Property AI Report 079 - Pope Leo on 'Disarming' AI, Claude Opus 4.8 Drops & Music AI has a Big Week

Join Mal McCallion and Matt Goddard as they explore the latest in property market dynamics, AI innovations, and thought-provoking perspectives from voices like Pope Leo XIV. This episode dives into regulatory impacts, technological advances, and the future of AI in society and business, making it a must-listen for property professionals, tech enthusiasts, and curious minds alike.

00:00 - Weekly Property & AI Report Overview and Market Impact
 02:16 - Changes in Landlord Strategies Post Renters' Rights Act
 04:26 - Industry Shift: Institutionalisation of Lettings and Private Equity Roles
 09:02 - AI Market Developments: Claude Opus 4.8 & Hallucination Challenges
 12:26 - AI in Business: Automating Sales Progression with AI Tools
 15:54 - The Vatican’s Perspective: Pope Leo XIV’s AI Doctrine & Societal Implications
 20:32 - Latest AI Models: Mythos & the Return of Hallucinations in Claude
 25:02 - Predictions of AGI Arrival: Experts’ Timelines & Societal Impact
 27:03 - AI in Music: ElevenLabs’ Music Generator & Spotify’s AI Collaborations
 29:45 - Geopolitical Restrictions: China's AI Talent Controls & Global Tech Race
 31:13 - Elon Musk’s XAI: Tensions & Strategic Moves in AI Development
 32:40 - Bizarre Uses of AI: Resurrecting Voices of Deceased Pilots & Ethical Dilemmas
 33:58 - Google Omni & Future of Real-time Video Content Creation
 36:08 - Final Thoughts & Wrap-up

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hi everybody and welcome to the Property AI Report. This is your weekly digest of all things property and AI. Brought to you by me, Mal McCallion, and my good friend and co-host Matt Goddard. Matt, how are you this week? Warm. How are you, Matt? That is essentially that word, just all week long. It's been amazing. Very, very, very warm. But uh yes, we can't complain, right? Because it doesn't happen often enough.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

How was the heat on the way to Cardiff? Because I know you've had an exciting road trip for some AI initiative, aren't you?

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Yeah, so very fortunate to be invited to the Sovereign AI. So the government's um sovereign the calling sovereign wealth fund for AI. Um they launched in way off the Welsh element uh in Cardiff last night. So really good to get down there, meet some really amazing people doing some really amazing things in AI. Um and yeah, um got back very late last night and uh yeah, up bright and early to do this because we need to make sure people know what is happening with property and AI. So let us quickly, because this intro is going on, talk about our property news. All right, uh, property news this week. Um, big stuff about the impact of various things that that have happened in the lettings market, particularly. So landlords being far more selective about tenants now that the Renters Rights Act informed uh is in force, rental yield stabilizing um after a period of softening is is and more stories coming out. Again, I know this is something that's pretty uh pretty focused on. And Ben Beadles of the National Residential Landlords Association has been talking quite a lot about what the future holds.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

What's your take on this, Matt? I don't think there's a surprise around this, is there, in terms of landlords who have stuck in the market and have stuck with their their properties for for rents, being more selective around who they're allowed allowing in, given that now the it's gonna be harder for them actually to to move tenants on as and when they need to. Obviously, over the abolition of section twenty-one and the no-fault um evictions, you you're not just gonna take a punt with a view that actually at the point I can serve notice I will and I'll get the property back. And there's obviously a lot more stringent in terms of the grounds to get to get occupancy back. So of course, landlords are are gonna be a bit more selective and considerate when they're when they're doing that. I think it just puts a bit more pressure on the lettings agents, doesn't it, in terms of what that extra information means needs to be gathered for them. Do you do you think so, Mar?

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Yeah. Yeah, listen, so I was speaking to an agent um who was very focused on lettings in London, who runs a yes, bigger than 10 branch um firm. Uh and he was um being very, very down on the idea that essentially, you know, people who want to want to invest in the UK um aren't aren't choosing property anymore because it's just like it's just too much of a um, you know, just there's so much going on, it's too confusing. Um, you know, it literally said, you know, until Labour get out and reform come in in coalition, but then you know, not things are gonna change, and then reform's gonna end up like, you know, working really hard and trying to just fix stuff, and then it's gonna be waiting for the Conservative government to come in like in eight years' time, and that's gonna be when things go. I was just like, wow, that is uh that is some uh some advanced thinking. But yeah, it just feels like, you know, and I know that we we we periodically come back to talk about this, but I think it's so important. It's been such an important part of our industry for so long and relatively it it's it's been under fire for a lot of that time, you know, whether you look at kind of generation rent or you look at kind of you know the the actual um regulatory stuff that's come out uh potentially as a result of that sort of pressure. It just feels like it's uh you know it's it's gone. But that that idea of um you know actually um uh people wanting to have that um that that income, that that ability to provide you know for the private rented sector, um is is is is disappearing. Um and there are a few you know there are fewer professional landlords with multiple um uh portfolios um uh around. You know, the kind of guts of it is most of it is pretty gutted. Um and there is you know that there are relatively few uh few options kind of left. Um yeah, I I I think it's just just kind of like to flag it as you know, obviously our main story because that there have been few uh a few different kind of disparate parts of it this week. But I think you know, you roll it up, and again, you know, having talked to agents a lot this week about it, um, it just feels, you know, kind of what month in uh as as we've kind of looked at it and been able to kind of touch it and hold up to the light, then actually it's it it's kind of it it it's it's done a significant um chunk of of harm to availability of property, you know, people's good feeling about it, goodwill around it, and it is now just very much a almost like a kind of grind and a sort of teeth grit if you want to kind of get involved.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

Do you think do you think that's the case in in terms of like the smaller independents and the sort of maybe less than five branch agencies? But actually when you see the likes of LRG and Loam and these big private equity backed businesses who are buying up rent rolls and consolidating and creating these VMoths, mainly around the fact that you can you can put a a multiple against sort of the recurring lettings revenue. Do you think that means we're moving more towards like an institutional lettings industry rather than sort of the that you touched on it last week, I think, with the accidental landlords vacating the sector, but actually more of these these powers who get the economies of scales and and that's what's tipping for us. Like I always think of Germany where it's 50% of the population rents, roughly, are probably 55 or something like that. We're we're not like that because you know every person's home is house is their home sort of situation. That's sort of always been the UK approach. But actually, is is lettings gonna shift more towards that that thing? So I think it's even two or three months ago, obviously John Lewis had made a big noise a few years back about moving into lettings, and two or three months ago they backed away. Um but these huge conglomerations that's good words this time and more in of tenancies together. Is is that where the dial's shifting?

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Well, so so so I I I put that to to this agent yesterday, you know, again, significant presence in London, multi-branches right across the capital. And and they said no, you know, actually people there's this kind of belief that that the um that the properties are being bought up by other investors um to to kind of continue to let out. And he was saying they're all being bought by end users, all of them. He said end users, so so yeah, basically people who are moving into to live in them and buy them. So yeah, I I think there is a you know, if you go further out into to pass the the the rest of the country, you know, yes, I think that there are those that are they're being bought up, but I think it's a it's a percentage of it, it's not 100%. I think it is it is there is a chunk that is going out into the owner-occupier sector. And yeah, I I think that the acquisition, the LRGs, the Lowman's, you know, the the Dexters, all those kind of guys who are um scooping up all of these rent roles. Obviously that's with the plan, as you say, to get the multiples to to you know, in the end to to sell. But I do wonder, you know, actually how many of those are are permanent, because that there'll be landlords within those rent roles who are making decisions just like every other landlord's making decisions and thinking, this is too hard, I'll I'll I'll want to go. So there will undoubtedly be a kind of write down of some of those that they've acquired.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

That's because yeah, because that they just won't continue to be that recurring revenue anymore. I think. It's an it's an interesting one, and it's uh certainly I think it's a an education process. So some of the agencies, like Dexter's an example, went really early doors in restructuring for the Renters Rights Act. And maybe a lot of people are sort of sneering from the sidelines thinking, well, they've gone far too early, it's not all formalised. But we meant they were able to educate all of their hundreds of thousands of landlords in terms of what was happening. And some of maybe the positives for Texas or any letting agent is there's such a risk of compliance and raft of compliance that you can actually up people from let only to rent collect, and then from rent collect to managed, and actually that brings in its own revenue. And and then they're also educating about well, we can now start introducing rent reviews during the course of a tenancy. And if we do those section 13s and then initiate the rent review and and handle the tribunal process well, then there's a chance, Mr. and Mrs. Landlord, to get more income from it. And I think some of the forward-thinking lettings agents I've spoken to are seeing those opportunities. Yes, there's a whole host of pain, a bit like when you know the tenant fee bank came in and suddenly all those fees disappeared. People looked at, well, what what else can I bring in around that? And that's when rent insurance is starting getting sold quite heavily, and now you're getting rent guarantor products coming in because it's like, well, hold on, you're never going to be able to get rid of your tenant. It's the extreme view. That's where you need a rent guarantor product, and we can sell your rent guarantor products. Obviously, then there's the the sort of rent referral fee based around that.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

Yeah. So so I I do think there are opportunities, absolutely, but I do think that the any change to what has been stated, yeah. So if I'm a landlord and I've got you know one, two properties and it's been relatively stable, and then I'm like, you know, doing let only, and then now I'm kind of thinking, well, I've got to pay more for the let only, then I've got to go through a rent review, then we've got this, that, this, that, it just feels like hassle. Um, and that's that's kind of what a lot of I'm hearing is is actually that there are people just going, do you know what, like whatever it is, it's just too hard. Um, but yeah, so so so lots and lots going on um as a result of the you know, that's as we look back, you know, 28 days into the the Renters' Rights Act actually coming into play and and it seems to be you know having a significant um um downward impact on on the rental sector overall, but no doubt we will you know continue to look again, you know, a few months' time and see see what's happening.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

Although just to to settle the rent yield said it's actually softening, doesn't it? So so it's it has been declining, but maybe there is a a bit of a pivot. But yes, as you say, let's keep a watch in brief on it.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

Yeah, yeah, it's um it's there is much still to play out in that, I think. Right. We are just gonna dip back into the um right move court battle. Um last week we uh we were we were recording um about this time last Friday, just before Right Move responded to the um to the uh the the latest kind of dates being sent out about 2nd of November, 3rd of November, when the um uh when the tribunal is going to take place. Um and we said right move have been quiet. And then literally about 10 minutes later they went, we're gonna fight this to the to the end. You know, there's no merit whatsoever in this particular court case. Um and then there's been some interesting commentary this week, um, particularly from Graeme Norwood, a great journalist over in um Estate Agent Today, um, saying um that um it that it echoes the on-the-market controversy, you know, nostalgia fans, um taking it back to I don't know, 2015 or something like that, when the one other portal rule, OOPA, was great, wouldn't it? It was like one of those things that um that was introduced by um uh on the market at the time. The intention was that um agents had to choose between um either um uh right move and on the market, or Zupla and on the market. Unsurprisingly about 95% of them chose right move and on the market, so Zupla had a massive hit basically taken out of it, um, which it then has been I kind of ever since trying to build back up again. But yeah, Graham's point is is that essentially this kind of echoes that is there's a lot of noise. And what actually happened at the time that there was the court case, there was a court case um about the one other portal rule. Um and the tribunal just went, fair enough, you can do what you like. If you if you don't want to do it, then don't join on the market. It's it's simple. So whether actually this will be a similar kind of thing, you know, in terms of actually they're gonna look at the right move tribunal and go, Well, you kind of you chose to be on there, so it's up to you. Which obviously, you know, goes very much against the fact that this is a very dominant board. You know, it's got 70% margins, which suggests that the the market itself is slightly askew. But yes, Matt, uh the more commentary has come out since uh the the big announcement at the end of last week. Um, what's your take?

SPEAKER_00 11:14

The key point really is that mon monopoly point, isn't it? I was gonna go for monopolistic, which I covered there. But um better, yeah. Yeah, so you uh you have to be on right move, otherwise you're not gonna get stock. Whereas the on the market bit was a stage where they had a uh very little market share, right? And so having starred as agents together and brought out the portal and being backed by the state agents was one thing, but as you say, you could choose not to do it and just stick on right move. So yes, going to court and a portal is probably the most relevant to the story, but uh other than that, I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

No sure. Uh and just for um brand name fans, um, ages together obviously is the charity was very good. Agents Mutual was the thing that they did. Thank you. Yes. I wasn't thinking about which one it was. Yeah, no, but yes, but not Agents Giving either, which is another charity. Another one, absolutely, but yes, just Ages Together's amazing things and are still going. So uh right, on to sales progression. Um, so you know, again, we like to talk about um AI that has been uh that's having an impact in the market. And yeah, this is a a tool from um who um yeah of uh using this incredible AI to to basically um uh around uh to to take a chunk of time off uh the processing that they do. So yeah, Matt, I think this is something that you you have a little um bit of insight into. What's what's going on?

SPEAKER_00 12:27

So it's completely ASAP obviously do or not obviously necessarily do the sales progression, outsource sales progression for a lot of estate agencies, um and they've got some incredible sort of pipeline turnaround times compared to the rest of the market. But there's still quite a lot of administration within the business. So what we've actually done there, and I I do a a lot of work with uh Richard Tony and the and the team there, is actually looking at the inefficiencies in the business and the administration, but also not just looking to try automate the life out of it because of the fact that a lot of it is the human touches, the people speaking and dealing with individuals during that emotional time of like buyers, vendors, even the estates agents and conveyancers, so looking at where the where the efficiencies can come from, the very, very, very manual processes. Um an amazing part of it was we found that 40% of incoming memos to say here's a deal, we need you to start progressing for us, were actually handwritten and the information was contained outside of CRMs. So it's a case of the pipeline, the pipeline was just scribbled down on the on the back of an offer form, or there's there's other information that's phone numbers and email addresses. And even I've seen so many examples where it'll have you know Mel McAlian in the bottom right of his email address and then a drawing to point at where the email address actually is, and then they get scanned and emailed across and don't even hit the the CRM. So this idea of oh, we'll build an integration with a CRM and you can cover off all of them quickly yourself, or you can build with the likes of um the gang at Glue Dog, that information's just not there. So there's cases like what what and also an ethos of complete ASP is trying to make the the business not have to change the way they work and not say, oh, actually you now need to load all that into CRM that you've never done before, and then click this button that you've never clicked before to send us the detail. It's to sort of fit in with the way that the teams work already. So actually, rather than change the process of emailing a memo form, we look to actually that's a great situation where you can use AI to grab that detail, think about oh, that person's drawn an arrow to the email address, and then take that information and build it into the process and also build validation around it. So not just using AI for the sake of AI, because in a business like that where compliance is extremely uh heavy and and you want to make sure the details are correct, it's actually using AI at the right point, but then actually building in the the process and the deterministic codes to take the kitty um the detail to where it needs to be.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

Yeah, and then this I think is you know, for for those listening, um, whatever your business, this is the critical piece, is is actually AI that is almost kind of hyper-personalized for you and your business. There are you know that there's a load of things that you can plug in, but you know, starting to kind of understand what it is that's actually going to work for you is is really, really important. Um and yeah, look, I think what they've done there is an absolute classic of find something, find a loop, find find something that you that that's really annoying and actually doesn't is so obviously inefficient, and really kind of focus in on that and try and work through how you can use AI to fix it because yeah, it's it's those things that will prove to you and the team what AI is possible, uh, what it can do, and then that then leads on to some of the bigger, chunkier stuff. But yeah, no, I think that's uh that's really powerful um example of what uh what it can do. All right, that is our property news for this week. Let's go and sit quietly and consider our AI and tech news this week. Now, for those uh who are fans of religion and getting involved with AI, uh we have from His Holiness the Pope, Leo the Fourteenth, what he's called the Magnifica Humanita. That is essentially humanitas, which is um from the uh from the Holy See uh uh of his holiness Pope Leo the Fourteenth on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence. This uh so in cyclical letter, very rare, and basically kind of almost sets out, it's it's not quite a manifesto, but it's basically you know, very early on popes get uh get get the opportunity to kind of set out their stall. And uh Pope Leo has basically gone really, really hard into uh AI, you know, in terms of of how he sees it having a huge impact on humanity, society, etc. Now, he called himself Leo. They can choose whatever name they like, right, when they when they get um made Pope. Because there was if you were to be a Pope, what would you call yourself? Dave. There you go. Pope Dave, okay, Pope Dave I. Great. I think I can see our high dent coming together for this week's episode. Pope Dave. I feel like I've been the Pope already on the Hide Dent. Sorry, carry on with the news. Have you? Anyway, um so yes, so so essentially um the Pope is is out there, he's basically um given his views on AI. Um they're generally obviously privileging humanity over AI. There was a previous Pope Leo around the time of the Industrial Revolution. This guy is deliberately calling himself Pope Leo after the Leo from the Industrial Revolution because he sees AI as being very much akin to that moment in humanity when essentially everything changed and everything is going to change with AI. So he's very very much kind of set his stall out um as being you know pro-human, basically, you know, we and and the word that he used um was um that we need to disarm AI. Okay, so disarming AI, and and he said, you know, I know this sounds like really quite extreme, but but that's that's the thing we've got to do. You've got to make sure that it works for us, that it's not weaponized. So yeah, look, there's there's a kind of lot to unpack. He he was up on um, I'm gonna say stage, but it's probably an altar, um, with um with with one of the co-founders of of Claude, interestingly, you know, not Elon Musk, not Sam Altman, somebody from Claude, uh, from Anthropic, sorry, um, a co-founder, um, who was you know also talking about, you know, um basically AI for humanity. Um so it's it's caused a a bit of a splash because obviously, you know, 1.4 billion Catholics in the world, that's a big old chunk of um of humanity, and they that they get taught what the Pope says at church, you know, every every week. So yeah, I think this is going to have quite a quite uh quite an interesting impact. Uh Matt, what's your take?

SPEAKER_00 18:16

It's and on top of the points you made about Pope Leo, he's also the the first American Pope, right? And he's the first one who's actually using technology. So he's he's of an age where he's got an iPad, he wears an Apple Watch, he's watches cable TV. There's even questions being asked as to whether he wrote his manifesto, because I'm not going to try to attempt the fancy words, using AI. And who would be surprised that actually something from the Pope and with a little bit of a religious event has been quite uh sort of divisive? And I've seen seen articles from big news outlets using the content to skew their own way, and then and then others sort of reading it the way they want to read it, and then painting it as positive, reading the way they want to, and painting it as a negative. But actually, you know, in it's only a couple of weeks ago, the American government was talking about stepping in and slowing down the process of of AI releases, and actually it was Biden during his tenure had it in place where everything was going to be checked by the government before being released, and then Trump came in and got rid of that, and now they're looking to bring it back in. And so it it's it's interesting just to have that extra voice on top of it, and and this is something that the the popes do have the ability to issue on a on a regular basis, say it's his first one. So given he said during his candidacy, it's uh it's the papal piece, isn't it? Like it's he he was big into AI even then, wasn't he? Being called out as the AI Pope. So it'll be it's just another voice in the mix, and we'll have to see if I'm on the pods.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

And yeah, it does cast my mind back to to his predecessor, um, who was what was it, the Balanchega uh like big coat kind of stuff. And that was one of the first times that people had seen what was possible with AI and the kind of deep fake stuff. So yeah, it's uh it's interesting that um that yeah, our um the the popes have very much been at the cutting edge of uh of AI all the way through so far. So yeah, that is um uh food for thought, uh particularly for those um yeah, of a religious bent um as to to what where does AI fit into the kind of the whole theocracy and and uh theology, sorry, um in terms of uh yeah, what uh what it should do um versus humanity. Right. Next up is the big drop of this week in terms of product. It happened late last night as I was on my way back from Cardiff, and was I was very excited um and tasted back straight away. Uh Claude Opus 4.8 is here. It is pretty huge, it's pretty expensive. And uh Matt, it seems like hallucinations might be back.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

Yeah, exactly. It exists. I don't think we've heard of hallucinations for a fair while now, have we? Although actually, and and we have to remember we're in a bit of an echo chamber because people we speak to and listen to the pod are quite in engaged. And uh then and I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I was talking with a business where the the founder who was a developer and the CTO still were thinking of Gemini as being more in mind with Bard than sort of the the books that we sort of had blazing at trail through 2025. So not everyone necessarily knows the hallucinations have gone. I I heard another stat this week that obviously the majority of people who use Claude or use ChatGPT using the free versions, which are actually most of the time the older, dumbed down using your data to train the model sort of models. And even if you cast your way mine way, way way back to when DeepSeek first hit the uh hit the ground last year, it was the first publicly accessible reasoning model because most people hadn't discovered the O model in Chat GPT, right? So it was like we sort of think hallucinations back. It it may be that actually people are still dealing with that. So having done a quick recap, it's back. So so there's been teasers coming about Opus 4.8 for a little but while and and in our world that probably means like the last few days of sort of models appearing that look like a mythos. Light Mythos being the big groundbreaking model that's scared everyone and created Project Glass Wing. And there's even he didn't make our show notes, but there's been calls from both the UK government and European governments to allow them to be part of Project Glass Wing. Um and the number of zero-day bugs being fixed by companies is incredible. And it's like that's that's still not been released, but in the testing arenas, this mythos light started appearing. Whether that's 4.8 or not, we're not sure. But you I woke up to a message from you very excited on your drive back from Cardiff. I'm sure you sent it hands-free. I was in a train. Yeah, there you go, on a train. Um, so it's really brilliant and strong for Greenfield one-shot work in terms of you give it a prompt to build a website and it absolutely flies through and in terms of prototyping, but it's it's struggling with sort of the final 10%, it can't quite stick and land on the finishing. It's where it's hallucinating is on on bug hunting, and it's it's worryingly, it's really confidently wrong, which you can imagine is quite dangerous in existing code bases. And it's also not quite ambitious enough. There's there's things where with 4.7, you would say, Look, you've got my GitHub, you've got everything, you'd set all of that stuff up in advance. You'd so you'd prompt it and it'd go off and investigate things and say, Well, actually, in this project we've done X, Y, and Z and K some ideas. And and 4.8 doesn't seem to have that. You keep having to push it and be like, Hold on, we've covered this before, we've done that, and they're like, Oh, you're right, yes, here's that information, you know. I can now find that in GitHub.

unknown 23:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:35

So I don't know if maybe they've rushed it out, or if it's a case of uh, you know, no, that's ultimately yeah, have they rushed it out? So it's like, what's the situation? And as as you allude to, it's spending.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

Yeah, yeah, it feels like it's almost like a holding position until mythos comes out, you know. So basically they've they've got all this stuff and they're trying to release a safe version of mythos, and this kind of feels like this is the safe version that they've kind of stretched out a bit, but in trying to kind of dumb down mythos a bit, then they've probably dumbed down to to the point of having hallucinations. So it's better than 4.7, but it's obviously you know not as good as mythos, and it's kind of taking some stuff out. But yeah, I've I've been spending a lot of time this week um looking at um uh doing some clawed design um with with Opus 4.7, and like you said, it's amazing. Websites, so we've very soon you'll see a new modelprop um.ai website um that's been completely built with with clawed design, uh and and it's amazing and like it's so fast, it's insane. But uh, but yes, yeah, it it is good to see it out. Again, I I I don't know how deep this is going to go because mythos is gonna come soon because it kind of has to, it's it's been trailed for so long. Um, but uh yes, in the meantime, this feels like a bit of a holding pattern. Interesting to see. I haven't really had enough time to play around with it um because it was last night, but we will um continue to update as we get more and more stuff. I'm sure that it will trigger um some kind of response from OpenAI, some kind of further response from from Google uh and so on going forwards. All right, um, we shall hurry through some more um AI and tech news. Um we are quite fanboys of um of Demis Asabis um of Google Deep Mind. Um he's no world price winner, prize winner and uh and everything. He says AGI is three to four years away. So just to recap on these really annoying acronyms. Thank you. That was the word I was looking for. AI, obviously artificial intelligence, AGI, artificial general intelligence, uh, which is when uh AI is so smart that it can do most human things as good as humans can do them. And then there's ASI, which is um artificial superintelligence, which is when basically every AI can do things much better than the majority of humanity. AGI, Asabas says, is three to four years away. So yeah, set your alarms for around about 2030 to 2029. And yeah, basically AI will be doing stuff as well as you in most cases. So yeah, that feels um that feels pretty seismic, doesn't it? It does.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

And it's uh it's it's maybe kicking back from where people are saying it's it's sooner, right? There like there was predictions that we'd already have it by now, and there's talk of the singularity, which is a pretty scary concept to be in in the next few weeks at times. But um, it seems to be aligning though with other people. I think another co-founder of Open AI, Ilya, Skeva, I probably really hammered the name there, but um back in 2017 they were saying 2019 or 2021 for for AGI, which is still a couple of years apart. Uh but uh they sort of uh updated that saying like much, much more likely to be 2030 or up to 2045. So it feels a little bit like people just sticking the fingers in the air.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

It does say, and people can't really agree on what AGI is gonna look like either. Some people are saying we're pretty much there already, and other people are saying, yeah, as Hasabas is saying, yes, three to four years away. So look, and again, we always just say this go use this stuff. In some ways, it feels already a little bit better than I am at loads of stuff, like particularly coding and things like that. So, you know, from that perspective, it's not really about GI broadly, it's actually what is it gonna do for you and how well is it gonna be able to help you to achieve what your business and personal goals are. Let's dive a little bit into some music stuff. So um 11 Labs has launched a new music generation model, and uh you love it, don't you?

SPEAKER_00 27:03

I'm a big fan of music in general, right? And I always loved uh the old days of MTV's mashups where you could uh I you know I guess the first mashup that was absolutely not MTV was Run DMC and Aerosmith, right? Where uh the the read launched what this way and they've now done a a a version of 11 Labs music where you can switch genres midway through the uh through the song. And um there's it's not just 11 labs that are announcing things because I think 11 labs have made well make our our tool of the week. City's not looked to it, you definitely should be. But Spotify also made announcements this week, haven't they?

SPEAKER_01 27:36

Yeah, yeah. So that as you say, it's a big space and that there's a lot of stuff going on. So yeah, so so fan-made covers I think is is going to be really interesting. Um so they've uh Spotify teamed up with Universal to launch a tool for AI um remixes. So, you know, that's that's quite important because Universal, obviously, one of the big um music uh record companies with lots and lots of IP and with lots and lots of artists um registered to them, are now kind of getting involved with AI and with Spotify. And I think that's that's a really interesting kind of move. Um, particularly as, you know, I am old enough to remember when Spotify was the big bad as far as the um the music companies were concerned. And you know, basically everyone's going, streaming, really bad. You know, at least it's not we have killed Naps. Do we need to kill Spotify? And now obviously it's kind of you know, it it's the establishment and they're working together with Universal, and it's the likes of Suno, the kind of upstarts uh who are you know basically sort of um you know trying to find ways to kind of do AI almost independently with music. Um so yeah, that Spotify Universal, you know, again, that's that's gonna be an interesting tool to go and play with. Also got a note this morning from from Suno itself to say that they've now launched CarPlay. So actually, you know, again, if you've got an Apple phone and you plug it into your um your car to to get your sat nav and all the other stuff on podcasts like this podcast um on your your Apple uh podcast, you can also now plug in Suno and you can just listen to AI-made music for as long as you like. And you know, so yeah, you can get your driving home for Christmas kind of um, you know, style remixes of whatever kind of tunes, and then apparently you're gonna be able to uh to kind of mix genres halfway through as well. So lots happening in that space, and uh yeah, gonna be interesting to see um how much further it develops because there's plenty there. A couple of other quick bits um because we are running out of time. Uh we've got uh China limiting overseas travel for AI talent, deep sea Gallibaba, and elsewhere. This kind of comes a bit hard on the heels of um them actually blocking uh Manus from being sold to to an American firm to Meta. Um Matt, you obviously you've been globetrotting recently, you've been pressing flesh with the likes of uh Manus and others. Um did you detect that they were very worried about the global situation and whether they're gonna be able to stay in America?

SPEAKER_00 29:45

Well, so it was Americans that I was meeting over in America or something like that. But um it's it's very much a uh the the dialing back and they they're curbing the basically what we're trying to do is curbing the the travel for their top AI talent to make sure that they're they're not disappearing off because what manus did is they actually moved their the base to Singapore, thinking it would be grounds the uh the the problems with selling their company and obviously nobody would notice no exactly and uh allegedly they were then bound to being stuck in the China and they was it what did you refer to it, disappeared. And so this this not just the manus piece, but everybody now has had that travel uh impact put on them, which is obviously slightly worrying from a humanitarian point of view.

SPEAKER_01 30:26

Yeah, yeah, that's reasonably limiting. Other stories we've got m Elon Musk's X AI. Um so so the the kind of big story um of the last couple of weeks is Cursor. So Cursor is a coding platform, it has historically utilized uh Glyphlaw code, uh Codex, but just had a really nice interface that makes it really, really easy so that they've supercharged that they're worth billions and billions, hundreds of billions. Sorry, not tons of billions, tens of billions. And it's been uh mooted over the last couple of weeks that um Elon Musk's XAI is gonna take it over. So they've got an option, it seems, for um that they're either going to pay them 10 billion to work with them or 60 billion to take them over post the float of SpaceX XAI, which is coming up in uh the next couple of months. But now it seems that there's been a bit of a falling out, and potentially, you know, I mean, who knew Elon Musk was gonna fall out with somebody? Um but um but yes, it looks like um the the previous closeness that was being triggered over the last few weeks is now starting to fray. Again, just to recap, XAI is built and two massive data centers, one called Colossus One, one called Colossus Two. Colossus One is now being rented out by Anthropic. Um again, Elon Musk had previously slated Anthropic in calling them evil. Now he they're paying him billions and billions of dollars, so he's fine with that. Then he gave Cursor Colossus II, which is the brand new one, which historically should have been used by XAI, which is why everyone's thinking, right, that means that Cursor is going to be taken over by XAI, but now there seems to be some fraying of that um relationship, and Elon Musk is warning people within XAI not to talk to Cursor people who are sitting in the same building, basically.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

That kind of stipulated that basically that it was a missive sent by the director or directive by the general counsel there, James Burnham, basically very blunt. It just basically says that the interactions with cursor staff must be limited solely to the implementation of a previously announced technical collaboration. So there's definitely something going on, right? Yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

All right, that's all we've got time for on AI and Tech News this week. Um, we are going to dip very quickly into weird AI of the week. All right, our occasional series now focuses on um uh the weirdness of AI being used to resurrect the voices of dead pilots. So we've had a few stories of you know relatives of people resurrecting their uh that their loved ones. Now, this is kind of a bit darker because actually these these are people who listen into or you know, you get transcripts of um and actually recordings of um, you know, pilots as they're kind of talking over radios and things like that. Now people, strange people, very strange people, are using those voices without any kind of attribution or without any um authority to to then recreate these things and then you know kind of use them for yeah, just basically very strange uh kind of purposes. This is um there's there's one particular guy, Scott Manley, a popular YouTuber whose channel combines physics, astronomy, and video games, was talking about the the the the ability to reconstruct these um and that's basically it's been what's happening. So, you know, there's been um a lot of people out there who have started to utilize that. So now the the um the the government is trying to to pull those back. But again, it just kind of speaks to the idea that um we are going to find AI being used in very strange ways for very weird, it's very highly niche uh purposes. Um and yeah, for all of us, we've just got to be kind of on our toes a bit about what is true and what is not, because uh in AI, even more, as we're about to see in our tool of the week, you can do pretty much anything. All right, um, moving on to our tool of the week. Now, um I wanted to to just kind of we were speaking again last week, Matt, and we were talking about Google Omni and about how it's coming. Now, I spent you know the early part of the weekend looking at this last weekend, um looking at how um how I could kind of get access to to Google Omni. It's not available in our area right now, um, so it wasn't wasn't something I could play around with. I was looking to do some videos because as of next week I'm doing this the the 40-day 40 location tour, right move resistance three, and you know, taking it out there and and kind of trying to build out this um uh the a suite of videos, so 40 videos uh and then one that covers the kind of whole tour. And basically it was amazing. So I was using um Claude Design, which was able to create like literally like 40 prompts quickly off the bat. It was able to describe the the background. So, you know, Brighton, you know, is talking about you know, kind of um a lot about the kind of drag queen side of things and all that sort of stuff. Then we have Manchester with bucket hat people in the rain, and then you've got kind of you know bagpipers up in Edinburgh and all this sort of stuff. And it was just you know, so so it created all these prompts, and then I put it into Hey-Gen, Avatar 5, which has C Dream underneath it. And literally, I mean, uh if you go on to um uh modelprop.ai forward slash summer26, you can see one of these videos of me, and that there's a loads of others on LinkedIn that we've been putting out this week, and they're just all different and all fascinating and all amazing. And it's just me walking through streets and basically talking to camera, my avatar, uh talking to camera about you know what we're gonna be doing, which particular time, which particular location. And it's just honestly, it was mind blowing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:08

I um I I I think you missed a trick. So obviously, I tasked you last week of saying Omni's drop, but we know you need to go away. So yes, yes, Omni, understandable. You didn't use your VPN to get access to it, which which we all need to set you up with. But um the I think you missed the trick and twofold, right? It's a very bittersweet symphony style for those old enough to remember. We won't get cut for not playing it or mention yeah, mentioning it's fine, right? Yeah, I think that's so you should be walking down the street in a leather jacket, bouncing into people. So I didn't think there's enough shoulder barges for my point of view. But I also think you maybe miss the likes of Renton running down Prince's Street rather than the uh the bagpipe when you're doing Edinburgh.

SPEAKER_01 35:45

Should have done that, should have had much more kind of reference to culture, all that sort of stuff. The next one, all right, that's where we'll go. We'll go there instead. Um but yeah, look that basically go have a look at it. It's it's it's amazing. So, like I said, called design, you can you can just articulate what you want to do from video perspective or whatever, it will create prompts for you. They can be wildly different. If you've got different areas of you know your locality that you represent, then you know, again, you can start like kind of um talking to to different areas and why they're special and all that sort of thing. Um, and then if you put that into Hadrian Avatar 5, it can use C Dream 2.0 and uh yeah, that and then it's got some pseudo music over the top that's vaguely adjacent to Bittersweet Symphony as well. So just go over that. Yeah, exactly right. All right, that is um all we've got time for in another epic, epic episode. You need to go because you've got meetings and so on. Um but yeah, listen, um, it's been uh yeah, love this. Thanks so much for listening in, everybody. Um really enjoyed the chat, Matt. Um, and we will be back again next week with plenty more property and AI news. Uh until then, have great weeks. Enjoy. Take care, everyone.