Month: June 2024

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge

Surely, you’ve heard Mariah Carey’s holiday smash hit, “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” But have you heard about this other song? It’s also called “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” and uh, it sounds a lot like Mariah Carey. We’re about to spend a long time litigating how that happened.
On this episode of The Vergecast, with the help of Switched on Pop’s Charlie Harding, we dig deep into the new lawsuit filed by the RIAA against two AI companies, Udio and Suno. Those two companies are alleged to have violated music industry copyrights by ingesting vast quantities of recorded songs in order to train their AI models. Copyright law is complicated, these fights against AI companies are everywhere, and there’s really no telling how this is all going to go. But there’s really no way to hear the AI sing “Jay-son De-RULO” and not know exactly where it came from.

After that, we talk about the upcoming phone releases from Samsung, Google, and Motorola and try to figure out if any of the AI features we’ll hear about will actually convince us to buy a new phone. We also talk about some big-deal speaker news, because this is the summer of the party speaker.
Finally, we do a lightning round. We talk about Verizon’s extremely goth new logo, Meta’s latest foray into the fediverse, this week’s Supreme Court decision about social media, and of course, some very important Cybertruck wiper news.

If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, beginning with the RIAA lawsuit:

What the RIAA lawsuits against Udio and Suno mean for AI and copyright
Major record labels sue AI company behind ‘BBL Drizzy’
From 404 Media: Listen to the AI-Generated Ripoff Songs That Got Udio and Suno Sued

Good 4 who? How music copyright has gone too far
From Rolling Stone: A ChatGPT for Music Is Here. Inside Suno, the Startup Changing Everything

Charlie’s excellent podcast: Switched on Pop

And in gadget news:

Samsung just announced a date for its next Unpacked
Google announces surprise Pixel 9 hardware event in August
Motorola’s 2024 Razr phones are ready to make a splash
Beats Pill review: much easier to swallow this time
Ultimate Ears announces new Everboom speaker, Boom 4 with USB-C, and more

Ludacris Performs Free Concert With JBL Speaker: Here’s Where You Can Buy One for Summer

And in the lightning round:

Nilay Patel’s pick: Verizon’s new V logo arrives as the lines blur between 5G, Fios, and streaming

Nilay’s other pick: Supreme Court rules Biden administration’s communications with social media companies were not illegal coercion

Nilay’s other other pick: Tesla Cybertruck recalled again, this time over faulty wiper and trim

David Pierce’s pick: Meta is connecting Threads more deeply with the fediverse

David’s other pick: ChatGPT’s Mac app is here, but its flirty advanced voice mode has been delayed

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge

Surely, you’ve heard Mariah Carey’s holiday smash hit, “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” But have you heard about this other song? It’s also called “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” and uh, it sounds a lot like Mariah Carey. We’re about to spend a long time litigating how that happened.

On this episode of The Vergecast, with the help of Switched on Pop’s Charlie Harding, we dig deep into the new lawsuit filed by the RIAA against two AI companies, Udio and Suno. Those two companies are alleged to have violated music industry copyrights by ingesting vast quantities of recorded songs in order to train their AI models. Copyright law is complicated, these fights against AI companies are everywhere, and there’s really no telling how this is all going to go. But there’s really no way to hear the AI sing “Jay-son De-RULO” and not know exactly where it came from.

After that, we talk about the upcoming phone releases from Samsung, Google, and Motorola and try to figure out if any of the AI features we’ll hear about will actually convince us to buy a new phone. We also talk about some big-deal speaker news, because this is the summer of the party speaker.

Finally, we do a lightning round. We talk about Verizon’s extremely goth new logo, Meta’s latest foray into the fediverse, this week’s Supreme Court decision about social media, and of course, some very important Cybertruck wiper news.

If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, beginning with the RIAA lawsuit:

What the RIAA lawsuits against Udio and Suno mean for AI and copyright
Major record labels sue AI company behind ‘BBL Drizzy’
From 404 Media: Listen to the AI-Generated Ripoff Songs That Got Udio and Suno Sued

Good 4 who? How music copyright has gone too far
From Rolling Stone: A ChatGPT for Music Is Here. Inside Suno, the Startup Changing Everything

Charlie’s excellent podcast: Switched on Pop

And in gadget news:

Samsung just announced a date for its next Unpacked
Google announces surprise Pixel 9 hardware event in August
Motorola’s 2024 Razr phones are ready to make a splash
Beats Pill review: much easier to swallow this time
Ultimate Ears announces new Everboom speaker, Boom 4 with USB-C, and more

Ludacris Performs Free Concert With JBL Speaker: Here’s Where You Can Buy One for Summer

And in the lightning round:

Nilay Patel’s pick: Verizon’s new V logo arrives as the lines blur between 5G, Fios, and streaming

Nilay’s other pick: Supreme Court rules Biden administration’s communications with social media companies were not illegal coercion

Nilay’s other other pick: Tesla Cybertruck recalled again, this time over faulty wiper and trim

David Pierce’s pick: Meta is connecting Threads more deeply with the fediverse

David’s other pick: ChatGPT’s Mac app is here, but its flirty advanced voice mode has been delayed

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Image: Hugo Herrera / The Verge

One of the big selling points you hear for electric vehicles is that they require less maintenance than traditional gas-powered vehicles. No oil changes, less gunk, fewer moving parts — that sort of thing.
But EVs are essentially giant computers on wheels. And since when have you known any computer to be problem-free?
JD Power’s latest quality study is out, and it’s not looking good for EVs. And in some ways, it’s not a surprise. Like in past versions of the survey, battery-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles performed worse than their gas equivalents in just about every repair category measured by JD Power.
JD Power measures quality based on reported problems per 100 vehicles of a particular brand. According to the survey, people who own internal combustion vehicles reported having 180 problems per 100 vehicles (PP100), while EV buyers have 266 PP100.
The problems had little to do with the mechanics of EVs — motors, batteries, etc. — and almost entirely to do with the tech.
The problems had little to do with the mechanics of EVs — motors, batteries, etc. — and almost entirely to do with the tech
“Owners of cutting edge, tech-filled BEVs and PHEVs are experiencing problems that are of a severity level high enough for them to take their new vehicle into the dealership at a rate three times higher than that of gas-powered vehicle owners,” Frank Hanley, senior director of auto benchmarking at JD Power, said in a statement.
As with all things in EVs, you need to separate Tesla from the rest of the pack thanks to the electric automaker’s outsize representation among people who own EVs. Tesla typically performed better than legacy automaker’s EVs in past JD Power surveys. But now that gap has closed, with Elon Musk’s company rating as poorly as the rest. JD Power attributes this to major design changes in Teslas, such as the removal of traditional feature controls like turn signal and wiper stalks.

Image: JD Power

But most of the grousing seems to be about tech, a major concern given that the auto industry is haphazardly racing to cram as much software into their models as possible. JD Power has logged this problem before, and it seems to be exacerbating.
People are irritated about false rear-seat warnings and inaccurate and annoying alerts from advanced driver-assist systems, especially around new features like rear cross-traffic warnings and reverse automatic emergency braking. Infotainment touchscreens are giving people headaches. EVs had 30 percent more problems with “Features, Controls and Displays” than ICE vehicles.
And when car owners try to find relief from terrible native software experiences by mirroring their smartphones, they run into even more obstacles. “Customers most frequently experience difficulties connecting [their phones] to their vehicle or losing connection,” JD Power reports. “More than 50% of Apple users and 42% of Samsung users access their respective feature every time they drive, illustrating that customers want their smartphone experience brought into the vehicle and also desire the feature to be integrated wirelessly.”
The brands that log the fewest problems are the ones that tend to attract the most repeat buyers. Truck owners are extremely loyal, so Ram is rated number one in the survey. Someone who buys a Ram truck every few years is going to report way fewer problems with their experience than someone who is taking a risk on a new brand — or even a new powertrain.
None of this should come as much of a shock. These types of surveys are typically a good measure of familiarity versus unfamiliarity. Old versus new. We’re in the midst of a huge shift from traditional gas-powered vehicles to high-powered computers that run on enormous batteries. That transition is proving to be messy as hell, and customers are finding themselves caught in the middle.

Image: Hugo Herrera / The Verge

One of the big selling points you hear for electric vehicles is that they require less maintenance than traditional gas-powered vehicles. No oil changes, less gunk, fewer moving parts — that sort of thing.

But EVs are essentially giant computers on wheels. And since when have you known any computer to be problem-free?

JD Power’s latest quality study is out, and it’s not looking good for EVs. And in some ways, it’s not a surprise. Like in past versions of the survey, battery-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles performed worse than their gas equivalents in just about every repair category measured by JD Power.

JD Power measures quality based on reported problems per 100 vehicles of a particular brand. According to the survey, people who own internal combustion vehicles reported having 180 problems per 100 vehicles (PP100), while EV buyers have 266 PP100.

The problems had little to do with the mechanics of EVs — motors, batteries, etc. — and almost entirely to do with the tech.

“Owners of cutting edge, tech-filled BEVs and PHEVs are experiencing problems that are of a severity level high enough for them to take their new vehicle into the dealership at a rate three times higher than that of gas-powered vehicle owners,” Frank Hanley, senior director of auto benchmarking at JD Power, said in a statement.

As with all things in EVs, you need to separate Tesla from the rest of the pack thanks to the electric automaker’s outsize representation among people who own EVs. Tesla typically performed better than legacy automaker’s EVs in past JD Power surveys. But now that gap has closed, with Elon Musk’s company rating as poorly as the rest. JD Power attributes this to major design changes in Teslas, such as the removal of traditional feature controls like turn signal and wiper stalks.

Image: JD Power

But most of the grousing seems to be about tech, a major concern given that the auto industry is haphazardly racing to cram as much software into their models as possible. JD Power has logged this problem before, and it seems to be exacerbating.

People are irritated about false rear-seat warnings and inaccurate and annoying alerts from advanced driver-assist systems, especially around new features like rear cross-traffic warnings and reverse automatic emergency braking. Infotainment touchscreens are giving people headaches. EVs had 30 percent more problems with “Features, Controls and Displays” than ICE vehicles.

And when car owners try to find relief from terrible native software experiences by mirroring their smartphones, they run into even more obstacles. “Customers most frequently experience difficulties connecting [their phones] to their vehicle or losing connection,” JD Power reports. “More than 50% of Apple users and 42% of Samsung users access their respective feature every time they drive, illustrating that customers want their smartphone experience brought into the vehicle and also desire the feature to be integrated wirelessly.”

The brands that log the fewest problems are the ones that tend to attract the most repeat buyers. Truck owners are extremely loyal, so Ram is rated number one in the survey. Someone who buys a Ram truck every few years is going to report way fewer problems with their experience than someone who is taking a risk on a new brand — or even a new powertrain.

None of this should come as much of a shock. These types of surveys are typically a good measure of familiarity versus unfamiliarity. Old versus new. We’re in the midst of a huge shift from traditional gas-powered vehicles to high-powered computers that run on enormous batteries. That transition is proving to be messy as hell, and customers are finding themselves caught in the middle.

Read More