Speaker 1: It's time for it's time for tech talk. The machines
Speaker 1: are getting smarter.
Speaker 2: This is tech talk.
Speaker 1: I will just say.
Speaker 3: We look, Secretary of State is a full job.
Speaker 1: Your plate is full.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, you don't have time to be interim director
Speaker 3: of the National Security Agency.
Speaker 2: You'll see, okay. Mark Saltzman joins us.
Speaker 1: We talk things technology, and we've talked many, many times,
Speaker 1: lots and lots of segments about artificial intelligence. And Meta
Speaker 1: has launched its standalone AI app that's out there that's
Speaker 1: supposed to be sort of a rival to chat GPT.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's available now for iPhone and Android. There's a
Speaker 4: web version as well, but the smartphone version allows you
Speaker 4: to converse with it very naturally. You sign in with
Speaker 4: your Instagram or Facebook info.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: It's a similar experience actually to being able to access
Speaker 4: the Meta AI within Instagram.
Speaker 2: And you may have already seen.
Speaker 4: This or WhatsApp or Facebook if you dig a little deep.
Speaker 4: But this is a standalone app, and the idea is that, yeah,
Speaker 4: you can converse with it. It sounds very human and
Speaker 4: like other large language models as it's called, you can
Speaker 4: ask it to generate ideas. You could say, hey, I'm
Speaker 4: having ten people over for a dinner party this Friday.
Speaker 4: Three are vegetarian, three are going to be kids, and
Speaker 4: you know six are is my math off for our carnivores.
Speaker 4: What can I make or cocktail ideas, create images, create videos,
Speaker 4: create itineraries for trips. But what's unique, I would argue
Speaker 4: is it's twofold. One is that there's a new discover
Speaker 4: section that shows what your friends on Instagram and Facebook
Speaker 4: have asked Meta Ai to do, and then you can
Speaker 4: remix that. Like if you have a friend that said
Speaker 4: show me, you know a picture of Gary and Shannon
Speaker 4: on the moon, I don't know holding an American flat,
Speaker 4: then you can take that and then tweak it some more,
Speaker 4: or take a recipe that one of your friends asked
Speaker 4: it to create and then remix that. So that's kind
Speaker 4: of neat if with consent, you can opt to share
Speaker 4: what you're leveraging AI for with your friends on Facebook
Speaker 4: and Instagram through the Meta ai app. And then the
Speaker 4: other thing that makes it unique is that you're allowing
Speaker 4: the AI to comb through your social feed to get
Speaker 4: to better know you. So when I downloaded Meta AI
Speaker 4: and I installed it, it said, so, Mark, I see you
Speaker 4: like music and you like festivals, music festivals. I see
Speaker 4: you were recently, you know, on a trip in Italy, Like,
Speaker 4: what did you like most about your trip? So it
Speaker 4: tries to get to know you in order to curate
Speaker 4: more personalized results. It's not for everyone. Some people may
Speaker 4: think it's creepy, but you know, AI is definitely here
Speaker 4: to stay. I know a lot of your listeners are
Speaker 4: probably rolling their eyes because they're sick of hearing about it.
Speaker 4: But over a billion people have already tried the meta
Speaker 4: AI features baked into Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and so
Speaker 4: the company Meta thinks that a standalone AI Meta AI
Speaker 4: by itself could be a really big player, and it's free.
Speaker 1: Did they get some pushback? Did metiget pushback? I realize.
Speaker 1: I recognize that if you search for something on Instagram,
Speaker 1: for example, the search bar is it says either ask
Speaker 1: meta AI or search And I've always been I've always
Speaker 1: thought that that's kind of a dangerous thing to combine
Speaker 1: the two of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not unlike Google.
Speaker 4: I don't know when's the last time you Googled something,
Speaker 4: but if you ask a question, chances are Google Gemini
Speaker 4: is going to kick in. There is a way to
Speaker 4: go into the settings and separate this.
Speaker 3: I first when Google did this, I said I hate this.
Speaker 3: I'm never clicking on this, and then the next day
Speaker 3: I loved it. And now I soak up all the
Speaker 3: AI responses. I find them to be well, well curated, yeah,
Speaker 3: well curated yeah.
Speaker 2: For the user. But if you run a website.
Speaker 4: Let's say I don't know, garn Channon, you guys have
Speaker 4: a digital magazine, then you publish content. If Google and
Speaker 4: Meta and other players are extracting your content and then
Speaker 4: delivering the answers to someone who's asking a question, they're
Speaker 4: not going to land on your website, and so that's
Speaker 4: going to hurt your traffic, which could hurt your ad sales.
Speaker 2: So there is a domino effect here.
Speaker 4: You got to look at it kind of holistically as
Speaker 4: a consumer, as a user.
Speaker 2: I think it's pretty wild. But there's one thing AI.
Speaker 4: Hasn't been able to do, and this is I think
Speaker 4: a good segue into the second part of our chat today.
Speaker 4: Something I was that I was in San Francisco yesterday
Speaker 4: at a Visa event and it's called Product Drop, and
Speaker 4: they unveiled something called Visa Intelligent Commerce as the name
Speaker 4: suggests your AI in the near future could actually transact
Speaker 4: for you with consent, of course, so the idea is this,
Speaker 4: right now, let's just stick with that itinerary example from earlier.
Speaker 4: You want to go to Miami for three days, you
Speaker 4: can ask like chat ept to create a three day
Speaker 4: i itinerary for you, even recommend hotels and restaurants and
Speaker 4: flights and excursions, but it'll stop short from paying for
Speaker 4: them for you, right Like it'll say if you ask
Speaker 4: it to, okay, buy that hotel room that's perfect, it'll say, sorry,
Speaker 4: I can't do that, and it'll send you to some
Speaker 4: websites where you can do it. But what Visa and
Speaker 4: other players are working on is the ability with consent
Speaker 4: and partners like open Ai who owns chat ept and others,
Speaker 4: to actually pull the trigger for you on those purchases.
Speaker 4: But it'll first send it to you to say is
Speaker 4: does this look good? And then you just give it
Speaker 4: a one time yeah, like you give it a once over.
Speaker 4: So that's going to save a lot of time. I
Speaker 4: think that's going to save people a lot of time.
Speaker 4: And if you're willing to trust Visa, I mean, look,
Speaker 4: they've had what they've been around sixty years. They've processed
Speaker 4: over almost three and a half trillion transactions over the
Speaker 4: past quarter century alone. You know, if you're going to
Speaker 4: trust a company to do it, that's the company need
Speaker 4: to do it. So yeah, there's I think it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it could save time, but I mean there's got
Speaker 1: to be a someone's going to do the psychological study
Speaker 1: of it. Could cost more money because you believe the
Speaker 1: computer's doing it in your best interest or the computer's
Speaker 1: got your best choices, you know, based on whatever algorithm
Speaker 1: it's going to be using, and therefore you would be
Speaker 1: more free with the money. You say, Okay, they must
Speaker 1: know what they're talking about, and I must like this
Speaker 1: product or whatever that is that they're going to get me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hear what you're saying. Gary.
Speaker 4: There's obviously an element of trust here, and that's a
Speaker 4: hurdle that many any company that's going to do what's
Speaker 4: called agentic or agent based commerce is going to have
Speaker 4: to wrestle with.
Speaker 2: But it's going to send you a push to say
Speaker 2: does this look good to you?
Speaker 4: And so you it's if you didn't have that safeguard
Speaker 4: in there, then I would agree, Yeah, this can be
Speaker 4: a little bit of a slippery slope. But is it
Speaker 4: like tapping? Do you find you're spending more money because
Speaker 4: you can now tap your credit card rather then insert
Speaker 4: it and put in a pin? Are you do you
Speaker 4: do you find I'm just I'm just curious. Do you
Speaker 4: find your spending more because it's just so easy now
Speaker 4: to use your visa at retail by tapping or your
Speaker 4: watch or your phone.
Speaker 3: You think it's translating to me spending more? It is
Speaker 3: definitely easier and quicker.
Speaker 4: Right, And that's the idea, is that you want something
Speaker 4: convenient and with AI being like your assistant, like now
Speaker 4: being able to or soon within a couple of months,
Speaker 4: they're telling me be able to transact for you, and
Speaker 4: again you're still going to have to aokay it. I
Speaker 4: think that's a great time saver for me. I love
Speaker 4: that idea. I'm busy. If you set those thresholds ahead
Speaker 4: of time, Like I want to stay in the hotel,
Speaker 4: but I don't want to spend more than four hundred
Speaker 4: to night, and I like that flight, but I don't
Speaker 4: want to stop over or a red eye. If you
Speaker 4: set those parameters in advance, and an AI can get
Speaker 4: to know you and remember things. Then I think it's
Speaker 4: just going to help us be a lot more efficient
Speaker 4: personally and professionally, So I'm all in on that.
Speaker 2: But yeah, there'll be other players as well.
Speaker 4: But you know, Visa was first out of the gate
Speaker 4: yesterday at this event, this product drop showcase, which was
Speaker 4: pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then everybody's gotta you know now that the
Speaker 1: ones that come second have to try to find some
Speaker 1: way to improve upon what they what Visa has done.
Speaker 3: All right, Mark, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Appreciate it me too. Cheers, guys, cheers.
Speaker 1: Make sure you follow Mark on x M A r
Speaker 1: C Underscore Saltsman with a Z's got some great stuff
Speaker 1: up there, and you can also check out the tech
Speaker 1: it Out podcast on the iHeart app.
Speaker 3: You are