do to kind of break drive-through only, no dining room, drink-focused concept called Cosmic.

9:52It's a bet for sure. If you live in the Chicago suburb, I think the first one is coming to you sometime this year. So get excited for that. The final thing I want to touch on is this burger revamp. They are redoing their burgers for the first time in many years because McDonald's burgers don't perform well on satisfaction tests. McDonald's burger came in 13th in burger quality, Only 28 % of respondents to a burger survey said they crave McDonald's burgers. So they're making them bigger. They're making more than 50 tweaks to their Big Macs and different burgers because it seems like they're not sort of doing that.

10:29They've kind of lost focus on their bread and butter. I think they got to go the Smashburger route. I mean, places like Smashburger, Five Guys, Shake Shack, they all have that Smashburger and it's just head and shoulders above everything else. I love those little crispy edges. But instead, it looks like McDonald's is like changing their bun. They're going Brio. So we'll see because I am still a McDonald's fan. So I hope that their new burgers are good. Okay. Welcome to Neil's numbers. The segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will make you feel like you're Jimmy Neutron in a world of sheens.

10:58But since it's my segment, I'm going to bend the rules like Beckham and run through four numbers since there were so many great factoids recently. For the first stat, we have to talk about Taylor Swift, who was named Times Person of the Year yesterday. Toby and I predicted it would be Sam Altman. But deep down, I think we knew it was always going to be Swift all along. And with her award, she becomes the first musician to be named Times Person of the Year. Here are some numbers behind Taylor's epic year. The Aeros tour grossed about$2.2 billion in North American ticket sales alone. And it's well on its way to becoming the highest grossing tour in history.

11:33Whenever she went to a city to perform this summer, it was like a Super Bowl was being staged there. Her 53 U.S. concerts this year added$4.3 billion to the country's GDP. When she went to Minneapolis, for example, hotel revenue was almost six million dollars that weekend, up from two point seven million the same weekend a year before. And a few weeks ago, Bloomberg calculated that Swift was a billionaire because not only is she a generational performer, she's made an astounding amount of savvy business moves along the way to capture as much value for herself as possible. The right choice, Toby.

12:06The right choice. I mean, the Fed even gave her a shout out for boosting the U.S. economy this summer because through the hotel bookings, through just like the hoopla she brings to any city she's in, the heiress to her absolutely dominated. Even NFL Sunday night football viewership got an 8 % boost at games that she attended to see her boyfriend, Travis Kelsey. So, again, it was the year of Taylor. I think we were wishfully thinking that it would be more business focus with Sam Altman. What's more business focus than this? She propped up the entire U.S. economy. We didn't even talk about the movie.

12:38I know. The movie, the Aerostore movie, was one of the top 20 biggest films of the year. And she did this creative partnership with AMC and sidestep the studio. So she recoups 57 % of all the sales of this movie. That's why she's a billionaire, Neil. She's savvy. All right. My second number concerns the hype around the trailer release for the next Grand Theft Auto, the first entry into the franchise in more than a decade. The trailer, which was leaked Monday night when it was supposed to come out Tuesday, earned 90 million views in 24 hours on YouTube, topping a Mr. V's video for the most viewed non-music video on the platform.

13:15It also led to a ridiculous spike in streams for a song featured in the trailer, Tom Petty's Love is a Long Road. Spotify said that streams of the song jumped 37 ,000 % week over week, thanks to the trailer. It says that it's seen soundtracks skyrocket before, but never like this. For comparison, Linda Ronstadt's Long, Long Time jumped 4 ,900 % when it was featured in HBO's The Last of Us. So my takeaway here is when GTA 6 is released next year, it's going to make$5 trillion. When you're going toe-to-toe with Mr. Beast numbers and you're in the 30 ,000 % of stream increases, you know people are excited for this game.

13:56the funniest thing about the trailer to me too is that people found specific scenes within the trailer that were referencing news stories from it's set in florida and so they were comparison real life news stories to some of the easter eggs within the trailer so people combed over every single inch of this i also wanted to compare the increase in streams to kate bush's running up that hill right that was made popular by uh stranger things this year that only soared 8 000 so this is a whole different level of hype that we're talking Also, this Tom Petty song was a deep cut. Deep cut. So I think the baseline was basically maybe two people listening to it for a week.

14:34Yeah, just for comparison, it's been streamed 11 million times now, post-hype cycle, which if you compare it to Free Falling, which is Tom Petty's most famous song, that has 600 million streams. So you're right. You've got to give some context here. And the thing that people paid attention to also on GTA 6 is that it's going to have the first female protagonist of the franchise, which is a big deal. I might play the game. I never played the original one, but I want to give it a go. All right, before we get into the next two numbers, we're going to take a quick halftime break. Does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void?

15:10But with LinkedIn ads, you can know you're reaching the right decision makers, a network of 130 million of them. In fact, you can even target buyers by job title, industry, company, seniority, skills. And did I say job title? See how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. Spend$250 on your first campaign and get a free$250 credit for the next one. Get started at linkedin.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from EBCLIS. After an initial dosing phase, about 4 in 10 people taking EBCLIS achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks.

15:47And 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. Also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. EbGliss can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to EbGliss. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe.

16:16Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EpGliss. Before starting EpGliss, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Searching for real relief? Ask your doctor about EpGliss and visit epgliss.lily.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. We are back and my third number is about the boom in women's sports, which is expected to hit a major milestone next year. Revenue from major women's sports is projected to cross$1 billion for the first time in 2024, according to a report from Deloitte.

16:50That is a big number on its own, but maybe the real story here is that would be a 300 % increase in revenue from the year before. And you can't help but sense a surge of momentum in women's sports. Demand for women's basketball Final Four tickets on StubHub was higher than it was for the men's Final Four for the first time. The WNBA more than doubled its audience for the finals. And who could forget 92 ,000 people turning out to watch Nebraska volleyball play in Memorial Stadium, the most people to ever watch a live women's sporting event. Toby, women's sports is one of the fastest growing sectors in the entire economy right now.

17:24And I think the big deal that you didn't actually mention yet was the NWSL's TV deal, which was 40 times larger than the pre-existing one. It's$240 million. And that, to me, is so important because TV money is the lifeblood. These broadcasting deals is the lifeblood that has propelled men's sports specifically to the level it is. So it's good to see deals like that. It bodes well for future growth. and then yeah the NBA WNBA got a dream matchup between the Aces in the Liberty dream matchup in the NCAA finals too between Iowa and LSU so I do think we're just seeing a lot of storylines converging the women's national team has a Netflix show about their run through the World Cup unfortunately that ended not how they wanted to but you just start to take in the broad expanse of what's happening women's sports and of course it seems like a billion dollar opportunity there There is a difference between popularity and cultural impact and translating to money, but it finally seems that investors' capital markets are starting to actually pour serious cash into women's sports.

18:23I mean, Mark Cuban just sold the Mavericks, and there's rumors it's because he thinks that the market's kind of topped for how much bigger could the NBA's TV deals do. So if you are a capital allocator, of course you look at women's sports because men's is a little oversaturated. Right. And just for comparison's sake, they're expecting women's sports revenue to hit$1 billion next year. Just the YouTube Sunday ticket deal alone for the NFL is worth$14 billion. There's room to run. There's room to run. OK, for my final number, Jerome Powell might need to turn his attention to New Haven because grade inflation at Yale is out of control.

19:00Almost 80 % of all grades given to undergrads at Yale were either A's or A-minuses last year, according to a report from an economics professor there. That is a sharp increase from the 67 % of A's and A-minuses that were handed out in 2011 and 73 % in 2019. So something clearly happened during the pandemic that caused grade inflation to soar. And this isn't just confined to Yale. At its arch rival Harvard, 79 % of all grades given to undergrads in the 2020-2021 year were also A's or A-minuses, up from 60 % a decade earlier. The problem with grade inflation is that you can't just hike interest rates to bring it down, and no school is going to be the first one to tackle the issue, because if Yale starts cracking down, then Harvard students will look better to employers and vice versa.

19:45So not a simple solution here, but when you give A's 80 % of the time, it kind of defeats the entire purpose of grades. I mean, I am probably the worst person to talk to about this, because I literally went to a school that for the majority of classes, you could take pass fail. Brown allows you to take a lot of the classes without grades. Some of the more mathematics and economics focused courses, you do have to take for a grade. And we see this breakdown even within the spectrum of everyone getting A's. Less than 65 % of grades in economics, math, and chemistry were A's or A's minuses. So those more STEM focused classes are still on the harder end of the spectrum, even though even those classes have been seeing some of that grade inflation well if you're giving well if you're giving 80 a's you might as well just move to a pass fail yeah at a certain point yeah what's the what's the difference so maybe brown's ahead of its time no grades i love it okay we're coming to the end of the year which means not only is the existential dread of what to get your siblings for christmas mounting but the end of the year lists and predictions are also coming out the latest to drop comes from the spice maker McCormick, who has named Tamarind as its 2024 flavor of the year.

20:57Tamarind got the nod because according to McCormick's head chef, it brings out all of what we saw for this year, which is a rise in growth of tangy and sour foods, as well as some over-the-top takes on childhood classics that she calls nostalgic foods. So if you want to seem trendy, get Tamarind involved in your cooking game. But Axios also released a food trend prediction list that tabs pickles, halloumi, and camel milk for breakout years. Some of the other trends, Axios notes, ultra-processed foods are on the out, more raw ingredients are in. Pickles are the new it ingredient again. And the it pasta shape is the Crest de Gallo, which has an extended ruffle resembling a rooster's crest.

21:35And if you're more into restaurants, West African, African, and Lebanese foods are on the upswing, according to Open Table CEO. And finally, camel milk, which is easier to digest than cow's milk, is also predicted to become a staple in households next year. Neil, which one of these trends stuck out to you? I would say nostalgia, which is an interesting term. But to me, I'm seeing a lot of those old foods come back, but put in a bougie twist. That's not how the people put it. But I would say it is bringing back something that used to be not necessarily the most fancy thing in the world and packaging it up all nice and selling it at an artisanal shop for $14, like pickles, like tinned fish, I think is another example of this nostalgia trend.

22:17I was looking at one of these restaurants in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, yesterday, and it said it was like a soda fountain pharmacy, but they spelled pharmacy instead of the PH. They put an F. And I was just like, oh, this is nostalgia at its best slash worst. Way too fancy. If I could buy one stock in one food slash drink this year. Camel milk. Not camel milk. It's espresso martinis. They're one of the fastest growing menu items of the last 12 months. every single person i see going out these days orders an espresso martini it's a crazy thing to order wait espresso martinis peaked in 2021 they peaked in no they were like a 90s fad and i think they're still on the up trend right now oh you're saying they were the drink of the summer in 2021 no doubt i i think espresso martini has peaked i would short it some other hot foods that are according to data central which is one of the data providers for axios shawarma shaved ice mustard seeds and spam also the national restaurant association predicts a rise in birria wagyu beef stuffed vegetables hot honey breakfast sandwiches and grilled slash cooked cheeses i'm buying these all seem trends that have been existing i don't think these are anyone's really going out on a limb here especially and i want to talk about this the life cycle of a food fad right now is so fast it's whatever tiktok wants yeah it is maybe these uh kind of data providers that are doing trend forecasts are behind the boat because tiktok moves way faster that's what i think so the tiktok's a much better trend prognosticator but you can't you don't know what's gonna pop off yeah that is true although can't you got we got to try camel milk i mean i've never seen camel milk either either of i i quizzed my friends the other day i'm like what animal's milk do you think is popping up it was 30 guesses before we got to camel milk so it's apparently it's better for your stomach though have you had tamarind i've had tamarind either You haven't had Tamar?

24:06I'm way behind. I've had it with a, it's very popular in Mexican candy. So if you go. Oh, I have had Tamar in that. Okay. It's good. I like it. It's got a little pang. Our last story of the day is also food themed. Big food show today. In a fantastic example that karma is alive and well, an Ohio woman who was convicted of assault for throwing her burrito bowl at a Chipotle worker must now work for two months at a fast food chain in order to reduce her jail time. Rosemary Hain is a 39 year old who went viral for screaming at a Chipotle employee. before hurling her food back at the woman's face, and a judge decided to get creative with her sentencing.

24:41He told Haynes she could cut off 60 days in jail if she agreed to work at least 20 hours per week at a fast food restaurant for two months. Neil, this is not a normal thing for a judge to do. No, I didn't know there was such latitude. Can a judge just be like, you have to come clean my house for a month instead of jail time? I didn't know that you have the power to do this, but he said in an interview, why should the city taxpayers pay for her and feed her for 90 days in jail if I can teach her a sense of empathy. So he's taking on this paternalistic figure. I really don't know whether you can do this or why judges haven't done something like this in the past, but it is kind of like a walk in their shoes kind of thing.

25:21Which other creative ways would you like to see judges pass down to reduce jail time? Okay, so I thought of a few examples here. So for some of our most notorious offenders, For SBF, instead of jail time, I think he should just have to go to a casino, find the most reckless gambler there, and just have to constantly fund that person until, like, just go to the ATM, take out hundreds of dollars, give it to this person to put on, like, one number in roulette until all of SBF's money is gone. And then there's another one for Billy McFarland who made Fyre Fest. I say we just dump him on a deserted island for 10 days, feed him just cold grilled cheese sandwiches.

26:00instead of jail time. He would probably thrive in that environment. I was thinking, and this isn't a crime, but for anyone who tweets something critical or derogatory at an athlete, they should then have to attempt the action they are criticizing. So if you tweet at a field goal kicker for missing a field goal, you have to go on national television and attempt a 25-yarder with people running at you. That would be good comedy right there. All right, so we still don't know where this person is going to work. I assume they have, I don't know how much of a choice they have, but where would you work?