Google says AI

Happy Zelda release weekend to all those who celebrate.

First off, congrats to the person who managed to book Brian Chesky’s Airbnb room while it was briefly available. I’m sure he can’t wait to talk to you about org charts. And my condolences to whoever lost to Mark Zuckerberg on the jiu-jitsu mat.

I spent yesterday at Google’s I/O developer conference in Mountain View, where AI was of course the topic du jour. I have notes from being on the ground there. The other big news of the week is that Elon Musk has found his new CEO for Twitter. It’s probably not who you’d expect. But as I explain below, his likely pick makes sense.

Elon Musk says he has found a new CEO for Twitter and that “she” will start in a matter of weeks. It’s most likely going to be Linda Yaccarino, the current head of advertising and partnerships for NBCUniversal.

I wish I could say with certainty that it’s her, though the deal doesn’t seem to be totally done. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that she’s “in talks” for the job and Dylan Byers of Puck says Musk “plans” to give it to her. Unfortunately, her spokesperson is ghosting me and Twitter has resorted to responding to press inquiries with a poop emoji.

I do know, however, that Yaccarino has been angling for the job and telling friends she wants it. The advertising world is certainly gossiping that it’s her. She recently hosted Musk at her advertising conference in Miami for a gushing interview and has been tweeting up a storm, including about how excited she is for NBC to partner with Twitter for the next Olympics.

In his tweet today, Musk said that, once his mysterious new CEO starts in about six weeks, he will “transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops.”

That means his CEO will be almost solely focused on the business, which Yaccarino is certainly qualified for. She already runs a multi-billion-dollar ads business and is well respected among the cohort of CMOs who need to be convinced to spend on the platform again. Importantly, I’m told that she and Musk also see eye to eye politically.

“She’s tough as fucking nails and she’s always wanted this job,” a former colleague says. “It’s perfect.”

If I had to guess, the reason Musk didn’t announce the name is because of unfortunate timing on Yaccarino’s end. NBCU is slated to give its annual Upfront presentation to advertisers on Monday, which Yaccarino is apparently in rehearsals for today. Awkward!

As I arrived at Google’s Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View yesterday, my head was buzzing with the same question as everyone else: How will Google respond to the rise of ChatGPT and generative AI?

I sat behind a group of company execs and VIPs, including Jeff Dean and the former YouTube boss Susan Wojcicki, and I couldn’t help but think about the legacy Google is suddenly feeling the need to defend. The company turns 25 this year. Through a series of prescient deals and investments, it has become one of the most influential businesses in the history of the world. Throughout multiple platform shifts, it has remained dominant. It’s the Kleenex of search engines.

As has already been well documented by my colleagues at The Verge, there was plenty to announce at I/O this year, from upgrades to its Bard chatbot to generative AI summaries in search itself. (If you’ve used Neeva’s AI search features like I have, you will no doubt see the similarities.) What I found most interesting was not what Google announced, but CEO Sundar Pichai’s decision to make the company’s AI search experience an opt-in thing.

Google hasn’t given any information about how many people will be given access and on what timetable, but if reporting ahead of the event is to be believed, a max number of 30 million people will be let in by the end of the year, and access will be gated to the US. If Google really thought ChatGPT, Bing, or some other search startup was going to meaningfully eat at its business in the near term, such a gradual rollout doesn’t make sense.

After spending time with employees at various levels of the org chart yesterday, I’ve come away with the impression that Google feels confident in its position, even if it’s moving slower than its smaller rivals. There’s a buzz in the air there that hasn’t existed for a long time, especially for the teams working on AI in search and Bard. I’ve heard that Pichai and, yes, co-founder Sergey Brin have been personally weighing in on specific features.

There’s another reason Google can move slowly here: in the search business, distribution is king. And, at least for the foreseeable future, Google has unbeatable distribution that it pays handsomely to keep. Until that distribution (namely, the Apple search deal) is up for grabs, Google has the luxury of taking it slow.

As always with events like these, the most interesting conversations happen away from the mainstage. For the first time at I/O, Google hosted a series of private talks specifically for regulators, policymakers, and think-tank-types. While journalists weren’t allowed to sit in for these off the record discussions, people who attended told me there was an especially strong presence in the room from European regulators.

Given the EU’s aggressive stance on regulating generative AI, that isn’t a surprise. And as OpenAI’s experience with ChatGPT being briefly banned in Italy has shown, there’s an argument to be made that the current implementation of these AI chatbots could be in violation of GDPR. Perhaps that’s why none of the more than 180 countries Google announced are now gaining access to Bard belong to the EU.

Throughout the series of closed-door policy panels yesterday, I’m told that global affairs president Kent Walker and other Google execs fielded pointed questions about the company’s use of personal data for everything from large language models to ad targeting. Applying copyright law to generative AI was discussed but seemingly not a top concern for the room. Instead, most of the questions were about the use of AI as it relates to user privacy and safety. Regulators wanted to know how Google thinks about using sensitive data from both individual users and enterprise customers for its training sets. And during a talk dedicated specifically to AI and search, concerns were raised about showing harmful, AI-generated results for medical queries.

Google execs conspicuously reiterated that the company has used LLMs to help power search results for years, giving them an early lead on anticipating these kinds of issues. That may be true, but it remains to be seen whether Google can compete effectively and balance the concerns of the many regulators who are watching the company like hawks.

Towards the end of the day, I got to demo Project Starline, Google’s holodeck-esque video conferencing rig that I’ve written about before on The Verge. It was the first time Google had publicly demoed its latest, slimmed down Starline hardware, and given the praise I’d heard from people who tried earlier demos, I was excited to see it in action myself.

Andrew Nartker, the head of Starline, first greeted me in real life outside of the separate booths we entered to continue the conversation. Inside, we each sat in front of two large displays and kept talking for about 10 minutes. While the display itself was physically flat, it showed Nartker in 3D with an impressive level of realistic depth, fidelity, and low latency.

While I wasn’t allowed to record or take pictures, I can confidently say that Starline is one of the most impressive tech demos I’ve ever seen. At one point, Nartker reached out to me while holding an apple and asked me to grab it from him. I tried and half expected to feel it. The experience was that magical.

He told me that Google is focused on bringing the cost of deploying Starline down and already trialing it with some companies to get feedback on how it can be used the best in work settings. If the technology can be miniaturized and made cheaper over time, I have no doubt that it’s going to be a game changer.

“It seemed, by all accounts, a terrible business decision.” - A Delaware judge commenting on Block’s disastrous acquisition of Tidal, which a recent court filing shows was opposed by senior management but pushed through anyway by Jack Dorsey while he was on vacation with Jay-Z.

​​That’s it for this week. If you aren’t already subscribed to Command Line, you can do so here.

I’ll be back next Thursday. In the meantime, if you have any feedback on this edition or tips for the new Zelda game, let me know.