Netflix Embraces AI

Potential Impact | Negative

TL;DR: Netflix is using AI to slash production costs on its shows and is now planning to use that same tech to create interactive ads that tailor themselves based on the viewer.

Summary:
Netflix finally admitted what many in the industry already suspected: it is using GenAI. While that’s causing some expected grumbling from creative professionals, the really interesting piece of this is what Netflix plans to do next. The company is now floating the idea of interactive ads that would customize themselves based on your browsing and usage history.

For advertisers, this is the holy grail: a focus group of one that provides instant, personalized feedback. For the rest of us, it’s a bit creepy and brings up a ton of privacy questions.

The Personalization Trap

TL;DR: OpenAI's new CEO of Applications is signaling a major shift from a single, all-knowing chatbot to specialized AI tools designed for tutoring, personal coaching, and health.

Summary:
OpenAI is making it clear that it wants to be more than just a chatbot. With a new CEO of Applications, the company is pushing to build specialized tools, and the three big areas of focus are tutoring, coaching, and health. While I agree there are huge opportunities here, each comes with its own major challenges. For tutoring, you can't just have a super-encyclopedia; you have to build applications specifically designed for learning, which is a much harder problem to solve.

Then there's coaching, which veers dangerously close to the "GPT Psychosis" problem. I'm not sure the AI companies have a real solution for this yet. They're making models that are designed to be agreeable and rewarding, which can create unhealthy dependencies. The fact that an OpenAI study found 90% of users said ChatGPT helped them "understand complex ideas more easily" just shows how powerful and popular this use case is, despite the risks. Health is the most complicated, and I do agree there are massive opportunities there, but it also carries the highest stakes if the AI gets something wrong.

TL;DR: The EU's sweeping AI Law is coming online, but instead of reining in Big Tech, its high compliance costs and weak enforcement might just make it harder for new startups to compete.

Summary:
As someone who's formerly been a fan of the EU attempting to regulate industries, I've become less optimistic about how their approach works over the past couple of years. The EU's big AI Law just went into effect, and it feels like history repeating itself. On paper, it's meant to create transparency and hold tech giants accountable. In reality, all it seemingly does is make it cost-prohibitive for new entrants to rise, which you can see in how challenging it is to launch a startup in Europe. There are surprisingly notable exceptions, Loveable, but they are the exception that proves the rule.

The core issue is enforcement. The big companies that this law is supposedly targeting will just drag out legal challenges for years or pay the eventual fines as a cost of doing business. Meanwhile, it’s the smaller companies trying to compete that get tangled in the regulatory net. They either can't afford the legal teams to ensure compliance or they become easy targets for regulators who know they can't fight back. The end result is that the law, intended to foster competition, may actually end up strengthening the moat around Big Tech.

TL;DR: Google is integrating its Duplex AI technology directly into Gemini, giving your phone the ability to make calls on your behalf to handle real-world tasks like negotiating bills or checking store inventory.

Summary:
For the past few months, a handful of niche tools have popped up that act as AI callers, helping you work through annoying situations like negotiating bills or checking on restaurant reservations. Now, Google is officially bringing this capability to the masses by rolling out a feature within Gemini that uses its impressive Duplex functionality.

The potential use cases are immediately obvious and incredibly practical. Instead of spending 45 minutes on hold to argue about your cable bill, you can just tell Gemini to handle it. The technology is also smart enough to handle more specific queries, like calling a local toy store to see if they have a specific, hard-to-find item in stock. This is a significant step toward the AI assistant that gets things done for you in the real world.