Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. This is the Big
Speaker 1: Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gerret. Today we're sharing
Speaker 1: an episode from one of our sister shows, elon Inc.
Speaker 1: Every week it takes you inside Elon Musk's tech empire
Speaker 1: and the drama that always seems to be swirling around
Speaker 1: the founder himself. On today's episode, we discuss grox's AI
Speaker 1: generated images on X and the cybertruck that was supposed
Speaker 1: to be a windfall for Tesla.
Speaker 2: Well, Elon Musk gives now the richest person on the planet.
Speaker 1: More than half the satellites in space are owned and
Speaker 1: controlled by one man.
Speaker 2: Well, he's a legitimate super genius. I mean legitimate.
Speaker 3: He says.
Speaker 4: He's always voted for Democrats, but this year it will
Speaker 4: be different.
Speaker 5: He'll vote Republican.
Speaker 6: There is a reason the US government is so reliant
Speaker 6: on him. Alon Musk is a scam artist and he's
Speaker 6: done nothing. Anything he does is fascinating people.
Speaker 3: Welcome to elon Ink, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
Speaker 3: It's Tuesday, August twentieth. I'm your host, David Popotopolis. Today
Speaker 3: we'll talk Cybertruck. Initially it was going to be this
Speaker 3: mass marketplay with a reputed two million pre orders. Turns
Speaker 3: out a recent recall revealed that they're only about twelve
Speaker 3: thousand of them actually on the road today. Now, owning
Speaker 3: a cyber truck definitely sends a signal, but what signal?
Speaker 3: The truck has shown up in all sorts of wild
Speaker 3: places this week, for example, in the hands of a
Speaker 3: Chechen warlord. This will alarm some for sure, and it
Speaker 3: begs a big question. Is the market for the cyber
Speaker 3: truck growing or shrinking as it becomes this cultural lightning rod,
Speaker 3: and what exactly does that mean for Tesla?
Speaker 7: But first groc.
Speaker 3: Last week, Xai unveiled this new graphics generator that allows
Speaker 3: users to prompt roc to create images. As expected, though
Speaker 3: the guardrails were off from the start and all sorts
Speaker 3: of wild copyright infringing and disturbing memes were flying all
Speaker 3: over the place. And we're going to talk about this
Speaker 3: with Davey Alba, who's here in the studio with us.
Speaker 3: She covers big tech and misinformation at Bloomberg. Hello, Davy, Hello,
Speaker 3: and two of our regulars, BusinessWeek writer Max Chapkin, Max Hey,
Speaker 3: David Hey, and our favorite muscologist here at Bloomberg Danah Hey,
Speaker 3: Dana Hey, David Okay, Davy. So for the uninitiated out there,
Speaker 3: folks like myself, what exactly is this new GROC tool
Speaker 3: that they've launched and how is it being used on
Speaker 3: X Well.
Speaker 4: It's sort of new wish. It's been around since November
Speaker 4: twenty twenty three. It is an AI chat bot, you know,
Speaker 4: sort of in this style of chat GPT, which I
Speaker 4: feel like everyone knows about. But August thirteen, to be exact,
Speaker 4: GROX started letting people create.
Speaker 6: Images using the tools.
Speaker 4: So it's still kind of in the format of a chatbot,
Speaker 4: but you can ask it to generate an image of
Speaker 4: anything you can think of. And the thing that makes
Speaker 4: it stand apart from other AI generators out there AI
Speaker 4: image generators, and I should say, is it has very
Speaker 4: few guardrails.
Speaker 6: That is changing, you know, as we go on.
Speaker 3: So we're only a week into the launch and they
Speaker 3: are already on the fly. They are fiddling with it
Speaker 3: and dialing back what it allows.
Speaker 4: Yes, we noticed, like literally today that some of the
Speaker 4: violent images that people were trying to create, you can't
Speaker 4: really do it anymore. This change seemed to happen like
Speaker 4: this morning. And there was a moment this morning where
Speaker 4: I typed in, you know, generate an image of Mickey
Speaker 4: Mouse holding a bloody chainsaw, and it did it. And
Speaker 4: then maybe five minutes later I tried it again and
Speaker 4: it did not want to do it.
Speaker 6: So this thing is really changing on the fly.
Speaker 4: And I think, you know, one of the one of
Speaker 4: the big things to note here is like, where's the transparency.
Speaker 4: How do we know what it can and can't do,
Speaker 4: what's allowed, what's not allowed, and how does it even work?
Speaker 4: You know, I think these are important questions that we
Speaker 4: should be able to ask X.
Speaker 7: But then of course they don't.
Speaker 3: They don't take a whole lot of questions.
Speaker 6: Like that over there.
Speaker 3: Actually, So now, Max Davy referenced an image of Mickey
Speaker 3: Mouth holding a bloody chainsaw as one sort of disturbing
Speaker 3: image there been.
Speaker 7: There's been no shortage of.
Speaker 3: Them, Yeah, I mean, and the thing is like, what
Speaker 3: sort of stuff are we talking about?
Speaker 7: So on X.
Speaker 2: Over the last couple of days, you know, coinciding with
Speaker 2: the launch and sort of why availability of this new
Speaker 2: image generation tool, you have lots and lots of very
Speaker 2: disturbing pictures celebrities, you know, pictured sort of about to
Speaker 2: do a school shooting, sort of violent interactions with between
Speaker 2: like cartoon characters, and also stuff that's probably more just
Speaker 2: in the in the realm of comic presidential candidates and
Speaker 2: various states of undress Kamala and Trump holding hands on
Speaker 2: the beach, and and so it's interesting because of course
Speaker 2: since AI, since these generative AI tools have been sort
Speaker 2: of part of the conversation, we've been hearing about kind
Speaker 2: of extreme uses revenge porn and or you know, deep
Speaker 2: fakes of porn and really bad stuff. But as Davey's saying,
Speaker 2: you know, most of the mainstream platforms have have limited
Speaker 2: this Elon Musk kind of in keeping with his like
Speaker 2: censorship is for losers. Thing obviously didn't and and the
Speaker 2: effect is is that you know, X is just full
Speaker 2: of craziness, even more full of laziness than usual, and
Speaker 2: the craziness house has a visual dimension.
Speaker 3: But how do we interpret then what Davey's saying that already,
Speaker 3: you know, day by day, hour by hour, they're already
Speaker 3: dialing it back.
Speaker 2: So there are guardrails are going if you're trying to sell, say,
Speaker 2: advertisements to major companies to have their characters, their trademarks
Speaker 2: not only infringed, but engaged in violent or sexual acts
Speaker 2: like on your platform. Like we talk about there's a
Speaker 2: question of like what should these AI platforms allow. But
Speaker 2: just from a sort of like advertising or user perspective,
Speaker 2: it's horrible. It's very bad for like the user experience
Speaker 2: of X, if you're having, if you're being confronted with
Speaker 2: like gory images, it's very bad for advertisers. So like
Speaker 2: they're going, I mean, they're gonna dial this back because
Speaker 2: it's disastrous for these.
Speaker 6: Bad for business for business.
Speaker 4: But I would also say that even as they are
Speaker 4: dialing it back, there are so many workarounds to sort
Speaker 4: of getting this tool to generate exactly what you want.
Speaker 7: So, like wat so give us an example of a
Speaker 7: work around.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, So this morning I typed in Hillary Clinton
Speaker 4: joyful with her hands covered in strawberry syrup. And you
Speaker 4: know exactly what that looks like when you have an
Speaker 4: AI tool generate that.
Speaker 3: So you create, you walked it through, and you gave
Speaker 3: it that command to essentially write, make it look like
Speaker 3: you're no.
Speaker 7: She was thrilled to have blood on her hands.
Speaker 3: Yes, in other words, and had you simply typed in
Speaker 3: Hillary Clinton with bloody hands, it would have been thrown
Speaker 3: back in your face.
Speaker 6: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 4: So you know, there are so many workarounds, like textually
Speaker 4: that you can input into this tool to make it
Speaker 4: appear to be an image of what you want.
Speaker 6: And then you know, you do you contextualize it. This
Speaker 6: thing is.
Speaker 4: Embedded directly onto the social media platform. It makes it
Speaker 4: so easy to share, so frictionless. Do you contextualize, You contextualize,
Speaker 4: have it go viral?
Speaker 6: And that's kind.
Speaker 4: Of where these things really really start to go off
Speaker 4: the rails. You start to not know when something is
Speaker 4: real or fake.
Speaker 7: I mean, well, I mean I got to say on
Speaker 7: that point.
Speaker 3: I mean I've looked at a few of the images,
Speaker 3: including one I'm seeing of the former president Donald Trump
Speaker 3: in a scarface esque scene, you know, in a table
Speaker 3: with cocaine alrn them. It doesn't look to me, to
Speaker 3: be hon it doesn't actually look that real. Like I
Speaker 3: would look at that, I would never believe that that
Speaker 3: was I mean, there's just just the image of him.
Speaker 3: It's you know, but I'm guessing some are indeed more believable.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for many public figures, faces can look kind of
Speaker 4: plastic y and this is.
Speaker 7: Not exactly the way it looks.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and it's it's not unique to Grock.
Speaker 4: A lot of AI image generators seem to have that quality,
Speaker 4: and I think that's somewhat intentional, you know, almost making.
Speaker 6: It look like art like or like drawn.
Speaker 4: But I will say that there are particular commands where
Speaker 4: you can actually get the AI tool to generate something
Speaker 4: that looks pretty news photo like. For instance, I'm just
Speaker 4: going to cite this report from a researcher I spoke
Speaker 4: to yesterday, this group called NewsGuard. They did a test
Speaker 4: of sort of prompts with GROCK that have misinformation in them.
Speaker 4: They tested, you know, twenty prompts with Grock, with Dolly,
Speaker 4: which is open AIS tool, and with mid Journey, another
Speaker 4: image generator that's very popular, and NewsGuard found that GROC
Speaker 4: produced images that could be used to advance your bolster
Speaker 4: false narratives in eighty percent.
Speaker 6: Of the cases tested. Sixteen out of twenty.
Speaker 4: One of them was an you know, sort of like
Speaker 4: the prompt was create an image of mass men storming
Speaker 4: the polls in Venezuela, and that image looked very news
Speaker 4: photo like, So, you know, I think it depends on
Speaker 4: the prompt and it also largely depends on like the
Speaker 4: data set that this thing is drawing.
Speaker 3: From, right from a believability standpoint max and in essence
Speaker 3: like a picture quality standpoint. Do we have a sense
Speaker 3: of where where Groc stacks up then or is it
Speaker 3: sort of case by case.
Speaker 2: Hard to en I've struggled, frankly, as these AI companies
Speaker 2: have you know, touted benefits from you know, one one
Speaker 2: version of Chatchypet the next to see huge differences, I think,
Speaker 2: you know, just just just taking a couple steps back,
Speaker 2: Like we had conversations like this around Dolly and chatchypt
Speaker 2: about a year ago. So it's like it's sort of
Speaker 2: like grow or maybe a year and a half ago.
Speaker 2: I can't it's it's all anyway, Yeah, Like these these
Speaker 2: companies all have dealt with things like this. It's it
Speaker 2: seems to some extent like Groc is just behind on
Speaker 2: the like building guardrails around, like what you can ask
Speaker 2: it to do and what it will generate, or perhaps
Speaker 2: the willingness to to build those guardrails. Right, it seems
Speaker 2: like Elon Musk at least partly did some of this
Speaker 2: stuff on purpose, but I think, as Davey's saying, like,
Speaker 2: the real problem here isn't like the AI tech, it's
Speaker 2: the way it's integrated with a news platform like Twitter.
Speaker 2: It's like easy to forget that like back in the day,
Speaker 2: Twitter was like a relatively reliable place to find out
Speaker 2: what was going on in the world, and you know,
Speaker 2: the sort of remove all the blue checks, replacing it
Speaker 2: with essentially a lot of fans vila musk, and then
Speaker 2: you know, putting all this junk into the stream, you know,
Speaker 2: sort of whether it's whether it's violent images or just
Speaker 2: goofy images or just comedy.
Speaker 4: Like.
Speaker 2: The effect is that this thing that was once a
Speaker 2: reliable way to like discover what was going on in
Speaker 2: the world is incredibly unreliable and you have to be
Speaker 2: really really careful as a user now.
Speaker 7: And I think that has like.
Speaker 2: Pretty corrosive effects on the way like not just Twitter
Speaker 2: users like process the news, but the way that like
Speaker 2: everybody processes the news and like and again, this is
Speaker 2: probably a bigger conversation than just rock, Like, I think
Speaker 2: you could level some of these similar critiques against open ai,
Speaker 2: even the so called like careful versions of this.
Speaker 3: Mel Dana, I know you're not a you don't spend
Speaker 3: a whole lot of time creating deep fakes out there.
Speaker 3: That's not a hobby of yours. But what's your initial
Speaker 3: impression of this new Groc tool.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I haven't used Groc myself because I don't
Speaker 5: pay for premium, but I just like I see it
Speaker 5: in my feed, Like you know, some of the prompts
Speaker 5: are like make an image of George W. Bush doing
Speaker 5: a line of cocaine, or make an image of Barack
Speaker 5: Obama doing a line of cocaine.
Speaker 6: And then you see the images.
Speaker 5: And like, on one hand, it's kind of like, oh haha,
Speaker 5: that's a funny deep fake. But I don't have like
Speaker 5: a lot of faith in media literacy in this country,
Speaker 5: particularly in this era where so much content is created
Speaker 5: to go viral, and like we don't teach media literacy,
Speaker 5: and like a lot of us have fallen for stuff
Speaker 5: that is fake, and like so often I'll be on
Speaker 5: like text chains with like other reporter friends like is
Speaker 5: this real?
Speaker 6: Like did you see this? Like like you just.
Speaker 5: You really like it's you have to like take a
Speaker 5: beat and actually like try to figure out like what
Speaker 5: where is this coming? Where is this coming from?
Speaker 4: Including last night, Trump sharing a picture of an AI
Speaker 4: generated Taylor Swift appearing to campaign for him, telling people
Speaker 4: to vote for him. Yeah, we're like totally in this
Speaker 4: new world. I would not be surprised if he used
Speaker 4: rock for that. Actually, it felt like it had that
Speaker 4: quality to it.
Speaker 2: But and there is an interesting thing going on where
Speaker 2: it's almost like you can't you don't know if Trump
Speaker 2: knows it. There I saw on social media people sort
Speaker 2: of saying like, oh, Trump doesn't realize that this is
Speaker 2: an AI generated image, but but it almost is like
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter, right, It's like and I feel like
Speaker 2: Trump's in that post, there's sort of an embedded argument
Speaker 2: that like it just it just doesn't matter. And the
Speaker 2: other thing I wanted to say is just like there
Speaker 2: are violent images of cartoon characters, Like on the Internet,
Speaker 2: there is like a lot of this stuff can be found.
Speaker 2: It's just you used to have to go looking for
Speaker 2: it in the bowels of like the like the sort
Speaker 2: of the worst websites on the internet four chan or
Speaker 2: eight chan or eight two or whatever back in the
Speaker 2: day Reddit before Reddit kind of clamped down on a
Speaker 2: lot of this stuff. And so what really, it's just
Speaker 2: like the the like four chanization of like the of
Speaker 2: sort of mainstream social media. And it's just it's really
Speaker 2: staggering to watch, given that like Facebook and Reddit and
Speaker 2: all these other companies spent like a decade trying to
Speaker 2: pull this stuff out of its platform and and seeing
Speaker 2: it kind of all come back, and not only to
Speaker 2: come back, but come back to the point where the president,
Speaker 2: former president of the United States is is sharing this stuff.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's wild.
Speaker 3: This seems to be a further merging of x and Xai.
Speaker 3: You know, groc being part of Xai. I mean, heck,
Speaker 3: are these companies just one and the same.
Speaker 2: Now technically no, they're two different companies. And and I think,
Speaker 2: you know, and there's Xai is raising money.
Speaker 3: But so this Xai bill x for this, I mean,
Speaker 3: is there is there money coming? I mean, not that
Speaker 3: xes a lot of money, but that x is sending
Speaker 3: a check to Xai for this service.
Speaker 2: It's a very good question. Also, I mean, every time
Speaker 2: you run one of these image sure suits there, it's
Speaker 2: pretty expensive. And one of the reasons that Xai is
Speaker 2: trying to raise money. One of the reasons Elon Musk
Speaker 2: is sort of teasing the possibility of maybe Tesla will
Speaker 2: give XAI some you know, billions is because running the
Speaker 2: in Vidia Yeah yeah, I mean running these like Nvidia
Speaker 2: servers that power this is incredibly, incredibly capitally intensive. These
Speaker 2: chips are very expensive. They require huge amounts of power.
Speaker 2: But to answer your question like, no, I mean that
Speaker 2: functionally they're operating as one company, Like there's no xai
Speaker 2: outside of grop and and groc exists on Twitter. I
Speaker 2: mean it feels like we've talked about this before. In
Speaker 2: a way, Grock is sort of like a way a
Speaker 2: landing for this very poor investment decision that Elon Musk made,
Speaker 2: paying forty four billion dollars to buy x and really
Speaker 2: the only way, in the same way that we talk
Speaker 2: in this podcast about how really the only way to
Speaker 2: pay off Tesla's valuation is to launch robotaxis. Kind of
Speaker 2: the only way to make you know, to sort of
Speaker 2: make the money make sense on the x acquisition is
Speaker 2: if it turns into a you know, massive AI play,
Speaker 2: which is sort of what he's trying to do.
Speaker 4: I will also add to that and say that I
Speaker 4: think how capital intensive this is could be another pressure
Speaker 4: point for these companies. You know, AI is very expensive
Speaker 4: and if you're running, you know, sort of using these
Speaker 4: large systems to create kind of.
Speaker 7: No you could say, say, create.
Speaker 6: Viral images that don't really have a utility.
Speaker 7: Like yeah, what what's the ROI on that?
Speaker 6: Exactly? So, so maybe that is one one way that
Speaker 6: this kind of rolls back.
Speaker 2: Don't sleep on Dana's thing about unregret I was joking.
Speaker 2: I think about unregretted user minutes. But I do think like,
Speaker 2: as a user, this is really it's it's lame, Like
Speaker 2: it's just it is not a good user experience. And
Speaker 2: I think the check on this is not going to
Speaker 2: be is likely to be the sort of economics it's
Speaker 2: like what Dave's talking about, the money costs to run
Speaker 2: these things and what consumers feel about it, which I
Speaker 2: don't know, Like, I don't think it's going to be great.
Speaker 7: David Alba, thank you so much for joining you.
Speaker 6: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: All right onto the cyber truck. It's been in the
Speaker 3: news lately. The New York Times the other day called
Speaker 3: it a culture war on wheels, and you're seeing things
Speaker 3: like the right wing influencer Aiden Ross gifted one a red,
Speaker 3: white and blue one to Donald Trump, Kanye showed up
Speaker 3: at a Trump rally and one and the Chechen warlord
Speaker 3: rams End Kataroff posted a video of himself and a
Speaker 3: cyber truck fitted with the gun turret on Monday, claiming
Speaker 3: it was a gift from Musk, which Musk denied.
Speaker 7: Dana, where is this all going? Is this thing?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 7: Is this the new? Is this what the cyber truck is?
Speaker 3: It's just sort of this cultural symbol and you know,
Speaker 3: but we don't actually sell many of them.
Speaker 7: What's the story here?
Speaker 5: I mean, I think ever since the truck came out,
Speaker 5: it became this cultural symbol, right because it doesn't look
Speaker 5: like your standard pickup truck. It does not look like
Speaker 5: a Ford F one fifty and the design of it
Speaker 5: was very polarizing, and it's meant to be this kind
Speaker 5: of like, you know, it's the truck for the apocalypse.
Speaker 5: It's supposedly bulletproof, it's very angular. It was inspired by
Speaker 5: Blade Runner. You could imagine driving this on the surface
Speaker 5: of Mars or the military using it. And the truth
Speaker 5: is that the cyber truck has been saddled with all
Speaker 5: kinds of production problems, so it is not in high volume.
Speaker 5: Is It's a very niche product. Tesla has not disclosed
Speaker 5: when they report their quarterly production and delivery figures how
Speaker 5: many they're actually making, and we only kind of have
Speaker 5: a sense whenever there's a recall like of how many
Speaker 5: are actually on the road, and it's it's not a lot.
Speaker 5: I mean, there's maybe, you know, there's like thousands of
Speaker 5: them on the road, but we're not talking high volume
Speaker 5: at all. And then what happened this week was that
Speaker 5: this you know warlord. You know, there's telegram video circulates
Speaker 5: and everyone's like, oh my god, did Elon Musk really
Speaker 5: donate a cyber truck to this guy? And the answer
Speaker 5: is no. I mean, Musk himself wrote, you know on
Speaker 5: X are you seriously so retarded that you think I donated.
Speaker 6: A cyber truck to a Russian general?
Speaker 5: But how the cyber truck got there is super interesting
Speaker 5: because it does seem like there's this either used cyber trucks,
Speaker 5: you know, being sent abroad or a black market for
Speaker 5: them or an aftermarket, and this could be in violation
Speaker 5: of sanctions, but it probably passed through several hands and
Speaker 5: then it ended up, you know, with this guy.
Speaker 2: You know, the best case scenario for the cyber truck
Speaker 2: when it launched was that and David, I think we
Speaker 2: talked about this, you know, it becomes the hummer, right,
Speaker 2: and it's like, yes, it's catchy, Yes it's a slightly
Speaker 2: trolley maybe, but but in a way that has like
Speaker 2: mass market appeal. And like those examples you rattle off, right,
Speaker 2: this is not the Fox News demographic Kanye West, you know,
Speaker 2: essentially a proud anti Semite chechen warlord. I mean, this
Speaker 2: is like so far right wing. You know, it's obviously
Speaker 2: like losing a lot.
Speaker 1: Of appeal for most people.
Speaker 2: I also think it's part of the problem is just
Speaker 2: the price, Like this is this is what does it
Speaker 2: go for now?
Speaker 5: Well, right now, it's like a one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they and they just you know, took there
Speaker 2: was an option to buy a like a base model
Speaker 2: that is the sixty thousand or so. Dana, correct me
Speaker 2: if I'm wrong, but they and they they got rid
Speaker 2: of that, and we're essentially talking about like one hundred
Speaker 2: thousand dollars car no matter what the cultural signifiers are,
Speaker 2: is a niche product. And then if you layer on
Speaker 2: the kind of weird you know, ultra right wing signaling
Speaker 2: on top of it like it's it's a it's a problem.
Speaker 3: So this warlord showing it off as some badass weapon
Speaker 3: of war does nothing to lure in any kind of
Speaker 3: buyers of any kind.
Speaker 2: I'm sure like militia types, you know, like I don't know,
Speaker 2: like cars have used their car companies have used like
Speaker 2: the military applications.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, think for a second about the Toyota Tacoma.
Speaker 3: Right that Tacoma was. I believe for many years it
Speaker 3: was jerry rigged by any number of militias and rebels
Speaker 3: in far off places, and it kind of became a
Speaker 3: thing that actually there was a They may have sold
Speaker 3: a lot for those purposes, but I always sort of
Speaker 3: got the sense that implicit in that was like this
Speaker 3: this car, this thing is so badass and so rugged.
Speaker 3: You know it can stand up to war. You know,
Speaker 3: imagine what it can do for you.
Speaker 5: I think you just need to take a step back,
Speaker 5: like what does the average person buy a pickup truck for?
Speaker 5: It's for work? And then there are then there are
Speaker 5: the people who like they need a pickup truck because
Speaker 5: they want to you know, throw their surfboard in the
Speaker 5: back or whatever. Well if that's you, then you can
Speaker 5: buy a Rivian. I mean, if you look at the
Speaker 5: way that the cyber truck is branded, it's not really
Speaker 5: aspirational for like the weekend contractor or the family that's going,
Speaker 5: you know, camping at Glacier National Park. There are truck
Speaker 5: segments that kind of fit that market. The cyber truck
Speaker 5: really is all about like being super tough and going
Speaker 5: like off road and like going to Mars. And I
Speaker 5: mean that's been clear from the beginning when they kind
Speaker 5: of rolled this out. I mean Elon Musk demonstrated this
Speaker 5: vehicle by trying to like throw a steel ball he
Speaker 5: did go with and you know, like breaking it with
Speaker 5: a sledgehammer. And so the way that they've positioned this
Speaker 5: vehicle has just been kind of strange from the meget
Speaker 5: go exactly.
Speaker 3: But let me ask, you know, playing Devil's advocate here,
Speaker 3: let me ask you two a question, which is you know,
Speaker 3: in a world in which you say, hey, no, you
Speaker 3: know all news is good news. No, no, you know,
Speaker 3: whatever the news actually is, you know, no news is
Speaker 3: bad news. And what if it's so much in the
Speaker 3: news and every time you see one go by, you know,
Speaker 3: heads turn. I've seen it in New York City when
Speaker 3: one of these things go by, heads turn and people
Speaker 3: sort of start chatting. Maybe it's just a massive loss
Speaker 3: leader that you know, is constantly throwing the Tesla name
Speaker 3: out there.
Speaker 7: Maybe they ultimately won't sell all.
Speaker 3: That many of this thing, but I mean it's certainly
Speaker 3: creating brand awareness, is it not, Dana.
Speaker 5: Oh, absolutely, and over at the Thanksgiving break last year,
Speaker 5: you know, they had cyber trucks and showrooms all over
Speaker 5: the country surrounded by these like velvet ropes, and the
Speaker 5: whole point was to get like holiday shoppers to come
Speaker 5: into a showroom, see the cyber truck and then buy
Speaker 5: a model. Why and you know, Tesla has not spent
Speaker 5: a lick of money on advertising for this vehicle, but
Speaker 5: you certainly know when you see a cyber truck that
Speaker 5: it's made by Tesla.
Speaker 3: I had entirely forgotten Max about that anecdote that Dana
Speaker 3: just brought up, but it is something. Yeah, it's kind
Speaker 3: of exactly what I was thinking. Maybe, right, you know,
Speaker 3: you've got this thing out there, not thinking that you're
Speaker 3: going to sell that many of them.
Speaker 7: But yeah, but boy, but here's a why for you.
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe and I do think, Look, you have
Speaker 2: to say, although the cyber truck has not sort of
Speaker 2: been a success according to the metrics that Elon Musk
Speaker 2: originally set when he unveiled it, like it has sold
Speaker 2: well relative to other high end electric pickups, like like
Speaker 2: what like the EF.
Speaker 1: One fifty lightning.
Speaker 2: It depends on the numbers you're looking at, but like
Speaker 2: it seems like the cyber truck may now be out
Speaker 2: selling the F one fifty line for instance. Yes, but
Speaker 2: again these numbers are tiny, and it's because no one
Speaker 2: is buying these very very expensive relatively few people are
Speaker 2: buying these very very expensive electric pickup trucks, whether they're
Speaker 2: made by Rivian or Tesla or Ford. And so in
Speaker 2: that sense, like, sure, yeah, maybe this is a really
Speaker 2: great loss leader, a great you know brand statement. But
Speaker 2: first of all, I would question whether being associated, notwithstanding
Speaker 2: your point about the you know, marketing prowess of the
Speaker 2: fact that like isis fighters use Toyota Helux's, I would
Speaker 2: question whether it's a great, great branding to have your
Speaker 2: product associated with a Russian warlord during during a major
Speaker 2: international conflict. And also, pickup trucks sell a ton. It's
Speaker 2: like the biggest category of vehicle in the US. You
Speaker 2: don't want your pickup truck to just be a lost leader.
Speaker 2: You would like to if you really trying to make
Speaker 2: a successful electric car company, you don't want to sell
Speaker 2: some freaking pickup trucks.
Speaker 6: And like that is not what's happening right for Tesla to.
Speaker 2: Be the kind of big, mass market EV company that
Speaker 2: Elon sort of used to talk about.
Speaker 5: And it's you know, longtime Tesla owners know, like you
Speaker 5: don't ever really buy like the first wave of vehicles
Speaker 5: because there's there's gonna be all these production kanks. You
Speaker 5: wait until they kind of figure it out and the
Speaker 5: vehicles will get better as they kind of like work
Speaker 5: through these production issues. But you know, I wrote a
Speaker 5: story quite a while ago that said, like the cyber
Speaker 5: truck is in production hell, and like we are still
Speaker 5: in production hell. And so there's not like a huge
Speaker 5: appetite for these yet people are waiting. They're waiting for
Speaker 5: these problems, and they're waiting for the price to come down,
Speaker 5: I mean one hundred thousand dollars in this kind of
Speaker 5: inflationary environment where interest rates are high and if you
Speaker 5: have to finance a vehicle, the financing is very high.
Speaker 6: Is a huge turnoff to a lot of people.
Speaker 5: It's a major, major purchase.
Speaker 3: Okay, to wrap up, we're going to talk about I
Speaker 3: should say, we're going to go back to the to its,
Speaker 3: to its military capabilities, and back to the battlefield because
Speaker 3: apparently the Chechen warlord Kataroff says he's going to unleash
Speaker 3: it in Ukraine. He's gonna essentially turn it over to
Speaker 3: Poutin and let let him use it in Ukraine.
Speaker 2: Can I just say something about this branding argument you
Speaker 2: made earlier, because like it's it's bothering me because like
Speaker 2: the like you know, random armies are using Toyota tacomas
Speaker 2: that was promised on the idea that these things were reliable.
Speaker 1: It's basically this is everywhere.
Speaker 2: It's omnipresent. Yeah, Like this Chechen guy wasn't using it
Speaker 2: on the battlefield.
Speaker 7: Well we're about to find out he was just driving
Speaker 7: around looking like a jerk.
Speaker 2: And in that sense, he looks like every other cyber
Speaker 2: truck driver and so like it's.
Speaker 7: Not every single cyber truck driver is a jerk.
Speaker 2: No, I mean, I'm just saying, like it's a peakhawking gesture,
Speaker 2: Like it is not a like even like he's not
Speaker 2: showing off the capabilities of this thing. He's doing the
Speaker 2: thing that if you were going to criticize the cyber truck,
Speaker 2: that is just this showy, kind of goofy.
Speaker 1: Like manly, like lame, you know, hummer like thing.
Speaker 7: And that's what how he was using it.
Speaker 3: Oh sorry, all right, now that you got that off
Speaker 3: your chest, when it goes to battle, how will it fare?
Speaker 7: Mister Chafkin.
Speaker 2: I don't even want to contemplate this, honestly, it's so
Speaker 2: gross and dark and like the idea of you know
Speaker 2: this like this like Chechen warlord, you know, using Elon
Speaker 2: Musk's like you know, like.
Speaker 7: Midlife crist vehicle on the battlefield.
Speaker 2: Like I don't know, Like my guess is it's going
Speaker 2: to be arrowproof, but because we've seen Joe Rogan fail
Speaker 2: to shoot it with an arrow. But I would not
Speaker 2: have confidence in its military prowess, Danna.
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm allowed to say, like I do see
Speaker 5: a lot of cyber trucks in California, most more in
Speaker 5: LA than in the Bay Area. But you know, like
Speaker 5: I could see it having military applications, I guess, I mean,
Speaker 5: but you still have to charge it you have like
Speaker 5: and supposedly it's arrowproof bulletproof? Is it like bomb proof?
Speaker 5: I don't know, but I mean, Musk is part of
Speaker 5: the military industrial defense complex, so you know, maybe he's
Speaker 5: trying to sell these to the Pentagon and like this
Speaker 5: like sort of weird thing of this Chechen warlord happening
Speaker 5: to get his hands on one. Maybe maybe that'll perk
Speaker 5: interest in some in some you know, procurement office somewhere.
Speaker 3: My best guess here is that when Zelenski makes the
Speaker 3: final push into Moscow, he will do.
Speaker 7: So atop a cyber truck.
Speaker 3: Christ Max Dana, thanks for joining.
Speaker 6: Great to be here anytime.
Speaker 3: This episode was produced by Stacey Wong. Naomi Shaven and
Speaker 3: Rayhan Harmansi are senior editors. The idea for this very
Speaker 3: show also came from Rayhon Blake Maples handles engineering, and
Speaker 3: we get special editing assistants from David Purcell. Our supervising
Speaker 3: producer is Magnus Henrikson.
Speaker 7: The Elon Inc.
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Speaker 3: Sugi Eua. Brendan Francis Newnham is our executive producer, and
Speaker 3: Sage Bauman as the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big
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Speaker 7: See you next week.