Tech News Weekly 407 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

Mikah Sargent [00:00:00]:
Coming up on Tech News Weekly, we kick off the show by talking about OpenAI's new app for AI generated social media. Afterwards, I talk about how AI may be at the heart of a surge in app fraud. Then Abrar Al-Heeti sticks around to talk about how Amazon has a whole new host of devices. And Florence Ion joins us to give us the lowdown on Google's new smart home hardware. All of that coming up on Tech News Weekly. This is Tech News Weekly.

Mikah Sargent [00:00:41]:
Episode 407 with Abrar Al-Heeti and me, Mikah Sargent. Recorded Thursday, October 2, 2025: Google and Amazon Reveal New Hardware. Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where every week we talk to and about the people making and breaking that tech news. I am your Mikah Sargent and I am joined today by the wonderful Abrar Al-Heeti. Welcome back to the show, Abrar.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:01:08]:
Thank you so much for having me. Always thrilled to be here.

Mikah Sargent [00:01:11]:
Always a pleasure to have you join us. For people who are tuning in for the first time, or maybe you've been here before and you just need a little reminder, like I do, what happens on the show? I don't know. No, but we start out the show by talking about our stories of the week. These are the stories that we find interesting that we think you should know about. And so let's kick things off, Abrar, with your story of the week.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:01:36]:
Yes, I wanted to talk about the hottest new social media app that, frankly, terrifies me. So this week OpenAI released Sora 2, which is its latest video generation model. It's supposed to be more physically accurate and realistic than the previous model. Not terrifying at all. It has synchronized dialogue and sound effects, so potentially harder to tell reality from AI. Super fun, right? And so then along with Sora to OpenAI also released a new Sora app for iOS. Now think of this as a TikTok feed where literally nothing is real. So you enter a text prompt to create whatever scenario you want, let your imagination run wild and it will generate that.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:02:21]:
And so you have these like short bite sized videos that you continue to scroll through. And you can also upload yourself essentially into any Sora generated scene and that's called a cameo. And before you do all that, you record video and audio of yourself into the app to, as they say, verify your identity and capture your likeness. And then you can also give other people permission to use your likeness in their own videos. So OpenAI is calling this a quote, new and unique way to communicate with people. I personally am good with texting, but to each their own. If that's how you'd rather communicate with your friends, I will not stop you. So the Sora app is currently invite only and, and I, you know, clearly OpenAI is aware of some hesitation and trepidation around something like this.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:03:11]:
So they have I'll read this kind of statement that they had in their announcement. By default, we show you content heavily based, biased towards people you follow or interact with, and prioritize videos that the model thinks you're most likely to use as inspiration for your own creations. We are not optimizing for time spent and feed and we explicitly designed the app to maximize creation, not consumpt. And then they also say they'll periodically pull users on their wellbeing and proactively give them the option to adjust their feed. So they're really. One of the really interesting things they're doing here is they're kind of pointing the finger to other apps and saying, see the problem with those apps is they try to monetize the time that you spend on here. And the content creation is monetized in a way that doesn't align with what people actually want to be making. And what they're saying is they say that they're incentivizing decisions that are at odds with user well being, which is just a really interesting way to say, like, oh, don't worry, our platform is better for user creators.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:04:09]:
I'm not really understanding why that would necessarily be the case. And so, and then they also say in terms of monetization, they'll eventually charge people to generate extra videos when there's a lot of demand. And they explicitly actually say, we're optimistic that this will be a healthier platform for entertainment and creativity compared to what is available right now. I can already tell from your reactions that you perhaps feel the same way I do. So that is very bold statement to say this will be a healthier platform. So I would love to know what you're thinking as you're hearing.

Mikah Sargent [00:04:44]:
Yes, that really bugs me because it feels like you sit down at the, you're at school, I don't know, it's middle school. And you're sitting down at the table at lunch and you pull out what your parents were able to afford, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some Doritos chips, right? And you start to eat them. And many of the people around you are also enjoying the same thing. But someone sits down at the table and they pull out like a hummus plate with I don't know. A fiber one bar and a green drink that was handcrafted for them in the morning by the housekeeper. And they kind of turn their nose to you and say, oh, you were eating all of that processed food with the sugar and this and that and the other. It just feels really snooty. But there's like some added wrinkle in my weird metaphor where what's actually in the.

Mikah Sargent [00:06:01]:
If you look at the ingredients of the fiber one bar and the green drink in the other, there ends up being more sugar in that than there is in whatever it is you're eating. That's the point that I'm trying to make here in the end, which is like, that's. It's foolish to me. What is being said here is foolish. Now, speaking of Sora 2 and this app, like the experience itself, just make the thing and let it be the thing. It doesn't also have to be a statement. Right. Like, that's my problem with it is let people do with it what they can do with it.

Mikah Sargent [00:06:40]:
I know I'm making all of these comparisons, but they're kind of coming to me as we go. It's a little bit like. And people who like Google's Android devices, that's fine. It's a little bit like how you go around and you see Google doing billboards that are making fun of the iPhone and Apple is not making billboards making fun of Google's phones. If you, you don't have to do that. If you can just let the product stand for itself. So I have a problem with the way that that's being marketed, but let's just talk about the thing itself.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:07:17]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:07:18]:
Interesting that you are. You're creating allegedly or in theory a social media network. But it's for creation. This is the, like, this is what. What's kind of confusing to me is usually a creation app is a separate thing that then creators use to make stuff that they then share on their social media. I don't see it as a negative personally to be a consumer on a social media app because that's what I'm going there for, for the most part is to see what's there and look at cool stuff or look at things that I need to know. And so this idea that it's sort of like subpar or not what one should be doing to just be a consumer is a little odd to me. It all just feels so fake.

Mikah Sargent [00:08:21]:
That's. That's. It almost feels like they said to their own chat bot, help me figure out a way to market this to make it sound better than the other stuff that's out there. And then they just copied and pasted all of that into the press release for it.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:08:37]:
It's so true. It said, you're absolutely right. This is the best thing that's ever been created as AI chatbots do they will enable you.

Mikah Sargent [00:08:43]:
Yes. Yeah, that's how I'm feeling.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:08:46]:
It's interesting because one of the things they say is that one of the things that people have been saying is, well, the good thing here is when you go on other social media platforms, you don't know what's real and what's not anymore. But this is all AI, so it's better because you're not going to be tricked. And then I'm like, well, then why does it exist? Like, you know, like, it's not like people are scrolling through TikTok and saying, oh God, I wish all of this was fake. Like, no, the opposite. They're saying, I wish there were more people on this and not some random AI generation of a sinkhole. Like, I don't know, like, it's just. You see the weirdest stuff where you're like, what is this? And then the other piece of it is that idea of allowing other people to use like your cameo so that they can use your likeness in their videos that it's really concerning. And I feel like they're being foolishly optimistic about how quickly that will go south.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:09:35]:
And they talk about how you can control that. You can even see drafts created by other people that use that likeness. You can remove those videos at any time. But why are you enabling them in the first place if you're already predicting that it's going to go bad?

Mikah Sargent [00:09:47]:
You know, that's the thing. Like, this is a company that currently is moving through its 180 days or whatever, many days it said to try to mitigate the suicidal ideation and sycophancy leading to death that we have seen from the platform. You're doing that right now. And now you're making a thing that it's not hard to jump to how this can be abused. And the idea that, oh, you can control the video. Honey, honey. Yeah, I don't think you've ever owned a phone. You think that immediately that person isn't.

Mikah Sargent [00:10:30]:
Like, if somebody's trying to do something bad with it, right? Like to, hold on, I might be able to say, no, delete that thing in the app. But that person already has it saved to their phone or they have it, you know, they did a screen capture of their device. Whatever. That's. That's not. That. That's not real. That's not real, man.

Mikah Sargent [00:10:51]:
Yeah, so that's bugs me as I don't think that should have ever been a tool. And when you are a part of this, when you said that about sharing your likeness.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:11:01]:
Oh, my gosh.

Mikah Sargent [00:11:02]:
My immediate thing was this is OpenAI sort of, sort of easing people into it. Owning your likeness or being able to use your likeness. Yeah, I would love to read the privacy policy on this and see what that means, because what would be. What's better than having all of this training data of your. Of your identity verification? Right? That is delicious. Yum, yum, yum. Eat it up. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:11:36]:
And I also. Do we know right now? Because I did. I downloaded the app, obviously I want to know what this stuff is and like, what. What are the avenues for abuse? And of course, it's invite only right now. Do we know who is getting invites right now? And how did you get an inv.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:11:57]:
I have not even attempted or asked, but I think chat. Well, I know that ChatGPT Pro users can use the Sora 2 Pro model, and so I wonder if they. It might be easier for them to get an invite for the app as well. But I've seen like a couple videos pop up already on my Instagram of people testing this out, so maybe they're not that hard to come by because I already see people hopping on this pretty quick.

Mikah Sargent [00:12:24]:
Yeah, I was wondering that as well. I am a plus user and so I thought, oh, maybe I'll just be able to log in and it will say, we'll notify you in a couple of days or something, sort of get in line kind of a deal. But it did not have that. And so I thought, okay, I mean, fine, I again want to check it out and see what's going on and how it works. But I saw. I think I only saw one person actually. Colleague of yours. I think it was Scott Stey.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:12:56]:
Yeah, it was Scott Stein.

Mikah Sargent [00:12:57]:
Yeah. Oh, that's funny.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:12:58]:
Crack me up.

Mikah Sargent [00:12:59]:
Yeah, so I thought that's probably. They were probably giving them out. I was thinking maybe they're just giving them out to journalists right now and other people or. Yeah, so I was curious if you ended up with one as kind of a social media person as well. So let's talk about, though, what is an example of a video that can be created with this? Like, what does it look like when it's made? Is it. Is it just as we've seen in the past with Sora, where it's this sort of 6 second weird rubber blob that is somebody drinking from a wine bottle but seems to not be able to ever drink from the wine bottle. Always goes to like either side of their mouth.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:13:43]:
Yeah. To their credit, it's actually become impressively accurate. They've kind of started to figure out physics and then you start to see how it's kind of a big deal. It's a little important, but like you can turn yourself into like an Olympic gymnast or you can be actually like eating something and it's actually ends up in your mouth, which is like big deal. Somebody's definitely going to recreate the Will Smith spaghetti. Just give it some time. Yeah. Everything you do just does look a lot more realistic.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:14:13]:
Which then makes me wonder as you're scrolling through this feed as both a creator and a user, how does that impact your mental well being and your sense of reality? Because you know it's not real, but subconsciously your brain is like, this is really cool stuff. Why would I go to, you know, plain old Instagram or tick tock and watch somebody do something very boring and human? You could be in space shooting hoops. Like, you know, So I don't, I don't. We're gonna have to see how that.

Mikah Sargent [00:14:39]:
Yeah, mine is working in the reverse abrar. I am on social media and every video I. And I'm not trying to be old man cloud shout.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:14:50]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:14:50]:
I'm literally going, this might be fake, so it doesn't matter. To me, this might be fake, so it doesn't matter. Like that's how I feel about things. And frankly, I think that is how that is a behavior I would encourage. And it stinks to say that, but that's a behavior I would encourage. You need to assume that everything you're seeing is. It's not a. For me, it's no longer a trust but verify.

Mikah Sargent [00:15:21]:
It's a don't trust and verify situation. I don't know now because it used to be. Yeah, I saw those early gymnastics videos and the person would grow three legs and they would do some wild stuff. But I was watching one video just yesterday and I am looking at it and going, you know, for people who are listening and not watching, I'm doing weird things with my eyes like squinting and stuff because I'm going, where is it in here that this is going to show me that it's fake? And it was like, specifically this was. Someone say, I generated this video and so I'm looking for the Part where it's not real. And I was having trouble finding anything and it didn't even. It used to. That it would kind of tweak my uncanny valley thing too.

Mikah Sargent [00:16:08]:
It wasn't even doing that. And that is mortifying, especially in this, as we call it, post truth world that we live in. Can't count on honest. I mean, I probably. You never could truly count on honesty, but it feels like more than ever, you can't count on honesty.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:16:25]:
Definitely.

Mikah Sargent [00:16:26]:
And yet OpenAI that does this shrugie emoji or shruggy emoticon and keeps making this stuff. And, you know, I think the argument there for them is, well, if we are not doing it, someone else is.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:16:41]:
Exactly. And people are eating it up. So they're like, why wouldn't we be? Right.

Mikah Sargent [00:16:45]:
People are eating it up.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:16:46]:
Oh, goodness.

Mikah Sargent [00:16:48]:
I don't like it.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:16:48]:
No, I don't like it. Me neither.

Mikah Sargent [00:16:50]:
And I see, I struggle sometimes with that, with that phrase, but also with that mindset. Because I don't want it to be taken for our listeners. I don't want it to be taken as just this sort of negative mindset of. Of, oh, you're afraid of this technology. And that's the popular way to think about it, is it's going to do. And so I'm very conscious of trying to celebrate the things that are cool about this and that can be good about this, while also saying we cannot forget about the negative aspects of it and how it can be abused. And I think that both can exist. Right.

Mikah Sargent [00:17:38]:
We can say, oh, it is pretty neat that somebody who can never go to space could sort of picture themselves in space. Beautiful way of using it. But then if it can also be used for someone to put a video out on social media of their mortal enemy, you know, attempting an assassination on a public figure.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:18:02]:
Right.

Mikah Sargent [00:18:02]:
And then that person is hunted down by social media. And like, that's just one of hundreds of probably thousands of ways that that could be abused.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:18:13]:
Yes. And I think it just begs the question of what do you want from social media? Like, what do you want when you go online? Right. Do you want to connect with your friends in one way or the other? And if this is a way for you to feel like you're bonding, then that's great. And I think just think about what you want from it. That's really what it boils down to.

Mikah Sargent [00:18:29]:
Increasingly, what I want from it is I don't want to go online. I just don't want to go online. Don't make me go online. Online is scaly. All right, let's take a quick break before we come back with more conversations of AI and fraud, as I am joined this week by Abrar Al-Heeti of CNET. I am excited to tell you that this episode of Tech News Weekly brought to you by Hoxhunt. That's Hoxhunt. As a security leader, you get paid to protect your company against cyber attacks, but frankly, it's getting harder with more cyber attacks than ever and phishing emails generated with AI.

Mikah Sargent [00:19:06]:
We were just talking about that on the show. Legacy one size fits all awareness programs. They don't really stand a chance because they Send at most 4 generic trainings per year and most employees ignore them. When somebody actually clicks, they are forced into embarrassing training programs that feel more like punishment. And that's why more and more organizations are trying Hoxhunt, because Hoxhunt goes beyond security awareness and changes behaviors by rewarding good clicks and coaching away the bad. It's super cool. We got to speak to the folks at Hoxhunt about this and I actually thought, can we set this up here? Because I want to be challenged by it. You get these awards for properly following the security protocols and it kind of gamifies it, but in a way really smart way.

Mikah Sargent [00:19:51]:
And some of the trainings that they talked about, I'm like, oh man, I would feel like double oh seven as I dodged all of these horrible attempts at trying to scam me. Whenever an employee suspects an email might be a scam, HOX Hunt will tell them instantly providing a dopamine rush that gets your people to click, learn and protect your company. As an admin, Hoxhunt makes it easy to automatically deliver phishing simulations across email, which you can expect, but also slack or teams using AI to mimic the latest real world attacks. So it's constantly being trained on how things are happening right now. Simulations are personalized to each employee based on department location and more, while instant micro training solidify understanding and drive lasting, safe behaviors. This is super important too, because AI is being used in that negative way of training new types of scams and personalizing it to individuals. So your training needs to be that same way. You need to be able to teach your employees in that same way.

Mikah Sargent [00:20:54]:
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Mikah Sargent [00:21:53]:
Thank you so much to Hoxhunt for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly. All right, back from the break, and that means it's time to continue on with my story of the week. There's a new report from a company called DoubleVerify that reveals how AIs actually supercharging mobile app fraud at an unprecedented scale. The company's fraud lab has detected nearly three times more fraudulent iOS apps and six times more fraudulent Android apps in early 2025 compared to the five year average. Now, these aren't just simple scam apps. They're sophisticated AI generated shells that look legitimate enough to slip past marketplace reviews to hijack devices and generate millions of fake ad impressions. This explosion in AI powered fraud is forcing a reckoning for app stores, advertisers and the entire mobile ecosystem about how to maintain quality standards when artificial intelligence can create convincing fakes faster than humans can identify them. So I think the big aspect of the story here, of course, is that there have long been apps that are their sole intention is to be a sort of secondary knockoff of an app and then get a lot of money from that.

Mikah Sargent [00:23:12]:
An example of this that I just recently saw was I was, I think it was on Instagram that I was looking through and I saw this hilarious video of a couple and they were like, right as they were winding down at night, they had this app where you can record something, record audio. And so they were recording like a couple of lines from a song, or maybe even just one line from a song, singing it. And then the app lets you play it back in reverse. The other person hears it in reverse. Yeah, so you know about this. The other person hears it in reverse and attempts to sing it in reverse. And then you play it back again in reverse, which of course flips it back around to the right way and see how close you are to the original thing. Super funny, super fun.

Mikah Sargent [00:23:59]:
And there was an app in the App Store that was sort of the real app. But if you typed in, as I did, reverse audio into the App Store to search, dozens of apps showed up, many of them having weekly subscriptions, many of them having loads of ads built in, many of them. And that is because you see these companies, well, not even companies, sometimes individuals, quickly moving to create apps whenever there's a trend. And because of AI, the vibe coding way of doing things, it's become a lot easier to create apps. And that scale ends up being a bit of a problem because as we said, the company reports detecting nearly three times more fraudulent iOS apps and six times more fraudulent Android apps compared to five year averages. And Apple's own statistics hint at this issue. The company rejected 1.93 million app submissions last year. That's 10% more from 1.76 million the previous year.

Mikah Sargent [00:25:05]:
Of course, Apple doesn't explicitly blame AI as the reason behind the increase increase or anything like that, but you can kind of quickly see how that could be part of the problem. You also have the ability to, if you're making. There's kind of like different definitions for what you would say is a fraudulent app. There's a fraudulent app that is sort of a knockoff clone of an app that exists for the purpose of getting people to download it instead and then make ad revenue. Right. But then there are fraudulent apps that actually attempt to take money. We just saw recently, I believe it was on Android, it was an app that was, you know, Play Store verified and it was a, like a bitcoin app where it was sort of like a, I think it was either a game or it was a gambling app situation where you could play with your bitcoin and this person ended up losing their. And like I think it was, you know, multiple tens of thousands of dollars because this was actually just a fraudulent app that the moment that they got that bitcoin information, they pulled it and took it.

Mikah Sargent [00:26:15]:
So that's another kind of fraudulent app. But then you also have another type of fraud that AI is being used for, which is it's being used to appear as though it is a real user of an app. So then that drives up app use, but then it also drives up ad views which then pays out for that. So you have developers who are impacted by this, you have advertisers who are impacted by this. I'm always a little bit like boo hoo. But you also have, I say, as I look around and realize that My whole life is supported by advertisers. JK advertisers. Anyway.

Mikah Sargent [00:26:56]:
And then you also have individuals who are impacted by this. So. Yeah, I kind of wanted to talk to you about. Well, first, I'm kind of curious. Have you ever vibe coded an app? I know you wouldn't do it for fraudulent purposes, but. Or have you thought about it? You're like, you know what? Actually, I would love an app that did. I don't know. That took Taylor Swift lyrics.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:27:14]:
Oh, my God.

Mikah Sargent [00:27:14]:
And turned them into haiku.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:27:18]:
Well, I know what I'm doing tonight. Yeah. Album release night. No, I'm not that cool. Have you ever done. Have you ever.

Mikah Sargent [00:27:27]:
I actually have only done it once, and that is because I needed a. I recently ran a D and D charity stream to raise money for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. And one of the things that happens is people donate to give my players, like different things in game while we're doing it live. And I wanted something before I was just using a note card and a pen, and I wanted something just very specific to what I needed, which was kind of like a. Almost like a countdown wheel for each person. So this person has five instances of. For the D and D nerds, they'll know what I'm talking about.

Mikah Sargent [00:28:07]:
Five instances of. Of advantage. Five instances of. I forget what the other thing was that I was giving players. Oh, Nat 20s and then just to be able to flick it and it would go down by one and to have all of their names listed and not have to create a Google sheet somewhere else, but just have it there on my phone. And so I was able to vibe code that in really no time at all, very easily. So, yeah, I've done it once and then I uploaded it to the app store. I made $100,000.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:28:37]:
No, I'm just kidding.

Mikah Sargent [00:28:40]:
Oh, Burke, by the way, our engineer says that Lily has been vibe coding for the. Those who don't have the twit lore. Lily is Burke's miniature, I think, golden doodle. Yes. Lily is a dog and has not actually been vibe coding.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:29:02]:
Well, maybe an AI World Lily would be.

Mikah Sargent [00:29:04]:
Yes. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Sora too. Gonna have Lily vibe coding in no time. But yeah, I'm curious again, just a little bit more about that. How you. Or what are your thoughts? Have you. Have you run into an issue where you went looking for an app and you found the wrong one? Do you have that anxiety of it? How does that play out for you?

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:29:27]:
Definitely, I'm trying to. It's definitely happened and I'M trying to think of specific examples as you were speaking, but it's, it's tricky because they're always named so similarly too. And sometimes you get a little too far in and you're like, wait, I don't think this is what I was hoping for. Thankfully, I haven't run into any actual issues where any money went down the drain or my personal security was compromised, at least not that I'm aware of. But no, this idea of you kind of have to think about everything and that's what I think the takeaway, the second is you have to really kind of think twice about everything that you're doing and interacting with and see. Yeah. And to see how much of an impact this has on like you mentioned everyone, right. It's the users, but it's also, you know, the advertisers.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:30:10]:
And then you see, you know, like the fact that even reviews can't always be trusted and they never really, I mean, again, you should always be cognizant of that. But now even more than ever, it's so far reaching that being even more careful has never been more important. And so, yeah, hearing about the impact and rise of this, that will surely continue. We're just getting started here is something to keep in the back of your head.

Mikah Sargent [00:30:36]:
Yeah, absolutely. And the last thing I'll say before we take another break is I feel for people who have normal jobs and have other things they need to focus on and yet they are being, they're realizing that they have to also think about this like this. It's my job to think about this and, and I have a lot of knowledge about it and so it comes easier. But I think about, you know, the person who, they don't spend all of their time looking at this and learning the signals and now they've got to take that on too as well as work the 9 to 5 and, and focus on all of the things they've got. It's just, it's, it's unwieldy and frankly, I don't see an easy solution to it. Again, as we continue to see AI being what it is and growing from where it is right now, the only thing that we're seeing that seems to be working is a fight fire with fire situation as we kind of talked about with that sponsor from before. So in fact, the next sponsor is going to talk a little bit about that as well while we take a quick break. I'm excited to say Abrar will be joining us again after the break as we talk about what Amazon announced at its recent hardware event.

Mikah Sargent [00:31:53]:
But first, let me tell you about Zscaler bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. Zscaler is the world's largest cloud security platform. As organizations leverage AI to grow their business and support workforce productivity, it can't rely any longer on traditional network centric security solutions that don't protect against these emerging threats and AI attacks. Bad actors are using new AI capabilities and powerful AI agents across all four attack phases. Discover the attack surface compromise, move laterally and exfiltrate data. Traditional firewalls and VPNs, they simply aren't helping. Instead they're actually expanding your attack surface and enabling lateral threat movement. They're also more easily exploited with AI powered attacks.

Mikah Sargent [00:32:41]:
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Mikah Sargent [00:33:53]:
Amazon had I think quite the refresh of its device lineup across the board. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, like fully across the board. I had spoken with Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, one of the hosts on the show and was kind of getting an early impression and take from her before the event talking about Amazon kind of trying to premium ify its its hardware and JPT said, you know, I think that's kind of what has happened here. We saw a revamp of The Echo Show 8 and 11. They have it, they have a nice thin display on them with a fabric wrapped feature or excuse me, fabric wrapped speaker behind them, 13 megapixel wide angle cameras so it can detect people in the room and then some upgrades to the UI to help it kind of help you be able to control Smart home devices. And of course they now come with that Alexa assistant, which is an AI powered AI LLM powered assistant that is, you know, reported to be better at its job. Echo Show 11 comes in at about $220 with a 1080p display. The Echo Show 8 at $180 with a 720p display.

Mikah Sargent [00:35:19]:
Also added to the mix are some new Echo Dot style devices. There's the Echo Dot Max and the Echo Studio. Now I remember when Amazon originally introduced its Echo Studio and that thing was bigger than a home pod. Huge. This one's much more small or much smaller rather, and in fact includes somehow better sound. It claims the company claims Spatial Audio, Dolby Atmos, which you can expect. And then you can also use those Echo, the Echo Studio and the Echo Dot Maxes together to create a surround sound experience, which is kind of cool. The Echo Dot Max is available for $100, $99.99 and of course is then far more expensive than the regular Echo Dot, which comes in at $50.

Mikah Sargent [00:36:20]:
Amazon also updated its Fire TVs. Those have Alaxa built in. It's supposed to be able to offer movie recommendations, sports scores. If you have a scene that you really like from content on Amazon Prime's prime video, then you can use it to search for that. It's, you know, the latest in terms of QLED. You can get them from 50 to 75 inches. Amazon also has its less expensive Fire TV models that are, I think they're called series or two series and four series. And then there's a new Fire TV stick as well.

Mikah Sargent [00:37:08]:
So. Oh, oh. And then lastly in this section, because we'll talk about kind of ring and blink afterward. But lastly in this section, Amazon also announced new Kindle scribes. There are two of them. There's the standard Kindle Scribe which comes in at $429.99. Then there's the Kindle Scribe with front light which is $499.99. And the new Kindlescribe color soft, very expensive, arguably at $629.99, but features now the ability to highlight, draw and write in several colors with that color E ink display.

Mikah Sargent [00:37:49]:
So starting with that side of things, again, lots of new devices. Have you had an opportunity to kind of see what Amazon has announced and I'm kind of curious your thoughts on everything and if you currently rock any of Amazon's hardware in your home?

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:38:08]:
Yeah, I haven't had a chance to see anything firsthand, but I've Definitely been following this. And the feature that I'm most excited about as a bookworm is the new Kindle Scribe features. So there's a feature that I think I would use use very heavily if I wanted to spend a lot of money on a new Kindle, which I don't, but if I did, I think that there's something called Story so Far which uses AI to give you a summary of everything that happened up until the point that you stopped reading. Which is so convenient because. Yeah, because if you're like me, you're like overly optimistic about all the things that you want to read. And so then you read one thing and then you stop and then you go read something else and then you're just like, I actually don't remember where I left off, so that'd be very cool. And then there's another feature called Ask this Book which gives you specific answers about what you've been reading too. Like, sometimes I'm like, oh, what was that thing called? Or like, I think that would be super, super neat.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:38:55]:
So. So I'm really excited about the Kindle Scribe features more than anything else. But I think, you know, having that smarter, smart assistant is what everyone's been waiting for. And especially built into the TVs, being able to get recommendations that kind of aligns with what Google's been doing with Gemini, kind of building that into Google TVs too, to help you figure out what you should be watching. I haven't really gotten a chance to test any of those features, but I like the concept of it because I think we're all a little overwhelmed every time you open up a streaming platform and actually have no idea where to even begin and then you just end up rewatching something that you've seen three times.

Mikah Sargent [00:39:25]:
So absolutely, yeah, that is my way for sure. I'm pretty excited about it. I think that some of the changes that we've seen again, sort of make the hardware feel a little bit more premium. This is certainly the best looking of the Echo shows. When Amazon started making those larger Echo show devices, the sort of wall mounted or monitor ARM mounted displays, I thought those were really good looking. Like that's kind of what I wanted a show to be. As opposed to this screen that has all of this bulk on the back of it. And so seeing these new show eights and 11, I'm happy with the way that Amazon has gone with this.

Mikah Sargent [00:40:20]:
It's interesting also seeing the company kind of look at Apple and Sonos Playbook a little bit when it comes to Sound in the home with these new Echo Dot options and the Echo Studio option. As you start to see how you could build out a full sound system in your home home using these devices, I do think that that's a compelling use case. Once you've tried it and you go, oh, I can. Oh, that's kind of nice.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:40:49]:
Yeah. And it makes it like more user friendly because I don't want to figure out what sound bars to be buying and where to put speakers. Like, imagine you just buy this device and you just place it in different areas and you're good to go. That's so great.

Mikah Sargent [00:40:58]:
Yeah, I agree. I agree. And then when it comes to the Kindle Scribe, I got the first generation of the Kindle Scribe because I thought, oh, this is so cool. I've got this E Ink journal and I'm gonna, this is gonna be great. And then I saw the color version from a different company come out and I thought, if only I could have that because then I'll be able to highlight in color. And that's what I really need is some way to differentiate between the two. I never ended up getting that, thank goodness. Because I very rarely use my Kindle.

Mikah Sargent [00:41:37]:
So the thought of as much as this stuff calls to me, I just don't make use of it. But that doesn't pull away from the fact that it was really cool seeing what they're doing with E Ink. I think that in screen pigment technology is really neat.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:41:53]:
Definitely.

Mikah Sargent [00:41:54]:
We've come a long way from the Etch Sketch for sure.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:41:56]:
Oh yeah. Finally. Yes.

Mikah Sargent [00:41:58]:
And then on the camera front, I learned recently some people aren't aware that Blink is an Amazon owned property. Blink is kind of the budget version or the less expensive version of Ring in terms of the offerings. Right. It's security cameras. Blink announced a new arc device which is basically two of its cameras with this plastic thing in between to hold them at two different angles. But within the hardware, they've built in a way to kind of give it this 180 degree view. So you'd put it on, you know, the side of a house or on a post in your backyard or on, I don't know, on a tree. I don't know, somewhere where you can get this nice wide view of your whole yard.

Mikah Sargent [00:42:45]:
With the Blink devices being less expensive than the new ring devices that have up to 4K video recording, there's a new wired doorbell Pro, a new outdoor cam Pro, a new spotlight cam Pro, a new floodlight cam Pro, a new wired doorbell standard, and a new indoor Cam, what they call indoor cam plus with 2k video. Some of the features for this include facial recognition technology. So that can actually be handy. We saw Amazon kind of hint at this early on where it was able to kind of say, oh, did somebody. Somebody was supposed to come home and do blank? And you could look and see, oh, yes, this person did come home. I could see that being helpful. It can also do things like automatically talk to a solicitor and say, you know, what are you here for? And they say, oh, I'm here to try to sell you solar for the sixth time. And then Amazon can go ahead and say, okay, well, they don't want that, so buy.

Mikah Sargent [00:43:48]:
Which I think is great. But my favorite new feature, it's called Search Party, and it uses AI to detect. Right now it's for dogs. It'll spread to cats. And Amazon says more pets. So I'm so curious if you're. I guess if your capybara gets loose. But basically it lets the whole neighborhood, if they choose to use their ring cameras to detect when a dog that you have lost has run by and kind of give you updates on where that dog is and help you locate your.

Mikah Sargent [00:44:22]:
Your lost animal. So I think that's super cool. We have a few ring devices here. When we moved into this place, it came with a few, and so we just kind of augmented the system and that's something that we use at our house. And so I don't need any new ring hardware, but I do like the look of the new ring hardware. It's. It's got this really nice kind of premium design. They've done a good job there.

Mikah Sargent [00:44:50]:
And I think I've used Blink in the past, and it's pretty miraculous what they're able to achieve on battery power alone. And so for a budget device, I think they've done a good job there as well.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:45:02]:
Yeah, it's cool that they've kind of upgraded both pretty significantly, too. And I agree that I think Search Party sounds like the cutest, most wholesome way to bring a neighborhood together. So I really look forward to hearing this. Those stories when people implement that.

Mikah Sargent [00:45:16]:
Yeah, absolutely. That part. I. Yeah, I'm sure Amazon will have a lot of those videos.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:45:22]:
Oh, yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:45:23]:
Soon it's going to be like, it's.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:45:24]:
Just showing that their version of the Apple Watch, how every year we get an Apple Watch video about how it saves people's lives. Search Party is going to be Amazon's Apple Watch.

Mikah Sargent [00:45:31]:
And honestly, it will work better on me than the Apple Watch would because those Apple Watch videos already get me like they hit. Yeah, but that. Ooh, buddy, you got me there. There'll be lots more to talk about as folks are able to get their hands on these devices and see how they perform in real life. And I'm looking forward to that. I'm also curious to hear about how the quality of Amazon's E Ink display compares to some of the others on the sorry, color E Ink display compares to some of the others on the market and if the colors are richer than what we've seen. In any case, Panos Panay is very pumped about all of the technology that Amazon has put out. So that is that.

Mikah Sargent [00:46:26]:
Abrar, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you sticking around to hang out with me and talk about Amazon's stuff. If folks would like to follow you online and keep up to date with the great work you're doing, where should they go to do so?

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:46:39]:
Well, you can find me on CNET.com you can also follow me on Instagram Abrar Al he and I'm also on X every now and then. Al Heati underscore three and always a pleasure to join you. Maika. Thanks for having me.

Mikah Sargent [00:46:50]:
Absolutely. Good luck with avoiding the Sora 2 created videos on TikTok.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:46:57]:
What a journey.

Mikah Sargent [00:46:58]:
Dodge, Good luck to us.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:47:01]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:47:01]:
Yes, exactly. See you again soon.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:47:03]:
Thank you. Bye.

Mikah Sargent [00:47:05]:
All right, we're going to take another quick break before we come back with a very exciting end to the show as I interview a familiar face about what Google announced recently and its own smart home efforts. But first, let me tell you about Veeam bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. When your data goes dark, Veeam turns the lights back on because Veeam keeps enterprise businesses running when digital disruptions like ransomware strike. How? Well, by giving businesses powerful data recovery options that ensure you have the right tool for any scenario. Broad, flexible workload coverage from clouds to containers and everything in between. Full visibility into the security readiness of every part of your data ecosystem tested, documented and provable recovery plans that can be deployed with a click of a button. That's why Veeam is the number one global market leader in data resilience. Just call them the global leader in helping you stay calm under pressure.

Mikah Sargent [00:48:08]:
With Veeam, it's all good. Keep your business running at veeam.com. that's V-E-E-A-M.com and of course, we thank Veeam for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly. And we are back from the break. I am excited to say I am joined today, by the way. Wonderful. Florence Ion. How you doing, Flo?

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:48:31]:
Hi, Mike.

Florence Ion [00:48:32]:
I'm doing well. It's been a wild week though. I've got a lot that I've got.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:48:36]:
To do over here.

Mikah Sargent [00:48:38]:
I'm sure, I'm sure, yes, Google, shortly after, I believe or round about the same time as Amazon said, okay, Amazon, I see you've got a bunch of new home stuff you're talking about. We got a bunch of new home stuff to talk about too. And I was just talking to Flo yesterday on, on my Clockwise podcast and I said, oh, Flo knows about what's going on with Google. I hope she could join. And you were able to. So I appreciate you being here to talk about it. I was hoping you could kind of start by maybe giving us. I think it's important for people to understand what is part of Google's home initiative.

Mikah Sargent [00:49:19]:
Right. Because Gemini is being brought into the mix pretty big. But then it also has Nest and is Nest just a camera situation? Is it a thermostat? What is Google's sort of whole swath of home stuff?

Florence Ion [00:49:33]:
Yeah, absolutely. So it's kind of a three pronged approach if you think about it. The first one of the most obvious is going to be a complete revamping of the Google home app. It's got a new consolidation going on, there's new tabs, it's got going to rely a lot more on that kind of magical routine making that is provided by Gemini. But that is a different, that is a different prong that we'll get to at the end. The second prong is the hardware, it's the Nest hardware. Nest is pretty much going to stick around as a device branding because that's, it's been so strong. There's no point in changing it at the this point.

Florence Ion [00:50:16]:
But a lot of what you're saying is getting changed over to what Gemini is going to be, which is that final prong like Gemini is the infusion for the smart home. Now this is, you know, it's Google's bread and butter. This is what they're so good at. So naturally this is going to be like the foundation of what their next generation of the smart home is going to be.

Mikah Sargent [00:50:37]:
Absolutely, that's. I've honestly, I've been saying this for a little while now in testing out and using the different virtual, not even virtual assistants, but the sort of AI backed systems. I've been very impressed with Google's Gemini and have often turned to it for whatever it is that I'm trying to figure out before I even turn to some of the other popular options like those from OpenAI. Thinking about Gemini and its capability that I see with its online system or using the Gemini app, I think this is very exciting to see what it can do here. Because the promise of the smart home has always been, I think it's almost like things have gotten muddied over time. I remember when I was younger watching a Disney Channel original movie where it was about this person winning a smart home.

Florence Ion [00:51:37]:
And it's playing in my mind right now as I'm explaining it.

Mikah Sargent [00:51:40]:
But yes, yes, yes. So somebody runs.

Florence Ion [00:51:43]:
Everything is in my face.

Mikah Sargent [00:51:45]:
I love it so much. Yes. Like the part where she becomes a tornado. The idea is you get this smart home and then you walk in and it just does everything for you. Right? And that was the dream, that was the idea, of course, that smart home things went poorly. But that's not the point. No spoilers. Go watch it.

Mikah Sargent [00:52:06]:
What we then got. And I think what seems to be the case now is when I say smart home and I'm talking to someone who's not in this field or not paying attention to this, they think, oh, I can use an app to turn on the light in my kitchen or I can use an app to change the color of a light in my kitchen. It is not what that original promise was, which is the home will pay attention to your behavior and then will do all of the stuff for you. It will set proper temperatures. It will learn when you spend most of your time, like what rooms, all that kind of stuff. And that promise kind of went away and I feel like it's just now coming back. And I'm excited to see this, this Gemini for home and intelligence for your home. Can you talk a little bit about what Google means when they talk about Gemini being the Google Assistant replacement on smart displays? But also like what has changed in the Google home app to make it that command center for your home?

Florence Ion [00:53:14]:
I will say right now a lot of the Gemini promises are all just what Google has been doing in its laps. A lot of the stuff hasn't manifested in real life quite yet. In fact, I'm kind of in this sort of annoying spot right now where I have some of my smart speakers are still on the Google Assistant and then I have my phone's on Gemini. And so when I'm, you know, saying, saying the command line in the home, sometimes it gets a little mixed up. Smart home routines, automation, they're called automations now in the Google home app. They're not as robust as they, or rather it's. They're not robust. But the language that you were using before with the Google Assistant, that's changing now that Gemini is coming in.

Florence Ion [00:54:01]:
The idea is that you could be more conversational. It's going to take in the context, you know, you're talking to it about the weather. Okay, what's the weather going to be like today? For my softball game. Game, let's say, which I don't play softball but. But it's understanding sort of the nuance behind your question. Okay, you're getting together a bunch of people outside. You want to know if it's going to rain today. You want to know if it's going to be muddy, where you're going to be, that sort of thing.

Florence Ion [00:54:30]:
And so the idea is that Gemini would take all of that into context when it delivers your answer. Again, this is Google's promise. This is really what they want to, to show us that they've done, but it's not really a reality quite yet. This is a very slowly rolling out ability. Right now I am about to jump into the beta for it to really, to really see. I mean, I've been in the beta for the Smart home for the last year, but it's now that I'm starting to see the real changes happen with devices in the house. Gemini too is going to be a major player in that nest hardware because it's going to learn, you know, it's got that back end. So the front end is the Gemini you talk to the one that you conversate with.

Florence Ion [00:55:19]:
And then the back end is. It's doing all of this stuff to recognize what your patterns are as you come in and out of the home. How do you like the lights at a certain time of day? Do you like this Philips Hue light bulb over here? You like it at 67% percent. Okay, we'll put it at 67% at 7pm and then you like this light over here at 13%. We'll do that at the same time. That's sort of what it wants to solve, but again, this is all theoretical until it exists.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:55:47]:
Sort of.

Florence Ion [00:55:48]:
How I think about it, announcement is really an announcement.

Abrar Al-Heeti [00:55:51]:
It's. That's what it is.

Mikah Sargent [00:55:52]:
And that's fair too, right? Because you don't want to buy this hardware with, with features that are not yet available. Never buy technology at the future promise of what it can provide, but instead what it has to offer now. Otherwise you might end up getting disappointed. Can you tell us now about the new hardware offering? So we're rocking new, I believe, Nest Cams and Doorbell and new Google Home Speaker. I feel like they changed the name of that speaker. Yeah, so often. But yeah, tell us about that.

Florence Ion [00:56:28]:
So first I want to clarify and say that Google's done a lot of work to ensure that the Nest devices you had from 2015 beyond are working with what's coming from Gemini. So you do not have to go out and buy new hardware. The Nest Learning thermostat that you have, it's going to learn some things, this is going to have some infusion. I think Google wants to make it so that people aren't jumping off and out of the air ecosystem just because of all this. But the new hardware, which is the. There's a new Nest cam indoor for $100, a new second gen Nest Cam outdoor for I think 180, and then the new Nest doorbell for 150. They're improved because they have wider field of views. You know, the preview video is much, much lighter than it used to be, as much more detailed than it used to be.

Florence Ion [00:57:21]:
But what Gemini is going to do is actually read what's happening in the preview. So if it sees that You've got a FedEx delivery person over a postal service worker, it will say FedEx guy dropped off a package around 1:15pm or whatever. It'll actually be able to show it to you because the frame of you has been expanded so you could see the ground. So those are all kind of the perks of updating the hardware. But the idea is that your original Nest hardware should have some of these smarts. You will have to pay for it though. The Nest Aware subscription, which is what you were paying for with the cameras beforehand. Now it's going to be called Google Home Premium, I believe.

Florence Ion [00:58:06]:
And there's two tiers. The first tier is the one that unlocks most of those smarts for you. The second tier is the one that gives you like more cloud storage and that sort of thing. So that's going to change. That's going to change big time for Nest users, current Nest users.

Mikah Sargent [00:58:23]:
And then when it comes to the kind of sort of pulled back look at things, the conversational aspect of, of Gemini and what some of those promises are, was there anything for you that stuck out? Like for example, something that I thought was kind of cool is the part where they talk about being able to say, what time did the kids get home? And have it kind of look through those scenes and see, oh, this is what I found when your child got home from school. And they were lying to you? No, I. You told think that's kind of a cool feature.

Florence Ion [00:59:06]:
That's going to be me in a couple years.

Mikah Sargent [00:59:09]:
Yeah. Was there anything else that stuck out for you that you found kind of interesting from Google here?

Florence Ion [00:59:17]:
Yeah, I think I really want to have the way my house, it's very important for me for my house to be at a certain brightness level with lights in certain rooms on, in certain rooms off. And so I really want to have this stuff just be completely automatic. I. The big thing for me with a smart home is, and why I was making the joke when we were starting our, our little segment off is I haven't done any maintenance to my smart home in a couple years. I've been kind of slowly waiting out for matter to really take hold. That's the unifying protocol that was released a couple of years ago. Kind of was waiting to see what's happening with that. I haven't updated any of my devices.

Florence Ion [01:00:00]:
Really. There's been no need. And so I'm looking forward to seeing what Second Life Gemini will infuse in whatever this home is that I've had that's just been kind of honestly collecting dust and I've got different ecosystems here, so I'm hoping that Gemini will play a little bit better even with those outside of the NEST ecosystem. You know, I have some, I have some cheaper cameras as well. And actually Google announced this week that they partnered with Walmart to develop two sort of entry level smart home cameras, a doorbell camera and a regular security camera. They're both under $40, so therefore a very economical user. So it's going to be. Yeah, I'm curious to see what Second life we're going to get out of Gemini and if we're finally getting what Google's been promising because it feels like they're, that's what they're doing right now.

Florence Ion [01:00:55]:
They're trying to say, hey, we heard you, we want to try again.

Mikah Sargent [01:01:00]:
We hear you and we will do better. Yes, indeed. Well, thank you so much, Flo for taking the time to join us today to go. I mean, again, it feels like I was looking through the different blog posts that Google put out announcing everything and, and because of the focus on AI, I feel like some of the hardware kind of got lost. And so it's nice to hear from you kind of what actually was announced, what we can count on right now, what we'll be able to see in the future.

Florence Ion [01:01:28]:
Smart speakers next year, by the way. Sorry, I know we had forgot to talk about that but it's not out until spring 2026 so we have a while to wait.

Mikah Sargent [01:01:37]:
Thank you for that as well. If people would like to keep up with you, where should they go online to do so?

Florence Ion [01:01:44]:
An easy place to go is florenceiron.com that's my website. I also have a podcast on the Relay Network. It's called Material. And for those of you who used to be fans of All About Android, I am on Android Faithful. I write a newsletter over there every week. So check us out. And thank you for having me.

Mikah Sargent [01:02:02]:
Yeah, thank you so much for being here and hopefully we'll see you again soon. And with that, we've reached the end of this episode of Tech News Weekly. So thank you all for tuning in this week. We appreciate it. You can head to Twitter TV TNW to subscribe to the show in audio and video formats. I also want to remind you about Club Twit at Twit tv Club Twit. That is where you can go to join our club. It is $10 a month, $120 a year.

Mikah Sargent [01:02:29]:
When you join the club you gain access to some awesome things. All of our shows ad free, just the content. You also gain access to our special Club Twit feeds that have our live commentary of tech news events. We also have bits and clips and we publish the shows that we do for the club there as well. Those shows include things like my Crafting Corner, Stacey's Book Club. We've occasionally got Coffee Time and Photo Time and some other great shows if all that sounds good to you. And you'd also like to gain access to our members only Discord Server. Well, join the Club twit.tv/clubtwit.

Mikah Sargent [01:03:06]:
We kick you off with a two week free trial so there's no reason not to head over and sign up today. If you'd like to follow me online, I'm @milhasargent on many a social media network. Or you can head to chihuahua.coffee, that's C-H-I-H-U-A-H-U-A.Coffee where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. Thank you so much for being here today. We appreciate it and we will see you again soon for another episode Soon. We'll see you again next week for another episode of Tech News Weekly. Bye bye.