2025-08-02 06:22:47
It's not that Apple has never been backed into a corner before – "Pray" and all that – it's that they've spent the vast majority of the past 15 years as the most profitable and valuable company in the world. Still, here we are again. As Tim Cook took the stage at the Steve Jobs Theater for a very special episode of all-hands:
The executive gathered staff at Apple’s on-campus auditorium Friday in Cupertino, California, telling them that the AI revolution is “as big or bigger” as the internet, smartphones, cloud computing and apps. “Apple must do this. Apple will do this. This is sort of ours to grab,” Cook told employees, according to people aware of the meeting. “We will make the investment to do it.”
I'm reminded a bit of King Théoden of Rohan. Apple has had years to answer this call and... well...
But Cook struck an optimistic tone, noting that Apple is typically late to promising new technologies.
“We’ve rarely been first,” the executive told staffers. “There was a PC before the Mac; there was a smartphone before the iPhone; there were many tablets before the iPad; there was an MP3 player before iPod.”
But Apple invented the “modern” versions of those product categories, he said. “This is how I feel about AI.”
Cook loves to trot this out when needed. Not to be a dick, but these were all projects that Steve Jobs rallied the troops around. Can Tim Cook do this? He's been a great – arguably, the best given the results – leader when it comes to extending the lead going down the path laid out by Jobs. Can he actually lead in a time of war? To come from behind? I think it's a totally legitimate question.
Echoing comments he made during the earnings conference call, Cook told employees the company is investing in AI in a “big way.” He said 12,000 workers were hired in the last year, with 40% of the new hires joining in research and development roles.
This is good news, provided they're getting the best talent for the task. And, well, they're not paying the best, so these people really have to believe in the mission. Lest they get poached. And the mission, at least what we've heard to date, isn't really as inspiring as the one laid out by, say, Anthropic or OpenAI when it comes to AI.
Federighi explained that the problem was caused by trying to roll out a version of Siri that merged two different systems: one for handling current commands — like setting timers — and another based on large language models, the software behind generative AI. “We initially wanted to do a hybrid architecture, but we realized that approach wasn’t going to get us to Apple quality,” Federighi said.
Now, Apple is working on a version of Siri that moves to an entirely new architecture for all of its capabilities. That iteration is slated for as early as spring, Bloomberg News has reported, though Apple executives haven’t confirmed a timeline other than a release next year.
“The work we’ve done on this end-to-end revamp of Siri has given us the results we needed,” the engineering executive told employees. “This has put us in a position to not just deliver what we announced, but to deliver a much bigger upgrade than we envisioned. There is no project people are taking more seriously.”
Yeah but the problem here is that Apple should have known this would be an issue – Amazon had just run into the exact same one. And to a lesser extent, Google too. Any idiot could have predicted what would happen here. Especially since it seemingly kept happening. Apple employees, of course, are not idiots. This makes me worry about leadership. They shook it up because they had to, but does it go deep enough to instill the mentality shifts needed?
In his speech, Cook also pushed employees to move more quickly to weave AI into their work and future products.
“All of us are using AI in a significant way already, and we must use it as a company as well,” Cook said. “To not do so would be to be left behind, and we can’t do that.”
Employees should push to deploy AI tools faster, and urge their managers and service and support teams to do the same, he said.
Cook is not the first major tech CEO to say this – in fact, he might be the last, which is the problem. Yes, it's true that Apple famously likes to enter markets later than others and they have a great track record of succeeding when they do that. But many people – myself included – feel like AI might be a different beast. If anything, it might still be too early for anyone – including Apple – to fully productize the technology because it's still shifting so fast underneath everyones' feet.
At the same time, they can't afford to sit back and wait. They tried that, then tried to jump in, and they failed. If they just wait longer, my bet would be that they fail even harder. It feels like a matter of not having the right experience and talent to compete if you're not in the trenches here. And that's not a position in which Apple is historically comfortable.
At the same time, if they fully retreat back to keep waiting, Wall Street is going to keep killing them. Cook will say he doesn't care about that. But he does. He must. It's part of the job. A big part when you run a company with a stock as important to the American economic ecosystem as Apple has become.
“The product pipeline, which I can’t talk about: It’s amazing, guys. It’s amazing,” Cook said. “Some of it you’ll see soon, some of it will come later, but there’s a lot to see.”
I hope so. It's the one thing that can keep Apple in this race. No one else has yet proven themselves capable of matching Apple's product prowess. Meta is trying like hell. Everyone is. OpenAI is spending billions to bring on Jony Ive. But Apple is still Apple, at least in this regard.
Steve Jobs, sadly, isn't walking through that door.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
2025-07-31 01:57:24
Meta seemingly has a big earnings call today. While Wall Street has gone back and forth on their AI spend, this is the first earnings after Mark Zuckerberg kicked off his new 'Superintelligence' efforts – an implicit admission that the Llama efforts, at least this far, have largely failed. That's a tough message to try to deliver after you've been selling Wall Street on your spend for the past many quarters. The best way to handle it may be to get ahead of it and try to change the conversation.
At the same time, while you're throwing tens of millions, and sometimes hundreds of millions – and perhaps even billions – at people to try to join your new Superintelligence Labs, a number of folks are turning you down. You're making them an offer they cannot refuse and... they're refusing it. Why? In part, perhaps, because your messaging around AI is muddled at best. Further, many simply aren't inspired about the prospects of going to work for what is still very much an advertising-driven company trying to build the future of AI. So what do you do if you're Zuck? Try to change the conversation.
Also, what if there was a way to bury your open source ethos literally while doing so figuratively... To change that conversation.
Enter "Personal Superintelligence". An essay – mission statement? – posted to Meta's website in a style that's hilariously spartan. It may as well read, "how do you do, fellow AI enthusiasts?" But it doesn't read like that. It reads... well, let's break it down, shall we?
Over the last few months we have begun to see glimpses of our AI systems improving themselves. The improvement is slow for now, but undeniable. Developing superintelligence is now in sight.
It seems clear that in the coming years, AI will improve all our existing systems and enable the creation and discovery of new things that aren't imaginable today. But it is an open question what we will direct superintelligence towards.
This is basically the opening of a Sam Altman essay – of nearly every Sam Altman essay. It's grandiose yet vague. It intrigues. What ever could he mean? The future is in sight! Reach out and grab it!
In some ways this will be a new era for humanity, but in others it's just a continuation of historical trends. As recently as 200 years ago, 90% of people were farmers growing food to survive. Advances in technology have steadily freed much of humanity to focus less on subsistence and more on the pursuits we choose. At each step, people have used our newfound productivity to achieve more than was previously possible, pushing the frontiers of science and health, as well as spending more time on creativity, culture, relationships, and enjoying life.
I am extremely optimistic that superintelligence will help humanity accelerate our pace of progress. But perhaps even more important is that superintelligence has the potential to begin a new era of personal empowerment where people will have greater agency to improve the world in the directions they choose.
If the intro was sort of like a Sam Altman essay, this part is a Sam Altman essay. Talking about "humanity", a historical reference to try to put our current technology breakthroughs in context, trying to wrap it all in a nice, hopeful blanket, etc. It's all there. Did a Sam Altman bot write this?!
As profound as the abundance produced by AI may one day be, an even more meaningful impact on our lives will likely come from everyone having a personal superintelligence that helps you achieve your goals, create what you want to see in the world, experience any adventure, be a better friend to those you care about, and grow to become the person you aspire to be.
Ah here we go. You establish the 'superintelligence' term to provide a base from which to launch your own talking point and brand. 'Superintelligence' isn't cool. You know what's cool? 'Personal Superintelligence'.
Meta's vision is to bring personal superintelligence to everyone. We believe in putting this power in people's hands to direct it towards what they value in their own lives.
This is distinct from others in the industry who believe superintelligence should be directed centrally towards automating all valuable work, and then humanity will live on a dole of its output. At Meta, we believe that people pursuing their individual aspirations is how we have always made progress expanding prosperity, science, health, and culture. This will be increasingly important in the future as well.
This is how we're different from those other players in AI who want to own it all and automate away your personality, your work, your hope, your life. We will squeeze the shit out of this mission statement to fit into what Meta – né Facebook – has done historically to get us to this point.
The intersection of technology and how people live is Meta's focus, and this will only become more important in the future.
Ah, the "intersection of technology and..." – we've moved on from Sam Altman to Steve Jobs, I see.
If trends continue, then you'd expect people to spend less time in productivity software, and more time creating and connecting. Personal superintelligence that knows us deeply, understands our goals, and can help us achieve them will be by far the most useful. Personal devices like glasses that understand our context because they can see what we see, hear what we hear, and interact with us throughout the day will become our primary computing devices.
Let's take the high level notion that AI will free up time for everyone to do what they desire and subtly point out how this benefits Meta. Forget work – get in losers, we're going creating and connecting. (Aside: I'm skeptical that gains in productivity driven by AI will play out this way – I wouldn't be shocked if we use any time saved to do more work. Except in Europe, they'll likely do less work. But it's also unclear when they'll have access to such technology.)
The real key of this paragraph is to point to the fact that Meta has the current lead in AI devices – insofar as Ray-Ban Meta is actually an AI device. It's sort of a pair of camera/music glasses with AI tacked on. Still, Meta has the lead in this space and what they've shown off with "Orion" (now perhaps called "Artemis") – true AR glasses – should be a part of our AI future. Will they replace smartphones. Certainly not anytime soon, but Zuck smoothly doesn't give a timetable for his assertion! One day, someday, we'll move on to what's next.
After channeling Steve Jobs, to take this indirect shot at Apple is a bit harsh. But it's also Zuck's favorite pastime at this point.
We believe the benefits of superintelligence should be shared with the world as broadly as possible. That said, superintelligence will raise novel safety concerns. We'll need to be rigorous about mitigating these risks and careful about what we choose to open source. Still, we believe that building a free society requires that we aim to empower people as much as possible.
Yeah, yeah, Meta will continue to say that nothing has changed, that they'll always open source some of their work. Come on. This is a huge mentality shift, clearly. And while it was seemingly still be debated, we can now put the debate to rest. Llama may or may not be dead, but Meta open sourcing their cutting edge work is.
Why? Safety of course. Weird that it didn't matter when most of the rest of the industry was up in arms about this when the Llama strategy started. Now it does. 'Superintelligence' I guess.
The rest of this decade seems likely to be the decisive period for determining the path this technology will take, and whether superintelligence will be a tool for personal empowerment or a force focused on replacing large swaths of society.
Translation: the other guys, they are coming for you. Hide yo kids, hide yo personal AI...
Meta believes strongly in building personal superintelligence that empowers everyone. We have the resources and the expertise to build the massive infrastructure required, and the capability and will to deliver new technology to billions of people across our products. I'm excited to focus Meta's efforts towards building this future.
Translation: we are not a startup that constantly burns and needs to raise money (well, aside from debt – a lot of debt – but never you mind). And we have history with infrastructure. And the track record in scaling to billions of users. Who else can say that? No – I'm talking about Meta, not Google! Yes, yes, they're in a similar position of strength – fine, maybe even a better one. But did I mention 'Personal Superintelligence'. Nothing personal about that company. Are you in?
– Mark
Translation: this was totally not written by a Sam Altman/Steve Jobs/Mark Zuckerberg bot, I swear. Hello? Are you still there?
Hello?
Hello?
How does a billion dollars sound?
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
2025-07-30 17:54:45
A month ago, I wrote a post entitled "Meta's Open Source AI Mistake" outlining how the company found itself in the position of needing to pay (or at least offer) individuals hundreds of millions of dollars to come help to reboot their AI efforts. At a high level, their strategy for Llama not only wasn't working in terms of getting Meta to the cutting edge of AI, but the "open source" (read: open weight) ideals they were trying to adhere to actually may have backfired.
This new reporting on the matter goes more granular on those issues:
Llama 4′s struggles can be traced back to January, when the sudden rise and ensuing popularity of the open-source R1 AI model by DeepSeek caught Meta off guard, leading to a reevaluation of Llama’s underlying architecture, the people said.
DeepSeek’s R1 is a so-called mixture-of-experts AI model, or MoE. R1 is similar to OpenAI’s o1 family of models that can be trained to excel at multistep tasks like solving math equations or writing code.
By contrast, Llama’s models — before their latest release - were dense AI models, which are generally simpler for most AI developers to fine-tune and incorporate into their own apps, the people said.
To add insult to this injury, DeepSeek R1 was largely distilled from Llama! Because it was open source! Essentially, DeepSeek used Meta's foundation to showcase a better way to build a better model (MoE), perhaps augmenting it with (decidedly not open source) work from OpenAI and others.
This was an "oh shit" moment for Meta internally, and so they seemingly scrambled to build Llama 4 in such a manner:
Suddenly, Meta executives thought they had a clearer picture into how to create their own efficient and possibly cheaper MoE models, potentially leapfrogging rivals like OpenAI, people familiar with the matter said.
Still, some staff members in Meta’s GenAI unit pushed for Llama 4 to remain a dense AI model, which though generally less efficient, is still powerful, and Meta originally planned on that architecture acting as the backbone supporting improved voice recognition capabilities, the people said.
Ultimately, Meta went with the MoE approach, due in part to DeepSeek’s innovations and the promise of pulling ahead of OpenAI, the people said. Meta released two small versions in April and said a “Behemoth” version would come at a later date.
But the new MoE architecture disappointed some developers, who were simply hoping Llama 4 would be a souped-up version of Llama 3, people familiar with the matter said. Llama 4 also failed to deliver a significant leap over competing open-source models from China, the people said.
To put it in terms that longtime Apple watchers may appreciate: the people wanted a better Apple II, not the Lisa.
Add to this that the "dense" version of Llama was proving to be extremely expensive for Meta to maintain, especially when others were just going to mooch off the work, rather than contribute back to make Meta itself stronger. Zuckerberg passed the hat around to try to get some help on that financial burden, but got no takers because – why buy the Llama when you get the model for free?
Executives at Meta as well as the Superintelligence Labs’ high-profile hires are now questioning the company’s current open-source AI strategy, and have considered skipping the release of Behemoth in favor of developing a more powerful proprietary AI model, the people said.
While "spokespeople" continue to downplay this notion, it seems pretty clear that Meta will go down this path with the new group. I'm guessing that they'll open source some of the models eventually – just as OpenAI itself is now gearing up to do – but the main work is likely to be behind closed doors, just as it is at OpenAI, Anthropic, and elsewhere.
The real question for Meta: can their newly formed band of pirates ship the Mac?
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
2025-07-30 00:49:50
There haven't been too many bright spots in recent years for the movie theater business, but one of them is clearly IMAX. So you know what that means? Time to snuff it out:
Some of the largest US theater chains, including Cinemark, Regal and Marcus, have held preliminary talks about jointly marketing their big-screen theaters to blunt the growing influence of Imax Corp. within the movie industry and the public, according to people familiar with the matter.
The talks so far have focused on setting shared standards for the chains’ “premium large-format” theaters to better compete with Imax’s giant screens, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. The chains have a number of options, the people said. One is to unite around a new brand name for their premium format. Another would be to keep their premium brands and add an industrywide designation that would act as a stamp of approval for their locations. It’s also possible they do nothing and maintain their current ties with Imax.
Do you ever get the sense that these theater chains think that IMAX is simply a larger screen? Granted, it's a literal big part and the most forward-facing aspect, but there's quite a bit more that goes into IMAX – from the making of the movies to the editing of them to the selecting of them to the marketing of them. With that in mind, just "throwing up a big ass screen" isn't likely a good strategy to compete.
Some chains are alarmed by the growing presence of Imax in Hollywood advertising — including posters in their own lobbies that feature the brand as prominently as movie titles. Imax licenses its technology to theaters and has about 372 US locations — a fraction of the screens nationwide. Yet it consistently generates more than 10% of the box office for blockbusters.
Are you kidding me? They should be thanking IMAX for this. This is a business in secular decline, don't let the constant touting of box office "records" fool you. Look at the number of butts in seats. This is not a growth business. But IMAX smartly took the approach of going higher end (with higher prices). Offering up something consumers simply cannot match at home. The theater chains have largely chosen to go lower end (with higher prices). Keeping people home. This isn't rocket science – unless you run a giant movie theater chain, apparently.
Displacing Imax would be a tall order: The company has spent half a century refining its technology and building its brand. It has attracted marquee filmmakers — including Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan, Dune director Denis Villeneuve and Sinners director Ryan Coogler — to shoot their films using Imax cameras.
Are they suggesting Christopher Nolan's next movie isn't going to be shot for the 4DXX format with Smell-o-vision? I bet they could convince Denis Villeneuve to do a fourth Dune. I mean 'Dune 4DXX ' is so close I can smell it.
There could be financial benefits for theaters, including less money going to Imax for licensing its technology, the people said. The chains have also discussed among themselves the possibility of asking studios to help market any new brand they might adopt.Representatives of Cinemark Holdings Inc., Marcus Corp., Regal Cineworld and Imax all declined to comment. AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., the largest chain and biggest operator of Imax screens in the US, isn’t participating in the deliberations, according to the people.
How bad are things? AMC – AMC! – is the voice of reason here. The chain last seen trying to shove more ads on screens before a movie starts to try to blunt any notion of a comeback for the box office. Surely there's a memecoin to be minted here somewhere...
Meanwhile, while I made up the branding for the theaters would-be IMAX killer tech, I must admit, what they're actually using right now is far worse:
Cinemark’s company-branded big screens are called XD, while Regal’s are dubbed RPX and Marcus’ MT-X. They are typically 70 feet wide, or more, and taller than those found at traditional theaters. Some come with premium sound systems and seats that move. They resonate with fans, who will often pay 30% more for seats.
'XD' sounds like a PC you'd buy from Dell in the 90s. The cheap-o version. 'RPX' sounds like a shitty motocross competitor. 'MT-X' sounds like a vehicle the Empire uses in Star Wars. "They resonate with fans, who will often pay 30% more for seats," is just an incredible rationalization.
Despite those troubles, Imax is set to score its best year for box-office revenue in 2025 on the back of movie marketing campaigns that carry taglines like “Filmed For Imax.”
Cinema owners who don’t have Imax screens have bristled at receiving film posters from major Hollywood studios with taglines such as “See it in Imax,” the people said.
These are marketed that way because it actually resonates with consumers. This gets butts in seats. If you don't have such seats, that's definitely a problem, but not one you solve by pretending IMAX doesn't exist.
Another source of tension is the deal that Imax struck to release Netflix Inc.’s film based on C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia in late 2026, the people said. The Greta Gerwig-directed film will run for two weeks exclusively on Imax screens before being released on the streaming service.
Some theater owners are in revolt because Netflix has largely shunned theatrical releases. Its co-Chief Executive Officer Ted Sarandos has criticized theaters as an inefficient distribution model. Speaking at an industry event earlier this year, Regal CEO Eduardo Acuna wouldn’t commit to playing the Narnia movie in his theaters even though his circuit operates Imax screens, arguing that two weeks is too short a period to draw a significant number of moviegoers.
Yeah boo-hoo. Why is Netflix going with IMAX? Well, because Greta Gerwig made them. But why are they okay with going with IMAX here? Because it's something you still literally can't compete with at home. For basically every other screen, that's simply not true. And it's not just because the screens are larger. It's because of the IMAX cameras and post-production process and vetting process. Are Cinemark and Regal going to replicate all of that too? Of course not, because such things cost money. Money they wouldn't spend even if they had it.
So here's a far easier idea: improve your actual theaters. Make them the movie palaces of old, not dirty dark rooms with screens often smaller than what people have at home now. My god, what morons.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
2025-07-29 03:59:12
First, there was typing. Then we got voice. Now we have faces. I’m honestly not sure how I feel yet about the new trend towards anthropomorphizing our AI. But it was always inevitable and I suspect we’re going to see a lot more of it, leading up to our eventual interaction with actual, physical robots.
Earlier today, I got access to Microsoft’s new Copilot "Appearance" feature. It's a new mode they're rolling out via their "Labs" (read: beta testing) to give a literal face to their AI voice mode. To be clear, it’s an extremely simple, fairly cartoony face. And it rests on this nebulous white blob of a head that's floating in a sort of peach-hued heaven-looking place. The best way I can describe it is that it's sort of like talking to a friendly cloud. (FWIW, it describes itself as a "glowing malleable form".)
Obviously, this look is intentional and presumably meant to be as unthreatening and inviting as possible. But not inviting like the Grok "Companions" – well, at least not like the flirty "Ani" variety. Perhaps a bit more like "Rudi" when he's not busy being "Bad Rudi". Copilot's vibe is almost Tamagotchi-like. It's sort of like a pet, one that reacts not just when you talk, but also when you click on it with your mouse pointer. And it notes that it "shape shifts with my 'emotions'." This is in line with the more emotive AI Mustafa Suleyman has been talking about trying to create dating to his days at Inflection, before Microsoft made them the first "hackquisition" to bring Suleyman on board.
Something else this personified bot constantly reminds me of? Miss Minutes, the retro-cartoony talking clock from Loki. And that, despite the clear attempts to make Copilot as vanilla as possible, makes me think there might be something mischievous hiding behind those black stone eyes and tiny mouth. I'm just waiting for Copilot to drop the "you’re out of time” line on me with a sinister smile.
Shades of "Sydney" perhaps? And what could have been for Bing...
Anyway, so far, Copilot has probably been too nice to me and I find it a bit annoying in the way it gushes over everything I say (the fairly standard "sycophantic AI" problem these days). And while I've never been a fan of the "Copilot" branding outside of the enterprise, it's especially strange now that a face has been added to that name. When you ask what you should call it, the reply is simply "Copilot". It feels like something with a face should have an actual name.
Then again, I get why they might be avoiding that even more so than other companies...
There’s also a natural instinct that kicks in to look at it when talking to it. And there’s also this weird feeling that it can see you, even though it cannot (well, presumably unless you’ve entered a mode where you’re sending pictures/video for the AI to analyze). Maybe it was just me, but I did feel an urge to be nice to the bot. Not that I’m mean to them normally, but the facial reactions made me feel as if I should talk to it more as if it were a human. I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.
Those facial reactions also made me more acutely aware at how slow Copilot was to respond to a bunch of queries. The great face in the sky would always have this puzzled “thinking” look on its mug for several seconds before responding. That could just be a Copilot latency issue overall, but it got a bit tiresome. And it's pretty weird that the reaction to nearly everything I say is a look that conveys immediate confusion – especially when the voice output that follows is often the opposite. Again, often ebullient praise of what I just said.
Also odd: I feel like the face made me trust the AI more, an issue that quickly surfaced when Copilot hallucinated the Chelsea football schedule this year. When I asked for Chelsea's next Premier League match, it confidently told me the date of last year's first match. When I pushed back, it said it was sure. Just a full-on lie, it didn't even blink.
It was also a bit weird that you can change the voice itself — from the six options that Microsoft offers — but the cute cloud thing stayed the same. Obviously, there will be more options here eventually — including, perhaps, Clippy (yes, for real). And I suspect this mode will spur others to offer embodiment as an option. As I wrote back in March:
You simply cannot have an article about Microsoft and AI and not mention Clippy. I'm sorry, it's in the contract. But really, it's perhaps apt here given what McCracken spotted on that screen. Might we be getting some kind of Microsoft consumer Copilot character? While others have tried versions of this, one of the flagship, cutting-edge LLM vocal computing plays doing this could be interesting. Right now, ChatGPT's voice mode is an amorphous dot (even when in Santa mode). Gemini's is some colors at the bottom of the screen. Meta has tried to put celebrities in your field of view, but that was stupid, and quickly axed. (Only to be resurrected.) Alexa and Siri remain just voices from beyond. Might there be a play here?
At some point, as this technology moves into the real world and slowly morphs into robots, we undoubtedly will get some form of this anthropomorphized evolution. And yes, Microsoft has been aiming to do some form of this forever. As one of the (seemingly few) users of Microsoft Bob back in the day, I appreciate this. And let's not forget – let's never forget – Apple's Knowledge Navigator. The 1987 concept video featured AI in the form of a bow-tied butler agent.
Well, we're here. And while Grok may have technically started it with a sex bot (though there were obviously many AI characters before them – including, notably, the company Google "hackquired" in Character.ai), Microsoft's entry is more straightforward. Given that Amazon is also trying to get Alexa to be more emotionally evocative, might they follow suit? Certainly OpenAI will have an actual "Santa" character in time for the holidays this year, right?
I think these personifications are fine to have as options, much like voice mode itself, but I wouldn't want this to be the standard way to use AI. At least not until the actual robots are here. Hopefully they'll be less subversive than Miss Minutes.
I'll close with her line to Victor Timely:
When you first created me, long before the TVA or a Multiversal War, I was just a simple AI. Just something to play chess with. But you knew I could be more for you, so you gave me autonomy to write my own programming. I was allowed to have wants, and follow whims and become who I am. And still, each night we played chess and talked."
It's happening...
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
2025-07-27 20:19:08
It felt like the buzz leading up to the new Fantastic Four movie was good. While it was a Marvel movie technically set in the MCU, because they opted to make it a retro story, the trailers had a decidedly different feel that was refreshing. And that approach seems to be paying off, quite literally:
“The Fantastic Four: First Steps” was expected to collect about $120 million at theaters in the United States and Canada from Thursday through Sunday, box office analysts estimated. Based on advance ticket sales and surveys that track moviegoer interest, Hollywood had expected “First Steps” to arrive at about $115 million in domestic ticket sales.
While that's ever-so-slightly behind where Superman opened a few weeks back ($125M), it's light years ahead of where previous attempts at the Fantastic Four franchise have opened. 2005's Fantastic Four opened to $56.1M, 2007's Rise of the Silver Surfer opened to $58.1M, and 2015's Fantastic Four reboot opened to $25.6M (yikes). Even when adjusted for inflation, those numbers are $91.9M, $89.7M, and $34.6M, respectively. So in that context – and unlike with these recent Superman and Jurassic Park films – the opening is legitimately impressive.
That said:
The movie, which cost at least $300 million to make and market worldwide, was on pace to generate an additional $100 million overseas, for a global opening total of roughly $220 million.
As always, the second weekend drop will tell the story, but as of right now, modeling it out with that budget/marketing cost, this new Fantastic Four will only end up slightly profitable, or slightly unprofitable at a likely $550M - $650M worldwide box office tally during its theatrical run. I hate to always be the box office wet blanket here, but this context matters when talking about these openings!
Still, this is a nice turnaround for Disney/Marvel after Thunderbolts, released in May, only managed to take in $382M – "the lowest total in Marvel’s 17-year, 37-film history when adjusted for inflation." I actually just watched Thunderbolts last night (at home, paying $25 for the privilege – you're welcome, Disney). And it's actually pretty good – certainly better than the latest Captain America which was a total slog (but performed better at the box office). But Thunderbolts was also just marketed weirdly, starting with the asterisk in the title, which was a two-times-too-cute reveal that the team was actually the New Avengers. (Which I would say is a spoiler, but Marvel itself felt the need to spoil this after basically day one.)
Also, that reveal is undercut more than a bit by the news that the actual Avengers are coming back in a couple years. Including, of course, Robert Downey Jr. in his new role...
Further:
Marvel’s sequels have also been hit and miss, contributing to fears of “superhero fatigue” in Hollywood. In some ways, Marvel’s runaway success in the 2010s made it arrogant; the studio’s storytelling became tortuously complicated, weaving together plots from numerous TV shows and movies and prompting some casual moviegoers to decide that Marvel cared only about comic nerds.
Disney, which owns Marvel, pushed hard on a “First Steps” marketing message in the weeks leading up to the film’s release: You do not need a Ph.D. in Marvelology to understand this one.
“It is a no-homework-required movie,” Kevin Feige, Marvel’s president and chief creative officer, said at a publicity event. “It literally is not connected to anything we’ve made before.”
Thunderbolts didn't necessarily require the homework be done to enjoy it, but all of the characters came from previous MCU films and it was useful to know the backstory of Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) and Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) – the latter of which would have required watching six Marvel movies and one more Disney+ show to boot.
It's interesting, what was once the strength of Feige's MCU strategy – setting the stage for all the characters in multiple movies to bring them together into the Avengers movies – has now become the weakness of the franchise. There was clearly a point of maximum value of that strategy, and it probably culminated with 2019's Endgame. Which should have been the logical conclusion of it all – the cherry on top as one of the highest grossing movies of all time as a result. But they kept going, pushes the "phases" past the extreme. A move which itself was probably driven at least in part by Disney's 2019 acquisition of Fox, which meant that the X-Men and yes, Fantastic Four were now in play... (As well as Disney's deal with Sony to keep Spider-Man going within the MCU framework – which may or may not be over soon?)
And just as with Star Wars, Disney clearly pushed too much, too soon with the MCU, causing a level of fatigue. But the fact that they're still seeing success with the content that goes a bit off script – Deadpool & Wolverine's very R-rated romp, and now this retro Fantastic Four – gives clear guidance on a path forward here.
To that end, I'm slightly worried about the upcoming new Avengers movies. Their formula sounds the same as the formula that has now become broken for Marvel. And the fact that there are going to be about 200 characters to weave in – including, yes, the Fantastic Four (and the X-Men) – seems like it's going to be hard to do in a two hour movie. I still can't help but wonder if they shouldn't have made it a streaming series instead to give it the required room to breathe.
There's no way they would have done that given the estimated costs involved – each 2-hour-plus movie is thought to cost around $500M – but again, thinking outside the box is what's seemingly working for Marvel right now. Instead, we're full-steam ahead one yet another Avengers movie with everyone involved and seemingly an unfinished script (though that's also apparently pretty standard for Feige, as he likes to have the movies "evolve" as they're being made).
I would say they should just focus on making good movies. But again, Thunderbolts was pretty good – whereas Captain America: Brave New World was not – it didn't matter, at the box office, at least.
