Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Meta’s New Muse AI App Makes Shopping Easier
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- 0:02Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios.
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- 0:23Speaker 3: Paul, you have a section on your phone that you
- 0:26Speaker 3: created a new folder.
- 0:27Speaker 1: Of AI apps. Darn right I did.
- 0:29Speaker 3: And you started using some of them. How many do
- 0:31Speaker 3: you have right now? I've got four or five.
- 0:33Speaker 2: It's like my AI.
- 0:34Speaker 6: I've got four. I've got ChatGPT.
- 0:37Speaker 1: Okay.
- 0:38Speaker 6: Claude.
- 0:40Speaker 1: Gemini, and now I downloaded today, Muse.
- 0:43Speaker 3: Okay, that is Meta's new AI app. It's free to use,
- 0:48Speaker 3: provided you don't go over your limit. Have you used
- 0:50Speaker 3: it yet?
- 0:51Speaker 4: No.
- 0:51Speaker 3: Okay, well, Mandeep Singh, he's our global head of tech
- 0:54Speaker 3: research here at Bloomberg Intelligence. He knows a thing or
- 0:57Speaker 3: two about Meta and, of course, about their AI ambitions.
- 1:00Speaker 3: And Mandeep, you've used this Muse app, and you said
- 1:03Speaker 3: that it's pretty good, which is in line with what
- 1:06Speaker 3: a lot of folks have been saying, which is why
- 1:08Speaker 3: the stock soared yesterday.
- 1:10Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, this app has got a couple of
- 1:13Speaker 4: very good use cases to serve as personal agents, which
- 1:17Speaker 4: is what they're pitching for. So I'll mention, you know,
- 1:21Speaker 4: just if you want discount codes for any brand that
- 1:24Speaker 4: you're shopping on the Internet.
- 1:25Speaker 7: Always.
- 1:27Speaker 4: So you look for discount codes through Google searches and
- 1:30Speaker 4: all that. Just ask Muse a question and it will
- 1:34Speaker 4: give you the best discount codes.
- 1:35Speaker 1: But do the discount codes work?
- 1:37Speaker 3: Because I asked Google the same thing and Google will
- 1:39Speaker 3: give me a whole bunch of discount codes. And when
- 1:41Speaker 3: you apply it, it says, nope.
- 1:42Speaker 1: Not applicable.
- 1:42Speaker 6: It does for the most part. And you bring up
- 1:44Speaker 6: a very good point.
- 1:45Speaker 4: So the challenge for this is In theory, it scrapes
- 1:50Speaker 4: all the best information from the Internet.
- 1:52Speaker 6: But what if a retailer.
- 1:54Speaker 4: Like Amazon blocks you or it doesn't give you the
- 1:56Speaker 4: most up-to-date information? And that's where the agent may not
- 2:00Speaker 4: work as desired because it doesn't have that latest information.
- 2:05Speaker 4: Not because it can't, but because, you know, the retailers
- 2:09Speaker 4: who own the inventory don't want it to be integrated,
- 2:13Speaker 4: you know, with what they're doing. And so in this case,
- 2:16Speaker 4: Amazon probably will end up launching their own agent. But
- 2:19Speaker 4: I would expect that agent to work in conjunction with
- 2:23Speaker 4: what Meta is doing, because there will be a lot
- 2:26Speaker 4: of agent to agent traffic and shopping where the human
- 2:30Speaker 4: user is completely gone. It's your agent working with that
- 2:36Speaker 4: retailer's agent and doing the transaction.
- 2:38Speaker 3: All right.
- 2:39Speaker 6: I've got a use case.
- 2:40Speaker 2: Now, go for it. This will not work with Matt Miller,
- 2:43Speaker 2: but it works for me. I arbitrage Lyft and Uber.
- 2:48Speaker 1: And it really works. You're not loyal to either.
- 2:50Speaker 2: No, I could care less. I'm just looking for the
- 2:51Speaker 2: best price. This will do it for me, it sounds like.
- 2:54Speaker 4: It will. Any sort of price comparisons that involve opening
- 2:59Speaker 4: three different apps and doing a price comparison or three
- 3:02Speaker 4: different websites?
- 3:03Speaker 6: This can do it very efficiently.
- 3:06Speaker 4: And not only will it pull the links in terms
- 3:09Speaker 4: of what you have to do, it can actually do
- 3:11Speaker 4: the full transaction because they want to integrate payments. They
- 3:15Speaker 4: want to do this end to end, an agent working
- 3:18Speaker 4: on behalf of the user.
- 3:19Speaker 6: So in theory, this is very powerful.
- 3:22Speaker 4: The challenge is In the ecosystem, you want the payment
- 3:25Speaker 4: trails to be integrated. You want all the retailers who
- 3:29Speaker 4: have that actual supply. If you're booking travel, Airbnb or
- 3:33Speaker 4: booking a hotel that's showing up, you want this agent
- 3:38Speaker 4: to be able to do this end-to-end. What if Airbnb
- 3:41Speaker 4: doesn't support it?
- 3:42Speaker 6: Like Amazon. So that's where this can fall short, but.
- 3:47Speaker 3: So it can come up with information for you, but
- 3:48Speaker 3: then you have to execute it on your own.
- 3:51Speaker 1: Or maybe not even do that part.
- 3:52Speaker 6: Yeah.
- 3:53Speaker 4: So the agent is very capable of executing it all
- 3:56Speaker 4: the way through.
- 3:57Speaker 1: But it just doesn't have access.
- 3:59Speaker 6: It doesn't have access.
- 3:59Speaker 1: Well, that's not helpful.
- 4:00Speaker 3: You know, I mean, if I'm looking for a place
- 4:02Speaker 3: to stay, I want it to look up Airbnb along
- 4:05Speaker 3: with other hotels.
- 4:07Speaker 6: Exactly.
- 4:07Speaker 2: So what does it mean for.
- 4:09Speaker 6: Airbnb and booking.com and all that stuff.
- 4:11Speaker 4: I mean, all these companies, the reason why you see
- 4:14Speaker 4: Amazon resisting this or any other platform that is likely to.
- 4:17Speaker 6: Resist is because they will lose direct traffic. All the like,
- 4:21Speaker 6: look at what you do on Amazon.
- 4:22Speaker 4: You go to the Amazon page, you spend five minutes
- 4:25Speaker 4: looking at different items. Amazon shows you 10 different ads.
- 4:29Speaker 4: They make so much money when you are searching and
- 4:32Speaker 4: showing you sponsored ads.
- 4:34Speaker 6: All that time goes.
- 4:35Speaker 4: Away and suddenly it's Metamuse whose agent is doing all
- 4:39Speaker 4: the work.
- 4:40Speaker 1: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 4:47Speaker 5: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
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- 4:57Speaker 5: you get your podcasts or watch us live on YouTube.
- 5:01Speaker 2: We just heard President Trump speaking at the United Nations,
- 5:03Speaker 2: a busy day here in New York City for all
- 5:06Speaker 2: the diplomats coming. Let's stay on the politics front here.
- 5:09Speaker 2: We can do that with Henrietta Trey, managing partner and
- 5:11Speaker 2: director of economic policy at Veda Partners. Henrietta, anything new
- 5:16Speaker 2: in this speech at the United Nations that struck you
- 5:19Speaker 2: as we really gear up for midterms in just a
- 5:22Speaker 2: few weeks here?
- 5:24Speaker 8: Paul, it was really helpful to get confirmation from the
- 5:27Speaker 8: president that we should not expect a deal with Iran
- 5:30Speaker 8: before the elections. I think a couple of really important
- 5:33Speaker 8: points were made by the president.
- 5:35Speaker 1: Number one, we're not in a.
- 5:37Speaker 8: Position to get a deal. So any optimism that had
- 5:39Speaker 8: been building in the markets or circulating around talking points
- 5:42Speaker 8: in DC and the White House that there might be
- 5:44Speaker 8: a breakthrough were off the mark. That is not happening
- 5:47Speaker 8: for at least the next six weeks. And number two,
- 5:50Speaker 8: the president stated something that I firmly believe, which is
- 5:54Speaker 8: an acknowledgment that he is not on the ticket. So
- 5:57Speaker 8: if you think that we have passed Trump's authority in
- 6:00Speaker 8: the White House, peak Trump, if you will, we are
- 6:03Speaker 8: not yet there.
- 6:04Speaker 1: I think that's really important, not.
- 6:06Speaker 8: Just for Iran, but also for nations like Canada to hear.
- 6:09Speaker 6: In my conversations around.
- 6:11Speaker 8: The president trying to pull out of the USMCA or
- 6:14Speaker 8: otherwise getting escalatory with Canada, it's really important for folks
- 6:18Speaker 8: around the world to acknowledge that just because the Republicans
- 6:21Speaker 8: will lose the House and may also lose the Senate,
- 6:23Speaker 8: does not mean that President Trump will be reined in.
- 6:26Speaker 8: He has expansive authority over tariffs, over trade, over the
- 6:31Speaker 8: ability to wage war. And I think that what we
- 6:33Speaker 8: should prepare for is massive action from the Republican Party
- 6:37Speaker 8: in the fourth quarter to give him as much protection
- 6:40Speaker 8: as he'll need to be that quote unquote peak Trump
- 6:43Speaker 8: kind of leader. for the next two years in the
- 6:46Speaker 8: fourth quarter of this year with another reconciliation bill or
- 6:48Speaker 8: whatever they can get through for farmers to fund the Pentagon,
- 6:53Speaker 8: all kinds of stuff. So there's a lot of headwinds ahead.
- 6:56Speaker 1: Okay, so they will take all kinds of measures to.
- 6:58Speaker 3: Support the president so that he can enact his full agenda.
- 7:02Speaker 3: What did you learn from President Trump when it comes
- 7:04Speaker 3: to Cuba? He mentioned how Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State,
- 7:08Speaker 3: one of his many titles, is deep into negotiations with Cuba.
- 7:11Speaker 3: And we know that the secretary has been kind of
- 7:13Speaker 3: the leading point person on that. He also made the
- 7:15Speaker 3: point that the U.S. is seeking a fundamental change in
- 7:19Speaker 3: the situation in Cuba. Does that suggest that something in
- 7:22Speaker 3: the realm of what happened in Venezuela could be happening
- 7:25Speaker 3: in Cuba soon?
- 7:27Speaker 8: Very much so, and I think that's the perfect segue.
- 7:29Speaker 8: If you are looking for any indication that the president
- 7:32Speaker 8: is gonna behave differently after the election than before, I
- 7:35Speaker 8: think the one thing you should expect is that he's
- 7:38Speaker 8: going to be more aggressive. He is a lame duck president.
- 7:41Speaker 8: As any lame duck president, that's when they get most
- 7:44Speaker 8: severe on foreign policy. What's reigning the president in right
- 7:47Speaker 8: now is record high diesel prices, gas prices that are
- 7:50Speaker 8: about 450 a gallon on average in the United States.
- 7:53Speaker 8: and an unpopular war. After this election, none of that matters.
- 7:57Speaker 8: He's free to conduct himself the way he sees fit.
- 8:00Speaker 8: He's held off on Cuba for I would say at
- 8:03Speaker 8: least the last eight months in what otherwise has been
- 8:06Speaker 8: pretty clearly telegraphed by Marco Rubio that their clock is
- 8:10Speaker 8: ticking in Cuba. He makes allusions to that in front
- 8:13Speaker 8: of the.
- 8:13Speaker 6: United States Senate.
- 8:14Speaker 8: When he testifies, he makes allusions to that in public
- 8:17Speaker 8: to the media. I think that's a clear segue from
- 8:20Speaker 8: the Venezuela and Maduro actions that will lead towards Cuba
- 8:25Speaker 8: for Marco Rubio.
- 8:27Speaker 2: As Scarlett was mentioning, Henrietta, the president has a number
- 8:30Speaker 2: of key meetings today in New York, but he's also
- 8:32Speaker 2: got a pretty important meeting down in Washington, D.C. later
- 8:35Speaker 2: this week with President Xi of China. What's the expectation
- 8:39Speaker 2: for this get-together?
- 8:42Speaker 8: I think the market had been most optimistic that we
- 8:44Speaker 8: might see some movement on AI. As you can tell,
- 8:46Speaker 8: the president instead is migrating towards a position of rebranding AI,
- 8:51Speaker 8: which is not regulation in any way, shape or form.
- 8:54Speaker 8: And if anything, it's more like deregulatory. And I think
- 8:57Speaker 8: he acknowledged that in the opening segments of his speech
- 9:00Speaker 8: earlier as well, talking about removing regulation and treating it
- 9:05Speaker 8: like a superpower. He does not want to be reined
- 9:07Speaker 8: in by any nation, let alone China, and I don't
- 9:10Speaker 8: see any path to coordination. That's what the market has
- 9:12Speaker 8: been most focused on. What I think will happen and
- 9:15Speaker 8: where we should be mindful here is two things. Number one,
- 9:19Speaker 8: the piece that is really ready for prime time is
- 9:23Speaker 8: run by Ambassador Greer, and that is the Board of Trade,
- 9:25Speaker 8: a new group that has been started, much like every
- 9:28Speaker 8: other administration in the modern era has started a working
- 9:31Speaker 8: group with China. And they're going to reduce tariffs, maybe
- 9:34Speaker 8: even remove them, on about 7% of goods traded between
- 9:39Speaker 8: the United States and Canada.
- 9:41Speaker 1: There will be winners and losers here.
- 9:42Speaker 8: Some companies want the tariffs to stay, and others want
- 9:45Speaker 8: to see them lifted. Target, Dollar General, Home Depot, they're
- 9:48Speaker 8: hoping that for consumer goods, really non-national security related items,
- 9:54Speaker 8: an umbrella or a rain jacket, you can get tariff
- 9:56Speaker 8: rates reduced.
- 9:57Speaker 6: I think that's the most we should expect.
- 9:59Speaker 8: But to position back to that peak Trump idea, I
- 10:03Speaker 8: think post election, we'll see the release of the second
- 10:06Speaker 8: section 301 investigation on excess capacity. and tariff rates will
- 10:10Speaker 8: rise on Chinese goods back to their original IEPA levels,
- 10:14Speaker 8: which is about 20% on top of what he did
- 10:17Speaker 8: in his first term. So there's good news now, but
- 10:19Speaker 8: more to come later.
- 10:20Speaker 1: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 10:27Speaker 5: You're listening to Bloomberg Intelligence with Scarlett Fu and Paul
- 10:31Speaker 5: Sweeney on Bloomberg Radio.
- 10:33Speaker 7: Bloomberg.
- 10:35Speaker 6: All right, it's Garth LeFou and Paul Sweeney.
- 10:36Speaker 2: We're live here in our Bloomberg Interactive.
- 10:37Speaker 1: Broker Studio in New York City.
- 10:38Speaker 2: We're streaming live on YouTube as well. Boy, if you're
- 10:41Speaker 2: thinking about a growth industry, how about cybersecurity? It just
- 10:46Speaker 2: feels like that's going to be around forever. What does
- 10:49Speaker 2: AI mean to that?
- 10:50Speaker 6: It can't be good.
- 10:51Speaker 2: I don't know. But let's talk to our next guest.
- 10:53Speaker 2: She thinks about this stuff a lot. Sherrod DiGrippo, VP
- 10:57Speaker 2: for Threat Intelligence at Unit 42. How cool is that?
- 11:00Speaker 2: The company is Palo Alto Networks. We certainly know that. Sharon,
- 11:05Speaker 2: thanks so much for joining us here. I got to ask,
- 11:07Speaker 2: what is Unit 42? What do you guys do there?
- 11:09Speaker 2: It sounds kind of black box. It's a little bit
- 11:12Speaker 2: of black box.
- 11:13Speaker 7: We track the threat landscape and understand what bad actors
- 11:16Speaker 7: are doing maliciously globally on the digital landscape, just checking
- 11:20Speaker 7: out what the bad guys are doing.
- 11:22Speaker 2: I would think the AI can be a tool for
- 11:25Speaker 2: you for good. But boy, I could really see it
- 11:29Speaker 2: being a tool for the bad guys here that would
- 11:32Speaker 2: make your job even more difficult.
- 11:36Speaker 7: I think there's an element of that.
- 11:37Speaker 6: Yeah.
- 11:38Speaker 7: You know, any tool can do that, right? Tools can
- 11:40Speaker 7: be used for good. Tools can be used for evil.
- 11:42Speaker 7: And I think our job here at Unit 42 at
- 11:45Speaker 7: Palo Alto Networks is to understand what the bad guys
- 11:47Speaker 7: are doing with those tools and use the tools to
- 11:52Speaker 7: combat them as effectively as we can.
- 11:55Speaker 2: So what are you seeing in the marketplace that you
- 11:57Speaker 2: can talk about in terms of how AI is?
- 12:01Speaker 1: Again, I would think it would.
- 12:03Speaker 2: Make the bad actors that much more active, that much
- 12:07Speaker 2: more smarter, maybe. What are you guys actually seeing out there?
- 12:11Speaker 1: That's exactly right.
- 12:12Speaker 7: So threat actors are leveraging AI to accelerate what they're
- 12:16Speaker 7: doing to make their lives easier and helping them with
- 12:20Speaker 7: individual tasks, setting up agents to do multiple parts of
- 12:24Speaker 7: an attack, things like sending emails that get people to
- 12:27Speaker 7: click on things or having their agents go and test
- 12:32Speaker 7: various networks to see if there's vulnerabilities in them. So
- 12:35Speaker 7: the threat actors are absolutely using AI capabilities across their
- 12:38Speaker 7: entire attack chain to get more effective and achieve their
- 12:42Speaker 7: goals and objectives a little bit easier.
- 12:46Speaker 2: So what are companies doing to protect themselves here? Again,
- 12:51Speaker 2: any kid asking me for career advice, I would just
- 12:53Speaker 2: say cybersecurity. It's like the new plastics. What are companies
- 12:57Speaker 2: trying to do here to stay ahead of this?
- 13:00Speaker 7: I think cybersecurity is really important and we're learning a lot.
- 13:02Speaker 1: This really is a new era.
- 13:04Speaker 7: For us in terms of tooling and what we're seeing
- 13:07Speaker 7: threat actors doing. You can't really defend against these sort
- 13:11Speaker 7: of machine speed attacks with a slow sequential response. You
- 13:15Speaker 7: have to use the AI tooling to fight the AI
- 13:19Speaker 7: tooling that the threat actors are using. And that means
- 13:22Speaker 7: getting your enterprise up and ready using the agentics that
- 13:26Speaker 7: are available to you and using the AI tooling that
- 13:29Speaker 7: security is trying to.
- 13:30Speaker 1: Deploy out there. It sounds expensive here.
- 13:34Speaker 2: Are companies willing to make what I'm just assuming is
- 13:38Speaker 2: a pretty big additional technological investment?
- 13:43Speaker 7: Security has always been underfunded. I don't think that we're
- 13:45Speaker 7: new to that world. But I think that AI transformation
- 13:51Speaker 7: is being forced and budgets are having to adapt.
- 13:55Speaker 2: It seems like one of the things we've seen across
- 13:57Speaker 2: the tech stack is companies just allocate more and more
- 14:00Speaker 2: of their tech budget to AI. Other parts of technology,
- 14:04Speaker 2: whether it's consulting or some IT, they tend to get shortchanged.
- 14:09Speaker 2: And I would think that would be a risk for
- 14:11Speaker 2: a lot of companies. How do you kind of argue
- 14:13Speaker 2: against that?
- 14:15Speaker 7: I think the reality is that we are entering this
- 14:17Speaker 7: new era where we don't really understand how resource allocation
- 14:21Speaker 7: from a budget perspective, from a human capital perspective, has
- 14:24Speaker 7: to be done going forward. CISOs and CFOs are struggling
- 14:28Speaker 7: with this all the time. They're seeing efficiencies, but they're
- 14:31Speaker 7: also seeing things like token prices and budget for AI
- 14:34Speaker 7: tooling increase. Every organization has to figure that out. I think...
- 14:40Speaker 7: Skipping on the security budget is going to bite people,
- 14:43Speaker 7: and they have to be really, really careful with making
- 14:45Speaker 7: sure that they are arming their organizations to be able
- 14:48Speaker 7: to protect themselves from the potential of AI-enabled attacks.
- 14:53Speaker 1: Maybe it's just me, but I just don't recall.
- 14:57Speaker 2: It seems like there was a time when we were
- 14:58Speaker 2: hearing about a lot of attacks, whether it's Paramount or
- 15:01Speaker 2: just other things that were coming into the news.
- 15:04Speaker 1: Have we not.
- 15:04Speaker 6: Heard as much recently?
- 15:06Speaker 2: How are things out there in terms of activity?
- 15:10Speaker 7: The threat landscape is moving. It's moving really fast. I
- 15:13Speaker 7: think we're seeing ransomware continue to increase. The time from
- 15:17Speaker 7: when a threat actor enters an environment to when it
- 15:20Speaker 7: starts demanding ransom has gotten shorter and shorter and shorter.
- 15:25Speaker 7: A lot of things are getting captured in logs, but
- 15:28Speaker 7: we're actually not seeing them reported because security teams haven't
- 15:33Speaker 7: been able to act quickly enough. AI is compressing windows,
- 15:37Speaker 7: so there's less and less to talk about because the
- 15:40Speaker 7: intrusions happen a lot quicker. The landscape is increasing, but
- 15:45Speaker 7: getting a handle on it, visibility, understanding what's happening, a
- 15:49Speaker 7: lot of that is hidden and a lot harder to.
- 15:52Speaker 1: Discover these days.
- 15:54Speaker 2: How much is state-sponsored cybercrime versus individuals?
- 16:00Speaker 7: I think the majority of the landscape today, and as
- 16:03Speaker 7: we've seen it, has been spread across the traditional nation-sponsored
- 16:09Speaker 7: attacks plus financially motivated or crime threat actors that are
- 16:12Speaker 7: looking to make a payday. But as we move into.
- 16:15Speaker 1: The AI evolution... What we will see.
- 16:18Speaker 7: Is individuals will have the tooling and capabilities that comes
- 16:24Speaker 7: up on par with a military intelligence or an espionage-focused
- 16:29Speaker 7: nation state.
- 16:30Speaker 1: There's just no way to avoid that. This is the
- 16:32Speaker 1: Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast.
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