The App That’ll Be Bigger Than TikTok

0:00Okay, so last night I downloaded an app that blew my mind, and it's called Sora. And I don't say that casually. I'm not trying to be an AI thought leader who's like, holy crap, the new model is so unbelievable. They just changed the game. No, no, no. This app was weird. Weird in a way that I haven't like, hasn't settled yet. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel. Okay, so basically OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, have released a new app called Sora. And when you hear it, I think the first reaction is a big eye roll.

0:40It's a feed like TikTok, but hey, all the videos are made AI. You don't have to worry about like, is this a fake video? They're all fake videos, okay? And so the initial reaction from the smart guy community was like, literally like, oh good, pure AI slop. In fact, there were some great tweets about this that I just want to call out for humor and excellence. Chris Bakke had a great one. He goes, Sam Altman, open AI, we're going to cure brain cancer. Open AI today, we created brain cancer. Like the worst thing you could do is just a feed of AI, AI slop, basically. But when you go in, it's not AI slop.

1:22I think that's a thing that gets you cool points on the internet. I don't think it's what's going on here. And I think you're going to be on the wrong side of history if you try to resist this. And so you open up the app. The way it works is like chat GPT, you can type anything and it's going to create an AI video. But the very first thing it does, the camera's on. And this is not like any onboarding I've ever done in any other app. The camera's on and it says, say these three numbers out loud. And you're like, all right, 12, 74, 88. It's like, cool, stole your voice. Got it. Like, what? It's like, yeah, we can use AI to do your voice from those three numbers.

1:56Got it. And it's like, hey, just look to the right real quick. There's something over there. You look over to the right. It's like, got your face. All right, now we can put those two little actions. You sang three numbers. You're looking at the camera and then looking to the side. It now can recreate your face. I did mine last night in bed. I made one that said, I made a few actually. The first one was put me in a Ralph Lauren ad, which is hilarious. But the really shocking one, I said, make it look like I have a ponytail. And let me, all right, share that ponytail one. It's scary. I let it grow out over the last year.

2:32It feels completely different, but I kind of like it. It's easy enough to keep in shape just to rinse in some conditioner and let it do its thing. When I'm working or need it out of my face, I just pull it back like this. Simple. Feels good. So this app is unbelievable. I did one where I said, me ding-dong ditching somebody, used like the ring camera footage, and then I cartwheel away to hide. All right, here we go. Quick knock. And I'm out. Perfect.

3:00How does it know your height and stuff? It just inferred my entire body from my face, which is disappointing in its own way. That looks real. Yeah. And so, okay, so you could do it for yourself. Now, watch this one I just sent. You could also use other people if they let you. So Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, he's available to be used. So if you just tag, you're just like, me talking to Sam Altman or whatever. But in this case, somebody was like, they used Sam Altman and they were making fun of the idea of the AI slop. Have you seen this one?

3:42Are my piggies enjoying their slop?

3:48This is crazy. This is 100%, I think, better than TikTok, actually. I think it's better than TikTok. And this is V1. it's so good so there's a couple of kind of so i think this is going to be uh here's a couple of predictions i think this is going to be the most downloaded app in the history of the world um in a short period of time so i think it'll be like the fastest to get to 100 million downloads um because i think it'll happen in like like right now it's gated by you need an invite code but as soon as they open that gate or if they open that gate um in in short order this thing would get 100 million plus downloads very, very quickly.

4:27I just went to the app store last night and I just clicked download and it worked. I didn't know you had to have an invite. Yeah, same. Other people couldn't do that. They all needed, they would hit a wall that said you need an invite code. Because I was like, dude, have you seen this? I was texting people and they were like, I can't get in. I was like, I didn't have a code. I don't know why I got in and others didn't. I'm not sure. So that's my first prediction. Second prediction is, I think this opens the floodgates of something that Matt Mazzeo talked about on our podcast. So I did an episode with Matt about AI.

4:52Matt's totally like, he's so far down the rabbit hole. I'm like, Matt. And it's like, Matt, Matt, Matt. It's like echoing down the rabbit hole. And he was talking about AI and he goes, the crazy thing about AI is we are so early. And I don't mean in just in terms of how smart it's going to be. We're so early because every AI tool right now is single player. He's like, chat GPT is just a tool you use yourself. And same thing with the image creators. And same thing with almost all of the tools are still single player. But the internet has showed us that like all the most powerful apps, through multiplayer, the things you do with other people, whether it was Facebook and social networking, whether it was Uber connecting you with drivers or Airbnb connecting with other people, Slack where you chat with your teammates.

5:31Like it's crazy that none of the AI tools are really multiplayer today. And so he's like, I'm waiting for that. Like that's the next wave. That's the big thing. This was one of the first AI native things where I'm like, oh yeah, I'm going to be using this with other people. Like last night, me and my friends were basically like creating videos of each other, making each other laugh. it was like so easy just to do that back and forth and get it there you know you get a tag you got tagged somebody made a video of you it's like dude i have to go look at that i can't not look at that like so hey here somebody hold this baby i gotta look at this video somebody made of me right it's like one of the most like strong pulls and if if you remember one of the big growth levers for facebook was when they introduced friend uh photo tagging so they made it super easy where not just you could upload photos that's a solar player experience but when you could just click on somebody in the picture and write their name and then you would get an email whether you used Facebook or not that would say Sean just uploaded a photo and tagged you in it and you're like oh I got to go see what this picture is like that's out there for everybody to see that created this insane growth loop for for Facebook I think that's what's going to happen with this when you lived in China did you uh I forget what they call them but what are the apps that are like I think it's what's app is one of them whether like an everything app where we chat yeah super apps we chat so like with we chat it's it's hard to understand in america but they call it everything app because you could like you chat with your buddies you order groceries and you send money like what is that right you pay your electricity bill you can buy furniture you do anything you want on that app so um i downloaded this thing or i signed up for chat gpt pro or whatever the most expensive one is because they have this new thing called pulse have you used pulse dude no but i i love this idea i haven't used it can anybody just turn this on You have to pay money.

7:12So it's expensive. I think it's$100 or$200 a month. But basically, I tell it what I'm into or it gets to know me. And every day when I wake up now, I'm on chat all day anyway. Now in the morning, I pull up Pulse. And it's sort of like my news feed, except it's all tailored for me. So I'll tell it I'm interested. I'm reading this particular book that interests me. And I see relevant articles that it has written. So it's the journalist. and so it's like, you know, Apple's newsfeed, except it's also the journalists. Or like I'm into like Greek philosophy right now. And like I'm seeing like it's telling me about Greek philosophy tailored towards me.

7:52Or like YouTube, like, you know, we're trying to like learn more about YouTube. It's saying like, I'm like, I want to learn how to get more popular or be better at storytelling or whatever on YouTube. Like I want to like perfect that craft a bit more. It writes articles based off of the conversations that I've had with it. So when we do this podcast, will use ChatGPT to research and come up with story ideas. It's giving me daily articles based off that, which is insane. And so like - They should have just called this Ben Levy because this is what Ben Levy does. Ben gets to know you. He knows what your interests are, what your dreams are.

8:22He knows what you're working on right now. And every day he'll just text you useful, interesting things and celebrate your success and like help. Hey, here's a tweet I saw that's relevant to the thing you're talking about. Hey, here's an article that talks about how to do that thing you were talking about. Now Ben has to compete with AI because AI is doing that. And this is the first example of a super app. Now I'm starting to get it where I'm like, everything's going to be on here. And frankly, like I'm a free market guy. This is scary. This is like every quarter. I'm like, okay, now I am a little bit more fearful.

8:52What's going to happen in five years? Because how is this company not going to take over the world and be the biggest company on earth? The way that like I'm using it already. And why is that something you're fearful of? There is always a biggest company on earth. Why is it scary that it would be OpenAI? Because I think it's potentially going to be significantly larger than every company ever. And we'll know more about me. Like, well, it will be ubiquitous in more ways than it has ever been. You know, like NVIDIA is the third largest company in the world. I don't particularly interact with that every day.

9:21And I don't know if it knows anything that it could like ruin my life. But now OpenAI does. I just think that OpenAI is going to be like the combination of Facebook, Google, every news company ever, and then like five other companies combined into one. I want to talk about this for a second. This is pretty fascinating. So I sent this to my sister. I sent her one of these videos. She was like, oh, what? AI, Sean, what is this? And I'm like, oh, the makers of ChatGPT now have this app. You can make any video about anything using any one. And you just use your face. And then they just do it. And she's like, oh, my God, being your sister is so tiring.

9:54You have so many cool things that I now need to know of. And I was just getting settled in this couch of life here. and now I have to get up and go do things. And like, what is this? And I feel that. I actually feel that in a big way, right? You feel exhausted? Yeah, because like even when you talked about Pulse, it's like, oh, another game-changing thing I need to go learn, do, try. Oh my God, am I irrelevant now? Am I super powerful or irrelevant? I can't tell. So I think there's that angle, which is I think some people feel exhausted by the rate of change. and I don't know what to tell you.

10:32It's like saying I'm so, it's like on Survivor when they're like, I'm so cold. And it's like, well, you still got 30 more days out here and it's going to keep raining. Like, I don't know what you're going to do. You sleep every night in the rain. That's what happens. You're going to be drenched. You just summed it up perfectly. Am I now super powerful or am I irrelevant? I don't know which one. Yeah, because dude, I mean, looking at this thing, I'm like, oh, cool. So content creation, everybody can just do it easily. Interesting. You know, I was watching this interview with Steve Bartlett. And Steve, his podcast is called Diary of the CEO.

11:03And I think it's basically like the second biggest podcast in the world right now. It's pretty insane. He was talking and he was like, you know, he's sort of like, you're either the hunter or the hunted. It was like, you are either going to get disrupted or you're going to be the one doing the disrupting. He was talking about for his own business. He's like, yeah, so I have a team that's just working on AI podcasting. So they're making like AI Steve or AI Guest. And then we're creating all AI podcasts. And he's like, we are testing them with ad spend to see, do people watch the AI podcast as much as they watch the normal podcast?

11:40He goes, before it was like, no, it was really bad. He goes, now, as bad as it sounds, like the average watch time is the same on the AI podcast versus the human podcast. He's like, so that's going to be a thing. And I'm like, I don't even know if that's true. I don't know if I believe that. I don't know where that is. I don't know what he's exactly saying. just that idea of like, oh, so like, again, if I'm a content creator, maybe I'm just irrelevant at this stage. Like, who knows? Maybe, maybe I'll be completely obsolete or maybe I'm 10 times more powerful, right? There's two different perspectives.

12:10So I think there's an exhausting reaction to it. I think another reaction is sort of the dystopian of like, yo, this is all too powerful and you guys are getting way too powerful. When it took my face and my voice in three seconds. And now like, if I toggle the button on, you can make a video of me doing anything, saying anything. And if you use ChatGPT, you can just upload all of my writing ever and all of the transcripts of this podcast. And you could be like, hey, let me just have Sean as my coach. And I don't get paid for that. That's just like a thing that people can do. Like this is all like a little insane, right?

12:46And it's all quite powerful. And some people don't trust Sam Altman. So I think there's that dystopian of like, you know um where is the world going do i want this sort of all-powerful technology or this company to be all-powerful i think there's that fear too and i think there's a third reaction which is the one i'm trying to lean into which is just be curious go have fun go play wow what an amazing time to be alive that like you're seeing the birth of this thing and you get to ride these waves and like the whole world's going to change hopefully for the better and you can kind of impact that, that I think is the only useful reaction of the three.

13:21All right, guys, here's the thing about side hustles. Everyone wants one, but most people overthink about it and they never actually launch anything. But because of AI, you can go from idea to your first sale in only seven days. My old company, The Hustle, they just dropped an AI side hustle crash course. So basically what the hustle did was they looked at things that me and sean and hubspot cmo kit binder they look at stuff that we said and they broke it all down into simple bite-sized steps which means you're going to get a guide that gives you everything you need to launch a side hustle without any of the guesswork so you can get it right now you can scan the qr code or click the link in the description now back to the show dude what's going to happen in the next couple years is palantir is gonna we're all just gonna be in a palantir cage you know like we're just gonna be in a palantir cage and sam altman's gonna be throwing stuff at us uh like our slop that we have to eat the cage and this is just how it's going to be uh i i do think the haves and the have-nots it's just gonna separate even further so can i tell you some uh some of the more uh positive uplifting exciting versions of this.

14:37So I think learning and education is getting way better. So there's a few examples of like people who are making AI tutors that are incredible. We've talked about Alpha School. Google just released this thing called like, I forgot what it's called, like personalized learning, where you can basically tell it what you want to know. And then it just like develops this incredibly personalized curriculum for you and feeds you, that takes you down that path, which is really cool. And I think the idea of like, just like you have a therapist or we talked about a you know a therapist in your pocket a sponsor in your pocket you're also going to have Socrates in your pocket what's it called uh you know Google sucks at naming everything so they're like Google learning and development trees it's like I don't know what I don't know what it's called it's like something bad all these companies just they name their thing like maps like it's just like one it's like it's like this is Ava Ava your your cute friend who's all knowing.

15:27Hey, Ava. All you have to do is out in public just say, hey, Ava. I don't want to say, hey, Ava, out in public. Hey, Ava, how much is that house worth? That's what I'm going to be saying.

15:46Hey, Ava, does she have an OnlyFans? Thanks, Ava.

15:54while your glasses are on hey can you hold still for a second hey ava record hey can you turn this on i'm out of range hold on let me get closer to your face do you ever gawk like you ever see like a crime and i'm like uh like whenever i see a police officer doing something i just him um uh i'm just like sir let's go gawk like i'm just like like hey can you guys i just overestimate myself i'm like you guys need a hand with anything can you guys explain what's going on uh like what did he do what did he do i'm just like uh i'm just like uh shamelessly i'll just go up to someone and be like can you give me a play-by-play dude by the way that's one of the best soar prompts is uh use body cam footage to show me doing x and it's a cop body cam that's following you it's okay uh let me tell you a story and then i want to ask you a question i was with someone recently this past weekend and we were watching a baseball game and in between each inning he would like look on his phone and like start messing around and doing stuff and then during the game i would hear like ka-ching or like a like a buzzer a buzzer noise and i was like after four endings i was like what are you doing and he was like oh i'm betting like three dollars or five dollars between each inning on what's gonna happen over the next inning and i was like what what are you talking about he's like well i have this app where like it uses ai somehow and it like makes you it comes up with like different micro bets that you can bet throughout the game and i was like do you do you do this all the time like what's the situation he's like oh like literally every time i watch sports i do this and I said, how much do you watch sports?

17:38He's like, oh, every day. I was like, wait, is this a thing? And I went and like talked to like 10 other people in this room and I was like, tell me, do you do this? Do you do this? Do you do this? And almost every single person in the room, they, if it was a man, they did it. If it was a woman, they're like my brother or husband or boyfriend does it. Well, if you watch any sport now, like every ad is basically, like the sponsor of every podcast is, you know, FanDuel or DraftKings. And then if you watch games, like, you know, the leagues used to ban this. they didn't want gambling as a part of it but now they basically realize like that's our premium sponsor and so they're like heavily using it but it's funny because like there's been all these situations now i don't know if you've seen where players are caught there was probably like five notable things not five notable cases of this last year uh across like nba and nfl let's say and so like one guy for example um you know he owed a bunch of people money owed like a car dealer money and his jewelry guy money and whatever.

18:35And then they went back and they looked at like a pattern of his games and they're like, huh, like that's weird that he didn't shoot the ball there at the end of the game. Or like just last week, even this football player, they were the quarterback, they were winning. The quarterback wanted to run out the clock. So they're just trying to hold the ball. And so he took the snap and then to make sure that he used all of the clock, he just started running backwards, which you would never do normally if you wouldn't run backwards. But he's like, cool, I just need the seven seconds to expire. He ran all the way backwards into the end zone and took a safety, so a two-point swing for the other team, which didn't matter.

19:06They were up by seven anyways, but the line was six, and so it went from a win to a loss. Now, he wasn't cheating, but the gambler, these guys get death threats in their DMs every day now because they're like, dude, you messed up my parlay. You messed up my over-under. You piece of shit, blah, blah, blah. They get harassed, and the players don't really like it who are just trying to play the game because all of a sudden people take it uber, uber personally if they have a bad game or if they missed that shot or if they scored one extra time or didn't score one extra time when they could have swung the line, you know?

19:38By the way, there's another angle to this that's kind of fascinating in the sort of sports betting nerdery. So I don't know if you've seen lately, but there was this great tweet where it showed Robinhood stock going like this and DraftKings stock going the exact opposite way in the same timeframe. Sports betting, which is like a pretty regulated thing, like I can't do it out of California, for example, right? I think you can do it in Texas, but I can't do it there. I don't know what state, New Jersey. 38 states in America allow it. Yeah, and it started with like just New Jersey and then it's Michigan and then it's been expanding since then.

20:10But it's a pretty regulated thing. And, but all these other apps now do sports betting, but they call it prediction markets and prediction markets are legal. So Robinhood now has sports betting in its app, even though it's not a casino. You could just go in Robinhood right now and bet on sports. You could do it on Kalshi. You could do it on Polymarket. You could do it on all these prediction market sites. And their volume is like exploding because they now added basically like sports wagers because there's like a technical loophole. In sports betting, you're like, okay, here's the distinction.

20:45So sports betting, you're wagering directly on the outcome of the game, you know,$100 on the Warriors to win. So this is regulated under U.S. gambling laws by the state gaming commissions. Prediction markets are seen as a financial market where you're trading the future, like trading futures or stocks, not a bet. So you are buying and selling shares of an outcome. That's insane. I don't know why that's any different, but it's basically calls it like, it's almost like a commodity basically. So you're, so all these apps were able to add it as prediction markets rather than sports betting. And so now it's, now it's in more places than it was before.

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21:59All right, back to the pod. I think once you become like a famous podcaster like Scott Galloway or you and I, we have to take on the cause. Like we automatically get interested in saving young men, which is like all the rage right now, right? Like young men are getting left behind. But in all seriousness - Which is ironic because I spent like most of my 20s gambling on like riverboat casinos and like Indian reservations. But yeah, you guys shouldn't do it, even though I did. Well, you know, I don't like gambling at all. But I think that there's a there's and I don't particularly like outlawing stuff.

22:31But I think that there's a difference between like going to a casino and that being your night out. I still don't think it's great. But I think that it's different than what I've experienced in my short amount of time being around guys like betting$3 every game and having a DraftKings account manager calling you and being Like, hey, do you want a$500 credit to try this new bet? Like, you know, it's a little bit more isolated. And so it's strange to me to see this. I talked to this guy. Go to bircheshealth.com. So B-I-R-C-H-E-S. So bircheshealth.com. This company, they just raised$20 million from General Catalyst and Kevin Ryan from Alley Corp.

23:13I don't know this guy at all. And I've got no involvement or anything. I just thought it was cool. But it's a company that raised$20 million. And their whole thing is helping particularly young men get cured or get help from gambling addiction. And the reason I thought this was interesting is I brought this up about three years ago where I was like, I'm shocked that there's not more alternatives to Alcohol Anonymous. Because Alcohol Anonymous is a massive, it's not a business, but it's a massive organization. and uh one of the reasons now that i run a community and in real life community is that i realized that alcohol anonymous is all based around you and like 20 other alcoholics where you're sharing and like the connection is what matters and doing that online it doesn't really solve the problem the same way that doing it in real life and so that's one of the reasons why there hasn't been an alternative however with the rise of better help and like all these like telehealth psychiatrists or whatever which i've done and i've tried like it does actually help solve the problem.

24:06I don't know if it does it as well or not. I don't know the research behind there. But it definitely like helps it is a fine alternative to in real life therapy. And I saw that these guys had just raised money. I think he said, they're only two years old, they grew like five x in the last year. And I was reading the New York Times about this online betting, it said 60 % of guys between 18 and 22 do sports betting. And a large percentage of them are now problematic gamblers. I'm like, Oh, this company is going to take over the world. Like this is like now, Like I was seeking earlier, like years ago, for like an alcohol anonymous alternative as like an interesting business that could do good in the world.

24:40This, Birch's Health, and I'm sure there's competitors. It's a very interesting business that I think could take off. Someone on the pod brought this up a long time ago. They were talking about how like physical centers, basically they were like, oh, you could repurpose like, I forgot what it was. There's some retail concept that is just dying, like a blockbuster type of thing. And they were talking about how their prediction, their idea that they brought on the pod was to repurpose those for gambling addiction. They're like, oh, at that time, there wasn't even the prediction markets. It was just daily fantasy.

25:09And they were like, you know, there's going to be a big need for this. Can I tell you about an MFM listener who's doing something really cool with this? All right. So there's a guy who I think he listens to the pod. He DMed me, and he's got a very interesting app. So if you go to sunflowersober.com. Okay, that's cool. Check this out. So this guy, Kobe, created this app called Sunflower Sober. and it's an AI based version of what do they call like a sponsor? Yeah. So I think, I don't know exactly how AA works. I can tell you. I can tell you. I can tell you. Did you go? Yeah. Were you a member? I was a member of AA.