Talk to the Pin or Pen or Pendant

AI Hardware • The AiPhone • Oscar Nominations • Apple's Internal AI Apps • Meta's First Superintelligent Models • Reed Hastings at the Movies • He-Man!

With Apple now seemingly about to get back into the AI game with the help of Google, a new device race may also be about to get underway. While this will undoubtedly bolster the iPhone, will there actually be space for new types of AI-first devices? It wasn’t the case a couple years ago, but now the major players may be aligning around the notion, undoubtedly driven by voice…

🗣️ Pinning Hopes on New AI Hardware – Again – Even Apple

With competent AI incoming, Apple considers an AI Pin...

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I Wrote…

📲 An Actual AiPhone

Gemini? Check. Chatbot? Check. But might we need an app?

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I Note…

🏆 2026 Oscar Nominations

Sinners has set a new high water mark with 16 nominations — a full two clear of All About Eve (1950), Titanic (1997), and La La Land (2016). That’s great news for everyone involved — especially Ryan Coogler given his unique and wild deal for the film — which includes Warner Bros. Which also made the second most-nominated film this year: One Battle After Another, which got 13 nominations. All in, WB racked up 30 nominations, far ahead of Neon at 18, and Netflix with 16. If say, those two companies were to be combined, you would have 47 nominations (HBO also got one for a documentary). The closest major studio would be Universal (thanks to Focus Features) at 14. After that, it’s Disney at 4. Four. Even Apple had 6 (thanks mainly to F1, which scored a Best Picture nomination too). Paramount? Zero. As with the Golden Globes, this obviously should have no baring on antitrust matters, but mainly just points to an incredible year for Warner Bros. [Deadline]

🤖 It Was Enchanté To Meet You

As they push to get Siri back up to speed powered by Google’s AI, Apple has their own internal AI chatbot apps — ones which are apparently different from the previously circulated "Veritas" app (which sounded like a way to help with the AI "bake off" for which model Apple should choose for Siri). Enchanté sounds like a ChatGPT-like app to help employees with their work, using both Claude and Gemini on the backend (alongside some of Apple’s own models). The focus — and presumably the reason why they’re not just using Claude or Gemini themselves — is unsurprisingly on security, either running queries locally or in Apple’s secure cloud. The same sounds generally true for ‘Enterprise Assistant' which sounds decidedly more boring and straight-forward as a tool to help navigate internal workflows and documentation. Anyway, this just backs up my point that I still think Siri should have a stand-alone app, not just be in the background of iOS/macOS. [Macworld]

🦸 Meta’s First "Superintelligence" Models in Testing

When asked about the first outputs from the MSL group, Andrew Bosworth doesn’t sound exactly enthused. Noting the first models have been released internally, he kicks off by couching his answer that the team has only been at work on it for six months, "not quite even" before saying they’re "very good". Not "great" not "fantastic" certainly not the "best" because he goes on to note that they need more post-training work. All seems reasonable given the quick turnaround, still… Meta needs to get back in the game, fast. And they’re obviously paying whatever it takes to make that happen. They need to whip the llama’s ass. Boz also notes what a "tremendously chaotic year" it has been for Meta with AI. I’ll say. [Reuters]

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I Quote…

"Companies get good at something, and then if you can add to the core mechanism, that’s great. So we’ve always wanted to add content to the Netflix subscription to make it more and more useful, more and more enjoyable, but kind of keep it like one big model, as opposed to also do theatrical movies or also do something else as a way to expand revenue."

— Reed Hastings, on a January episode of the Invest Like the Best podcast. As Chairman of Netflix’s board, he obviously signed off on the Warner Bros deal, but it sounds like he’s still quite skeptical of how well theatrical will work for Netflix… But that is Ted Sarandos’ (and Greg Peters’) call now…

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Asides…

• Google looks to have made another "hackquisition" this time around voice AI tech – a topic I’ve been thinking about a lot recently – Hume AI’s CEO and "several top engineers" will join the DeepMind team in exchange for (of course) an undisclosed licensing fee (though the company does seem like it will continue to operate independently, as this is becoming a big business). [Wired]

• Ahead of racing towards IPOs, OpenAI and Anthropic are both clearly on the road with slightly smaller tin cups to raise mere tens of billions for the next (last? or famous last words?) private rounds:

  • Sam Altman is in the Middle East looking for "at least" $50B — with Amazon in for "at least" $10B. The valuation is still looking to be in the $830B range, obviously depending how much they bring in. [Bloomberg 🔒]

  • Anthropic’s round is said to already be "oversubscribed" at more than $10B — which is on top of the $15B that NVIDIA and Microsoft have committed. That could push the valuation above the $350B range. [Bloomberg 🔒]

  • The two are also battling on the margins with their margins. Anthropic’s may be getting hit by high inference costs. [Information 🔒]

  • Meanwhile, OpenAI is busy with a re-org now that Barret Zoph is (controversially) back. He’ll now oversee their key enterprise sales push for OpenAI — which seems a bit odd given that he was CTO at Thinking Machines? Jack of all trades, I guess. [Information 🔒]

• Sort of wild that Blue Origin is launching a satellite internet service separate from Amazon’s being-deployed Leo service. Yes, TerraWave will be focused on enterprise (and governments — and space data centers, naturally), but in the success state, they’ll obviously compete in ways. That’s theoretical though with both being miles away from Starlink’s 9,000 satellites at the moment… [CNBC]

• How much of a cut will be the standard for AI chatbots handling commerce transactions? If the OpenAI/Shopify deal is any indication: 4%. [Information 🔒]

• With Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube battling Netflix in the living room, the latter is going to focus more on vertical video to try to combat all of them better on mobile. That suggests, perhaps, more "UGC" coming, but at first, it will be focused on their big video podcast push. [THR]

• It sounds like China has finally signed off on the TikTok deal, as such, it could close this week. Our long national nightmare is over. I mean, maybe? [Semafor]

• Paramount has formally kicked off their proxy fight for Warner Bros Discovery, but also pushed out their deadline for investors to tender shares — no surprise since only a tiny amount have thus far. [THR]

• End of an era with Prue Leith signing off from The Great British Bake-Off after some 400 challenges over 9 seasons. I had absolutely no idea she was 86! Merry Berry, whom she replaced, is 90! [NYT]

  • English food writer and chef Nigella Lawson, a spry 66, is rumored to be her replacement. Between this and tracking the next Bond… [Guardian]

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I Spy…

This could go one of two ways: either it will be fun or it will be awful. There is no in-between. And it’s really hard to tell from this trailer which way, He-Man. I do wish everyone would stop doing the "cast away to Earth" storyline, I’d rather this just be straight-up Eternia fantasy?

Then again, I was a kid who grew up loving both the action figures — obviously I had the Castle Grayskull set — and the OG cartoon. That said, I also have a soft spot for the ridiculous Dolph Lundgren 1987 movie which yes, was set mainly on Earth.

Best case may be Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves, which was actually quite good and fun. Though this looks a bit too Thor-y… Don’t ruin the possibility of a Thundercats movie for me, He-Man!