In this week’s episode, Grace and Liel are throwing a party, and the theme is AI. They’ll be discussing social media and the Google dilemma on how to compete with Chat GPT in a way that doesn’t result in them getting blown out of the water.
It’s like Congress had a piñata party, and the CEO of TikTok was the piñata. Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle took turns beating up TikTok, but did they really accomplish anything? We’ll discuss it.
While Google’s release of Bard was met with all the excitement of a soggy piece of toast, Chat GPT 4 is making waves. It’s so smart; it can pass the bar and make it to the top 10% of scores, but does that qualify it to write your website’s content? We will find out.
Join us for a conversation that’s equal parts informative and witty as we explore the state of legal marketing and AI.
Resources mentioned in our episode:
- Join Grace’s presentation at MTMP in Las Vegas on April 11th at 3 pm
- The Verge hands-on with Bard
- CEO TikTok hearing, the human piñata experience
- Chat GPT 4, the bar exam challenge
Enjoy the show? Subscribe and leave us a review! Don’t forget to send us your questions and comments at ask@incamerapodcast.com.
Episode notes powered by ChatGPT.
Transcript
Liel: [00:00:00] Welcome to In-camera Podcast, Private Legal Marketing Conversations. Grace, How are you? Welcome back. I’m doing great. Grace, Thank you so much for asking. You know, it’s been so eventful since you and I last met. A lot has happened that is really shocking, just to believe how much material we have now to talk about. And while I’m sure there’s been a lot that’s been happening in the master litigation world and there’s a lot of insights that you can share in business of law or just things in marketing in general that we can talk about. We’re not going to do any of that today, but instead we’re just going to sit here and rant about what’s been happening on the world because it’s just nonstop of information. And quite honestly, it’s also very fun. It exploded.
Grace: [00:00:46] It exploded even more than the last time we spoke about it. I agree. I love it. This is so much fun.
Liel: [00:00:51] All right. Grace. So for those who are just kind of like tuning in and they’ve been living under the rock and they have no idea what we’re talking about, why don’t you just give us kind of like a quick rundown of what has happened over the past week or ten days so that we can lay the ground of what we’re going to be exploring? Oh.
Grace: [00:01:11] I know I’m starting a little backwards, but honestly, I have to mention this. Um chatgpt. So for those of you who don’t know, you know, Chatgpt four was launched on March 14th, so I’ll start there. Actually, um, it’s a successor to Chatgpt three, obviously. Right. Three, four, five. Um, and the technology is the viral chatbot Chatgpt as a whole. So all it is. But guys, it’s been around a long time. For those of you that don’t know anything about this, like you said, living under a rock potentially because it’s been around probably close to what, 20 years, something like that as chatgpt original, but a long time. So right now we’re on the fourth version and this version that’s going to be coming up soon is version five. Now, what is the difference? Right? Why do we care that Chatgpt is now version four going to five and all the stuff going on with it? I’ll tell you why. Chatgpt is truly the idea that we’ve always had about AI, right? It’s artificial intelligence, semantic language. It is the learning capability of quote unquote a person. But through AI. Yeah. So that’s the best way I can explain it. That is why it’s important. And now they truly have these functionality that’s going to supposedly. Right, truly allow us to use the AI the way it was intended originally with sophistication 100%.
Liel: [00:02:38] So a few things there to note out. I mean, the jump between the three and 3.5 version to four is just remarkable. It’s outstanding. So a few things that chatgpt for now can do that you couldn’t do with a previous version is actually fit to the AI system or machine actual images and ask put up commands about that. So that’s quite amazing, right? Because it opens up a whole new door to a bunch of other possibilities, but the systems also become much smarter than it was before. So just to give you a perspective, Grace and I’m not sure if you’ve seen this stat, but while the previous version of Chatgpt was able to pass the bar exam, now the newer version of the of Chatgpt can actually pass the bar exam and be on the top 10% of people.
Grace: [00:03:34] Taking the exam. Yeah, they rank high.
Liel: [00:03:37] So that’s how much smarter the app just got. And that’s really, really great. Ai Grace You know, we talk about it here all the time. I just cannot get enough of it. I think it’s brilliant. And it’s exactly because of what you’ve said. There has been other versions, there’s been other software previously put out there for you to use and leverage AI and get things done, like, for instance, content, right? And the thing about it that was not really great is the command writing was very complex before, before, before even GPT three Okay. Now what’s amazing about Chatgpt is that the command writing is just regular normal language. Like it doesn’t get easier than that. Do me this, do that, apply this to that, Get me this and get me that. And now create a title for this. And so it’s so easy that you really just need to get better at being concise at what you want so that you can express it in language and then get what you need. And you know, it’ll be interesting to know that. Now command writing, it’s it’s a valuable skill set right away. Right.
Liel: [00:04:54] And it sounds ridiculous, but it is because if you’re good at it, you’re going to be able to leverage way more than machine in more effective ways much faster. Then others were not. And the other thing that is amazing about this tool is that you can feed to it content in text and now in images and then ask for it to analyze it and do something for you. Right. For instance, put up all of your episode, podcast, episode transcript, and then ask for it to write notes for the episode. Right? That’s the easiest thing that you can think of, but there is much more that can be done, you know, that is not necessarily creating your content per se, which is kind of like one of those borderline things where we say, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You may not necessarily want to relegate that task to a tool that doesn’t necessarily write based out of facts, but more so out of prediction. And so, you know, within those limits, there’s so much you can do. So any any other thoughts about our new chat GPT version here? I used it.
Grace: [00:06:12] So actually we have a command writer here. I made him the command writer because he’s just that good at it. He’s our right guy for the Lake Law Firm. We also have an outsource company that handles our as a whole, but he’s our in-house person that takes care of all of us, right? It’s about 89 of us, which is a lot, you know, for one person. But he manages it very well. So part of what I do with him is we’ll look at new projects, new software, new things. And when he saw that one of our developers had Chatgpt as a subscription, he’s like, Hey, can I get involved in that? I’ve been playing with it. So we actually tasked him after the Tyson event that we had in Miami with the pictures and, you know, where we did the auction for the gloves that he signed. So he took those pictures and fed it to the chatgpt and said, We are donating the purchased gloves. You know, the money that we got from it for this nonprofit organization, X, Y, Z. So after feeding it that feeding the concept of what we needed, he was able to create a beautiful form letter congratulating the people that won the bid all through Chatgpt. And mind you, he’s not a marketing person, but he was able to understand the question that we needed, the business goal that we had, feed it an image and some content, very basic, like the fact that it was Mike Tyson and the fact that it was a glove and come out with this beautiful marketing letter that we then turned around was we’re able to send off to people when they won the gloves and the pictures. So we used a little bit of everything that we’re talking about right now to develop that marketing piece. And we’re going to start doing that more and more with things like, I’m speaking at Rtmp. You know, I want them to maybe create a social media post and I’ll let you know how that goes.
Liel: [00:08:06] Grace, I think that’s amazing. First of all, congrats on the speaking engagement and lucky everyone who’s going to be there listening because they have a lot of they have a lot to learn. So once you know the time, the date and the track where you’ll be talking, please let us know so we can share it here also. Grace It is amazing. I mean, there’s so much that it can do and I think it’s just fun. I think, you know, we have just seen kind of like a scratch over the surface of what are the capabilities of AI. I just think that, you know, the amount of data analysis that we’re going to be able to relegate to this and be able to make better decisions, better strategies through this is just a. Remarkable. And as I’ve said, I think we’ve not yet seen the beginning of it. Now, some interesting facts about it. There is now a billion, a billion chatgpt users, which is quite remarkable. Grace, I know that you’ve said that this has been around for a very long time, but really opened up to the public and popular. It’s been about, um, I don’t know, maybe I’m going to dare to say 7 or 8 months. November really of last year is when it became more widely known and for a platform for any platform to go from, you know.
Liel: [00:09:24] I don’t know, hundreds of thousands into a billion users. It’s remarkable. Like it took Facebook years to get there. And so I think we’ve just kind of like unlocked here something that can be maybe a monster. But I think that it can also generate a lot of good. And, you know, we’re for the most of it, slow at identifying threats, even though a lot has been already said about the dangers that there are in in in AI and how it can be used for bad things, as much as good things. But hopefully there’s going to be enough guardrails as this continues to grow that will keep the app being primarily used for great stuff. Now Grace talking about guardrails and talking about tech being in hot water as we are recording this, we have the CEO of TikTok here in the United States facing Congress. And I think the best way of explaining what’s happening is like he’s pretty much the equivalent to a human pinata. They are really beating him in every single direction. And anyone who was expecting any different. Was again living under a rock. Because TikTok is coming under so much heat after everything that’s been happening around the fact that it is a.
Liel: [00:11:14] Chinese headquartered company that it is suspected or maybe even known that has given access to the Chinese government about user information. Right. And even though they’re treating this as kind of like there is not evidence on that, you know, there is enough whistleblowers that have come out and said that, yeah, that shit’s happening to raise concerns. And while they’re also aggregating that, there’s a partnership with Oracle where it says that the data from the United States is kept in the United States. It’s not compelling enough. And I’ll tell you something, Grace, while I understand the posture and the position that TikTok has become very, very popular, according according to the CEO of TikTok, there’s 150 million users here in the United States. And so it’s quite a statement that the value and the impact that the platform has had. But at the same time, you know, I think government makes a very good point at being concerned about all of the data that is actually mining here in the United States and how it can be used against it. And and I would just say this because a lot of and then there and then there’s the mental health. Right. Part of it is how much this platform can negatively impact young minds minds and.
Liel: [00:12:50] In a way or another, make a lot of harm and deterioration to society. But you can very well argue that other social media platforms do that, like Facebook, like Instagram and so and Twitter, especially Twitter. So, you know, you you see them as more harmful than others. But I think it’s really more about. Why do we need to give up so much data, so much information, so much control, so much influence to foreign government, which has proven to be time and time and again a potential threat to the stability of the United States. And the other kind of thing that I want to say here is. Don’t forget that they do not allow either Google or Facebook to operate in their stores. Right? They do not let these tech companies that we cannot think of not having them around in their country. So why why do we need to let them have it their way? Right through the product is good, through the experience is is good. But as I’ve said before, last time we talked about it like I don’t think we cannot over time get a similar level of experience through real through shorts or whatever you want, right? I mean.
Grace: [00:14:19] I not only agree, I actually believe even further than to a whole other level. I worked for an import export law firm for many, many years. So a large part of what I would see was the antidumping and countervailing duties. China is a communist country. The fact that people forget this is blows my mind, frankly, because exactly like you said, how are you going to allow a communist country to have access to our data and our privacy when Apple has been disallowed, when Facebook, all these companies have been disallowed and have been required to put restrictions in place to help with data privacy and all of these EU laws for GDPR as an example. So why are we even allowing a foreign government to have access to that level? Because social media, like you said, there is actually some class action lawsuits on it’s called Social media Teen Harm because of exactly what you’re saying. It is bad for some of these developing minds that are constantly absorbed by these dancing things on their screen. And so TikTok is, while it might be lovely and a great, you know, time, it is subversive.
Grace: [00:15:41] It is taking our information and sending it to a government that has no human rights whatsoever. So to me, I, I completely understand why this TikTok has become what it has in terms of under scrutiny. And I don’t think that’s ever going to let up. I hope it doesn’t, as a matter of fact, because when it comes to my nieces. Privacy on TikTok. I don’t want them taking her information and selling it or using it in any way, shape or form. But that’s what they’re going to do. That is what all advertisers do. That is what all companies do with the data that they get. So the fact that they get this data, it’s a whole other level because it’s a country that does not care about human rights. They’re communist. They don’t allow our products in their country the way they are because they keep their people down. I don’t see how that is possible to continue allowing that in the United States. This is a country of freedom, capitalism and human rights. Does it make sense to me, Leo?
Liel: [00:16:49] Yeah. Grace So, you know, that’s the argument that is being made right now in Capitol Hill, and it’s and it’s a fair and it’s a fair one. Now, just looking at it from the other standpoint, right? Because, you know, we need to look at both sides and we need to be mindful of the fact that TikTok, because of the way that it just gained popularity, ease of use and appeal. It has become such an important platform for both creators and brands. And a ban on the platform is going to create potentially a lot of harm to a segment of the creators community of the of the nation. And obviously they have a voice and have every right to be concerned. And it’s it’s 100% valid. And then we have businesses and amongst them obviously law firms because, you know, we it cannot be ignored. The fact that a lot of law firms have been able to figure out TikTok to their advantage, to the point that it’s not just a brand awareness platform for them, they actually generate cases from there. And so potential ban which is what. This whole hearing is basically. Aiming to lead to or you would think, right. I’m sure there’s a lot of theatrics there that are just about making noise and shows strength and condemned, you know, the platform and then maybe go back to normal.
Liel: [00:18:25] But obviously, there is a very unique situation here where there seems to be bipartisan support to to ban the app. Now, what would it take? Let’s just take for a moment the scenario of the ban, finding a way forward. What how would that look like? Right. How how not getting banned would look like? Well. It basically says that. The market of the United States in the app would have to be owned by a separate entity that it’s not that has no ties to China, which if you think about that Grace. Like who can afford to buy TikTok? Like TikTok years ago, years ago, was valued at $30 billion. $30 billion. This app is and I know this may seem like an exaggeration for a lot, but this is an app that has actually harmed the entire streaming industry. It has destroyed the stock of Netflix because people are spending more time watching the content in Netflix in TikTok than they do streaming platforms like Netflix. And so this is a company that I have heard time and time and time and again heading towards becoming $1 trillion valued company. So who can buy that? I agree with.
Grace: [00:19:55] You. I mean, it’s just and it will put a lot of people in a really bad position, particularly those that only did TikTok, you know, So I you know, it’s it’s a little catch 22, right? I mean, put all these investment and time and effort into a social media platform that’s getting you dollars and cents and Yeah.
Liel: [00:20:15] So so yeah I think, you know, the the the acquisition of the app as a whole, I think it’s hard to grasp. I think it would be. Very difficult to. To find a buyer that can actually pull that, I don’t know, a partnership or something that gives enough confidence to government that the app is secure. And then then let’s just go down the road of the scenario where it actually gets banned. How would they actually banned? How? Like what would the app just disappear from your phone? And the reality is, no, it won’t just disappear from your phone. What’s going to happen is that it’s no longer going to be available through the major app stores where it needs to be acquired for it to operate in systems. So that will be Google’s App store and then Apple’s app store. It would stop releasing out upgrades, but basically those who still have access to the app is very likely that we will retain access to the app up until the point that the, you know, whatever version they have installed on their phone stops working or no longer supports the platform. So it’s not as automatic as as you may think. Right. I know it sounds like, oh, a ban on TikTok and all from the sudden it just disappears or vanishes. It’s a little bit harder than that.
Liel: [00:21:34] So that’s another thing there to keep in mind is that it may not turn out to be kind of like just gone entirely. I think it certainly has reached a point where a lot of skeptical that have been it’s never going to happen. And so they’re now starting to question themselves. What I will say, though, is that a lot of the firms and and law firm owners that I’ve met and talked about this topic, generally speaking, they don’t seem to be that worried, even though they understand the impact of it. They’ve been diverse in their social media efforts and they are aware or prepared in case something like this were to happen, as they have both strong following in Instagram and in Facebook. So, you know, it’s it’s what you were saying there, Chris. You know, you cannot put all your eggs in one basket. Grace Let’s move on to just other fun new news. And that is, you know, the much anticipated release of barred, right? And for those of you who are still not familiar with what barred is, well barred is Google’s chat bot and it will finally release to the public barred is exactly the response of Google to chatgpt. Right. We all know that Google’s been big in everything that has to do with. The Internet and search. And so for them not to have been at the forefront of the release of the first.
Liel: [00:23:24] Mass. Available product that answers commands is being extremely painful. Extremely painful. Both I believe in their ego and economically. And so they rushed to release a bot that is called Bard. And I’m really curious to hear Grace what you’ve heard about it, or if you’ve actually had the opportunity to use it. But the reality is this, right? The fact that we need to even ask one another, have you used Bard already comes to show how much not impactful it has been. And I’ll just say that I’ve had a lot of fun over the past week, just, you know, reading and watching memes about how much not of an impressive chat bot Bard is. Right? So, you know, let’s just put it this way. Soon after it was released, somebody tweeted, Hey, just a heads up. Google’s bard has been released. And the good news is that we can all rest assured that we’re all going to keep our jobs because Bard doesn’t seem to be a threat in any way to anyone. It’s not really that remarkable. It seems to be very, very bland and also making a lot of mistakes. So that’s kind of like the short cut version of what has happened there. What have you heard? Grace Not very.
Grace: [00:24:53] Much, because honestly, like you said, I haven’t even it’s so low on my priority list that I haven’t even tried it. That’s how much I’ve not really heard and also heard that it’s not really useful in any way, shape or form. You might as well be using one of your original chat bots with, you know, actual answers fed into it that I built, you know what I mean? So yeah, no, they they really failed. And it’s sad because I love Google and I love everything Google produces and it feels very like, like you said, they just trying to catch up and they did a really bad job. So I personally don’t think that they’re not going to catch up on this one unless I mean, Microsoft did what they were supposed to. They freaking bought it, you know what I mean? Then they put it on their servers and said, Hey, use it for free. Oh, if you want to. Here’s charge 20 bucks a month for unlimited access to our chat. Gpt Who wouldn’t do that? Like all developers love that kind of o pay very little or use it for free open source concept. So Google was always like that open source kind of concept in my opinion. At least that’s the way most people felt about them. So this it’s like, I don’t know what you’re doing with Bard, but you just missed the boat so bad. Like, I think they should just scrap it and try it again.
Liel: [00:26:13] So, you know, just the comparison with with being chat function is, you know, being seems to be winning big time here when we when, you know, when we look at what has Bard been good at. Well somebody here says in the verge that it was able to write a heck of a Taylor Swift style breakup song about dumping my cat. Um, but it doesn’t seem to be that great in terms of productivity tasks. It seems to get a lot of wrong answers. And one thing that I gained, and this is something that we’ve mentioned in our last conversation that touched on this point, is that Google is making very, very sure of differentiating between this feature and what they do as a search engine. By no means they want to try to make Bard a replacement to what Google search does. And I think Grace, it makes I mean, I’m not surprised by it because their entire business model is selling ads through the search engine. And so obviously. Until they figure out a way that they can actually monetize this in a way that it will make sense for them. They’re just trying to stay relevant, but not necessarily trying to find a way that they can take what they do best, which is organizing all of the information in the Internet and present it through search result pages in a way that it’s going to be better through this bot because they clearly don’t want to lose their. A market share in search because if that were to happen, there goes their entire business model.
Liel: [00:28:12] So, you know, I think it’s, um, it must be difficult for for Google to figure out how, you know, what to do with this and how to, how to use this in ways that it can be monetized and. Secondly, you know, not impact their their other business model. And I think that’s where Microsoft is a little bit more open about it because Microsoft main product is not search. You couldn’t care less, honestly, probably they do a little bit, but not much because their ads model from being is a fraction of the revenues that Microsoft generates as a whole as a business software solution. Right? So I mean, I think we’re yet to see what’s going to happen here in the search world. And how much this is going to is going to change. But the bottom line is that even though Bart gives way more wrong answers than Chatgpt does, is that Chatgpt still also gets a lot of shit wrong. And that’s because it’s a it’s a it’s a tool that uses natural language and uses prediction predictive, you know, a prediction algorithm to figure out its answers, which not always correlate to facts. And so, you know, from whichever angle you look at it, the value that that search engine, the content that search engines can present you with by. Well positioned sources is still carrying a lot of weight. So. Interesting times in which we live. Grace, what can I say?
Grace: [00:29:58] Yeah, especially that I don’t know if you know this, and this is my last comment on the Chatgpt situation, but last week, actually it might have been a couple of days ago or over the weekend, Chatgpt exposed everyone’s history to each other and went down. I saw everybody’s history.
Liel: [00:30:19] That’s a wild that’s a wild. They took.
Grace: [00:30:21] It down. I was like, oh, my goodness. Some of the things people are feeding it are pretty bad. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Liel: [00:30:27] 100%. Actually. That’s the one thing, you know, that’s the one thing that Bart seems to be a little bit more careful, cautious with. I wouldn’t say I don’t know privacy, but it’s not responding well. Prompts or commands or language that can that can trigger a response that could be in aware in another scene as a as a threat or or disrespectful or unhinged, which is something that Chatgpt has been known for. Right. Everyone, particularly journalists, they’re crazy to try to go and get it to say some crazy shit. And and Bart is not Bart is kind of like declining to to react to certain vocabulary, to certain prompts and such. So, you know, I think Google there is being very much themselves by by not losing those kind of like safeguards that it has about what what’s what’s right and what isn’t. But we’ll see. Right? I mean it’s been pretty wild for for for that in certain aspects. So which we know is something that that that David admitted. You know listen this is powerful and and we we still need to figure out how to how to how to control some aspects of it. So Grace this is fun. And we could stay here for another half an hour just talking and ranting and making fun about these things. But at the same time, it’s a very as I’ve said, these are really interesting times in which we are. It’s definitely something that, you know, we are just seeing probably how the next big wave of tech is going to impact all aspects of our lives, both personally and from a business side of things. So yeah, it’s, it’s it’s definitely very, very happening. So let’s just wrap up here with, with a couple of takeaways that make sense.
Grace: [00:32:31] So I’ll take the first one. Um, I know I mentioned that it happened many, many years ago, meaning Chatgpt came out many, many years ago. I would like to redo that just so everyone truly understands and then end on the takeaway for it. So chat bots have been around the original Chatterbot term came from 1994, just so everyone knows the actual chat GPT that we’re talking about came out from the AI OpenAI language model in 2018. So March recently. That’s chat GPT for my takeaway is yes, there are things that have come out, things that are similar, things that are, you know, different types of software and pieces. But something that I say pretty much on every time we talk about a piece of software is try it. It might be of use for you, it might not, but it is worth an attempt. Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes I’ll tell you, it’s not worth an attempt. But I do believe that Chatgpt is one of those things that you should try to see, because I do believe it can help with even small things, right? Like social media posts from current blogs that you have. You know, there’s things that will assist you in your content delivery that doesn’t require a full blown person or a whole other person. If you already have some of this information, that’s great.
Liel: [00:33:52] I agree with it. Grace I would just say, you know, our takeaway number two and three, just to really keep it plain and simple, is. Never trust one tech platform with all of your data, Right? That’s super important to keep in mind, especially as we’re seeing here with TikTok, because what you may at one point thought or think that was unlikely or impossible to happen. Well, maybe not, right? So you always want to diversify. That’s one takeaway. So build up a presence not just in one platform, but secondly, it’s owning your data, right? Making sure that you’re not actually connecting only with your audience through a platform that is connecting both of you, but you also want to try to get direct access to your audience by collecting whatever details are relevant to you. And in most cases, those would be emails or cell phone numbers, right? For text messaging. So if that’s not something that you’ve done yet and yet has a following, it doesn’t have to be big, but just the following of people that like you engage with you and are present on your social media, you may want to start creating a connection that is direct and that will protect you for when the unexpected things that are now more likely to happen start happening. Okay.
Grace: [00:35:28] Remember, MySpace is all I got to say.
Liel: [00:35:31] All right, Grace And on that note, we’re going to finish up this episode. Thanks again for the insights, for the time, for the conversation, for the fun. And we’ll be back in a couple of weeks. Thank you, Liel. All right. Bye bye.
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