The AIs are officially out of control

When you ask an AI bot for an image of the Founding Fathers or a group of German soldiers from 1943, you expect... something. You probably don’t expect what Google Gemini has been delivering, which is a set of images that goes heavy on diversity and light on historical accuracy. And when you ask ChatGPT a question, you probably don’t expect total gibberish in response. It’s been a very strange couple of days in AI land, but it makes us wonder: what do we actually want from AI?

On this episode of The Vergecast, that’s what we talk about. We also talk about Reddit’s big AI training data deal with Google in the run-up to the company’s initial public offering. (Full disclosure: Reddit actually filed its S-1 paperwork right as we finished recording this episode. We’ll have lots more on Reddit’s IPO journey next week.) We also try to make sense of Google’s AI naming systems before deciding that’s just impossible.

After all the AI talk, it’s time for two lightning rounds! We talk Vizio TVs and Echo Hub tablets, Samsung audio systems, and Samsung TVs. We look at Apple’s new Sports app and its ultra-secure new messaging protocols and wonder just how many people are out there looking for $100,000 EVs.

If you want to learn more about everything we discussed in this episode, here are some links to get you started, beginning with AI:

• Google cut a deal with Reddit for AI training data
• Reddit is going public and inviting power users to invest
• Google apologizes for ‘missing the mark’ after Gemini generated racially diverse Nazis
• Google’s open-source Gemma AI models draw from the research behind Gemini
• ChatGPT spat out gibberish for many users overnight before OpenAI fixed it
• 2024 is a year of reckoning for AI

And in our gadget lightning round:

• Alex Cranz’s pick: Walmart to acquire Vizio in $2.3 billion deal
• Nilay Patel’s pick: Samsung details a host of audio upgrades coming to its phones, tablets, and TVs
• David Pierce’s pick: Echo Hub review: a simple, customizable smart home control panel

And in our non-gadget lightning round:

• David’s pick: Apple launches Apple Sports app with scores and betting odds
• Alex’s pick: Apple is already defending iMessage against tomorrow’s quantum computing attacks
• Nilay’s pick: Rivian says it is laying off 10 percent of its workforce as EV woes deepen