May 29, 2026 • 35 mins
Across the country, Americans are cutting back on groceries, but maybe they don’t have to. With an eye to one of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s signature initatives, Max and Stacey take you inside a city-run grocery store in Atlanta that keeps some prices low no matter its profit margins. And then, what’s the difference between art and slop? Max sits down with AI filmmaker Matt Zien to weigh the pros and cons of a nearly human-free cast and crew. (We promise that neither Max nor Stacey has been replaced by a chatbot.) Plus, we discover 2026’s song of the summer, and doping in sports is so back.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Access to fresh food is not it's not socialism. It
is it's a bare necessity need for any giving fee.
So this notion of socialism is not and this is
not a handout.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
This is just a helping hand I'm Stacy Vanix Smith
and I'm Max Schaffkin.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
And this is everybody's business.
Speaker 5 (00:31):
Your group, Chat's favorite financially oriented podcast. Indeed, well, you
know we have to find our niche. Today on the show,
we have two really interesting stories.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
A first one is a big one. It is affordability.
We take a look at a state run grocery store.
Speaker 5 (00:49):
There are more and more of these around the country.
We're going to take you inside one in Atlanta.
Speaker 6 (00:54):
When you when you highlight the key necessities people need,
like produce, milk, eggs, bread, stuff like that, I think
that we are We're beating our competitors.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
And then it's.
Speaker 7 (01:05):
A totally new category. When you use it to tell
stories that otherwise could not exist, people don't really care
that it's AI if they like the story.
Speaker 8 (01:16):
I sat down with filmmaker Matt Zion about how AI
is changing Hollywood or might change Hollywood in the future.
One of the big questions that will hang over this
segment that I'm talking about with Matt Zion, but also
other parts of this show is I think, what is
the difference between art and slop?
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Where does slop become art? Where does art become slopped?
Speaker 4 (01:37):
Question for the ages, It's a question I think about
all the time, so Max.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
One of the things that we've been talking about for
as long as the show has been a show has
been inflation. It's just been one of the biggest economic
stories of this moment, and affordability, all the affordability problems
that inflation is causing. People are struggling to afford the
basics more and more. We just got savings numbers out
those are near the lowest levels they've been And a
(02:04):
new CNN poll found that sixty one percent of people
have changed what they buy at.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
The grocery store because food costs are rising so much
right now right.
Speaker 8 (02:12):
And that is both obvious because prices are high, obviously
people are going to change what they buy, but also
very bad economically. That is a warning sign. And here
in New York this has been a big issue Mayor
Mom Donnie. Part of the way he got elected is
talking about affordability, and one of his solutions is the
idea that the city will operate grocery stores. This has
(02:34):
been super controversial, a lot of people on social media
and elsewhere saying it's ten amount of socialism. But the
plan is to have a city run grocery store opening
next year. And again, lest you think that this is
some kind of crazy, fringe New York thing, this is
happening in other places in the United States too. In fact,
one in Atlanta just opened last year. It's called Azalea
(02:56):
Fresh Market.
Speaker 6 (02:58):
Hey, on the phone with the espresso people now, so
do I.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Put them on pause? Yeah?
Speaker 9 (03:04):
Just put them on the back.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
Yeah, Okay, We're very lucky today we've got the general
manager of Azaleam Market, that's Jada Mura, and the CEO
and president Palmnaire.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Welcome, thank you, thank you for having us.
Speaker 10 (03:21):
Thank you.
Speaker 5 (03:21):
And Jada, you just got off the phone apparently with
an espresso company because you are trying to negotiate. This
is apparently the day to day workings of what you do.
Can you tell us a little bit about what you
were asking them about?
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Sure?
Speaker 6 (03:37):
So right now we are going through a transitional period
for upstairs area on the first floor. We have a
full fledged grocery store where you have your fresh food,
your produce, your meat, your frozen and it's in a
very compact space. So the previous location here was a
wal grain So if you can imagine the sizeable walgrains
and take the entire floor and turn it into a
(03:58):
grocery store, that's the space that we're dealing with. We've
renovated it completely. We have our own Mayt to Order restaurant.
So when we opened up the facility, there was a
coffee shop that we tied in with and then High
Roller Sushet and the coffee shop has decided that they
are relocating, so we are trying to transition into our
own coffee branding. So right now I was on the
(04:20):
phone just trying to make sure that we have all
the proper machinery because I do have a breef stuff.
There's training right now, so we're just make sure that
we can get on the ground running for next week.
That way we're not missing out on too much money.
Speaker 5 (04:31):
I read that you had more than seven hundred people
come to this grocery store.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
Yeah, can you talk.
Speaker 5 (04:37):
A little bit about what the store is and why
so many people showed up.
Speaker 11 (04:43):
The store is for the neighborhood.
Speaker 6 (04:46):
We're in a downtown area and there's really not many
areas around in the country that have a grocery store
in the part of downtown. And then on top of that,
we're also in Atlanta we have GSU. They are a
main customer base. We really serve students. It really it
is a food desert down here, and our goal is
to be able to supply the food desert with a
fresh food resource.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
This is a huge initiative from the Mayor's office in
West Atlanta to address this food desert.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
This sheet.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Now, when you hear about this world food doesert, people
think that, hey, it's a racial it is a you know,
it's a divide.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
It's not.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
I mean, it's actually every In fact, I was having
a discussion with somebody from New Jersey. They have fifty
nine food deserts, So that means that fifteen nine areas
two to three mile radio there is no grocery stores
at all. So this this is a big task be taking.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
This is a public private partnership.
Speaker 8 (05:41):
You know, we're dealing We're talking about some of this
in New York as well with with this plan of
Mayor Mom Donni's to open a city run grocery store
or maybe more than one city run grocery store. And
I don't know if you know this, but many people
out in the world find this very upsetting, right they
see this as the first step in the in the
slide towards communism. I for when I'm surprised that you
(06:04):
are not wearing your chairman Mao outfits or what you
seem like normal capitalists as far as I can tell,
can you talk about exactly what you know, exactly what
the relationship is and kind of like what your reaction like,
kind of how you see this conversation around city and
grocery stores.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Sure you know that, and that is a beautiful question,
and I do like to address it head on. You know,
when when uh, when this when we been in the
thick of building this, we actually had a call from
Mayor Mom Danny's office asking how we did what we did,
and we made it very clear, you know, it should
not be a city ran operation because city employees doesn't
(06:46):
know how to run retail outlets. So we've we've actually
discussed that now talking about socialism, you know, access to
fresh food is not.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
It's not socialism. It is it's a bare.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Necessity, the need for any human being, so for for us,
for someone to clean. And by the way, just on
this one, this is not a handout from the city.
What we have is a small grant and the rest
everything else is loan that you're supposed to pay back.
So this is capitalism at best. So we are making
(07:20):
sure that this becomes sustainable and pay back the loan.
So this is this is the only difference in this
is the city is acting more like a bank, so
the underwriting is a little bit more easier, and it's
a low interest, so we can we can make it
affordable to the people who shopping. So this, this notion
(07:40):
of socialism, is not and this is not a handout.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
This is just a helping hand.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
How does your pricing and I guess your selection compare.
Speaker 6 (07:48):
When you when you highlight the key necessities people need,
like produce, milk, eggs, bread, stuff like that. I think
that we are we're beating our competitors. Half a loaf
of white bread for a dollar seventy nine. I sell
chicken breast for four ninety nine pound. We have a
half dollar milk for two dollars and eighty five cents and.
Speaker 11 (08:10):
It doesn't make a dollar sixty's flying.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
It might be worth it to fly to Atlanta from
New York. We would love to host you.
Speaker 6 (08:21):
It's crazy. We were selling a dozen eggs for a
dollars sixty nine. There's there's not many areas where you
can get fresh products for that price. And we go
buy Paul's price promise, so it's under his name, but
we do have key items in the store where we're
guaranteeing your price no matter what our cost is.
Speaker 11 (08:38):
Now, obviously our.
Speaker 6 (08:38):
Goal would be to not lose more money than we're spending,
but the investment is in the community.
Speaker 8 (08:45):
Before we go any further on on the grocery prices,
and because the context here and one of the reasons
we want to talk to you is there was a
poll that showed that a lot of people are changing
their buying habits because of rising prices. Is a huge issue,
you know, not just run the poics in New York,
but in the country. We wanted to get a quick
sense of how our listeners were feeling. And our producer,
(09:06):
Miles J. Herzenhorn, was in Chicago. He went out on
the streets to ask people how they were feeling about
grocery prices.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Let's all listen together and then we can talk about this.
Speaker 12 (09:16):
What is the last thing you bought at a grocery
store that gave you pause?
Speaker 4 (09:22):
Oh, ground beef.
Speaker 13 (09:25):
Says that used to be forty nine cents a pound
are now a dollar nineteen.
Speaker 14 (09:29):
Wanted to cook a rabbi one day? One rib i
fake was like twenty nine dollars.
Speaker 12 (09:32):
What do you think about the current level of grocery
prices at the moment?
Speaker 13 (09:35):
Grocery prices at the moment are absolutely ridiculous. I mean,
you can't walk into a grocery store and buy anything
for less than five dollars. You know, what used to
cost you a week's work of shopping one hundred, one
hundred and twenty dollars is now well over two hundred dollars.
I truly don't know how families can.
Speaker 11 (09:52):
Afford to eat.
Speaker 12 (09:54):
Do you currently budget for food?
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (09:56):
I do.
Speaker 13 (09:57):
Before I used to go in and just go shop,
being in, buy whatever I wanted to buy, and because
that's what I wanted. Now I find myself shopping for
what sun sale, what's the house brand which is costing
less than everything? Else, which is not a way I
used to shop.
Speaker 14 (10:13):
I get groceries and enough items to cook that will
last for a few days. So normally I'm cooking like
maybe twice a week and making the meal stretch.
Speaker 12 (10:22):
And how do you think other families around the country
are managing the affordability crisis?
Speaker 11 (10:26):
What do you think they're doing?
Speaker 14 (10:27):
I honestly feel that families across the country they're budgeting,
They're trying to plan out their meals. There no snacks,
no junk foods, things that are actually going to last
for a good bit of time.
Speaker 13 (10:37):
Honestly, I think they're charging it and getting deeply in debt.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Scary.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Yes, this is I actually I hear this just about
every day, even you know, I was the other day,
I was outside Walmart just kind of talking to people.
What the similar kind of questions? And it is it is.
It is strange a minute, it is bad, and you know,
and again this the fuel pricing. It's a combination of
(11:06):
different things, right, I mean, it's not just one thing
that attributes to the situation. So I believe once the
gas prices comes down, I think things may level off.
But unfortunately, the issue is COVID has changed a lot
of things, how the pricing has been set, and you know,
(11:27):
is that a lot of profit taking into these things.
I can't say no to that. So it's a combination
of different things, and this is something that needs to
be addressed.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Are you seeing you've been open for a year or so,
have you seen shifts and how in what people are
spending money on or are you seeing sort of those
efforts to save in terms of like what people are buying,
passing up, choosing or not choosing in kind of your stores.
Speaker 11 (11:56):
I think you do see shifts.
Speaker 6 (11:57):
I think that the the biggest thing in grocery is
if people think that they're saving money, you have a
bigger chance that.
Speaker 11 (12:06):
They're going to make that purchase.
Speaker 6 (12:08):
I could mark up the price of cheese its and
I could do buy one, get one fifty percent off,
and just off of the thought that oh, I'm saving
money on cheeses, then that's that's the more likely purchase
than the.
Speaker 11 (12:20):
Ones that are not discounting.
Speaker 6 (12:22):
So you do see people that are attracted more to
advertised sales the private brands, like they mentioned in the video,
just speaking on the options that are the cheapest, you
do kind of see a trend but I do think
the biggest trend that I've seen is the payment method.
So instead of paying with credit or cash, my electronic benefit.
Speaker 11 (12:45):
Charges are starting to go higher. They're about forty of
our purchases.
Speaker 8 (12:54):
So electronic benefits. That's food stamps, yeah, yeah, food stamps snap.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
How does your business model work? Do you make a profit?
Do you not? Because you're charging really I very low prices.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
So traditionally, you know what happens if there is low
pricing and let's say the margin is twenty percent and
the shrink is two percent, So what happens is you
mark it up twenty two percent to make up the difference.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
What is the shrink? What does that mean?
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Shrink could be theft or breakage?
Speaker 4 (13:27):
Oh okay, okay, that doesn't so just losses.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
So you mark up the twenty two percent to make
up the difference. You know, we're not doing that, and
so our to answer the question, we want to be profitable. Yes,
that's exactly what we are running for. So we're looking
at different other sources. What else can we do? What
are the services we can bring in? So that's the
ways in data is aggressively negotiating with different coffee companies.
(13:53):
We're hoping to be profitable pretty soon, so at least
at a minimum breaking.
Speaker 5 (13:59):
Well, what do you hear from your customers? Like, what
feedback have you gotten from them over the last year.
Speaker 6 (14:04):
Before we opened, we had some some lapses in the
opening time, so we ended up pushing it until September,
but we had to define an opening day I believe
in late August, and then had to push it back,
push it back, push it back. And our first upset
customers were the ones that weren't able to come into
the door.
Speaker 11 (14:22):
We had people that were leaving us Google reviews already
about oh you guys, had you open at this time
and you're not.
Speaker 6 (14:28):
We want a shop, So our first customers were people
that were didn't ending to be able to take advantage
of our facilities.
Speaker 11 (14:34):
So now that we're here, we're here to say and
we're here commun to do all.
Speaker 8 (14:39):
Right, Jada and Paul, general manager and CEO of Azalea Market,
thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Stacey and I will definitely come visit and.
Speaker 5 (14:46):
By threatening to get on a plane some of that
espresso once you get this chain all worked out.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
But up Max, we're going to hold you to that
waiting until I Love It for a month long shehof shopping.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
Stacy.
Speaker 8 (15:06):
Two weeks ago or so, I had a conversation, fascinating
conversation on stage at the Artist and Machine Conference. This
was an event in in Brooklyn about AI and creativity
with this guy, Matt Zion, who is an AI filmmaker.
You and I we've talked all about AI and how
it's changing things. I haven't talked I don't think that
(15:28):
much about the entertainment business. That's kind of where this
conversation is located. There are obviously lots of people who
are using AI in Hollywood right now to sort of
like touch up scenes or make crowds look better or whatever.
Matt's thing is like using only AI. I mean, it's
like the most sort of out there version of this.
(15:48):
I mean, in fact, so out there that the kind
of central question in this conversation is sort of like
what is the difference between AI art and AI slop? Like,
at what point does it become art when you're just
you know, prompting a computer to generate something. And then
the other reason I think this is a cool conversation
is because, like I said, Matt is really good at
(16:09):
prompting AI at basically asking AI questions. And I found,
even though, as you know, I'm somewhat skeptical of this stuff,
I actually found this conversation somewhat useful in terms of, like,
how can somebody get the most out of their experience
with AI? Because he is really he's pushing these things,
you know, kind of to the limits.
Speaker 4 (16:29):
I'm excited to hear the conversation.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Let's give it a listen.
Speaker 8 (16:32):
And I thought to start, we could just see a
short clip from what is this?
Speaker 3 (16:38):
This is like your first ever AI movie.
Speaker 9 (16:41):
Twenty twenty four. Wow, going way back, runway Jen three.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Okay, this is called the Relic.
Speaker 15 (16:53):
Daring Expedition in the bar of plan.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
On the podcast, we're seeing a shot from a plane.
Speaker 15 (17:00):
What could possibly drive these military gos? Why?
Speaker 8 (17:04):
None of it looks like an old newsreel.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
We see some guys and restore peace.
Speaker 15 (17:12):
Hello, little monkey. Our heroes are not alone in that quest.
But this relics has been guarded for thousands of years
by a noble drive, the keepers of this ancient wonder.
Speaker 8 (17:23):
All right, So for people who didn't watch that old thing,
it's like a sort of newsreel style report from world
War two. How did you come to be a person
who made this? Like, like, what's the story that led
you to make that film?
Speaker 16 (17:40):
At the time, I had just discovered mid Journey, which
had just moved out of Beta and Runway, and I'm
just trying really really hard to get into Runways beta,
and it was like, Okay, what can we make that
is actually watchable with where the tech is now and
those old newsreels. I was it like, they're all the
(18:00):
footage is already really grainy and bad, so maybe we
could sell it. But the thing that was the hardest
was to make them walk, Like it was really really
hard to make them walk, and when they kind of
started to walk, usually they'd become glitches very very quickly.
And it's kind of amazing how far and how quickly
it's come since being super excited that they could walk
(18:23):
and not become like a glitch monstrosity.
Speaker 8 (18:27):
Yeah, I mean we'll see some of the more advanced
clips that, like you said, it's been very quick, just
matters of months or a year. Just take us back
to like what caused you to get interested in the
space in general? Coming from a sort of more traditional
I mean, you've been basically producing what documentaries?
Speaker 16 (18:44):
Yeah, nonfiction series and documentaries for over ten years, and
nonfiction is a very entrepreneurial, scrappy part of the business,
with lower budgets than scripted, much lower. And the thing
that bothered me the most as it development executive was
we'd have these meetings where we came up with ideas,
(19:04):
and there were all these ideas we'd fall in love with,
and we knew our friends at the networks would love them,
and we knew what the audience would love them, but
we had to throw them away right away. We couldn't
even speak because it cost too much. We would never
get those budgets. And as I saw this improving rapidly,
I thought this would solve the problem that has bothered
(19:28):
me the most through my whole career, which is incredible
stories that deserve to be told but could not be
told otherwise.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
You were like, let me, I'm in this world of
documentary and non.
Speaker 8 (19:38):
Facial let me take the most synthetic thing. I'm just kidding, Yeah,
no recreations. I mean epic scale things set in the
ancient world or the beginning of time, following Neolithic humans
as they developed language. There's so many incredible stories that
would be just so much fun to watch, but there
is an archival for them. What was the reaction you
(20:01):
put this on YouTube? Is that how you showed it
to the world. Start on TikTok okay. I put this
on TikTok and uh, there's a lot of like cool.
But then there was someone who really they told me
to kill myself and I was shocked. Well, I want
to get into that and into the into the way
that people have been reacting. And and I think it's
super easy to be in place like this and and
(20:24):
or in you know, a corporate boardroom where there's also
a lot of AI enthusiasm, and and miss the fact
that if you pull people about this stuff, a lot
of people will be the opposite of enthusiastic.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Right, They're gonna be the they're they're in the kind
of hater camp.
Speaker 8 (20:38):
So you've been you've been dealing with this, right, putting
stuff out there that is really cool on a sort
of technical level, like oh my god, I can't believe
that you can make this with a computer, and getting
some blowback, and you've been responding to that. And let's
watch the next clip. This is called Forgive the Haters.
Speaker 10 (20:58):
Good old Machus mortgage everything for film school head seven
years around and hain't painted off yet. His professors promised
if he learned the rules master composition, lighting, all the tools, heat.
Speaker 9 (21:17):
The value low, computer could repleach. Now you watch his
prompts with wonder on the face.
Speaker 11 (21:25):
Forgive the hate.
Speaker 9 (21:30):
They're not what they see.
Speaker 13 (21:34):
They're watching the death.
Speaker 10 (21:39):
They're American dream. Forgive the hate, see them true.
Speaker 8 (21:51):
Never seeing some of the comments including slops, garbage, crap,
I assume that's a real surial comments, uh not an
AI generated one that we know of. What was talk
about the motivation to make this and I'm curious about
the composition, like are you what if? For people who
are just listening to this, what we saw is sort
of like an eighties rocker, like an arena rocker singing
(22:15):
that song, and some eighties style workers who are reacting
to AI.
Speaker 16 (22:22):
We this actually ties back to the collaborative way of
working with AI that I mentioned before. To get to
this song, I told Claude I was I pretended I
tricked Claude into thinking I was the haters, okay, And
I compiled my worst hate comments and was like, help
me get this AI filmmaker, like this is what I
wrote to them, and Claude like built a case against
(22:45):
me because if you just ask it straight up, like
if I was like, hey, these are my haters, it'd
be like, oh, they're.
Speaker 8 (22:52):
Idiots, right, because it wants you to keep using it
the sycophancy problem.
Speaker 16 (22:55):
I reversed the sycophancy, so I was a hater and
then I was like whoh, and it really broke down
what people were angry about and fearful of. That hit
me and I was like, these are this is a
real disruption, and I understand where these emotions are coming from,
and I want to make art about it.
Speaker 8 (23:17):
The characters there's a visual effects artist, there's a film professor, screenwriter,
or it's a bunch of people who are dealing with
the kind of economic fallout or confronting it in various
ways emotional ways, economic ways. The song is talking about
these complaints, the idea of a screenwriter can't find work
(23:38):
or something like that, and for the most part, like
that isn't true.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Like I was on a panel or here earlier, where.
Speaker 8 (23:44):
On the stage people are saying like actually, and this
comes up in other domains around AI, Right, you think
it's gonna lead to massive job losses. But it hasn't
yet and it may never. But in your work it
is right, I mean, it is just you. There is
no AI screenwriter that that singer is a bot, there's
no actor being paid it.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
It is in some sense taking away those jobs. Does
that give you any kind of pology?
Speaker 9 (24:10):
Yeah? The thing is, I don't know if it is.
Speaker 16 (24:12):
I don't know of any production that was using people
before and has now let those people go to use AI.
I can't think of one. Maybe that will happen in
the future, but I haven't seen it yet. When people
look at AI filmmaking, they think it's a replacement. They
immediately think it's a replacement for practical production or animation.
(24:33):
But the way I see it is it's a totally
new category. It is a new medium entirely that can
do different things than either of those mediums. And when
you use it as a replacement, audiences don't really respond.
When you use it.
Speaker 9 (24:48):
To tell stories that otherwise could not exist, people don't
really care that it's AI if they like the story.
Speaker 8 (24:56):
When you hear your colleagues in the entertainment world, like
Germel de Toros saying like, I'd rather die than use AI.
I mean, like, so these are not just randos on
the internet slinging at you, right.
Speaker 16 (25:07):
I'd be really honored if he's slaying at me, really right,
and I respect him. But it's also very easy to
say I'd rather die than use this when you're sitting
on one hundred and thirty million dollar budget, when you're
trying to climb your way up as a filmmaker and
the industry is already contracting.
Speaker 9 (25:23):
You're gonna do what you gotta do to get your
story in the world. You use the.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Sort of distinction between art and slop.
Speaker 8 (25:30):
I can't remember when we were Backstager just now, but
there's a lot of what I think is more clearly
like AI slop that is doing very.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Well on the internet.
Speaker 8 (25:39):
Like I was not even gonna bring this up, but
so many people have brought it up. When I said, oh,
I'm doing a panel and AI filmmaking these fruit Love
Island videos. Yes, it's like a very successful TikTok where it's.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
Like a parody of Love Island, but they're fruit.
Speaker 8 (25:54):
The visuals are so We're gonna put one up, but
the visuals are so garish we're worried about offending people.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
What do you make of that and the success of it.
Speaker 16 (26:05):
I think the thing that's doing really well that is
an AI in practical production is human slop too.
Speaker 9 (26:10):
Everyone's talking about real shorts.
Speaker 16 (26:13):
And these like one minute like like absolutely horrible soap operas,
these vertical soap operas, and that's crushing it. Like human
slop and AI slop are both doing really well in
terms of numbers.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
We talked about the slop end of the spectrum.
Speaker 8 (26:28):
I want to play one last clip of your work,
a recent piece that is I think maybe and maybe
you correct me if I'm wrong, but it feels like
the most fully fleshed out like film. It's a twelve
minute short film. It's called DJ. We're gonna watch a
short clip and then talk about it.
Speaker 11 (26:46):
Then they still just drop in loneliness.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Huh they die of loneliness? What they cured everything? Accept
the part where they can't talk to nobody, can't say
they're sad, so their bodies just quit.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Okay. So that was a shot of a few characters
in a car.
Speaker 8 (27:18):
Three women. They're like agents of some sort. They're going
into this futuristic nightclub. I'm not gonna spoil the whole story,
but I wanted to ask you, Matt, you've talked about
casting these actors, what do you mean.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
By that AI is a probability cloud.
Speaker 16 (27:34):
When you ask for an image, it's going to give
you the most likely image that it can make from
the probability cloud. But interesting characters you have to wrestle
with the machine. You have to put constraints in, So
I like to use paradoxes that force the model into
the edges of its training data, so it gives you
(27:55):
people that are not the most statistically average output. And
then it's really just a human judgment thing. You look
and see if that person is compelling, and if they're
compelling enough, you moved them to the next stage where
you design a voice. You design a voice for each
character and make sure the voice matches, and then you
put it into video and you audition your own creations
(28:17):
until it's something that you feel holds the screen. They're
compelling enough to hold the screen.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
Where are we in this culture battle?
Speaker 9 (28:24):
Like?
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Do you think the intensity of this debate is gonna?
Have we hit the peak? Is it just starting? What
are you all happening right now?
Speaker 16 (28:31):
I'll tell you what I saw last night on Reddit
that kind of shocked made me really worried for a minute.
There are subreddits that are all about AI hate, and
one came up on my feed that was a photo
for a billboard of a small Mexican restaurant in a
four hundred person town in Washington State, and the caption was,
(28:55):
look at this cringe AI slop on the billboard. I
The thing I thought immediately was, Oh, no, this family
restaurant is about to get brigaded. I looked at the
Yelp expecting to see hundreds of like horrible reviews, but
I just saw five star reviews and it was like
the best Mexican food anyone had ever had. But I
was and the person who drove by and posted that
(29:17):
would never try that. But that's the kind of thing
you're worried about.
Speaker 8 (29:19):
That's this thing i've heard of building into the real world. Yeah,
we've seen that, of course, with some attacks on some
AI industry executives and so on. Last question, real quick,
do you worry about your own the role that you're playing,
about disrupting yourself or whatever, Like the idea that this
could get so good that like that artist.
Speaker 16 (29:37):
Vision wouldn't be needed, not not at all. No, I,
this is so much fun. The community that does it
is the warmest community I've ever found in film. This
is not going away and it's only going to get better.
We say all the time, this is the worst it
will ever be.
Speaker 8 (29:57):
Matt Zion, thank you so much for being here, Thank
you all for listening.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Name great conversation.
Speaker 5 (30:10):
All right, Max, So, in the spirit of the conversation
that you just had and this idea of creating art
with AI, there has been sort of a summer song
moment that we have had that is is a collaboration
between a person and AI. So it's called the Puerto
(30:34):
Rico Song. It is totally blown up in the last
few weeks it was written.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Are you saying this is the underrated story?
Speaker 11 (30:41):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (30:41):
I think it is underrated, Yes, because even though it's
blown up, is the song of the summer.
Speaker 5 (30:46):
It's been on TV, like, it's on Spotify, like this
has like become this thing. It was and how it
happened was there was this comedian and he likes to
travel and when he comes back, he takes his travel
notes and likes to write song.
Speaker 4 (30:59):
Lyrics and then he feeds them into this.
Speaker 5 (31:01):
AI tool called Suno, and Suno creates a little song
around the lyrics. He's done this on a bunch of
places that he's traveled, and he went to San Juan
and he wrote a song with AI and it has
become this big hit. Are you ready to hear the song?
Speaker 3 (31:21):
I'm ready?
Speaker 4 (31:21):
All right, here we go.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
First time in Sana.
Speaker 9 (31:34):
Juan, Puerto Rico.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
Immediately, this song sucks, Stacy. I'm sorry. It is a bad,
bad song. It is not the song of the summer.
Speaker 5 (31:52):
Puerto Rico is flying him out to become This is
going to become the promotional song.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
I hope it does.
Speaker 11 (31:58):
Puerto Rico.
Speaker 5 (32:00):
People love this.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
That's funny.
Speaker 8 (32:01):
Is from Puerto Rican There are I mean, this is
not even the song you got to get off the internet,
I think honestly, because this is this is not the
song of the summer.
Speaker 4 (32:11):
This is blowing up. People love the song. It's very fun,
it's very sweet. It's I don't know. You didn't even
listen to it for ten.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Seconds, I have to say, and I have to admit this.
Speaker 8 (32:23):
I feel like I failed as a podcaster, which is
that I listened to this beforehand, So I think I
went into the listen with a little bit of bottled
up rage that that unfortunately may happen. Rage about what
I feel like. We're like grading AI on a curve.
We're like, oh, like, it's so this is it's so catchy,
(32:44):
but it's is.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
It catchy though?
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Like I'm not totally sure.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
I think it's catchy.
Speaker 8 (32:48):
All right, Well, speaking of people who need to get
off of the Internet, I have been following the Enhanced Games,
which is the quote unquote steroid Olympics.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
Ceacy. You and I have talked about the Enhanced Game before.
Speaker 8 (33:01):
It was this kind of like Silicon Valley attempt to
quote unquote disrupt the world of sport by giving elite
athletes drugs.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
Okay, you're familiar with the Enhanced Games, right, Uh?
Speaker 8 (33:16):
Yes, Okay, So I've been founding this closely because, as
I said, I've been spending too much time on the Internet, and.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Everyone was sort of expecting that.
Speaker 8 (33:25):
It would be this, you know, like, oh my god,
like world records are going to fall and so on.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Do you want to know what happened?
Speaker 4 (33:31):
What happened?
Speaker 3 (33:32):
The athletes not using the drugs were the ones who won.
Oh in many cases.
Speaker 8 (33:38):
Okay, and it was kind of it was kind of
a letdown and the enhanced Games in one hundred meter
in the men's hundred meters, they were talking about taking
down Usain Bolts record. The guy who won was number one,
not on drugs, and number two did not run very fast.
There was one world record in swimming in the men's
fifty meter, but it's sort of unclear.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
Whether it was the drugs or whether it was one
of those suits. Do you remember those suits that Olympian
Olympic swimmers were wearing for a while, in the speed suit,
the speed suits.
Speaker 8 (34:07):
He was wearing one of these speed suits, and so
it's like, maybe it was a speed suit, maybe it
was a drug, but they did.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
Set a record there.
Speaker 8 (34:13):
Anyway, Wall Street has been unimpressed that the stock basically
went public right before.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
This and it has not been well.
Speaker 8 (34:21):
The last I checked, it was down seventy percent from
its high about.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
A month ago, so a bit of a dud.
Speaker 8 (34:34):
This show is produced by Jasmine J. T. Green, Stacey Wong,
and Miles J. Herzenworth. Magnus Henrickson is our supervising producer.
Ken Militzer handles engineering, and Dave percellfact checks special Thanks
to Jeff Muscus.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
Julia Rubin, and Ria Lingk.
Speaker 8 (34:48):
If you have a minute, please rate and review the show.
It'll mean a lot to us. And if you have
a story that should be our business, email us at
Everybody's at Bloomberg dot net. That's everybody with an s
at Bloomberg dot net. Thank you for listening, and we
will see some
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Access to fresh food is not it's not socialism. It
is it's a bare necessity need for any giving fee.
So this notion of socialism is not and this is
not a handout.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
This is just a helping hand I'm Stacy Vanix Smith
and I'm Max Schaffkin.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
And this is everybody's business.
Speaker 5 (00:31):
Your group, Chat's favorite financially oriented podcast. Indeed, well, you
know we have to find our niche. Today on the show,
we have two really interesting stories.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
A first one is a big one. It is affordability.
We take a look at a state run grocery store.
Speaker 5 (00:49):
There are more and more of these around the country.
We're going to take you inside one in Atlanta.
Speaker 6 (00:54):
When you when you highlight the key necessities people need,
like produce, milk, eggs, bread, stuff like that, I think
that we are We're beating our competitors.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
And then it's.
Speaker 7 (01:05):
A totally new category. When you use it to tell
stories that otherwise could not exist, people don't really care
that it's AI if they like the story.
Speaker 8 (01:16):
I sat down with filmmaker Matt Zion about how AI
is changing Hollywood or might change Hollywood in the future.
One of the big questions that will hang over this
segment that I'm talking about with Matt Zion, but also
other parts of this show is I think, what is
the difference between art and slop?
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Where does slop become art? Where does art become slopped?
Speaker 4 (01:37):
Question for the ages, It's a question I think about
all the time, so Max.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
One of the things that we've been talking about for
as long as the show has been a show has
been inflation. It's just been one of the biggest economic
stories of this moment, and affordability, all the affordability problems
that inflation is causing. People are struggling to afford the
basics more and more. We just got savings numbers out
those are near the lowest levels they've been And a
(02:04):
new CNN poll found that sixty one percent of people
have changed what they buy at.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
The grocery store because food costs are rising so much
right now right.
Speaker 8 (02:12):
And that is both obvious because prices are high, obviously
people are going to change what they buy, but also
very bad economically. That is a warning sign. And here
in New York this has been a big issue Mayor
Mom Donnie. Part of the way he got elected is
talking about affordability, and one of his solutions is the
idea that the city will operate grocery stores. This has
(02:34):
been super controversial, a lot of people on social media
and elsewhere saying it's ten amount of socialism. But the
plan is to have a city run grocery store opening
next year. And again, lest you think that this is
some kind of crazy, fringe New York thing, this is
happening in other places in the United States too. In fact,
one in Atlanta just opened last year. It's called Azalea
(02:56):
Fresh Market.
Speaker 6 (02:58):
Hey, on the phone with the espresso people now, so
do I.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Put them on pause? Yeah?
Speaker 9 (03:04):
Just put them on the back.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
Yeah, Okay, We're very lucky today we've got the general
manager of Azaleam Market, that's Jada Mura, and the CEO
and president Palmnaire.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Welcome, thank you, thank you for having us.
Speaker 10 (03:21):
Thank you.
Speaker 5 (03:21):
And Jada, you just got off the phone apparently with
an espresso company because you are trying to negotiate. This
is apparently the day to day workings of what you do.
Can you tell us a little bit about what you
were asking them about?
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Sure?
Speaker 6 (03:37):
So right now we are going through a transitional period
for upstairs area on the first floor. We have a
full fledged grocery store where you have your fresh food,
your produce, your meat, your frozen and it's in a
very compact space. So the previous location here was a
wal grain So if you can imagine the sizeable walgrains
and take the entire floor and turn it into a
(03:58):
grocery store, that's the space that we're dealing with. We've
renovated it completely. We have our own Mayt to Order restaurant.
So when we opened up the facility, there was a
coffee shop that we tied in with and then High
Roller Sushet and the coffee shop has decided that they
are relocating, so we are trying to transition into our
own coffee branding. So right now I was on the
(04:20):
phone just trying to make sure that we have all
the proper machinery because I do have a breef stuff.
There's training right now, so we're just make sure that
we can get on the ground running for next week.
That way we're not missing out on too much money.
Speaker 5 (04:31):
I read that you had more than seven hundred people
come to this grocery store.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
Yeah, can you talk.
Speaker 5 (04:37):
A little bit about what the store is and why
so many people showed up.
Speaker 11 (04:43):
The store is for the neighborhood.
Speaker 6 (04:46):
We're in a downtown area and there's really not many
areas around in the country that have a grocery store
in the part of downtown. And then on top of that,
we're also in Atlanta we have GSU. They are a
main customer base. We really serve students. It really it
is a food desert down here, and our goal is
to be able to supply the food desert with a
fresh food resource.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
This is a huge initiative from the Mayor's office in
West Atlanta to address this food desert.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
This sheet.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Now, when you hear about this world food doesert, people
think that, hey, it's a racial it is a you know,
it's a divide.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
It's not.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
I mean, it's actually every In fact, I was having
a discussion with somebody from New Jersey. They have fifty
nine food deserts, So that means that fifteen nine areas
two to three mile radio there is no grocery stores
at all. So this this is a big task be taking.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
This is a public private partnership.
Speaker 8 (05:41):
You know, we're dealing We're talking about some of this
in New York as well with with this plan of
Mayor Mom Donni's to open a city run grocery store
or maybe more than one city run grocery store. And
I don't know if you know this, but many people
out in the world find this very upsetting, right they
see this as the first step in the in the
slide towards communism. I for when I'm surprised that you
(06:04):
are not wearing your chairman Mao outfits or what you
seem like normal capitalists as far as I can tell,
can you talk about exactly what you know, exactly what
the relationship is and kind of like what your reaction like,
kind of how you see this conversation around city and
grocery stores.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Sure you know that, and that is a beautiful question,
and I do like to address it head on. You know,
when when uh, when this when we been in the
thick of building this, we actually had a call from
Mayor Mom Danny's office asking how we did what we did,
and we made it very clear, you know, it should
not be a city ran operation because city employees doesn't
(06:46):
know how to run retail outlets. So we've we've actually
discussed that now talking about socialism, you know, access to
fresh food is not.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
It's not socialism. It is it's a bare.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Necessity, the need for any human being, so for for us,
for someone to clean. And by the way, just on
this one, this is not a handout from the city.
What we have is a small grant and the rest
everything else is loan that you're supposed to pay back.
So this is capitalism at best. So we are making
(07:20):
sure that this becomes sustainable and pay back the loan.
So this is this is the only difference in this
is the city is acting more like a bank, so
the underwriting is a little bit more easier, and it's
a low interest, so we can we can make it
affordable to the people who shopping. So this, this notion
(07:40):
of socialism, is not and this is not a handout.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
This is just a helping hand.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
How does your pricing and I guess your selection compare.
Speaker 6 (07:48):
When you when you highlight the key necessities people need,
like produce, milk, eggs, bread, stuff like that. I think
that we are we're beating our competitors. Half a loaf
of white bread for a dollar seventy nine. I sell
chicken breast for four ninety nine pound. We have a
half dollar milk for two dollars and eighty five cents and.
Speaker 11 (08:10):
It doesn't make a dollar sixty's flying.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
It might be worth it to fly to Atlanta from
New York. We would love to host you.
Speaker 6 (08:21):
It's crazy. We were selling a dozen eggs for a
dollars sixty nine. There's there's not many areas where you
can get fresh products for that price. And we go
buy Paul's price promise, so it's under his name, but
we do have key items in the store where we're
guaranteeing your price no matter what our cost is.
Speaker 11 (08:38):
Now, obviously our.
Speaker 6 (08:38):
Goal would be to not lose more money than we're spending,
but the investment is in the community.
Speaker 8 (08:45):
Before we go any further on on the grocery prices,
and because the context here and one of the reasons
we want to talk to you is there was a
poll that showed that a lot of people are changing
their buying habits because of rising prices. Is a huge issue,
you know, not just run the poics in New York,
but in the country. We wanted to get a quick
sense of how our listeners were feeling. And our producer,
(09:06):
Miles J. Herzenhorn, was in Chicago. He went out on
the streets to ask people how they were feeling about
grocery prices.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Let's all listen together and then we can talk about this.
Speaker 12 (09:16):
What is the last thing you bought at a grocery
store that gave you pause?
Speaker 4 (09:22):
Oh, ground beef.
Speaker 13 (09:25):
Says that used to be forty nine cents a pound
are now a dollar nineteen.
Speaker 14 (09:29):
Wanted to cook a rabbi one day? One rib i
fake was like twenty nine dollars.
Speaker 12 (09:32):
What do you think about the current level of grocery
prices at the moment?
Speaker 13 (09:35):
Grocery prices at the moment are absolutely ridiculous. I mean,
you can't walk into a grocery store and buy anything
for less than five dollars. You know, what used to
cost you a week's work of shopping one hundred, one
hundred and twenty dollars is now well over two hundred dollars.
I truly don't know how families can.
Speaker 11 (09:52):
Afford to eat.
Speaker 12 (09:54):
Do you currently budget for food?
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (09:56):
I do.
Speaker 13 (09:57):
Before I used to go in and just go shop,
being in, buy whatever I wanted to buy, and because
that's what I wanted. Now I find myself shopping for
what sun sale, what's the house brand which is costing
less than everything? Else, which is not a way I
used to shop.
Speaker 14 (10:13):
I get groceries and enough items to cook that will
last for a few days. So normally I'm cooking like
maybe twice a week and making the meal stretch.
Speaker 12 (10:22):
And how do you think other families around the country
are managing the affordability crisis?
Speaker 11 (10:26):
What do you think they're doing?
Speaker 14 (10:27):
I honestly feel that families across the country they're budgeting,
They're trying to plan out their meals. There no snacks,
no junk foods, things that are actually going to last
for a good bit of time.
Speaker 13 (10:37):
Honestly, I think they're charging it and getting deeply in debt.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Scary.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Yes, this is I actually I hear this just about
every day, even you know, I was the other day,
I was outside Walmart just kind of talking to people.
What the similar kind of questions? And it is it is.
It is strange a minute, it is bad, and you know,
and again this the fuel pricing. It's a combination of
(11:06):
different things, right, I mean, it's not just one thing
that attributes to the situation. So I believe once the
gas prices comes down, I think things may level off.
But unfortunately, the issue is COVID has changed a lot
of things, how the pricing has been set, and you know,
(11:27):
is that a lot of profit taking into these things.
I can't say no to that. So it's a combination
of different things, and this is something that needs to
be addressed.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Are you seeing you've been open for a year or so,
have you seen shifts and how in what people are
spending money on or are you seeing sort of those
efforts to save in terms of like what people are buying,
passing up, choosing or not choosing in kind of your stores.
Speaker 11 (11:56):
I think you do see shifts.
Speaker 6 (11:57):
I think that the the biggest thing in grocery is
if people think that they're saving money, you have a
bigger chance that.
Speaker 11 (12:06):
They're going to make that purchase.
Speaker 6 (12:08):
I could mark up the price of cheese its and
I could do buy one, get one fifty percent off,
and just off of the thought that oh, I'm saving
money on cheeses, then that's that's the more likely purchase
than the.
Speaker 11 (12:20):
Ones that are not discounting.
Speaker 6 (12:22):
So you do see people that are attracted more to
advertised sales the private brands, like they mentioned in the video,
just speaking on the options that are the cheapest, you
do kind of see a trend but I do think
the biggest trend that I've seen is the payment method.
So instead of paying with credit or cash, my electronic benefit.
Speaker 11 (12:45):
Charges are starting to go higher. They're about forty of
our purchases.
Speaker 8 (12:54):
So electronic benefits. That's food stamps, yeah, yeah, food stamps snap.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
How does your business model work? Do you make a profit?
Do you not? Because you're charging really I very low prices.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
So traditionally, you know what happens if there is low
pricing and let's say the margin is twenty percent and
the shrink is two percent, So what happens is you
mark it up twenty two percent to make up the difference.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
What is the shrink? What does that mean?
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Shrink could be theft or breakage?
Speaker 4 (13:27):
Oh okay, okay, that doesn't so just losses.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
So you mark up the twenty two percent to make
up the difference. You know, we're not doing that, and
so our to answer the question, we want to be profitable. Yes,
that's exactly what we are running for. So we're looking
at different other sources. What else can we do? What
are the services we can bring in? So that's the
ways in data is aggressively negotiating with different coffee companies.
(13:53):
We're hoping to be profitable pretty soon, so at least
at a minimum breaking.
Speaker 5 (13:59):
Well, what do you hear from your customers? Like, what
feedback have you gotten from them over the last year.
Speaker 6 (14:04):
Before we opened, we had some some lapses in the
opening time, so we ended up pushing it until September,
but we had to define an opening day I believe
in late August, and then had to push it back,
push it back, push it back. And our first upset
customers were the ones that weren't able to come into
the door.
Speaker 11 (14:22):
We had people that were leaving us Google reviews already
about oh you guys, had you open at this time
and you're not.
Speaker 6 (14:28):
We want a shop, So our first customers were people
that were didn't ending to be able to take advantage
of our facilities.
Speaker 11 (14:34):
So now that we're here, we're here to say and
we're here commun to do all.
Speaker 8 (14:39):
Right, Jada and Paul, general manager and CEO of Azalea Market,
thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Stacey and I will definitely come visit and.
Speaker 5 (14:46):
By threatening to get on a plane some of that
espresso once you get this chain all worked out.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
But up Max, we're going to hold you to that
waiting until I Love It for a month long shehof shopping.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
Stacy.
Speaker 8 (15:06):
Two weeks ago or so, I had a conversation, fascinating
conversation on stage at the Artist and Machine Conference. This
was an event in in Brooklyn about AI and creativity
with this guy, Matt Zion, who is an AI filmmaker.
You and I we've talked all about AI and how
it's changing things. I haven't talked I don't think that
(15:28):
much about the entertainment business. That's kind of where this
conversation is located. There are obviously lots of people who
are using AI in Hollywood right now to sort of
like touch up scenes or make crowds look better or whatever.
Matt's thing is like using only AI. I mean, it's
like the most sort of out there version of this.
(15:48):
I mean, in fact, so out there that the kind
of central question in this conversation is sort of like
what is the difference between AI art and AI slop? Like,
at what point does it become art when you're just
you know, prompting a computer to generate something. And then
the other reason I think this is a cool conversation
is because, like I said, Matt is really good at
(16:09):
prompting AI at basically asking AI questions. And I found,
even though, as you know, I'm somewhat skeptical of this stuff,
I actually found this conversation somewhat useful in terms of, like,
how can somebody get the most out of their experience
with AI? Because he is really he's pushing these things,
you know, kind of to the limits.
Speaker 4 (16:29):
I'm excited to hear the conversation.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Let's give it a listen.
Speaker 8 (16:32):
And I thought to start, we could just see a
short clip from what is this?
Speaker 3 (16:38):
This is like your first ever AI movie.
Speaker 9 (16:41):
Twenty twenty four. Wow, going way back, runway Jen three.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Okay, this is called the Relic.
Speaker 15 (16:53):
Daring Expedition in the bar of plan.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
On the podcast, we're seeing a shot from a plane.
Speaker 15 (17:00):
What could possibly drive these military gos? Why?
Speaker 8 (17:04):
None of it looks like an old newsreel.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
We see some guys and restore peace.
Speaker 15 (17:12):
Hello, little monkey. Our heroes are not alone in that quest.
But this relics has been guarded for thousands of years
by a noble drive, the keepers of this ancient wonder.
Speaker 8 (17:23):
All right, So for people who didn't watch that old thing,
it's like a sort of newsreel style report from world
War two. How did you come to be a person
who made this? Like, like, what's the story that led
you to make that film?
Speaker 16 (17:40):
At the time, I had just discovered mid Journey, which
had just moved out of Beta and Runway, and I'm
just trying really really hard to get into Runways beta,
and it was like, Okay, what can we make that
is actually watchable with where the tech is now and
those old newsreels. I was it like, they're all the
(18:00):
footage is already really grainy and bad, so maybe we
could sell it. But the thing that was the hardest
was to make them walk, Like it was really really
hard to make them walk, and when they kind of
started to walk, usually they'd become glitches very very quickly.
And it's kind of amazing how far and how quickly
it's come since being super excited that they could walk
(18:23):
and not become like a glitch monstrosity.
Speaker 8 (18:27):
Yeah, I mean we'll see some of the more advanced
clips that, like you said, it's been very quick, just
matters of months or a year. Just take us back
to like what caused you to get interested in the
space in general? Coming from a sort of more traditional
I mean, you've been basically producing what documentaries?
Speaker 16 (18:44):
Yeah, nonfiction series and documentaries for over ten years, and
nonfiction is a very entrepreneurial, scrappy part of the business,
with lower budgets than scripted, much lower. And the thing
that bothered me the most as it development executive was
we'd have these meetings where we came up with ideas,
(19:04):
and there were all these ideas we'd fall in love with,
and we knew our friends at the networks would love them,
and we knew what the audience would love them, but
we had to throw them away right away. We couldn't
even speak because it cost too much. We would never
get those budgets. And as I saw this improving rapidly,
I thought this would solve the problem that has bothered
(19:28):
me the most through my whole career, which is incredible
stories that deserve to be told but could not be
told otherwise.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
You were like, let me, I'm in this world of
documentary and non.
Speaker 8 (19:38):
Facial let me take the most synthetic thing. I'm just kidding, Yeah,
no recreations. I mean epic scale things set in the
ancient world or the beginning of time, following Neolithic humans
as they developed language. There's so many incredible stories that
would be just so much fun to watch, but there
is an archival for them. What was the reaction you
(20:01):
put this on YouTube? Is that how you showed it
to the world. Start on TikTok okay. I put this
on TikTok and uh, there's a lot of like cool.
But then there was someone who really they told me
to kill myself and I was shocked. Well, I want
to get into that and into the into the way
that people have been reacting. And and I think it's
super easy to be in place like this and and
(20:24):
or in you know, a corporate boardroom where there's also
a lot of AI enthusiasm, and and miss the fact
that if you pull people about this stuff, a lot
of people will be the opposite of enthusiastic.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Right, They're gonna be the they're they're in the kind
of hater camp.
Speaker 8 (20:38):
So you've been you've been dealing with this, right, putting
stuff out there that is really cool on a sort
of technical level, like oh my god, I can't believe
that you can make this with a computer, and getting
some blowback, and you've been responding to that. And let's
watch the next clip. This is called Forgive the Haters.
Speaker 10 (20:58):
Good old Machus mortgage everything for film school head seven
years around and hain't painted off yet. His professors promised
if he learned the rules master composition, lighting, all the tools, heat.
Speaker 9 (21:17):
The value low, computer could repleach. Now you watch his
prompts with wonder on the face.
Speaker 11 (21:25):
Forgive the hate.
Speaker 9 (21:30):
They're not what they see.
Speaker 13 (21:34):
They're watching the death.
Speaker 10 (21:39):
They're American dream. Forgive the hate, see them true.
Speaker 8 (21:51):
Never seeing some of the comments including slops, garbage, crap,
I assume that's a real surial comments, uh not an
AI generated one that we know of. What was talk
about the motivation to make this and I'm curious about
the composition, like are you what if? For people who
are just listening to this, what we saw is sort
of like an eighties rocker, like an arena rocker singing
(22:15):
that song, and some eighties style workers who are reacting
to AI.
Speaker 16 (22:22):
We this actually ties back to the collaborative way of
working with AI that I mentioned before. To get to
this song, I told Claude I was I pretended I
tricked Claude into thinking I was the haters, okay, And
I compiled my worst hate comments and was like, help
me get this AI filmmaker, like this is what I
wrote to them, and Claude like built a case against
(22:45):
me because if you just ask it straight up, like
if I was like, hey, these are my haters, it'd
be like, oh, they're.
Speaker 8 (22:52):
Idiots, right, because it wants you to keep using it
the sycophancy problem.
Speaker 16 (22:55):
I reversed the sycophancy, so I was a hater and
then I was like whoh, and it really broke down
what people were angry about and fearful of. That hit
me and I was like, these are this is a
real disruption, and I understand where these emotions are coming from,
and I want to make art about it.
Speaker 8 (23:17):
The characters there's a visual effects artist, there's a film professor, screenwriter,
or it's a bunch of people who are dealing with
the kind of economic fallout or confronting it in various
ways emotional ways, economic ways. The song is talking about
these complaints, the idea of a screenwriter can't find work
(23:38):
or something like that, and for the most part, like
that isn't true.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Like I was on a panel or here earlier, where.
Speaker 8 (23:44):
On the stage people are saying like actually, and this
comes up in other domains around AI, Right, you think
it's gonna lead to massive job losses. But it hasn't
yet and it may never. But in your work it
is right, I mean, it is just you. There is
no AI screenwriter that that singer is a bot, there's
no actor being paid it.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
It is in some sense taking away those jobs. Does
that give you any kind of pology?
Speaker 9 (24:10):
Yeah? The thing is, I don't know if it is.
Speaker 16 (24:12):
I don't know of any production that was using people
before and has now let those people go to use AI.
I can't think of one. Maybe that will happen in
the future, but I haven't seen it yet. When people
look at AI filmmaking, they think it's a replacement. They
immediately think it's a replacement for practical production or animation.
(24:33):
But the way I see it is it's a totally
new category. It is a new medium entirely that can
do different things than either of those mediums. And when
you use it as a replacement, audiences don't really respond.
When you use it.
Speaker 9 (24:48):
To tell stories that otherwise could not exist, people don't
really care that it's AI if they like the story.
Speaker 8 (24:56):
When you hear your colleagues in the entertainment world, like
Germel de Toros saying like, I'd rather die than use AI.
I mean, like, so these are not just randos on
the internet slinging at you, right.
Speaker 16 (25:07):
I'd be really honored if he's slaying at me, really right,
and I respect him. But it's also very easy to
say I'd rather die than use this when you're sitting
on one hundred and thirty million dollar budget, when you're
trying to climb your way up as a filmmaker and
the industry is already contracting.
Speaker 9 (25:23):
You're gonna do what you gotta do to get your
story in the world. You use the.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Sort of distinction between art and slop.
Speaker 8 (25:30):
I can't remember when we were Backstager just now, but
there's a lot of what I think is more clearly
like AI slop that is doing very.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Well on the internet.
Speaker 8 (25:39):
Like I was not even gonna bring this up, but
so many people have brought it up. When I said, oh,
I'm doing a panel and AI filmmaking these fruit Love
Island videos. Yes, it's like a very successful TikTok where it's.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
Like a parody of Love Island, but they're fruit.
Speaker 8 (25:54):
The visuals are so We're gonna put one up, but
the visuals are so garish we're worried about offending people.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
What do you make of that and the success of it.
Speaker 16 (26:05):
I think the thing that's doing really well that is
an AI in practical production is human slop too.
Speaker 9 (26:10):
Everyone's talking about real shorts.
Speaker 16 (26:13):
And these like one minute like like absolutely horrible soap operas,
these vertical soap operas, and that's crushing it. Like human
slop and AI slop are both doing really well in
terms of numbers.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
We talked about the slop end of the spectrum.
Speaker 8 (26:28):
I want to play one last clip of your work,
a recent piece that is I think maybe and maybe
you correct me if I'm wrong, but it feels like
the most fully fleshed out like film. It's a twelve
minute short film. It's called DJ. We're gonna watch a
short clip and then talk about it.
Speaker 11 (26:46):
Then they still just drop in loneliness.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Huh they die of loneliness? What they cured everything? Accept
the part where they can't talk to nobody, can't say
they're sad, so their bodies just quit.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Okay. So that was a shot of a few characters
in a car.
Speaker 8 (27:18):
Three women. They're like agents of some sort. They're going
into this futuristic nightclub. I'm not gonna spoil the whole story,
but I wanted to ask you, Matt, you've talked about
casting these actors, what do you mean.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
By that AI is a probability cloud.
Speaker 16 (27:34):
When you ask for an image, it's going to give
you the most likely image that it can make from
the probability cloud. But interesting characters you have to wrestle
with the machine. You have to put constraints in, So
I like to use paradoxes that force the model into
the edges of its training data, so it gives you
(27:55):
people that are not the most statistically average output. And
then it's really just a human judgment thing. You look
and see if that person is compelling, and if they're
compelling enough, you moved them to the next stage where
you design a voice. You design a voice for each
character and make sure the voice matches, and then you
put it into video and you audition your own creations
(28:17):
until it's something that you feel holds the screen. They're
compelling enough to hold the screen.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
Where are we in this culture battle?
Speaker 9 (28:24):
Like?
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Do you think the intensity of this debate is gonna?
Have we hit the peak? Is it just starting? What
are you all happening right now?
Speaker 16 (28:31):
I'll tell you what I saw last night on Reddit
that kind of shocked made me really worried for a minute.
There are subreddits that are all about AI hate, and
one came up on my feed that was a photo
for a billboard of a small Mexican restaurant in a
four hundred person town in Washington State, and the caption was,
(28:55):
look at this cringe AI slop on the billboard. I
The thing I thought immediately was, Oh, no, this family
restaurant is about to get brigaded. I looked at the
Yelp expecting to see hundreds of like horrible reviews, but
I just saw five star reviews and it was like
the best Mexican food anyone had ever had. But I
was and the person who drove by and posted that
(29:17):
would never try that. But that's the kind of thing
you're worried about.
Speaker 8 (29:19):
That's this thing i've heard of building into the real world. Yeah,
we've seen that, of course, with some attacks on some
AI industry executives and so on. Last question, real quick,
do you worry about your own the role that you're playing,
about disrupting yourself or whatever, Like the idea that this
could get so good that like that artist.
Speaker 16 (29:37):
Vision wouldn't be needed, not not at all. No, I,
this is so much fun. The community that does it
is the warmest community I've ever found in film. This
is not going away and it's only going to get better.
We say all the time, this is the worst it
will ever be.
Speaker 8 (29:57):
Matt Zion, thank you so much for being here, Thank
you all for listening.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Name great conversation.
Speaker 5 (30:10):
All right, Max, So, in the spirit of the conversation
that you just had and this idea of creating art
with AI, there has been sort of a summer song
moment that we have had that is is a collaboration
between a person and AI. So it's called the Puerto
(30:34):
Rico Song. It is totally blown up in the last
few weeks it was written.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Are you saying this is the underrated story?
Speaker 11 (30:41):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (30:41):
I think it is underrated, Yes, because even though it's
blown up, is the song of the summer.
Speaker 5 (30:46):
It's been on TV, like, it's on Spotify, like this
has like become this thing. It was and how it
happened was there was this comedian and he likes to
travel and when he comes back, he takes his travel
notes and likes to write song.
Speaker 4 (30:59):
Lyrics and then he feeds them into this.
Speaker 5 (31:01):
AI tool called Suno, and Suno creates a little song
around the lyrics. He's done this on a bunch of
places that he's traveled, and he went to San Juan
and he wrote a song with AI and it has
become this big hit. Are you ready to hear the song?
Speaker 3 (31:21):
I'm ready?
Speaker 4 (31:21):
All right, here we go.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
First time in Sana.
Speaker 9 (31:34):
Juan, Puerto Rico.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
Immediately, this song sucks, Stacy. I'm sorry. It is a bad,
bad song. It is not the song of the summer.
Speaker 5 (31:52):
Puerto Rico is flying him out to become This is
going to become the promotional song.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
I hope it does.
Speaker 11 (31:58):
Puerto Rico.
Speaker 5 (32:00):
People love this.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
That's funny.
Speaker 8 (32:01):
Is from Puerto Rican There are I mean, this is
not even the song you got to get off the internet,
I think honestly, because this is this is not the
song of the summer.
Speaker 4 (32:11):
This is blowing up. People love the song. It's very fun,
it's very sweet. It's I don't know. You didn't even
listen to it for ten.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Seconds, I have to say, and I have to admit this.
Speaker 8 (32:23):
I feel like I failed as a podcaster, which is
that I listened to this beforehand, So I think I
went into the listen with a little bit of bottled
up rage that that unfortunately may happen. Rage about what
I feel like. We're like grading AI on a curve.
We're like, oh, like, it's so this is it's so catchy,
(32:44):
but it's is.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
It catchy though?
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Like I'm not totally sure.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
I think it's catchy.
Speaker 8 (32:48):
All right, Well, speaking of people who need to get
off of the Internet, I have been following the Enhanced Games,
which is the quote unquote steroid Olympics.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
Ceacy. You and I have talked about the Enhanced Game before.
Speaker 8 (33:01):
It was this kind of like Silicon Valley attempt to
quote unquote disrupt the world of sport by giving elite
athletes drugs.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
Okay, you're familiar with the Enhanced Games, right, Uh?
Speaker 8 (33:16):
Yes, Okay, So I've been founding this closely because, as
I said, I've been spending too much time on the Internet, and.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Everyone was sort of expecting that.
Speaker 8 (33:25):
It would be this, you know, like, oh my god,
like world records are going to fall and so on.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Do you want to know what happened?
Speaker 4 (33:31):
What happened?
Speaker 3 (33:32):
The athletes not using the drugs were the ones who won.
Oh in many cases.
Speaker 8 (33:38):
Okay, and it was kind of it was kind of
a letdown and the enhanced Games in one hundred meter
in the men's hundred meters, they were talking about taking
down Usain Bolts record. The guy who won was number one,
not on drugs, and number two did not run very fast.
There was one world record in swimming in the men's
fifty meter, but it's sort of unclear.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
Whether it was the drugs or whether it was one
of those suits. Do you remember those suits that Olympian
Olympic swimmers were wearing for a while, in the speed suit,
the speed suits.
Speaker 8 (34:07):
He was wearing one of these speed suits, and so
it's like, maybe it was a speed suit, maybe it
was a drug, but they did.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
Set a record there.
Speaker 8 (34:13):
Anyway, Wall Street has been unimpressed that the stock basically
went public right before.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
This and it has not been well.
Speaker 8 (34:21):
The last I checked, it was down seventy percent from
its high about.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
A month ago, so a bit of a dud.
Speaker 8 (34:34):
This show is produced by Jasmine J. T. Green, Stacey Wong,
and Miles J. Herzenworth. Magnus Henrickson is our supervising producer.
Ken Militzer handles engineering, and Dave percellfact checks special Thanks
to Jeff Muscus.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
Julia Rubin, and Ria Lingk.
Speaker 8 (34:48):
If you have a minute, please rate and review the show.
It'll mean a lot to us. And if you have
a story that should be our business, email us at
Everybody's at Bloomberg dot net. That's everybody with an s
at Bloomberg dot net. Thank you for listening, and we
will see some
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