August 20, 2024 • 29 mins
Last week, X users might have noticed a new kind of artificial intelligence-generated image proliferating: strange visions of Elon Musk next to Disney characters carrying guns, or Donald Trump in all kinds of, well, weird situations. This was what followed a new release of Musk’s Grok AI tool, which can now make images—unsurprisingly with fewer guardrails than other image-creating machines out there.
On this episode we’ll talk about Grok’s new skillset and also get into the semiotics of the Cybertruck. Initially conceived of as a mass-market truck, it’s slid into another category: marker of a certain kind of right-wing flex, the kind Musk himself has engaged in on his struggling social network. Joining David to discuss is Davey Alba, a Bloomberg technology reporter, along with Max Chafkin and Dana Hull.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Well, Elon Musk is now the richest person on the planet.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
More than half the satellites in space are owned and
controlled by one man.
Speaker 4 (00:22):
Well, he's a legitimate super genius.
Speaker 5 (00:24):
I mean legitimate.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
He says.
Speaker 5 (00:26):
He's always voted for Democrats, but this year it will
be different.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
He'll vote Republican. There is a reason the US government
is so reliant on him.
Speaker 5 (00:33):
Elon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing.
Anything he does, he's fascinating people.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Welcome to Elon K, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
It's Tuesday, August twentieth. I'm your host, David Popotopolis. Today
we'll talk cyber truck. Initially it was going to be
this mass marketplay with the reputed two million pre orders.
Turns out a recent recall revealed that they're only about
(01:11):
twelve thousand of them actually on the road today. Now,
owning a cyber truck definitely sends a signal, but what signal?
The truck has shown up in all sorts of wild
places this week, for example, in the hands of a
Chechen warlord. This will alarm some for sure, and it
begs A big question, is the market for the cyber
truck growing or shrinking as it becomes this cultural lightning rod,
(01:35):
and what exactly does that mean for Tesla? But first GROC.
Last week, Xai unveiled this new graphics generator that allows
users to prompt CROC to create images. As expected, though
the guardrails were off from the start and all sorts
of wild copyright infringing and disturbing memes were flying all
(01:56):
over the place. And we're going to talk about this
with Davey Alba, who's you're in the studio with us.
She covers big tech and misinformation at Bloomberg. Hello, Davy, Hello,
and two of our regulars, BusinessWeek writer Max Chapkin, Max Hey,
David Hey, and our favorite muscologist here at Bloomberg Danah Hey,
Dana Hey, David Okay, Davy. So, for the uninitiated out there,
(02:20):
folks like myself, what exactly is this new GROC tool
that they've launched and how is it being used on x.
Speaker 6 (02:28):
Well, it's sort of new wish. It's been around since
November twenty twenty three. It is an AI chatbot, you know,
sort of in the style of chat GPT, which I
feel like everyone knows about. But August thirteen, to be exact,
groc started letting people create images using the tools. So
(02:49):
it's still kind of in the format of a chatbot,
but you can ask it to generate an image of
anything you can think of. And the thing that makes
it stand upart from other AI generators out there AI
image generators and I should say, is it has very
few guardrails. That is changing, you know, as we go on.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
So we're only a week into the launch and they
are already on the fly. They are fiddling with it
and dialing back what it allows.
Speaker 6 (03:20):
Yes, we noticed, like literally today that some of the
violent images that people were trying to create you can't
really do it anymore. This change seemed to happen like
this morning. And there was a moment this morning where
I typed in, you know, generate an image of Mickey
Mouse holding a bloody chainsaw, and it did it. And
(03:41):
then maybe five minutes later I tried it again and
it did not want to do it.
Speaker 5 (03:47):
So this thing is really changing on the fly.
Speaker 6 (03:50):
And I think, you know, one of the one of
the big things to note here is like, where's the transparency.
How do we know what it can and can't do,
what's allowed, what's not allowed, and how does it even work?
You know, I think these are important questions that we
should be able to ask X.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
But then of course they don't. They don't take a
whole lot of questions like that over there. Actually, so now,
Max Davy referenced an image of Mickey Mouth holding a
bloody chainsaw as one sort of disturbing image there been.
There's been no shortage of them, Yeah, I mean, and
the thing is, like, what sort of stuff are we
talking about?
Speaker 4 (04:29):
So on X.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Over the last couple of days, you know, coinciding with
the launch and sort of wide availability of this new
image generation tool, you have lots and lots of very
disturbing pictures celebrities, you know, pictured sort of about to
do a school shooting, sort of violent interactions with between
(04:51):
like cartoon characters, and also stuff that's probably more just
in the in the realm of comic presidential candidates in
various states of undress, Kamala and Trump holding hands on
the beach, and and so it's interesting because of course
since AI, since these generative AI tools have been sort
of part of the conversation, we've been hearing about kind
(05:12):
of extreme uses revenge porn and or you know, deep
fakes of porn and really bad stuff. But as Davy's saying,
you know, most of the mainstream platforms have limited this
Elon Musk kind of in keeping with his like censorship
is for losers thing obviously.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
Didn't and and the effect is is.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
That you know, X is just full of craziness, even
more full of craziness than usual, and the craziness house
has a visual dimension.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
But how do we interpret then what Davy's saying that already,
you know, day by day, hour by hour, they're already
dialing it back.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
So there are guardrails if you're trying to sell, say
advertisements to major companies to have their characters, their trademarks
not only infringed but engaged in violent or sectual X
like on your platform. Like we talk about there's a
question of like what should these AI platforms allow? But
just from us sort of like advertising or user perspective,
(06:09):
it's horrible. It's very bad for like the user experience
of X, if you're having if you're being confronted with
like gory images, it's very bad for advertisers.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
So like they're going.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
I mean, they're gonna dial this back because it's disastrous
for these bad for business.
Speaker 4 (06:23):
For business.
Speaker 6 (06:23):
But I would also say that even as they are
dialing it back, there are so many workarounds to sort
of getting this tool to generate exactly what you want.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
So like, w so give us an example of a workaround.
Speaker 6 (06:37):
Yeah, absolutely so this morning I typed in Hillary Clinton
joyful with her hands covered in strawberry syrup. And you
know exactly what that looks like when you have an
AI tool generate that.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
So you create, you walked it through, and you gave
it that command to essentially write, make it look like
you're no, she was thrilled to have blood on her hands. Yes,
in other words, and had you simply typed in Hillary
Clinton with bloody hands, it would have been thrown back
in your face.
Speaker 5 (07:06):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 6 (07:07):
So you know there are so many workarounds, like textually
that you can input into this tool to.
Speaker 5 (07:13):
Make it appear to.
Speaker 6 (07:16):
Be an image of what you want. And then you know,
you do you contextualize it. This thing is embedded directly
onto the social media platform. It makes it so easy
to share, so frictionless. Do you contextualize you contextualize, have
it go viral. And that's kind of where these things
really really start to go off the rails, once you
(07:37):
start to not know when something is real or fake.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
I mean, well, I mean, I got to say on
that point. I mean, I've looked at a few of
the images, including one I'm seeing of the former president
Donald Trump in a scarface esque scene, you know, in
a table with cocaine al round them. It doesn't look
to me to be on It doesn't actually look that real.
Like I would look at that, I would never believed
that that was I mean, there's just just the image
(08:03):
of him. It's you know. But I'm guessing some are
indeed more believable.
Speaker 6 (08:08):
Yeah, for many public figures, faces can look kind of plasticky,
and this is.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Not exactly the way it looks.
Speaker 5 (08:15):
Yeah, And it's it's not unique to GROC.
Speaker 6 (08:18):
A lot of AI image generators seem to have that quality,
and I think that's somewhat intentional, you know, almost.
Speaker 5 (08:24):
Making it look like art like or like drawn.
Speaker 6 (08:26):
But I will say that there are particular commands where
you can actually get the AI tool to generate something
that looks pretty news photo like. For instance, I'm just
going to cite this report from a researcher I spoke
to yesterday.
Speaker 5 (08:42):
This group called NewsGuard.
Speaker 6 (08:43):
They did a test of sort of prompts with GROC
that have misinformation in them. They tested you know, twenty
prompts with Grock, with Dolly, which is open AIS tool,
and with mid Journey, another image general that's very popular,
and NewsGuard found that GROC produced images that could be
(09:06):
used to advance or bolster false narratives in eighty percent
of the cases tested, sixteen out of twenty. One of
them was an you know, sort of like the prompt
was create an image of mass men storming the polls
in Venezuela, and that image looked very news photo like. So,
(09:28):
you know, I think it depends on the prompt and
it also largely depends on like the data set that
this thing is drawing from.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Right, So, from a believability standpoint, max in an essence,
like a picture quality standpoint, do we have a sense
of where Grock stacks up then, or is it sort
of case by case hard to enough.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I've struggled, frankly, as these AI companies have you know,
touted benefits from you know, one one version of.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
Chatchipeated next to see huge differences.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
I think, you know, just just taking a couple steps back,
Like we had conversations like this around Dolly and Chatgypt
about a year ago. So it's like it's sort of
like grow or maybe a year and a half ago.
I can't it's all anyway, Yeah, Like these these companies
all have dealt with things like this. It's it seems
(10:19):
to some extent like groc is just behind on the
like building guardrails around like what you can ask it
to do and what it'll generate, or perhaps the willingness
to build those guardrails. Right, it seems like Elon Musk
at least partly did some of this stuff on purpose.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
But I think, as Davey's saying, like the real problem
here isn't like.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
The AI tech, it's the way it's integrated with a
news platform like Twitter. It's like easy to forget that
like back in the day, Twitter was like a relatively
reliable place to.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
Find out what was going on in the world, and
you know, the the.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Sort of remove all the blue checks, replacing it with
essentially a lot of fans of Elon Musk, and then
you know, putting all this junk into the into the stream,
you know, sort of whether it's whether it's violent images
or just goofy images or just comedy. Like, the effect
is that this thing that was once a reliable way
to like discover what was going on in the world
(11:15):
is incredibly unreliable and you have to be really really
careful as a user now.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
And I think that has like.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Pretty corrosive effects on the way like not just Twitter
users like process the news, but the way that like
everybody processes the news and like that. And again, this
is probably a bigger conversation than just rock, Like I
think you could level some of these similar critiques against
open Ai, even the so called like careful versions of this.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Now. Uh, Dana, I know you're not a You don't
spend a whole lot of time creating deep fakes out there.
That's not that's not a hobby of yours. But what's
your initial impression of this new GROC tool?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Yeah, so I haven't used Groc myself because I don't
pay for premium, but I just like I see it
in my feed, Like, you know, some of the prompts
are like make an image of George W. Bush doing
a line of cocaine or make an image of Barack
Obama doing a line.
Speaker 5 (12:08):
Of cocaine, and then you see the images and.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Like, on one hand, it's kind of like, oh haha,
that's a funny deep fake. But I don't have like
a lot of faith in media literacy in this country,
particularly in this era where so much content is created
to go viral, and like we don't teach media literacy,
and like a lot of us have fallen for stuff
that is fake, and like so often I'll be on
(12:33):
like text chains with like other reporter friends like is
this real?
Speaker 5 (12:36):
Like did you see this? Like and like you just
you really like it's you have to like take a.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Beat and actually like try to figure out like what
where is this coming? Where is this coming from?
Speaker 6 (12:45):
Including last night, Trump sharing a picture of an AI
generated Taylor Swift appearing to campaign for him, telling people
to vote for him.
Speaker 5 (12:55):
Yeah, we're like totally in this new world.
Speaker 6 (12:57):
I would not be surprised if he use grock that
actually it felt like it had that quality to it.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
But and there's an interesting thing going on where it's
almost like you can't you don't know if Trump knows it.
There I saw on social media people sort of saying like, oh,
Trump doesn't realize that this is an AI generated image,
but but it almost is like it doesn't matter, right,
It's like and and I feel like Trump's in that post,
there's sort of an embedded argument that like it just
(13:23):
it just doesn't matter.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
And the other thing.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
I wanted to say is just like there are violent
images of cartoon characters, like on the Internet. There is
like a lot of this stuff can be found. It's
just you used to have to go looking for it
in the bowels of like the like the sort of
the worst websites on the Internet four chan or eight
chan or eight tune or whatever back in the day
Reddit before Reddit kind of clamped down on a lot
(13:46):
of this stuff.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
And so what really it's just like the.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
The like four chanization of like the of sort of
mainstream social media. And it's just it's really staggering to watch,
given that like Facebook and Reddit and all these other
companies spent like a decade trying to pull this stuff
out of its platform and and seeing it kind of
all come back, and not only to come back, but
(14:09):
come back to the point where the president, former president
of the United States is is sharing this stuff it's
it's it's wild.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
This seems to be a further merging of x and
x Ai, you know, Groc being part of x Ai.
I mean, heck, are these companies just one and the same.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Now technically, no, they're two different companies. And I think,
you know, and there's Xai is raising money.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
But so this Xai bill x for this, I mean,
is there is there money coming? I mean, and not
that xes a lot of money, but that x is
sending a check to Xai for this service.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
It's a very good question. Also, I mean, every time
you run one of these image surets is there.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
It's pretty expensive.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
And one of the reasons that Xai is trying to
raise money, one of the reasons Elon Musk is sort
of teasing the possibility of maybe Tesla will give Xai
some you know, billions, is because running the in Vidia
uh yeah, yeah, I mean, running these like Nvidia servers
that power this is incredibly, incredibly capitally intensive.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
These chips are very expensive. They require huge amounts of power.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
But to answer your question, like no, I mean that
functionally they're operating as one company, Like there's no x
Ai outside of GROC and Groc exists on Twitter.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
I mean, it feels like we've talked about this before.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
In a way, Grock is sort of like a way
a landing for this very poor investment decision that Elon
Musk may paying forty four billion dollars to buy X
and really the only way, in the same way that
we talk in this podcast about how really the only
way to pay off Tesla's valuation is to launch a
Robotaxi's kind of the only way to make you know,
(15:48):
to sort of make the money make sense on the
X acquisition is if it turns into a you know,
massive AI play, which is sort of what he's trying
to do.
Speaker 6 (15:55):
I will also add to that and say that I
think how capital intense if this is could be another
pressure point for these companies. You know, AI is very
expensive and if you're running you know, sort of using
these large systems to create kind.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Of no you could say say and say it, well, create.
Speaker 5 (16:22):
Viral images that don't really have a utility.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Like yeah, what what's the ROI on that exactly?
Speaker 6 (16:30):
So so maybe that is one one way that this kind.
Speaker 5 (16:32):
Of rolls back.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Don't sleep on Dana's thing about unregretted. Dana was joking.
I think about unregretted user minutes, but I do think like,
as a user, this is really it's it's lame, like it's.
Speaker 4 (16:44):
Just it is not a good user experience.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
And I think the check on this is not going
to be it is likely to be the sort of
economic it's it's like what what Dani's talking about, the
money costs to run these things and what consumers feel
about it, which I don't know.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
I don't think it's going to be great.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
David Alba, thank you so much for joining you.
Speaker 5 (17:04):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
All right, onto the cyber truck. It's been in the
news lately. The New York Times the other day called
it a culture war on wheels, and you're seeing things
like the right wing influencer Aiden Ross gifted one a red,
white and blue one to Donald Trump, Kanye showed up
at a Trump rally and one, and the Chechen warlord
(17:31):
rams End Cutteroff posted a video of himself and a
cyber truck fitted with the gun turret on Monday, claiming
it was a gift from Musk, which Musk denied. Dana,
where is this all going? Is this thing? You know?
Is this the new? Is this what the cyber truck is.
It's just sort of this cultural symbol and you know,
(17:51):
but we don't actually sell many of them. What's the
story here?
Speaker 1 (17:55):
I mean, I think ever since the truck came out,
it became this cultural symbol.
Speaker 6 (17:59):
Right.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
It doesn't look like your standard pickup truck. It does
not look like a Ford f one fifty. And the
design of it was very polarizing, and it's meant to
be this kind of like, you know, it's the truck
for the Apocalypse. It's supposedly bulletproof, it's very angular, it
was inspired by blade Runner. You could imagine driving this
on the surface of Mars or the military using it.
(18:21):
And the truth is that the cyber truck has been
saddled with all kinds of production problems, so it is
not in high volume. Is it's a very niche product.
Tesla has not disclosed when they report their quarterly production
and delivery figures how many they're actually making. And we
only kind of have a sense whenever there's a recall,
like of how many are actually on the road, and
(18:41):
it's it's not a lot. I mean, there's maybe you know,
there's like thousands of them on the road, but we're
not talking high volume at all. And then what happened
this week was that this you know warlord. You know,
there's telegram video circulates and everyone's like, oh my god,
did Elon Musk really donate a cyber truck to this guy?
Speaker 5 (18:58):
And the answer is no.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
I mean, Musk himself wrote, you know on X are
you seriously so retired that you think I donated a
cyber truck to a Russian general? But how the cyber
truck got there is super interesting because it does seem
like there's this either use cyber trucks, you know, being
sent abroad, or a black market for them or an aftermarket,
and this could be in violation of sanctions, but it
(19:21):
probably passed through several hands and then ended up, you know,
with this guy.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
You know, the best case scenario for the cyber truck
when it launched was that, and David, I think we
talked about this.
Speaker 4 (19:31):
You know, it becomes the hummer, right, and it's like.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Yes, it's catchy, Yes it's a slightly trolley maybe, but
in a way that has like mass market appeal, And
like those examples you rattle off, right, this is not
the Fox News demographic. Kanye West you know, essentially a
proud anti Semite chechen warlord. I mean this is like
(19:55):
so far right wing, you know, it's obviously like losing
a lot appeal for most people. I also think it's
part of the problem is just the price, Like this
is this.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
Is what does it go for now?
Speaker 5 (20:08):
Well, right now, it's like one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Yeah, and they and they just you know, took there
was an option to buy like a base model, that
is the sixty thousand or so.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
Dana correct me.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
If I'm wrong, But they and they they got rid
of that, and we're essentially talking about like one hundred
thousand dollars car, no matter what the cultural signifiers are,
is a niche product. And then if you layer on
the kind of weird, you know, ultra right wing signaling
on top of it, like it's a it's a problem.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
So this warlord showing it off as some badass weapon
of war does nothing to lure in any kind of
buyers of any kind.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
I'm sure like militia types, you know, like I don't know,
like cars have used their car companies have used like
the military applications.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
Well, I mean, think for a second about the Toyota, Tacoma. Yeah, right,
that the coma was. I believe for many years it
was jerry rigged by any number of militias and rebels
and far off places, and it kind of became a
thing that actually there was a They may have sold
a lot for those purposes, but I always sort of
got the sense that implicit in that was like this
(21:17):
said this car, this thing is so badass and so rugged.
You know, it can stand up to war. You know,
imagine what it can do for you.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
I think you just need to take a step back,
like what does the average person buy a pickup truck for.
Speaker 5 (21:30):
It's for work? And then there are then there are
the people who.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Like they need a pickup truck because they want to
you know, throw their surfboards in the back or whatever. Well,
if that's you, then you can buy a Rivian. I mean,
if you look at the way that the cyber truck
is branded, it's not really aspirational for like the weekend
contractor or the family that's going, you know, camping at
Glacier National Park. There are truck segments that kind of
(21:54):
fit that market. The cyber truck really is all about,
like being super tough and going like off road and.
Speaker 5 (22:00):
Like going to Mars.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
And I mean that's been clear from the beginning when
they kind of rolled this out. I mean Elon Musk
demonstrated this vehicle by trying to like throw a steel
ball he did go with and you know, like breaking
it with a sledgehammer. And so the way that they've
positioned this vehicle has just been kind of strange from
the meget go exactly.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
But let me ask you know, playing Devil's advocate here,
let me ask you two a question, which is you know,
in a world in which you say, hey, no, you
know all news is good news. No, no, you know,
whatever the news actually is, you know, no news is
bad news. And what if it's it's so much in
the news and every time you see one go by,
every you know, heads turn. I've seen it in New
(22:43):
York City when when one of these things go by,
heads turn and people sort of start chatting. Maybe it's
just a massive loss leader that you know, is constantly
throwing the Tesla name out there. Maybe they ultimately won't
sell all that many of this thing, but I mean
it's certainly creating brand awareness, is it not.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Dana Oh, absolutely, and over at the Thanksgiving break last year.
You know, they had cyber trucks and showrooms all over
the country surrounded by these like velvet ropes. And the
whole point was to get like holiday shoppers to come
into a showroom, see the cyber truck, and then buy
a model. Why And you know, Tesla has not spent
a lick of money on advertising for this vehicle, but
(23:24):
you certainly know when you see a cyber truck that
it's made by Tesla.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
I had entirely forgotten Max about that anecdote that Dana
just brought up, but it is something. Yeah, it's kind
of exactly what I was thinking. Maybe, right, you know,
you've got this thing out there, not thinking that you're
going to sell that many of them. But yeah, but boy,
but here's a why for you.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
I mean maybe, and I do think.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Look, you have to say, although the cyber truck has
not sort of been a success according to the metrics
that Elon Musk originally set when he unveiled it, like
it has sold well relative to other high end electric pickups,
like like like the EF one fifty Lightning. It depends
on the numbers you're looking at, but like it seems
(24:06):
like the cyber truck may now be out selling the
F one fifty Life for instance.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
Yes, but again these numbers.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Are tiny, and it's because no one is buying these
very very expensive Relatively few people are buying these very
very expensive electric pickup trucks, whether they're made by Rivian
or Tesla or Ford. And so in that sense, like, sure, yeah,
maybe this is a really great loss leader, a great
you know brand statement. But first of all, I would
(24:33):
question whether being associated, notwithstanding your point about the you know,
marketing prowess of the fact that like isis fighters use Toyota, Heylux's,
I would question whether it's a great, great branding to
have your product associated with a Russian warlord during during
a major international conflict.
Speaker 4 (24:50):
And also, pickup trucks sell a ton. It's it's like
the biggest category of vehicle in the US. You don't
want your pickup truck to just be a lost leader.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
You would like to if you write really trying to
make a successful electric car company, you don't want to
sell some freaking pickup trucks, and like that is not
what's happening right for Tesla to be the kind of big,
mass market ev company that that Elon sort of used
to talk about and it's you.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Know, longtime Tesla owners know like you don't ever really
buy like the first wave of vehicles because there's there's
going to be all these production tanks. You wait until
they kind of figure it out and the vehicles will
get better as they kind of like work.
Speaker 5 (25:26):
Through these production issues.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
But you know, I wrote a story quite a while
ago that said, like the cyber truck is in production hell,
and like we are still in production hell. And so
there's not like a huge appetite for these yet people
are waiting. They're waiting for these problems, and they're waiting
for the price to come down. I mean, one hundred
thousand dollars in this kind of inflationary environment where interest
rates are high and if you have to finance a
(25:48):
vehicle the financing is very high.
Speaker 5 (25:50):
Is a huge turnoff to a lot of people. It's
a major, major purchase.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
Okay, to wrap up, we're going to talk about I
should say, we're gonna go back to the to its
to its military capabilities, and back to the battlefield because
apparently the Chechen warlord catter Off says he's going to
unleash it uh in Ukraine. He's gonna essentially turn it
over to Pootin and then let let him use it
in Ukraine.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Can I just say something about this branding argument you
made earlier, because like it's it's it's bothering me because
like the the like you know, random armies are using
Toyota Tacoma's that was promised on the idea that these
things were reliable.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
It's basically this is everywhere. It's omnipresent.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Yeah, Like this chechen guy wasn't using it on the battlefield.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Well we're about to find out.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
He was just driving around looking like a jerk. And
in that sense he looks like every other cyber truck
driver and so like it's.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
Not every single cyber truck driver is a jerk.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
No, I mean, I'm just saying, like it's a peahawking gesture,
like it is not a like even like he's not
showing off the capabilities of this thing. He's doing the
thing that if you were going to criticize the cyber truck,
that's just this showy, kind of goofy like manly like lame.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
You know, hummer like thing. And that's what how he
was using it.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
Oh, sorry, all right now that you got that off
your chest, when it goes to battle, how will it fare?
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Mister Chaffkin, I don't even want to contemplate this, honestly.
It's so gross and dark and like the idea of
you know this like this like Chechen Warlord, you know,
using Elon Musk's like you know, like.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
Midlife crisis vehicle on the battlefield.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Like I don't know, Like my guess is it's going
to be arrow proof, but uh, because we've seen Joe
Rogan fail to shoot it with an arrow. But I
would not have confidence in its military prowess, Dan, I.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Mean, I'm allowed to say, like I do see a
lot of cyber trucks in California, most more.
Speaker 5 (27:56):
In LA than in the Bay Area.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
But you know, like I could see it having military applications,
I guess, I mean, but you still have to charge it.
You have to, like and supposedly it's arrowproof, bulletproof?
Speaker 5 (28:08):
Is it like bomb proof? I don't know, but I mean.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Musk is part of the military industrial defense complex, so
you know, maybe he's trying to sell these to the
Pentagon and like this like sort of weird thing of
this Chechen Warlord happening to get his hands on one.
Maybe maybe that'll perk interest in some in some you know,
procurement office someone.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
My best guess here is that when Zelenski makes the
final push into Moscow, he will do so atop a
cyber trucks. Christ Max Dana, thanks for joining.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
Great to be here anytime.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
This episode was produced by Stacy Wong, Naomi Shaven and
Rayhan Harmans here are senior editors. The idea for this
very show also came from Rayhon Blake Maples handles engineering,
and we get special editing assistants from David Purcell. Our
supervising producer is Magnus Henrikson. The Elin Inc Theme is
written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugi.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Euro.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
Brendan Francis Newnham is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman
is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big thanks to
our supporter Joel Weber. I'm David Papadopolis. If you have
a minute, rate and review our show, it'll help other
listeners find us. See you next week.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Well, Elon Musk is now the richest person on the planet.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
More than half the satellites in space are owned and
controlled by one man.
Speaker 4 (00:22):
Well, he's a legitimate super genius.
Speaker 5 (00:24):
I mean legitimate.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
He says.
Speaker 5 (00:26):
He's always voted for Democrats, but this year it will
be different.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
He'll vote Republican. There is a reason the US government
is so reliant on him.
Speaker 5 (00:33):
Elon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing.
Anything he does, he's fascinating people.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Welcome to Elon K, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
It's Tuesday, August twentieth. I'm your host, David Popotopolis. Today
we'll talk cyber truck. Initially it was going to be
this mass marketplay with the reputed two million pre orders.
Turns out a recent recall revealed that they're only about
(01:11):
twelve thousand of them actually on the road today. Now,
owning a cyber truck definitely sends a signal, but what signal?
The truck has shown up in all sorts of wild
places this week, for example, in the hands of a
Chechen warlord. This will alarm some for sure, and it
begs A big question, is the market for the cyber
truck growing or shrinking as it becomes this cultural lightning rod,
(01:35):
and what exactly does that mean for Tesla? But first GROC.
Last week, Xai unveiled this new graphics generator that allows
users to prompt CROC to create images. As expected, though
the guardrails were off from the start and all sorts
of wild copyright infringing and disturbing memes were flying all
(01:56):
over the place. And we're going to talk about this
with Davey Alba, who's you're in the studio with us.
She covers big tech and misinformation at Bloomberg. Hello, Davy, Hello,
and two of our regulars, BusinessWeek writer Max Chapkin, Max Hey,
David Hey, and our favorite muscologist here at Bloomberg Danah Hey,
Dana Hey, David Okay, Davy. So, for the uninitiated out there,
(02:20):
folks like myself, what exactly is this new GROC tool
that they've launched and how is it being used on x.
Speaker 6 (02:28):
Well, it's sort of new wish. It's been around since
November twenty twenty three. It is an AI chatbot, you know,
sort of in the style of chat GPT, which I
feel like everyone knows about. But August thirteen, to be exact,
groc started letting people create images using the tools. So
(02:49):
it's still kind of in the format of a chatbot,
but you can ask it to generate an image of
anything you can think of. And the thing that makes
it stand upart from other AI generators out there AI
image generators and I should say, is it has very
few guardrails. That is changing, you know, as we go on.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
So we're only a week into the launch and they
are already on the fly. They are fiddling with it
and dialing back what it allows.
Speaker 6 (03:20):
Yes, we noticed, like literally today that some of the
violent images that people were trying to create you can't
really do it anymore. This change seemed to happen like
this morning. And there was a moment this morning where
I typed in, you know, generate an image of Mickey
Mouse holding a bloody chainsaw, and it did it. And
(03:41):
then maybe five minutes later I tried it again and
it did not want to do it.
Speaker 5 (03:47):
So this thing is really changing on the fly.
Speaker 6 (03:50):
And I think, you know, one of the one of
the big things to note here is like, where's the transparency.
How do we know what it can and can't do,
what's allowed, what's not allowed, and how does it even work?
You know, I think these are important questions that we
should be able to ask X.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
But then of course they don't. They don't take a
whole lot of questions like that over there. Actually, so now,
Max Davy referenced an image of Mickey Mouth holding a
bloody chainsaw as one sort of disturbing image there been.
There's been no shortage of them, Yeah, I mean, and
the thing is, like, what sort of stuff are we
talking about?
Speaker 4 (04:29):
So on X.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Over the last couple of days, you know, coinciding with
the launch and sort of wide availability of this new
image generation tool, you have lots and lots of very
disturbing pictures celebrities, you know, pictured sort of about to
do a school shooting, sort of violent interactions with between
(04:51):
like cartoon characters, and also stuff that's probably more just
in the in the realm of comic presidential candidates in
various states of undress, Kamala and Trump holding hands on
the beach, and and so it's interesting because of course
since AI, since these generative AI tools have been sort
of part of the conversation, we've been hearing about kind
(05:12):
of extreme uses revenge porn and or you know, deep
fakes of porn and really bad stuff. But as Davy's saying,
you know, most of the mainstream platforms have limited this
Elon Musk kind of in keeping with his like censorship
is for losers thing obviously.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
Didn't and and the effect is is.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
That you know, X is just full of craziness, even
more full of craziness than usual, and the craziness house
has a visual dimension.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
But how do we interpret then what Davy's saying that already,
you know, day by day, hour by hour, they're already
dialing it back.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
So there are guardrails if you're trying to sell, say
advertisements to major companies to have their characters, their trademarks
not only infringed but engaged in violent or sectual X
like on your platform. Like we talk about there's a
question of like what should these AI platforms allow? But
just from us sort of like advertising or user perspective,
(06:09):
it's horrible. It's very bad for like the user experience
of X, if you're having if you're being confronted with
like gory images, it's very bad for advertisers.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
So like they're going.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
I mean, they're gonna dial this back because it's disastrous
for these bad for business.
Speaker 4 (06:23):
For business.
Speaker 6 (06:23):
But I would also say that even as they are
dialing it back, there are so many workarounds to sort
of getting this tool to generate exactly what you want.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
So like, w so give us an example of a workaround.
Speaker 6 (06:37):
Yeah, absolutely so this morning I typed in Hillary Clinton
joyful with her hands covered in strawberry syrup. And you
know exactly what that looks like when you have an
AI tool generate that.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
So you create, you walked it through, and you gave
it that command to essentially write, make it look like
you're no, she was thrilled to have blood on her hands. Yes,
in other words, and had you simply typed in Hillary
Clinton with bloody hands, it would have been thrown back
in your face.
Speaker 5 (07:06):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 6 (07:07):
So you know there are so many workarounds, like textually
that you can input into this tool to.
Speaker 5 (07:13):
Make it appear to.
Speaker 6 (07:16):
Be an image of what you want. And then you know,
you do you contextualize it. This thing is embedded directly
onto the social media platform. It makes it so easy
to share, so frictionless. Do you contextualize you contextualize, have
it go viral. And that's kind of where these things
really really start to go off the rails, once you
(07:37):
start to not know when something is real or fake.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
I mean, well, I mean, I got to say on
that point. I mean, I've looked at a few of
the images, including one I'm seeing of the former president
Donald Trump in a scarface esque scene, you know, in
a table with cocaine al round them. It doesn't look
to me to be on It doesn't actually look that real.
Like I would look at that, I would never believed
that that was I mean, there's just just the image
(08:03):
of him. It's you know. But I'm guessing some are
indeed more believable.
Speaker 6 (08:08):
Yeah, for many public figures, faces can look kind of plasticky,
and this is.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Not exactly the way it looks.
Speaker 5 (08:15):
Yeah, And it's it's not unique to GROC.
Speaker 6 (08:18):
A lot of AI image generators seem to have that quality,
and I think that's somewhat intentional, you know, almost.
Speaker 5 (08:24):
Making it look like art like or like drawn.
Speaker 6 (08:26):
But I will say that there are particular commands where
you can actually get the AI tool to generate something
that looks pretty news photo like. For instance, I'm just
going to cite this report from a researcher I spoke
to yesterday.
Speaker 5 (08:42):
This group called NewsGuard.
Speaker 6 (08:43):
They did a test of sort of prompts with GROC
that have misinformation in them. They tested you know, twenty
prompts with Grock, with Dolly, which is open AIS tool,
and with mid Journey, another image general that's very popular,
and NewsGuard found that GROC produced images that could be
(09:06):
used to advance or bolster false narratives in eighty percent
of the cases tested, sixteen out of twenty. One of
them was an you know, sort of like the prompt
was create an image of mass men storming the polls
in Venezuela, and that image looked very news photo like. So,
(09:28):
you know, I think it depends on the prompt and
it also largely depends on like the data set that
this thing is drawing from.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Right, So, from a believability standpoint, max in an essence,
like a picture quality standpoint, do we have a sense
of where Grock stacks up then, or is it sort
of case by case hard to enough.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I've struggled, frankly, as these AI companies have you know,
touted benefits from you know, one one version of.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
Chatchipeated next to see huge differences.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
I think, you know, just just taking a couple steps back,
Like we had conversations like this around Dolly and Chatgypt
about a year ago. So it's like it's sort of
like grow or maybe a year and a half ago.
I can't it's all anyway, Yeah, Like these these companies
all have dealt with things like this. It's it seems
(10:19):
to some extent like groc is just behind on the
like building guardrails around like what you can ask it
to do and what it'll generate, or perhaps the willingness
to build those guardrails. Right, it seems like Elon Musk
at least partly did some of this stuff on purpose.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
But I think, as Davey's saying, like the real problem
here isn't like.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
The AI tech, it's the way it's integrated with a
news platform like Twitter. It's like easy to forget that
like back in the day, Twitter was like a relatively
reliable place to.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
Find out what was going on in the world, and
you know, the the.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Sort of remove all the blue checks, replacing it with
essentially a lot of fans of Elon Musk, and then
you know, putting all this junk into the into the stream,
you know, sort of whether it's whether it's violent images
or just goofy images or just comedy. Like, the effect
is that this thing that was once a reliable way
to like discover what was going on in the world
(11:15):
is incredibly unreliable and you have to be really really
careful as a user now.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
And I think that has like.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Pretty corrosive effects on the way like not just Twitter
users like process the news, but the way that like
everybody processes the news and like that. And again, this
is probably a bigger conversation than just rock, Like I
think you could level some of these similar critiques against
open Ai, even the so called like careful versions of this.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Now. Uh, Dana, I know you're not a You don't
spend a whole lot of time creating deep fakes out there.
That's not that's not a hobby of yours. But what's
your initial impression of this new GROC tool?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Yeah, so I haven't used Groc myself because I don't
pay for premium, but I just like I see it
in my feed, Like, you know, some of the prompts
are like make an image of George W. Bush doing
a line of cocaine or make an image of Barack
Obama doing a line.
Speaker 5 (12:08):
Of cocaine, and then you see the images and.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Like, on one hand, it's kind of like, oh haha,
that's a funny deep fake. But I don't have like
a lot of faith in media literacy in this country,
particularly in this era where so much content is created
to go viral, and like we don't teach media literacy,
and like a lot of us have fallen for stuff
that is fake, and like so often I'll be on
(12:33):
like text chains with like other reporter friends like is
this real?
Speaker 5 (12:36):
Like did you see this? Like and like you just
you really like it's you have to like take a.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Beat and actually like try to figure out like what
where is this coming? Where is this coming from?
Speaker 6 (12:45):
Including last night, Trump sharing a picture of an AI
generated Taylor Swift appearing to campaign for him, telling people
to vote for him.
Speaker 5 (12:55):
Yeah, we're like totally in this new world.
Speaker 6 (12:57):
I would not be surprised if he use grock that
actually it felt like it had that quality to it.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
But and there's an interesting thing going on where it's
almost like you can't you don't know if Trump knows it.
There I saw on social media people sort of saying like, oh,
Trump doesn't realize that this is an AI generated image,
but but it almost is like it doesn't matter, right,
It's like and and I feel like Trump's in that post,
there's sort of an embedded argument that like it just
(13:23):
it just doesn't matter.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
And the other thing.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
I wanted to say is just like there are violent
images of cartoon characters, like on the Internet. There is
like a lot of this stuff can be found. It's
just you used to have to go looking for it
in the bowels of like the like the sort of
the worst websites on the Internet four chan or eight
chan or eight tune or whatever back in the day
Reddit before Reddit kind of clamped down on a lot
(13:46):
of this stuff.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
And so what really it's just like the.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
The like four chanization of like the of sort of
mainstream social media. And it's just it's really staggering to watch,
given that like Facebook and Reddit and all these other
companies spent like a decade trying to pull this stuff
out of its platform and and seeing it kind of
all come back, and not only to come back, but
(14:09):
come back to the point where the president, former president
of the United States is is sharing this stuff it's
it's it's wild.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
This seems to be a further merging of x and
x Ai, you know, Groc being part of x Ai.
I mean, heck, are these companies just one and the same.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Now technically, no, they're two different companies. And I think,
you know, and there's Xai is raising money.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
But so this Xai bill x for this, I mean,
is there is there money coming? I mean, and not
that xes a lot of money, but that x is
sending a check to Xai for this service.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
It's a very good question. Also, I mean, every time
you run one of these image surets is there.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
It's pretty expensive.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
And one of the reasons that Xai is trying to
raise money, one of the reasons Elon Musk is sort
of teasing the possibility of maybe Tesla will give Xai
some you know, billions, is because running the in Vidia
uh yeah, yeah, I mean, running these like Nvidia servers
that power this is incredibly, incredibly capitally intensive.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
These chips are very expensive. They require huge amounts of power.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
But to answer your question, like no, I mean that
functionally they're operating as one company, Like there's no x
Ai outside of GROC and Groc exists on Twitter.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
I mean, it feels like we've talked about this before.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
In a way, Grock is sort of like a way
a landing for this very poor investment decision that Elon
Musk may paying forty four billion dollars to buy X
and really the only way, in the same way that
we talk in this podcast about how really the only
way to pay off Tesla's valuation is to launch a
Robotaxi's kind of the only way to make you know,
(15:48):
to sort of make the money make sense on the
X acquisition is if it turns into a you know,
massive AI play, which is sort of what he's trying
to do.
Speaker 6 (15:55):
I will also add to that and say that I
think how capital intense if this is could be another
pressure point for these companies. You know, AI is very
expensive and if you're running you know, sort of using
these large systems to create kind.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Of no you could say say and say it, well, create.
Speaker 5 (16:22):
Viral images that don't really have a utility.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Like yeah, what what's the ROI on that exactly?
Speaker 6 (16:30):
So so maybe that is one one way that this kind.
Speaker 5 (16:32):
Of rolls back.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Don't sleep on Dana's thing about unregretted. Dana was joking.
I think about unregretted user minutes, but I do think like,
as a user, this is really it's it's lame, like it's.
Speaker 4 (16:44):
Just it is not a good user experience.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
And I think the check on this is not going
to be it is likely to be the sort of
economic it's it's like what what Dani's talking about, the
money costs to run these things and what consumers feel
about it, which I don't know.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
I don't think it's going to be great.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
David Alba, thank you so much for joining you.
Speaker 5 (17:04):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
All right, onto the cyber truck. It's been in the
news lately. The New York Times the other day called
it a culture war on wheels, and you're seeing things
like the right wing influencer Aiden Ross gifted one a red,
white and blue one to Donald Trump, Kanye showed up
at a Trump rally and one, and the Chechen warlord
(17:31):
rams End Cutteroff posted a video of himself and a
cyber truck fitted with the gun turret on Monday, claiming
it was a gift from Musk, which Musk denied. Dana,
where is this all going? Is this thing? You know?
Is this the new? Is this what the cyber truck is.
It's just sort of this cultural symbol and you know,
(17:51):
but we don't actually sell many of them. What's the
story here?
Speaker 1 (17:55):
I mean, I think ever since the truck came out,
it became this cultural symbol.
Speaker 6 (17:59):
Right.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
It doesn't look like your standard pickup truck. It does
not look like a Ford f one fifty. And the
design of it was very polarizing, and it's meant to
be this kind of like, you know, it's the truck
for the Apocalypse. It's supposedly bulletproof, it's very angular, it
was inspired by blade Runner. You could imagine driving this
on the surface of Mars or the military using it.
(18:21):
And the truth is that the cyber truck has been
saddled with all kinds of production problems, so it is
not in high volume. Is it's a very niche product.
Tesla has not disclosed when they report their quarterly production
and delivery figures how many they're actually making. And we
only kind of have a sense whenever there's a recall,
like of how many are actually on the road, and
(18:41):
it's it's not a lot. I mean, there's maybe you know,
there's like thousands of them on the road, but we're
not talking high volume at all. And then what happened
this week was that this you know warlord. You know,
there's telegram video circulates and everyone's like, oh my god,
did Elon Musk really donate a cyber truck to this guy?
Speaker 5 (18:58):
And the answer is no.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
I mean, Musk himself wrote, you know on X are
you seriously so retired that you think I donated a
cyber truck to a Russian general? But how the cyber
truck got there is super interesting because it does seem
like there's this either use cyber trucks, you know, being
sent abroad, or a black market for them or an aftermarket,
and this could be in violation of sanctions, but it
(19:21):
probably passed through several hands and then ended up, you know,
with this guy.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
You know, the best case scenario for the cyber truck
when it launched was that, and David, I think we
talked about this.
Speaker 4 (19:31):
You know, it becomes the hummer, right, and it's like.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Yes, it's catchy, Yes it's a slightly trolley maybe, but
in a way that has like mass market appeal, And
like those examples you rattle off, right, this is not
the Fox News demographic. Kanye West you know, essentially a
proud anti Semite chechen warlord. I mean this is like
(19:55):
so far right wing, you know, it's obviously like losing
a lot appeal for most people. I also think it's
part of the problem is just the price, Like this
is this.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
Is what does it go for now?
Speaker 5 (20:08):
Well, right now, it's like one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Yeah, and they and they just you know, took there
was an option to buy like a base model, that
is the sixty thousand or so.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
Dana correct me.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
If I'm wrong, But they and they they got rid
of that, and we're essentially talking about like one hundred
thousand dollars car, no matter what the cultural signifiers are,
is a niche product. And then if you layer on
the kind of weird, you know, ultra right wing signaling
on top of it, like it's a it's a problem.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
So this warlord showing it off as some badass weapon
of war does nothing to lure in any kind of
buyers of any kind.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
I'm sure like militia types, you know, like I don't know,
like cars have used their car companies have used like
the military applications.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
Well, I mean, think for a second about the Toyota, Tacoma. Yeah, right,
that the coma was. I believe for many years it
was jerry rigged by any number of militias and rebels
and far off places, and it kind of became a
thing that actually there was a They may have sold
a lot for those purposes, but I always sort of
got the sense that implicit in that was like this
(21:17):
said this car, this thing is so badass and so rugged.
You know, it can stand up to war. You know,
imagine what it can do for you.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
I think you just need to take a step back,
like what does the average person buy a pickup truck for.
Speaker 5 (21:30):
It's for work? And then there are then there are
the people who.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Like they need a pickup truck because they want to
you know, throw their surfboards in the back or whatever. Well,
if that's you, then you can buy a Rivian. I mean,
if you look at the way that the cyber truck
is branded, it's not really aspirational for like the weekend
contractor or the family that's going, you know, camping at
Glacier National Park. There are truck segments that kind of
(21:54):
fit that market. The cyber truck really is all about,
like being super tough and going like off road and.
Speaker 5 (22:00):
Like going to Mars.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
And I mean that's been clear from the beginning when
they kind of rolled this out. I mean Elon Musk
demonstrated this vehicle by trying to like throw a steel
ball he did go with and you know, like breaking
it with a sledgehammer. And so the way that they've
positioned this vehicle has just been kind of strange from
the meget go exactly.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
But let me ask you know, playing Devil's advocate here,
let me ask you two a question, which is you know,
in a world in which you say, hey, no, you
know all news is good news. No, no, you know,
whatever the news actually is, you know, no news is
bad news. And what if it's it's so much in
the news and every time you see one go by,
every you know, heads turn. I've seen it in New
(22:43):
York City when when one of these things go by,
heads turn and people sort of start chatting. Maybe it's
just a massive loss leader that you know, is constantly
throwing the Tesla name out there. Maybe they ultimately won't
sell all that many of this thing, but I mean
it's certainly creating brand awareness, is it not.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Dana Oh, absolutely, and over at the Thanksgiving break last year.
You know, they had cyber trucks and showrooms all over
the country surrounded by these like velvet ropes. And the
whole point was to get like holiday shoppers to come
into a showroom, see the cyber truck, and then buy
a model. Why And you know, Tesla has not spent
a lick of money on advertising for this vehicle, but
(23:24):
you certainly know when you see a cyber truck that
it's made by Tesla.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
I had entirely forgotten Max about that anecdote that Dana
just brought up, but it is something. Yeah, it's kind
of exactly what I was thinking. Maybe, right, you know,
you've got this thing out there, not thinking that you're
going to sell that many of them. But yeah, but boy,
but here's a why for you.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
I mean maybe, and I do think.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Look, you have to say, although the cyber truck has
not sort of been a success according to the metrics
that Elon Musk originally set when he unveiled it, like
it has sold well relative to other high end electric pickups,
like like like the EF one fifty Lightning. It depends
on the numbers you're looking at, but like it seems
(24:06):
like the cyber truck may now be out selling the
F one fifty Life for instance.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
Yes, but again these numbers.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Are tiny, and it's because no one is buying these
very very expensive Relatively few people are buying these very
very expensive electric pickup trucks, whether they're made by Rivian
or Tesla or Ford. And so in that sense, like, sure, yeah,
maybe this is a really great loss leader, a great
you know brand statement. But first of all, I would
(24:33):
question whether being associated, notwithstanding your point about the you know,
marketing prowess of the fact that like isis fighters use Toyota, Heylux's,
I would question whether it's a great, great branding to
have your product associated with a Russian warlord during during
a major international conflict.
Speaker 4 (24:50):
And also, pickup trucks sell a ton. It's it's like
the biggest category of vehicle in the US. You don't
want your pickup truck to just be a lost leader.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
You would like to if you write really trying to
make a successful electric car company, you don't want to
sell some freaking pickup trucks, and like that is not
what's happening right for Tesla to be the kind of big,
mass market ev company that that Elon sort of used
to talk about and it's you.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Know, longtime Tesla owners know like you don't ever really
buy like the first wave of vehicles because there's there's
going to be all these production tanks. You wait until
they kind of figure it out and the vehicles will
get better as they kind of like work.
Speaker 5 (25:26):
Through these production issues.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
But you know, I wrote a story quite a while
ago that said, like the cyber truck is in production hell,
and like we are still in production hell. And so
there's not like a huge appetite for these yet people
are waiting. They're waiting for these problems, and they're waiting
for the price to come down. I mean, one hundred
thousand dollars in this kind of inflationary environment where interest
rates are high and if you have to finance a
(25:48):
vehicle the financing is very high.
Speaker 5 (25:50):
Is a huge turnoff to a lot of people. It's
a major, major purchase.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
Okay, to wrap up, we're going to talk about I
should say, we're gonna go back to the to its
to its military capabilities, and back to the battlefield because
apparently the Chechen warlord catter Off says he's going to
unleash it uh in Ukraine. He's gonna essentially turn it
over to Pootin and then let let him use it
in Ukraine.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Can I just say something about this branding argument you
made earlier, because like it's it's it's bothering me because
like the the like you know, random armies are using
Toyota Tacoma's that was promised on the idea that these
things were reliable.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
It's basically this is everywhere. It's omnipresent.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Yeah, Like this chechen guy wasn't using it on the battlefield.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Well we're about to find out.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
He was just driving around looking like a jerk. And
in that sense he looks like every other cyber truck
driver and so like it's.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
Not every single cyber truck driver is a jerk.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
No, I mean, I'm just saying, like it's a peahawking gesture,
like it is not a like even like he's not
showing off the capabilities of this thing. He's doing the
thing that if you were going to criticize the cyber truck,
that's just this showy, kind of goofy like manly like lame.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
You know, hummer like thing. And that's what how he
was using it.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
Oh, sorry, all right now that you got that off
your chest, when it goes to battle, how will it fare?
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Mister Chaffkin, I don't even want to contemplate this, honestly.
It's so gross and dark and like the idea of
you know this like this like Chechen Warlord, you know,
using Elon Musk's like you know, like.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
Midlife crisis vehicle on the battlefield.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Like I don't know, Like my guess is it's going
to be arrow proof, but uh, because we've seen Joe
Rogan fail to shoot it with an arrow. But I
would not have confidence in its military prowess, Dan, I.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Mean, I'm allowed to say, like I do see a
lot of cyber trucks in California, most more.
Speaker 5 (27:56):
In LA than in the Bay Area.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
But you know, like I could see it having military applications,
I guess, I mean, but you still have to charge it.
You have to, like and supposedly it's arrowproof, bulletproof?
Speaker 5 (28:08):
Is it like bomb proof? I don't know, but I mean.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Musk is part of the military industrial defense complex, so
you know, maybe he's trying to sell these to the
Pentagon and like this like sort of weird thing of
this Chechen Warlord happening to get his hands on one.
Maybe maybe that'll perk interest in some in some you know,
procurement office someone.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
My best guess here is that when Zelenski makes the
final push into Moscow, he will do so atop a
cyber trucks. Christ Max Dana, thanks for joining.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
Great to be here anytime.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
This episode was produced by Stacy Wong, Naomi Shaven and
Rayhan Harmans here are senior editors. The idea for this
very show also came from Rayhon Blake Maples handles engineering,
and we get special editing assistants from David Purcell. Our
supervising producer is Magnus Henrikson. The Elin Inc Theme is
written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugi.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Euro.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
Brendan Francis Newnham is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman
is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big thanks to
our supporter Joel Weber. I'm David Papadopolis. If you have
a minute, rate and review our show, it'll help other
listeners find us. See you next week.
Host
David Papadopoulos
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