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casey newton

Here at the “Hard Fork” show, we’re big sleep maxers. We’re always trying to improve our sleep.

kevin roose

Yeah.

casey newton

Because, you know, podcasting is a sport, and you have to remain in peak physical condition —

kevin roose

That’s true.

casey newton

— if you want to perform at the highest levels. And so I noticed a story in “The Verge” this week that said Eight Sleep, which makes the bed that I happen to sleep in — it’s one of these beds that sort of automatically cools and heats according to your preferences, and can raise and lower to stop you from snoring.

kevin roose

Wow, flex.

casey newton

They have a new water-chilled pillow cover, Kevin.

kevin roose

Wow.

casey newton

And I wanted to ask if you could guess how much it costs.

kevin roose

$100.

casey newton

That would be a really great and fair price for a water-chilled pillow cover. The actual cost is $1,049.

kevin roose

Come on!

casey newton

And I want to be clear. It doesn’t come with the pillow.

kevin roose

You have to supply your own pillow?

casey newton

It’s BYOP for the Eight Sleep water-chilled pillow cover.

kevin roose

Wow.

casey newton

So obviously, I sent this to my boyfriend and I was like, what are we thinking about this? And he said, honestly, I think my pillow experience is already fine. And I thought, thank god.

kevin roose

Have you heard about these new corduroy pillows they’re selling?

casey newton

No, I haven’t. Are they from the ‘70s?

kevin roose

No, but they’re making head lines. [THEME MUSIC] I’m Kevin Roose, a tech columnist at “The New York Times.”

casey newton

I’m Casey Newton from Platformer.

kevin roose

And this is “Hard Fork!”

casey newton

This week, don’t stop til you get enough. We’re talking about the new AI-generated video feeds from Google, Meta, and OpenAI. Then, psychotherapist Gary Greenberg stops by to discuss his essay on treating ChatGPT as a patient and why he thinks we should pull the plug. And finally, let’s get on track. The Hot Mess Express has returned.

kevin roose

Chugga, chugga, choo-choo.

casey newton

How many chuggas was that?

kevin roose

Just two.

casey newton

OK.

kevin roose

Casey, I don’t know if this is on your calendar, but it was recently International Podcast Day.

casey newton

Oh, happy International Podcast Day to you and your family, Kevin.

kevin roose

So I have a perfect gift for you this year.

casey newton

What’s that?

kevin roose

A subscription to “New York Times Audio.”

casey newton

Wow. Tell me, what comes in that?

kevin roose

So this is, of course, the subscription we’ve talked about on the show in the past. You get access to the entire back catalog of not just “Hard Fork,” but all of the other “New York Times” podcasts. But now, in addition to that, with an audio subscription, you’ll now get subscriber exclusive episodes from across the “New York Times” podcast universe. That means more of “The Daily,” “Modern Love,” and Ezra Klein your life.

casey newton

I’ve been trying to get more Ezra Klein my life, but he won’t text me back.

kevin roose

[LAUGHS]: Yeah, well, I don’t blame him. So if you are already a “New York Times” subscriber, thank you. This is already included in your subscription. But if you have not yet subscribed, then maybe this is the time to do it. To learn more, go to nytimes.com/podcasts, or you can subscribe directly from Apple Podcasts or Spotify. [MUSIC PLAYING]

casey newton

Well, Kevin, it’s Slop Week here on the “Hard Fork” show.

kevin roose

Slop to you drop.

casey newton

Don’t stop til you get enough. If you’re new to the world of slop — slop, of course, refers to AI-generated art and video. And to say that it is having a moment right now, Kevin, I think, would be an understatement.

kevin roose

Yes. I think this was the week that AI-generated video kind of went from something that was, you know, experimental, and early, and various tools had been released. But this was the week that I think it really crossed the chasm into the mainstream.

casey newton

It really did. And so today, we want to talk about what the big AI labs are doing here, why we think they are doing it, and maybe what are some of the implications of living in a world where maybe the majority of video that we are watching is synthetic and generated by large language models.

kevin roose

Yes.

casey newton

Shall we get into it?

kevin roose

Let’s get into it.

casey newton

Well, Kevin, before we flop into slop, we’re going to do a quick crop and say what our disclosures are.

kevin roose

Yes. I work “The New York Times,” which is suing OpenAI and Microsoft over copyright violations.

casey newton

And my boyfriend works at Anthropic. All right. So Google, Meta, and OpenAI all put out tools over the past several weeks, and let’s talk about them in order. This whole thing begins with Google DeepMind. They have a very good video generation model called Veo 3. And on September 16, YouTube has an event where they announced that they’re going to integrate a version of Veo 3, Veo 3 Fast, into YouTube Shorts.

kevin roose

Right. So you’ll just be able to make a video and post it on YouTube from within YouTube with this model, Veo 3.

casey newton

That’s right. And this is a free tool. Users can create videos that are up to eight seconds long using a text prompt. They can also just upload a still image, turn that into a video. YouTube will label them as AI-generated. And this is basically YouTube’s way of introducing slop into the YouTube feed.

kevin roose

Yes. So I have not seen a ton of obvious AI-generated content on YouTube yet, but I have seen them going on other platforms — Facebook, Reels, even on X, and TikTok, people are using Veo 3 to generate scenes and little videos and posting them there.

casey newton

Yeah. So I think it’s fair to say Veo 3 didn’t make that much of a splash. Then, last Thursday, Meta gets into the game and releases Vibes. Mark Zuckerberg, in a post on Instagram, announces that a preview of the new social feed is available in the Meta AI app. If you wear the Meta Ray-Bans, this is the app that you use to get photos and videos off of your glasses and onto your phone. And Zuckerberg posts a bunch of short videos, including one that features a sort of cartoon version of him. His caption is, “Dad trying to calculate the tip on a $30 lunch.” And then he pairs that with the real audio of him at the meeting with Donald Trump, in which he says, “Oh, gosh, I think it’s probably going to be, I don’t know, at least $600 billion.” And my question here is, what joke was Mark Zuckerberg trying to make? Do you understand the joke?

kevin roose

I don’t.

casey newton

Is the joke that he’s bad at math?

kevin roose

I think the joke is that dads are bad at doing tips. I don’t know. It’s like, a self-deprecating dad joke. But why does every new social product that Meta releases sound like it was conceived of by the Steve Buscemi carrying a skateboard “how do you do fellow” kids character? Calling this Vibes, I don’t know, man, it’s cringe.

casey newton

[LAUGHS]: Calling this Vibes is cringe, says the 40-year-old man.

kevin roose

I’m not 40, I’m 38. So I did go into Vibes and take a look at it. It’s essentially like TikTok, but if TikTok were populated just by little animated AI-generated shorts.

casey newton

Yeah. My take on Vibes is that this is Cocomelon for adults. OK?

kevin roose

Yes.

casey newton

It is completely disconnected from friends or family, for the most part. It’s just creators making these somewhat fantastical, surreal, unsettling images. And they just sort of wash over you in this endless feed. There’s no real point to them. There’s no real narrative. It is just like, pure visual stimulation.

kevin roose

Right. It’s stuff like, oh, a panda riding a skateboard or and inchworm on the moon, or something like that. It’s just people kind of testing what this thing can do. And the answer appears to be not much that I would personally be interested in watching.

casey newton

Yeah. And so for both Zuckerberg and Alexander Wang, the comments on their posts are just brutal. Right? The majority of the comments that I saw on Zuckerberg’s post are along the lines of, “Gang, nobody wants this, or “Drained an entire lake for this.” And then, on Alexander Wang’s post on X, where he had said something to the effect of, we at Meta are delighted to announce the new vibes app, somebody quote tweeted it. This was my favorite one. Did you see this? This was the dunk. They said, “We at Meta are delighted to announce we’ve created the infinite slot machine that destroys children from the hit book, ‘Don’t Create the Infinite Slot Machine That Destroys Children.’”

kevin roose

Yes.

casey newton

So what do you make of the highly negative reaction that Meta got here?

kevin roose

I mean, I was not surprised to see Meta announcing a version of essentially a social network with no actual people on it. I think this is the direction that they’ve been moving for several years now.

casey newton

It’s barely even a social network. There’s really almost no social component to it at all.

kevin roose

Yeah. It’s just like, what if TikTok but no people.

casey newton

Yeah.

kevin roose

That is the idea behind Vibes. And I think I was not surprised by the negative reaction.