A song featuring A.I.-generated versions of Drake and the Weeknd went viral — before being taken down by streaming services. Is censorship of A.I.-generated songs the way forward? Or can singers benefit from synthetic voices, as some artists like Grimes are suggesting?
Then, HatGPT: Kevin and Casey pull headlines out of a hat and generate their own takes on ... Show More
Oct 23
What’s the Deal With Billy Evans? A Spoiler-Filled Guide to ‘You Can See Everything’
This week, we focus on Billy Evans, the breakout character of the documentary “You Can See Everything,” and his Theranos-esque new blood-testing start-up. Rob Copeland, a New York Times finance reporter, and Erin Griffith, a tech reporter, join Max Read to discuss what Evans is l ... Show More
59m 10s
Oct 16
Why No One Can Look Away From Elizabeth Holmes
This week, there’s a new blockbuster Elizabeth Holmes documentary out, and we’ve assembled an expert panel to discuss the movie and what Holmes means to the tech world of today. Max Read is joined by John Carreyrou, who, through his investigative reporting for The Wall Street Jou ... Show More
1h 7m
Oct 9
Anthropic’s Quest to Give A.I. Morals
This week, Max Read talks to the Times religion correspondent Elizabeth Dias, the tech reporter Erin Griffith and the opinion writer David Wallace-Wells about Anthropic’s private meetings with religious scholars on A.I. consciousness and how to make Claude “good,” its differences ... Show More
44m 20s
Apr 2023
AI Drake, AI friends, AI everything
Today, things got a little loose in the studio of The Vergecast. Switched on Pop's Charlie Harding joins Nilay Patel, Alex Cranz, and David Pierce to make their own version of Drake's AI summer classic. We're not saying a laser bong was involved, but we're not not saying that eit ... Show More
1h 23m
Apr 2023
The Ballad of ‘Deepfake Drake’
<p>This month, an anonymous producer jolted the music industry by using artificial intelligence to impersonate the singers Drake and the Weeknd, creating a fake track, “Heart on My Sleeve,” that quickly went viral.</p><p>Joe Coscarelli, a culture reporter for The Times, talks abo ... Show More
24m 48s
Apr 2023
Ben Smith on the Bust of the Digital Media Age
The media world over the last few week has been rocked by major disruptions: Fox ousts Tucker Carlson, CNN fires Don Lemon, BuzzFeed News is shutting down, Twitter has become a less reliable resource, and Vice Media shutters its flagship program “Vice News Tonight.” Over the last ... Show More
35m 5s
May 2023
Jonah Peretti, Nick Denton and Ben Smith on digital news’ past and future
It’s our first four-way pod, featuring BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti, Gawker founder Nick Denton, and Semafor founder (and former editor-in-chief of the recently shuttered BuzzFeed News) Ben Smith, who wrote a book about them both. Peter Kafka talks to all of them in conjunction ... Show More
36m 30s