You’re cute no matter what phone you have
Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge
The iPhone 16 is great. But it’s great in pretty much exactly the ways you’d expect it to be great — gone, it seems, are the days of big new ideas about these slabs of glass we all use all day. And that’s basically okay! But it does make you wonder: could you just train an AI to tell you everything you need to know about the new iPhone?
On this episode of The Vergecast, we find out. Joanna Stern, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal and a forever friend of The Verge, comes on the show to tell us about her adventures building the Joannabot, an AI chatbot that knows a lot about iPhones and basically nothing about anything else. We ask Joannabot some questions; we take some of your questions and present them to the Joannabot (and a few to the real Joanna). The iPhone 16 may not have much AI yet, but there’s plenty of AI about the iPhone. And as it turns out, the Joannabot thinks you’re pretty great.
After that, we talk about some of the other gadget news of the week, most notably the new Snap Spectacles. We dissect the hardware, the software, the use cases, and the strategy, and try to figure out whether these fifth-generation AR glasses are a step in the right direction or just a weird-looking computer on your face.
Finally, in the lightning round, we talk about all of YouTube’s announcements at Made on YouTube this week, Lionsgate’s AI deal, Instagram’s new controls for teenage users, and the new social network where everyone but you is a bot.
If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, beginning with the iPhone:
From The Wall Street Journal: Our iPhone 16 Review, Brought To You By a Joanna Stern AI Chatbot
Apple iPhone 16 and 16 Plus review: all caught up
Apple iPhone 16 Pro review: small camera update, big difference
And on Snap’s Spectacles:
Snap releases new Spectacles for AR developers
Snap announces “Simple Snapchat” redesign to compete with TikTok
Evan Spiegel explains why Snap is betting on Spectacles
Sterling Crispin’s X thread about the Spectacles
Meta extends its Ray-Ban smart glasses deal beyond 2030
And in the YouTube lightning round:
YouTube’s new Hype feature is a way to promote and discover smaller creators
YouTube integrates AI for creators through Veo and the Inspiration tab
YouTube Communities let fans and viewers chat and post with creators
YouTube confirms your pause screen is now fair game for ads
YouTube is adding ‘seasons’ to make your favorite channel more like Netflix
And in the other lightning round:
Alex Cranz’s pick: Lionsgate signs deal to train AI model on its movies and shows
Joanna Stern’s pick: Instagram is putting every teen into a more private and restrictive new account
Nilay Patel’s pick: SocialAI: we tried the Twitter clone where no other humans are allowed
Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge
The iPhone 16 is great. But it’s great in pretty much exactly the ways you’d expect it to be great — gone, it seems, are the days of big new ideas about these slabs of glass we all use all day. And that’s basically okay! But it does make you wonder: could you just train an AI to tell you everything you need to know about the new iPhone?
On this episode of The Vergecast, we find out. Joanna Stern, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal and a forever friend of The Verge, comes on the show to tell us about her adventures building the Joannabot, an AI chatbot that knows a lot about iPhones and basically nothing about anything else. We ask Joannabot some questions; we take some of your questions and present them to the Joannabot (and a few to the real Joanna). The iPhone 16 may not have much AI yet, but there’s plenty of AI about the iPhone. And as it turns out, the Joannabot thinks you’re pretty great.
After that, we talk about some of the other gadget news of the week, most notably the new Snap Spectacles. We dissect the hardware, the software, the use cases, and the strategy, and try to figure out whether these fifth-generation AR glasses are a step in the right direction or just a weird-looking computer on your face.
Finally, in the lightning round, we talk about all of YouTube’s announcements at Made on YouTube this week, Lionsgate’s AI deal, Instagram’s new controls for teenage users, and the new social network where everyone but you is a bot.
If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, beginning with the iPhone:
From The Wall Street Journal: Our iPhone 16 Review, Brought To You By a Joanna Stern AI Chatbot
Apple iPhone 16 and 16 Plus review: all caught up
Apple iPhone 16 Pro review: small camera update, big difference
And on Snap’s Spectacles:
Snap releases new Spectacles for AR developers
Snap announces “Simple Snapchat” redesign to compete with TikTok
Evan Spiegel explains why Snap is betting on Spectacles
Sterling Crispin’s X thread about the Spectacles
Meta extends its Ray-Ban smart glasses deal beyond 2030
And in the YouTube lightning round:
YouTube’s new Hype feature is a way to promote and discover smaller creators
YouTube integrates AI for creators through Veo and the Inspiration tab
YouTube Communities let fans and viewers chat and post with creators
YouTube confirms your pause screen is now fair game for ads
YouTube is adding ‘seasons’ to make your favorite channel more like Netflix
And in the other lightning round:
Alex Cranz’s pick: Lionsgate signs deal to train AI model on its movies and shows
Joanna Stern’s pick: Instagram is putting every teen into a more private and restrictive new account
Nilay Patel’s pick: SocialAI: we tried the Twitter clone where no other humans are allowed