Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Is it just me?
Speaker 1: Or is AI suddenly everywhere?
Speaker 2: Right now? Both in the US and China ecosystem, The
Speaker 2: AI space is racing on the breaks, taking.
Speaker 3: Sea is everywhere.
Speaker 4: It's not that big scary thing in the future.
Speaker 1: AI is here with us. You open up Google and
Speaker 1: instead of getting a list of websites, there's now often
Speaker 1: an AI overview. This summary scraped together from a sometimes
Speaker 1: strange variety of sources. One recently told me that cheese
Speaker 1: was great at preventing cavities, citing the Cleveland Clinic, the
Speaker 1: British Heart Foundation, and the noted Vermont cheesemaker Cabot as sources.
Speaker 1: And it's not just Google. Apple wants to power its
Speaker 1: iPhones with Google's Gemini generated AI, Alhibet.
Speaker 2: And Meta, offering millions to Hollywood to partner on artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1: From Instagram to customer service, even to healthcare, there's a
Speaker 1: generative AI bot that seemingly has all the answers, if
Speaker 1: not necessarily the correct ones. All this has led to
Speaker 1: big questions recently about what's going into these models. On
Speaker 1: today's episode, what's behind the recent AI headlines, and what
Speaker 1: does all this mean for our ability to opt in
Speaker 1: or opt out of using AI in the future. I'm
Speaker 1: David Gurra, and this is the big take from Bloomberg News.
Speaker 1: We're going to get back to those AI overview search
Speaker 1: results a little bit later in this episode, but first
Speaker 1: we're going to start unpacking all of this by looking
Speaker 1: at what's been going on with another company, Open Ai. Well,
Speaker 1: six months ago, the company behind chat GPT was in
Speaker 1: the headlines after a leadership struggle broke out between the
Speaker 1: company's founders. Now open Ai is back in the news
Speaker 1: for a whole different reason.
Speaker 4: So well, lot's been going on the last few weeks.
Speaker 4: Sometimes in my head I call it as the Open
Speaker 4: Ai turns.
Speaker 1: Rachel Metz is an AI reporter with Bloomberg. She says
Speaker 1: the open Ai soap opera got a new plotline a
Speaker 1: few weeks ago when the company released an update to
Speaker 1: Chat GPT.
Speaker 4: They introduced their latest flagship AI model, This is GPT
Speaker 4: four O.
Speaker 1: Open Ai unveiled human sounding voices for chat GPT in
Speaker 1: September of last year, but the update really only made
Speaker 1: headlines a few weeks ago, after the company hosted a
Speaker 1: live stream to show off what it considers to be
Speaker 1: a big leap forward.
Speaker 5: We'll be showing some live demos today to show the
Speaker 5: full extent of the capabilities of our new model.
Speaker 1: It was during the demonstration when open AI's Mark Chen
Speaker 1: unveiled GPT four Oh's lifelike voices.
Speaker 2: Hey, catching Fatu him Mark? How are you?
Speaker 5: Oh, Mark, I'm doing great, Thanks for asking how about you?
Speaker 1: That a lot of people notice that this voice sounded
Speaker 1: remarkably like the voice of the actress Scarlett Johansson.
Speaker 4: Oh, you're doing a live demb right now. That's awesome.
Speaker 2: Just take a deep breath and remember you're the experts.
Speaker 1: The perception was furthered when Sam Altman, OpenAI's reinstated CEO,
Speaker 1: posted a single word to X after the event, Her,
Speaker 1: which some took as a nod to the twenty thirteen
Speaker 1: Spike Jones film in which johanson voice is the Open
Speaker 1: Operating system Samantha.
Speaker 4: And it turns out Scarlett Johansson thought it also sounded
Speaker 4: a lot like her.
Speaker 1: The thing is Altman had approached Johansson twice about potentially
Speaker 1: working with open Ai, but Johansson turned him down. To
Speaker 1: some watching, it felt like a bunch of Silicon Valley
Speaker 1: types had ignored the wishes of one of Hollywood's most
Speaker 1: famous actresses just so they could make the plot line
Speaker 1: of a movie a reality.
Speaker 4: She seemed quite genuinely upset about it and thought it
Speaker 4: sounded like her, even though she had specifically said I
Speaker 4: don't want to participate in this project on multiple occasions.
Speaker 1: For anyone feeling anxious about the ubiquity of AI and
Speaker 1: about the information these generative models are hoovering up the
Speaker 1: dust up struck a nerve.
Speaker 4: I think there's a few different things that go into
Speaker 4: making people feel really alarmed by this. One is people
Speaker 4: really like Scarlet Johanson. She is an iconic actress. Another
Speaker 4: thing that I think is interesting about her in particular
Speaker 4: is like yourself, David, as you were saying, you talk
Speaker 4: for a living. Your voice is valuable. Her voice is
Speaker 4: valuable as an actor, but it is also iconic. People
Speaker 4: know her voice in part because of the movie her
Speaker 4: but also just because she happens to have a voice
Speaker 4: that is very easily recognizable. I think a less recognizable
Speaker 4: voice people might not be taking as much to this issue.
Speaker 1: Open AI says it never intended to use Johansson's voice
Speaker 1: as one of its assistants.
Speaker 4: Basically, what they said is they started working on the
Speaker 4: voice feature way back in spring of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 4: and they cast a number of voice actors for five
Speaker 4: different voices and said that they were planning on her
Speaker 4: being a sixth voice. So it's not they're saying, Look,
Speaker 4: it's not that she would be that voice, or that
Speaker 4: this voice is meant to sound like her. This is
Speaker 4: another person.
Speaker 1: But after the backlash from Johansson and the public, open
Speaker 1: ai removed the voice, which Rachel says is something of
Speaker 1: a turning point in terms of our ability to opt
Speaker 1: out or at least push back against these generative models
Speaker 1: that seemed to be pushing forward with seemingly few guardrails
Speaker 1: in place.
Speaker 4: A lot of consumers and a lot of artists are saying,
Speaker 4: wait a minute, that's not what I signed up for
Speaker 4: when I put this and that on the internet.
Speaker 1: Just this week, open ai introduced a new safety board
Speaker 1: led by CEO Sam Altman. Move came after the company
Speaker 1: disbanded a team that had been created to focus on
Speaker 1: the long term threat AI could post to humanity. Some
Speaker 1: former insiders are saying that probably won't be enough, including
Speaker 1: former OpenAI board member Helen Toner. Toner told the ted
Speaker 1: Ai Show podcast this week that she had concerns about
Speaker 1: Altman's commitment to safety based on his past behavior.
Speaker 2: On multiple occasions he gave us inaccurate information about the
Speaker 2: small number of formal safety processes that the company did
Speaker 2: have in place, meaning that it was basically impossible for
Speaker 2: the board to know how well those safety processes we're
Speaker 2: working or what might need to change.
Speaker 1: And it's not just open ai that's been getting some pushback.
Speaker 1: After the break, we take a look at another sector
Speaker 1: that's grappling with how and when to fight developments in
Speaker 1: generative AI. Can we weigh up whether or not any
Speaker 1: of this will be enough to shake up what some
Speaker 1: are calling the raw deal at the center of AI.
Speaker 1: Open Ai is certainly not the only company racing to
Speaker 1: release new AI products. There are startups like Anthropic and
Speaker 1: Elon Musk's Xai, which just announced this week it raised
Speaker 1: six billion dollars, giving the company a valuation of twenty
Speaker 1: four billion dollars. There's also Meta, which recently rolled out
Speaker 1: its ask meta feature to Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp.
Speaker 1: And then there's Alphabet, which just added those AI overviews
Speaker 1: to Google.
Speaker 5: So iioverviews they announced this Developers conference.
Speaker 1: Dave Lee is a Bloomberg opinion columnist. He recently attended
Speaker 1: the Google Developer Conference, where the company unveiled this latest
Speaker 1: change to its search engine.
Speaker 3: The result is a product that does the work for you.
Speaker 3: Google Search is generative AI at the scale of human curiosity,
Speaker 3: and it's our most exciting chapter of search yet.
Speaker 5: And basically what it does is it's all builds on
Speaker 5: something that's already been on Google. If you search for,
Speaker 5: you know, who are the Beatles, you'll get like a
Speaker 5: sort of fact box, and it will have pictures and
Speaker 5: a quote from Wikipedia and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 5: Aio overviews is sort of that, and then some.
Speaker 1: AI overview synthesizes information from a host of different sources
Speaker 1: into a generated answer, similar to something you'd get if
Speaker 1: you typed a question into say Open AI's chat GPT.
Speaker 1: At the bottom, there are some links to where that
Speaker 1: information came from if you're curious, which is all well
Speaker 1: and good for Google, but critics of this approach point
Speaker 1: out that it deprioritizes going directly to a source, and
Speaker 1: that means less traffic to those sites.
Speaker 5: If you're the website that's crazing that information. Why on
Speaker 5: earth would you continue to do it if you know
Speaker 5: for all these popular searches, you're not going to get
Speaker 5: that kickback of traffic, which means that revenue, which means
Speaker 5: continuing to exist. And that's a really, really big fear
Speaker 5: with AI overviews.
Speaker 1: Google has it rolled out the feature to every search
Speaker 1: just yet, but the mere prospect that it will do
Speaker 1: so has created an existential threat for news publishers. But
Speaker 1: Dave says it's not just news publishers who should be worried.
Speaker 5: I also think there's a big problem for Google as well,
Speaker 5: because because Google needs this web ecosystem to exist. And
Speaker 5: I didn't get the sense, and I tooked to a
Speaker 5: Google executive afterwards their event, I didn't get the sense
Speaker 5: that they really quite comprehended how damaging and how quickly
Speaker 5: damaging it might be.
Speaker 1: This web ecosystem can only exist if publishers can stay
Speaker 1: in business. One way that AI companies have been attempting
Speaker 1: to solve this puzzle is by cutting publishers into some
Speaker 1: of their current and potentially future profits. Take open ai again.
Speaker 5: So what they've been doing is going to going out
Speaker 5: to as many publishers as they can trying to come
Speaker 5: up with these deals to allow open Eye or whoever
Speaker 5: use that information from those publishers on their lash anguish models.
Speaker 1: And some publishers have agreed to take these deals, including
Speaker 1: The Atlantic and Vox Media, both of which ink deals
Speaker 1: on Wednesday. What are the terms of the deals? What's
Speaker 1: what's the incentive for them to do this?
Speaker 5: I wish I'd seen the terms of the deals. I mean,
Speaker 5: this is one of the criticisms of these deals is
Speaker 5: that we don't know a great deal of what, you know,
Speaker 5: the nitty gritty here, what's happening.
Speaker 1: Some publishers, yes.
Speaker 5: Have made deals. The most notable one is News Corporation
Speaker 5: for a lot of money, for a lot of money,
Speaker 5: two hundred and fifty million over five years. Now that
Speaker 5: doesn't necessarily mean they're getting a nice big check for
Speaker 5: two hundred and fifty million, because part of that deal
Speaker 5: is using open ai technology within news Corps and what
Speaker 5: that looks like we don't know. We don't know whether
Speaker 5: open Ai has said, guess what, using our technology is
Speaker 5: worth one hundred million dollars a year. We don't have
Speaker 5: those details, which is very frustrating, But you know, there
Speaker 5: is there is a willingness to make friends of open
Speaker 5: AI because there's a general feeling. And the chairman of Lamont,
Speaker 5: the French newspaper. I'm paraphrasing here, but he basically said, look,
Speaker 5: even we do this with them and we get some money,
Speaker 5: or they do it anyway with our content and we
Speaker 5: have no control over it and we don't benefit, and
Speaker 5: it's going to harm us as a publisher.
Speaker 1: Dave says he believes publishers are making a big mistake
Speaker 1: by agreeing to sell their content to open AI, even
Speaker 1: if he understands the economic incentives pushing them to strike
Speaker 1: deals that could help insulate them against potential revenue short
Speaker 1: falls in the future. And there are some holdouts.
Speaker 5: The big one at the moment is the New York Times.
Speaker 5: They suit open AI. They said them for copyright infringement,
Speaker 5: which is going to be an interesting one to make
Speaker 5: in court because their argument is that when you said
Speaker 5: certain things the chat GPT, it would recreate bits of
Speaker 5: timed journalism and that was copyright infringement. There won't be
Speaker 5: a preliminary hearing in that case for it for a
Speaker 5: number of months, which is you know, just kind of
Speaker 5: goes to show. I mean, think how much has changed
Speaker 5: an AI in just the last two years or so.
Speaker 5: You know, with every passing day, it feels like this
Speaker 5: challenge is getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
Speaker 1: There's also another group called old in Global Capital, which
Speaker 1: owns a bunch of titles like The New York Daily
Speaker 1: News and The Chicago Tribune. They're using the same sort
Speaker 1: of logic to sue open AI and adding another element.
Speaker 1: It has to do with a well known flaw in
Speaker 1: a lot of generative AI tools we've been using, which
Speaker 1: is their propensity to hallucinate or make up answers.
Speaker 5: That's another interesting thing because these hallucinations couldn't be damaging
Speaker 5: to these news brands as well. If these machines are saying,
Speaker 5: you know, crunching two bits of information and saying, well,
Speaker 5: that came from such and such and it might not.
Speaker 1: What does that mean for the news industry. If publishers
Speaker 1: are reluctant to or unable to opt out from what
Speaker 1: these AI companies are trying to do.
Speaker 5: That's a profound question. Right, publishers have had perilous business
Speaker 5: models for so long now, and sort of one by
Speaker 5: one they've been they've been sort of removed by bits
Speaker 5: of tech, you know, whether it was Craigslist for classifieds
Speaker 5: or you know, Google just getting a lot of the
Speaker 5: advertising revenue from from one over the place. You've got
Speaker 5: this situation where I think, already, and we've seen this
Speaker 5: from the reaction to AI overviews from just regular users,
Speaker 5: there is a suspicion of these sort of computer generated
Speaker 5: fits of information. I saw a great quote and it's
Speaker 5: gone around the Internet so much now that I've no
Speaker 5: idea who first said it, which is kind of good
Speaker 5: because it kind of just belongs to us all now.
Speaker 5: And one of them was, you know, why would I
Speaker 5: be bothered to read something you couldn't be bothered to write?
Speaker 5: And I kind of hope. I hope that sort of
Speaker 5: attitude is going to persist. I hold I hope that
Speaker 5: people will care about human made things, whether it's newspapers
Speaker 5: or movies or books or whatever.
Speaker 1: But for now, at least, there isn't an easy way
Speaker 1: to opt down. Here's Bloomberg's Rachel Mets again.
Speaker 4: These companies that are ingesting tons and tons and tons
Speaker 4: of data using that to train their AI systems, And
Speaker 4: if we want these AI systems to get better, the
Speaker 4: current prevailing thought is we need more data and more
Speaker 4: compute to make them more better. That is how it's
Speaker 4: working right now. I have my own thoughts about whether
Speaker 4: that will be true in the future, but right now,
Speaker 4: that's what we're seeing, is we're getting better results from
Speaker 4: more data and more compute. And in that sense, we're
Speaker 4: all sort of opted in in various ways, depending on
Speaker 4: how much of our lives have been lived on the
Speaker 4: Internet and how much of that data these companies are using.
Speaker 1: But just because we're all effectively opted in, whether we
Speaker 1: like it or not, doesn't mean that we don't have
Speaker 1: a say in how our data are written, words, and
Speaker 1: our voices are being used, even if we're not all
Speaker 1: as famous as Scarlett Johansson. Rachel says, the fact that
Speaker 1: OpenAI listened, that it pulled the Sky Voice in the
Speaker 1: face of a public outcry, means there's room to well
Speaker 1: have a voice in how generative AI gets developed and used.
Speaker 4: I don't like to think that anything with technology is inevitable.
Speaker 4: I like to think that we have a lot of
Speaker 4: control over what happens, and I think that what we're
Speaker 4: seeing with some of this pushback recently against this voice
Speaker 4: that people feel and Scarlet Johansson feels sounds like Scarlett Johansson.
Speaker 4: I feel like that's a really good examp love it.
Speaker 4: So I feel like that's sort of a hopeful sign,
Speaker 4: right that we still have agency and we still have control.
Speaker 1: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Thomas lu It was edited
Speaker 1: by Aaron Edwards. It was mixed by Blake Maples. It
Speaker 1: was fact checked by Adriana Tapia. Our senior producers are
Speaker 1: Kim Gittleson and Naomi Shaven. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso.
Speaker 1: Nicole Beemster bor is our executive producer. Sage Bauman is
Speaker 1: our head of podcasts. Thanks for listening. Please follow and
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