Chatbot For Congress

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DAILY TOP TRENDS

Hallmark Is So Hot Right Now

Hallmark Media, the studio behind dozens of romantic and holiday films a year, is ramping up its output and experimenting with new forms of entertainment as demand for the brand reaches a fever pitch.

The Big Picture: While Hallmark can be the butt of a lot of jokes in media and entertainment circles, the brand’s expanding fanbase shows that catering to a niche community is a great business model and that family-friendly entertainment is underserved by Hollywood.

Behind The Scenes: Hallmark wants to entertain you on land, sea, and, we assume, one day, air.

• It launched its Hallmark+ streaming service last month, which doles out Crown Rewards points by just watching content on the app.

• It struck a deal with the Kansas City Chiefs, culminating in the movie Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story, which will feature Chiefs coach Andy Reid, several players, and even Travis Kelce’s mom, Donna. It premieres November 30th.

• November 30th is also the beginning of Hallmark’s first “Christmas Experience” — a four-weekend-long extravaganza featuring a holiday market, product drops, and nightly tree lightings that’s expected to bring in 80,000 attendees.

• Also, the maiden voyage of the “Hallmark Christmas Cruise” (a four-night trip from the Bahamas) kicks off in November. It sold out in hours and broke Norwegian Cruise Line records with 70,000 people on the waitlist — a second cruise sold out in under 24 hours.

Closing Credits: If you’re thinking, “That’s a lot of Hallmark,” well, that’s kind of the point. But it’s also strategic. Take the Chiefs partnership, for example. It’s common knowledge that the Travis Kelce-Taylor Swift relationship brought in a huge number of new female fans for the team. But according to Chiefs president Mark Donovan, there are apparently more female Chiefs fans than male fans… and they have a huge crossover with Hallmark’s audience. Over half of the audience of Hallmark’s popular “Countdown to Christmas” movie series also watch sports.

In other words, watch as Hallmark becomes a Disney-like entertainment empire. Where do you think the company will build a theme park?

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Chatbots Can Debate For Politicians Now

Incumbent Virginia Representative Don Beyer turned down a chance to debate challengers Bentley Hensel and David Kennedy… so Hensel created a chatbot of Beyer to take his place.

The Big Argument: AI is starting to infuse into every aspect of American life. But the fact that a Congressional debate was allowed to move forward with an unauthorized chatbot of one of the candidates makes it seem like its normalization into the mainstream is already complete.

Between The Lines: Independent candidate Bentley Hensel, a software engineer by trade, refused to let Beyer miss last Thursday’s debate over Zoom. So, he created “DonBot.”

• He was originally building it on the OpenAI GPT-4o system, but the company suspended him when news broke of what he was doing. So, he switched over to Meta’s Llama 2-8b system.

• He trained DonBot solely on Beyer’s official websites, press releases, and Federal Election Commission data.

• And that was apparently all it needed for the debate — despite a few technical glitches, it performed well and answered questions cogently and on-message for Beyer. However, it didn’t sound like Beyer.

The Future: By all accounts, the debate was smooth and civic. At times, they even agreed (you can see for yourself here). According to Fast Company, Beyer will likely win the election (his sixth term) in a landslide, so that’s why he didn’t bother to show up. So, the real winner is clearly Hensel… at least as far as his software engineering career is concerned. He’s currently working on making chatbots of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump for their campaigns (they’re both unauthorized). 

Don’t be surprised if there’s a future where a candidate simply sends over their chatbot to rallies or town halls… leaving them vulnerable to be hacked.

Go Deeper: South Korea’s president won his election by flooding the zone with deepfakes of himself.

DEEP DIVES

• Read: WSJ profiles legendary designer Giorgio Armani, who, at 90-years-old, is still as ambitious as ever.

• Listen: The Vergecast interviews Amazon exec Panos Panay, who’s charting a new course for the company’s Kindle device.

• Watch: The Future with Hannah Fry explores what changes could be in store as another billion people are about to gain access to the internet.

82.7% of you voted Yes in Friday’s poll: Do you think society focuses too much on “hustle culture?”

“I renounce it.”

“‘Hustle culture’ is when you work an extra job so the CEO can buy an extra yacht.”

“Creative juices come from active involvement in the engagement — if that’s called hustle, so be it.”

“Provides purpose and creates opportunity, which contribute to happiness, but also much stress and desperation — when stillness and gratitude could cultivate more.”

Let’s keep the conversation going. Join our Poll Of The Day newsletter so your opinions can shine. Discover how your views line up with your peers’, check out cool insights, and have some fun. It’s data with personality.

QUICK HITS

→ Entertainment / Media

📺 Netflix continues dominating the streaming ecosystem by adding five million new subscribers and beating nearly every Wall Street expectation last quarter.

🎤 Artists can now automatically turn their concert setlists into playlists on Apple Music, which pulls info from Bandsintown and Shazam.

♟️ Slaughterhouse-Five author Kurt Vonnegut’s long-lost 1956 board game, General Headquarters, is finally being made available.

→ Technology

💰 Best frenemies OpenAI and Microsoft have hired investment banks to determine how much the latter’s $14 billion investment in the former is worth when it becomes a for-profit company.

👁️ Sam Altman is rebranding Worldcoin as World in a bid to get everyone’s humanity “orb-verified” in an increasingly digital world.

₿ Stripe is paying a billion dollars to acquire stablecoin-infrastructure firm Bridge. Is crypto back?

→ Fashion / E-commerce

🍾 Philippe Schaus, LVMH’s head of wine and spirits, is leaving the company after over 20 years at the fashion giant.

🛒 Amazon is launching a new grocery concept to sell all the unhealthy food it can’t stock at Whole Foods.

🐶 Dogs can rock Crocs now. Adorable.