Stuff Worth Knowing for the Week of May 15, 2023
OpenAI's CEO warns of AI dangers, Disney decides to cut content to save money, and Montana bans TikTok.
Welcome back to Stuff Worth Knowing! Each week, I'll round up news related to tech, video games, film, television, anime, and more. I’ll probably also start using Substack for more short-form thoughts once Substack Notes launches. At the same time, I’m going to be using my Patreon, SavePhile, more often.
Tech ⌨️
Montana Bans TikTok
On Wednesday, Montana made good on a threat a number of states have been making over the past few months: it banned TikTok completely. Many states have banned the app for government devices, but this is a full tilt ban. The ban, which takes effect on January 1, 2024, imposes a fine of $10,000 per day on any app stores with TikTok on it.
Montana governor Greg Gianforte also put a ban on other apps for government employees. These apps include Telegram, WeChat, CapCut, and Temu, which are owned by Russian or Chinese companies. That ban will take effect much sooner, on June 1.
“We want to reassure Montanans that they can continue using TikTok to express themselves, earn a living, and find community as we continue working to defend the rights of our users inside and outside of Montana,” said TikTok in a statement.
A day after the ban was signed into law, TikTok users sued the state, contending that it’s unconstitutional. “Montana can no more ban its residents from viewing or posting to TikTok than it could ban the Wall Street Journal because of who owns it or the ideas it publishes . Even if Montana could regulate any of the speech that users share through TikTok , SB 419 wields a sledgehammer when the First Amendment requires a scalpel,” says the lawsuit.
Why It's Worth Knowing: A state has banned an entire social media app because it perceives a dangerous threat. Is that even allowed? It’ll be up to the courts to determine if that’s the case. At the very least, expect a number of other Republican states to try the same to show their bonafides. Still, the legal challenges will probably be numerous.
The Supreme Court Reaches A Decision In Both Section 230 Cases
Back in February, I mentioned the U.S. Supreme Court hearing arguments in two cases related to the internet and social media. The cases in question were:
Gonzalez v. Google - This case finds its start in an Islamic State shooting in Paris in 2015. One of the victims was student Nohemi Gonzalez. Her family argues that Google violated laws by promoting and not removing Islamic State videos on YouTube, which ultimately led to the attack.
Twitter v. Taamneh - This is a similar case. The family of Jordanian citizen Nawras Alassaf, who died in an Islamic State attack in 2017, argues that Twitter, Google, and Facebook all failed to get rid of terrorist-related content on their platforms.
This week, the Supreme Court declined to deal with one of the cases, while ruling in favor of Twitter on the other. Gonzalez v. Google was sent back to the lower court for a second look. In Twitter v. Taamneh, the court found in Twitter’s favor in a unanimous decision. The court stated that the link between Twitter and the terrorist attack wasn’t strong enough to make the social media company liable.
Apple Testing New M3 Chips
Frequent Apple scooper Mark Gurman is reporting that Apple is currently testing its all-new M3 chips. The next set of Mac devices will utilize M2 chips, but Apple is pushing the new chips to make up for significant declines in Mac sales. Gurman says the M3 being tested has 12 CPU cores, 18 graphics cores and 36 gigabytes of memory, making it likely the M3 Pro iteration.
Based on those specs, Gurman speculates that the M3 Max could come with 14 CPU cores and 40 graphics cores, while the M3 Ultra would hit 28 CPU cores and 80 graphics cores. The entire lineup would be based on a 3nm process. He believes that Macs with these chips could come late this year or early next year. There’s no word on iPads with the M3 in Gurman’s story.
Samsung Decides Not To Replace Google Search With Bing
A large part of Google’s push into AI was existential: the company had heard that Samsung was thinking of replacing Google Search with Bing across all its devices. On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Samsung has suspended its internal review on the matter, sticking with Google as the default search engine. Apparently, Samsung shelved the potential change over the market perception of the move and its ongoing relationship with Google. Samsung is still open to the possibility of changing, but it’s not happening any time soon.
Meta’s Twitter Clone For Instagram Leaks
As Twitter continues to flail into obsolescence, everyone else is trying to come up with a valid replacement. This week, Lia Haberman offered a brief look at Instagram’s new text-based social media app. The leak was a single slide from a presentation for the app, showing something that looks a lot like Twitter, but for Instagram.
The app is planned for release in late June. It’ll utilize existing Instagram accounts, but will be a decentralized service that is also compatible with apps like Mastodon. “Users on these other apps will be able to search for, follow and interact with your profile and content if you’re public, or if you’re private and approve them as followers,” says one section of the slide. It’s a solid side-step from the existing Instagram platform, allowing users to attach links, photos, and videos to text posts up to 500 characters in length.
This Week In Twitter: We Finally Have a New CEO
Last week, Twitter owner Elon Musk welcomed incoming CEO Linda Yaccarino. Folks noted that Yaccarino, whose background as NBCUniversal’s head of advertising, could potentially pull advertisers back to Twitter, assuming Musk could shut up for a bit. In an interview with CNBC, Musk put a bit of doubt in that possibility. “I’ll say what I want to say, and if the consequences are losing money, so be it,” Musk said.
As Musk continues to make antisemitic and conspiratorial posts on Twitter, the service tries to plug the holes with new features. Twitter Blue subscribers can now upload videos up to two hours in length. There was little acknowledgement of potential copyright infringement problems, considering Twitter’s enforcement in this area isn’t the greatest at the moment.
Twitter also sent a letter to Microsoft, accusing the company of violating its data agreement. This follows Musk making similar statements back in April, after Microsoft dropped Twitter support in several services due to the new paid API. While the letter came from Twitter’s legal counsel, it’s not actually a lawsuit at this time. It’s likely Twitter is hoping to bully Microsoft back into using its services.
So, the average amount of nonsense from the newly-named X Corp.
AI 🤖
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Testifies Before Congress, Urging AI Regulations
As Big Tech runs headlong toward AI everything, the guy behind the company that kicked off the zeitgeist is publicly saying that folks probably need to pump the brakes. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee about the dangers and benefits of AI. Altman talked about the potential harm of AI and asked for firm regulations from the U.S. government, but also said that his company would continue pushing forward with the technology.
“I think if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong. And we want to be vocal about that. We want to work with the government to prevent that from happening,” said Altman at the hearing, according to the New York Times.
The OpenAI CEO acknowledged the problems with AI, including disinformation, outright lies, and the potential of lost jobs. “We believe that the benefits of the tools we have deployed so far vastly outweigh the risks, but ensuring their safety is vital to our work,” he stated. Oddly enough, Altman seems to have side-stepped the issues surrounding copyright for the images, text, and audio that AI models have been trained on. He also called for a government body to provide regulation and standards for the AI industry.
Some called out Altman’s testimony as pure posturing. “It’s such an irony seeing a posture about the concern of harms by people who are rapidly releasing into commercial use the system responsible for those very harms,” Sarah Myers West, managing director of AI Now Institute, told the NYT. She makes a great point considering that…
OpenAI Launches ChatGPT App on iOS
While its CEO is on Capitol Hill talking about the dangers of AI, OpenAI launched a brand-new ChatGPT app for iOS. The app itself is free and offers voice input, but users can pay $19.99 per month to access ChatGPT Plus. Upon release, it shot to #1 in the “Productivity” category on the Apple App Store.
OpenAI has launched the app in the United States first, but it will expand to other regions in “the coming weeks”. It also has an Android client in the works, but declined to offer a specific timetable for that launch.
Why It's Worth Knowing: Altman is saying all the right things to get Congress off his back—his session went much better for him compared to when TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified—but OpenAI continues to pursue strong commercial utilizations of its tech. The launch of its own app comes alongside the hefty inclusion into most of Microsoft’s product line over the past few months. And don’t forget, OpenAI recently took in a ton of venture capital for other projects. Altman is a teenager calling his parents and asking for a strong curfew while he’s out at a party doing beer bongs of Everclear. It rings false.
Flawless Partners With US and UK Firms To AI Dub Foreign Films
While this story is film and television adjacent, it’s really an AI story. Last year, director Scott Mann released his film Fall, a thriller about two young women trapped on top of a radio tower. Following the film’s release, Mann revealed that he had bumped it down from an R rating to PG-13, using AI to remove f-bombs from the film.
The company that did the work of editing the film using AI is called Flawless… a company that Mann also happens to be a co-founder of. The technology is rather impressive in action, but it does make one wonder if Mann used Fall as a proof-of-concept. He also touted the tech being used to lip sync the film to dubbed languages.
The latter use is key for this week’s news: Flawless has partnered with U.S. distributor XYZ Films and UK producer Tea Shop Productions to acquire rights to foreign-language films, dubbing them in English and lip syncing them using the AI tech. According to Deadline, the first film utilizing the process will be UFO Sweden, a Swedish sci-fi film. Flawless says it will still require original voice actors for the English dubbing process, with its process only being used for the lip syncing.
Why It's Worth Knowing: I’ve repeatedly said that I don’t find all AI technology reprehensible, and this is a good example. The lip syncing side of Flawless’ tech is intriguing and useful, a patch on the existing dubbing process. The more problematic side is the ability to edit dialog, changing an actor’s performance to remove or add lines. It’s useful for film producers, but for actors, it’s better for them to get called back on set to refilm scenes.
And while lip syncing is good, there’s the worry that the next step is utilizing AI vocal technology to outright translate the original actor’s voice into a different language. This would side-step local voice talent and likely would not result in further pay for the original actor. The point is where companies draw the lines.
Video Games 🎮
The European Commission Approves Microsoft’s Acquisition of Activision-Blizzard
A few weeks ago, Microsoft was dealt a severe blow in its potential acquisition of Activision-Blizzard when the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it would block the deal. This week, it got some good news, however. The European Commission announced that it would approve the deal in Europe.
Once again, cloud gaming was the focus. “The approval is conditional on full compliance with the commitments offered by Microsoft. The commitments fully address the competition concerns identified by the Commission and represent a significant improvement for cloud gaming as compared to the current situation,” said the European Commission.
Those commitments included a free license for European consumers allowing them to stream Activision-Blizzard games on the platform of their choice. Similar offers were made to the CMA, but the primary difference between the EU and CMA is the latter doesn’t believe Microsoft will stick to its commitments.
This week saw the addition of Xbox titles to Nvidia’s GeForce Now cloud gaming service. This is part of Microsoft’s ongoing attempt to offer cloud gaming deals that would allow the Activision-Blizzard deal to go through. Gears 5 is the first game to come to Nvidia’s platform, with Deathloop, Grounded, and Pentiment coming on May 25.
Why It's Worth Knowing: Microsoft nets another win in its acquisition plans. The problem is the CMA and U.S. Federal Trade Commission are staunchly against the deal going through. Microsoft is unlikely to make some sort of carve out in the U.S. and U.K., meaning without those approvals, the deal is dead in the water. The company will fight it out in court, but it won’t be an easy battle.
Take-Two Suggests Grand Theft Auto 6 Could Come In 2024-2025
On Wednesday, Take-Two Interactive released its financial earnings report for fiscal year 2023. In the report, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick noted that major growth was coming in fiscal year 2025, which would stretch from April 1, 2024 to March 31, 2025.
“We believe that we will enter our next phase of growth in Fiscal 2025, as we plan to deliver several groundbreaking titles that we anticipate will set new standards of quality and success and enable us to deliver over $8 billion in Net Bookings and over $1 billion in Adjusted Unrestricted Operating Cash Flow,” said Zelnick. “After numerous years of investment and creative development, we are excited about this next chapter for Take-Two. As we execute on our strategy and release what we expect will be an array of hit titles, we believe that we will grow our scale and margins, generating industry-leading returns for our shareholders.”
A big chunk of that will likely be Grand Theft Auto VI, given that Grand Theft Auto V and Grand Theft Auto Online are perennial money-makers for Take-Two. Despite that, Zelnick states that 44% of the games coming in the next three fiscal years would be new brands.
“And we now have a great deal of confidence that that pipeline will be delivered in the next three years, 12 titles in fiscal '24, 36 in the following 2 years, up 44% of that is new intellectual property. The rest is new iterations of existing franchises, and that's mobile, console, PC and numerous business models,,” he stated on the earnings call.
Film, Television, and Streaming 🎞️
Screen Actors Guild Leaning Into Strike Talk
Things are getting cagey for the studios as The Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike hits week three. During the week, The Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) board unanimously agreed to a strike authorization vote. Union members now have to vote on whether they’re going to strike, assuming that the union doesn’t come to a new agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP).
Why It's Worth Knowing: The current SAG-AFTRA contract ends on June 30. If Hollywood loses another union to a strike, it’ll make it that much harder for things to operate like normal, and many actors are already on the picket line alongside the writers. At the moment, studios are leaning on unscripted shows and scripted fare that was written and produced prior to the Writers strike. If they lose actors, that’s the game.
As a reminder The Directors Guild of America also sees their contract ending on June 30. The union is already in negotiations with the AMPTP, and in an op-ed for Variety DGA president Lesli Linka Glatter has outlined what directors are looking for in their new contract. The requirements include streaming residuals, deals related to international distribution, and ongoing diversity programs.
Disney Begins To Cut Content and Make Moves
Last week, Disney released its financial earnings report for the second quarter of fiscal year 2023. This week, CEO Bob Iger started to make more changes within the company. Disney is still in a legal feud with Florida governor Ron Desantis, which led to the cancellation of a $1 billion construction project planned for the Orlando area. It also announced the closure of the Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser hotel experience, which is in the Florida park.
At the same time, Disney Parks & Resorts pitched a new expansion project in Anaheim, California, tentatively called DisneylandForward. Given the push back from the Florida legislature, Disney has also scrapped plans to move employee operations from California to Florida, something the current employees didn’t want anyways.
As the Parks division moves spending around, the content side of the business is looking to cut costs. Last week during the earnings call, Disney CFO Christine McCarthy announced a content impairment charge of $1.5-1.8 billion on existing content. An impairment charge is a reduction in the value of an asset for tax and accounting purposes. Basically, Disney is saying that certain content assets aren’t worth keeping around for whatever reason.
This week, Disney announced which shows and films on Disney+ were getting written down. These shows included Disney+ originals like Willow, Big Shot, and Turner & Hooch., alongside Hulu shows like Y: The Last Man, Little Demon, and Pistol. The creators and fans of these shows are, of course, deeply unhappy. Especially for the Disney+ shows: if they’re not available on the platform, they might be gone for good as there are no physical releases.
A few days after the announcement of the list, Disney did reverse course on some projects. Howard, a documentary about The Little Mermaid lyricist Howard Ashman, and Marvel’s Voices Rising: The Music of Wakanda Forever were cut from the list of removals. That doesn’t help shows like Willow, however.
Why It's Worth Knowing: The streaming revolution promised a cornucopia of content that would never go away and that promise is breaking down in the face of reality. Warner Bros. Discovery paved the way for other studios to remove their original streaming shows for accounting purposes. Corporations only need one of their own to make a change so they can gleefully follow along. (See also: the massive layoffs elsewhere following Elon Musk gutting Twitter’s staff.)
We’ve backslid to an earlier era in content preservation. There are a lot of shows from the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s that have been simply lost to time because they weren’t as popular as other shows or films from those eras, or they were live programming. We got better at preservation later, but these modern streaming shows have nothing to fall back on outside of piracy. Physical releases aren’t a given either: if a show isn’t profitable enough to simply keep on a streaming platform, is a company going to even bother to create a DVD or Blu-Ray run? It’s a sad state of affairs.
Layoffs 👷
Meta Is Planning Third Wave of Massive Layoffs For Next Week
Meta has already made two waves of massive layoffs, cutting off 11,000 employees in November of last year and another 4,000 employees last month. The second set of cuts were part of 10,000 layoffs announced back in March. Now it sounds as if Meta is going to lay off the rest. Vox obtained in meeting audio stating that the third wave of layoffs is going to happen next week.
“The third wave is going to happen next week. That affects everybody in the biz teams, including in my orgs,” said Meta president of global affairs Nick Clegg. “It’s just a time of great anxiety and uncertainty. I wish I could have some easy way of providing solace or comfort. It is uncertain. And actually it’s really increased my admiration for the way that everyone—notwithstanding that uncertainty—you’re just displaying such resilience and professionalism.”
Deck Nine Games Lays Off Staff
Deck Nine Games, the studio behind Life Is Strange: True Colors and the upcoming The Expanse: A Telltale Series, has apparently undergone a series of layoffs. Several employees noted on Twitter that they had been laid off from the company, but there’s no word of the overall scope of the layoffs.
On My Mind 🧠
Nicholas Cage Is Coming To Dead By Daylight: Beloved actor Nicholas Cage is coming to horror game Dead By Daylight in some fashion. The news came from the official Dead By Daylight Twitter account, touting a full reveal on July 5. Cage will be a new Survivor in the game, meaning players can take control of him to run away from the host of Killers.
“After countless awards and over one hundred movies shot across the globe, Nicolas Cage had seen it all and done it all – or so he thought. While on set filming the role of a lifetime, his performance summoned The Entity, a malevolent being of incomprehensible power. The actor soon found himself cast in otherworldly Fog, forced to Survive a host of terrifying Killers deadlier than even the most scathing film critic.”
Dead By Daylight has made its way through most of the famous horror franchises and it looks like other pop culture is the next move. In addition to Cage, developer Behaviour Interactive is planning new cosmetics based on metal bands Iron Maiden and Slipknot.
Google Deleting Inactive Accounts Soon: Google will be deleting accounts that haven’t been active for at least two years. The change was noted in a policy update noting that the earliest account deletion would happen is December 2023. You keep an account active, you simply need to sign in once every two years. According to 9to5Google, deleted accounts will not be freed up for reuse.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Sells 10 Million Units Worldwide: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has only been out for eight days, but apparently it has already sold 10 million copies worldwide. According to Nintendo, this makes it the fastest-selling game in The Legend of Zelda series. It also happens to be the fastest-selling Nintendo game ever in the Americas.
Not surprising, considering that everyone seems to be playing it.