The Fall in the House of Sora
Fall of Sora • ChatGPT Apps • xAI Founders • Project Hail Box Office • OpenAI/Anthropic Beef • 2076 iPhone • Chromebooks in School Backlash
I Note…
📹 The Sudden Fall of Sora
A bit more reporting around the end of OpenAI’s big video push. The high level remains that they simply need to focus, and beyond the costs (which were massive – burning $1M/day!), Sora required the training of its own models, different from the LLM models – one of which, “Spud”, they’re clearly sprinting towards and need all the compute resources on hand to get it over the finish line. But also an interesting tidbit that Meta had tried to poach one of the key people behind the Sora models, and when OpenAI countered to keep him, it also set them down the path of the Sora stand-alone product. Seems like the team will focus more on “world models” which is sort of what Sora already was, but now without that expensive front end. The Disney situation remains the real shitshow though. This has them being alerted less than an hour before the plug was pulled. Shades of the blindsiding of Microsoft by OpenAI back in the day... [WSJ 🔒]
🐢 ChatGPT’s Slow Start with Apps, Again
Two years ago, I wrote a post noting that perhaps not everything needs an app store. That was about OpenAI’s directory for custom GPTs, which never really went anywhere. A few months ago, OpenAI was back at it, rolling out apps in ChatGPT to much fanfare. The result, at least so far, is the same. The problem seems pretty fundamental. It’s easier to use Booking’s website to book a property. And it’s faster to use Uber’s app to hail a ride. Not sure I see how that changes. These apps are more obviously interesting for enterprise integrations but one suspects OpenAI keeps trying for if/when they have their own device(s). But that also hasn’t really worked for Amazon... [Bloomberg 🔒]
👋 And Then There Were None
As in co-founders of xAI. With Ross Nordeen leaving, only Elon Musk himself remains of that original team. Which is crazy but also fairly par for the course with these AI labs. That said, if anyone was set up not to leave it was Nordeen, who came from Tesla and helped Musk with the Twitter takeover too. But perhaps better to just totally rip-off the band-aid to start anew – for everyone. Imagine if this was a startup you invested in though. Of course, it just highlights the fact that no one was investing in the team, it was simply a bet on Elon and that he would pull a rabbit out of the hat. Which he did in the form of SpaceX shares. Still, at some point xAI actually needs to work, right? [BI 🔒]
🎥 If You Build It (A Good Movie) They Will Come (See It)
Project Hail Mary soars past $200M globally (and $137M domestically) in just two weeks with an insanely impressive 34% second weekend drop at the box office. It’s already Amazon MGM’s most successful movie of all time too (topping Creed III). And unlike Apple’s F1, it will end up a big hit even with its relatively high budget. So it’s hardly surprisingly that there’s already sequel talk, which author Andy Weir isn’t shooting down. 2 Hail 2 Mary? How about an Interstellar cross over? Importantly, this gives Amazon good momentum gearing up for Bond – which hopefully means sparing no expense while also giving the creative team full control to just make a good movie. Important since Denis Villeneuve is said to not have final cut... [THR]
🍿 The OpenAI/Anthropic Beef Origins
Speaking of drama... while there’s clearly many missing elements in the relaying of this internal infighting between Dario and Daniella Amodei versus Sam Altman and Greg Brockman while all were still at OpenAI, I mean even if just these stories are accurate – it makes the old Microsoft org chart look like a Kumbaya circle. This paints a picture of a schism between Dario and Brockman which spiraled into a much bigger beef over time as egos and perhaps some double-dealing was put in motion. It all started a decade ago, before Dario even got to OpenAI (he turned down an opportunity to be a co-founder to stay at Google) and Daniella was at Stripe (where she met Brockman). What’s especially wild is how this is all still playing out in real time given the war in Iran and AI’s role. And the fact that these two companies are both now valued in the hundreds of billions of dollars and racing to go public. The first OpenAI movie hasn’t even come out yet and the sequel is already obvious. [WSJ 🔒]
I Wrote…
📲 The 70 Year Old iPhone
Will the device still be central in 2076?
I Quote…
"We’re not going back to stone tablets. This is intentional tech use."
– Shiloh Vincent, the superintendent of a school grappling with a tech problem. Not AI. Not iPhones. Chromebooks!
The kids have apparently figured out how to use computers for things beyond schoolwork and the grown-ups are shocked. Shocked! (Perhaps another avenue back into the classroom for Apple with the MacBook Neo?)
Asides…
It feels like all the focus has been on the AI models coming out of China. But the talent gap may be the real issue going forward... [Economist 🔒]
Millions of people are watching an AI version of Love Island on TikTok featuring fruit. Maybe I’ve been wrong, maybe we are cooked. [WSJ 🔒]
On that topic, the most popular writer at Fortune is letting AI do a lot of the leg work. Which, fine as a tool, but who is actually benefitting from reading such content, let alone writing it? Anyone? [WSJ 🔒]
Apple is paying up (in the form of stock options) to try to stop the talent bleeding to OpenAI and Meta. [Bloomberg 🔒]
Vibe-coded apps seem to be breaking the App Store as the review process can’t scale with the submission rate. As such, the app update pipes are clogged. Which seems like a major problem that isn’t going to ease! [BI 🔒]
Is ‘Vibe Augmenting‘ the new ‘Vibe Coding’? Taking existing software and using AI to write software around it to customize it. [WSJ 🔒]
Bluesky launches a new AI app for building custom feeds. I have no idea who or what this is for. It feels like a feature that should be in Bluesky but the community might revolt. [TechCrunch]
Meta’s impending AI glasses are targeted at prescription wearers, which seems wild that they weren’t um, focused, here before? I know they had the option, but this is the market already captured. Like me! [Bloomberg 🔒]
They should launch in Europe around 2056. [Bloomberg 🔒]
Helium is literally a key element for making chips, and beyond the US, Qatar is a huge source. Which is yet another problem for the chip industry when Qatar is being bombed. [NYT]
Is Claude gaining on OpenClaw with Anthropic’s new agentic tools? Obviously yes. It’s so much easier to use! [Information 🔒]
Midjourney still alive, still kicking (thanks Meta), still being sued by the studios. but it sure sounds like they’re going to bite the bullet and raise funding soon. They’re still working on some hardware product? [Information 🔒]
I Spy…
Why is Netflix raising prices again? Well, for one, now that they're out of the Warner Bros running, they can. Second, this chart. Relative to their peers, they're still massively under-priced when it comes to viewership.
Hail Mary really was great, wasn’t it? It’s so simple - interesting problem, charming lead, great side kick, cool visuals - and yet very much not!