More from The Code Conference 2023: all the news as it happens
Verge EIC Nilay Patel asked whether the company is as “dependent on Nvidia as everybody else.” Adobe’s Still didn’t answer the question directly, but she suggested the company needs more than one GPU partner.
“I would say we’re certainly using a lot of GPU server capacity,” she says. Of course, “Nvidia’s a great partner,” she caveats.
Free and paid Adobe users get credits to use its generative AI tools, Still says, because they don’t want someone to have to pick between buying an add-on or just making stuff.
I’m hearing a lot of “oohs” and “ahhs” from the crowd. A photographer in the front row is shaking his head in disbelief.
Now, he’s adding a cat. (Sorry dog.)
She’s on stage at Code 2023 — and already discussing the full launch of Photoshop on the web.
Yoel Roth said he said that to Elon Musk when he left the company. He’s rooting for CEO Linda Yaccarino, the current CEO of X — who will be speaking at Code in just a bit.
I asked him if there would ever be a platform that’s as culturally relevant as Twitter, now X. “I do hope somebody can capture that,” he said. “I hope they can do it better than Twitter.”
To CEO Linda Yaccarino: “Look at what your boss did to me,” he says, referring to Musk’s tweets opening him up to death threats. “I hope she is thinking about what those risks are and what she might face.
To Musk: “There are still people within Twitter who care about the platform, who care about making thoughtful, principled, data-backed decisions for Twitter’s users. Listen to them, give them space, don’t overrule them.”
Roth says he’s worried about the lawsuit trying to stop government agencies from working with platforms on moderation.
“It’s a chilling effect,” he said. Even with parts of the original ruling overturned, the communications haven’t started up again, he said. “The strategy works even when it loses in court.”
He sees a similar chilling effect happening across the tech landscape. “It’s what they’re doing to academics, folks working in government, to platforms themselves,” he says of people trying to stop content moderation.
At Code 2023, he noted that of all the VLOPs, TikTok hasn’t laid off members of its trust and safety team and that it continues to invest heavily in identifying inauthentic behavior. Not the answer I was expecting!
They started after Musk implied that Roth had advocated for sexualizing children — an obviously untrue statement.
Shortly afterward, his address was published online. “I had to sell my house. I had to move,” Roth said. “I bounced between a couple of different places for a few months and then lived in a temporary apartment for a while while I tried to figure out where to land next.”
Roth says there was “overwhelming pressure to change” the platform. “Maybe that pressure would prove to be positive in the long run. My experience was that it wasn’t,” Roth said.
He expected there to be constraints on what Twitter could strip away in terms of safety. But the company didn’t “behave rationally.” And so things have gotten worse.
That’s how Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, characterized the decision immediately after Elon Musk took over the company to change the logged out experience to the explore page.
Kara Swisher is interviewing him, ahead of X CEO Linda Yaccarino appearing at the end of the day.
Roth is a surprise addition — from what I can tell, Swisher added him into the schedule in the last 24 hours. Quick reminder: she doesn’t run this conference any more... but, you know, everyone still listens to Swisher.
Toner and Cotra both say they like this new method for slowing down AI development. Basically, companies have to “clearly state what capabilities [they’re] ready to deal with.”
If they’re not ready to handle something, they need to make sure their AI systems can’t do it. Cotra says what she likes about this method is it can “make you pause as long as you need to” to get AI safety right.
Platformer’s Casey Newton is moderating a conversation with Ajeya Cotra, senior program officer at Open Philanthropy, and Helen Toner, director of strategy at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.
Roblox CEO David Baszucki thinks people will be dating in Roblox, but at Code 2023, Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd doesn’t sound like a fan of that idea. “Maybe that is how people will originally connect,” she said, but noted that “I will be much more sad for humanity than myself if people just stop really meeting in real life.”
It uses AI to identify bird species, take photos of them, and organize the photos on your phone.
He compares it to real life Pokemon Go, which... kind of rules. I’m all in on birds now.
Bumble founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd told the audience at Code 2023 that she sees potential for dating apps throughout the various phases of a relationship, not just to meet new people.
Earlier this year, the company acquired Official, an app for couples to track relationships and stay connected.
Wolfe Herd says they’re “definitely on the roadmap.”
She says it’s important to do it responsibly, though, and focus on “never inundating the customer.”
“We do see a huge opportunity in advertising partnerships across the group,” she says. But the company still sees plenty of room to grow its current subscriptions business. “We don’t think the subscription model opportunity is nearly at its potential right now.”
Makes sense, given her plans for a high-priced AI tier.
Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder and CEO of Bumble, talked at Code 2023 about how the company is thinking about more pricey subscription tiers that would come with more features.
She declined to give an estimate on price — hopefully it’s not as high as Tinder’s $499 per month plan! — but she said how it could offer things like AI-powered features to help you find better matches.
Whitney Wolfe Herd envisions an AI coach — “certainly not launching tomorrow, but very realistic” — that you’d be able to tell everything you want out of a partner. It would then go and sync up with other users’ coaches and try to find a match.
Wolfe Herd:
So now instead of you having to swipe and match and chat with dozens of people, you could only talk to the three people who came back as qualified individuals for what you’re looking for. You could really use AI to supercharge compatibility.
