1014: Anthropic doesn’t use AI

**CJ** (0:00)
Welcome to Syntax.
It's Syntax Weekly. We're back from Amsterdam and we've got a ton of news and other interesting things to share with you. I am joined today by Wes and Scott. How are you guys feeling?

**Wes Bos** (0:13)
I'm doing great. I got back from Amsterdam and I did that opposite jet lag where you wake up at 6 a.m. and you feel great because your body is adjusted. And I was like, I'm gonna become a morning person now, but then it wore off after two days.

**CJ** (0:28)
Yeah.

**Scott Tolinski** (0:29)
Yeah. CJ, what day did you get back? I got back on Saturday late night.

**CJ** (0:33)
Just yesterday. So I have not adjusted yet. I was up at 3 a.m. today, so.

**Scott Tolinski** (0:38)
Yeah. I was up early too. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Very early. Oh man. Feeling it.

**CJ** (0:44)
Nice. So like was mentioned, we've got some stuff for you. We're going to be talking about how Anthropic does not use AI.
We'll recap our Amsterdam trip. We met a ton of you while we were there. This was the most, I don't know about you guys, this was the most selfies I've ever had taken at an event.

**Wes Bos** (1:00)
Unbelievable. Yeah. The amount of photos that people take has gone up over the years. I remember maybe five, six years ago, one person, a really young person asked me for a photo. I was like, oh yeah, sure. I've never had that before.
It's just become this thing now where everybody takes photos.
We were in line with meeting everybody and saying hi or whatever for probably at least an hour, hour and a half. It was fantastic to meet everybody. So many little gifts as well.

**CJ** (1:36)
Yeah. I had somebody ask me to sign their badge on the way out. I was like, you want my autograph? What?

**Scott Tolinski** (1:45)
I signed the badge. I signed the Lego set. Oh yeah. I signed some stuff.

**Wes Bos** (1:48)
They're definitely stealing your identity, CJ. I can't believe you did that. I know.

**CJ** (1:51)
I didn't give them the regular signature.

**Wes Bos** (1:53)
I spruced it up a little bit. All right.

**CJ** (1:56)
Yeah. So we've got a ton of pictures to show you. We'll recap the event. Anybody that was at the event, feel free to say hey in the chat.
We've got some other stuff. HTML out of order streaming has made it into Chrome. So Scott's going to tell us about that. I've got a few fun sites to show you as well. This is Syntax Weekly. Why don't we get right into it? Wes, what do you have?

**Wes Bos** (2:14)
Yes. All right. I have two things, both related to the Claude 5 Fable launch, but not about Claude Fable. And it's more the launch videos that went out. So every time Claude has something or Anthropic launches something, they have these like beautiful videos that are, they're usually like UI animations of like showing it and moving around. But this one, they had this like beautiful like fives and nice animations, kind of stop motion feel to it. Just I just absolutely love the look of it. And I remember seeing that and be like, hmm, I wonder if those assets were programmatically generated or not.
And somebody asked on Twitter, I'm curious how Anthropic makes the models for their promotional materials. Is this Claude collaging found images? It doesn't look like an image model.
And Sam McAllister, who works there, he says, there was no AI involved in this project. And I previously had been DMing with somebody that works on the like After Effects ones that they put out. And they said, yeah, like we have some processes with AI in place, but all of the actual videos were totally done by hand by like extremely skilled people. He says, much of the source material was made from the Brockes Encyclopedia and our internal teamwork. So some brilliant animators for the Finnish finished product. But he showed himself actually making the fives out of the map, which is really, really cool to see. Because anytime these videos come out, you get these like dudes saying, oh, definitely prompted, we made it with re-motion and like, I'm so in on like AI video editing, but like there's no, this is like miles ahead of all the other stuff they're working on.

**Scott Tolinski** (4:13)
Yeah. Somebody, you know, I've maybe mentioned this a few times, but my background is in motion graphics. I worked professionally as a motion graphics artist. I did a lot of After Effects in my career. And man, it is a powerful tool in the hands of the right people doing stuff like this. So when I see that this type of work is still being created by hand, and it's not a surprise to me, given the level of care that's clearly put into it.