The New A.I. Helpers & Disney’s Big Bet

Julia Alexander (0:01)

Why haven't Google or Apple launched it? Because they are at the interface of all that. You store your credit card within Gmail and Google Wallet, or within Apple Pay, and they don't have agents. So the two companies at the forefront of really developing at-scale consumer agents are two of the least trusted companies in tech.

Peter Hamby (0:20)

Welcome to The Powers That Be Daily, Pucks podcast focused on the intersection of Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley and Hollywood, and the players who run it all. I'm Peter Hamby. It's Friday, October 2nd. Today, I'm joined by Julia Alexander for a landscape analysis of all the AI assistants that now want your business. Muse from Meta, Dots from OpenAI, and Insight, chief among them. But are these tools built to organize calendars, set meetings, and make restaurant reservations on track for mass adoption? Or are they really just for the tech people who make them, and care a lot about optimizing their own lives? Julia and I also discussed Disney's streaming goals after they signed producer and filmmaker Shawn Levy to help bring young male viewers over from Netflix to Disney Plus. We'll discuss all that and much more on today's episode of The Powers That Be.

Happy Friday everybody and welcome to The Powers That Be. I'm joined today by my colleague, pal, fellow, Joe Burrow Stan, Julia Alexander. We're gonna talk about all the AI assistant agents out there that you now have to choose from, Muse, Insight, Dots.

It feels like they're everywhere, but can they reach mass adoption? We're also gonna talk about Disney going big on streaming and what that means for Disney television, job cuts maybe. We'll see Julia, good to see you. How you doing?

Julia Alexander (1:56)

Good to see you, brother. How have you been? Good.

Peter Hamby (2:00)

I've been very, very good. Thank you very much. Bummed about the Bangles loss this weekend. I knew you were too, but here we are. I know you're a Saints fan, but-

Julia Alexander (2:07)

You know what? I'm bummed about every Saints loss, so I'm with you spiritually.

Peter Hamby (2:11)

I get it. Are you a Tyler Shaw, show believer, Shuff? How do you say it even?

Julia Alexander (2:16)

I mean, I'm a believer in him. Do I think he's a Drew Brees? No, but I'm a believer in him doing better for us, so I'll take it.

Peter Hamby (2:24)

Well, he definitely has a better personality than Drew Brees, who's got all the charisma of a piece of wet cardboard. Anyway, walk me through some of these AI agents. If you are on Instagram or Facebook or any Meta product lately, you've been seeing ads for Muse. You've probably seen the little Muse, the cute little avatar that they launched. They've been doing a big paid media campaign.

You've also got Dots from OpenAI. I saw Alex Kantrowitz, a tech reporter, tweet, saying, man, Dots is awesome. I'm ripping through work today. There's a lot of buzz in my circles about Insight, which is a hot assistant startup. What is the point of all of these things to start?

Julia Alexander (3:05)

That's a good question because I think it depends on which company you ask.

If we just take those three, because I think they're a really good starting point.

Muse is this personal agent. For those who are listening and maybe don't even know what that means, an agent is basically your little robotic pal or your little robotic employee, who's going to go and do things for you while you're sleeping or doing other things. With that in mind, Muse, which is from Meta, is supposed to be your day-to-day companion, helping with everything from managing your financial subscriptions, to helping you build out your kid's soccer schedule and your dinner schedule, to doing anything that you touch on a day-to-day basis. And the reason that Muse has become such a huge talking point is because it's become massively adopted right out the gate. It was sitting at the top of the App Store for days on end. It's on the path to reach a significant amount of users in a very short period of time. And so everyone has started to talk about, is this the beginning of the agentic web? And that's a whole other situation. But if you were to ask OpenAI, who launched Dots, and it's for a Chat GPT Pro customers only at this point, it is to go and do some critically foundational day-to-day work stuff. So what is the productivity struggles that you are facing in your day-to-day job? How can you integrate Dots into your life to take care of that component? And so I think what makes this conversation complex, Peter, is how do people envision using or relegating activity and decisions they would once do on their own to robot agents that they don't know if they can trust? And that is the crux of where this moment is.