(Preview) Sora 2 and an AI Video Boom, Meta’s Vibes One Week Later, Questions on TikTok, Solar Power, and the iPhone Air

Andrew and Ben begin with reactions to OpenAI's Sora 2, a new Sora app, and more thoughts on last week’s ‘Vibes’ release from MetaAI. Topics include: Parallels between Sora 2 and the GPT 3.5 release in 2022, responding to a sample of disgusted MetaAI 'Vibes' reactions, why OpenAI is investing in short form video, why the threat to Meta is clearer than ever, and fair questions about Mark Zuckerberg's leadership after the last several years. At the end: TikTok’s business prospects and security concerns, solar power possibilities for AI infrastructure, Ben's shocking embrace of the iPhone Air, and a Sharp Tech x Oreo crossover.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Andrew Sharp?

  Hello and welcome to a free preview of Sharp Tech.

• 0:08Andrew Sharp?

  Hello and welcome back to another episode of Sharp Tech. I'm Andrew Sharp and on the other line, Ben Thompson. Ben, how you doing?

• 0:19Ben Thompson?

  Feeling chastised, Andrew, but we can get to the reasons why momentarily.

• 0:23Andrew Sharp?

  Oh, boy.

• 0:23Ben Thompson?

  No, I'm feeling old. I'm feeling old. That's how I'm feeling.

• 0:27Andrew Sharp?

  And is this related to our emergency episode dedicated to meta vibes last Friday?

• 0:32Ben Thompson?

  It might be. As I told you, that's why I don't do emergency episodes. No, I think it's it's actually a very ripe topic for discussion. So I'm actually looking forward to this.

• 0:42Andrew Sharp?

  It sure is. Feels like we're recording in the middle of the slop revolution here. Very exciting stuff. We're going to get to the vibes reactions later in the episode, but I'm going to start with the news of this week, which was the release from OpenAI of Sora 2. I'll read from an OpenAI blog post titled "Sora 2 is Here." They write, "The original Sora model from February 2024 was in many ways the GPT-1 moment for video, the first time video generation started to seem like it was working, and simple behaviors like object permanence emerged from scaling up pre-training compute.

• 1:24Andrew Sharp?

  Since then, the Sora team has been focused on training models with more advanced world simulation capabilities. We believe such systems will be critical for training AI models that deeply understand the physical world. A major milestone for this is mastering pre-training and post-training on large-scale video data, which are in their infancy compared to language. With Sora 2, we are jumping straight to what we think may be the GPT-3.5 moment for video. Sora 2 can do things that are exceptionally difficult and in some instances outright impossible for prior video generation models.

• 2:05Andrew Sharp?

  Olympic gymnastics routines, backflips on a paddleboard that accurately model the dynamics of buoyancy and rigidity, and triple axles while a cat holds on for dear life."

• 2:17Andrew Sharp?

  So I'll stop there, but we can go back to the sentence with Sora 2. We are jumping straight to what we think may be the GPT 3.5 moment for video. GPT 3.5, of course, spawned ChatGPT. Is this a ChatGPT moment for generative video in your eyes?

• 2:37Ben Thompson?

  So I kind of poop with this statement like it seems awfully audacious to claim that we're going to recreate one of these seminal moments in all of technological history. And I think that's probably still fair. Like, I'm not sure if anything like in our lifetime will ever quite match.

• 2:53Andrew Sharp?

  It's a very, very high bar. I think that's worth noting, yes.

• 2:57Ben Thompson?

  In fairness, though, to this post, it doesn't say we're jumping straight to the ChatGPT moment for video. Even though Sora has gotten viral, it's number three in the App Store. I think Met AI is like 125 or something like that, which we'll get to momentarily.

• 3:11Andrew Sharp?

  Poro vibes, yup.

• 3:13Ben Thompson?

  What they did say is the GPT 3.5 moment. And I think that's a distinction that I failed to appreciate when I was writing about this. And it's been a little painful. I almost like did an emergency post yesterday because I'm like, I need to like correct the record here. But I'll have to save it for next week and just.

• 3:32Andrew Sharp?

  Well, that's what the podcast is for, you know, here we are.

• 3:34Ben Thompson?

  I know, but some people don't do both. But, uh, so what was the 3.5 moment? So GPT 1 was amazing and GPT 2 and GPT 2 was, I think, the one that really like sort of caught my eye. And then GPT 3 is like, wow, it's actually like making sense for a while. And then it would sort of trail off into nothingness after a couple of paragraphs. And the difference is no one was paying attention at that time, right? Like people were, who were watching were very impressed, but it wasn't a phenomenon. Like by the time Sora comes out, oh, Sora is coming from the company that made ChatGPT. And so it was a huge deal.

• 4:16Ben Thompson?

  And in that context, it's like, eh, it's impressive, but there's a lot of problems here, a lot of issues. And frankly, you know, as we've discussed, Google sort of blew them out of the water with, with, with Veo and.

• 4:29Andrew Sharp?

  Veo, yeah.

• 4:30Ben Thompson?

  Veo 3, Veo, Veo, whatever it's called. And. So backing up, in that context, Sora was like the GPT one, or even GPT two, if you sort of want to be generous. It's it's showing emergent capability that is going to be a big deal, but is not really useful yet. Yeah. GPT three point five was useful. Like now, there were lots of issues with ChatGPT when it launched, it launched with with GPT three point five. But it was still incredibly impressive. And it was impressive in that it's it hallucinated way more than it does now. It got, you know, it it wasn't nearly comparable to GPT today.

• 5:14Ben Thompson?

  But it was good enough and it was a finished thought. Like, like you got a cogent essay in response to a question with a beginning, a middle and an end. That sort of all made sense. And it was because of that consumable and impressive to people in a way that GPT two, even GPT three weren't quite there. Mm hmm. If that is the framing that they were going for here, and again, I should give them more credit and read their words closely instead of thinking about ChatGPT, which I was when I sort of critiqued this sentence. Then yeah, that's a fair way to characterize what we got with Sora two. It's a finished thought. You can create eight second videos or however long they are that Yeah.

• 5:59Ben Thompson?

  hold together, that are impressive. And one of my learnings from this week is something I need to be on guard on, on looking at these products is because I'm immersed in this and looking at everything, I probably consistently underrate what's going to be a big deal and what isn't, because I'm not surprised by Sora two's capabilities. The capabilities, yeah. What I've seen in other people using it is they're blowing their socks off, right? And I'm like, well, this is, you know, you've, I I've been using like Google Veil, for example, like I I've been making videos. Like, I'm not surprised they can do this. There's some new things here that other other ones aren't doing, but.

• 6:43Ben Thompson?

  People who are not tracking it closely, they download this app and it's like, holy cow. And this happened actually in January with DeepSeek. What happened with DeepSeek, there's lots of things I'm interested about the DeepSeek moment. But up to that date, OpenAI had thinking models where instead of just spurting out an answer, it stopped and it thought about it and gave you a much better answer. All the thinking models were only available to paying customers. So a lot of free users, their first experience with a thinking model was actually DeepSeek. And so it wasn't just that the novelty of it being a Chinese app. They actually got a remarkably better experience when they downloaded this app and it had very cutesy sort of telling you what it was thinking about and be like, oh, look at the model's thinking.

• 7:28Ben Thompson?

  Or the AI is trying to figure it out, da, da, da, da. Which for anyone who-

• 7:32Andrew Sharp?

  Wow, AI can do this?

• 7:34Ben Thompson?

  Right, right. And so I'm thinking about like, how to talk about this, write about this. And I really feel there's an angle here, which is the new emerging blind spots for me with AI. And one of them is this, it's like, like, underestimating, just because you can fast forward and see, oh, hey, this is going to happen. Most people aren't thinking about that. And when it lands, don't underestimate what a big deal it is to drop a finished product. And now is sort of too finished? No, but it's sufficiently finished to be something meaningful like GPT-3.5 was. So actually, this sentence is very accurate.

• 8:13Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, and for people who haven't seen any of the Sora videos, I wrote down a sample of my Sora feed as of Thursday afternoon. One video was Ronald McDonald in a hamburger car in a high-speed police chase on the 110 in LA.

• 8:30Ben Thompson?

  That was a good one.

• 8:31Andrew Sharp?

  Martin Luther King Jr. saying, "I have a dream that Xbox Game Pass was still $20." There was a video, "The movie Interstellar rendered with Minecraft animation." Another was Sam Altman acting in a movie where he says, "We were never OpenAI. Welcome to closed AI." And then there was Jesus- Christ himself, live streaming, walking on water and turning the ocean water to wine. And right before we came on to record, someone sent me a Sora clip of scenes from the movie Oppenheimer. Except the characters are all SpongeBob characters. Uh, feels pretty stupid to read all that aloud, but the slop era is here, Ben. We're all just sidling up to the trough.

• 9:15Ben Thompson?

  We're into learning number two. Um, I personally do not find the Sora feed very compelling. I find the Jesus ones actually particularly annoying. I get a ton of them for some reason. Uh, like, I don't know. I don't like, I don't like the guy. I did like the Ronald McDonald, uh, police chase one. That one made me amused.

• 9:34Andrew Sharp?

  It elicited a half smile from me as I was reviewing it before the episode here.

• 9:40Ben Thompson?

  But we talk about on this podcast all the time that I am the weirdo when it comes to entertainment choices. Right? I'm not the one that's watching a gazillion shows on TV, even the good ones. I will treat myself on like after a long week on a Friday night to an hour of reels time. But it is so like addictive that like, I don't like to try to get in too deep. I try to not spend too much time there. I love Twitter.

• 10:07Andrew Sharp?

  For the next 12 to 18 hours.

• 10:09Ben Thompson?

  The tax sort of thing. I do have a note on Twitter, by the way, and phone usage that we should, we should maybe come back to a little bit.

• 10:14Andrew Sharp?

  Eagerly awaiting that later in the episode.

• 10:17Ben Thompson?

  So whatever I'm interested in is probably not what is going to be broadly popular. And whatever I'm not interested in might actually be popular. Like, and I sort of know that. I've known that for years. And it's maybe useful to be reminded of that sometimes. I still like vibes better than Sora. Like I find it sort of like inspirational, interesting. I like these futuristic environments. I also liked mid journey and like the discord. Now, the discord thing was a big blocker. I never actually went there because it's such a pain to use discord. But this sort of like ethereal, sort of like completely different world. Um, but I think one of the, you know, Gruber related, uh, I think someone called like vibes feels like a screensaver. Um, you know what I love?

• 11:03Ben Thompson?

  The Apple TV Ariel screensaver where it's like

• 11:06Andrew Sharp?

  I don't mind that either.

• 11:07Ben Thompson?

  shots flying around. I will watch it for a while. I find it very calming and a real wake up call. Honestly, like this is an issue that I knew, but yeah, I'm not.

• 11:18Andrew Sharp?

  Well, thanks to millions of people who have been using these generative AI video products. Ben has realized or remembered that he's a weirdo in the midst of the crowd there. Yeah, I mean, I think the I have a few takes on what's happening and

• 11:34Ben Thompson?

  I need your takes. You're the resident normie. I need to I need to be educated by you.

• 11:40Andrew Sharp?

  Well, and I have to guard against my own hater impulses on some of this stuff. But I think this probably is a technical breakthrough on par with what we saw with Chat GPT. I'm pretty blown away by the quality of these videos and maybe that makes me the normie who would have been blown away by DeepSeek if I wasn't already subscribing to the advanced models. But like opening up the app, A, it's really easy to use and intuitive. And B, the quality is pretty high and pretty impressive and it's photorealistic videos for the most part, which I gravitate toward as opposed to the mid journey aesthetic and the kind of ethereal dreamlike quality that you get with some of the other AI content, particularly vibes.

• 12:25Andrew Sharp?

  And the virality that I've experienced in my personal life over the last couple of days since Sora launched, including with a few people who I would put in the normie category. They're not like early adopter tech obsessives texting me about how crazy this app is. That is much closer to Chat GPT than anything in AI that I've experienced over the last two years. So there's some real momentum where I pump the brakes on the Chat GPT comparison, though, is just a total absence of utility beyond entertainment. Like Chat GPT, I use it every day for household stuff.

• 13:07Andrew Sharp?

  Asking about different projects I'm doing around the house or asking questions about toddlers or whatnot. The Sora app, I can't use it, and maybe this is just me. I find myself wanting to bail after looking at it for like 90 seconds. I can't imagine getting lost in Sora for 30 minutes, two hours, whatever it may be. We have a friend who did that last night and was up till 2 or 3 a.m. on Sora. So clearly, some people can do that, but I'm struck by how useless it appears now. I'm not saying it's gonna always be useless, but I do think that's an important distinction

• 13:49Andrew Sharp?

  from what we saw with ChatGPT, where it wasn't just a parlor trick. People immediately found it easy to use and helpful in their daily life. I'm not sure where the path is for Sora to become that kind of tool for people in addition to entertainment. Does that make sense?

• 14:05Ben Thompson?

  Well, I have four responses to what you dropped.

• 14:08Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 14:09Ben Thompson?

  Number one, I do think the bit that I mentioned about vibes, about it being an all-AI feed, I think that take is still right. Like, there's a bit where you mentioned you liked that it's photorealistic and real world. You're also like going in cognitively aware this is all fake, which lets you just sort of enjoy it instead of trying to parse video by video, is this real or is this fake? So that's sort of, so I think that part of the take is still correct, sort of number one. Number two, I agree it's super easy to make. This is really impressive. It's so much easier than Veo, Vio, whatever it's called. Like, just making videos is super easy.

• 14:49Andrew Sharp?

  And by the way, that was what was cool about it for me. I was aware of Vio, Veo 3, and I was aware of Meta Viz, but this is just like, oh, it's, if nothing else, it's a testament to what a great product company OpenAI is.

• 15:05Ben Thompson?

  That is my exact take. Like, and not just a great product company, but they've done it again, to your point about being viral. Like, so it was like, so they did it with ChatGPT, obviously. They had this Studio Ghibli moment with their image generation. They have this moment right here with Sora, clearly going viral. That, like, three times is worth keeping track of. This isn't a, this isn't a thing that happened once. And that is notable, and I think an important, and I think something that we'll circle back to. The bit about being a good product company, being easy to make, I talked about the 99 1 sort of bit where 1% of people create, 9% sort of distribute and 90% consume.

• 15:46Ben Thompson?

  The pushback I would have on you about the question about productivity is twofold. Number one, everyone always dismisses entertainment only apps as toys, not interesting, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Chat GPT actually helps me get work done. Guess what the most valuable companies do? They entertain you.

• 16:06Andrew Sharp?

  Help us shut off our brains.

• 16:07Ben Thompson?

  That's and like that's, that is just a reality.

• 16:11Andrew Sharp?

  One minute at a time. Yeah.

• 16:12Ben Thompson?

  That's right. And so I wouldn't dismiss it on those grounds. I would actually, that would excite me on those grounds. Number two, they may be undoing that ratio. Like AI actually can possibly make, making stuff so much easier that that 1% expands. And if you think about it, even if that 1% just goes to 2%, that's a doubling, that's a doubling of the people making compelling content. And I think on Sora, there's a good chance it goes higher than that. We talk about give lip surface do, oh, AI will, more people be creators. I'm not sure we fully internalize the implications of that. We're talking about at least a doubling, maybe a tripling.

• 16:56Ben Thompson?

  Actually, maybe like a deciling, what is 10 times? Like, what does that mean for the amount of content that's out there? The likelihood of there being some brilliant creator that was limited by the necessity. We were just fixing around with video before here, right? Big pain in the ass video is, like, and to actually, I wrote when the image generation, image generation stuff came out. I talked about the separation, the breaking apart of the idea and the substantiation of the idea. And like, that's a really big deal. And it's one of those things where I look at myself, even though I wrote that three years ago, and I think that was a very prescient observation on my part.

• 17:33Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 17:34Ben Thompson?

  Did I fully internalize that? Maybe not. So that's a pretty big deal. And the implication of these sort of four observations is.

• 17:45Ben Thompson?

  Meta might be in big trouble. And the reason is, at the end of the day, all their power, everything they have, all their ad business, it's all predicated on attention. And if they are consistently, someone else is taking attention. And with TikTok, took a lot of attention, hurt them badly. A lot of people on TikTok are not on reels. But at the end of the day, they could ramp that up by shoving it into Instagram. Yeah. Can they? They have two problems if this continues to be a big deal. Number one, their AI just isn't good enough. They can't shove it in.

• 18:29Ben Thompson?

  And number two, does anyone want it shoved into Instagram? I think my, like I said, I still think the take on AI, a distinct AI feed, being cognitively better to consume than a mixed one, remains the case. And it's sort of a very disruptive sort of bit where, where Sora gets to come in. One of the questions was, was it right to launch a new app or shove it into ChatGPT? What I liked about, I think the ChatGPT app right now on the phone is underrated in how, it's actually kind of annoying where sometimes I want to continue a conversation, but you open the app and you're immediately in a new conversation. But I think that's actually a really good trade off they make

• 19:10Ben Thompson?

  because the time to get into conversing with ChatGPT is extremely low. And in this case, I think not messing with that, not trying to shove this in, is a good thing from the OpenAI perspective. I understood Meta doing it the opposite way because they just want people to install the app, which, which you know, no one has and to potentially use it. But to pull off and to get the app number three in the app store, by the way, Gemini is still number one. I'll be at its gated by invites. So we'll see sort of what happens there. Like Meta might be in trouble here. Like, like, like, because attention is a precious thing and.

• 19:49Ben Thompson?

  The route to recapturing it in this space, they have structural factors working against them.

• 19:55Andrew Sharp?

  Well, I got bad news for you, Ben. Meta is not the only one in trouble because we have a sample of the vibes reaction that we're going to read through now. We exhorted people to try Meta Vibes on the emergency podcast and said, email us, email us your thoughts. Let me tell you, Ben, the audience responded to that prompt. So I'll read a sample. Okay.

• 20:18Ben Thompson?

  Helps me stay humble. Give it to me.

• 20:20Andrew Sharp?

  That's right. It's good for Ben. Absolutely. This is character building stuff. Uh, Lillian says, Ben, I was very surprised by your Meta Vibes take. People are addicted to reels because they're either funny or sexy. AI slop can be neither. Artificial aesthetics without something visceral will quickly become boring. And then Carlin says, Ben and Andrew, I listened-

• 20:45Ben Thompson?

  Yep. It's not funny or sexy. Uh, I like watching Apple TV screensavers. Um, I'm good to take the L on that one. Uh, continue.

• 20:52Andrew Sharp?

  There you go. Plus one to Lillian. Uh, Carlin says, Ben and Andrew, I listened to the emergency pod, downloaded the new version of Meta AI, opened the app and was hit immediately by a viscerally negative reaction. Most short form video on TikTok or reels or YouTube shorts has some kind of narrative arc, but none of the videos I saw in vibes had anything resembling a narrative, just cutesy surreal or eye catching visuals paired with bouncy music. The bull case is that creators can now use AI generation tools to create compelling narratives, but watching the initially seeded content, I was surprised that Ben was so thrilled by it. It's just one

• 21:33Andrew Sharp?

  more step in the depressing arc of engrossing technology that drives our society toward atomized, isolated experiences in service of commodifying and monetizing our attention. Ben, go touch some Wisconsin grass. And Jeremy echoed that sentiment.

• 21:51Ben Thompson?

  No, no, wait. No, anyway, Carlin's gonna come that hard. Uh, I'm gonna come back in return. Uh, so here's-

• 21:56Andrew Sharp?

  By all means, the floor is yours, sir.

• 21:58Ben Thompson?

  So overall, what Carlin is saying is right. People like, it's funny, this is a lesson I learned with Stratechery over the years. So when I started and it was successful, then some other people would start and they started sites. And I thought they wrote really interesting things. And I was surprised at how relatively unsuccessful a few of them were. There's one guy that sticks in my mind. I even know what happened to him. He's not, I'm not sure he's on Twitter anymore. But he had really good takes that I consistently learned a lot from. And he tried the subscription model, went nowhere. Like, I'm not even sure if he got like a hundred subscribers or something like that. And I was trying to, I was trying to figure out, why was I successful and he wasn't?

• 22:39Ben Thompson?

  And I realized what he was posting, I thought was very substantive. The analysis was very good. I was consistently evolving my thinking in reaction to what he wrote. And it was incredibly dry and boring.

• 22:54Andrew Sharp?

  No narrative hook. It's all about telling a story.

• 22:57Ben Thompson?

  Exactly. The best Stratechery articles tell a story. And the reason why the main articles that are on the front pages of Stratechery are so painful to write is it takes, it's so hard to figure out what's the narrative. I know what I want to say from an analytical perspective, but those are the ones where I want to deliver a narrative. I want to tell a story. It needs to have a beginning. There needs to be some sort of protagonist. There needs to be a middle. There needs to be an end. And this was, I, I think, not to like pat myself on the back, I didn't start Stratechery meaning to write this way. I guess it's just something that, that came fairly naturally to me. And that is unquestionably a critical factor in Stratechery's success, sort of, particularly in the early years.

• 23:40Ben Thompson?

  Like, it would draw people in and they'd want to read it and it'd feel very satisfying to sort of consume it. I think there might be something similar here. I, well, it goes like the TV thing. I, I have a story in my head.

• 23:57Ben Thompson?

  About, just me being a weirdo. Sorry, I'm not trying to praise myself, it's just the reality of my mind thinks. I have a story in my head about the way the world works. Part of the reason I find TV shows tiresome is I, I'm like, I could go to Wikipedia and get the story here. I just not caught up on the, like, like, the, someone else telling, I like real, I love sports on TV because there's drama, it's uncertainty. I don't know what's going to happen. I'd rather watch a bad baseball game than watch like an episode of Succession. Like, just because the, the potential for drama and uncertainty is what I find compelling because that's not in my head. That's something that I don't already have a thought on the way this should go or what it should be. And so when I would read this guy's analysis, who I thought was really good,

• 24:41Ben Thompson?

  I was reading it very actively, plugging what he said into my view of the world, thinking, hmm, that's interesting. I never thought about it that way. X, Y, Z. The narrative was in my head the whole time, so I didn't need his narrative. Now, I'm not saying this, this, this sounds like, it's hard to say this, it's sounding like, like, like, I'm just not someone who wants other people's narratives. And so I, I think this was like for vibes, I see some of these futuristic landscapes or these things, and I find it inspirational to my internal narrative. Thinking about like, like thinking about this and what it works, or even like the, the, like you fly over, like there's a aerial, Apple screensaver fly over like LAX airport and I'm like, looking at it and looking at the traffic flows and how horrific it is, and like where the planes park, like, and I just like, just like,

• 25:28Ben Thompson?

  it's hard being me, whatever. My mind's like just going gazillion miles per minute all the time. And I find the little narrative cutesy stuff, occasionally they're funny. I mostly just find it annoying in the videos. I'm like, I, like, I have my own story. I don't watch your story. And this is such a, it was a massive blind spot. I, I was totally wrong. And again, I'm not saying I'm better or worse than other people. Whatever I'm talking about is certainly a function of why, I've been writing stratechery for 12 and a half years now. Writing multiple times a week? How can you? People will ask me, how can you generate someone's content? This is the answer. The answer is like, I'm generating narratives in my head, basically 24/7. And it's almost like a relief to be able to get a few out.

• 26:14Andrew Sharp?

  You want your passive consumption to be narrative free. That's what I'm taking away from this.

• 26:19Ben Thompson?

  That's right. Yeah, I always wanted to escape from narratives, right? Or I want drama and uncertainty because that's interesting. So again, this is, I'm not saying this is a better way. It's actually a very annoying and painful way to live in many respects. I'm lucky I got a job that basically rewards this sort of mindset. But it is, it was a massive blind spot. I think what Carlin is saying is actually totally correct. The lack of narrative or storytelling is not compelling to most people. I'm the weirdo here. And, and so I think this was, again, I think this was.

• 26:54Andrew Sharp?

  Or even information. I think short form video, I mean, a lot of people feel like they're learning when they're watching short form video.

• 27:01Ben Thompson?

  Right, I love cooking videos and stuff like that. Like, I don't know how many cooking videos I've watched and never implemented. I don't know if I've learned anything, but I do like those.

• 27:08Andrew Sharp?

  Vibes is completely devoid of any illusion of teaching you anything about anything, which is part of the problem and part of why people found it so viscerally upsetting toward the end of last week. Uh, I'll just read.

• 27:22Ben Thompson?

  I'm very hesitant to like, explain this. I want to explain it because I think I was wrong. And so I want to be honest. I always try to explain my thought process about how I got stuff wrong. I worry that the way I present this makes it sound like, oh, you know, I think about stories. I don't care. You know, like, but it's not, it's not like that at all.

• 27:43Andrew Sharp?

  You're just explaining your taste. It's a subjective reaction that most people had in the opposite direction, but it's a subjective thing.

• 27:51Ben Thompson?

  I'm the, I'm the, I'm the one, I'm the one, I'm the one that's wrong here. So, um, so, and it's funny because for me, when Carlin says I need to touch some Wisconsin grass, for me, this experience is more akin to touching grass. Because it's like stepping back from narrative. For me, is the relaxing, refreshing experience, right? And, uh, so.

• 28:19Ben Thompson?

  Yeah, so I like artificial grass. What can I say?

• 28:23Andrew Sharp?

  Well, the emergency pod will live on in infamy as part of Sharp Tech lore. I'll just read one note from Alexander. He says, Ben and Andrew, am I taking crazy pills? As a faithful Sharp Tech and GOAT listener, I immediately downloaded the Meta AI app, started flipping through some AI reels. After about 30 seconds, I closed the app and I don't plan on opening it again for another six months. I can see Ben's vision of AI-created worlds that you can explore in VR, but an app which just serves me AI video slop set to catchy music doesn't do it for me. I don't want to watch an AI-generated slam dunk. I want to see a real NBA player do it. To Ben, do you think this product will be successful?

• 29:06Andrew Sharp?

  To Andrew, I feel like Ben's excitement is what got you fired up to talk about the Meta AI app, but will you honestly ever open it up again? So for my part,

• 29:18Ben Thompson?

  Take some responsibility, Andrew.

• 29:21Andrew Sharp?

  Here's the thing. I record a lot of podcasts, Ben. I offer up lots of different opinions on lots of different things. And the only takes I ever regret on a podcast are takes where I feel like I don't think I've accurately conveyed how I feel. So on the Vibes pod, you were in such a euphoric place. I didn't want to bring the party down by disclosing to the audience that on the Zoom call where you were showing vibes to me and Duman, you did have to stop at a certain point because you said, okay, Andrew's bored. Let's stop. And that's how I feel. That, more than anything, captures my reaction to what's happening

• 30:04Andrew Sharp?

  on Meta's Vibes app. And I just, I think,

• 30:09Andrew Sharp?

  In general, the way I've reframed it, because a lot of people were really, really upset about the Meta product. And I think that reaction is interesting in its own right. But for me, the way I've kind of reframed this in my mind is I look at all of these video apps as if we're looking at computers in 1993 or 1994. And so rather than looking at those apps saying, is this useful? Does it matter? Is it dangerous? I just think it's kind of an interesting glimpse at where things are right now. And all of the apps are like horribly half baked and full of unanswered questions about

• 30:53Andrew Sharp?

  where it's going to be four or five years down the line. But I do think we'll be able to look back at this era as kind of charming. And every company is sort of clueless about how to do this. And so I'm enjoying that look into the process. I can't say that I was enjoying Meta's Vibes app all that much. And I, 20 minutes after we finished recording, I was like, what did I just endorse? And so I do agree with most of the haters that emailed in afterward.

• 31:23Ben Thompson?

  Yeah, real betrayal of your principles. I'm disappointed in you.

• 31:26Andrew Sharp?

  It's terrible.

• 31:27Ben Thompson?

  With Alexander. I do think just to add on to this point. I've generally been optimistic about VR and this idea of like AI-generated worlds. Everyone should take this reaction with, uh, keep that in mind when I express that optimism. Like people actually want, you know, you mentioned the, you liked the more photorealistic aspect of the Sora app, which I personally found less interesting. And that speaks to the fact that maybe these AI-generated worlds are not, to most people, going to be interesting. To some people, like again, there's this whole universe of people

• 32:10Ben Thompson?

  that sit on Discord and just generate photos and go through them, for Midjourney, I mean, and find it really interesting. So it's not that there won't be a market here. People that like to read like sci fi, for example, and like to sort of imagine these fantastical worlds and these different technologies. And guess what? I like reading sci fi, right? Like, like the

• 32:29Andrew Sharp?

  I was just gonna say, I'm not really a sci fi guy. And maybe that's the problem with me and

• 32:34Ben Thompson?

  No, and most, and most people aren't. I'm not sure if that's a perfect analogy, but, but I think there is something to, and maybe this speaks to some of the critiques about like sort of worlds in your heads or sort of whatever it might be. I mean, I think I'm a pretty effective grass toucher, uh, sort of, you know, like I'm not too concerned about getting lost in this stuff. But I don't know, maybe I need to, maybe I need to revisit a lot of my, my questions and assumptions. But I don't know, I just, I just think it's really interesting. Like, like I always say that the most fascinating times for me on Stratechery is when I get something wrong. And this has been sort of a big one for lots of reasons, and it's making me think about lots of things.

• 33:14Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah. Well, as we continue thinking about where any of this is going.

• 33:17Ben Thompson?

  Push back. You need to do better.

• 33:20Andrew Sharp?

  Well, I know, at the very end of the podcast where you were like, you liked it too, right? We both endorsed it on the way out. And I was like, ah, should have taken that opportunity to say I got bored on the Zoom call, but such is life, you know, all part of the fun with the emergency

• 33:36Ben Thompson?

  I think I said on the podcast, yeah, whatever. Okay.

• 33:38Andrew Sharp?

  It's terrible. I will read part of a tweet here from Ash K. Kathari on Twitter. He asks, why do we keep dedicating our brightest minds, billions of dollars, and the most powerful GPUs on earth to building yet another app that optimizes for attention decay? And I include that tweet, not because it's especially unique, but because it's a question that has recurred like every 10 minutes on Twitter for the last seven days. It's a question people have about both vibes and Sora. All right. And that is the end of the free preview. If you'd like to hear more from Ben and I, there are links to subscribe in the show notes, or you can also go to sharp tech.fm.

• 34:21Andrew Sharp?

  Either option will get you access to a personalized feed that has all the shows we do every week, plus lots more great content from Stratechery and the Stratechery Plus bundle. Check it out. And if you've got feedback, please email us at email at sharp tech.fm.