 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners, thanks to all of you including Philip Shane, Paul Boyer, Brad, and our new patrons, Dallas, Tyler, and Burger. On this episode of DTNS, Microsoft really wants you to use co-pilot. Google really wants you to stop using cookies. And where is this lawsuit from the New York Times against open AI going anyway? We'll do our best to explain next. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, January 4th, 2024. Suggested by Nick with a C from Naughty Pinewood Studio, I'm Sarah Lane. From Columbus, Ohio, I'm Rob Denwood. And from Deep in the Heart of Texas, I'm Justin Robert Young. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Cheng. Well, I think we're going to have a good show, gentlemen. We've got open AI. We've got Google. We've got Microsoft. But first, we have some quick hits. If you are a LastPass user, you've probably seen the emails that the password manager was planning to force a new 12 character minimum for customers' master passwords. Today is the day. Since last April, 12 characters has been the default setting for any new customers or anyone who is resetting their master password. Now all users must have that pass of 12 characters to be in compliance. Del is streamlining its XPS laptop line in 2024. All new XPS models will receive the minimalist design of the XPS 13 Plus like a seamless glass touchpad, edge-to-edge keyboard, and glowing function and media keys. But won't feel as sharp to the touch as the XPS 13 Plus. The Plus branding is also going away. So the new lineup now includes the XPS 13 starting at $12.99, the XPS 14 starting at $16.99, and the XPS 16 starting at $18.99. On January 24th, customers of T-Mobile's Go 5G Next Unlimited plan will get Hulu's ad-supported plan for free. This tier is normally $7.99 per month. T-Mobile is calling this Hulu on us. And along with some similar offerings for Netflix and Apple TV Plus, it adds up to $35 per month in savings if you were to otherwise pay for all three. Go to 5G Next starts at $100 per month and goes up to $2.25 per month for a four-line bundle. Thursday, that's today. The Biden administration pledged $162 million in federal grants to Arizona-based semiconductor manufacturer Microchip Technology, which supplies chips to the automotive defense and other industries. This is the second award under the CHIPS Act, which aims to keep a steady chip supply for American companies that rely on semiconductors. With this investment, Microchip plans to increase its production and output and is expected to create more than 700 jobs in construction and manufacturing. Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon XR2 Plus Gen2 chipset, an upgrade to the XR2 Gen2 in the MetaQuest 3. It supports 4.3K resolution at 90 frames per second per eye, 12 concurrent cameras to forward pass through video, and also improved body and face tracking. Qualcomm claims a 15% increase in GPU and a 20% increase in CPU frequencies to handle spatial computing in 4K. Qualcomm says it's already working with HTC and at least four other hardware makers to use this chipset. Didn't mention Meta, but could be Meta. Given that Qualcomm announced a VR partnership with both Google and Samsung, about a year ago, and we didn't really hear anything more about that, might we hear more at Samsung Unpacked next Wednesday the 17th? Almost 30 years after Microsoft introduced the dedicated Windows key to its keyboards, it's adding another dedicated key, the co-pilot key. This will replace the menu key and be over on the right hand side by the alt key on most keyboards, and it will start shipping on various new PCs, laptops, and Surface devices starting later this month. Yeah, and as the name suggests, the co-pilot key is a quick way to launch Microsoft's AI-powered Windows co-pilot experience that's built into Windows 11. For countries where co-pilot isn't available, and that might be yours, the new key will launch Windows Search. It does something, but co-pilot is the end. That's kind of the point. Microsoft added a dedicated office key in the same spot you might recall back in 2019. For now, the co-pilot key, just that launch key. You're not going to be able to use it in tandem with other keys to perform other various tasks. It just does one thing. No word on the OEMs that will use the new co-pilot key yet, but we would expect that that would be announced at CES next week. Big news, y'all. Big news. When Microsoft makes changes to anything hardware, and this certainly applies to that, I think it signifies that they're pretty serious about co-pilot. Yeah, I think that they absolutely are serious about co-pilot. In fact, I would say that this from Microsoft AI and co-pilot might actually be their search because they never really hit it with search. They have played second or third or even fourth fiddle to Google forever with their search. But with AI, I think Microsoft is really leaning into people are going to start looking for things on the internet in a different way than they did in the Google days. So I think that for them, this signifies that they really are all on board with this as they are physically changing hardware that they haven't touched in 30 years. I mean, it's been a long time since they've really made significant updates to this keyboard. Well, but they also added the office key back in 2019. So this is not like they are replacing the Windows key with a co-pilot key. That would probably be a bigger deal. That being said, Microsoft is a company that loves its synergies. They want to be able to demonstrate everything they do, especially when it comes to Windows. This is a hardware fix, which I do believe is a much bigger deal. And whether or not this key only just opens up essentially the chatbot version of their skin on a chat GPT, I do think that it's an interesting idea going forward when I do believe we're going to be doing a lot of different things with AI. And from a branding perspective, it is my belief that we are not going to refer to everything as an AI thing for long. I think that in the same way that we transitioned away from saying that everything was online or Internet enabled, no one described Instagram as Internet enabled. We just understood it to be a thing. There will be a use for specific kinds of applications to be launched that have this kind of technology for Microsoft to brand it as co-pilot is smart because I do think that this is just going to be a burgeoning field. Yeah, I think to your point, Justin, Microsoft marketing this as the year of the AI PC. This is something that's been echoed by executives as of late. It kind of sounds like Microsoft saying, all right, it's the year of the AI PC everybody. Next year isn't also going to be the AI PC year. We're just going to be used to it by then. So it's like, let's use this term as much as we need to get everybody used to it, put a co-pilot keyword on those surface devices that are rumored to be coming out this spring. And it just becomes part of everyone's experience. Yeah, I think that really when you think about this, you have this assistant that can do stuff. You're sitting at your computer, you don't need to say a keyword. You literally just hit a button on your keyboard and now you just talk to or you start typing and your computer is really actively listening to what you're saying and going to give you feedback based on that. I think that this is just going to become the way that we do stuff in the same way that we just talk to our assistants. This is how you do it when you're sitting at your keyboard. That phrase, the year of the AI PC with CES on the horizon. I dare offer a drinking game to the GTNs audience for the year of the AI everything that will be in Las Vegas over the next week and a half. It's going to be the year of the AI doorstop, the year of the AI toaster, the year of the AI infinity is going to be the buzzwords that will come out of CES. Yeah. Yeah. It's like the toaster is no longer just smart. It's an AI toaster. Smart. Smart. It knows what you want before you know. So 2000 and late. Smart. So Google has been saying that it would eventually block third-party cookies in Chrome as a way to track user intent and behavior for some time. But today is the day that it has actually started testing its Cooculus technology on 1% of Chrome users globally. About 30 million people will be randomly asked if they want to browse with more privacy. If users say yes, third-party tracking cookies will be blocked. Google will temporarily turn cookies back on for sites that are having issues because many sites have said we're going to have issues. But according to Anthony Katzer, chief executive of the IAB Tech Lab, which is an ad tech industry trade group, the $600 billion a year online ad industry centering around the use of cookies is nowhere near ready for this. I tend to believe them at the same time. I feel like, okay, a lot of people use Chrome. 1% of those users accounting for 30 million people is still just 1%. I mean, they got to start somewhere, right? They got to start somewhere. And my gut tells me that Google is probably already thinking that they're not going to just kill cookies at the end of the year. I think this would be massively disruptive for the industry. And my gut is telling me that I don't think they will do that. They absolutely can. And they're telling you that they're going to. But I wouldn't be shocked if you see the actual ending of cookies move sometime into next year. I think what this 1% that they've turned on today is signifying is that, yes, we're really serious about this. And advertisers, you need to get your act together. They are going to do it. They're probably going to do it on time. And here's the reason why. Of course, the advertisers are not ready for this. And they never would be until it starts happening. The job of the advertiser is to say, I'm a company. I need to reach an audience. Where do I do it? Do I still have this avenue? Is this effective? Cool. I will do it there. Google is fine with disrupting this kind of advertising. Now, they've had their hands in it for a long time. They acquired double click a very long time ago. So this sort of tracking ad technology, something that they have made money on. But the golden goose for Google is AdWords. The golden goose for Google is making it very easy for people to buy on search results. And they have other avenues to have you spend your ad dollars as well up to and including YouTube that they want to push certain people to. This is a disruption. They will welcome 10 out of 10 days because they have other places for that money to go. Well, into Google's pockets is what you're saying. Of course. Yeah. Because they have their hand in this. But also what they want to do is differentiate themselves from Facebook. And they want to differentiate themselves from something that is a scummy way that that chases you around the Internet and the, you know, the devices listening to you. And that's why all of a sudden the product you were talking about shows up on a website that you just went to, they want to avoid that they want to get back to you. You are searching for a thing. We have the ad for you, even if it means putting another seven ads on your front page of search results. I also, you know, I haven't seen this implemented yet, but I cannot imagine of the 30 million people who might potentially see that that that that pop up window saying, would you like to browse with more privacy would say, no, no, less privacy for me, you know, I want to be as transparent as possible. So I think this is a user behavior test as much as it is how do cookies, you know, without the cookies, you know, how does the Internet break and it, you know, at what length. So here's a question I have. Oh, you know, and I do agree with you, you know, Justin, that Google absolutely wants to lean into this. They want to do this because that ultimately can mean more money for them. But are they going to have problems with regulators? I'm thinking of the EU is the EU going to say, you're just disrupting too many companies. You are a, you know, you're a monopoly. You guys need to slow down. You need to give them more time. I can't not see that company. It's just like, you know, they they're very litigious in the EU. I think that that would probably happen before, especially if companies are complaining about this, before they would allow Google to just turn off cookies for Earth. Rob, the EU is going to regulate this segment if it goes on for more than five minutes. So yes, they will face regulatory pressure in the EU, but that can't dictate what they want to do. And ultimately, if we're really going to take a big picture, look at this, what you have to understand is that Google is probably not at the peak of where their powers are in terms of AdWords. They've seen it contract. They also know that they evaporated television advertising. They evaporated display advertising. They evaporated newspaper advertising. They evaporated magazine advertising. Disruption is possible. And they want to consolidate their position before the next thing that shows up, be it more people interacting with stuff via AI, or something else that we don't know about comes along and takes it from them. Well, stay up to date in the fast-moving world of artificial intelligence, and have a lot of fun at the same time by listening to AI name this show. Every week, Tristan Yutra and Teja Kastodi waved through the hype and doom saying, so you can stay informed on everything in the AI world. Catch it at aynamethisshow.com. All right, we've got a lot of open AI stuff to talk about because, you know, AI is part of tech news these days. The information sources say open AI is now offering content licensing deals to publishers between $1 million and $5 million annually to rightfully, rightfully be in the keyword there, use publisher content to train its models. Open AI does have existing licensing deals with both Axel Springer, that includes content from Politico and Business Insider, and Ink2Deal, I believe last July, with the Associated Press. The report also says Apple's also negotiating similar rights, but it's a little bit different. Apple and Open AI, very different companies. Apple's also reportedly offering more money, but also wants to be able to use content more widely in its future products, not just its current ones. But Rob, let's focus on open AI for now. Yeah, because on November, excuse me, December 27th, the New York Times filed a lawsuit against open AI claiming the company infringed copyright by using New York Times content to train their large language models. The lawsuit seeks to hold open AI responsible for billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages. The NYT claims that www.nytimes.com was the most common proprietary source used for content to train GPT-3's 66 million records. It alleges Open AI's models can generate output that recites Times content verbatim, closely summarizes it, and mimics its expressive style. So Justin, fair use is going to come up here, but whether training models are transformative enough or not, and whether the time suffers as a result of this or not, we're kind of in uncharted territory. So what are you thinking is going to actually happen here? So I read the New York Times lawsuit and I found it to be very curious, specifically because it's a grab bag of a lot of different complaints that the New York Times has against open AI, not only the one that you just mentioned, but also seemingly the opposite. They claim that open AI is incorrectly summarizing the information on its website and therefore is delivering brand reputational damage to the New York Times. So it is both too accurately summarizing things verbatim, according to them, and not summarizing it correctly. If that seems to be contradictory to you, it is because ultimately this lawsuit is not real. It's a lawsuit that is being filed so they can better negotiate what you brought up, Sarah, at the beginning of this segment, how these licensing agreements are going to go for, and whether or not we are going to look back at offers like one to five million dollars a year and say that is a ridiculously laughable price for the kind of value that Open AI would get out of this content. If we're going to dig into the Times lawsuit specifically on the stuff that you mentioned though, Rob, the larger question in my mind is not necessarily fair use. It's where did open AI get that New York Times content? Because from everything that we know publicly and even is summarized in the Times lawsuit, they got it from sites like Reddit. Now why would the New York Times leave oftentimes full articles up in Reddit comments without throwing a C&D or a multimillion dollar lawsuit at that company? Well, the reason is because Reddit was a good inbound driver of traffic to the New York Times, and they could probably do the math on their back end and say that a portion of that wound up crossing the paywall and actually making money for that company. Unfortunately, if you are claiming mass copyright theft and Open AI didn't get it directly from the New York Times website, then the question I think a reasonable judge might say is, well, why didn't you protect your copyright when you had the chance the first time? Because now this is just another derivative of something that you could have stopped a long time ago. I mean, couldn't the Times just say, well, Open AI got all of it before we knew how to track it down appropriately? Well, copyright stuff is very interesting. A lot of times when you are, periodically this happens and it happened a lot during the odds and the tens, but when somebody would do fan art of something or there would be a parody video and the owners of that copyright would sue the people doing it and the fans would go crazy and say, oh my God, you make so much money, why can't you let this little thing live? Here's the reason why. If you do not consistently fight for your copyright by way of lawsuits, you open up the possibility that your hold on that copyright is eroded. And so it is legally a question whenever you deal with cases like this. I don't know whether or not a judge would rule like that. And that brings me to my second point. Open AI and Microsoft don't know either. My belief and it is almost spelled out in this lawsuit is that this lawsuit is a way to move negotiations forward that everybody acknowledges that they were in the middle of. But I don't think Open AI and Microsoft would be adverse to having some kind of legal resolution because the Times is not the last outlet that will look to negotiate a usage fee with Open AI and Microsoft by way of threatening a lawsuit. So I think for Open AI and Microsoft, they're like, sure, let's at least know where we stand legally so we can negotiate in a faster, more efficient way. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right on that. Just give us some precedent so we know what we're doing here. And the Times is big. Clearly Open AI and Microsoft are big. Let's go ahead and let these lawyers duke it out. Let's figure out what a judge is going to say and then we can act accordingly. But you're also absolutely right, Justin, that if you do not protect your copyright, that is ground for you not to actually have the copyright that you're trying to protect. So we all know the reason that they didn't go after Reddit and other sites like Reddit that were wholly posting articles inside of their apps or inside of their part of the Internet is because, well, they always had links back out to the NYT article, which ultimately is what the New York Times wanted in the first place. They wanted, ultimately, for people to come and read the extended article on their site. So they would get the eyeballs, that you would see their ads and they ultimately could monetize it. What Open AI is doing is changing that because you can get an answer that is so good. There's really no reason for you to go any further than the AI bot that you're getting the information from. So that's why the Times see such an issue with this is like, oh, wait a minute, they've got our content, but they're not sending us traffic. They're just giving the answer, which is good enough to the users who are looking for them. Which is why some of the fair use stuff is interesting to me because, yeah, if the Times says we're not getting inbound traffic anymore, so this is different than a user on Reddit posting an article where we can see some sort of benefit on some level. If it's a combination of, okay, for fair use, it's transformative, well, if it was not too transformative, then that's an issue. And if the Times can also argue, which to your point, Justin, a couple of minutes ago is kind of contradicting itself, saying, well, we're not getting traffic back, which is a problem and one of the issues in fair use, but it's also the wrong information. So not only does someone not gradually walk back to us to get more content, they just think they've gotten it, but it's wrong. Now our reputation takes a head and that's a problem. Also, the New York Times and their lawsuit are not alleging that there are not links back to the articles. They are alleging that there are not prominent links back to the articles. And I'm making air quotes while I say that because if this does become a duke it out legal problem, that's going to be the question. What is and is not a prominent link? And are the links on those two services specifically prominent enough for the New York Times to say, well, we are okay with you summarizing parts of our content if it links back to the other thing. But one more element of reading it verbatim, we have to be clear about what they are alleging. What they are alleging is that famous articles or articles that got a lot of traction online, when you put in their full headline, you can then ask these services, please read it for me one paragraph at a time. Now I don't think that that is a use case that many people actually do. But even in that case, it can't always go paragraph for paragraph. In their own lawsuit, they say that the second paragraph is the third paragraph as they lay out in their own examples. So this to me, and I don't know what's going on inside of those negotiations, I assume that this is high level stuff and the New York Times, which knows it has a tremendous treasure trove of highly edited, very, very high quality content, wants not only a pretty penny in their lawsuit, they also said they want to seat at the table to determine open AI standards on this kind of stuff. But filing the lawsuit, we'll see. We'll see if in hindsight this is a great idea for them. Open AI also is no stranger to lawsuits. In 2023, writers, Sarah Silverman, led a group of writers back in July. A group of writers led by Michael Gibbon, again in September, launched a separate lawsuit. Both fiction and nonfiction artists, authors, have gone after open AI in September and November of last year. So those are all different situations than what we're specifically talking about with the New York Times today. But one would think that this particular lawsuit will be transformative, ha ha, no pun intended for the industry going forward in general, because there will have to be some precedent set or we're never going to get anywhere. Anytime you go from zero to 80 billion, lawsuits are going to happen, I'm guaranteeing that. That is for sure. What's also for sure is that people write us all the time at feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com and we love to get your mail. So Rob, what do we got in the mail back? Bruce wanted to add, what he thinks might also be contributing to the slowing of EV markets as far as how many EVs are being sold. And we talked about this on Tuesday's show. He says, another confounding factor I've encountered is misbehaving dealers, at least anecdotally. My partner had a great experience with her used 2019 Chevy Bolt when Mrs. Venture happened, befell it. She decided that she wanted to buy a new one and take advantage of the $7,500 EV incentive tax rebate. She contacted eight or ten dealers both in Seattle, metro area and other regions including Oregon, California and Idaho. In every case, no matter the advertised price of the vehicle, the drive away price always included an extra $7,500 in dealer fees. Strangely, the exact amount of the tax rebate. Obviously, the incentive for purchasing a new EV was negated and without it, the purchase of a new EV didn't make financial sense. Predatory pricing of nearby dealers kept her from purchasing this new Chevy Bolt that she wanted. For what is worth, she ended up getting a used Kia Nero EV, which she's very happy with despite no apical tax credit. I guess the real moral to the story is that people interested in EVs should check out the used market. Lots of great stuff out there for much lower price than a new one. Oh, Bruce, thank you for that information. Yeah, we were wondering how much that $7,500 incentive tax rebate going away on many new models, not all of them, would deter people from getting an EV. But yeah, that whole dealer fee being the exact same amount does sound a little suspicious. And it sounds like she certainly did her homework there. Yeah, it's one of those things to where if everybody's doing this though, somebody's going to get sued over that because it's like that sounds like collusion. She's looking across multiple states and they're all doing this. One of the great things about the internet is we can actually go out and look and see what car should cost. And if there's $7,500 more or $8,500 or whatever the case is based off of your state, that's problematic. I mean, there's a reason why another EV manufacturer that I won't mention because it's a whole paragraph in and of itself actively killed the dealer market for their cars. And you get the $7,500 EV credit for that manufacturer. Well, Bruce, we're glad that she likes her Kea Nero. And yeah, the used EV market. If you're in the market, definitely something not to forget about. Thank you for the email. And thanks to you, Justin Robert Young. Let folks know what you've been up to lately. Well, friends, it's January and that means that we are within two weeks of the Iowa caucus. Very soon after that, it's the New Hampshire first in the nation primary and your boy Justin Robert Young may not be on as many DTNS is over the next couple of weeks because I will be on the road in all of those early primary states. If you want independent boots on the ground conversation and sounds from the place that it's happening. Well, there's only one place that you need to go and that is politics, politics, politics available wherever you find your podcast. Probably the place you're listening to this right now. So Patrons, stick around for the extended show Good Day Internet. Yeah, we're going to be talking about 23 and me not making a lot of friends on the playground to day. But just a reminder, we do the show live and we'd love to have you join us live if you can. Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern 2100 UTC is when it all goes down. Find out more at DailyTechNewShow.com slash live. We'll be back doing it all again tomorrow with Tristan Jutra joining us then. Talk to you. The DTNS family of podcasts helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.