Why Sam Altman Is Panicking + 9 New AI Tools

Welcome to the Next Wave podcast. I'm Matt Wolf and today I'm joined once again by my recurring co host, Maria Garib. And it's perfect timing too, because this week the AI world delivered absolute chaos. And I needed Maria's sharp takes for this one because something really wild just happened. OpenAI officially went into Code Red mode. Like, not metaphorically, literally. Internal alarms, priorities shifting, projects paused. And all of it was triggered by Google's sudden surges with Gemini 3 and Nano Banana Pro. So in this episode, we break down what the Code Red actually means inside of OpenAI, why Sam Altman slammed the panic button, and whether this is the first real sign that Google's full stack advantage is becoming an existential threat to other companies. The Then we dive into the Model Wars Claude Opus 4.5 Gemini 3 GPT 5.1 and why some models feel smarter, why others feel dumber, and how the power dynamics between Google and OpenAI and anthropic and XAI are all shifting in real time. And that's not all. We also get into the explosion of AI video tools that came out over the past week, like Runway's gen 4.5 and cling's multiple model drops and Nano Bananas growing dominance. And some of these demos are pretty insane. I mean, some of them still make people look like they're limping through the uncanny valley, but others are really impressive. And Marie and I do not hold back in this one. We also touch on Alibaba's unexpected entry into AI glasses, why Notebook LM might secretly be the best research tool on the planet. And what happens when your mom sends you AI videos that she thinks are real? It's a jam packed episode with a ton of big shifts, some spicy opinions and and a little bit of smack. Talk about Sam Altman. All in good fun though. So without further ado, let's jump on over and dive in on everything that's been going on with Maria.

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Yeah, so we have some major news that's happening this week. It seems like there's some shakeups happening right now.

I wouldn't say Shake up. Everyone has red button. Feels like Didi all over again, you know, like, everyone wants to hit that Code Red. And Sam Altman is one of these people. I think he has like a red button on his desk and he wants to hit that. Because I saw the news, I was like, what do you mean, Code Red? What's happening in the OpenAI house right now?

Yeah, so apparently they have a very similar system to like the US Government threat level where they have, like, the various color coding. So I guess like a code yellow is. Everything's going fine. They were in Code Orange and now they're at Code Red. That was what I read. Here, let me actually share the article. But apparently OpenAI decided we need to go into what they call, like, Code Red mode because of Google. Right. We saw over the last couple weeks that Google Gemini 3 came out and really blew a lot of people away. We saw Nano Banana Pro come out. That blew a lot of minds. And it was taking a lot of this sort of narrative and AI mind share away from OpenAI. And that caused Sam Altman to go, all right, we need to, like, rethink things here. So if we want to get into breaking down the details of the Code Red, basically what it is is Sam said, we're going to deprioritize a lot of things in OpenAI. We were planning on putting ads into chats, which is a whole other story that a lot of people are going to hate. They were planning on putting ads right into the chat window. They're putting a pause on that. They have their OpenAI Pulse, which is like their daily AI news update that you can get sent to your phone. They're putting a pause on that. Their agent models they've been working on put a pause the browser. All of the stuff that is not making Chat GPT better. They're essentially saying, pause that. Let's just make our models smarter and smarter for right now. And like, everything else is less important at the moment.

It felt like Mayday. Mayday. I was reading the article before I was writing in the newsletter. I was like, there's no way Sam Altman is hitting Code Red right now. Something is definitely off. But, like, let's say we want to compare Gemini 3 to GPT 5.1, which, by the way, what was that? What do you mean, 5.1? What does it add to anything right now? I didn't feel any difference, but that's me, you know, like, I on GPT every single day. How is it different than any of the other stuff before?

Yeah, I mean, I didn't really feel a big difference from like 5 to 5.1, other than the fact that I feel like ChatGPT has gotten dumber over time. Like, I honestly feel like ChatGPT has gotten dumber. Like the four models, like 4.0 and when they had 4.5 and even 4.1, which weirdly came out after 4.5. Yeah, those models were all like, pretty decent. And I've been using 5.1 lately and it hallucinates more than any model I've used before. Like, when you ask it questions about things that you know a lot about, that's kind of how you can test if it hallucinates. Right? Like you, you go and ask it questions about something you have deep knowledge on, go and read it and see how factual it is based on what you know. And I've noticed that lately it really, really sucks. Like, it is giving me a lot of wrong information and I'm having to like, double check constantly on what it's doing. So I don't know what it is about 5.1, but I can't stand it. Like, I, I want ChatGPT to release a new model because that one sucks.

Like, if they need to as soon as possible. I was like asking it one question and for some, there's like, you know, a pile of information happening in the chat before. It kind of was summing up everything that I was saying and then at the end it was giving me what I asked it in the first place. Like, that's not what I asked you, like, on a Monday. Don't piss me off, you know. So do we think like, Gemini 3 is better? Like, is it actually smarter? Is it like incredibly well connected to Google's data as. How do we compare it to whatever just happened with GPT 5.1?

Yeah, I mean, I definitely think Gemini 3 feels a lot smarter. But I think the sort of bigger picture here more so than just like, who has the smarter models, because I think that's going to be sort of like this cat and mouse game that we're just going to constantly see. Google, Anthropic, OpenAI and, you know, probably Xai, those four companies, we're just going to see them just keep leapfrogging each other and keep growing. One's going to have the smartest model for two weeks and then one of the other ones is going to have the smartest model for a week. And the models are just going to get smarter and smarter and we're going to see these labs just keep passing each other. I actually don't necessarily think that's the sort of bigger picture of this Code Red here. I think the bigger picture of this Code red here is OpenAI and Google. They're fundamentally like two completely different companies that have two completely different abilities, right? So if you look at OpenAI, OpenAI is still a startup when it comes to, like, their cloud compute. They rely on Microsoft's cloud servers. They're now working, working with Oracle. They're working with, like, other cloud providers now as well, but they rely on other cloud providers when it comes to, like, the compute and actually training new AI models. They're reliant on Nvidia's hardware, right?

Yeah.

They need that hardware from Nvidia. If they want to, like, integrate into Google Drive, they have to, you know, work directly with Google. Now compare that to Google, who literally owns the full stack. They have a Frontier research lab where they can keep on making better and better models. That's DeepMind, right? They've got their own hardware. They're not relying on Nvidia. They have their own TPU chips that they can train these models on. They're not relying on, you know, a Microsoft or an Amazon or something like that for the actual data centers and the processing. They have Google Cloud. They've got their own sort of compute infrastructure. They've got the app layer that people use, right? They've got Google Chrome, they've got Android operating system on mobile phones, they've got YouTube, they've got Google Drive and Google Sheets, they've got Gmail. They've got all of these things that users are already using in their ecosystem right now that they can now bake Gemini into. And they have the AI search business, which generates hundreds of billions of dollars a year for them to. So Google can afford to lose money every single time somebody enters a prompt. Because Google makes their money in other ways right now. So when you compare and contrast to OpenAI and Google, OpenAI is burning something like $200 million a month. Like, that's how much money they're losing every month.

Pocket money.

They have to keep on raising money constantly from investors to make sure that they can keep this business going. And they're so reliant on so many other companies to make sure their business keeps on going. Google's not reliant on anybody. And they have an abundance of money to just do whatever they want and subsidize the spending on AI. So in my mind, this is where the real Code Red comes in for OpenAI. It's not like, oh, no, Gemini has a smarter model. It's like, oh, no, Google has everything we don't have. And now they also have a smarter model.

Yeah, yeah. Do we think that they're winning the race as we speak? Like, do we think that because they are a powerhouse, they could win the race right now?

You know, I don't necessarily know if there is a finish line to win the race. You know what I mean? Like, when is the race won?

Yeah, that's actually a nice perspective.

Look, we know AI moves fast with new models dropping every week. So we created your weekly cheat sheet with what's happening this week in AI with over 20 prompts for the newest tools that you can copy and paste a quick reference table that shows you exactly which model to use when. And tactical breakdowns of the newest AI releases. Scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now let's get back to the show.

I mean, so many models are coming out right now, and I feel like people aren't talking much about Opus 4.5 and travesty and tragedy. And I don't like it when people do that. So my question for you, because I think you play around with a lot of these AI tools more than me, and I write about them every single day. What did Opus 4.5 genuinely fix that earlier versions didn't?

Yeah, so I do a lot of sort of like, vibe coding stuff in my free time. For me, that's like one of the most fun things.

Nerd.

Yes, totally good nerd, admittedly, but like. So Gemini 3 is really, really good at coding. Opus 4.5 is really, really good at coding, but I've noticed they're good in different areas. So Gemini 3, I've noticed, is really good for front end development. It's great at design. I don't know if you've ever used like, Claude or ChatGPT to code up something. All the designs look exactly the same. They've got this like purple gradient background. The fonts they use, the text they use. Like, you can see a page and pretty much instantly go, like, I know that that was generated by Claude, right?

Like, this was Claude.

They have a look to it. Gemini, on the other hand, seems to actually have more like design taste. So if you're trying to build like a website or an app and you tell it to design it for you and make it colorful and vibrant and interesting looking, it will actually design something unique that doesn't look like an AI generated front end. And I found that Gemini is really Good at giving it one prompt saying, this is the app I want, here's everything I want it to do. And then it just goes away. Builds the thing and it seems to work pretty well the first time out of the box. It's really good at that. Claude, on the other hand, is really, really good at this sort of backend. Once you're deeper into a project, sort of understanding the whole code base a little bit better and going and like fixing little bugs and getting deeper into the project. So Gemini, great for front end getting a project started. Claude, great for like going deeper and fixing bugs and refactoring code and sort of working a little bit deeper into the project. Those are where I found the differentiation. Yeah, but to answer the question about, like, what makes Claude different is the way that it understands the previous information that has been fed to it, right? So you've got your context window in these AI models where the context window is essentially how much text the model can understand, you know, both input and output. So something that, let's say, has a million token context window between the amount of text you feed in and the amount of text that it gives you back is a million tokens. A token is roughly 75% of a word. So about 750,000 words would be a million token context windows. But all of these models that are like thinking models, where you see it actually think through and you're seeing the internal thought process, that whole internal thought process is also using tokens. So all of that thinking is using that context window that these models give you. And what Claude changed is it's a much more efficient way of reviewing what text and conversation you've already had. It's gotten a lot better at like, getting rid of what's not important and keeping what is important and adding that back into the context of future conversations.

The thing about Clause, the depth of it is something that I haven't seen before. And whenever you need to ask a question, it actually holds your hand and says what it needs to say to you. Which when it comes to ChatGPT or other kind of models, they kind of catastrophize, in my opinion. They kind of compile it in a way that it's not really what you need it to be like. For people that are visual learners like me, I like Claude when it gives me the answers more than ChatGPT, even though ChatGPT kind of is more advanced. But my question is, do we think that Claude is playing the long, quiet kind of game? Because GPT is loud, you know, like OpenAI are so loud about everything, 100%. They're like in your face 24, 7. So do we think that it's like an underdog sort of thing?

I don't know. I would have a hard time saying that Claude is an underdog because when it comes to like a lot of the LM arena sort of model testing, Claude is pretty much always sitting at the top. So from like a general consumer standpoint, just like everyday people that aren't sort of immersed in tech, that aren't trying to keep up with AI on a daily basis, just your normal everyday people, they're familiar with ChatGPT. That's the biggest brand, that's the sort of most in the media, biggest in the pop culture, things like that. So Most people know ChatGPT, but I feel like once you start to narrow down and get into like techy people that are sort of playing with these models and using different ones, most of them are probably partial to more Google and Anthropic. Like when I build stuff behind the scenes and I'm doing like vibe coding type stuff, I'm almost never using OpenAI models. It's mostly either Gemini or Anthropic models. But I do think that when it comes to enterprise and when it comes to coding, Anthropic is kind of the leader right now when it comes to like backend API calls. I believe there's more companies, more products that are calling the Anthropic API than the OpenAI API. So ChatGPT has sort of become this consumer facing product company where they've put more and more focus into like how do we get more users in ChatGPT, how do we make it more sticky, how do we make it. So people keep on coming back to ChatGPT constantly where anthropic has been more like how do we make this model useful for enterprises and people that are using us through the API, right? So it seems like they're kind of taking slightly different approaches. OpenAI wants to be that consumer front end facing thing where everybody in the world has a ChatGPT account. Claude doesn't care if everybody in the world has a Claude account. Right.

Like it's knows its best, it know kind of like what is it's best at. So yeah, it doesn't need all of these things.

It focuses on API for like enterprise users and developers and you know, they've got the backing of Amazon. So just like OpenAI had, you know, 10 to $14 billion investment from Microsoft, Anthropic has pretty huge investments from Both Google and Amazon.

Yeah.

Right. So Anthropic has all of the same kind of backing that OpenAI has from some of these other companies as well. And right now they're raising at almost a 300 billion valuation. If you're keeping up with OpenAI. OpenAI is valued at about 500 billion. So they're not that far, far behind when it comes to, in terms of like, evaluation of a startup.

Yeah.

So they're playing different games. They're definitely competitors because OpenAI wants you using their API also. But it just kind of feels like their marketing and their efforts are going more towards chat, GPT and that front end facing product where Anthropic's efforts are going a little bit more towards enticing developers and enterprises to use their APIs and their systems on the back end.

I don't want to dwell a lot on claw, but I really want to pick your mind on this. Do we think that they're being held by safety in general, these are guardrails for them, or no?

I'd say Anthropic is a little bit more focused on safety and guardrails than OpenAI is. I feel like OpenAI kind of tests the limits a little bit and then pulls back. We saw that when they released Sora. They're like, we're making it. So you have to opt out if you don't want your brand in there. Well, a lot of companies got really upset about that and OpenAI course corrected and said, just kidding, you have to opt in now. Right. Like, I feel like OpenAI sort of pushes the limits and like, test the waters of what they can get away with and then back off a little bit. Where Anthropic takes the approach of like, trying to be the safest first. Right. Like, they don't release a model until they feel pretty comfortable saying that. I personally haven't run into, like, any issues in that regard with Anthropic. Right. Because I mostly use it for coding. I feel like most of the people that I know that use Claude a lot are using it for coding and you're not really running into like any sort of guardrail issues for the most part when you're coding. Unless you're trying to like, build something that hacks the government or something, which I'm not doing as far as anybody knows.

Right. So, like, leadership board, like, where do we put everyone else in terms of.

Like, the most capable models?

Like, let's say, okay, coding. We'd put Claude, God as first and then Gemini and then GPT.

Correct. Yeah, that's probably how I'd order them right now.

Like Deep Research. Where would you put all of them?

Deep Research? I would probably lean towards Gemini. Oh, actually, if we're talking about like really good research, if you really want to research something, well, NotebookLM is where it's at. Like, Notebook LM is the best research tool ever. Really? Yeah. Because Notebook LM lets you dump in sources, right? So you can go and find a bunch of articles all over the place, grab those articles, throw them in there. And now you're having a conversation with like these 20 articles that you just dumped.

Interesting take. People are going to freak out about this because, like, I think they're going to like revert back to going to that. Like, imagine having to research a lot of things. People would open like 7,000 tabs, 24, 7. Leave them open, like crash down their laptops and like cry and you know, and like, not. They're not caffeinated enough so they don't know what to do. And now everything has changed. So, like, I think Deep Research in like, these LLMs are like saviors for a lot of people.

Well, and Notebook LM is all powered by Gemini, so it's like, it's still Gemini. It's just a different user interface, a different wrapper around Gemini, essentially.

Right.

But I've been loving Notebook LLM for research. In fact, now when I'm making a video that I'm doing a bunch of research on, I go find all the articles I can about it, put them all into Notebook lm and then just start having conversations about Notebook lm and then it's sort of grounded on just the information that I fed it. So it's not going to hallucinate, it's not going to make up information. It's not going to.

It's giving you what's there.

Give me anything outside of what I've given it to pull from, you know.

I'm going to use that. I feel like maybe we should go Back to videos. TikTok is flooded. Instagram is flooded. Facebook. I'm being sent things from my mother asking me if it's real or not. As if I am like a person that knows what say I and what's not. Sometimes I can't even identify them, which is weird. But that's okay.

I feel like with images, I have a really hard time telling anymore. And that's scary to me because I used to be pretty good at spotting stuff. Now when it comes to images, I oftentimes can't tell. I feel like with video, there's still some signs to me. Video is still a little bit easier to determine, but images definitely. It's gotten to a point where I'm like, I don't know anymore.

My mother saw a video of like a baby with like a cat next to it and like she's like, oh, it's so cute. I was like, mom, that's AI. And she's like, no, it's not. She was so defensive and like, we don't know what to say to your 58 year old mother.

Yeah.

Anyway, let's talk about like, what is out there in the wild right now? What are people raving about? Like, Runway came out with something. Nano Banana. Funny name by the way. I still think it's a funny day. I don't know why they came out with that.

I love the name. Nanobanana is like my favorite name that a company's come up with. Because I'm so sick of like GPT OSS 3.5 sort of thing.

OSS Sora. Who is Sora? What is she? Yeah. So like, tell us, what is your stance about like creative AI as far.

As like my take on AI video, I definitely have two minds about it. On one case, I'm really, really, really kind of overseeing a lot of the AI slop. Like during Halloween, right? There was tons of videos circulating about like the craziest Halloween costumes. And I couldn't even tell like if they were AI or not. My wife was sending me stuff going, look at this costume. Isn't this the coolest costume? And then like a day later she's like, you know that costume I sent you yesterday? Turns out it was AI. And I'm like, I couldn't even tell.

The disappointment on their faces, as if like you betrayed them. Going on a call with your wife or my mother is like the equivalent of an anime betrayal when you tell them that this is AI, literally.

So I'm not really looking forward to the amount of AI slop we're about to get inundated with or have already started getting inundated with. Saying that there's also a lot of non AI generated slop. It's not like AI created the slop problem. There's always been a content slop problem. It's just AI makes it a lot easier to generate a lot of slop and do it at scale. And that's something I'm not looking forward to. But as somebody who makes YouTube videos, like, I love the ability to quickly make a little piece of B roll, right? Like I'll have a video where I'm like, I don't know what to put for this, like, little seven second clip. I don't really want me on screen here. Let me go generate a video that I can splice in here. That's quick enough that nobody even realizes it's a high. But it sort of like serves my purpose in the video to cover something up. So, like, I like that I can do that. So I mean, like, definitely. Pros and cons, what is your take on, like, AI video? Like, I've definitely mixed emotions about it.

I read a lot, right? Like, I think everyone knows now that I read a lot and like, fictional stuff and like fantasy and romantic things. It is so refreshing to see these kinds of stuff that you read in these kinds of videos. I am raving about it, but at the same time, I'm like, let's just use it like, in a nice way, like, you know, in the limits. Because people are going insane with everything. Like, everything needs to have these limits and there are people out there that take it way too far. So let's just keep it, you know, in a balanced way. But in terms of that, I am raving, like, I am very happy. I'm getting creative with these kinds of stuff. And I'm still a midjourney girly. By the way. Like, people don't know this, but I edit a lot of videos and sometimes I put it in a really nice video that I animated on my journey. I am having so much fun. The nanobanana stuff is really good. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not using Sora. It sucks. Sam, if you can see this, it sucks. But Veo is really nice. Like, I am liking it so far, but then there's like, the company that you just mentioned that I haven't really heard about.

Yeah. So we've got Runway and we've got Cling. CLING actually gave us new models. This week, Runway announced a new model. I have not actually played with any of these tools yet, so I have not experienced these. So the first one that cling released on December 1st here is called cling. Image 01. Here's what the tweet says. Input anything, understand everything, generate any vision. Superb consistency, precise modification, powerful stylization, max creativity. Image 01 brings it all. This update revamps the entire process from generation to editing. Empowering maximum productivity with a seamless experience. Basically, cling's version of nano banana. So this was released on December 1st and then on December 3rd, so two days later, they introduced video 2.6. So. And this is their model that has actual sound to it. So here's the Kling video 2.5. The big difference between the previous cling models and this one is that now it generates sound. I, to this day, I don't know what you think. I, to this day don't really think any of the sound in AI videos is very good. Like, it always still looks very off to me. And I feel the same way about cling. It looks pretty good, but I still feel like there's something about the blending of audio and video where it's like a dead giveaway to me. Like, there's something still so uncanny about the AI video and audio generators. Like, VO3 is the same way. Whenever I see VO3 generate dialogue, I always like, it's pretty good. But I don't think it's fooling anybody.

You know, I mean, I think, like, it's very comforting for people that still feel on shaky grounds when it comes to AI videos. I feel like people would look at it. I was like, yes, we can still identify it. Thank God we're not being replaced. But, you know, so.

But I also think that's only a matter of time. That's like a short window, right? I mean, with how fast this is advancing, I really think we're not going to be able to tell, like, this time next year.

I'm loving it so far. Like, I am liking how everything like, this is turning out. And I get to go as creative as I can go when it comes to these kinds of stuff. And I'm so happy. There are so many things up in my mind whenever I'm reading, like, a scene, like I'm reading, like, something fantastical and I get to sort of, you know, put in my creative writing in these kind of prompts, and it turns out to be something absolutely amazing. I'm having fun.

Yeah.

Thank God for AI. Honestly, whenever it's like, Friday night and like, it's raining 247 in the UK, I don't know if people know this, but it's rain season, so there's nothing always, like, happening outside. I'm not going for drinks because everyone's, like, cocooned inside their blankets. Like, I used to open my laptop and, like, create videos and that's pretty cool. With a glass of wine.

Yeah, that's one of my favorite things to do with suno, like, making AI music. I nerd out about that. I'll just generate song after song after song.

Yeah, we can talk about that, actually. What are you doing like, what kind of genre are you doing? Are you doing, like, rock or, like, if you're saying hip hop, I'm going to be very sad.

I tend to either do, like, pop punk kind of music or, like, sort of electronic dancey sort of music. Those are the two genres I tend to play with the most.

I would have thought you more into metal songs rather than edm, but here we are. I mean, like, the more, you know.

I have generated some metal songs, I wouldn't really say that's, like, my preferred genre. I was always more of, like, a punk person. I like pop punk. Like, I like the blink 182 of the world and bands like that.

That sounds so cool. Like, you are 100% a millennial. Thank God for that.

I am 100% a millennial. Well, there's one more video model that was announced last week. This one came out the week we're recording, so by the time you're listening, it will have been last week.

Right.

But Runway also introduced a new model this week. It's not actually in any of the Runway accounts yet, so you can't actually use it yet, but they have a new model called Runway gen 4.5, which apparently was codenamed Whisper Thunder.

Whisper Thunder.

Whisper Thunder was its code name, like, while they were working on it internally. I guess.

I want to be a fly on that wall. When that name was introduced, I swear, I would have laughed so much.

So they did some tests with artificial analysis. I think an ELO score is based on, like, actual users voting.

Is that a survey?

Yeah, I think it's kind of like a survey style thing where they're given multiple videos and people pick their favorite. And as we can see here, Runway gen 4.5 kind of blew everything out of the water when it comes to, like, people's preferences. The new cling 2.6 model isn't on here, but I still would imagine by how big of a margin this is, that it probably even blew away 2.6. One thing that's sort of interesting about this chart that makes it a little bit, like, misleading is they start the chart at 1200, so they look like this one's, like, really blowing everything away, but it's really, like, zoomed in on, like, from 1200 and up so much, it makes it look like this one blew everything out of the water, but it's really not that huge of a leap in numbers.

Yeah, yeah. So the gap isn't gapping. Like, it's not a gap. It's just. Yeah, okay. I don't like numbers, Matt. I don't know if you know.

I'm just saying that the screenshot that they shared here makes this out to be much more impressive than it actually is.

But let's take a look at their demo here and see what they're showing off. Let's see if we think it's a heck of a lot better than previous models.

Oh, that's pretty good.

Yeah, I'm not gonna lie. That actually looks really, really good.

I want a close up of like a tiger cub without the photographer being murdered. You know, like, that sounds nice. I want to see that.

Yeah, I mean, from what I'm seeing, it looks pretty good. You know, when they put out demo videos like this on social media, they're gonna cherry pick a little bit, right. Like they're going to go and find the best possible generations they've made and use those as their video. But I mean, the fact that it's capable of what we just saw, I think it's a pretty damn impressive video model.

When people are on dating apps, they' to pick out the worst pictures of themselves. They're going to pick nice pictures of themselves on dating apps. So, like, maybe, you know, like this is how people run.

Yeah, yeah.

But I think it's like notice when. When the people are like generating videos. Like some of. When they're trying to be as realistic as possible, the eyes are like b. Like they're out, you know, like they're coming out of the socket, which is it tell, you know that this is a. Yeah. So, yeah, you'd still know because of the eyes, in my opinion. And fingers, it does not get fingers. Till now. Like, the fingers are not.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, for me, it's usually like physics things that are the giveaway for me. Like, somebody will be walking and I'll be like, they stepped kind of weird there or like the people around them are moving at like a weird pace compared to them or something. Like, it's always something related to like the physics of the scene that give it away for me.

Like, why is this guy limping? Like, is he okay? You know?

But this one, I, you know, I don't know if this was like a response to the fact that Cling was putting out a new video model this week. I'm not really a fan of announcements of announcements. Right. And to me, this feels like Runway saying, hey, here's a new model we're announcing, but not yet. Right. Like, it's almost like, hey, we're going to tease this, but not give it to you yet. And I almost feel like what might have happened was they got word that Kling was going to be releasing a new video model and they're like, hey, let's announce that this is coming and get ahead of Kling. You know, I feel like a lot of that is happening in the AI world where like companies are constantly trying to one up each other or like, hey, there's news coming out on Tuesday, so let's get our news out on Monday. So it sort of overshadows Tuesday's news. A lot of that happens in the AI world.

That's the most action we're seeing right now in the AI world. And I feel like everyone's at each other's throats, but like in a nice way, you know?

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely leading towards things scaling a lot faster. Right. Like this competition is causing these companies to, I think, push out products quicker sometimes before they're even ready, just to sort of stay in the news cycle, be the most top of mind product or company at the time. But you know, circling all the way back around to how we started this episode, I really, really think that Google's probably going to be the one that comes out on top just because of their huge, like, infrastructure advantage and the fact that like, everybody's all so deep into the Google ecosystem, right? Like everybody has a gmail, everybody uses YouTube, we're using, everybody has a Google.

Drive right now as we speak.

You know, everybody uses Chrome, right? So I feel like because they have that ecosystem that so much of the world is already locked into, it's going to be hard for Google to lose. Like they really have to screw up bad.

I think the only thing I will not own is like a Google phone. That's where I draw the line when it comes to dating apps. Like when I find out someone's using an Android, basically I just like, so.

An Android is a red flag for you.

It's like a huge red flag. No.

That's hilarious. So if somebody texts you and you see the green bubble, you're like, no, I'm out.

No, no, no. But I don't know how. Like I try to answer, like I asked that question and like I find out that the guy I'm trying to talk to on the dating app is on Android or like any sort of Android. Like I find out that he is using it and I'm like, you know what? I'm working on myself right now. So we're not gonna do this today.

Because Apple is supremacy to me. Like Always has been.

I've never heard of that as like a dating criteria before.

This is the ick. Yeah. But there's one thing that I really want to talk about and you know how like Meta has a weird collaboration with Ray Bans and they have the Meta glasses and stuff and yes, it's nice, it's amazing. But then, you know, Meta is not trying to upgrade to Prada, which is whatever. But Alibaba apparently are coming out with their own version of AI glasses and like they're powered by their own GPT kind of like model, which is called Quen. And it's like a quiet launch. I think a lot of people are talking about it. But where I'm in right now, no one's really into it. But I've been reading about this in the east rather than here in West. They have real human sort of language built in. And they have two versions, which is S1 and G1. And the first one is on a budget sort of thing. And the second one is like, I don't want to sell a kidney sort of thing. And one is very fine, the other one's very expensive. And they both have tiny screens inside the lenses and built in cameras and the frame and everything runs on voice through Quen, which again, it's their own GPT sort of thing.

So they have the little heads up display inside the eye.

Yeah. And they have live translation while you're walking. AI generated meeting notes and can you imagine meeting notes? And it comes out with that. So rest in peace to whatever software you're trying to use. And you can ask questions out loud and it gives you the answers. And let's say you want to buy something and it takes a picture. You can take a picture with the classes and puts the prices on Taobao, which is, I think predominantly in the east, as I said. Yeah, it's pretty huge right now.

It's interesting to me just because when I think of Alibaba, right? Like the first thing that pops into my mind is the place where you go online to buy cheap junk. Yeah. In bulk. Right. Like, that's my thought on Alibaba. But now Alibaba's actually become this like frontier AI lab and they're actually building like interesting stuff in the AI world.

So good.

My brain is struggling to compute the fact that like this is the company that we go and import cheap junk from, is now like this huge tech company that's generating glasses. And so my mind automatically thinks of like Alibaba version of glasses is probably like the Cheap Chinese knockoff of, like, good glasses, but that's not really what they are. Like, Alibaba is, like, a legit tech company also, you know, it's a huge.

I'm not saying I was surprised. I saw the video and, like, they're not. Like, it's not a small thing. It's big energy. And I can feel it, like, coming through the market and kind of, like, maybe surpassing Meta. Who knows if Meta doesn't change these designs, maybe. But it's really good. Really good stuff. Like, I can see it.

I have a feeling in the US they'll probably be banned.

Yeah, they're probably used. Meta. Yeah, 100%.

Right. Because the US is already trying to ban DJI products, like the DJI drones and cameras and stuff, because they're worried about, you know, China spying through those gadgets and stuff.

Right.

So, like, glasses with cameras on them made by a Chinese company. I can see. If you want to get a pair, get them as soon as you can, because I cannot see that, like, lasting forever, especially here in the U.S. yeah.

I mean, wearable AI is the future, and I like it so much. I don't know if I like it on my face a lot. Maybe around, like, something on my. Maybe the watch is better. Maybe the ring is better. The ring thing, I really want to try it out, but, yeah, it's. I think we're reverting back from having it in our pockets and our bags to an actual, like, wearing it, you know, like something that you can go without.

Yeah. I mean, I'm also not quite convinced still that glasses are that, like, final form factor that everybody really wants. I don't think people take that off.

At the end of the day.

Like, I have regular Meta ray bans. Not the ones with the display, but the ones that have, like, the AI and the speakers and stuff built in.

Right.

And they're, like, quite a bit heavier than my normal glasses, really. So, like, most of the. Yeah, I'd like. If I wear them for a full day, let's say I'm wearing them for, like, eight hours in a day. Like, I feel it on my nose after a while because they get so heavy. And so, like, most of the time, I don't even wear those glasses unless I'm like, I know I'm going to be wanting to take pictures or, you know, use the speakers in them or something. Most of the time I still just grab, like, my cheap light glasses because those ones get heavy over time. But I also think, like, I don't know, I Don't think people are going to be wanting to walk around with, like, little cameras strapped to their face all the time. I think it's gonna kind of become somewhat socially unacceptable to just be, like, walking around with, like, cameras on.

Yeah.

But, you know, saying that I also don't know what form factor I'd prefer. Like, I don't know if you ever saw the movie her where he has, like, the little earbuds. I could see something like that. But also you lose, like, the vision elements of it. So I don't really know. And we also know that Sam Altman and Jony I've are over working on some sort of hardware that they claim isn't glasses and isn't like another, what is it? Pin kind of thing. And everybody's just confused, like, okay, well, what the hell is it?

I did, like, a small video about this on LinkedIn. And, like, they only want to talk about the vibe of it.

Yeah.

And it's going to be something of, like, an essential thing that you want to just have, and it makes you feel like you're in a cabin in the woods. What does that mean? What do you mean, what if I don't want to be in the woods? What kind of a description is that, you know?

Like, I have no idea.

Kind of a horror movie is that Cabin in the woods and peaceful. Bro, that's like every horror movie in America.

I'm pretty sure there is a horror movie called the Cabin in the woods, isn't there?

Maybe I got inspired by that. No, Sam. No.

I think there's an M. Night Shyamalan movie about the cabin in the woods.

Oh, my God. Sounds horrifying. Like, give us something so that people aren't, like, freaked out about it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, a lot going on right now. We didn't mention this when we were talking about the AI models, but supposedly OpenAI is working on a new model that's codenamed Onion.

Really?

You know, we've had Strawberries and we've had Bananas. Now they're working on Onion is their latest model, and rumors have it that it might be coming out within the next couple weeks to improve upon 5.1, but it's still very speculative. All that is is just sort of like, rumors and unconfirmed leaks and things like that.

I mean, you have your own people, and we're just people, you know, like normal people that write the newsletter every single day, but you have more people that tells you the secrets, so.

Well, this isn't a secret coming from Anybody of relevance. This is more like blog posts, speculating and things.

So we should have a model that' coming from chat GPT in the very near future. I don't know if you remember, but last year during December, OpenAI did their 10 days of Christmas or whatever, and every day for 10 days, they announced and launched something new. So last year in December, it was actually a really big month for AI announcements because OpenAI kept rolling stuff out. But that was also the same time that because OpenAI was rolling all this stuff out, that was when Google really heated up, like, December last year was when Google released, I think it might have been Gemini 2.5. I don't remember which model it was, but Gemini started releasing models like crazy to sort of, like, keep pace with OpenAI. I don't really feel like that's going to happen this December because we got so many new releases over the last, like, three weeks. But last year, like, this window of time was like an insane window for AI announcements.

So I wasn't keeping up. I think I was like, Christmas shopping and I come from a Lebanese household, so everyone needed a gift. So, like, we're talking about 70 people. So I apologize for not getting.

I was like, that's crazy. But, yeah, but, yeah. So it'll be interesting to see if this December is like a repeat of.

Can you imagine if they did it again? They probably do it again.

I'm kind of almost expecting Sam Altman to say, hey, we're going to do 10 Days of Christmas again and give us a new announcement every day.

Advent calendar.

Yeah, yeah, give us an advent calendar where every day we open up a new treat from OpenAI.

But can you imagine if they create, like, a thing that makes chocolate from scratch and they release it in an advent calendar? I'm giving them ideas right now. Million dollar idea.

Yeah. Well, last year they had the little, like, Christmas frogs in the background, all their videos, and I was really hoping they'd release them because I'm like, I want to put some Christmas frogs in the background of my videos, but I.

Really want to sit down with Sam, just, like, pick his mind. He sounds like a really interesting person, honestly.

Well, maybe if this podcast goes in the right direction, we'll get Sam.

Like, I'm sorry I bullied you, Sam. I was being nice. Like, I was just.

I take back everything we said about you, Sam. Please come on the show.

Please come here.

Well, awesome. I think we kind of covered everything that's happened over the last, you know, seven to 10 days. And I'd love to hear what people think about these episodes. So let us know in the comments. I think you can actually comment on Spotify now, too. So you know, YouTube Spotify. Leave us comments like these episodes, these news breakdowns and recaps and opinionated takes on things because they're a lot of fun for us to make. So let us know if you're enjoying these.

Oh, yeah.

And hopefully we see you in the next one. Please give this video a thumbs up and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. And we really appreciate you tuning in.

Yeah. See you guys.