Brian Fanzo | SXSW 2017
>> Narrator: Live from Austin, Texas, it's the Cube, covering South by Southwest 2017. Brought to you by Intel. (electronic music) Now, here's John Furrier. >> Hello, and welcome to a special broadcast of Silicon Angles, the Cube. This is our flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. We're here for a special broadcast, kicking off South by Southwest. This show is the center of the entertainment/media universe and we are here in the Intel AI Lounge, the hashtag Intel AI, and of course, hashtag The Cube, hashtag South by Southwest, and, again, South by Southwest, I call it the Burning Man for the tech industry, the music industry. It is where all the creative, the talented, and the innovators, the bomb throwers, the disrupters, and also the innovators building the next generation technologies. We're going to have wall-to-wall coverage, all day interviews here, and our theme this week at South by Southwest, is really powered by Intel AI, and that is, AI for social good. We're going to be unpacking all the cutting edge technology that's taking us into the next generation. What's this world look like with AI? What's this world look like with autonomous vehicles? These are significant shifts that we've never seen in the computer industry before. We're going to be breaking them down. And here to kickoff day one of our Cube coverage is, my friend, Brian Fanzo. iSocialFanz, is the founder. Great guy, young guy-- younger than me but, you know, still in the front lines. Brian, welcome to our kickoff. >> Thanks for having me. I like to be here. First time on the show was 2013, VM world. So, we were inside VM world, 2013, and now outside the Intel Lounge at South by. Pretty exciting. >> So, it's high noon here. We got our sunglasses on. High noon in Texas. I'm wearing my Ray Bans, but you have your Snapchat spectacles on. What's going on? Do you like them? Give us the update. >> Yeah, I'm actually a new user of them. I'm one who likes to jump on new technology, embrace the FOMO. I kind of waited a little bit on the specs. I also wanted to have something cool to release them with. After I got them, I decided to keep them in wraps until South by Southwest, but it's kind of fun. It's interactive. They are definitely-- now that you can buy them online, I think they're going to be seen a little bit more frequent, but here at South by, just walking down the streets, people are still stopping and saying, "Hey, take a picture of me," and, "How does it work?" I've been impressed. The quality's been pretty good, and it's really easy to use. I think battery life has a long way to go but we'll see. I think battery life in everything mobile has a long way to go. >> Well, that leads to our whole theme here. We're going to have Robert Scoble on, good friend, he's been doing a lot in Virtual Reality and AR, benpar, and a lot of scientists from Intel. Really, folks, talking about this kind of movement. There's a shift going on, user behavior shifting. You're seeing actually entrepreneurship, young companies coming out and changing the world, and not changing the world to go public and some of those vanity things around money, but really around social change, and that's our theme. You have been really prolific over the past couple years, this year in particular, going out, pounding the pavement. You've been at a zillion events. We see each other all the time. Of course, we do over a hundred events last year. You see a lot of stuff. What's the pattern that you're seeing out right now? In this new world order, there's certainly a couple key trends, and the big ones are autonomous vehicles, smart cities. Median entertainment's changing. The home, Alexa, Google Home, automation, but a paradigm shift is happening. What is your take on this? >> I think it comes down to, a lot of it, I think we've all realized we want an experience. Experience is extremely important. But what does an experience mean? And how do you make an experience stand out? I think that's one of the bigger problems today, is, with so much noise, so many things that are out there, I think a lot of people-- the idea of social good, people want to know that what they're working with, what they're working on, has a greater purpose. And I think, today's world, you're connected with no limitations, no silos, and not only being connected at all times, but how can you be connected at the right time and reach the right audience. I think technology like AI and some of the things-- especially cognitive, the idea that machines are learning with us, so it's not just machines learning and leaving the humans behind, but it's humans teaching machines, machines teaching humans, and then moving forward together. I think that's some exciting change. And it's from TV entertainment to enterprise tech, to even the social media space where I do a lot of work in. >> We're here in the Intel AI Lounge. We're on 77 Rainey St, so come by if you're watching here in South by Southwest. Always on Twitter. The hashtag is Intel AI at the Cube, ping us. Brian, the whole theme is here at Intel, and at South by Southwest, is real progressive thinkers, Intel's tag line is, "Your amazing starts with Intel." You start to see, even Intel, which powered the PC revolution, servers, are starting to make chips not just for machines anymore, for the Cloud, for cars. If you just think about autonomous vehicles, for instance. You think about what that does for the younger generation coming in, the computing landscape isn't about a device anymore, it's about an integrated experience, and one of the things we've been talking about on the Cube, and we're going to talk about this year, is, my vision of counterculture. >> Right. >> Every single movement, if you go look at the 60s, the computer industry was impacted by the counterculture of the 60s. You look at the PC revolution with Steve Jobs in the 80s, that was a counterculture. We're starting to see a counterculture now around new amazing new things. >> Brian: Right. >> With software, machine learning, AI-- I mean, it's mind boggling. >> Brian: It is. >> So, what is this counterculture? Do you have any thoughts on it? Do you agree, do you have any thoughts on that? >> I like to say, when Henry Ford said, that if he would've asked then what they wanted, they would have said faster horses not cars. I think today's generation has a bigger megaphone, is not afraid to say what they want, and because now, we have all of the data, they're not afraid to share that data. We're being much more transparent, allowing people to be a little bit more authentic with what they're sharing. I think we now have the opportunity to really shape new technology based on more data than we've ever had, more understanding of our consumers than we've ever had, and I like to say the consumer's no longer dumb, therefore, we have to start really pushing the boundaries. I love the tagline with awesome in it, because I think we are now creating awesome experiences and connecting things, probably in ways we would have never imagined. >> Yeah, I mean, one of the things we've been unpacking on Silicon Angle on the Cube, is this notion of all these trends that we're watching. A couple things we can talk about-- Delete Uber campaign came out of nowhere. The company's reeling because of one blog post by a woman who worked there, accusing the CEO of having a misogynistic culture. Fake news during the election. Global communication, now network, with instant sharing. We start to see these points where the voices of the internet of people is now part and disrupting traditional sacred cows, whether it's government, play, academia, so you can almost see it if you look at it and zoom out, you can say, "Woah, a new set of amazing things are happening, good and bad." >> Yeah, for sure, and I think, also, in that same realm, where now, it's kind of this idea where-- I think for the longest time, technology was taking us further away from the human condition, and we were able to be fake online, throw up a website, and really distance ourselves from the consumer and the community. And I believe now, because people are seeing through that, and the idea where people are faking profiles, we're now coming full circle where live video and a lot of these other things are saying, "Hey, we want humans, we want-- and then we want to be able to connect and come together." And I love the idea that we don't need-- a movement doesn't require a resume, doesn't require you to live in the same location. You can come together around a shared purpose, a shared passion, leveraging technology, and you can do it anywhere in the world. Especially from a mobile perspective, it's exciting to see people being able to have their voice heard, no matter where they are in the world. >> I mean, they literally-- I hate to use the phrase democratization, but that is really what's happening here, and if you look at how politics is changing and media-- the gatekeepers used to be a few parts of the world, whether it's a group of guys or a group of media companies or whatever, they were the gatekeepers. That's now leveled. You have now a leveling of that where you have these voices. So, what's happening, in my mind, is this whole AI for social good is super interesting to me because, if you think about it, the younger generation that's coming online right now and growing up into adulthood or teens is post-9/11 generation. When you think about 9/11, what that meant for our world, and now you're seeing the whole terrorist thing, these are people who are digital natives. There's a sense of, I won't say philanthropy, but societal thinking. >> And I think a part of it is, I think everyone has always wanted the ability to make a bigger impact on the world, but they also, now, I believe-- chapter three of my upcoming book is actually the future of marketing as social good, because I believe people want to know that what they're investing their money, their time in, has a greater purpose than themselves, and I think, because they're able to be connected, and we're able to expose cultures-- I mean, my daughter says good night to Alexa when she goes to bed, as if it's a human, and she's like, "Well, I got to say good night to it." It's this idea where, we're able to share, connect, and communicate-- computers are as much a part of that as humans are online, and it's an exciting movement because I think it's going to highlight and amplify the good and we're going to start to be able to drown out the noise and the bad that, before, oftentimes had a larger microphone and now, we're able to kind of equalize that. >> This is what I like about what Intel's doing. If you think about AI for social good. First of all, Intel benefits, thanks to Intel for sponsoring the Cube here, appreciate that. Plug for Intel. But if you know what they're doing under the hood, Intel makes chips. Moore's law has been one of those things that, for the folks who don't know, look it up on Google, Moore's law. Doubling the power every x-number of months, that creates really good processing power. That powers your glasses. That powers your car. The car is now a data center. The car is now an internet device. A human might have implants, chips some day. So this notion of the power, the computing power and now software's creation an amazing thing, but if you look at what you just said, it has nothing to do with computers. >> Brian: Right. >> So, computers are enabling us to do things and be connected, but if you think about that next generation of impact, it's going to come from human beings. Human beings, part of communities. And I think, if you look at the community dynamic, which has always been kind of like, oh yeah, I'm part of a community, but now, that there's intercommunication, your glasses are doing a streaming a video, we're doing a live broadcast, Twitter's out there, people can talk all over the place. You have a self-forming governance, a network. >> Which is awesome, because now, it's connecting great people no matter where you're at, you're not limited by your resume or where you grew up, and I also think there's an element here where, if you look at collaboration-- I believe collaboration is this key for the future of innovation. I think it's the idea of chips coming together with hardware and software, working together, not only in the post-product stage, but also in the innovation stage. And also, R&D Teams working together to now make things faster and smaller and able to really push the envelope. Things like, in the glasses, having sound and video, and having it connected to my phone, and transmitting with very little human input, we're now able to get perspectives that we would have never imagined, especially from just a regular person walking the streets. >> One of the things I want to get your thoughts on, because you're in the front lines, and also, I look at you, and you're not a young guy, you're an adult, but you're part of a new generation. I was talking with some folks at Stanford just last week around algorithms, and it's kind of an AI conversation, and something popped up. There is actually an issue of gender bias in algorithms. Who would have ever thought? So, now, there's kind of like algorithms for algorithms. This is kind of this AI for social good where, we don't want to actually start bringing our biases into the algorithms, so we have to always be monitoring that. But that brings up the whole point of-- Okay, we're living in a world of first time opportunities and problems and challenges. In the old days in the tech, we knew what the processes were: automated accounting software, automate this, automate some IT department, with unknown technology. And the technology would come out, like Intel and others-- now, we have unknown processes and problems, and known technology developing faster. So, what that's going to require is the human involvement, the communities to be very agile. >> Without question. Not only embrace change, but you also have to look at communities now where, I don't believe we are doing things massively different as humans today than we were years ago, we just now have more transparency and more exposure and access to all of our lives, and I think, with that becomes, as technology exposes more of our vulnerabilities, we as humans have to start to realize that people are more vulnerable and no one's perfect, and things are migrating in a different pattern. Give me that collaboration because we have to be able to trust the algorithms, there has to be that transparency there, but we also want some version of our own privacy, but I kind of live in the space where I don't think of privacy anymore. I think of things as transparently sharing, engaging, and then, hopefully, technology amplifying that and giving us the controls. >> And that's why I like how the AI for social good that Intel's doing here at South by, because it's not just the tech, it's the humanization of it, and South by Southwest represents a global culture of tech, creative tech practitioners, tech visionaries, futurists, kind of all kind of coming together. So, give us the update so far. You've been on the streets. You've been seeing folks last night. I've been on the influencers list last night on Facebook, there's a special group there, all our friends are on there. What's the update so far at South by Southwest, what's the current vibe, how do you see it going this week, what are some of the themes you see popping out of the woodwork at South by Southwest? >> I think last year was interesting. This is my third year in a row at South by, and I present and talk on a bunch of different topics, but I think last year, it was a lot about what is VR, and VR was shiny and fancy, and the conversations now seem to be, what is VR doing, what's the content look like, and where is it going and how do I get there. That's an exciting conversation because, I think, instead of it being a shiny object, it's now VR and AR and AI, how do they intertwine into our lives. The idea of interactive-- South by Southwest Interactive, really what these tools and technology are, is connecting that interactive capabilities. It's interesting to see the different car brands here. You have Intel, you have Dell, you have IBM, but then you also have some of these other brands that are trying to push the, I'd say, the startup agenda. That's exciting, because I remember, I wasn't here for Twitter when you were here for Twitter, but Meerkat, two years ago, for me, was the darling live streaming app that launched here, and it died a year later, but I'm glad to see that innovation and the startup culture is now mixing, kind of hand-in-hand with the enterprise. >> Well, I'm going to see some of my old peeps from the Web 2.0 days, and a lot of people were like, "Oh, the Web 2.0 days didn't happen," just like the bubble burst and the internet bubble, and that burst, but it all happened. Everything that was put out there, pets online, everything online went online. Everything that was promoted in Web 2.0 is happening now, so I believe that you're seeing now the absolute operationalizing, the globalization of democratization. The technology has now come with software for that democratization and now, what's exciting is, with machine learning, data sets, and all the stuff happening with the cloud technology and 5G, it's going to get faster now. >> Which is exciting, because I think real time is a powerful element, but if you're able to get multiple senses of data, interact with machines, and ultimately push that forward at the right time, I think that collaboration of machine, human, and experience at the right time is where we start pushing new innovations. AR and VR, even some of this cognitive type learning, starts hitting to mainstream, which I'm excited about because, I think, we're getting to this culture now where we look at change and we're hopefully now embracing the opportunities rather than looking and saying what you do. I think, now we're realizing no one cares what the product is, we want to know how does it impact us and why should we care. >> Brian Fanzo, new generation, a millennial, making things happen out there, checking things out. Of course, iSocialFanz is his Twitter handle, check him out. Always great content, always out there, the canary in the coalmine, poking at the new stuff and analyzing it and sharing it, oversharing, as some people would say, but not in my book. Always great to have you on. Good to see you. Thanks for spending the time, taking off our AI Lounge. >> My pleasure. Happy South by Southwest. >> Alright, we'll be back with more Intel AI Lounge after this short break. Hashtag Intel AI. I'm John Furrier with the Cube. We'll be right back. (electronic music)
SUMMARY :
Narrator: Live from Austin, Texas, it's the Cube, and extract the signal from the noise. and now outside the Intel Lounge at South by. but you have your Snapchat spectacles on. and it's really easy to use. and not changing the world to go public and leaving the humans behind, but it's humans and one of the things we've been talking You look at the PC revolution with Steve Jobs in the 80s, I mean, it's mind boggling. I love the tagline with awesome in it, because I think of the internet of people is now part and disrupting and the idea where people are faking profiles, and media-- the gatekeepers used to be a few and the bad that, before, oftentimes had a larger microphone for the folks who don't know, look it up on Google, And I think, if you look at the community dynamic, and able to really push the envelope. the communities to be very agile. and access to all of our lives, because it's not just the tech, it's the humanization of it, and the conversations now seem to be, from the Web 2.0 days, and a lot of people were like, and experience at the right time is where we start Thanks for spending the time, Happy South by Southwest. I'm John Furrier with the Cube.
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Ben Parr | SXSW 2017
>> Narrator: Live from Austin, Texas, it's The Cube covering South by Southwest 2017, brought to you by Intel. Now, here's John Furrier. >> Hey, welcome everyone back for day two of live coverage of South by Southwest. This is the cube, our flagship program from Silicon Angle. We go out to the events and extract the (mumbles). We're at the Intel AI Lounge, people are rolling in, it's an amazing vibe here, South by Southwest. The themes are AI, virtual reality, augmented reality, technology. They got great booths here, free beers, free drinks, and of course great sessions and great conversations here with the Cube. My first guest of the day here is Ben Parr, a friend of the Cube. He's been an entrepreneur, he's been a social media maven, he's been a journalist, all around great guy. Ben, thanks for joining us today. >> Thank you for having me again. >> So you're a veteran with South by Southwest, you know the social scene, you've seen the evolution from Web 2.0 all the way to today, had Scobel on yesterday, Brian Fanzo, really the vibe is all about that next level, of social to connecting and you got a startup you're working on that you founded, co-founded called AI? >> Ben: Octane AI. >> Octane AI, that's in the heart of this new social fabric that's developing. Where AI is starting to do stuff, keep learning, analytics but, ultimately, it's just a connection. Talk about your company. What is Octane AI? Tell us a little bit about the company. >> So Octane AI is a platform that lets you build an audience on Facebook Messenger and then through a bot. And so, what we do is allow you to create a presence on Messenger because if I told you there was a social app that had a billion users every month, bigger than Snapchat plus Twitter plus Instagram combined you'd want to figure out a strategy for how to engage with those people right? And that social app is Facebook Messenger. And yet no one ever thinks, oh could I build an audience on a messaging app? Could I build an audience on Messenger or WeChat or any of the others. But you can through a bot. And you can not just build an audience but you can create really engaging content through conversation. So what we've done is, we've made it really easy to make a bot on messenger but more importantly, a real reason for people to, actually, come to your bot and engage with it and make it really easy to create content for it. In the same way you create content for a blog or create content for YouTube Channel. Maroon 5, Aerosmith, KISS, Lindsay Lohan, 30 seconds to MARS, Jason Derulo and a whole bunch more use us to build an audience and engage their fans on Messenger. >> So let me get your thoughts on a couple of trends around this. Cause this is really kind of, to me, a key part that chat bots illustrate the big trends that are going on. Chat bots were the hype. People were talking about, oh chat bots. It's a good mental model for people to see AI but it also has been, kind of, I won't say a pest, if you will, for users. It's been like a notification. A notification of the economy we're living in. Now you're taking it to the next level. This is what we're seeing. The deep learnings and the analytics around turning notifications which can be noisy after a while, into real content and connections. >> Into something useful, absolutely. Like look, the last year of bots. The Facebook platform is not even a year old. We've been in that fart apps stage of bots. Remember the first year of mobile apps? You had the fart app and that made $50,000 a day and that was annoying as hell. We're at that stage now, the experimentation stage. And we've seen different companies going in different, really cool directions. Our direction is, how do you create compelling content so you're not spamming people but you have content that you can share, not just in your bot but as a link on your social media to your followers, to your fans, on Twitter, everywhere else and have a scalable conversation about whatever you want. Maroon 5 has conversations with their audience about their upcoming tours or they even released an exclusive preview of their new song, Cold, through our bots. You could do almost anything with our bots or with any bot. We're just learning right now, as an industry, what are the best practices. >> So where do bots go for the next level? Because you and I have known each other for almost over 10 years, we've seen the whole movement and now we're living in a fake news era. But social media is evolving where content now is super important that glues people together, communities together. In a way, you're taking AI or bots, if you will. Which is a first, I mean, .5 version of where AI is going. Where content, now, is being blended into notifications. How important is content in community? >> Content in community are essential to any product. And I feel like when you hear the word bot, you don't think community and that you could build a community with it because it's a bot, it's supposed to be automated. But you, actually, can if you do it in the right way and it can be a very, very powerful experience. We're building features that allow you to build more community in your bot and have people who are talking with your bot communicate with each other. There's a lot of that. What I feel like is, we're at the zero point one or zero point two of the long scale of AI. What we need to do right now is showcase all the use cases that really work for AI, bots, machine learning. Over time, we will be adding more other great technologies from Intel and others that will make all these technologies and everything we do better, more social and most of all, more personalized. I think that's one of the big benefits of AI. >> Do you see bot technology or what bots can turn into being embedded into things like autonomous vehicles, AR, is there a stack developing, if you will, around bots? What you're talking about is a progression of bots. What's your vision on where this goes down the road? >> I see a bunch of companies, now, building the technological stack for AI. I see a bunch of companies building the consumer interface, bots is one of those consumer interfaces. Not just chat bots but voice bots. And then I see another layer that's more enterprise that's helping make more efficient things like recruiting or all sorts of automation or driving. That are being built as well. But you need each of those stacks to work really well to make this all work. >> So are there bots here at South by Southwest? Is there a bot explosion, is there bots that tell you where the best parties are? What's the scene here at Southby? Where are the bots and if there were bots, what would they be doing to help people figure out what to do? >> The Southby bot is, actually, not a bad bot. They launched their bot just before South by Southwest. It has a good party recommendations and things. But it the standard bot. I feel like what we're seeing is the best use, there's a lot of good bot people. What I'm seeing right now is that people are still flushing out the best use cases for their bots. There's no bot yet that can predict all the parties you want to go to. We got to have our expectations set. That will happen but we're still a few years away from really deep AI bots. But there are clearly ones where you can communicate faster with your friends. There's clearly ones that help you connect with your favorite artist. There's clearly ones that help you build an audience and communicate at scale. And I feel like the next step is the usefulness. >> Talk about the user interface. Robert Scobel and I were talking yesterday, we have some guests coming on today that had user experience background. With AI, with virtual reality, with bots, with deep learning, all this collective intelligence going on, what's your vision of the user interface as it changes, as people's expectations? What are some of those things that you might see developing pretty quickly as deep learning, analytics, more data stats come online? What is the user interface? Cause bots will intersect with that as an assistant or a value add for the user. What's your vision on? >> I'll tell you what I see in the near term and then I'll tell you a really crazy idea of how I see the long term. In the near term, I think what you're going to see is bots have become more predictive. That, based on your conversations, are more personalized and maybe not a necessarily need as much input from you to be really intelligent. And so voice, text, standard interfaces that we're used to. I think the bigger, longer run is neurological. Is the ability to interface without having to speak. Is AI as a companion to help us in everything we do. I feel like, in 30 years, we won't even, it's, kind of like, do your remember the world when it had no internet? It's hard, it feels so much different. There will be a point in about 20 years we will not understand what the world was before AI. Before AI assistance where assisting us mentally, automatically and through every interface. And so good AI's, in the long run, don't just run on one bot or one thing, they follow you wherever you go. Right now it might be on your phone. When you get home, it may be on your home, it may be in your car but it should be the same sets of AI's that you use daily. >> Doctor Nevine Rou, yesterday, called the AI the bulldozer for data. What bulldozers where in the real world, AI's going to do that for data. Cause you want to service more data and make things more usable for users. >> Yes, the data really helps AI become more personalized and that's a really big benefit to the user to every individual. The more personalized the experience, the less you have to do. >> Alright, so what's the most amazing thing you've seen so far this year at Southby? What's going on out there that's pretty amazing? That's popping out of the wood work? In terms of either trend, content, product, demos, what are some of the cool things you're seeing. >> So, as it is only Saturday, I feel like the coolest thing will still come to me. But outside of AI, there have been some really cool mixed reality, augmented reality demos. I can't remember the name. There's a product with butterflies flying around me. All sorts of really breaking edge technologies that, really, create another new interface honestly where AI may interact with us through the augmented reality of our world. I mean, that's Robert Scogul's thing exactly. But there's a lot of really cool things that are being built on that front. I think those are the obvious, coolest ones. I'm curious to see which ones are going to be the big winners. >> Okay, so I want to ask you a personal question. So you were doing some venture investing around AI and some other things. What caused you to put that pause button on that mission to start the chat bot AI company? >> So I was an investor for a couple of years. I invested in ubean, the wireless electricity company and Shots with Justin Bieber which is always fun. And I love investing and I love working with companies. But I got into Silicone Valley and I got into startups because I wanted to build companies. I wanted to build ideas. This happened, in part, because of my co-founders. My co-founder Matt, who is the first head of product at Ustream and twice into the Forbes 30 under 30. One of the king makers of the bot industry. The opportunity to be a part of building the future of AI was irresistible to me. I needed to be a part of that. >> Okay, can you tell any stories about Justin Bieber for us, while we're here inside the Cube? (laughs) >> I wonder how many of those I can, actually, tell? Okay, so look. Justin Bieber is an investor in a company I'm an investor in called Shots. Which is now a super studio that represents everyone from Lele Pons to Mike Tyson on digital online and they're doing really, really well. One of Justin's best friends is the founder, John Shahidi. And so it's just really random. Sitting with John, who I invested in and just getting random FaceTime's. Be like, oh it's Justin Bieber, say hi to Justin. As if it was nothing. As if it was a normal, it's a normal day in his life. >> Could you just have him retweet one of my Tweets. He's got like a zillion followers. What's his follower count at now? >> You don't want that. He's done that to me before. When Justin retweets you or even John retweets you, thousands of not tens of thousands of Justin Bieber fans, bots and not bots, start messaging you, asking you to follow them, talking to you all the time. I still get the tweets all the time from all the Justin fans. >> Okay don't tweet me then. I'm nice and happy with 21,000 followers. Alright, so next level for you in terms of this venture. Obviously, they got some rock stars in there. What's the next step for you guys right now? Give us a little inside baseball in the venture status where you guys are at. What's the next step? >> We launched the company publicly in November, we started in May. We raised 1.6 million from general catalyst, from Sherpa Ventures, a couple of others. When we launched our new feature, Convos, which allows you to create shareable bots, shareable conversations with the way you share blog posts. And that came out with all those launch partners I mentioned before like Maroon 5. We're working on perfecting the experience and, mostly, trying to make a really, really compelling experience with the user with bots because if we can't do that, then there's no use to doing anything. >> So you provide the octane for the explosive conversations? (laughs) >> Yes, there you go, thank you, thank you. And we make it really easy. So we're just trying to make it easier to do this. This is a product that your mom could use, that an artist could use, any social media team could use. Writing a convo is like writing a blog post on media. >> Are moms really getting the chat bot scene? I, honestly, get the Hollywood. I'm going to go back to Hollywood in a second but being a general, middle America kind of tech/genre, what are they like? Are they grokking the whole bot thing? What's the feedback from middle America tech? >> But think of it this way. There are a billion people on Messenger and it's a, really, part of the question, they all use Facebook Messenger. And so, they may be communicating with a bot without knowing it. Or they might want to communicate with their fans. It's not about the technology as much as this is like connecting with who you really care about. If I really care about a Maroon 5 or Rachel Ray, I can now have that option. And it doesn't really matter what the technology is as much as it is that personal connection, that experience is good. >> John: Is it one-one-one or group? Cause it sounds like it's town hall, perfect for a town hall situation. >> It's one-on-one, it's scale. So you could have a conversation with a bot while each of the audience members is having a conversation one-on-one. When you can choose different options and it could be a different conversation for each person. >> Alright, so I got to ask about the Hollywood scene. You mentioned Justin Bieber. I wanted to go down that because Hollywood really has adopted social media pretty heavily because they can go direct to the audience. We're seeing that. Obviously, with the election, Trump was on Twitter. He bypasses all the press but Hollywood has done very well with social. How are they using the bots? They are a tell sign of where it's going. Can you share some antidotal stories or data around how Maroon 5, Justin, these guys are leveraging this and what's some of the impact? >> Sure, so about a month 1/2, 2 months before Maroon 5 launched their new song, new single, Cold. They came to us and wanted to build a distribution. They wanted to reach their audience in a more direct personal way. And so we helped them make a bot. It didn't take long. We helped them write convos. And so what they did was they wrote convos about things like exclusive behind the scenes photos from their recent tour or their top moments of 2016 or things that their fans really care about. And they shared em. They got a URL just like you would get, a blog poster URL. They shared it out with their 39 million Facebook fans, they shared it with their Twitter followers, they shared it across their social media. And 10's of thousand's of people started talking with their bot each time they did this. About 24 hours before the bot, before their new single release, they exclusively released a 10 second clip of Cold through their bot. And when they did that, within 24 hours, the size of their bot doubled because it went viral within the Maroon 5 community. There's a share function in our convos and people shared the convo with their friends and with their friends friends and it kept on spreading. We saw this viral graph happen. And the next day when they released the single, 1000's of people bought the song because of the bot alone. And now the bot is a core of their social strategy. They share a convo every single week and it's not just them but now Lohan and a whole bunch of others are doing the same thing. >> John: Lindsay Lohan. >> Lindsay Lohan is one of our most popular bots. Her fans are really dedicated. >> And so you can almost see it's, almost connecting with CGI, looking at what CGI's doing in film making. You could almost have a CGI component built-in. So it's all this stuff coming together. >> Ben: Multimedia matters. >> So what do you think about the Intel booth here? The AI experience? They got some Kinetic photo experience, amazing non-profit activities in deep loading (mumbles), missing children, what do you think? >> This is some of the best use cases for AI which is, people think of AI as just like the direct consumer interface which is what we do but AI is an underlying layer to everything we do. And if it can help even 1% or 1,000% identify and find missing children or increase the efficiency of our technology stacks so that we save energy. Or we figure out new ways to save energy. This is where AI can really make an impact. It is just a fundamental layer of everything. In the same way the internet is just a fundamental layer of everything. So I've seen some very cool things here. >> Alright, Ben Parr, great guest, in venture capitalist now founder of a great company Octane AI. High octane, explosive conversations looking forward to adopting. We're going to, definitely, take advantage of the chat bot and maybe we can get some back stage passes to Maroon 5. (laughs) >> (laughs) There will be some fun times in the future, I know it. >> Alright Ben Parr. >> Ben: Justin Bieber. >> Justin Bieber inside the Cube right here and Ben Parr. Thanks for watching. It's the Intel AI Lounge. A lot of great stuff. A lot of great people here. Thanks for joining us. Our next guest will be up after this short break. (lively music)
SUMMARY :
covering South by Southwest 2017, brought to you by Intel. a friend of the Cube. and you got a startup you're working on Octane AI, that's in the heart In the same way you create content for a blog A notification of the economy we're living in. that you can share, not just in your bot Because you and I have known each other And I feel like when you hear the word bot, a stack developing, if you will, around bots? the consumer interface, bots is one And I feel like the next step is the usefulness. What is the user interface? the same sets of AI's that you use daily. called the AI the bulldozer for data. the less you have to do. the cool things you're seeing. I feel like the coolest thing Okay, so I want to ask you a personal question. One of the king makers of the bot industry. One of Justin's best friends is the founder, John Shahidi. Could you just have him retweet I still get the tweets all the time in the venture status where you guys are at. And that came out with all those This is a product that your mom could use, Are moms really getting the chat bot scene? and it's a, really, part of the question, John: Is it one-one-one or group? So you could have a conversation with a bot He bypasses all the press but Hollywood and people shared the convo with their friends Lindsay Lohan is one of our most popular bots. And so you can almost see it's, almost This is some of the best use cases for AI of the chat bot and maybe we can get in the future, I know it. It's the Intel AI Lounge.
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