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Well, hello! It’s a beautiful day to talk about…robots. Robots that make art. Robots in art. A man who turned himself into a robot. It will all make sense when you read this week’s Big Thing. I’ve also got you covered on Apple’s latest iPads, news from Netflix and Snap and the best ways to take your online stuff offline. Plus, I need your help writing questions for tech-executive interviews I’m doing next week.
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PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: AMY LOMBARD; OPENAI DALL-E
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My column and video this week are about one of the coolest tech things I’ve tried in a while: AI art generators.
Using OpenAI’s Dall-E 2 and Stability AI’s DreamStudio, I can type in pretty much any phrase that comes to mind and get a pretty interesting—and probably hilarious—image.
“A monkey recording a podcast.” “Elon Musk holding a Twitter bird.” “Trying to fix an HP printer paper jam, medieval painting.” The systems will create images of all those things. The crazy part? They are made entirely by artificial intelligence. No humans—just computers.
“A robot sitting on a yellow bench by the pool reading The Wall Street Journal.”
When I started working on the video for this project, that’s one of the ideas that came to mind. So I typed it into Dall-E 2 and got a pretty fun image. Then we decided to try and see what it would take to create that scene in real life. We needed a person with a crazy robot suit (found Peter Kokis!), a yellow bench (found at Walmart!), a pool (found in my parents’ backyard!) and a copy of WSJ (found at the end of my parent’s driveway!). And finally, we needed a great photographer (found Amy Lombard!).
All that effort, compared to typing a few words into a computer. Sure, the AI art isn’t as good as our real photography, but AI’s capability—understanding what we want then creating a high-quality image of it—is getting better really fast.
Read the full column and watch the video here to find out how it all works and how, like other tech that’s fun and exciting, it can also be worrisome.
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PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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Next week our annual WSJ Tech Live conference kicks off in Laguna Beach, Calif. I’m taking over the Tuesday evening agenda with a special Tech Things program featuring an interview with Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and another with Apple senior vice presidents Greg Joswiak and Craig Federighi.
I’m very excited! But I need your help! What should I ask on stage? Reply to this email with your best questions for those executives. Maybe I’ll ask one of them.
You’ll be able to watch the interviews live on The Wall Street Journal Twitter account Tuesday starting at about 7:15 p.m. PT/10:15 p.m. ET. We’ll also have a special edition of the Tech Things newsletter on Wednesday, recapping the sessions and the event.
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Apple iPad News ✏️📷
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And then came the iPads! The 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro models have new M2 chips, while the basic iPad model has lost its home button and gained a slightly larger 10.9-inch display. Don’t worry, Touch ID still exists, it’s just now embedded in the power button at the top of the device. The new model uses a USB-C port (👍) but it still only works with the Lightning-port-charging first-gen Apple Pencil. Because of this, you need a $9 dongle to charge the Pencil in the new iPad (👎).
My favorite update? The new placement of the front-facing camera:
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CREDIT: APPLE
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The camera is no longer on the shorter side of the tablet. Sayonara, awkward camera angles and double chins. But come on, Apple! You should’ve moved the camera on the Pros, too! The iPads hit stores on Oct. 26 with the basic model starting at $449 and the Pro models starting at $799. Nicole wrote all about the tablets, so be sure to give her story a read!
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Tech Earnings Kicks Off 📈💸
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Netflix and Snap, two tech companies that have had a disappointing year, reported earnings, and things overall are…still not great. After posting two consecutive quarters of subscriber losses, Netflix managed to reverse the trend and add 2.4 million new customers in the third quarter. It’s better than the 1 million new subscribers it was expecting, but fewer additions than in previous years. As for Snap, it reported the slowest rate of revenue growth it’s had since going public in 2017. The company also warned that revenue growth will likely decelerate further in
the fourth quarter. Snap shares fell more than 25% in after-hours trading Thursday, while Netflix rose on its results.
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Meta’s Metaverse Falls Short 🌎🕹
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Last week, I covered Meta’s new $1,500 portal to the metaverse, the Quest Pro. A few days after, my colleagues reported that Meta’s metaverse-meetup app is not exactly off to a great start. Meta originally set a goal of attracting 500,000 monthly active users by the end of the year in Horizon Worlds—where users can shop, party and work in the form of virtual avatars. Meta later reduced that goal to 280,000, and internal documents show that the number is currently less than 200,000. Users also typically don’t return after the first month.
Of course, it’s early days for all this, and Meta already announced that it’s bringing Horizon Worlds to the web and mobile so you don’t have to put on a big face computer to hang with the avatars. But for now, the metaverse is best summarized by this Akon song.
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📰 Catch up on the headlines, understand the news and make better decisions. Sign up for What’s News, free in your inbox on weekday evenings and Sunday afternoons.
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A Thing to Try - Prepare to Be Offline
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Earlier this week, my colleague and newsletter-partner-in-crime Cordilia James wrote all about the hype around smartphone satellite capabilities. As nice as the iPhone 14’s Emergency SOS feature will be when it arrives in November, it’s limited. When you don’t have cellular service, you can only use satellite connectivity to contact emergency services.
As I was reading, I thought about all the other things you’re prevented from doing on your phone when you don’t have service—unless you prepare ahead of time. So let’s prepare:
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Download docs and other files:
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iOS and Android users can access Google Docs, Sheets and Slides offline. Open one of the apps, tap the three dots next to the file you want, then select the option to make it available offline. To find that file, tap the three Menu lines at the top, and tap Offline.
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Download music/podcasts:
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In Spotify, select the playlist, album or podcast you want to listen to offline and tap the download toggle. Once it’s downloaded, you’ll see a little green arrow below each title. In Apple Music, the process is more cumbersome. Hold down on the item and tap Add to Library. Then go to your Library, hold down again on the item and select Download. (For albums and playlists already in your library, just look for the down arrow.)
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CREDIT: JOANNA STERN/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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PHOTO: DALE MCKIM
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Dale McKim from Buffalo, N.Y.
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Sony Car Discman with portable speakers
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This was the “ESP” model that was supposed to prevent skipping when you hit bumps. It was still awful.
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I used to have a job filling up newspaper machines in the morning during college breaks. I would have this thing loaded up with the latest Seattle grunge music blasting out of my truck with the included cassette player adapter.
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It works, but I couldn’t play it in my car anymore because it doesn’t have a cassette deck (or a CD player, for that matter)!
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📷 Got an idea for a throwback? Reply to this email with a photo of your old tech and tell us why you loved—or hated—it. 📷
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Reply to this email and share your feedback and suggestions.
User-submitted content has been edited for clarity and length. This week’s newsletter was curated and written by Joanna Stern and Cordilia James.
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