Brian: Welcome to The Rebooting Show.
I'm Brian Morrissey.
I'm spending January on some preview episodes of the year ahead.
this is poised to be a pivotal year in the media business.
I mean, already the year has begun, unfortunately, with cuts at the Washington Post, at Vox Media, at HuffPost.
and this tracks with a lot of my conversations that I'm having.
2024, wasn't a great year for the industry and 2025 is set to be another year of retrenchment.
While at the same time retooling for a vastly changed environment.
And I don't think there's any use sugarcoating that exactly.
but it's hard not to contrast the state of affairs, with that in the tech industry and particularly the
biggest tech platforms, now often called the mag seven or magnificent seven.
These companies, saw their market caps grow 63 percent in 2024, as they rode the wave of excitement about AI.
Meanwhile, publishers.
Fred about a I further compressing their already compressed businesses.
the mag seven accounted for fully 75 percent of the S and P five hundreds growth last year, just to give you a sense
of just how powerful the tech industry has become in this country and big tech.
Has become an entrenched power center, no matter how much cosplaying it's many vocal cheerleaders on acts like
to do about how unfairly treated they are by the quote unquote elites.
and I often say media is downstream of big tech, which controls the distribution and,
also eats up most of the monetization as the duopoly has expanded to an oligopoly.
so to get a read on the year ahead in big tech, I had to turn to Alex Kantrowitz, who writes the Big Technology
Newsletter and hosts a podcast of the same name, in order to discuss, what we should expect, and get his analysis
of, the different moves that, the big technology companies will be making.
We discussed in this episode, the slightly unseemly kowtowing to
the incoming Trump administration we've seen from Meta and others.
Open AIs, wonky economics, Alex's, surprising bet on AI companions being a breakout, uh, AI AI product,
why X has proven its doomsayers, wrong, and, the bright spot of
individual creators amid a lot of this, media industry doom and gloom.
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Alex, I did, be sure to check out the Big Technology newsletter and podcast, I'm
going to include links to it in the show notes, But first, thank you to EX.CO for
sponsoring these year in preview episodes that will run throughout the month.
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Thanks so much, Ex.Co.
And now onto my conversation with Alex.
All right, Alex, welcome back to the podcast.
Thanks for joining me for this little look ahead at a big technology.
I thought who better to like, look at the year ahead, the Mr.
Big technology himself.
Alex Kantrowitz: Thank you, Brian.
Great to be here.
Brian: Okay.
So let's get right into it.
I mean, we're coming off like last week.
meta, you know, made waves with, with Mark Zuckerberg coming out and saying the content moderation.
he built is coming down and it was all the media's fault or various
other liberals and it's basically genuflecting, I think, to, to Trump.
I mean, they just killed their D.
I, infrastructure to today.
So I, and they just been making all these kinds of moves, but I want to get into to that part.
right now.
So this seems part of big texts like Trump accommodation.
is that fair to say?
And what are you seeing across all these?
And how will this play out in the year ahead?
Alex Kantrowitz: Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg have always played to the political winds.
himself has talked about how basically, He doesn't have any like
real values or morals in terms of like what should be on Facebook.
He just wants to give people what they want.
And I think it was pretty clear in his statement that he saw what people want, wanted in the election in 2024.
And that's Trump and the associated policies and the associated dialogue,
I suppose, and said, okay, well, we're going to go with that.
So that sort of fits his content moderation philosophy.
And of course, there's a lot to be gained.
when it comes to trying to get in the good graces of this administration, which Zuckerberg has seen, which Tim
Cook has definitely seen, he's going to donate to the inauguration, which Jeff Bezos has seen, he's now, you know, he's
going to be best buds with Trump, and which Elon Musk has seen, and they all stand to gain a lot by having the U.
S.
government basically say, we're going to be on your side on the issues that You care about, especially after the last
bunch of years where the U S government has been strongly anti big tech.
And I think that we're, you know, of course the tech clash started under
Trump where we started to talk about like the power of these companies.
And, you know, we just started to see the DOJ and the FTCs to bring cases against them.
but the tides are shifting.
I think the big tech has taken the government's best shot and is still standing and sort of like
the government sees that these companies aren't going away.
And these companies now see an opportunity to change the narrative and change their relationship with the government.
And they're doing what they can, you know, pragmatically to get in Trump's good graces.
Brian: Yeah.
I think sometimes it's, it's almost forgotten that this is how companies sort
of always acted until all of a sudden they sort of became into social activity.
Like that was, that was a, that was a departure from the norm and we're sort of back in the norm.
I mean, companies are not about, they're about delivering shareholder value.
That that's what they do.
They're not about furthering causes exactly and I think we got into some kind of a historical period
probably between 2017 and like into, I guess, up to the election, but I think it was sort of petering out.
anyway,
Alex Kantrowitz: Yeah.
One thing Matt Stoller, had this great tweet where he's, he's like actively watching Zuckerberg on Joe Rogan, which
of course, Zuckerberg went on to sort of herald the end of DEI at Facebook.
And Stoller says, Matt, Mark Zuckerberg doesn't care about any of this stuff.
He wants one, an end to the FTC antitrust suit against the firm to removing the consent degree that bans
the targeting of children and three, the government to legalize mass copyright violations for AI training models.
And it's like, yeah, that's it.
It's pretty simple.
This is a business and this is Zuckerberg doing business things.
Brian: Yeah, that's right.
It's almost kind of silly to be like debating the sort of merits of it.
Cause it's, it's, that's what it, that's what it comes down to, but let's, let's
actually bring that into, you know, how, how much big tech is now embedded.
With the government, because, you know, we're seeing, and maybe that's not necessarily big tech, but tech
overall, let's just say, because there's now becoming just like there was in the finance industry.
And when Goldman Sachs was government sacks, and there was just a regular sort of pipeline between the treasury
department and Goldman Sachs that, you know, people from the technology industry are now heading to Washington.
They're part of this, this very strange MAGA coalition.
I mean, I think it's very interesting because we saw the debates over, The use of H 1B, visas that erupted where, there's
clear fissures between what, you know, the, the investors, the people that from the tech industry who invested in the
Trump campaign, and, you know, the, the, the grassroots MAGA, America First people.
so, I mean, how do you, I mean, it seems inevitable that, that the technology industry overall is going
to be, you know, More enmeshed with the government because the technology
industry is, is one of our, one of the nation's biggest competitive advantages.
Alex Kantrowitz: absolutely.
And so I think it really begins.
I mean, there's so much opportunity there for the tech industry to sell into government.
To have government bless some of the policies that they want.
And we just talked about some of the policies that Zuckerberg is interested.
And this sort of combining of private enterprise and government, right?
Sort of like kind of central part of the American system.
only seems like it's going to get, you know, much more, enmeshed
as the tech industry and the Trump administration get closer.
of course there was a period within Silicon Valley where all
the employees protested, military contracts, which is just one part.
Of, cloud computing's relationship with the U.
S.
government.
the companies have basically said, like, Stop protesting or we're going to fire you.
I know that Google has fired some people who were against some of its cloud contracts, with certain governments.
And we also see Microsoft has taken like a pretty strong stance that they were like, we're just going to use our
technology and basically give it to the government for the purposes they want.
And that will make a strong country.
and so I was, I was speaking with the Garmin, last late last year,
and he said, look like we only have about 20 percent of all computing.
That's moved to the cloud and 80 percent that's still being done,
like in servers within companies and governments and agencies.
And his goal is to flip that to go from 20 percent cloud and 80 percent on prem to do 80 percent cloud and 20 percent the rest.
And like, how do you do that?
You move really reluctant.
Organizations, who don't want to change, you move them to change.
And so you can do that by selling into the government and getting them to move a lot of what they do to the cloud.
And that sort of helps you get to that number.
So there's, there's definite advantages to be had for Microsoft, for Google and for Amazon on that front.
And then there's just the obvious stuff.
There's Elon Musk who wants to get SpaceX to take more of a
load for For the government and further advance the space program.
There's Jeff Bezos.
He wants to do the same thing with Blue Origin.
There's even there's meta again.
Part of Zuckerberg's announcement today wasn't only like, you know, we wanted like now pursue the similar policies to Trump.
So please, like, you know, get us, get us these benefits where you can.
But they also say, listen, like we have other governments that are pushing us.
to take down content.
We don't want that.
We don't want to do that.
And we need an ally in the White House and we're going to look to you.
So it's all across the board that these companies and the government are just going to get closer and closer.
Brian: Yeah.
And, and also when you think about AI, right, I mean, I remember, like, I, I wrote a little bit about this last
week and I got, I got a email from, from someone in Europe and then you always get, you always get reminded
when you get an email from someone from Europe about like data privacy stuff.
And to think about like the AI, like, I don't think there's going to be, I don't know what, how the New York
Times lawsuit's going to go, but like, you know, this, we're, we're just very business oriented and we're not like
going to like hold her, you know, we're not, we're not going to get, hung up in, in a lot of, I don't think the data
privacy stuff, but when you think about, and Zuckerberg has mentioned not being able to deploy some of their models
in Europe, and, you know, with all of these advances in AI, it's all based
on a lot of presumptions of things that you can do with data and people's data.
I mean, this example from someone, was was saying, well, if they're like combining a lot of data,
About someone that is violating these data privacy, restrictions.
I'm like, it seems like it's gonna be a mess in Europe when it comes to a I, and deploying a lot of this because one.
Let's be real.
I mean, this tech was not built there and they don't really love the idea of, being so far behind in it, in tech overall.
and to, you know, you're, you know, they regulate, they regulate a lot.
And, that's That's just how they do, do things.
And so that, that gets ironed out on the governmental level.
Alex Kantrowitz: Yeah.
Unless you have like, I don't know, maybe a strict lobbying from the U S government and even that probably won't do it.
You're just not going to get this AI stuff.
In Europe, like one of the biggest tells his Apple intelligence, which
does nothing, is not being released in Europe because of data privacy issues.
And I think at least in the near term, the AI that's going to be most useful
to us outside of those of us that use like the chat, GPTs and clouds.
is going to be from companies like Google that will take our Gmail, our
docs, our calendar, and as they've been doing this for a while, right?
You get a flight confirmation in Gmail, it goes on your Google calendar before you even put it there.
so they're going to start to really max this out with Gen AI.
And, You're just not going to be able to use that in Europe, because there's
going to be all these concerns that the European commission will have.
And it's not worth it for these companies to launch there.
If they're going to get hit with these fines.
And it's amazing because every couple of days, it seems like there's another story about a new one, two, three,
5 billion fine that Europe levies on these tech companies, which like at one point, like, it's like, all right,
well, they're not going to, you know, pull out of your countries completely.
but on the other hand, they're like, well, why are we going to launch something new?
If we're just going to be fined, so, and you're not a big enough market to take that risk.
Brian: Yeah.
Alex Kantrowitz: in Europe.
Brian: And, and it's like, I think it's part of the overall, like, you know, the, I guess it's the splinter net.
I know it's, it's beyond internet now, but like, it's not the, the WW of WWWs is kind of gone because there's different,
there's going to be different like versions in a lot of different countries because a lot of, a lot of jurisdictions
because of, of the different like laws and it's not going to be uniform at all.
I forgot, somewhere I read earlier this week about how that was dead, so I'm probably stealing it from there.
Let's talk about who's positioned well in AI in 2025 and who is not.
think there's a case to be made, it seems, that Google is actually really well positioned.
I think, I think the sort of sentiment for Google and AI, like, in 2024,
like, was, it was, it was down and down and then it, like, sort of rose up.
I've, I've actually been impressed by, by, by some of their, their, not, leave aside the AI overviews in search.
I, I'm not impressed by those that much.
But Jev and I like advanced, I've been using that the last like few days and it's really good.
And like some of the, some of the things that notebook LM does, is,
you know, some of it is parlor tricks, but it's, it's pretty good.
And then, you know, just within their products, it's okay.
But I don't know, is, is Google well positioned now compared to like, say an open AI?
Alex Kantrowitz: Yes and no.
I mean, the reason why everybody ragged on Google, all through last year, well, there's really two reasons.
One is they just publicly demonstrated incompetence in building AI products, like the Eat Rocks example or the, you
know, the Founding Fathers who were every race but white, stuff like that.
And, that was embarrassing for them.
I think, like, the real issue for Google is the search situation.
I mean, perplexity hardly ranks right now in the App Store.
That being said, like everyone is aware that search is going to change and search will be offloaded to AI
conversational search engines, or Google will have to just change completely, which changes their business model.
Google's really interesting.
When you speak with them about search, they always give like a.
An answer of like, you know, you ask like a straightforward question, like, do you, did people click more ads?
And they always say people were more engaged in the search results and ask longer questions.
And it's like, yeah, but the ad thing is kind of important to your business.
Don't you think?
And they're like, people did more clicks within the
Brian: You feel like you're in an AI.
So I trust me.
I remember it goes back to my like early reporting days, talking to Google product managers.
I did feel like I had an early experience with talking with AI.
Alex Kantrowitz: Exactly.
So I think that that we shouldn't discount the fact that there is a still somewhat existential threat to
Google when it comes to search and AI search like AI will change search.
Can Google ride that wave?
We don't know yet.
That's why the stock tanked when general generative AI came out is because everybody was aware of that.
And then it just became clear in the aftermath, let's say in the two years following that we weren't just gonna,
you know, take all of our search and put it on chat GPT right away.
Like this was going to take a while, maybe it's going to take years.
it's really hard to sort of dislodge a longstanding consumer behavior.
And so that's why Google has bounced back.
The revenue looks amazing in the middle of this AI moment.
But again, it's like all about the long game on search.
So that's the biggest.
drawback for Google.
Brian: I want to get into the search.
That's a good segue because, I've, I've been amazed because that, that Google's, you know, share price has been, you
know, doing what it has done because their, their core product, the way they make, you know, the majority of their
money, It's clearly not good right now, like compared to where it was, like, I
mean, the search results are, at least to me, like, I think they're a mess.
they're, they're clearly trying to do so many different things.
You've got AI overviews, they're shoving Reddit down your throat and forums everywhere.
They're trying to clean up, clean out a lot of the SEO ARB, you know, affiliate stuff.
there's the, the ads are kind of.
All over the place at this point and, and like you said, if you go and you start, you're using like a perplexity,
not for every like search, but like, it's a, it's a better product for like most of the searches that at least for
me, like, I think it's a better product for, for most of the searches that I do.
I choose, I go to perplexity now more often than Google for, I would say at least half of my searches.
Alex Kantrowitz: Yeah.
So one thing that I found with perplexity is like, I'll try Google because that's just my default behavior.
Like it's the default on my Safari on the iPhone.
So I'm like Googling and on Chrome, right.
They pay good money for that and it's worked for them.
But I've turned to perplexity for the hardest queries, which is like, that is pretty bad for Google.
It's like, all right, I, you know, this is, this is something that's going to like, take some real digging.
Then I go to perplexity and I get the answer.
Like I, if I try to like cut through bureaucracy, like, you know, go through all these bureaucratic websites and
try to find a simple answer, it's like that's a job for perplexity.
And I think that as perplexity gets those tougher queries, right.
Then it's almost an easier battle to get the, the low hanging fruit of traditional search, right.
Brian: Yeah, so a media is always downstream of this, right?
So how does and I always think like what what's going on in in the search results pages right now is just Google
is trying to seize this threat to it and is trying to reposition itself.
And it's really difficult to do because there's so many different things that search is just so critical to it.
And, you know, publishers get trampled and it's just like, it's not personal.
It's just, they're, they're just collateral damage, unfortunately.
And a lot of this, what, what are some of the things that you think
that you can see, like Google having to do in, in the year ahead?
And like, what, what impact if any, that you could see, would it have to like publishers?
Alex Kantrowitz: So, you know, the, it's interesting cause I've always looked back at the Google news debate, which
I always thought was so silly when I've considered where Google might go here.
So the Google news debate was basically Google news was like this aggregator page.
I don't even know if, I mean, it still exists in some format.
No one goes to it, I guess.
Maybe it's like on the default, for Android and that's where it gets
traffic.
Yeah.
Okay.
So let me, let me, let me apologize to Google news.
I guess some people still use it, but basically,
Brian: Now I feel bad.
What do you,
Alex Kantrowitz: Yeah.
Anyway, sorry, we can, we can, revisit this over drinks one day.
I'll apologize, but look, here's the thing about Google news publishers always, hated the idea or some publishers
hated the idea that Google took their link and they took a snippet and it
provided value to Google, but only, but people only had to go to one link.
So 10 publishers providing value.
People click once, only one publisher got paid.
And.
I think that publishers generally were a little bit too whiny on that front.
Like, they're getting traffic from Google News, like take the traffic, right?
That's always been my perspective.
Brian: Yeah,
Alex Kantrowitz: But it gets interesting when it comes to the AI overviews or how news will be baked into generative search.
In that case, I really think that Google and Perplexity and others are going to have to make deals with publications to
get In the moment information within their search engines, in a way that they could sort of digest and spit out to people.
like we saw like perplexity tried to basically steal a Forbes ad last year
of Forbes, sorry, a Forbes article last year that didn't go well for them.
And so I think what you're going to see this year is, and we saw a lot of it last year too, is like the perplexities and
the Googles of the world, just signing deals with company, with news publishers, and maybe smaller publications like us.
that basically are just like, okay, like, you know, we value your ability to weigh in with high value information,
in the moment, and therefore, we want to pay you a little bit for
Brian: yeah.
I mean, they already took the evergreen.
It's gone.
They
Alex Kantrowitz: Yeah, that's gone.
Brian: Like, they already trained everything.
There's no taking it back.
And, yeah, it's the fresh content and, that, that they're gonna, that they're gonna need.
I think, you know, the question is always gonna be what, what kind of,
what kind of licensing deals are you gonna get out of these things?
I mean, if, if, what did Reddit get?
Reddit only got 200 million or
something.
Alex Kantrowitz: got a good amount of money.
Brian: but like, if it's reddit, like the amount of information on reddit, like, what are they going to pay?
And I think that is always going to be some of these deals that have already been been cut with, like, open AI is, you
know, there's always going to, there's always going to be a bid ask spread.
And, and that's gonna be the question.
But I do think I do agree with you that that Google hasn't been cutting
these deals yet, but you know, they're gonna have to at some point.
And, and it's kind of right.
It's actually, it's better than these schemes from governments to have governments basically take money
from from Facebook or Google and then distribute it to, a few publications
Alex Kantrowitz: Yeah, that's
weird.
Yeah.
And look, the revenue, like you're right, what are the deals gonna look like?
I always think that like, if you're counting on search or social
revenue to be your entire business, you're probably doing it wrong.
Try to build a strong core business outside of that.
And then just use this Google or perplexity, you know, generative AI money as gravy.
I mean, having lived through the BuzzFeed experiment, That would be my perspective at least.
Brian: That's a good point.
You're a veteran.
all right.
Open AI.
I mean, I've been listening to your, your podcasts, and you've been writing about it too.
it seems like you're a little bearish on, on open AI
Alex Kantrowitz: Yeah, well, look, they raised a lot of money and they're losing a lot of money.
And even their most popular products, like this new unlimited chat GPT that they released, Sam Altman just came
out and said, they're losing money on that because it costs so much to serve the responses to people.
And they underestimated how much people would use these things.
So they're actually getting more than 200 of value out of it.
Out of the products.
So like for me,
Brian: 2025.
That's it.
By the way, it's such a Silicon Valley thing to do.
It's like, Whoa, so we're losing a shit ton of money because people love our products so much.
It's just
Alex Kantrowitz: It's very silicon valley Yeah, I we just said on our on our show that anthropic will probably
come out with like their own version of this Like a one thousand dollar per month, edition of claude called anthropic
or claude 1000 and and I think that will probably sell very sickly valley.
In fact, this whole story is very very silicon valley Because it is
like a story of you lose money and you grow until you start making money.
And so like the argument in favor of open AI is that like, well, they just scaled from 100 to 300 million users
Brian: let me be clear, they're bringing in, like, a lot of revenue, they're just, they're
Alex Kantrowitz: Losing per query.
Brian: bring it in,
Alex Kantrowitz: And that's the problem.
I mean, the problem with GPT five and the problem with these reasoning models
is that they're just so expensive to run because they're so big.
And if they can't find a way to get those costs down.
There's one of two things that happened.
One is they raise costs tremendously on the people that use them.
And this is an industry that doesn't ha hasn't yet really shown a deep ROI on his, on his applications or B they shut down.
Right.
It's like one of two things you cannot, I mean, they just raised opening.
I just raised the biggest VC round in history, more than 6 billion last year.
they lost 5 billion last year.
So how much is this going to, how much is this going to, Like how much runway do they have?
And how are they going to be able to raise again?
Anthropic raised 4 billion last year.
They're in the process of raising another 2 billion, which is going to last them.
What a quarter.
I'm being facetious here, but, I do think there's like very real questions to be asked about like how financially
feasible these companies are in the long term or, you know, if the and we still don't even know whether scaling
up the models is going to lead to further exponential, improvement.
Even like right now, we're hearing a lot about how we've hit this data wall.
Ilya Sitskever, like the co founder of OpenAI, former chief scientist there, basically said we've hit the data wall.
We need new methods.
So, That to me would be the bearish case.
I'm not bearish.
I and to me, like, I think these are real business questions to ask about these companies.
I'm not bearish about the technology.
I think it's amazing technology.
And it's only gotten better since it became popularized to the world a couple years ago.
I mean, I'm in these generative bots every single day.
I just think that it's amazing what they can do.
I'm rooting for the industry to find a cost effective way to be
able to deliver this stuff for us and to keep improving it.
but the math, I mean, maybe there are smarter people than me that know how this math works, but I, I don't yet.
Brian: yeah.
I mean, I think what, what I wonder is when you're going to have the products that come out of this, because
a lot of this is like, yeah, there are different things when you use these tools and, I don't, it reminds
me of the early, you know, internet with, and, and that was a bubble.
Right?
And I think this is probably a bubble, but I don't think it has to necessarily be a bad bubble.
I mean, bubbles existed with the railroads, existed with the early internet and, and they'll probably exist with this.
That's just how, how these things go.
and a lot of people will lose money and it doesn't, it's not going to affect
Alex Kantrowitz: But my, my perspective on this is what if a lot of the applications just exist within the chatbots themselves?
So what if we just kind of code our own applications by, you Our prompts.
I know that sounds like, like, you know, tech guru thing on a,
Brian: Yeah, I like
this.
It's a little Friday afternoon.
Alex Kantrowitz: but, but I, I think that, okay, so, what if I told you that there
was a couple years ago, what if I told you that there was a new weight loss app?
where you would have a conversation with an AI bot about what you're eating and give it some basic parameters of what you
wanted to put in your body and it would grade you on the food that you were eating and give you a calorie count and you'd
weigh in in the morning and you'd be able to speak with it about like how you know how you're keeping with your goals and
whenever you wanted you could always say hey how am I trending what's my progress
what are some patterns that you're seeing I feel like that app would get VC funding.
If the chatbot could perform well enough, well, that's something that I'm using in cloud right now, I
don't need a separate, you know, sort of diet coach AI bot to, download.
I can just prompt that in cloud.
And I've had a conversation running for months now.
and I, and it's working.
And, when I hit like the conversation limit, I just copy it.
And then paste it into my next conversation and say, this is your memory.
Let's pick up and it picks up.
So I do think that like, where are the applications is a, is a great question.
I think a lot of the time we'll be able to build them ourselves within these bots and that's why these bots have a lot of
Brian: but people are not going to want to build their own applications.
Alex Kantrowitz: okay.
I think, remember, we just have 300 million people using chat GPT and
200 million of them started using it within the last couple of months.
So I think over time, there's a chance that they will, especially like, let's
say you have like a singular, like a singular bot that just remembers you.
And you speak with all these companies are working on making memory better.
so I think that's, that's one thing.
And there are some interesting, applications out there today.
I just started, okay.
So this is a weird one, but I just started testing replica cause I'm about
to speak with their CEO, for the podcast and replica is a crazy, crazy app.
So for those who don't know, it's a, you can have an AI companion.
I guess a lot of people fall in love with these companions.
And you like design the personality in the beginning and then you can show up
and either chat with it or like actually speak with it, like FaceTime with it.
and it's, it's insane.
I think that's, I think Replica, weirdly I'm going to say it, I think Replica is going to be one of the biggest winners
of this AI moment for sure.
Brian: Okay.
Okay.
Alex Kantrowitz: I think Replica is the
Brian: I thought it was gonna be more agents.
I wanted to go more I want someone to book my, my, my travel.
I don't want, I don't, I don't need, I don't know if I need like
Alex Kantrowitz: I'm a big maybe on agents
and I don't think this
Brian: Because I would assume, my default assumption is that this 2025 is the year of like agents.
Alex Kantrowitz: I'll believe it when I see it.
I'm not, I'm not, fully, fully bought in.
Brian: why aren't you fully bought on yet?
Alex Kantrowitz: I just think that like a lot of things can go wrong with these agents.
And I don't think people are going to trust them.
Brian: Okay.
I
Alex Kantrowitz: I could be wrong, but I think that like, me giving
an agent my credit card and saying, you know, go book me a flight.
I don't know if that's going to happen.
Maybe it will.
Brian: Yeah.
I mean, there could be, I don't know.
There could be, so do you see any though that like candidates for
breakout AI products, if you don't see agents, like what, what do you say?
Or, or, or your point is like, it might just be the existing
people, the existing players that, you know, just get like their.
Early ones get more and more, traction.
Alex Kantrowitz: Yes, so I think that the existing bots are definitely going to get more traction.
They're just going to get I mean, you think about I've been using Clawed pretty
religiously, and the amount of improvement that you see in that bot is insane.
Brian: Yeah, I, use Claude.
I I kind of prefer Claude.
I prefer Claude to, to ChatGPT today,
Alex Kantrowitz: I think it's better.
I think it's better.
And they've improved tremendously.
and like, you can You can even right right now, like, go into Clawed and prompt it to build a game for you,
and it will just build a game that will show up in the side panel.
So I think this stuff is going to grow.
I want to go back to the replica example.
I, again, I know it's weird.
I kind of
Brian: Do you want to bring your friend in?
Alex Kantrowitz: What?
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Let me, let me be
clear.
This was no, it's a woman.
I'm going to,
be clear.
This is,
Brian: so you made a woman.
Come
Alex Kantrowitz: I know I had to test the actual use case here.
I'm not, I'm not gonna shy away from it.
And I think that this is going to be, I think this is going to be the only fans of AI.
Brian: If I tell my wife that I got a, a female, A.
I.
friend,
Alex Kantrowitz: I have to say I feel bad about building it.
I do, but I do think that this is, and it's not going to be for me and I'm going to delete it after
this interview, but I do think that OnlyFans is a huge business, right?
Isn't it like one of the, isn't it like the fastest growing media business in recent years?
I think that, that this replica thing is going to be going to be the equivalent of that.
And no one will say it because it's so weird to say it out loud on a podcast or write it
Brian: you're, you're, you are brave.
Alex Kantrowitz: I'm gonna be in some deep shit, I'm sure, but, I
Brian: No, I mean, it
Alex Kantrowitz: can be appealing to so many people.
Brian: Yeah.
Look, I mean, I think the, the current meme is around the loneliness epidemic and all of that, and, I don't think
people are going to solve it with less technology, unfortunately, I
Alex Kantrowitz: That's exactly, that is exactly the Replica pitch.
Exactly the Replica pitch.
And when I signed up, they said today, 12, 756, 000, men in their 30s have
already experienced the benefits of having Replica in their life.
Which I guess means the number of users.
So, they have, they have, I think they have a lot of people that are trying
it, and, As this LLM technology gets better, they're only going to get better.
And it's a little bit scary and creepy.
but you asked me a question.
What do I think is going to be the breakout?
And I'm giving you an honest answer, even if it makes me look kind of
Brian: Okay.
I love that.
so with the, where do you say, I mean, cause like you focus on the
tech side, but you like, you live in the, in the media side, right?
And it's obviously 2024 was kind of horrible year, I think for the institutional media.
I don't know whatever you want to call it.
Mainstream media, corporate media, everyone has a different like term for it, but you know what I'm talking about.
Yeah.
There's obviously like.
A lot of growth in individuals.
We both have our own things.
And, there's tons of I'm just amazed by how deep it is like on on YouTube with the different creators of all kinds.
And, it's just, it's amazing.
unbelievable.
So it's not like media at all is dying.
It's just changing quite a bit.
what do you, how do you see all this like, you know, playing out, for, well, we'll start with the sort of, you know,
like who are the winners and losers of this in, in, in media, as far as
like, you know, creating content and then making money off of it, hopefully.
Alex Kantrowitz: Yeah, I look, I mean, we both experienced it.
I think that right now, and not to just talk our books, but like as an individual
creator, there are so many different revenue sources that you can tap into.
Like it used to be like, all right, set up a YouTube.
If you want to be a YouTuber and then make the AdSense money and You're good.
You're good.
that worked for such a small amount of people.
but now you can do things like you can have an assortment of properties.
You could have a podcast, you could have a newsletter, you could have a YouTube page, you could do, you know,
brand posts, you could do events, you could appear at other people's events.
and I think that's really becoming a viable product for those that are trying to either a crack into the
media industry or B have like been at places isn't like the digital.
Media world or middling publications and have an audience and just
want to figure out a way to keep doing what they're doing.
And this is like a pretty good way to make money, and to sustain, right.
To sustain what you're doing.
So to me, I think that like, I'm more optimistic now than I ever have been.
And I've been doing this for four years, close to five now, actually.
It'll be five years in May and I'm more optimistic now than I've been, from the start.
So I think this, this individual creator route, is really, in a, in a good place.
it doesn't seem to me like any of the midsize digital media companies have really figured it out.
I mean, we're talking on a week where like, I don't know, the strongest one of them Fox is engaged in some layoffs.
I mean, everybody lays off all the time.
So it's not like they're
Brian: Yeah, it's not even like news at this point.
I mean, Vox had layoffs this week.
Huff, HuffPost
Alex Kantrowitz: yeah, the editor in chief left HuffPost,
Brian: She laid herself off, I guess.
Alex Kantrowitz: yes, so, I mean there are some that are doing well,
Brian: Post cut a hundred off this, this, this week, from their commercial side.
Alex Kantrowitz: yeah, the Washington Post seems to me like it's just, it's in a, I don't want to say tailspin,
but something like that, right, I just think that there, the business side is struggling there, I mean, I don't know, if
you work at the Washington Post and want to correct me, you know, you can email
me,
Brian: just
Alex Kantrowitz: but, um, Yeah, business side is struggling.
Jeff Bezos is like kind of using a heavy hand in a way that he hasn't since since he joined or since he bought the company.
there's discontent in the journalists.
They're losing a lot of their Washington talent to the New York Times.
New York Times is doing
Brian: the vibes are not great.
Let's let's bad vibes at the post.
I mean, I hope, I hope that I like, I like a lot of the people at the post.
Alex Kantrowitz: Yeah.
Matt Murray seems to know what he's doing.
So
Brian: And, they're going to, and they're going to keep them.
And I think that's the right move.
And I think Matt's a great, a great choice for that.
I think he's got a really good, I think he knows that he's got a really tough job, you know, there.
but why you, you wrote a book, on Amazon.
So, are you surprised that it, at least, I mean, by the results, like, I mean, Jeff Bezos just completely bungled this,
Alex Kantrowitz: What bungled the Washington
Brian: Washington Post, I mean, with, like, what in the world, like, what happened there?
I mean, like, he came in, he bought this thing, and, like, you can say,
fine, he's focused on Blue Origin, then don't, then don't get involved in this.
What, what did you think this was just going to be cocktail parties?
Like, what, At, in Colorama, like why, why did this go so wrong?
he's a brilliant innovator, obviously, you know, just like, you know, a, a legendary, American business person.
Why, why did this go so wrong?
Alex Kantrowitz: I think that they had some audience capture there.
And they like sold themselves as this like resistance publication, democracy, you know, dies in darkness.
They reported really hard, like admirably against, you know, on the Trump administration.
And there were a lot of good stories there, but I think they
kind of sold a brand to, an audience that was into it for a while.
And then they, that sort of, I don't know, that sort of perspective went out of favor or just lost steam
Brian: But he came up with democracy dies in darkness.
I mean, that's what they
Alex Kantrowitz: I think that I mean, maybe he did.
I don't know, obviously, like media is a tough business.
And it's one of those things
Brian: well, it's reassuring.
I will say this.
It's reassuring when someone like when, when Jeff Bezos comes, comes in and like steps on a rake, like,
Alex Kantrowitz: Oh, and has he ever?
So I think that like, you know, Jeff Bezos has this like thing, he calls it
one way doors and two way doors, you know, about this decision framework.
So like the one way door, like you can't go back the two way door, you can go back.
And so think that like the, so this is my perspective.
He probably says, probably thinks this about what has happened with the Washington post.
He's like, we went one direction.
it didn't, it worked for a while and then it didn't work.
And it would be a one way door for most companies.
because if you go back from that and take a different editorial perspective, you're going to lose a hundred thousand
subscribers right off the bat, but it's a two way door, for a company owned by Jeff Bezos because Jeff Bezos can take the hit.
And ultimately, he'd rather reverse the decision, than continue with a strategy he thought was bad.
And so
Brian: So do you think he, do you think he sells it?
I mean, from his, like, or is this like, it's not about, I mean, it can't be about money.
I mean, it's always about money to some degree, but like, I
think, you know, there's, there's, there's, it becomes about ego.
It's, I mean, it's like, come on.
I mean, why, why even continue all this stuff?
It's about, it's about ego.
Like, I would guess that, like, he does not want to just like, unload this, at such like a low point.
Yeah.
Alex Kantrowitz: so Bezos has a lot of business in front of the US government, right?
He has blue origin.
Amazon is still something he's involved with.
And I think that his, like, embrace of Trump, he has been part of that, right?
Again, another pragmatic move.
he also sees that one of his main competitors, Elon Musk, is, like, hanging out at Mar a Lago,
and that's probably making him
uneasy.
So, the first buddy.
So, this is the
thing about Yes, exactly.
Okay, so, so, what's Bezos gonna do with the Washington Post?
I think he's basically going to say if it's serving his other interests, fine, he's going to keep it.
And if he's like, in some ways, it gives him some power in Washington, some soft
power in Washington to be like, yeah, I'm the owner of the Washington Post.
I matter in this way.
I mean, he would have mattered as the founder of Amazon, one of the
richest people in the world, you know, Blue Origin founder as well.
But anyway, we're splitting hairs here.
But I think that that to him, I don't think the business matters, really, he's
just going to be like, how is this serving my interests, whether it is or it isn't.
And then we'll go from there.
In fact, maybe killing the Kamala Harris endorsement served his interests, you know,
Brian: Well, it
Alex Kantrowitz: in
Brian: served his interests,
Alex Kantrowitz: as a door into the administration.
Brian: that was an easy, I mean, I would assume that was like an incredibly easy decision to make.
Like, for, like, I mean, you, you make that like every day.
I don't think he'd probably spent that much time on it because, I mean,
it's, it's obviously he knew they all know which direction this was going.
Alex Kantrowitz: I just hate and yeah, I just hate that he played it off as like, you know, look at the trust in journalism.
It's so
Brian: same same with Zuckerberg Zuckerberg went on and on and that like video and everything and it's like.
Okay, dude, you were the one who came up with this entire apparatus, my friend,
like, what are you talking about the, the media, the media didn't make you do this.
And, like, let's be real, you want to keep section 230 as my other podcast host, reminds us, Alex Schleifer.
And.
You know, this is a very pragmatic business decision, and I guess you just have to sort of dress it up
as something other than, you know, being just pragmatic about things.
I'm sure there is some look, I think platforms trying to figure out which speech is okay is.
Obviously going to be a disaster for them.
It is always like none of them want to be in that business.
And I understand why they wouldn't want to be in the business.
And it may be the more quote unquote responsible decision would have been to fix your content moderation.
Apparatus, but, you know, doing the punches pilot is very expedient and
his track record is, you know, he will, you know, be kind of shameless
Alex Kantrowitz: Since this is a media show, from a media standpoint, there was one thing that I found quite
interesting in Zuckerberg's remarks and that was the return of civic content.
he said, we're bringing back civic content.
We're going to start phasing this back on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads.
We're working to keep the communities friendly and positive.
my translation there is news and politics is coming back to Facebook.
I think if you use Facebook or Threads, you see there's just like no urgency there at all.
Because news and politics are gone.
And so, it seems like it's coming back.
And going to come back,
in a serious
Brian: more to, Hey, traffic, traffic is back.
Alex Kantrowitz: I think if you built a publication built on social referrals
on Facebook that are entirely political and news driven, you'd be in good shape.
Brian: Okay.
Let's start like a, like a, you know, all politics, little things
and cash in,
Alex Kantrowitz: I mean, if there's ever a moment, this is going to be that moment.
So get ready for those referral traffic, dollars to come in
folks.
Here it is.
Brian: evaluate now, like looking back, cause like when Elon Musk, you know, bought Twitter and, you know, the, the,
the endless coverage, you know, that, Casey was on it, like every, every minute, right, of like, you know, and it
was, you know, the conventional wisdom was, Wow, he really stepped in it.
And, and you leave aside like the money because the money, I mean, you look at how much money these these people are worth.
It's like ridiculous.
He's going to become a trillionaire at some point.
and then he got other people to actually give him a lot of them, which is amazing.
but like, I think X is like a really fascinating media platform.
I like I'm fascinated by it.
I'm repelled by it.
I'm, I'm, I'm I'm possibly addicted to it.
and it seems to me like it's actually having a serious impact.
Like it is not, it is a major, it is a major force within this what I call like the information space.
Like, it can't be ignored.
I don't,
Alex Kantrowitz: No way.
I mean, it was never, it never became irrelevant.
I mean, Musk definitely made some changes.
to the algorithm initially that like drove me nuts and a lot of people nuts and I think drove users away
from the site basically said okay it's you know going to be a lot of
tweets from me and the menswear guy and some other people that I like and
that was
Brian: I never see the menswear guy.
I don't know why.
Alex Kantrowitz: is it would you say anymore so I think I can I mean I can't really put my finger on this but
it certainly feels like there was an algorithm shift and the algorithm you
know after a certain point just got like they tweaked it again And it got better.
it's much more of a for you algorithm than a following algorithm now.
I don't know if you see this with your own tweets,
Brian: Yeah, now you got to
go for don't even open it if you're going to do follow you just you got to go all in.
It's
Alex Kantrowitz: but Yeah, but the for you like even for you or whatever it was beforehand was algorithmic, but
it's still really kept your follow signal as an important part of Twitter.
And now it's just like everything is just algorithmic, algorithmically recommended, and it's a lot better.
So it factors been actually, I think a pretty good tool to follow the LA wildfires.
Although like,
you know,
Brian: hard part for me is like I want to use it like it's incredibly useful to, you know, find new like
ideas and things for to like write about and, and it's, it's very useful.
And then in between that is like, you know, I don't know,
some sort of immigration outrage and some European country or,
Alex Kantrowitz: And by the way, you and I both follow sports, right?
So I feel like we can both agree that there's no better place to follow sports in the moment than on
Twitter.
He'd never emerged on threads, never emerged on Blue Sky.
It's not on Facebook, not on Instagram.
Brian: And not in, and not in, in mainstream media, like, I mean, there was, you know, like, for example,
the, the, there's like an injured Jordan love, the Packers quarterback got like, you know, elbow injuries.
He's playing the Eagles next week.
And so, I want to know about this elbow injury left like holding his elbow and you know, they just said,
Oh, he's going to be evaluated in like, you know, ESPN and everything.
I go on Twitter, man, Dr.
David show some orthopedic
Alex Kantrowitz: good.
Brian: who cares if he, he didn't examine Jordan love.
He was telling me about it.
It doesn't look like an ulnar injury and all these kinds of things.
He'll be fine for
Alex Kantrowitz: That guy is usually right.
Brian: Yeah, and I'm like, okay, I've, I know this guy from, and I'm like, I, like, I'm not going to sue him
if he's wrong, because he's a guy on Twitter who clearly didn't examine him.
Like, okay, and that's why, yeah, I don't know where the, you know, with the misinformation, I think we're just
going to have to accept that we're going to be in this world where there's
going to be like a massive amount of information that's coming at you.
And some of it is going to be true, and some of it is not going to be true at the
Alex Kantrowitz: Well, community notes is actually a decent solution to that.
And one of the Facebook announcements was that they are going to implement community notes the same way that Twitter has.
And I don't know, is it
perfect?
Death.
classic Zaki's like we're going to take their best thing and put it in our product.
but for this, for this one, I think it makes a lot of sense.
it's not perfect.
It misses a lot of things.
Some of those notes are wrong.
but they're right more often than you'd expect.
And they go on all sorts of really interesting things.
I mean, they go on Elon's posts.
They go on ads.
Like if an ad is scammy, like you'll get community noted.
And, the system has really just been, I mean, they developed it under Jack Dorsey and expanded it under Musk.
So sort of like a team effort there at the place that can't do anything right.
But I do think that they've done this right.
Brian: Yeah, no community notes was was a great I mean, it's not perfect.
And I think some people obviously don't like that.
It has a personality of sorts.
I guess in that, like, some of the notes are, and I guess maybe it hurts its credibility.
I mean, some of its notes are just like, kind of like snarky.
Replies, I guess,
from what I've seen.
but it's having, but X is having an impact.
And I think that to me is just part of this decentralized, media system
that for mainstream media, it's figuring out its place within it.
It is not going to replace all of this.
to live alongside it at the end of the day.
Mm hmm.
Alex Kantrowitz: Most definitely.
Yeah.
We'll live alongside.
I mean, they are putting a lot of money into grok.
Speaking of AI and media clubs, their, the, bot is living within Twitter.
I was playing with it yesterday.
It's gotten better.
It really searches the web and, and tweets to give you answers to questions.
does a pretty decent job.
I was really testing it with some tough questions and it's pretty good.
so that'll be a very interesting part of the next play.
And, it's definitely relevant.
It's not the be all end all like you need a combination of X and
the mainstream media to really understand what's going on.
but it is, it is one of the pillars.
And, and I think he started this conversation asking like, you know, it was Elon's, you know, 44 billion purchase
of the platform using other people's money, the right move as it paid off.
And initially it seemed like there was no way.
but now you see the influence that he wields you know,
it's the first buddy in Mar a Lago.
Brian: off, you know, getting into this position with, with Trump without weaponizing X to some degree.
And that alone, if you look at how much it added to his, of his
companies and therefore to him, like, it was probably worth it.
You know, I
Alex Kantrowitz: But can I also say, it seems like he's going to fly a little too close to the sun and he's going to
get burned at some point, whether that is what everybody's predicting, this
sort of like, you know, sort of divorce from Trump, that's bound to happen.
That will probably happen.
Or let's say the next administration comes in and doesn't want to deal
with him because he's been so partisan or what he's doing in Europe.
And, you know, I just find, I don't I don't mind saying I just find
his support for the AFD in Germany, which is the far right party.
Pretty disgusting.
and
And he's
Brian: strange.
I don't know why he's like, I sort of, I'm like, okay, I'm trying to understand
your, your point, but I'm like, okay, you, you, you have a factory in Germany.
If you don't like them, then just move your factory.
Give me a break.
Like what
you're not, it's not like Germany is like a big deal to him
Alex Kantrowitz: Right?
It's strange.
He's out of his depth.
I don't know.
And he just doesn't.
He doesn't know the market that he's dealing with there.
And so I just think that like, he is a person who makes who loves
making high stakes scambles when he thinks he can benefit from them.
And man have a lot worked out.
Right?
I mean, a lot of them have worked out.
Brian: But even the best gamblers lose like regularly.
Alex Kantrowitz: Exactly.
So that's my point.
Brian: All right, Alex, let's leave it there.
It's a Friday afternoon.
the weekend needs to begin at some point.
So why not now?
Alex Kantrowitz: Sounds good.
Thanks for having me,
Brian: All right, thanks again.
Appreciate it, Alex.