AI Shopping for the Holidays Might Not Be That Smooth | Bytes: Week in Review | Marketplace Tech

[music] Hey everyone, this is Marketplace Tech Bites. It's our weekly roundup of some

Bites. It's our weekly roundup of some of the big stories in [music] tech and maybe some you missed. I'm Megan McCarti Corino. This week, Meta did not violate

Corino. This week, Meta did not violate antitrust laws. A federal judge ruled AI

antitrust laws. A federal judge ruled AI enabled commerce might [music] not be the solution to your holiday shopping this year. and Vine, the OG short form

this year. and Vine, the OG short form video app, is making a comeback. Here to

discuss all that is our regular contributor, Pesh Det. He's a senior reporter at Wired. [music] Hey Pes, so good to see you.

>> It's been a little bit. Excited to be here.

>> Yeah, it's been a little bit. Always

good to have you. Uh, and we got to start off with our bite of the week.

This is a number that gives us a little insight into the week in tech. And I

brought a number myself. My number is 65 billion. Good, you know, nice big

billion. Good, you know, nice big number. And that is the number that uh

number. And that is the number that uh Wall Street heard Nvidia made in revenues during its last quarter. Of

course, Nvidia announced earnings on Wednesday after the markets close, the holiday that comes four times a year on Wall Street. Um but this time was being

Wall Street. Um but this time was being watched, you know, a little more cautiously maybe than in the the past quarters because there has been all of

this chatter over the last month or so about are we looking at an AI bubble. I

think traders were uh were warmed by Nvidia's earnings uh beating expectations. uh I don't think that's

expectations. uh I don't think that's sort of dispositive at this point. The

kind of spending the wild spending on data centers and GPUs that we have been hearing you know deal after deal after deal making headlines uh you know in

recent months that's shown up in Nvidia's earnings. I think that's where

Nvidia's earnings. I think that's where some of the concern comes of you know what is going to happen downstream from Nvidia. So yeah that's my number. What's

Nvidia. So yeah that's my number. What's

yours? Mine's 911 million, which is how many monthly users Facebook had back in 2012 when it bought Instagram, which had a meager 30 million or so users at the

time. Um, and these days, Meta is

time. Um, and these days, Meta is inching towards 4 billion daily users.

So, um, uh, I think that that number is important to keep in mind as we think about the implications of our first story.

>> Yeah. So, first story, uh, this antitrust case against Meta that actually originated way back during the first Trump administration. Of course,

Meta was not a favorite of uh, of Trump back then. And this case finally came to

back then. And this case finally came to a conclusion this week. Federal judge

ruled that the social media giant did not violate antirust laws when it bought Instagram, when it bought WhatsApp. Uh

so P tell us a bit more about kind of how significant this is.

>> Yeah, I mean I think this is telling tech companies, big tech companies like Meta, like Google, uh maybe you can get back to spending again. You can get back to acquiring other companies. But I

think the bigger implication is for this new generation of big companies like an open AI that is dominating the field of sort of AI chat bots. They have 800

million weekly users. you know, pretty close to that 900 million number of Facebook back in 2012.

That's, you know, kind of telling OpenAI maybe you're free to go out, acquire smaller AI companies, keep growing that way. Even though you're dominant,

way. Even though you're dominant, there's all this competition. and OpenAI

can point to that competition, point to that Facebook court ruling, uh sorry, the Meta court ruling and point to the fact that it has about the same users and say

>> we can buy other companies and it's not um uh you know, it's not an antitrust violation, >> right? And this is kind of the second

>> right? And this is kind of the second big antitrust case that has sort of gone big tech way. Of course, Google was declared a monopoly in its search

business, but the remedy that the judge ordered was pretty light. Was something,

you know, they didn't have to spin off Chrome browser, you know, it was kind of within the realm of what was going to be okay for Google, I guess.

>> Yeah. It was almost a sort of remedy that affected Google's partners were a lot smaller uh or some of them a lot smaller more than it affected Google in some ways.

All right. Well, now we want to get into a story that you uh reported for Wired Pesh on the big trend of agentic

shopping. Many of the big AI platforms,

shopping. Many of the big AI platforms, OpenAI, Google, uh this week, Perplexity did kind of a relaunch of uh this

feature for AI shopping. They've all

announced these in recent months and now it's happening. The Super Bowl of

it's happening. The Super Bowl of shopping is upon us. Black Friday uh Black Friday and the Black Friday season I guess you could call it and you did sort of a survey of the landscape. What

did you find? Like what's out there and how are these tools working?

>> The takeaway here is if you're one of the one in five Americans uh pulled who are ready to give up all of your

shopping to uh Agentic AI, uh you're kind of out of luck. Um, you know, if you want to be able to say to Chad GPT, for instance, uh, find a perfect, uh,

Christmas gift for my 10-year-old niece and order it, ship it to her. Um, it's

not that quite easy. You're going to be prompted at several steps along the way for more information. You're not going to be able to have the agent check out for you and complete the purchase

without you confirming the purchase. And

the issue is these systems are not very reliable. We know that using these every

reliable. We know that using these every day. Um and uh there's still a lot of

day. Um and uh there's still a lot of disagreement between the companies between the AI companies and the e-commerce companies about the best ways

to conduct these transactions, the best ways to share data between the two of them. How much chat history should the

them. How much chat history should the e-commerce companies get? How much uh customer data uh should the AI companies get? Uh, and as all that discussion

get? Uh, and as all that discussion plays out, it's going to be a while before consumers uh, can have a truly agentic kick my, you know, feet up and

relax kind of shopping experience.

>> You kind of alluded to this in, you know, what the numbers show, but I think one of the big questions is how much do consumers actually want this? Is this

providing a solution that consumers actually want? I can see a lot of

actually want? I can see a lot of people, you know, I think that surveys have shown a lot of people are using chat bots to discover products. That

seems like a, you know, a very useful function, especially as, you know, search engines like Google, I think, have degraded. um using a chatbot to

have degraded. um using a chatbot to sort of summarize all the reviews on something and get you know the consensus of the internet is very useful and to discover products especially in these

kinds of marketplaces like Etsy or you know Walmart or uh Amazon is kind of a special asteris asterisk there because uh they're not they're not into uh you

know sharing with the the chatbot platforms at all but um but yeah I mean do people want to give up the whole end of the process there of making a decision on what to buy and handing over

their credit card to a bot.

>> Well, that was the one of the interesting findings for me is that it does seem like there's a decent amount of consumers that are ready for that. Uh

at least for everyday purchase for b everyday purchases, basic things. Um

there is some demand for that. uh

Expedia for example told me that uh they have this integration with chat GPT uh that provides up-to-date flight and hotel pricing information. We're still

in the early adopter phase but the usage of that tool you know which is you have to like tell chat to explicitly Expedia or something like that to get it to to

prompt. uh they were surprised that it's

prompt. uh they were surprised that it's getting more usage than they expected um to start with. Uh you can't actually transact there again, you know, you have

to click and go off to Expedia to make a purchase. Um but the fact that there is

purchase. Um but the fact that there is some adoption for that and that the adoption is higher than expected um is giving Expedia um a lot of excitement

about where this is going.

this issue of the data and who gets access to to which data. Uh I can see you know this becoming an issue. It's

already become an issue with Amazon and perplexity. Tell us a little bit more

perplexity. Tell us a little bit more about what the friction is there for retailers and the chatbot platforms. >> Yeah, these platforms, the chatbot

platforms are very intimate in nature, right? We generally feel comfortable

right? We generally feel comfortable telling chat bots things we might not say to a sales representative on the floor in a store. Um, and as a result,

the chatbot companies want to protect that intimacy. They want to protect that

that intimacy. They want to protect that privacy. And so they want to limit that

privacy. And so they want to limit that the information that they are sharing with e-commerce companies. But then

e-commerce companies want to personalize our experiences and make it really, you know, fun and engaging and perfect it for us. and so they want more data. Um,

for us. and so they want more data. Um,

so that's just one example. Um, uh, then you have the actual customer data like your credit card info, your email address. Uh, Amazon is running an

address. Uh, Amazon is running an experiment right now where they do not give your real email address to e-commerce companies where they make a Gent purchases. I can't imagine those

Gent purchases. I can't imagine those shops are happy with that.

>> All right. Well, now we want to take a bit of a trip down memory lane back to the innocent days of the early 2010s.

Our brains were barely rotting back then. Uh, and that is when Vine became a

then. Uh, and that is when Vine became a thing. This was kind of the short form

thing. This was kind of the short form video app and it is apparently making a comeback. Pesh, do you remember Vine?

comeback. Pesh, do you remember Vine?

Were you using it?

>> Yeah, I posted a couple videos I think.

So, I actually went on this new tool uh trying to find them. I couldn't, but they apparently were only able to archive and recover some of the videos, >> right? Because this was uh it was

>> right? Because this was uh it was acquired by Twitter and then it was shut down in 2017. Apparently, now former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is one of the

backers of this comeback app called Devine. D I V I N E. Uh, and the sort of

Devine. D I V I N E. Uh, and the sort of selling point, I guess, is that it is going to be exclusively human-made content. No AI allowed. Do you think

content. No AI allowed. Do you think this will work?

>> They're going to use AI to try to keep AI out. Yes. Um,

AI out. Yes. Um,

I mean, that might work. Will the

experiment of getting people to use Vine again work? Yeah.

again work? Yeah.

>> Uh, I'm not sure. It's a nice science experiment, one of many that Jack Dorsey is currently funding through his nonprofit. Um, you know, several

nonprofit. Um, you know, several messaging apps, several other social networking apps. Uh,

networking apps. Uh, you know, yeah, nice science experiment and maybe a creative challenge for creators. Um, but it's hard to imagine a

creators. Um, but it's hard to imagine a lot of usage.

Yeah, I mean I think I I I like the idea of you know platforms kind of marketing themselves as AI slop free. I feel like that is going to be, you know, kind of a

continuing strain that we might see uh as these platforms just become overwhelmed with AI and there's the incentive to to do that

is so high on all the platforms because they do get engagement uh at this point.

you know, even when I see something and I know that it's AI and I become dismayed and disillusioned, you know, I still looked at it because it's, you know, it it pulls people in. There's

it's just it's it's a very easy thing to engagement farm with. Uh so yeah, having having these bastions of AI freedom on these kinds of platforms that are

content driven does seem like a potential uh you know thing that we might see more of.

>> Yeah. But as you noted, I mean, I'll acknowledge that counterpoint that uh people seem to be interested in some AI

swap. Um, and as uh OpenAI uh

swap. Um, and as uh OpenAI uh application CEO BGCMO said to my colleague uh in a story this week, like it's kind of paternalistic for people to

say that AI slop is bad because, you know, that's someone's creativity. Um,

and they, you know, we should have a minimum, you know, there's no sort of minimum bar for creativity.

>> All right, Pesh Devet at Wired, thanks so much for joining us.

>> Glad to be here.

>> And thanks to all of you for watching Marketplace Tech bites week in review.

This one was produced by Jesus Alvarado.

I'm Megan [music] McCarti Corino.

This is APM.