Today’s conversation: Alex was right.
On this week’s episode of PvA, I reported from the Paris cafe scene, where I observed very few people stressed by the start to Q4 or AI doom scenarios.
We also take a hard look at the spate of AI product rollouts this week, a welcome change from esoteric reports of model weights and comic-book fantasies of AGI.
OpenAI’s introduction of Sora 2, Pulse and Checkout show its ambitions to apply AI to everything from entertainment to utility to commerce. The New York Times’ new newsletter, The World, is a sign of the media singularity. Prediction: Things are gonna get weirder.
Three takeaways
Cassoulet vs AI slop. The French “Les Routiers” model — a blue-and-white stamp that guaranteed good food at roadside stops — is a metaphor for what media needs. With AI-generated slop filling feeds, provenance and trust are the new scarcity signals. The bad news: Very few people trust mainstream media.
AI reinvents the selfie. Sora2’s “cameos” let you star in your own mini-movies. It’s testament to how participatory media is becoming the normThe upside: more creative expression. The risk: AI slop is moving from an elite concern to the mainstream.
Agentic chokepoints are here. ChatGPT’s Pulse is a daily agent that learns your life and acts as a chief of staff, delivering a morning briefing. Once it authenticates your paid news and hooks into your email and calendar, it will relegate news to a feature of a larger habit product with intense personalization but very little personality.
What it means
Formats are collapsing. Text isn’t dead, but its packaging power is weakening, particularly compared to interactive and participatory formats. Related: Many people complain about Instagram; it now has over 3 billion users and could soon be on the way to
Scarcity is a feature again. Gen Z treating Apple’s Find My as a tiny social graph is part of a vibe shift. In an infinite feed, small circles win. That sensibility favors formats you can finish (Pulse caps at 10 items) and products that feel finite.
Sovereignty shifts. As Pulse or other agents become “the front page,” publishers will need their own Routier stamp: some signal that content is worth trusting and seeking out.
Conversations matter. AI will remix everything, but owning the original conversation is leverage.
What I’d like to know
What does all this mean for newsletters? They’re in the sweet spot for compression. I tend to drift to the essay format by habit and preference. Send me newsletter formats you like by hitting reply, and I’ll include some next week.
Interface eats the world
In the PvA Weekend newsletter:
Troy: “Platforms are sucking up value up and leaving everyone else scrambling.”
Alex: “Much of our interaction with computers will soon become a relationship with an AI that knows everything about you and the world around you.”
Me: “The centrifugal pull of all of this is to accelerate the commodification of all those who supply these interfaces with the raw material they will then refine and enrich — and extract the lion’s share of value created.”
Thanks for reading. I’m experimenting with new formats because sending people 1,500 words twice a week now feels rude. Send me feedback by hitting reply.
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