Generative AI is the thing, and all new software will be built around it. But while everyone is experimenting and some people are getting huge value out of ChatGPT or Midjourney right now, others haven't worked out how to make it useful. Yet. So how do we find use-cases for a universal, general purpose, magical technology, and is that a crazy question?

Will the US finally break up Tiktok? Will the EU break up the App Store? And why does Temu want to keep your orders under $800?

Are there questions that an AI chatbot shouldn't answer? Should it always give the 'right answer'? Are you sure? Google has egg on its face this week, but this isn't easy, and with generative AI, we're going to re-run all the arguments and panics we had over content moderation in the last decade.  

We’re past peak TV, the charts are curving down, and Hollywood is pretty sure that streaming was a bad idea. On the other hand, music is growing strongly and might even end up bigger than CDs. Why have newspapers, books, movies, TV and music coped so differently with the internet?

Yes, we bought one. What’s it like and what can we say that we didn’t say last summer? What has Apple built, what is it for, what does it mean for Meta, and why does it cost $3,500? 

Everyone needs an AI strategy (there was an email from the CEO!) but what would that mean? How does a big company work out how to deploy a new technology? How is this the same as every other platform shift, and how might it be different? 

Every year, Benedict produces a big presentation exploring macro and strategic trends in the tech industry. Here are some of the key takeaways from this year's presentation - AI, and everything else.

Presentation - https://www.ben-evans.com/presentations 

We spent the last 30 years building structures on top or instead of the raw links of the web, from Google to TikTok… but now LLMs might read all the links for us. 

ChatGPT and LLMs can do anything (or look like they can), so what can you do with them? How do you know? Do we move to chat bots as a magical general-purpose interface, or do we unbundle them back into single-purpose software?

A conversation with Leonard Brody, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Caravan. How do you build brands and consumer products in a world of infinite choice and infinite media? And how does celebrity fit into that? 

Caravan

Nine months on, everyone is still trying to understand where ChatGPT will go, but one big question for us: how is this useful, for us, today? What's the product? How does this get unbundled?