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Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Episode Summary
Episode Title
The Rivian R2: Are We Pre-Ordering? Episode Description: A deep dive into the latest tech news, including updates on the Rivian R2, Nothing Phone 2a, MacBook Air updates, and a special interview with OpenAI's Sora team. The episode also features trivia chaos.
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Episode Highlights
Segment 1
Weekly Tech News
- Nothing Phone 2a: Released with impressive specs, considered a solid budget phone.
- Key Specs:
- Dimensity 7200 Pro chip
- Dual cameras
- 5000 mAh battery
- 12 GB RAM and 256 GB storage for around $350
- MacBook Air Updates:
- New M3 chip introduced.
- Pricing: M3 model at $1099, M2 at $999, and discontinuation of M1.
- Notable feature upgrades include support for two external displays and better fingerprint resistance on the midnight color.
Segment 2
Rivian R2 Announcement
- Overview:
- The Rivian R2 is set to launch in 2026, with a starting price of $45,000.
- Available trims: Single, dual, and triple motor versions.
- Comparable in size and capability to the Tesla Model Y.
- Key features include:
- Up to 260 miles of range on the base model.
- Enhanced design and features like dual glove boxes and a rear trunk with a glass section.
Segment 3
Interview with OpenAI's Sora Team
- Introduction to Sora:
- Sora is OpenAI’s new video generation model capable of creating photorealistic videos by learning from various video data.
- Strengths:
- Creates long videos (up to one minute).
- Good at achieving photorealism and can handle diverse resolutions.
- Weaknesses:
- Struggles with complex physics and specific motions (e.g., hand rendering).
- Future Potential:
- The goal is to evolve Sora to include sound and other enhancements.
- Use cases extend beyond video generation to improving general AI understanding of the visual world.
Trivia Segment
- Trivia chaos with questions related to tech and film history, including questions about Kodak film and the Aura Ring.
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Key Concepts and Discussions
Technology Trends
- The evolving landscape of tech, particularly in budget smartphones and laptops, reflects consumer needs for performance at lower prices.
- The Rivian R2 highlights an increasing demand for electric vehicles that are accessible to a broader audience while maintaining innovative features.
OpenAI's Sora
- Sora represents a significant leap in video generation technology, with implications for content creation and media production.
- The discussion around Sora also brings up concerns about misinformation and the ethical use of AI in media.
Product Comparisons
- The Nothing Phone 2a is presented as a direct competitor to other budget phones, emphasizing performance versus price.
- The MacBook Air's latest updates indicate a trend where hardware refreshes focus primarily on internal upgrades rather than significant design changes.
Consumer Insights
- Consumer sentiment around new products like the Rivian R2 reflects expectations for functionality and value in an evolving automotive landscape.
- Audience feedback for tools like Sora underscores the importance of user experience and control in AI-driven technology.
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Conclusion This episode of the Waveform podcast is a comprehensive look at current trends in technology, featuring insights into new products and a fascinating exploration of AI capabilities with OpenAI's Sora. The lively discussions among the hosts provide a nuanced understanding of both consumer expectations and technological advancements.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:26Race the rudders!
0:35yo what is up people of the internet welcome back to another episode of the waveform podcast we're your hosts i'm marquez i'm andrew and i'm david we're all back we're back time uh we've got quite a mixed bag this week i'm sorry i gotta ask can i can i turn my headphones down a little more i think i asked for this wasn't in the script yeah oh that's perfect that's way better okay uh we're gonna check out the new macbook air that's number should i start over that was your slim shady i kind of liked it but now that you asked yeah nothing phone 2a is out and all the official specs and the review are out and also rivian r2 because it's you know it's the wave it's a wave form podcast and then we got to wrap it up with a quick interview of some open ai researchers talking about soar a little bit of exclusive information and some fun process stuff from the people at open ai but first samsung might make a ring maybe you need to pose the question because i think we briefly talked about how the samsung event had like this ring at the end but then we were getting water the other day and you just said to me what's the difference between the samsung ring and the galaxy home honest question and i was like well the samsung ring is definitely going to come out it's like pretty obvious there's aura rings we've seen them all a lot like blah blah and then your argument was well that when when the galaxy home was announced there were lots of other home speaker things that existed already there's i just feel like there's a surprising amount of parallels if you just look at the way this ring was announced i'm not saying it's not coming out i just think it's funny that there's a lot of parallels between this ring announcement and the bixby home that's what i'm calling it it's a good it's a galaxy sure but the galaxy home was like teased at the end of an announcement from some other product and then they had like a bunch of rows of them and you got to see it but it wasn't working and I think some people took videos of it, but they couldn't actually demo it.
2:27And then it was just gone for a while. And then we saw it at CES, remember? Like a couple weeks later. It was like on a wall full of them. Yeah. And then guess what? This Galaxy, this ring. And then they had it at Samsung Developer Conference, which I went to only to see the Galaxy Home. And it was fully working. They had full units there available to use. Yeah, I made a whole video, a hands-on video from it for Android Authority. One of the few. Yeah, one of the very few. And the Galaxy Ring is in the similar position where I think someone got hands-on time with it recently. I think at CES and posted a hands-on article about it.
3:05Yeah. But that's not further than the Galaxy Home got yet. I was going to say, it's the same timeline of, number one, it was announced as a blip teaser with no info at the end of a different product announcement. I think it was S24, right? We got this ring at the very end. And it was super short. It was like a 10-second circle on the screen. Oh, they're making a ring. I was just going to say that was less of a ring, more of like a shadow of a circle. It was a pure teaser. But then again at MWC a few weeks later at a trade show, we got to see them again. Some people got to see the ring and it was like, okay, it's real.
3:40They're going to make it. We don't have any more information about price or how it works or anything like that. I don't think we even have a name, but they're going to make a ring. And here we are again. so yeah i don't know how much it'll cost or what the features are differentiating things will be but it does kind of feel like it's the same question mark this is not dissimilar to air power either it was kind of the like we've got another cool thing yeah although air power they didn't even show off they just like talked about it once never again and then years later it was confirmed it was being yeah canned so the weird thing about galaxy home is samsung never addressed it like it just it got canceled internally but they did make a mini a home mini for south korea but then did that come out yeah in south korea only just in south korea i think so so they're just hoping we forgot about the other one yeah basically yeah and then this uh you can buy it on ebay yeah can we buy the mini one yeah you can there's nothing about it feeling like it says akg on it oh no yeah but it's in a samsung packaging yeah yeah we should buy this samsung owns Harman Kardon, which owns the licensing rights.
4:50Samsung owns everything. I didn't know they owned Harman Kardon. Wow, Samsung. I feel like if there's speakers in your car, they're owned by Samsung. Well, Harman Kardon is popular in cars. AKG is a sub-brand of Harman Kardon. B &O, though, is owned by LG? No, it's not. Cut that. B &O is also different from Bowers and Wilkins. Yes. And JBL is owned by Samsung as well, right? Are they really? Yeah. No, no. So they're owned by Harman Kardon. Yeah. Okay, so. It's an umbrella. Like, audio, like pro audio companies are very rarely independently owned anymore. They're all couple companies. Harman Kardon is owned by Harman International.
5:35Oh, B &O is owned by Harman International. Which is owned by Samsung. What? What? Yeah. No, no, there's like almost no independent players in the game anymore, which is also sad because like a lot of the companies that are under the Harmon umbrella, Lexicon being one of them. Like Lexicon was this really cool 80s and 90s companies that only made brilliant reverb all they did. And now they're just like a slap and they slap the name on it. Yeah, that's really still independent. Shout out to Grado. Harmon International completed the acquisition in 2015. Wow, that's depressing. That's what I'm saying.
6:11car speakers i feel like so many car speakers are like bang olson jbl harman kardon there's all samsung's wow that's actually making it to like buy really high-end audio brands and just like license the naming but actually just be samsung that's crazy yeah wow there's a couple out there there's the meridian there's bose there's some others but so why don't they just buy aura the ring the aura ring so that's the thing about a ring come on samsung it's a it's a decently well-known already category of product. We kind of know what a smart ring is, and Aura Ring is the dominant player. So I guess Samsung's choices were we make our own, we basically do all the same stuff, and people see the Samsung one on the shelf and just go, oh, a Samsung one, and we'll buy that instead of some Aura thing we've never heard of.
6:59Or they buy Aura and get all of those customers, people who love the brand, and I don't know. But please leave it alone, unlike Google did with Fitbit. Yeah, well, the Fitbit story is one to know. When Marques and I were talking about this, he like brought up all those points and I couldn't make the argument against it as much as I believe the Samsung ring is going to be. It probably will. Yeah. And and then he was like, well, why would someone want this over an aura ring? And I was like, well, because it'll fit into S Health easier. Like if they're in the ecosystem, that might be better. And then the first thing I was like, well, it makes more sense that they do that.
7:32Unlike Google, who has to be in the stupid Fitbit app now when it makes so much more sense to just be in Google Fit. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so I don't know. I still think this, I think you still think this is going to come out. I'm talking myself into, yes, it'll still eventually come out, but I really don't really have any info. I think it's much less common that products get announced, well, hardware products from major companies get announced and don't end up coming out. Agreed. So it probably will just based on precedent, but there is a chance. There is a chance that it just never ships. This still feels like an easier product than, because I mean this probably is almost exactly the same as the Oura Ring if we're being honest like and just in Samsung ecosystem which makes a ton of sense so I mean I guess at the same time so is the Bixby Home but it looks cool they've got the tiny one we have to buy this right can I send this to Alex right now I'm putting it on my to-do list I'm spoiler I'm sending this to Alex I'm putting this to Alex right now okay well hey speaking of easy products Apple refreshed the MacBook Air.
8:40Yay. What? Really? I thought that was a good segue. You missed this. That didn't really hit like I was hoping it would. Do it again. Do it again. But speaking of easy products, Apple just refreshed the MacBook Air. No way! I don't get it. Wait. When? Yesterday. It's the same laptop with the new chip inside. I'm not joking. Yesterday. No, yeah. They released it yesterday. Yeah, yesterday. Did they have like a - It was a press release. But we were at the event. well yeah we were in california but no we do we have a new m3 macbook air refresh for 2024 previously i mean this is it's really the easiest product of all time previously we had the m2 macbook air which was the new design and then we had the m1 macbook air which was the old design m2 was 1099 right and then m1 was the 999 laptop all they did ready is just slot in the new m3 chip to where the M2 MacBook Air was.
9:37So that's now 1099. They bumped down the M2 MacBook Air to 999 and they discontinued the M1 MacBook Air. Love to see it. Cool, yeah, moving on. That was great. No, they didn't really change anything else. And I think that's actually maybe my biggest complaint. Well. There are a couple of small things. Yes. Go for it. Number one, now you can have two external displays when you close the laptop. Small detail. you can only do that with the laptop closed. Yeah. So yes, you can support now two external displays from the MacBook Air with the M3 chip, thanks to the better chip, but it doesn't do three.
10:18So you can't have the MacBook Air screen on and two displays at once. You have to have it closed, which means you can't use the keyboard and trackpad built in. I asked Apple, you can't. Oh, really? You can't use it open with the screen off. Nice. So you also need an external keyboard and trackpad or mouse or whatever to use this. But yes. Except that challenge. There's definitely a way. I remember Ellis found a way to like with one line of terminal code, like make your laptop not sleep or something like that. The problem was is that I still don't know if that would enable the keyboard and mouse though.
10:49So like I'm sure there's a way you could have the laptop open and the screen off with some code. But would the keyboard and trackpad still work? That's just two more lines of code. Turn back on. What if we just made our own computer? What if you just decapitate a MacBook Air? I was like the headless. Those are for the MacBook Pros, I think. They were like the headless ones. Someone did that for Vision Pro as well. It's going to come back for the Vision Pro. Doesn't it have to recognize the screen of it? No, just the chip. Because the Vision Pro... Oh, it just has to be close to it? Yeah. Oh, yeah.
11:22Cool. It's pretty impressive, actually. That's a great setup. Yeah. It's mirroring the screen, so it thinks the screen is on. Yeah. Yeah. Other change, they added an anodization thing to the midnight color, so it gets less fingerprints. So it's more like the midnight black M3 MacBook Pro. So less fingerprints on the midnight. And there's also Wi-Fi 6E. Wow. Nice. It's a riot. This is getting to the point where every time one of these gets released, it's just cool that you can get the previous version cheaper. Yeah. I always thought when the M2 came out that 1099 was like, it's kind of pricey for that laptop.
12:06And I think they want, like they still kept the M1 around for 999. But when you see the old design for 999 and then you see the new design sitting next to it, I think Apple. Big jump. Like Apple's big thing is, yeah, there's a base price, but you don't want the base price one. So the$999 entry point for a Mac for the Mac laptop MacBook Air would immediately be right next to the new design for$1099. So I always thought that one was a little overpriced. So now that that one's$999, I think that's great. I will also say the graphics update from M2 to M3 is fairly substantial. It is big. So for$100, I probably would go with the M3.
12:43Is it? It really will be all about what you're doing on the laptop. That's what I was going to say. If you're caring about that that much, are you looking at an Air or a Pro? well i mean if you have a 15 inch air that you just like mostly want to use for productivity but every now and then get a couple games of dota 2 in do you think it's worth the gpu advantage for a hundred dollars if you're gonna if you are actually going to do that once in a while yes yeah but some people will never do that that's true like some people get the laptop and they're like yeah this is the one that i do taxes on and like web browsing and emails and they're never going to try to do anything gpu intensive and they should get the 999 laptop and be fine it is like a like kind of a thousand dollars is still expensive despite being cheaper but if someone's willing to spend a thousand dollars that m2 macbook air just feels like the easiest laptop to recommend to someone who's not like a computer person to that relative that's like what laptop should i get and what you could do is you could get the m2 but upgrade it to the 512 gigabytes of storage for 200 so you're paying a little bit more than the baseline m3 but it's only a little bit but only when are we gonna talk about that yeah the ram it starts at eight gigs of ram and 256 gigs of storage my phone doesn't start at that i'm pretty sure that's a very galaxy i mean it's a thousand dollar phone but the s24 ultra has more ram and storage wait the phone's more expensive yeah that's that's also kind of wild complicated and there's been a lot of discourse around this because macbook memory because it's on chip is so freaking fast that swap memory is really really good and for a long period of time when the m1s first came out it was like you don't need anything above the base model because the swap memory is so good which is mostly true except for the fact that if you use swap memory a lot you're reading and writing to those cells way more and the longevity of your hard drive is going to go way down i honestly don't mind the argument for like lighter users yeah i just think 256 gigs of total storage from a lighter user could be pretty quickly filled up maybe if you have like a bunch of iCloud photos backing up i don't i don't know if you remember this but my sister had texted me and been like hey i just got a great deal on a mac mini the eight gigabyte mac mini and there was just a deal that came out where the uh like the 16 gig of ram version with 250 sorry the 256 gig of storage version or whatever the second tier storage version was like only 15 50 more than the base model for like a week and i was like oh you just bought it return it and buy the the double storage version for barely any more money and she was like no and i was like but it's 50 and she was like but i'm never gonna fill up 128 gigs and I was like how is that possible how is that possible some people just never fill up 128 gigs and you know what respect yeah no she's like all my photos are in the cloud I don't keep files on my computer at all I do everything in a web browser and I'm just like man Chromebook life literally yeah that is no that's totally fair but yeah there are people who are who will quickly fill it up yeah they'll download a movie they'll play one game they'll just blast through 250 60s storage they'll stream a movie yeah and uh i i don't know it's definitely a conversation i don't know if that's worth a whole video or whatever but it is fascinating because apple loves to push you up the price ladder with like yeah the baseline version is a nice tempting price but here's the next option the next one the next one's a good deal but if you get that one it's only a hundred dollars more to the next one it's the pie on the windowsill just like yeah yeah one terabyte this way but for 50 bucks more you can get the pro but now you're back to eight gigs you know start the ladder again yeah yeah anyway that is a remarkably low amount of ram and storage yeah it's never really clicked i was just gonna say when you made the comparison to your s24 ultra i was like yeah hold on then you're right that's 2a has is such a good segue god i'm killing it today with segue oh well quickly i just i have to be grateful that we are 256 gigs now and not 128 because it was 128 for a very long time and that is absurd and that's crazy continue the nothing phone 2a has 12 gigs of ram and 256 gigs of storage and it's 350 dollars wow what's your excuse apple i think the base model is 8 gigs in 128 oh yeah oh so this is the 400 504 400 something dollar either way it's not a thousand dollars so apple i'm been waiting for that response uh no this is nothing phone 2a it's their budget phone we've read this phone it came out this week it is i think in general a solid across the board budget phone for the price and there's a lot of you know i think budget phones are interesting, as I said in the video, because you always have to find the ways to impress the buyer, but then you spent money on that.
17:48So you have to find ways to save money and give them an overall package that's worth the price that will sell. And different budget phones have different ways of doing that. iPhone SE, very different philosophy from Pixel 7a, very different philosophy from Moto G, very different from Samsung A series. And I like this one. This is a pretty, actually i'll use that word it's a pretty phone a lot of people would disagree uh it's made of plastic it's a dimensity 7200 pro chip we were talking about this a couple weeks ago wondering how well it performed it's got nothing phone nothing os 2.5 uh dual cameras 5000 milliamp battery and it's a big phone and as i used it for the past week i really felt like this was comfortably like performing like the 700 nothing phone too really really impressed and if you don't play any like super hardcore games you will find the battery life is great the performance is smooth and the pictures suck but that's okay because i didn't buy it for the camera suck are we saying suck yeah they're not great they're like c minus c minus pictures well okay sometimes they're f because like i'll take photos that are i'll be walking like i have a shutter speed that i need to be a little bit faster and i'll take a low light photo and it's just a blurry disgusting mess i'm like well that's useless but sometimes it's pretty decent i can deal with that sorry i do think like i love that they kind of cheaped out on the cameras and made everything else baller i want more phones like that because i feel like all phone manufacturers at this point spend all the money on making the cameras like as high-end as good as possible good cameras i don't give a crap about my phone's camera quality well who does you like other cameras though yeah not everybody can carry both.
19:31You literally own like 13 cameras. So for you it's perfect. Yes. Do you want to use it? That phone? Yeah. I would use it. You'd ditch your iPhone? For a bit. When RCS comes out I will. Okay. You got RCS right here. But it doesn't support Glyph Composer. You mean the iPhone? Unfortunately it's weird. No 2A. Oh not yet. It's just buggy. Didn't work for me. Which is weird. That's fine. But yeah a lot of other things are awesome about it. Yeah, I'm just saying, like, if you want me to, I will. As soon as RCS drops, I'm switching back to an Android phone. David will never use that phone. You heard it here first.
20:07I will use it for at least 24 hours. The time is getting lower and lower throughout this conversation. For a bit for 24 hours. I will hold it in my hands. I'll probably get a foldable or a Zenfone 10 or something, yeah. Yeah, the Dimensity 7200 Pro was the big question mark for me going into this because I haven't used a phone with this chip yet. And I came straight from S24 Ultra into this phone. And a lot of times I have to calibrate a little longer when I go from a$1 ,000 phone to a$300 phone. This felt smooth and right at home. Like all the time. It was only stuttery like super, super early when you first fire up the phone and then smooth.
20:44So yeah. Nice. Good job, Nothing. Carl Pace says that the Mensa D7 D200 Pro is a bespoke chip that they worked with MediaTek on, right? Because it's not in, yeah, the Pro at the end of the name. Right. And he made it very clear that before anyone knew it was like, it is not the Dimensity 7200. Technically true. Technically true. The best kind of true. Kind of like how this phone does not run a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Because it's a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy. Great. Branding. Love branding. It's like McDonald's Sprite. The same stuff, but just it's a little juicier. For real? everything at McDonald's hits harder it's because they have more syrup yeah at McDonald's they add just like a little bit more syrup in the Sprite fountain that's why McDonald's Coke well Coke too right everyone says a McDonald's Coke hits harder is Sprite not the meme?
21:38I thought it was Coke is this supposed to be common knowledge? probably not it's right next to it that their ice cream machines never work well they don't so you know though yeah yeah oh that's that's i think it's a i think it's a reasonable no no no no no readers digest march 4th 2022 let's trust that title here's why a sprite and mcdonald's taste so good okay i don't have enough spray i wrote mcdonald's coke in google first article there's a reason mcdonald's coke tastes better than all others sorry sugar is the answer to all of it look if i ran a restaurant chain you just gave me syrup and I can choose the ratios, I would try to optimize it.
22:20I would try to go hard. Yes. Going back to the phone. Yes. Sorry. No, I don't think anyone wants to care. You should start. I was just going to say, when we were first talking about renders, David and I were very into the renders. That's right. Seeing it in person, I'm less than impressed. It's weird. It looks really good when Brandon has it behind the camera. Other than that, can I see real quick? Everything looks good when Brandon has it behind the camera. very true very true it is very glossy in this and especially with the black version you can just see fingerprints i know people hate saying fingerprint magnet but dear lord it is i will say it's more it keeps fingerprints more than glass like this clear plastic i like that they leaned in because there's a lot of there's a lot of plastic phones at this price but i'll like wipe it off and i'll look at it and glass would normally be clean and this phone still has like these yeah like streaks on it so it doesn't clean as nice and i don't like the camera bump i thought the cameras were going to be like flush with it and instead it has just this weird kind of like dome with the two cameras by itself on this one really i think the camera bump is great no yeah i everyone hates it and i think it's perfectly good and this is what i want to say about well you're wrong but sorry this is what i want to say about the whole thing though is i if you can look past the like glossiness of it the design on the back is really cool unfortunately i'm nearsighted oh i can't look past it better i can see i think the design with all the wires and the glyphs and the circles are all really cool i think it looks better on the white i would like to see the white version we don't have a version in house and i really want to get i think the red looks like it pops way better on that and everything looks way more like you can see it easier because of the black glossy when this is at an angle you can't even see all the cool features you know what i think i think the white not only looks better in photos and videos i think you'd see less fingerprints i think i agree i think the white version nothing please send us a white line there's a really funny comment on our video that was like nothing marquez loves matt black we're gonna send him the black version he's gonna love this and then the first thing he says is like i think the white looks better some people put me in a box but you'd be surprised how many light mode apps i got going on i was just gonna say you are now switching everything to light fake almost almost everything i didn't i look I like dark mode.
24:39I like matte black things. But sometimes light mode hits pretty fast. Have you ever been under your covers before? I have. Light mode? Yeah. Under your cover? Okay. If I have the biggest problem with the iPhone 15 Pro is that the minimum brightness is too darn high. Really? Yes. Because now a lot of Android phones get so freaking dim. Also, my Nest Hub Mini, those things get so dim. It can be pitch black and you can be like, the screen is on. Yeah, they're incredible. That's because it's supposed to live next to your bed, right? I have to say my S24, I love it because when the lights are all out, it goes to the lowest brightness and I'm like, that's a little bright.
25:21And then you can take the automatic lowest brightness and just basically turn it off. And it's like super, super dim. And it's so nice, especially when Lane's sleeping like right at the other side. That's what makes it okay to have light mode at night because the screen actually gets dim. But if you're in light mode with a screen that doesn't get dim enough, light mode seems like the worst thing ever. So I get I totally get it. Yeah. Yeah. We work in a brightly lit studio. So like dark mode is actually sometimes fatiguing on the eyes. I was using I think it was Notion in dark mode of white text.
25:51It might have been Notion, but it might have been something else. But I was reading it and I looked away from my monitor after a while like that was unpleasant to read. Like I'm switching back to light mode. Wow. Just throwing it out there. Do you know what I learned recently? so I was in my gmail I have it in what I thought was dark mode and then I put in the like sidebar tasks like calendar and tasks and everything is white and then I tweeted about it and somebody said no you're not in dark mode you're just in a black theme it's not actually dark mode it's just a color theme so there isn't even a gmail dark mode I don't think oh really so that's why it's not or why people think it's not actually like matching the it should still match the theme i don't know how that's not true yeah but yeah it's just dark theme so they do call it dark theme though which is weird sorry oh yeah yeah right dark theme dark mode okay google fired that team the naming team and the tasks team apparently google tasks gets updated like once every five years with like two new features and it gets left alone again i just want to say okay quickly back to the phone yeah again how dare you there's a phone here wow um 349 i feel i had feelings about that price because when the pixel 4a came out the pixel 4a was the best 349 dollar phone that had ever come out in my opinion yes beautiful wonderful awesome plastic no wireless charging exact same freaking phone with the blue accent button don't forget yes the blue accent button was uh and the thing that made the pixel foray so good is that google software like the the pixel software is so good that like you didn't need a flagship chip when everything was all aie anyway the the voice to the text voice to text yes it's so good the like assistant stuff was so good the screen was a nice oled this is kind of the same situation yeah it's a nice modernized yeah yeah It's 120 hertz now.
27:51It's got thinner bezels and everything. Nothing OS 2.5 is very stylized and fast and fluid. You're just swapping the Pixel camera on a cheaper phone for a pretty back. That's true. Some lights. That's true. That's the main bad thing. Which I'm, again, I do like the design. I'm just upset about the gloss over top of it. That makes it harder to see. Yeah. And the camera bump sucks. Yeah. Totally fair. Yeah. Disagree. And the Pixel 4i was also tiny, which was nice. this is big agreed this is do you say this is bigger than the iphone 15 pro max it's this it's almost the size of the s24 ultra it's like a 6.7 inch screen yeah we could talk for years about the size of phones but we'll probably get to that eventually later uh we should take a quick break though because we got a bunch more to talk about before we do that let's do trivia there's a comment saying when are you going to get to the stop on the long pause and just go let's get a true video i like it's just like one word i will start doing that but i won't tell you when thanks yeah random comment thank you for that all right first question that ellis just beefed up with a nice little hint that i'll give you too samsung just soft launched the samsung ring but they've got some stiff competition mainly the aura ring what country is the aura ring company based in hint it's the same country that originally gave the world angry birds yeah poland why what about poland says angry birds it just feels right you know i just i remember the name of the company that made angry birds i recently played angry birds i'll tell you that no were you there for that no oh i just pulled up the galaxy s1 for our video on every phone and angry birds was installed because whoever we bought it from had angry birds on it and I played Angry Birds.
29:43The Galaxy S2 had this app where you could load up guns and point the camera at people and shoot people and blood would come out. That was also the S1. Was it the S1 or S2? Unironically, I heard that the Angry Birds movie and the Angry Birds 2 movie, actually I heard that the second one was better, went pretty hard. So you're pumped for three? They probably heard it. If you had to pick a movie, Angry Birds 2 or Dune 2, what would you pick? I haven't seen Dune 1 and I think Angry Birds 2 would make more sense than Dune 2. Agreed. Yeah. Well, the answer's at the end and we'll be right back.
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31:02And if you get stuck, Shopify is always around to share advice with their award-winning 24-7 customer support. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. You can turn your big business idea into with Shopify on your side. You can sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash waveform. So just go to shopify.com slash waveform, shopify.com slash waveform. Yo, what's up waveform? Marquez here reporting live from a totally different city, but I just got to see something pretty cool. So you might remember a couple months ago, we had RJ, CEO of Rivian, on the Waveform podcast, where we talked about R1T, their electric pickup truck, and R1S, their electric SUV, which I like very much.
31:47Both of them very premium, all-wheel drive electric vehicles with this adventure theme. And if you remember during that interview, RJ actually snuck in a mention of R2 coming soon, which is their next generation platform. We have a smaller set of products, creatively we call R2, R3. but they move into different form factors, obviously different sizes. And the goal of those is to continue to take the essence of what we've done here in terms of, you know, configure gear, your kids, your pets, do it in a really sort of refined and fun way, but in different packages and smaller form factors. And that's what I just got to see.
32:26They had an event today, they revealed the new R2, which is just one vehicle, and it's an SUV that is a slightly smaller, slightly cheaper, slightly less capable, but still very Rivian electric SUV. There's a bunch of different trims, but the idea is it starts at$45 ,000. It has a single, dual, or triple motor trim. It's smaller in every dimension to the R1S. I think it's most similar to like a Model Y. It's two rows now, and it looks very much the same as you'd expect. It's got the same face, the same taillights. Oh, and by the way, they also had a one more thing, which was R3 and R3X, which is even further down the line.
33:07So R2 is 2026 and R3 is some unknown time after that with an even cheaper, even smaller, but possibly even sportier combo vehicles. So I'm curious what your guys' reactions are for these. Cool. So that was Marquez out in California. He's not here right now because he got to see it a little ahead of time. But that's the R2 and the R3 and the R3X, apparently. Way more than what we were expecting. But I know we've been excited about R2 for a long time. Yeah, I've been excited about R3 for a long time. Yeah, you've been excited for R3 before R3 is a thing. Yes. You're a hipster R3-er. I'm always a hipster, baby.
33:45Let's go. That's my thing. I like to see it. But yeah, R2 specs I'm super interested in. And we kind of have some of them here. uh what we do know is that it starts at 45 000 there will be a single a dual and a triple motor version um nacs charging which is on the back right now instead of the front left i believe which sounds is that where tesla's is or tesla's back left tesla's is back right is it back left yeah you back left i don't know man but i mean i think don't you own a tesla Yeah, but remember when you're like in a gas car and you look at your speedometer and it shows the sun? It's because I still can't remember.
34:27I still have to remember. So this is also coming out in 2026. So by that time, hopefully the Tesla charging thing will be not to like park in the opposite spot. By that time New York is going to be underwater. I need our boat, please, Rivian. Come on. There will be a triple motor version that's 0 to 16 under 3 seconds. no more storage under the seats two glove boxes checkmate fisker um still has a flashlight in the door no bluetooth speaker power opening front trunk but not power closing by the way when he when he says no bluetooth speaker he doesn't mean no bluetooth speakers in the car he means the rivian r1 and r1t and r1s have this like camping speaker that's like under the center console it's very cool that you can take with you clarification yeah yeah very good clarification that would have been hilarious like of course it has bluetooth yeah um but i do think that's like one of the things rj said a while ago is that it should still have the feel of what everyone loved from rivian and i would argue the bluetooth speaker is one of those things so i think most people would assume it's in there i'm totally fine with it not being in there i'm much more happy that there's a front trunk that was something i was worried about i'm much more happy about having a flashlight yeah i think that they included all of these small things that are sort of like getting people excited about the brand and making it feel like the brand actually has like an identity and a soul yeah right like you can do these really really small things like i'm sure those bluetooth speakers even though they're like bespoke probably cost them like 30 a unit yeah the flashlights probably cost them like three dollars a unit it probably costs more for the flashlight to be fitted into the door than it does for the actual flashlight i mean maybe you design it to spec and you make a million of them yeah but yeah it's it's kind of interesting to me i kind of agree that it's that seems like a very low cost thing that they're cutting um and it seems like something they should keep on all the cars just to keep the like vibe agreed i wonder if the speaker at least the exact speaker since this is a bit shorter than the actual than the r1s and r1t um like i wonder what that console inside is really looking like and maybe there's just not enough space to fit in there although you obviously could make a smaller speaker but that's another product another SKU number they need which is annoying and whatever I don't need the bluetooth speaker all of us have a bluetooth speaker at this point that we could just bring by ourselves true um a couple other cool things though that Marquez seemed pretty pumped about was this new steering wheel he it has like these two big buttons they're like wheels almost but like vertical wheels the Tesla ones are the same way and he said but he said the like haptics on it are fantastic and that like that's a great way to be able to tell what you're doing without having to look at the screen and figuring all that out.
37:09I just want to say out of the past, I don't even know how many cars, I feel like that's the most excited I've heard him talk about a car feature. He was very much like it's like a PS5 controller. That's a really good point. What's cooler? But are there wheels on a PS5 controller or does he just mean the haptic? He's talking about the haptics of the controller, how they added that like... The pressure sensitive thing. Yeah, exactly. That's cool. That's kind of cool. I'm kind of whatever on it. but um the back glass rolls all the way down that's really cool um oh yeah there's the vent vented sides yes yeah great yeah i'm i feel like there's probably people with an r1s that are probably like i wish it had the event it's so the back windows that are kind of behind they would be where the third row is although this is only a two row they flare out yeah which is like nice to get some airflow in but also without having the like windows down yeah destroying your range and also like making it impossible to hear anything.
38:07Yeah, and then the back glass goes down so that you don't have to open the full trunk. So you can either like open the whole trunk, put all your stuff in or put the back glass down and then just slide things in. Yeah, and I do believe the R1S had the glass window would go up so you could do half and half like that, but scrolling down is cooler and now isn't a thing above you that feels more like easily to break it. Yeah, it's always interesting when you release the cheaper products many years later because you can like add new features and you're like but i want that in my r1 but i could see maybe r1 refresh at some time including some of these things they'll do that they'll put the nacs port in there yeah like a quality of life update that's a really good point by the time they do nacs port i wonder if they add a couple of these small things onto it i would guess they'll probably do a refresh yeah yeah but um yeah it's so it sounds like the 45 000 base the 45 000 base version is around 260 miles of range it's single motor but there are going to be higher trims with over 300 miles of range and double triple motor yeah i'm most interested but we don't know like what the prices for those are no no i'm yeah i'm really hoping 50 to 55 can give me dual motor 320 miles of range that would be either way because it's not going to be out i'm reserving this the absolute millisecond it comes out yeah i think this looks really cool which by the time this podcast has been out uh you have already reserved i have already reserved it yeah i just want to i would like to go through the pre-order qualifications that you said you wanted sure so first you said it needs to be dual motor they have a dual motor so it has dual motor and you're saying if it's 50 to 55 you would pre-order If it's 60, I'll still do it.
39:52Okay. Yeah. You need 200 miles of range minimum. I said 200? I mean 280, 280, sorry. Oh, well, dual motor would be 280. Well, we don't know exactly. Oh, it definitely will be. They said 300 or higher. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, he said the dual and triple motor have the bigger battery. Yeah. That's over 300. We'll see. Sometimes adding the other motor takes range away, so I'm hoping it doesn't take too much range away, but we don't know how big the bigger battery is, so I'm hoping it would still be around 320 with a dual motor. And then you said under 60K, which that's your limit. Seems like that's good.
40:23If it is 60, you will also pre-order. If it is like a clean 60. It's hitting everything else. So that's why I think I sold it. Boxy, not slanted, or a crossover hatchback. So, yes, that is still it. I looked at the dimensions of it. I don't have them right in front of me, but I can pull them up. It is slightly shorter in terms of height than the Forester by about an inch or two. but it is slightly longer in terms of length than the Forester so it's almost like between an Outback and a Forester I guess the one thing I'm most worried about and the reason I picked a Forester over an Outback is when I'm sitting I like my legs to be almost like 90 degrees like I'm sitting in a chair rather than a lot of cars you sit in are almost like a cockpit where your legs kind of go straight out oh yeah and sitting in an Outback it's like that since it originated as a station wagon that is the difference between the Model 3 and the Model Y too exactly in the 3 you're kind of like sitting like that.
41:19Oh, I did not know that. Yeah, it's like more like a cockpit. And then the Y, the chair is raised a lot higher up. And as someone with four knee surgeries, I like to just sit up all the way. That makes sense. I rented a Model Y when I was in LA a few months ago and it was really disorienting. Really? I was not used to sitting that high up. Just because of how much different it was? Yeah. And your last qualification was, it needs to have a frunk. It does. I was very worried they would take that away because frunks don't seem to be a default thing with an EV, which I kind of thought they would. Agreed.
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41:47Yeah. a super agree but sometimes when they have them it's like it's like an inch of space it's just like why do you even add that put your six pack in here yeah yeah um okay dimensions are length is 185.6 inches height is 66.9 inches wheelbase is 115.6 inches so how much smaller than the r1s is this this is a nice little graphic for it so it's 15 inches shorter it is 11 inches oh sorry no no it's always hard to say shorter yeah less long is the better way of putting it uh it is 11 inches shorter and it is the wheelbase is like six inches tighter closer okay um and so my other semi worry about this is just like i love how much headroom i have in my forester being someone who's 6 '2 so like i'm hoping since it's a little smaller shorter height wise it'll still be okay i i'm pretty sure it will be but yeah so this checks off everything i think on that list pretty well the front windshield looks a little more angled than i was hoping i was hoping it'd be a little like straight up um just because i think viewing's better out of stuff like that um but it's still way flat or not as angled as like the cybertruck which i think is ridiculous yeah um yeah just to throw some shots at cybertruck out there why i can but other than that this is awesome but there's something else that yeah oh yeah 2026 i think i mentioned that before yeah that's a little more but i got a lot of time i got plenty of time to throw the reservation and change my mind if the price is still the same that's a super good point because i i don't think that they'll pull the same move that they did on the r1t and r1s where they jacked the price up by a ton right before it came out do you know what will be interesting is when the reservation thing comes out if there'll be a clause in there that like this could change at all because last time what they did i think they will yeah last time the whole thing was you reserved and then they tried to jack it up and then they're like oh just kidding if you reserved at the old price we'll give you that i get that prices change and like the economies change and stuff but it's very frustrating to give a company a thousand dollar interest-free loan for two to three years and they get to do whatever they want with it and then you just have to take your money back if you decide you don't want it agreed i think like it i do understand like you said prices change but if you are going to take an interest-free loan from me like i that's the give and take here like you you have to deal with the price changing i have to deal with losing money for a while one last thing another thing what do they say one more oh one more thing okay yeah uh there is an r3 weren't you there for that what yeah how'd you forget that um i was like seven i don't know i was 12 years old or something yeah i don't know it's been a long time anyway um yes r3 so this is the even smaller even more subaru kind of like bronco lancia delta and tagrel yeah it feels cross trekky size if you're looking at subaru yeah i don't really know for sure how i feel about the vibe of it really yeah i i kind of want the more angular like actual subaru looking car than like a futuristic subaru looking car okay um but i could probably deal with it there's not a lot of details about this car almost at all uh just that it's a hatchback basically and it looks a little bit different and it's got this like slanted back thing going on yeah which i think is kind of interesting um but if it's a lot cheaper and it still has a lot of like outdoor kind of adventure style stuff i think it could be very interesting and i mean everything's going to be nacs by that time too yeah um the r2 is going to ship with nacs as well which is awesome yeah and it's we don't have a date for that or even like really it was just a next yeah next sometime later yeah so i think it looks really cool it reminds me of like a hatchbacky like a small hatchback but as the cross track is lifted up a little bit versus like the hatchback impreza so but it is way boxier it's got kind of like a yeah the slanted back and it has a really strange tail light i don't know if i love that quite as much i wish i liked the way it looked more than i do i do like how it looks to be honest but i want something with some more space it could also definitely change by the time it comes out because you can't like reserve one they're just showing it off my thinking is like i really like the way it looks right now i don't know if i'm gonna like this in 10 years whenever this comes out because it's not coming out anytime soon yeah i don't know 10 years probably like five years yeah so like yeah this is a very like style that is in like it's in vogue right now but in 10 years who knows it's probably just for them to show investors like hey we've got a whole family of evs coming in the future and please don't short us because their stock is not it's not doing good right now it's like 10 right now and ip they appeared at like 35 i am also wondering if if they're announcing r3 like this which is not a truck is there the opportunity for the r2 t which would be maverick sized which is an extremely popular small truck because maybe we should all realize we don't need behemoth trucks and can have the same size bed in a truck that's a regular size i am surprised they're not doing that yeah because like i don't know in america people love trucks they do they do they love big trucks but also the maverick is like insanely popular to the point where it's almost hard to get and it's a small normal sized truck hey what the maverick is still a huge truck it's still compared to everything else of the ui it is like okay a big reason a lot of people buy trucks that aren't actually using their beds every day it's the it's the prepper people it's the but what if my friend needs to move and i could save the day and swoop in your friend i think we used our f-bomb quota for the year um no like this is so many people buy trucks for that specific reason it's a what if what if i need to what if i need to and they use it like once and they're proud of themselves and then they move on you know so i'm just saying it's a very popular like people kind of want to buy these small trucks i'm so i'm surprised that they didn't announce an r2t maybe they will in the future i wonder if it'll come before if it'll ever come before before an r3 probably before r3 yeah but and then they also showed off the r3x which is a performance version right which at that point i don't know what pricing would be like on r3 but i'm assuming an r3x with an upgraded performance and more expensive is probably getting into r2 price probably pretty easily i would probably say 46 i'm wondering what the r3 base price is going to be probably like 36 or something i could see that yeah even still that's cheap not cheap you know not cheap but in the ev world yeah for sure yeah model 3 pricing but it's bigger so it's closer to a model y sort of yeah yeah yeah so i don't know i'm really pumped about these i can't wait to i will reserve the r2 i think it's awesome it's almost exactly what i wanted well we've been waiting a long time for that so i'm glad it's funny here did ellis want to say something i have so much to say but maybe we should just cut it what is it valuable maybe the first thing is that uh the um i thought the r3 looks like some of my favorite cars of all time which i'm really stoked for i think it looks like a lancia delta integrale dope car i think it looks like a datsun 210 also a dope car um um so i think it's going to be a timeless silhouette timeless if if it fingers crossed if it comes out i think the non-timeless thing is the big tail light on the back which i also could see not actually making it into the final version if we're kind of concept-y vibes at this point yeah the other thing that's been rattling around my brain is that there was a lawsuit this is i'm going to tie it back into cars i promise there was a lawsuit against dollar general in January because they were leaving two-year-old price stickers on the shelves.
49:59And then when they would ring up the skew, it would show the current day price. So the prices on the shelves were cheaper than the prices at the point of sale. And the lawsuit is like, that's super illegal. And then I was like, how is that different than what Tesla does? Which I get it is. It's like, you're not reading a sticker price and then five seconds later getting charged a different price but if you change five seconds to two years yeah i still think it's messed up that you can give an interest like a thousand dollar interest-free loan and in three years if they jack the price by 40 you just have to take your money back and you lost out on that interest i know yeah it's like it's it's pretty wild yeah it's crazy that's legal i don't love that all these different companies are doing this it feels like kickstarter yeah as group group buys in the mechanical keyboard world yeah it's like reserving the opportunity to purchase something and then it becoming prohibitively expensive is no good i mean and that's also probably the reason that we have to have all these like uh like do not resell this because if you get in early on something and then that's why cybertruck right now is the like you can't resell this within a year because someone gets it in early gets it early and then realizes like i can make money off this immediately yeah i guess yeah i don't know how they would do it other than that because i just wait till it comes out and then take your money but or collect the full sticker price at the moment of reservation i think that's how that's how all of their pre-orders work like i i pre-ordered a synthesizer about a year ago i paid the full price yeah I guess it is how like Actually that is more how like Kickstarters and like group eyes work You just get a discounted price On Kickstarter Sometimes, forget even Kickstarter Just like when you pre-order, when you pay for something That's not out, you normally pay For all of it That's a good point Yeah, you pay for the entire thing Like the early bird price When you pre-order an Apple Vision Pro You're not getting a discount But you also charge you until it ships though is that true yeah but you at least know that you're not like day of shipment and apple's not going to be like 100 more bucks please yeah that is an interesting point of being basically like here's the right to charge me for this but don't charge it until i receive it i guess that's way harder for an automobile when you're probably financing it and not paying straight in cash and in ev manufacturer defense it's way harder for an automobile where you have a global supply chain and any number of things can like drastically change how much a car costs but maybe you shouldn't take people i don't know i don't know i don't know okay and i'll do it anyway yeah yeah ride bikes cool all right well all that being said i think it's time for trivia you like how i just teleported back to the studio yeah from california faster than usual i'm pretty good at that i do just for trivia i only teleport for trivia is the r2 faster than the r1 at teleporting yeah new feature yeah dang they ditched the the tunnel less teleport just for teleportation the gear tunnel the gear tunnel pushed him into the tunnel and it's actually just a wormhole to the studio yo that's kind of a great through the r we need a thumbnail crawl into the gear tunnel so david yeah welcome back to the podcast thank you uh we're gonna go over the score when we go over the answers but i'll just let you know right now uh marquez is running it up i am yes i did miss two weeks so we wanted to try and sort of even things out a little bit yeah um so question number two in 1935 i don't like this at all kodak released their timeless, positive film employing just two color sensitivities, blue-green and red-orange.
54:01What was this film stock called? I got it. I think I got it. No idea. Me neither. Well, hopefully David gets this one right. That would be really embarrassing. That would be really embarrassing if you teleported back here just to get it wrong. We'll be right back.
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54:53Well, first of all, thank you guys for joining me. I imagine you're super busy, so this is much appreciated. If you don't mind, if you could go one more time and give me your names and then your roles at OpenAI. Yeah, my name is Bill Peebles. I'm a lead on Sora here at OpenAI. My name is Tim Brooks. I'm also a research lead on Sora. I'm Aditya. I lead the Sora team. Awesome. Okay, so I've reacted to Sora. I saw the announcement and the website and all those prompts and example videos that it made that you guys gave. And it was super impressive. Can you give me like a super concise breakdown of how exactly it works?
55:37Because we've explained Dolly before and Diffusion before. How does Sora make videos? Yeah, so at a high level, Sora is a generative model. So there's been a lot of very cool generative models over the past few years, ranging from language models like the GPT family to image generation models like DALI. Sora is a video generation model. And what that means is it looks at a lot of video data and learns to generate photorealistic videos. The exact way it does that kind of draws techniques actually both from diffusion-based models like DALI, as well as LLMs like the GPT family. It's kind of like somewhere in between.
56:15It's trained like DALI. but architecturally it looks more like the GPT family. But at a high level, it's just trained to generate videos of the real world and of digital worlds and of all kinds of content. And it creates a huge variety of stuff, kind of the same way the other models do, based on what it's trained on. What is Sora trained on? So we can't go into much detail on it, but it's trained on a combination of data that's publicly available as well as data that OpenAI has licensed. One innovation that we had in creating Sora was enabling it to train on videos at different durations as well as different aspect ratios and resolutions.
56:59And this is something that's really new. So previously, when you train an image or video generation model, people would typically train them at a very fixed size, like only one resolution, for example. But what we do is we take images as well as videos of all wide aspect ratios, tall, long videos, short videos, high resolution, low resolution. And we turn them all into these small pieces we call patches. And then we're able to train on videos with different numbers of patches depending on the size of the input. And that allows our model to be really versatile, to train on a wider variety of data, and also to be used to generate content at different resolutions and sizes.
57:41and so you guys have you've had access to using it building it developing it for some time now and obviously there's a maybe not obviously but there's a ton of variables with video like i make videos i know there's lighting reflections you know all kinds of physics and moving objects and things involved what have you found that sora in its current state is good at and maybe there are things that are specifically weaknesses? Like I'll show the video that I asked for in a second, where there's six fingers on one of the hands. But what have you seen are particular strengths and weaknesses of like what it's making?
58:17Yeah, so it definitely excels at like, photorealism is a big step forward in general. And the fact that the videos can be so long, up to a minute long, is really a leap from what was previously possible. But some things it still struggles with, I mean, hands in general are a pain point, as you mentioned, but also some aspects of physics. And like in one of the examples that you asked for with the 3D printer, you can see it doesn't quite get that right. And also if you ask for a really specific, for example, like camera trajectory over time, it has trouble doing that. So some aspects of physics and of the motion or trajectories that happen over time it struggles with.
58:57It's really interesting to see the stuff it does well because like you said there are those examples of like really good photo realism with like lighting and reflections and even close-ups and textures and just like dolly you can give it styles like shot in 35 millimeter film or shot you know like from a dslr with a blurry background um there are no sounds in these videos though i'm super curious if it would be a gigantic extra lift to add sound to these, or if it's more complicated than I'm realizing, how far does it feel like you are from being able to also have AI-generated sound in an AI-generated video?
59:36It's hard to give exact timelines with these kinds of things. For Sora 1, we were really focused on pushing the capabilities of video generation models forward, because before this, you know, a lot of AI-generated video was like four seconds of pretty low frame rate, and the quality wasn't great. So that's where a lot of our effort so far has been. We definitely agree, though, that, you know, adding in these other kinds of content would be like videos way more immersive. So it's something that we're definitely thinking about. But right now, Sora is mainly just a video generation model. We've been focused on pushing the capabilities there in that domain.
1:00:11For sure. So, okay, Dolly has improved a lot over time. It's gotten better. It's improved in a lot of ways. And you guys are constantly developing and working towards making Sora better. How do you, first of all, how do you get to the point where you've gotten good enough with it that you know it's ready to share with the world and we have this mic drop moment? And then how do you know how to keep moving forward and making things that it's better at? So a big motivation for us, really the motivation for why we wanted to get Sora out in this like blog post form, but it's not yet ready, is to get feedback to understand how this could be useful to people, also what safety work needs to be done.
1:00:54And this will really set our research roadmap moving forward. So it's not currently a product. It's not available in chat GPT or anything, and we don't even have any current timelines for when we would turn this into a product. but really right now we're in the like feedback getting stage so we want to you know we'll definitely be improving it but how we should improve it is kind of a an open question and we wanted to show the world this technology that's on the horizon and start hearing from people about how could this be useful to you hear from safety experts how could we make this safe for the world start hearing from some artists how could this be useful in your workflows and that's really going to set our agenda moving forward.
1:01:41So what have you heard so far? Yeah, like one piece of feedback we've definitely heard is that people are interested in having more detailed controls. So that will be an interesting direction moving forward. Whereas right now it's about, you know, you have this maybe kind of short prompt, but people are really interested in having more control over exactly the content that's generated. So that's definitely one thing we'll be looking into. Interesting. Yeah, I can imagine just wanting to just make sure it's widescreen or just make sure it's vertical or it's well lit or something like that just to not have to worry about prompt engineering, I guess.
1:02:17Okay, so I guess Aditya, if you've been working on this stuff for a long time, is there a future where you can generate a video that is indistinguishable from a normal video? Because that's how it feels like Dali has evolved over time, where you can ask for a photorealistic picture and it can make that. Is that something you could imagine actually being possible? I guess it's probably a yes because we've seen it do so much already. Yeah, eventually I think it's going to be possible. But of course, as we approach that point, we want to be careful about releasing these capabilities so that people on social media are aware of when a video they see could be real or fake.
1:02:58And when a video that they see comes from a trusted source. and we want to make sure that like these capabilities aren't used in a way that could perpetuate misinformation or something. Yeah, so there's a watermark in the bottom corner of Sora generated videos, which obviously is pretty important, but a watermark like that can be cropped. I'm curious if there are other ways that you guys think about being able to easily identify AI-generated videos, especially with a tool like Sora? Yeah, so for Dotly 3, we trained provenance classifiers that can tell if an image generated by the model or whether a given image was generated by the model or not.
1:03:40And we're working on adapting that technology to work for Sora videos as well. So that won't be a complete solution in and of itself, but it's kind of like a first step. Got it. Kind of like metadata or like a sort of embedded flag so that if you play with that file, you know it's AI generated. Yeah, C2PA does that. But the classifier that we trained can just be run on any image or video, and it tells you if it thinks that the media was generated by one of our models or not. Gotcha. I'm also curious, what's your reaction? You obviously have to get to the point where Sora comes out and you think it's ready for the world to see what it's capable of.
1:04:24What's been your reaction to other people's reactions to Sora? There's a lot of, this is super cool, this is amazing. There's a lot of, oh my God, my job is in danger. How do you digest all of the way people react to this thing? Yeah. Yeah, I felt like a lot of the reception was like, definitely, you know, some anxiety as to what's going to happen next. And we definitely feel that in terms of, you know, our mission to make sure that this technology is deployed in a safe way. And in a way that's responsible to all of the things people are already doing involving video generation. but I also felt like a lot of opportunity like right now for example if a person has an idea for a movie they want to produce it can be really difficult to get funding to actually produce the movie and because the budgets are so large you know production companies have to be aware of the risk associated with the investment that they make and so one cool way that I think AI could help is if it drastically lowers the cost to go from idea to like a finished video.
1:05:32Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of parallels with Dolly just in the way I feel like people are going to use it. Because when Dolly got really good, I started, I mean, I can use it as a brainstorming tool. I can use it to sort of visualize a thumbnail for a video, for example. And I could see a lot of the same tool like use being particularly awesome with Sora. I know you're not giving timelines, but you're in the testing phase now. Do you think it's going to be in a available for public use phase anytime soon? Not anytime soon, I think. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I guess my last question is way down the road, way down into the future when Sora is making five minute YouTube videos with sound and perfect photorealism.
1:06:21uh what medium makes sense to to dive into next i mean photos is one thing videos has this whole dimension with time and physics and all these new variables with reflections and sound you guys are you jumped into this faster than i thought what what is next on the horizon for ai generated media in general? So something I'm really excited for is how the use of AI tools evolves into creating completely new content. And I think that a lot of it will be us learning from how people use these tools to do new things. But often it's easy to think about how they could be used to create existing things.
1:07:08But I actually think they'll enable completely new types of content. And it's hard to know what that is until like it's in the hands of the most creative people. But really creative people, when they have new tools, do amazing things and they make new things that were not previously possible. That's really what motivates me a lot long term is like how could this turn into completely new experiences in media that currently aren't capable, that currently we're not even thinking about. and hard to picture exactly what that is but I think that will be like really exciting to just be pushing the creative boundaries and allowing really creative people to push those boundaries by making completely new tools yeah that's super interesting I feel like the the way because I I think in my video I sort of mentioned like it's trained on existing content so therefore it can only make things based on things that already exist.
1:08:02So the only way to get it to be creative is with your prompt, I imagine. You have to get clever with the learning curves of prompt engineering and figuring out what to say to it. Is that accurate? There are other kinds of cool capabilities that the model has sort of beyond just like text-based prompting. So in our research post that we released with Sora, we had an example where we show blending between two input videos. And there was one really cool example of that where the video on the left starts out as a drone flying through the Colosseum. And on the right, it gradually transitions into like a butterfly swimming underwater.
1:08:39And there's a point in there where the Colosseum like gradually begins decaying and looking as if it's like covered in coral reefs and it's partially underwater. And these kinds of, you know, generated videos really do kind of start to feel a bit new relative to what's been possible in the past with older forms of technology. And so we're excited about these kinds of things even beyond just prompting as being new experiences that people can generate with technology like Sora. That is super cool. In some ways, we really see modeling reality as the first step to be able to transcend it.
1:09:15Whoa. I like that. That is super interesting. Yeah, the better it is. Yeah, the better it's able to model reality, the faster you're able to sort of build on top of it. And ideally, that's able to unlock new creative possibilities as a tool and all kinds of other things. Super cool. Well, I guess I'll leave it open to, is there anything else you want people to know? Obviously, you guys have been working on this longer than anyone else has gotten to see what it does or play with it. What else do you want the world to know about Sora and OpenAI? I think another thing we're excited about is how learning from video data will make AI more useful a bit more broadly than just creating videos.
1:09:58Because we live in a world where we see things kind of like a video that we're watching. And there's a lot of information about the world that's not in text. And while models like GPT are really intelligent and understand a lot about the world, there is information that they're missing when they don't see the visual world in a way similar to how we do. So one thing we're excited about for Sora and other AI models moving forward that build on top of Sora is that by learning from visual data about the world, they'll hopefully just have a better understanding of the world we live in and in the future be able to help us better just because they understand things better.
1:10:34That is super cool. I imagine there's a lot of computing and a lot of talented engineering that goes into that. So I wish you guys the best of luck. I am so excited. I mean, eventually when I'm able to plug in more stuff into Sora, I'm very excited for that moment too. So keep me posted. Cool, too. Thank you so much. Thanks, Mark, guys. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. All right. Thanks again to the folks at OpenAI for making time for us and to explain one more fun fact. I forgot to ask them during the recording, but everyone wanted to know, how long does it take to generate a video with Sora with a single prompt?
1:11:09I did ask them after off camera, and the answer was, it depends, but you could leave, go get coffee, and come back, and it would still be working on the video. How far away is the coffee? A while seems to be the answer. But anyway, I'm back specifically because trivia. That was a short pause. I was expecting a lot more. Maybe it's just a variable I mess with every time Okay Quick update on the score Marquez in the lead with four points Prepare to lose the lead today Andrew Following him up with One, two, three, four Two points I just want to shout out someone on our subreddit SuperstanceNation Posted a picture that says If you know, you know And it's me carrying a one over my shoulder Nice nice also not our subreddit anymore it's correct unofficial unofficial subreddit david trailing with zero wow really dang zero points what if you carry the one it's still zero when i'm gone first question i'm gonna miss points when i'm gone okay first question what country is the aura company based in and your hints it's the same country that originally gave the world angry birds.
1:12:36Furiously scribbling away. Andrew's done already. How confident are you in your answer? No. Cool. Love that.
1:12:47Dave, you look menacing. I'm not sure. I'll be surprised. I wonder if any of us are going to have the same answer. That would just be impressive. There's a lot of countries. Because I'm pretty sure we all just randomly guessed. I've got vibes about this country. I have a region. Let us pick the continent. It's definitely Europe. All right. Let me read. Maybe we all go. Oh. Oh. Interesting. Okay. All right. What'd you guys say? You guys go first. I remember Rovio is the name of the company that made Angry Birds. And I think they're from Belgium? Nope. No. Sorry. But shout out Belgium, though. I know.
1:13:21I think I said it because of that one time Ellis just threw a stray at Belgium for no reason. I didn't talk to you. You threw a stray. I was going to take over the country. Multiple citizens of Belgium said they welcomed it. Oh. Two. Wait, what? Yeah. I missed that. Shout out Belgium. Belgium always real. I said, De Nederlander? I don't know what that is, but no. The Netherlands. Yeah. No. The correct answer. Finland. Ah. Ah. Ah. Yeah. So close. Thanks, Finland. Yeah. Dang. Great, great country. All right. FinTech. Next question. fintech land that's where mariah lives i definitely don't i'm guessing this kodak one i have no idea oh question number two oh kodak kodak kodak i thought you said kodak and i was like no it's film oh a film kodak film kodak funny stuff guys you know what's funny about kodaks what heaps i have a friend who works in av professionally uh for a big company and we were joking the other day and he was like he's mad at me everything is a codec oh yeah i was like what are you talking about he's like you know when you're connecting a bunch of streaming boxes and cameras all these things are doing is encoding and decoding everything's a codec did you ask him what is a photo i should have that seems like the person to ask that yeah right uh question two starring david amell in 1935 kodak released their timeless positive film i should say timeless until 2009 when it was discontinued but employing just two color sensitivities blue green and red orange what was this film stock called and i'm 90 sure i got something in this question wrong.
1:15:19And then David's going to be like, Ellis, how was I supposed to know that? And I'm going to be like, I don't really shoot film, so... I don't know. I was trying to give you points, bro. Can you explain that? No! No, I can't explain it. I just looked it up three minutes ago.
1:15:38All right.
1:15:45All right, Marquez because I can't see your board you want to go first? I wrote what is frittata? What is frittata? I realized Ellis couldn't see it so he actually was surprised by that. What is frittata? Dang it. I'm wrong. The next round of waveform like merch shirts we have to have at least one of the crazy things like the f*** is a frittata? I don't know. Andrew what did you put? I wrote blue grow. Blue grow. Blue, green, red, orange. No, but I could imagine someone rubbing that as a foam on their scalp and then growing it back. You know what I mean? David. I wrote Kodachrome. Kodachrome is Kodachrome.
1:16:32Does Kodachrome get any points? No. What are you not sure of about this question? That it was actually positive film. It wasn't negative film, but it was positive film. are you positive? negative
1:16:50yeah people have been wishing for this to come back for a very long time but it had many toxic elements in it so they had to stop developing it also Fuji Velvia there are two types one of them recently discontinued also because of toxic elements so you don't get any extra points for this? Well, I, you know, all the coolest photos in the world have been shot with Kodachrome. This is just David basking in the glow of the point he just got. So I can have one single one. I'm carrying one now, Andrew. Yeah. Well, how do you feel about that? Not bad because you'll be beating me by the end of next week's episode.
1:17:31Not if we do an Andrew question next week. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I like the sounds of that. I demand. I don't want an Andrew question because when I get it wrong, it's even more embarrassing. Well, that was a pretty fun, teleporting, fantastic episode. Thanks for joining us. Audio listeners have no idea what you're talking about. What chaos actually happened for the past hour and change, however long it was. But trust us, it was an adventure. It was a wild ride. It was a wild ride. Thanks for joining us with it. We'll be back next week. Catch you guys then. Peace. Waveform is produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Rovin.
1:18:04We're partnered with Vox Media Podcast Network. And our intro outro music was created by Vane Silk.
1:18:24Did you just do finger guns? We should start doing finger guns at the end of the episode. Oh, we don't want to get demonetized, though. It's a water gun. Finger water gun? Water gun sounds, then, instead of... You're just calling a cat over. Steve Harris
From the publisher
There was so much news this week! So much so, that we decided to basically split the podcast into three different segments. First, the Waveform crew talk about the news of the week including the Nothing Phone 2a, Macbook Air updates, and the Samsung Ring. Then, Andrew and David react to Marques giving us all of the news about the new Rivian R2, R3, and R3X before we jump into an interview that Marques had with three of the minds behind OpenAI's Sora! Of course, we close out the episode with trivia chaos. Enjoy!
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