Does Our Humanity Matter?
We have seen Silicon Valley’s vision of the future of social media, and there’s nothing “social” about it. Meta’s Vibes is fantastical AI-generated videos in snackable form, with the notable absence of any real people.
OpenAI’s new Sora app leans into deepfakes, which currently means a lot of jokes about Sam Altman until others (for some reason) give the company the right to create videos based on their likeness.
What’s missing is any semblance of humanity in these new apps.
The reason this is relevant for Asymmetric Investing is that I believe decisions about how aggressively to adjust the AI dial will be crucial for many companies.
Do people want a drink made by an AI robot, or is there value in being served by a human?
Do you want articles written by an AI prompt or a human’s thoughts?
Business models matter, and AI is part of the business model decision.
To show what I’m talking about, I want to show what’s being built by $Meta Platforms, Inc.(META)$ and OpenAI, which are two of the leading companies in AI today. They’re investing hundreds of billions of dollars to create products like 👇️.
Meta’s Vibes
Vibes is Meta’s new AI video feed that lives within the Meta AI app (yes, it’s confusing). Think of it like Instagram Reels, but ONLY AI.
You get videos like this fuzzy guy riding a motorcycle.
Creating AI content is bound to get easier. But having an app dedicated to an AI TikTok seems like content crack that no one asked for. Or maybe I’m just getting old?
And Meta thinks people want more AI in their Facebook Stories and Instagram Reels.
When you’re ready to share, post directly to the Vibes feed, DM to friends, or cross-post to Instagram and Facebook Stories and Reels. If you see a Meta AI video on Instagram, you can tap through to remix it in the Meta AI app.
Meta’s Vibes announcement
I’m questioning this app because Meta is the dominant player in social media, and it’s spending tens of billions per year to be a leader in AI.
And what it’s doing with AI is destroying the “social” part of social media (or what was left of the “social” part). Now, Meta is just making AI media.
Is that what people want?
And do they want it from Meta?
This is a $1.8 trillion company, so the answer seems relevant to both Meta’s stock as well as the multi-trillion-dollar AI buildout.
Sora’s AI Deepfakes
OpenAI’s Sora 2 absolutely took some big steps forward from the original Sora launch. You can see in the video below that physics and object permanence are getting really good in these videos.
Sora 2 is a little like Veo 3 from Google, but Sora is taking a new angle on getting to market. They’re making a social media app.
So today, we’re launching a new social iOS app just called “Sora,” powered by Sora 2. Inside the app, you can create, remix each other’s generations, discover new videos in a customizable Sora feed, and bring yourself or your friends in via cameos. With cameos, you can drop yourself straight into any Sora scene with remarkable fidelity after a short one-time video-and-audio recording in the app to verify your identity and capture your likeness.
Last week, we launched the app internally to all of OpenAI. We’ve already heard from our colleagues that they’re making new friends at the company because of the feature. We think a social app built around this “cameos” feature is the best way to experience the magic of Sora 2.
Sora 2 release announcement
What do people do with this power to create “cameos” of friends?
They make videos of Sam Altman stealing GPUs.
Or Sam Altman as a cat.
Again, I’m wondering if this is what people want? And if they do want it, how does OpenAI make money?
Is there a business model to this?
Or are we spending a trillion dollars to create AI deepfakes so no one knows what’s real?
The AI Dial
Companies are going to have to choose how they turn the AI dial.
Is the product or service going to be 100% AI?
Will it be 0% AI?
Or somewhere in the messy middle?
The right answer for each business will be different.
But importantly, how management decides to turn the AI dial will be critical.
I get the feeling most managers are defaulting to turning the dial up as high as they can. It’s understandable. A CEO sees cost savings immediately, not the poor user experience that will bleed customers over time.
Meta and OpenAI are the first to turn the AI dial up in a meaningful way. Will it make their business better or worse?
Time will tell.
The investing takeaway is that every company will have a choice about how much to lean into AI. And not every AI choice will be met with excitement from users. This will be more art than science.
I’m Leaning Into Humanity
I write this article in part to ponder what a future of AI video entertainment looks like because it’s important to many companies I follow. I tend to think human-directed entertainment will win out over AI content feeds. I may be wrong.
I also write this to tell you, my readers, that I’m leaning into my humanity on Asymmetric Investing. AI is great for helping me do research and assists in reducing my grammatical errors. But AI will NEVER write this newsletter.
I think the best way to differentiate myself in a world of endless AI content is to lean into my humanity.
The typos you get are from me.
And so are the ideas and analysis.
For better or worse, every word is written by me.
If you want analysis from AI, it’ll be out there. I’m leaning into my humanity, and I hope other businesses do too. It may be the only differentiation we have left in a world of AI.
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It looks like $Meta Platforms, Inc.(META)$ is fully convinced that the virtual future is all about AI. I'm not exactly sure that they're too interested in human interaction besides collecting clicks and views. They're basically improving their Ads revenue gathering platform using the AI as a bait IMHO.
Re the OpenAI it seems like they're expanding their products into social media and Instagram territory. The ability of the platform to generate and share great deep fakes is essentially an expansion into the quazy realistic universe of the AI based Instagram and TikTok likes. I'm pretty sure the donated "likeness" of the real humans and possibly pets is the base for the reimagined NFT/crypto market. Lots of money to be made there IMHO.