The Pixel 10's AI screamed at us

24:27So I did not end up with amazing side by side photos. photos um i have a side-by-side photo in the review which is basically a boulder with some trash next to it wasn't the most scenic photo you've like everything else in your review lovely it's like a boulder and like a stick yeah yeah there's like some garbage just sort of laying around and i was like well this is what we've got um because it was the only thing i could get framed up reliably um and it very humbling experience the the nikon and i put the the pixel on the tripod too to give it a fair shot um yeah that as you would expect the optical zoom does better i was sort of surprised i thought the the pixel did okay like considering everything it was doing yeah the 100x like that one clearly looks optical and it's not it's not a great photo but it's significantly clearer the pixel photo is not bad though particularly when you compare it to the like pre-ai version and this is the thing that's been fascinating is like i think there are certain there seems to be certain subjects where this ai enhancement is great and i think if you didn't tell me it was ai i would be like cool they're just doing some fancy upscale and looks great and it's like uh you know particularly for photographs of buildings um architecture in general it seems to look great it just like you can't tell that uh this has been upscaled in any way i've done like i've looked really closely side by side and i'm not seeing any weird ai wackiness yeah the thing that trips it up as soon as there is a single letter of text it goes uh-oh i'm ai i have no freaking idea what i'm doing and so there will be this image that like you you the thing that's wonderful is like the pixel gives you the before image and the after image so you can see what's happening and so you'll have this this image that uh by by all accounts everything else it's it's just like perfectly cleaned up crisper sharper uh looks clearer and then there will just be these letters they're just like i don't know what language is it's just like it's just total garbage and i'm like what happened here like it's just weird because it's like when are you gonna do this right like when are you gonna zoom in a hundred times for what purpose are you zooming in a hundred times on a thing if it's i mean i know i did it on the shakespeare line to be for shits and giggles because i was just bored and so i went a hundred a hundred times zoom on my friend's eye and that was a nightmare i hope that didn't enhance that's not oh that is a nightmare That is her eye before the AI got involved.

27:16That's the AI after. Oh. And I think that's just actually a really fun art project because what is this? This is a nightmare. This is like a black pit of despair with some like streaks of color around the outside. That looks like an eyelash maybe. That's something. And, you know, sure. Like what are you trying to do? Are you trying to find some interloper's license plate? number. Is that why you're doing 100 Zoom? I mean, the idea is landscape kind of stuff, landmarks. You're on vacation. You're taking a picture of Statue of Liberty. It's kind of far away. So I get that. There are all kinds of implications of what is a photo?

28:00Did you really take a photo of the Statue of Liberty if AI just kind of filled in the gaps for you? The writing thing is funny because it does get really nervous and doesn't know what to do. I found that like really big lettering, it could do okay. But as soon as it was a little smaller in the image, it just kind of like, I don't know what that is. That's what kind of breaks my mind about it. Because like, again, if I think if I took a Statue of Liberty photo with this, like, it would appear to be my photo by all accounts. But as soon as there is text in it, I'm like, no, there's literally an AI rewriting this image.

28:40And that's very trippy. And I think last week I was like, man, maybe this is some new era of photography. Everything is getting upscaled. But it seems like they've actually been pretty precise here and pretty limiting in what it's applied to. It feels like it probably shouldn't be applied to text at this point in time, even though it would be cool to be able to zoom in and read some signs from far away. But it doesn't know what language is, so it's not going to happen. Yeah. And I didn't see anything too wacky or unexpected outside of the letters and signs. It gets a little confused by, I think, specular highlights.

29:16If there is bright sunlight on the surface of a pond and there's a bunch of garbage and duck feathers floating around in the pond. It didn't know what to do with those because they just look like points of white stuff. And you magnify that a hundred times. It just looks weirder and weirder. So it could kind of, it sort of took those things and went in a different direction. And you're like, no, this isn't it. But for the most part, it was pretty impressive closer to 30 times. And as long as you're not asking it to read English. This is going to give us, I think, material to debate the what is a photo question for years to come.

30:00I suspect this is also not going to be the end of AI and camera apps. Very interesting year for the Pixel. Not a lot of huge hardware changes, but the AI stuff is, I think, particularly interesting this year. Other big thing in phones happening this week, Apple announced the iPhone 17 event. It's happening September 9th. I think we're expecting that to be a pretty interesting one. But now that we've seen what Samsung has to offer this year, now the pixels are out, what do we need to see from Apple to kind of keep up the momentum? I think it's going to be another situation where they kind of tap dance around the AI, you know, thing that's not happening or happening.

30:43It seems like we're going to get some different hardware. Camera bump goes sideways or something like that. But I think that the elephant in the room is going to be AI again. Yeah, I don't know. In a weird way, it feels like these phones are merging into each other. Because if the camera bump goes sideways, like some of the leaked renders I've seen, I'm like, it just kind of looks like this. It's not a bad look. I've looked at these mock-ups and I'm like, it's a little funky. but it's not a bad look but then i'm just like they're they're they're merging into each other in a way that's like you know pixel comes out with a journal app this comes out with the sideways sidebar magsafe is on both of them which you know honestly that was great having magsafe on this was like really great but um i don't know it's it's weird it's bizarre and google coming out with such a strong opinion on AI and where it belongs in our devices and our lives, I'm just sort of like, ooh, well, they threw down the gauntlet.

31:46What's Apple going to do? A big design refresh is always a good way to, I would say, distract from any other things. Like, you can do nothing else and you're like, completely brand new design. Like, I'll take it. I feel like there's such, right. Oh yeah, this is the thing. You've got to find something to pair with the lovely liquid glass redesign. You know, I think different years are for different things. But also, like, it's been a minute since the iPhone has changed in a pretty significant way. The current design is getting a little stale. So, like, I don't hate it. The AI thing is really interesting because it's true.

32:22Apple set down, like, a year and a half ago. They're like, we're going to be a major player in this. Year and a half later, and we kind of know that they're skirting around it. Skirting around it still. I don't know. They could have some surprises in store. I don't know that it's going to happen. I think there's been ongoing rumors that they're going to get a Gemini partnership to go alongside the chat GPT thing. It's not clear if that's actually going to happen in time. We'll see. We'll see what the one more thing is, if there is one. It's not going to be Google. I mean, honestly, I was just like, orange?

32:58Orange phone? Maybe? Orange? Because orange is not my color. But I've yelled for years that I would like an iPhone Pro model to actually have a color and not like a hint of a color. So I saw the renders and I was like, listen, that color is not for me. I'm not an orange person, but I appreciate it. This is what Apple needs to do this year. Make colors happen. Make colors happen. Real colors. Drag that saturation slider way up, you guys. You know what? That is enough. I will be like, yay, colors. Apple loves a pastel. Drives me crazy. Okay, we got to take a break. Allison, thanks for joining us.

33:40I know you've got to run, do an interview for next week's Vergecast, which I'm very excited to hear. That's right. Tune in on Tuesday to hear more about that. Awesome. All right, we got to take a break. We're back. We're going to have Richard Lawler. We'll be talking about Dish, Elon Musk, and Intel.

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36:29All right, we're back. Richard Lawler is here. Hello. Thanks for joining us. It's been a big week for disasters of companies. And the U.S. government being involved with them. I'm not happy about any of this. The first thing we have to talk about, and I think we're all in a very sad, dark place that Neelai isn't here to commiserate with us about this one. I think, as you all know, Neelai, for a period of time this year, has run a very famous, well-respected, well-received segment internationally known as Brendan Carr is a dummy. This segment highlighted the ups and downs and mostly the downs of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.

37:18Now, this segment will not be returning today because it is copyright trademark, all rights reserved, Neil I. Patel Enterprises, and I just couldn't get a license to it. But it is here in spirit because I cannot emphasize the disaster, the absolute disaster of what has happened with DISH. like dish was already a disaster and and i i do not know how it could get worse and now it did it it got worse it's just it's just a complete fail like there's been nothing redeemable about dishes 5g network is that correct i'm sorry i'm thinking i'm trying to think of something and i'm just i'm coming up with nothing i got nothing i think uh mitchell this this piece that mitchell clark wrote nearly three years ago now, I went to the Genesis point of Dish's 5G network and all I got was disappointment.

38:12Just captures the entire experience, I think. And not only that, that was the high point of Dish's network. So, okay, what happened this week is that they no longer have a network. They just sold it. So here is what happened. In April, SpaceX, G.L.I. Musk owns, complains to the FCC that DISH isn't making use of some of their spectrum. Now, in fairness to SpaceX, they're right. DISH isn't doing anything. They should have. They should be doing something. They are on the hook to launch a nationwide wireless carrier. They didn't do it. So a few weeks after that, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr opened the investigation into DISH's 5G network.

39:01this causes huge problems for DISH because DISH is a disaster DISH by the way I don't even know how to get into this DISH sold itself back to Echo Star which was originally what DISH was called and then spun out DISH it doesn't matter the point is they're not in a great financial place so the Wall Street Journal reports in June that Echo Star is considering filing for bankruptcy because Brendan Carr's crusade against them is making it impossible for them to do anything. They said that Carr's threats have, quote, effectively frozen our ability to make decisions, which in fairness, it was frozen anyway.

39:40They weren't doing anything, but it would have been nice if they had done it. Let's go back to 2019. Donald Trump was president. This is important because Donald Trump was president again. And in 2019, T-Mobile wanted to buy Sprint. And at the time, the Department of Justice, again under Trump, was like, hey, it's a bad idea to reduce the number of major wireless carriers in this country. We had four, that would make three. And so they cut this deal. They cut a deal where T-Mobile says, fine, we will sell off Boost Mobile, Virgin Mobile, Sprint prepaid, and some Spectrum to DISH in order to buy Sprint.

40:27and DISH will agree to actually launch a mobile network. They'll agree to become a 5G carrier. And DISH even agrees to a timeline. They work with the FCC. And by June 2022, they had to cover 20 % of the US population with this 5G network. By June 2023, they had to cover 70 % of the population. They do it. They meet these requirements in some alleged capacity. and then they never actually launch a service. This is, Neil I has been on about Project Genesys, AKA Project Genesis. I don't know what this thing is. This website hasn't been touched in years. They haven't made a social media post since 2022.

41:09It's now the second Trump term, okay? The first Trump term, they were like, dish, you have to be a wireless carrier. It's important that there are four wireless carriers. Okay, that's a big gamble because who's going to trust DISH to do this? But they have a point. That would be good. It would be good if DISH launched a wireless network. Now it is 2025. Trump is president again. I know I keep reiterating that, but it's important because this is the same administration. And now Brendan Carr, the FCC chairman, is out here saying stuff like there isn't a, quote, magic number of carriers that the U.S.

41:50needs. He doesn't care. He's like four carriers. whatever. This all leads to this week when DISH just comes out and they're like, okay, okay, we just sold all our spectrum to AT &T. Like basically all of it. They sold all the good 5G spectrum to AT &T. And DISH is like, yeah, we're like kind of a carrier, but not really. It's three carriers again. We're just back to three carriers. Not only are we back to three carriers, but AT &T got this huge chunk of really good spectrum that's going to make them an even better carrier, which is going to make it even harder for other people to compete with them.

42:21Dish, everybody. Brendan Carr, everyone. The Trump administration. This is how that has gone. Did I miss anything? My brain hurts. I think you covered everything. In the middle of that, I went back and pulled up our visual history of the whole timeline that got to DirecTV and Dish coming together. There's even more mess when you consider the media side. Another Neil, I favorite. But yeah, that is about it, I think. Has Dish done literally anything other than split apart and reassemble its assets over and over again for 20 years? No. That's what that timeline shows, right? That's what it is. I don't understand what Dish is now.

43:06I don't understand what it ever was. They did some innovative DVR stuff for a while there. Yeah. You know, I'm realizing that I've heard of Dish, but I don't think I've ever known truly what Dish is. If you're still rocking a Dish DVR, VergeCastoftheVerge.com, we want to hear from you. How's that going for you? If you ever use Project Jenna 5, sis, please. I do not know what's happening. Brendan Carr's argument here is he's like, oh, the MVNOs are really big now. And so we don't need more major carriers that have their own networks because there's competition. This does not seem like a good argument to me.

43:50Right. The MVNOs, they operate on the carriers. The carriers can do whatever they want with them. Competition that is the same, that is someone in the same outfit wearing a different shirt is not really competition. That is like precisely it. This is such a disaster and no one cares. And I think for the FCC in particular, it's just a complete abdication of their role. And I think particularly like this is Carr's doing. He was just like, hey, we gave him a deadline. They didn't really exactly follow through on it. So just just quit. Right. Instead of being like, hey, you're on the hook for being a major wireless carrier, a thing that we regulate.

44:34Why don't you go do that? He was like, hey, get out of here. He just wanted to wash himself of the dishes, wash the dishes. Listen, I've been trying to think of that one for a solid two minutes. Listen, nobody wants to spend time with Dish. That's the lesson we've all learned. They're Echo Star now. There are Echo Star now, a fact that confuses me every time I see it. And you know what? A fact that won't matter because it will never show up on our cell phones. Yes. But I mean, as you mentioned, that really is the problem, because if you live in an area that isn't well covered by the cell towers, if the prices are too high for the kind of service that you want, if you have fewer real options, there's no one who has a reason to try and get your business.

45:28and oh and MVNO we've seen the MVNOs we have any number of them maybe some of you have signed up for Trump Mobile or tried to let us know if you get those phones but I don't look at any of those I've tried some of them I don't look at any of them as competitors for the major carriers they just aren't they aren't on the same level the thing that gets me is like what say one of them became like a you know a major player what leverage do they have right like what's going to stop the major carriers from being like, hey, pay us more money. Okay, now they have to raise their prices. Like now this all goes away.

46:01They're only working because it wasn't necessarily a huge thing. The carriers are giving them discounts. The carriers can make their service worse anytime they want. The carriers can charge them more anytime they want. And when you're on one of these more budget services, oftentimes you're dealing with things like the kind of prioritization or these caps or, you know, kind of fine details. And I think there should be more options and plans, But there needs to be more competition and you just don't have that if you don't have carriers with their own towers. I think you can look back like the decade leading up to T-Mobile buying Sprint.

46:32I think because of T-Mobile in particular, there was actually a lot of competition in the mobile carrier space. They were they were making noise. They had to get scrappy. They had to fight pretty hard to be on par with AT &T and Verizon. I mean, that's why I got on T-Mobile, because, you know, like they had that guy. I forget his name. John Ledger? Yes, him. He was in the pink shirt and he was like acting up. But at the same time, he was acting up all the time. But at the same time, I was like, oh, you know, that's more affordable. I'm poor. I can do T-Mobile. And the service is actually pretty good.

47:08But I went down to my spouse's ancestral homeland of Tyaskin, Maryland recently. You know, and everyone there has Verizon because it's the only network that works. and we're going to put works in scare quotes because on his Pop-Pops farm, there's only one tree where you can get one bar of service. So to make a phone call before Wi-Fi, you always had to go to the one tree on the nut farm to make a phone call. So to your point, maybe Dish could have helped him out there if he had lived up to the promises because that tree is not close to the farmhouse. It's quite far to have to get the one bar of Verizon.

47:52But maybe now the government has more reason to give SpaceX a lot of money for Starlink. This is the weirdest part. They didn't, the thing that instigated all of this, SpaceX complaining, Echo Star slash Dish slash whatever it's called now still owns the spectrum that SpaceX wants. They're not, they're not using it. They're not doing anything with it. As far as I know, or as far as SpaceX claims. So in the end, everybody loses. Yay. That's just the story of America in 2025. Okay, it's now time to talk about a slightly more successful company at times. And that is Intel. Which if you average it out over the years.

48:37You know, I think slightly is a little harsh. You know, people know what Intel is and what Intel does. Those stickers went a really long way. They really, you know, bum, bum, bum, bum. That's true. What is the current name of Intel's processor series? Core what? Pentium. Ten Lake Moon something. I don't do laptops no more. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, if you average it out, it's right. Intel has been a bit of a rough streak, which has led up to, this happened on last Friday. So it was after we recorded the last Verge cast. intel gave a 10 stake of the company to the u.s government in exchange for 8.9 billion dollars this is weird for a lot of reasons including the u.s government does not typically take ownership stakes in private companies um but i want to talk about why this is a just bizarre and questionable We'll deal for Intel for a minute.

49:39The first being that they were already getting this money. This money was already awarded to them, primarily from the CHIPS Act. What happened is that Trump was like, what if we just don't get it to them? Now, I don't know if that's legal. Might not be. The CHIPS Act, I will remind everyone, passed the Senate and the House on a bipartisan basis. Everybody was like, hey, it would be a good idea to prop up the U.S. semiconductor industry. That's an important industry. We realized that during COVID. It has a lot of national security implications. Let's make sure that's doing well. Intel, they're not doing great.

50:18Let's give them some cash. Trump didn't like it because it was associated with Biden. And so he's like, I'm just going to I'm not going to give him the cash. And so he so this is the timeline of what happens. Early August, Trump demands that Intel's new CEO, Lipu Tan, resign. He's just like, I don't like this guy. He has some ties to China. Get him out of here. Tan goes and visits the White House, as CEOs do these days. And suddenly, they're good pals. And I assume that has to do something with the fact that, you know, a week or so later, he gives 10 % of the company to the United States. in exchange for this money that the United States was already paying them.

51:05What a deal. What a deal. Art of the deal. This is bizarre on all counts. Number one, Tan in some ways gave away 10 % of Intel to protect his job, which I think is a questionable decision. Number two, what is really happening here is that Intel is this foundry business. Foundry business is not doing great, right? It's not making the best chips. Companies don't want to make a deal with Intel's foundry business because they don't even know if Intel's foundry business is going to be there long enough to keep making the chips. And so the U.S. government is now getting involved. And I think the reason that Intel wants to do this is that they're like, hey, Trump, maybe I'll just pressure Apple to make some chips with us.

51:55Everyone's leaving Intel. and they're looking to Trump to put some pressure on them to get customers for Intel. There's some real galaxy brain math happening here. I feel like my brain is leaving my skull, yeeting itself to Jupiter and doing some mental gymnastics to try and see the logic behind this. And it's finding none. It's finding none. The logic, as far as I can tell, is like crony capitalism, right? The logic here is the U.S. government will get involved on Intel's behalf, and Trump is going to put pressure on people, and the folks he likes are going to win, the folks he doesn't like are going to lose.

52:41And right now, at this moment, he likes Intel, and he's going to try to get some people to be Intel's customers. And hopefully Intel can make some good chips for them, but we don't know if they can. Which has been basically Intel's whole problem for years now, that they've been supposed to be making better chips and sort of haven't. And I guess we'll see what happens with these next generation of chips that they're building. But they missed out on really the AI boom. They had TSMC has become massive on their watch. They missed out on this technology that they developed. is that just purely from a tech perspective, I don't see how this solves the problem of Intel messing up, which has been the story of their last decade or so.

53:24From a business perspective, I don't know what's going on. And from a political perspective, it's scary. Is there another part that I forgot? They also missed out on the mobile boom, which is like if you talk to Qualcomm for any second, because Qualcomm has always had a chip on their shoulder about how everyone knows about Intel and not them, even though they're in every Android phone and they're all over the place. Because you literally talk to Qualcomm for five seconds and they're like, we're in mobile, we're in everything. We're Qualcomm Snapdragon, yay. And nobody knows, outside of tech nerddom, no one knows what Qualcomm is, but everyone knows Intel.

54:04But yeah, they missed the mobile train. They missed the AI boom. and now they're like i don't know intel's just sad man well and to richard's point like this doesn't solve intel's the you know recent inability to make the correct business decisions yeah like the tech isn't there the business digits have been off um right like forcing people to be intel's customers it keeps them afloat which you know i i would like intel to survive. I would like its foundry business to succeed. I think that is a good thing for the industry. But they need to make good products, right? Fundamental rule of business is make a good product.

54:45So yeah, they kind of need to do that. But I don't know, man. Their marketing team is still great. That might be the only team at Intel that's still good. But they've been losing ground to AMD and now Windows on ARM is really good suddenly, apparently. Qualcomm and everyone is coming for them there. NVIDIA is reportedly making a chip. There's a lot of crossover and a lot of overlap, I think, in these companies and what they're doing. And I still don't see the position for Intel to get themselves into to make things better. There's also a bizarre national security component to this. Part of this is great.

55:22We want to make sure, you know, the United States wants to make sure that there are foundries in the U.S. that can make good chips, that the supply chain is here. This makes sense. On the other hand, TSMC was a really valuable national security contribution to Taiwan, right? And if the U.S. is trying to remove reliance on TSMC, then that's bad news for TSMC. It's bad news for Taiwan, which is bad news for the tech industry in general because, again, most of the chips are coming from TSMC. TSMC has the best stuff. And so this just gets messy on basically every level. Trump sees what he's doing as just getting 10 % of this company.

56:11But if you continue to follow out the next steps of this, what has to happen in order for this to make any sense, it is not good for anybody in the industry except perhaps Intel. And maybe not even Intel. So I guess the I don't specifically know what the counter argument is, but I guess if you if you take a look, how different is this from something like the auto bailout? Like in the Treasury, like kind of taking over GM in these bankruptcies. I feel like that was an emergency from outside. This is an emergency that Trump created. And so it's not the same. No, I think that makes sense. And then I correct me if I'm wrong.

56:49I don't the U.S. didn't take a stake in those companies. Right. Like that was they were giving them money. Right. For a time, I believe the Treasury owned GM. Oh, interesting. Okay. Yeah. But part of that was just that the U.S. bailed out the auto industry just because of the jobs and the industry, the local, how much it would devastate the local economy. This kind of just devastates Intel. And yes, there are jobs that are associated with Intel and whatnot. It's just I feel like there were bigger implications with, I don't know, the entire U.S. auto industry going versus one semiconductor company that happens to be American.

57:31If their problem had started with the president of the United States claiming that their CEO might be an agent for a foreign government, we'd be discussing it very differently. That too. Yeah, I think the auto bailout also goes to show the government has a lot of levers it can pull from the outside without going so far as taking an ownership stake in a company indefinitely. And I think that is where it gets concerning, right? Intel has the backing of the US government. That just necessarily gives Intel a very fascinating position and advantage over everyone else in the industry. and it puts pressures on everybody else in the industry, whether they like it or not.

58:11Okay, one more thing we have to talk about today. A few weeks ago, we maybe made fun of Elon Musk a little bit. Did we call it a shenanigan? We did. I think we said this was a shenanigan. Elon threatened to sue Apple over not featuring Grok in the App Store. And I think we all thought it was a joke. Because Elon threatens lawsuits a lot, does not always file them. he did in fact file a lawsuit he i don't know whether to say yay you know like oh you you finally followed through on a thing yay for you or to be like oh my god you followed through on this thing not yay for me it's not a great lawsuit but he did do it so xai suing open ai and apple and they're alleging anti-competitive conduct over a bunch of different issues that they have They have beef with OpenAI getting an exclusive deal to put JatchyBT into Siri.

59:12They claim that Apple is, quote, manipulating App Store rankings. And they say that Apple is delaying App Store reviews for Grok. Now, I think we can just say off the bat, famously, all the App Store reviews take forever. So that's not unique. But the premise here is basically this deal is unfair because it's not open to everybody. And we're getting screwed in the app store. And they undercut that argument right away because in this lawsuit, they highlight the fact that X is ranked number one as the free app for news. And Grok is ranked number two as the free apps for productivity. So in this lawsuit, they're like, hey, we have these great apps.

59:58They're at the top of the app store, but they're also getting screwed by the app store algorithm. and it's like, what is this case? What case are you making here? They're just mad that it's not in the must-have apps section. Don't argue against yourself. You're doing great. You just said you're doing great. Your argument is we're doing great and so we should also get featured in this other area. Having tested Annie, Grok's not a must-have app, I must say. And Elon has been obsessed with App Store rankings. As someone who has notifications on for his tweets, he was always tweeting about X or XAI or Grok or whatever being number one in the app store in some country that you forgot existed.

1:00:42he gets his feet of data and must share the news with everyone all the time. Richard that is extremely unhealthy I have to tell you It's the healthiest I know that I have not gone into active psychosis Because I still can't understand what Elon is saying And I get a reminder of this every 10 minutes or so It's great It really is It's really that often It's horrible You are right though Just the other day he retweeted somebody Which again cuts against their argument He's like we're featured in the must have One of those editorial sections They said they were featured in the United Arab Emirates in one of those editorial sections.

1:01:20And it's like, okay, so they are getting featured. I do not know that they have much of a case here. This is just like not a good thing to argue when at the same time you're saying that actually we're doing quite well. The other part of this case, I think, is actually very interesting. And they're saying, hey, we actually can't compete with ChatGPT because they're getting so much data and so many queries via Siri, which is this really interesting thing where they're kind of acknowledging, oh, we have to farm how everyone uses this thing or we can't improve it. Which is one of those things I think we all know, but it's like another thing to see it written down.

1:02:04I mean, if you want Grok baked into Siri, maybe don't make sex bots. Like, I don't know how else to say that part. But I don't want to talk to Siri and have bad Rudy, the little angry panda, say that I'm lame. Because if you insult that panda, all he says is like, I'm not lame. You're lame. And that's just, I don't know what he expects when he acts out the way that he does. And Apple has not been, like, hiding how they are this entire time and what they want out of the apps in their app store. They haven't hidden that. Well, and it's like, right, you have the chatbot that, number one, recently went on a tear and called itself MegaHitler for no clear reason.

1:02:57that you have now baked several like pre-made bots into it they've updated annie the the you know physical your digital person incarnation of grok um with some new outfits so she can uh so much like strip down into like a bathing suit or something now which is just very embarrassing um but again it's like apple is like pretty you know for better or worse they're fairly like prudish with the app store right they do that thing they always say that they're family friendly that any is not family friendly like it's just not right it's i think there's like again there's another world where i i think if this was a random small company like they're they're getting kicked out of the app store like i think apple has plenty of reasons to not feature this app um and elon is still asking for more.

1:03:50And I get it. Like, I understand why you'd be pissed about not getting a special deal. But actually, one thing that's really interesting, Tom Warren on our team, he writes the Notepad newsletter, reports on Microsoft. He reported, I think it was this month, that Microsoft has been testing, you know, the latest version of Grok, and they don't want to deploy it to Azure because they're worried about the safety of it, right? Like, this is not just an Apple thing. Like, this is Elon's product. It is not ready for this. It is not a thing other companies want to be associated with. You know, I don't think any of us are surprised when Elon has a tantrum, but this is the equivalent of him having a tantrum, personally.

1:04:36Like, I'm not the best in every single thing, so I'm going to sue you for not letting me be the best in every single thing. And it's not my fault. I have not done anything in this product that makes it not the best. You clearly, you know, it's just like very juvenile behavior and external blaming of, I think, if he were to listen, he would hear some very fair feedback and criticism for all of his products. And despite that, it's still, like you said, it's still ranked very highly in various sections, just not the section he wants to be the highest in. And that's just... Richard, have you spent any quality time chatting with Grok?

1:05:18I have not. That's where you draw the line. You will get a constant feed of Elon, but you won't talk... We've got Grok at home, okay? He's already getting Elon feed. He don't need the Grok feed on top of that. That's real. But I think the thing about this lawsuit that struck me is that we're about as receptive of an audience as there is, I think, to criticisms of the App Store and the way Apple maintains it. We've been talking about this for years, anti-competitive, monopolistic practices, the decisions that they make, the way that they do that. Other companies have made these arguments before.

1:05:57but as as v put it there are reasons why grok might not be featured there they're really good reasons and i think that they can make those arguments but it's pretty consistent with elon's overall uh approach that if he's not if he's not very visibly winning and celebrated for winning then it's someone else's fault that he's losing and he's going to make it everyone's problem that's really true and i do think there is some degree to which like okay apple didn't pander to him and so okay he's just gonna try to fight them a little bit i naturally the lawsuit is filed in texas where he can potentially find a friendlier judge so we'll see what happens maybe he can you know cause some problems for a little bit i'm not convinced this is a good case oh one one last very quick thing.

1:06:49Elon is also suing OpenAI over the fact that they're trying to become a public company, or at least they were. In the meantime, XAI drops its status as a public benefit corporation. This is, I don't know. I don't know what's happening over there. Other than that, Elon is obviously only looking at it for himself and using lawsuits as a way to create problems for other companies. And with that, we've got to take a break. When we get back, the thunder round. Stay tuned.

1:07:47No generic answers, no frustration. Visit sierra.ai to learn more. Every great company's story is defined by moments when the founders make bold decisions. These are high-stakes moments that risk the business, but can lead to greatness. I'm Murilov Boota, managing partner of Sequoia Capital and the host of Crucible Moments. We're returning for a brand new season. Join us as leaders from Stripe, Zipline, Palo Alto Networks, Klarna, Supercell, and more. Share what it's actually like to navigate the make or break decisions. Crucible Moments is back on October 23rd. Until then, catch up on seasons one and two wherever you find your podcasts.

1:08:40Morning, Zoe. Jeff Bridges. Why are you still living above our garage? I want to be in a T-Mobile commercial like you. Teach me, Sildana. I couldn't possibly. At T-Mobile, get the new iPhone 17 Pro on them. It's designed to be the most powerful iPhone yet and has the ultimate pro camera system. Impressive. Let me try. At T-Mobile, you can save up to 20 % versus the other big guys. You heard them. T-Mobile is the best place to get the new iPhone 17 Pro on us with eligible trade-in in any condition. Check them out to see how much you can save versus the other big guys at T-Mobile.com slash switch.

1:09:13All right, we're back. Time for the Thunder Round. Richard, you don't know this yet. Nilay obviously is not around, and so I have gone on a power trip. You know how Nilay feels with the lightning round. He thinks this is a fantastic part of the show. I have beef with it because there's a bunch of stories we want to get to. We never get to all the stories. And so I have destroyed the lightning round. It's gone. It's done. It's never coming back until maybe Nilay gets back. We'll find out. in place. We have declared this the thunder round. This is the thunder round. Instead of the lightning round, we're going to do five stories, five minutes each.

1:09:51I've given Eric Gomez, our producer, the power of thunder. If we go too long, we're going to hear a little rolling thunder playing us off. And if we need to move on, thunder will crash, strike, there will be thunder. There us it is time to move on all right let's get into it v what have you got for us so uh my new title at the verge.com is senior k-pop demon hunters reporter uh congratulations thank you i love you know a long time coming i was a senior reviewer then i was a senior cursed tech reviewer and now i'm senior k-pop demon hunters reporter and that's because k-pop demon hunters is officially the most ever watched movie on Netflix.

1:10:35Most popular movie of all time. And people actually like it. It's a great movie. This is the crazy, I cannot think of that for - It's sold out in real theaters. Real theaters. This is - This is going to the Oscars. Like, mark my words. I think I read that they are actually going to be nominating the soundtrack for the Oscars. And as they should, it is a banger of a soundtrack. And I'm not at all biased as a K-pop stan, but it is a banger of a soundtrack. And like the movie is actually, it's a spreezy 90 minutes. It's very good. This is legitimately the first Netflix movie that I've heard people talk about after the movie came out.

1:11:23And continue to talk about it. It's always, right, they'll create buzz in the lead up to a movie. The movie comes out, you don't hear a thing. This is the only one that I didn't hear anything about this before it came out and nonstop for the past like two months. There was like almost no promotion there. I think there was one trailer for it. They did not promote it at all. It came out. All of a sudden, all my TikTok things were, and I actually didn't want to watch it at first because I like K-pop. And because I'm Korean, I was like, oh, K-pop demon hunters? Are you kidding me? Pandering. And then just the feed was way too much.

1:12:01And then all of the people were like, oh, my God, it's based on this band. And I was like, all right, all right, let me go watch this movie. And then I watched it three times. That's one of my least favorite things, when everybody is right. It's just a good time. The singers who voice the characters, they're actual K-pop performers. So EJ, they're not. One of them is Audrey Nuna, and she's kind of a rapper. And then the other one is Rae Ami. But the main one, EJ, she is a bona fide. She's what you could call her the Benny Blanco of Korea. Because, you know, Benny Blanco has written all these. How is she on a podcast?

1:12:44She speaks English, so she's probably very good. That's okay. But basically she's written all of these major bangers for these huge bangers. Oh, wild. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hence the Benny Blanco thing. Like, I found out that she wrote this song Psycho by Red Velvet, and I went, what? That's on all my playlists. Holy crap, girl. And she was a trainee at one of the major K-pop studios, SM, known for putting out a lot of insanely talented vocalists, which she obviously is. And she wrote all of the songs for the movie and performed in them. And so it has that very authentic, genuine thing. But one of the most insane parts of K-pop Demon Hunter's insane success to me is that Sony, which made the thing, they basically gave it to Netflix because they didn't think it was going to do numbers.

1:13:36They just had no idea what they had on their hands. This movie took nine years to make is the other thing. Oh, my gosh. It's like a passion project. They put their whole heart and soul into like representing Korea, representing like this whole culture, which is why I think it's resonated a lot with K-pop fans because there's just so much love put into every single part of it. And it's authentic. And but it's still just like a good story. And like the visuals are very like unique and fun and kind of not it's not Pixar. Right. It kind of has the same vibe as the Spider-Man animated movies. The animation looks beautiful.

1:14:15It's really fun. And it's got a distinctive style. And one of the things I see people saying online that I agree with is that for once, it's original. It's like an original story. It's original characters. It's not a remake of a remake of a remake. It's just something new that's out there. And it's going to be done to death in the same view as Squid Games. But yeah, just the fact that Sony needs a hit and they're like, I don't know what to do with this here. Netflix, you take it. And then Netflix is like. This explains a lot. I want to ask something really quick of both of you. Can you both try to name one other movie in Netflix's top 10 of their original films?

1:14:54One other movie that Netflix has made that was successful? Bird Box? Okay, okay. That's one of them. That's one of them. That's number six. Richard, do you have any Netflix original movies? Only because I saw the list do I know Red Notice The movie that no one admits to of having watched I've never heard of it I constantly am like It's like Grey Notice Because they have Grey Man and Red Notice And I can't remember I'm like, that's all I can remember As far as Netflix originals go But this is it This is like Nobody talks about them the only thing that matters is k-pop demon hunters but at least they've got a hit all right richard what have you got for us uh pretty big controversy going on in the youtube world surprisingly never happens several creators are upset because they they noticed and they've started talking about how some of their youtube shorts videos look different ret show i think uh had made a video about this this is reported on the bbc and in other places and youtube responded um basically what they noticed, particularly comparing the YouTube Shorts version, I think, to Instagram Reels, is that the versions of their videos that were on YouTube had these extra details and looked really absurdly sharp.

1:16:13And they felt like it looked like an AI deepfake, is how they kind of felt like their videos looked. And YouTube's Rene Ritchie, he responded. He said that it was an experiment that YouTube was running. As far as I can tell, they hadn't told anyone about this beforehand and that they are using the kind of machine learning you've experienced with computational photography on smartphones, not generative AI. This is kind of the push and pull that's going back and forth between people saying it's AI or not AI. So if you've taken a look at the evidence, what do you guys think? AI or just upscaling?

1:16:47It looks like nasty upscaling to me. Like, this is just a failure on YouTube's part in general. It looks, you know what they look like? They looked like ripped videos on TikTok that somebody has, like, put an ad on top of. Like, I've seen this look, and it is when somebody is boosting your video and trying to hide that they have, like, downloaded it off something else. I had to go onto a Zoom call earlier today on the AI phone, and I don't know if it was Zoom or something else, but I looked at what I looked like in the camera. I'm like, oh, no, that's too much like me. Like, you know, it's just sharpened to the point where I was like, it's uncanny.

1:17:29It doesn't look right. And so I turned my camera off. I do think there's this like very funny, weird thing happening where people are like, I don't like it. It must be AI. And and the thing is, this is actually just bad. It doesn't matter what it is. It's just bad. Like they just shouldn't do this. Yeah, it didn't look good. They didn't tell people that this was happening to their videos, the select number of videos they use this on. But yeah, I've been sitting in demos at trade shows with companies showing off their HD upscaling that would make your 480p into 1080p for years. And this is what it looks like.

1:18:05Yes. Someone did that and turned the dial up and they all claim, every TV claimed that it has an AI processor in it for the last 10 years. So is it AI? Is it machine learning? What is the difference? I do not know. But it looks way oversharpened. They turned it up too much. And I think that the other part is how all of the tests and all of the features that YouTube is adding. We saw some backlash. We saw a thing pop up. There's one who was kind of upset because she noticed on Instagram reels that her voice translation, it translates it into another language, but also simulates your voice, which I think people were not ready for.

1:18:44So whenever you see something and it's altered, of course, for many people, the first question is going to be, oh, it's AI. It's just where we are now. No, that's a good point, though. And that did happen. And Instagram really was doing that. And it was kind of impressive. But it's probably good to know that that's going to happen before you see yourself talking in another language. I was watching those and like, is it even sinking the lips? It's trippy. It's really trippy. Um, and, and super impressive. I'm sure if you're a creator, like seems good if you want more reach. Um, but like, you want to know what's happening with your videos.

1:19:21And there's this other element here where like YouTube is acknowledging that it's machine learning and it's like, Oh God, where is the difference between machine learning and AI and which is the one that we're mad at and which is the one that we, and like, my whole thing is like, what is the outcome here? And the outcome here is they made weird, crunchy videos and didn't tell anybody that they're going to make them weird and crunchy and everybody was just mad that they looked ugly i mean that's the the real crux of it is just like if you're gonna do this don't make me look ugly we are vain creatures if i look better i'd be like oh thank you ai right i look crunchy you have these creators who worked really hard to make their videos look the way that they look they've they have expectations they know how youtube works they know how they'll be delivered on different platforms and they've gone to a great degree to get it to look this way.

1:20:11And then suddenly you change it. Yeah, at first when I heard they were secretly AI-ing videos, I'm like, oh my God, did they FaceTune people? Because that's creepy, that's messed up. No, they took the clarity slider and dragged it all the way to the top. Don't do that. Okay, next story. Google announced this week that they're going to start requiring verification for developers who want to publish apps on Android that live outside the Play Store. This, I think, doesn't sound monumental, but it kind of is, right? This is essentially how Apple operates the Mac, right? Anybody can publish a Mac app, but it's secretly a lockdown platform, which makes sense.

1:20:58That's how Apple has always kind of kept its gates tight. But if you want to publish outside of the App Store and the Mac, as people traditionally have, you still have to have an Apple developer account. Apple's always required these developer accounts. And so if you go awry and do something illegitimate, they can just shut down your app. This makes a little bit of sense to me on the Mac, where Apple's always had this level of control. Android, on the other hand, is ostensibly this open platform. It is ostensibly a platform that is open source, that nobody controls. Now Google is saying, it's an open source platform, however, we would like every developer to register with us and we will therefore be able to shut off your app if it's a problem.

1:21:46Now, on one hand, okay, great, that's a good security feature, right? I see the reason for it. I see how that makes sense. But to me, the other thing I see here is Google continuing to tighten its grip on Android and make it feel even more and more like a product that belongs solely to Google. And that's sort of been the entire trajectory of Android, I feel like, over the past decade plus. I think that's only going to get more true the more that they try and tie Android to Gemini. You know, like I think as that happens, as Gemini becomes another like vector in which Google tries to assert itself into products, I think you're going to see more of this going forward.

1:22:31Yeah, and I don't think this is the reason why everyone who uses Android uses Android, but there was in the past a reason to use Android because you could have more control of your device. You could install apps from anywhere. You could do what you wanted. And that is just, it's becoming a bit less true. And we saw kind of an example of what this could become just, I think, in the last day. Apple pulled a torrent app for the iPhone that was published in the alt store in Europe. But they can do that. And it's like, it's not clear why. And, you know, like we can ask them, but they don't have to answer.

1:23:06They're like, you know, they can still just enforce their arbitrary rules. And look, like, is that app being used for piracy? 100%, 100%. Should Apple be in charge of deciding whether you can pirate stuff or not? Like, I don't think that's the right move here. and like this is sort of the direction this takes where google now is going to have that authority and it's also different if you from the get-go like apple from the get-go is like no we have the control but google has historically been like we're we love open source we like being that kind of more interoperable uh company and to richard's point like who among us doesn't know the the android stand and i say this lovingly who's just like oh i just sideloaded onto this Like I can just do whatever I want with this versus you iPhone people enjoy your prison in the walled garden or whatnot.

1:24:03And so I think that when you position yourself one way and then you pivot and people start noticing that pivot, that's when people get mad. It's like when you're a free app and then all of a sudden you're like, hey, guys, subscription. Even if it's a baby step, even if it's like a small thing in a direction, you just get a lot of backlash because people are like, that's not what you said you were. That's not what you said. That's not what we signed up for. And now you're going the other way. So it's slippery slope. I think you're completely right. And I've talked about this before, but it's fascinating.

1:24:41if you look at Google's contracts with other, you know, smartphone makers, they do everything to lock down Android to make sure it's a Google product, even though it's open source. They say, if you want the Play Store, if you want our best apps, you got to put them in this folder, on this screen, in this spot. They're super specific about all of this. And so, you know, I think we don't quite see it all the time, but there are just a lot of different ways that app, that Google very clearly keeps its hands around Android to make sure that it is a Google product, even though it remains technically open source.

1:25:14So you'll still be able to sideload. This is still going to be an option. I do think, like, yes, this is a good security feature, but it has some very, I think, strange implications for the future of Android as an open platform. All right. V, what's next? So I really love this one, but Taco Bell, an executive there, is just like, so you know our plan to put AI in the drive-thrus? maybe I have second thoughts about doing that because there's a lot of people complaining on social media and a lot of people trying to troll the AI on social media by asking for, I believe, 18 ,000 cups of water. And so he tells the Wall Street Journal, we're learning a lot.

1:26:02I'm going to be honest with you. I think like everybody sometimes, it lets me down, But sometimes it really surprises me, which is, you know, I don't want to go to a drive-thru and talk to an AI and get a surprise. So I just, this tickles me because it's just, the other thing he says is that he's discovered that using AI exclusively in certain situations, like a drive-thru for, quote, super busy restaurants with long lines, might not be such a good idea after all. Which, I don't know, you think? Yeah, Richard, drive through AI. Thumbs up, thumbs down. Could we just have buttons? Right, right. You offer like 10 things.

1:26:48Just let me press the button and then we can do it. But yeah, I think it's not that hard to imagine that a bored teenager in many cases or basically anyone just happening to do this job is better equipped to deal with someone driving up to the window and saying, yeah, I want 18 ,000 cups of water than an AI is. It's just not going to work. Also, they might fight you. Underrated elements of having human employees. Would you imagine? You're not going to do that at Waffle House. You're not doing that at Waffle House. Waffle House, have you ever seen that video of the lady at the Waffle House and they throw the chair at her and she's like, not on my watch.

1:27:30And she just pulls the chair out of the air. Yeah, you're not going to do that at Waffle House. This is such a fascinating use case because on one hand, could an AI handle a drive-thru order? Probably with some frequency, it could do that correctly. But this is like a business that serves customers and needs to do things correctly all the time. Weekly too. Yes. And it's one of those things where like, okay, great. If AI screws up a response to me one in 10 times, like it's annoying. It's not great, but it's not a big deal. It's just talking to me. I see that it's messed up. I can deal with it.

1:28:11If it's in a drive-through dealing with thousands of customers a day, like you can't have that error rate. Like AI's error rate is not ready for this this is like precisely one of those situations where a company is like automate we can make a ton of money ceo i'm gonna sound cool my earnings call saying ai ai ai and then you put it into use and it's like oh like even if this works most of the time like it needs to work all of it well you say sometimes when when big tech talks about things that way i'm just like did they seem so um pure inside because i was like did you give it to a troll did you troll test this for, because it only takes one jerk to break the whole thing.

1:28:56And they're like, it'll be great. It'll do this. The ideal situation will happen and we're helping everyone. And it's like, did you give it to a 13 year old who really lives for the shits and giggles? Because if it can't survive that, it's just not going to survive the real world. And if you're Taco Bell, the only people I know who go to Taco Bell are probably having the munchies and or really hungry. And so if your AI is not working, they have the munchies, they're in a drive-thru line, they have road rage, and they're hangry. This is not the ideal situation for an AI. And I kind of feel bad for that.

1:29:34Not that AI has feelings, but I kind of feel bad for it in one sense. And then my other spiel is that, you know, whenever I call an insurance company and they put me in the AI robot tree and I have to listen to the dumb thing and I'm just going, let me talk to a human you know how is that not the same thing right can you just yell zero at the ai i would just be like human human just i want a taco mild sauce please chalupa like it's it's not it's not i just want a chalupa i i uh it makes a lot of sense that taco bell's customer base immediately made them regret this. Yeah. And I appreciate, they did good work here.

1:30:20Live must. You know, live must. Unless you're the AI at Taco Bell, in which case, live menos, I think. And that is the limit of my Spanish. Richard, wrap us up. What have you got? This one came from Andrew Hawkins. We have Robomart. They have introduced a new delivery robot that aims to shake up autonomous delivery. It is essentially, remember when Amazon introduced those lockers where you could get something delivered? Like if you didn't want it to be delivered to your house and sit outside all day, you can maybe have it delivered to the locker, get a code or something, and you just go pick it up.

1:30:58So what if the locker drove to your house? No. I can't tell if this is brilliant or the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. It's both. That is exactly what I said. It's one of those two things, and I don't know. It might be both of them all at once. It's both. I think the future is just lockers everywhere for everything. People love the lockers. I love the lockers. I'm like, ooh, a locker. I could pick something. I don't have anything to pick up. It could have something. It's the size of a shuttle bus and can carry up to 500 pounds. You've got to look at this, bitch. No, no, no, no, no. Oh, my God.

1:31:31I thought, sorry, I thought this was a small robot, not a full bus-sized vehicle. Oh, my God. It's like a sprinter van, you know, just rolling around full of whatever. Does this make any sense? No. I don't. But the problem is this requires what happens if the person is the thing with the locker, the locker sits there. It waits for you. If I'm not at home and the locker shows up, is this? Well, the locker could come to your office. But is it going to like. No, it's not useful for my groceries. Parallel park and try to like wait for me. Like, what happens to the person who's like 10 lockers in? What I love was one of the quotes on their website from Mars Unattended Retail.

1:32:18This partnership helps solve the industry's biggest issue. Ice cream melting before reaching the home when purchased in-store or through other delivery methods. What? Just get a cooler. Because it's refrigerated. Oh, it's refrigerated. I mean. Just get a cooler. This is a really expensive locker. This is the least efficient way to ship ice cream. Great. How is this an issue? I don't understand this. I like, I've tried grocery delivery before. I would say it has mostly been a bad experience. I've not had that bad of an experience with grocery delivery, even with ice cream. Have you tried Amazon Whole Foods, like grocery delivery?

1:33:01Okay, I don't use, they were not great. So I tried this because I got mad at my local grocery stores. You know what? They should carry better produce, all right? You cut open too many peppers that are bad inside, you get pissed. The problem I kept running into with Amazon is I'd be like, all right, I'm going to order some food, and then they would just be out of stock of everything. There's some weird online thing. But just it's not – I was never upset. Like, I'm not going to order ice cream. It's fine. I don't need to order ice cream for delivery. You've never dreamed of sitting at home wanting an ice cream sandwich and having a bus rolled up to deliver you one ice cream sandwich.

1:33:42That's not your dream. That's an abuse of power. Richard, you have invented a business known as an ice cream truck. This exists. This is famously a very successful industry. In New York, those things are like rolling around at all hours of the night. I can walk outside at any time and get an ice cream sandwich. I don't need a giant truck with a personalized locker to give me eight of them at once. They're solving an already solved problem. We have delivery. We have refrigerated trucks. I don't know what this is for. I'm sorry.

1:34:30they they saw when you put it that way

1:34:35yeah you know i i i understand why a business person i understand why like an amazon would look at this and go this is genius this is going this is on the level of ai it will revolutionize our business and then as soon as you figure out think about like How am I actually going to put this to use? I just have literally no idea. I'm also afraid of this on the road. I already have seen a TikTok of someone just filming one of those small ones that deliver drinks around. And they're just like, don't hit him. Oh, my God. It's like Frogger. He's going to get across the street. I'm afraid of this. It's got a bit of a tank vibe.

1:35:16It's like, yeah, this thing is hefty. It's hefty. It depends how much ice cream it's carrying. Can you just imagine it getting into a collision and then just the ice cream exploding out of the lockers and then it melts that way? You know what? That's the dream. Yes, I can. That is going immediately to the top of TheVerge.com. Yeah. All right. That's it for The Verge Cast. Stay tuned. Allison will be hosting on Tuesday. If you like what we do here, the best way to support us is to get a subscription to The Verge at TheVerge.com. We publish a lot of great stuff every single day. We'd love to hear your questions and feedback.

1:35:50Let us know what you want us to talk about in the show. Email us, vergecast at theverge.com, or give us a call, 866-VERGE-11. The Vergecast is a production of The Verge and Vox Media Podcast Network. Our show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, Travis Larchuk, and Andrew Marino. See you next week. Rinse takes your laundry and hand delivers it to your door, expertly cleaned and folded, so you could take the time once spent folding and sorting and waiting to finally pursue a whole new version of you. like tea time you or this tea time you or even this tea time you said you hear about Dave or even tea time tea time tea time you so update on Dave it's up to you we'll take the laundry rinse it's time to be great here we have the limo emu in its natural habitat helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual.

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