For all the deepfakes

April 23rd, 2024

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It’s Tuesday, and hopefully, your day is going better than Peter Rosza and Conor Woulfe, the two men who sued Universal after renting the Danny Boyle-directed comedy Yesterday, only to discover that actress Ana De Armas (who was featured in the trailer) wasn’t actually in the movie. It turns out that they rented the movie just to see her. After legal fees piled up, the two sides settled, with each getting “nothing.” Trailer fake-outs live on.

In other news… Netflix nixes subscriber counts, Drake disses with AI, and Amazon drops the drones.

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.ENTERTAINMENT.

Nothing to see here // Illustration by Kate Walker

Netflix’s next era doesn’t need subscriber growth

The Future. Netflix’s decision to stop reporting subscriber numbers on a normal basis shows that the company has reached the scale that it no longer needs to worry about competitors and that a slowdown could send its stock barreling down as it did in April 2022. With Netflix having won the streaming wars when it comes to subscribers and profit, rivals may simply focus on engagement — how long people spend on the platform overall — as the most important gauge for streaming success.

Growth 2.0
After spurring all of Hollywood to compete for streaming subscribers, Netflix is ending the race.

  • The streamer will no longer provide updated subscriber numbers during its quarterly earnings reports — it’ll only share them when they hit “certain major milestones,” per co-CEO Greg Peters.

  • Instead, it’ll focus on the metrics that Wall Street now cares most about, like revenue, operating income, and overall engagement on the platform.

  • Part of that reason is because the simple math of number of subscribers to revenue no longer makes sense — Netflix has multiple paid tiers, a growing ad tier, and may even change prices per market.

So far, Wall Street is wary of the plan, sending Netflix’s stock down 8% and suggesting that the company’s password crackdown has almost concluded juicing subscriber numbers… hence, the subscriber reporting pivot.

But if next quarter’s other metrics are good, subscriber counts will quickly be a distant memory.

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.A WORD FROM OUR FRIENDS AT RYSE.

It’s not too late to get in on RYSE

RYSE is on its way to making automated smart shades a thing. So, if you missed investing in their last round, it’s not too late.

They’ve launched in 120+ Best Buy retail stores and opened a new public offering. You can invest in their company at just $1.50/share.

The smart home industry is on fire, with double-digit growth projected until 2033 — and billion-dollar acquisitions for companies like RYSE with retail distribution and patented technologies.

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Media, Music, & Entertainment

  • Future and Metro Boomin’s We Don’t Trust You and We Still Don’t Trust You occupy two of the Top 3 album spots on the Billboard 200. [Read More]

  • Immersive entertainment startup Cosm is building its first “shared reality” venue — think a smaller version of The Sphere — in Los Angeles. [Read More]

  • Meta and Microsoft are collabing on a Quest headset specifically designed for the Xbox. [Read More]

Fashion & E-Commerce

  • Amazon will no longer offer drone delivery in Lockeford, CA, leaving College Station, TX, as its only drone-powered market. [Read More]

  • A study by Squared Circles found that people with an income over $100,000 are less likely to spend more on sustainable fashion than those who are making under that threshold. [Read More]

  • LVMH alone is responsible for 4% of France’s exports… more than the country’s agricultural industry (which also includes wine). [Read More]

Tech, Web3, & AI

  • Exowatt, the clean energy startup focused on providing power for large data centers, raised $20 million from Sam Altman and a16z. [Read More]

  • Work has officially started on America’s first state-crossing, high-speed rail line — the $12 billion Brightline West with service between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. [Read More]

  • Teen girls around the country are rallying state legislators to craft bills dealing with the growing problem of AI-generated nudes. [Read More]

Creator Economy

  • Snapchat is going all-in on filters and features for the current raft of music festivals like Coachella and Stagecoach. [Read More]

  • The EU is investigating TikTok over the “addictive” qualities of TikTok Lite — the app that’s paying users to engage with content. [Read More]

  • YouTube channel Watcher backtracked on its plans to stop uploading to YouTube and put its content behind a paywall after fan backlash led to a loss of over 50,000 subscribers in a single day. [Read More]

.MUSIC.

Drake and the deepfakes // Illustration by Kate Walker

Drake deepfakes Snoop Dogg and Tupac for a feature

The Future. Drake took the unprecedented step of using generative AI to add verses from Tupac and Snoop Dogg to a diss track aimed at Kendrick Lamar. Drake’s use of the tech is a total reversal from his reaction to his own voice being AI-generated for a song… and may inadvertently set off a wave of smaller artists releasing songs with deepfaked vocals in an effort to go viral.

Clone crew
Thanks to Drake, AI is the newest weapon in hip hop beefs.

  • Drake’s “Taylor Made Freestyle” features deepfake versions of Tupac and Snoop Dogg — two of Kendrick’s heroes and legends of west coast rap.

  • With lyrics written by Drake, the deepfakes are used to taunt Kendrick’s “height, talent, and credibility,” per Highsnobiety

  • But the crux of the diss is that Kendrick is taking too long to respond to Drake’s last diss track, “Push Ups” (without mentioning that it took Drake three weeks to release that song after Kendrick took aim at him in “Like That”).

By using AI, Drake is playing into the weird trend of people releasing AI-generated diss tracks from Drake and Kendrick, which has complicated the battle between the two artists. Whether his use of the tech is creatively clever or simply opening up Pandora’s Box at the worst time is TBD.

At least we get this hilarious Snoop reaction.

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  • Listen: Discord CEO Jason Citron talks to The Verge about how he believes the future of the internet will be smaller, more private, and built around niche interests. 

  • Read: Deadline analyzes how the shuttering of Participant Media may be because everyone has adopted the company’s mission of socially-conscious storytelling.

  • Watch: WSJ explores how America’s power grid may not be strong enough to handle the rise of AI.

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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Boye Akolade. Copy edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.

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