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Synthetic acting is here. Will you watch?
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Today’s Agenda

Untouchable

Meet Tilly Norwood, an aspiring actress from London:

Source: @tillynorwood/Instagram

She just booked her first-ever gig in a comedy sketch and is hoping more opportunities follow. Beyond her aspirations for stardom, though, she’s just like any other Gen Zer. She has a messy bedroom. She likes to go thrift shopping. And according to her Instagram, her “toxic trait is thinking iced coffee is a year-round personality.”

I disagree. Her biggest toxic trait is that … she’s not real.

Years from now, Tilly may be seen as the tipping point for AI. The AI actress — or, what SAG-AFTRA calls a “synthetic performer” — has Hollywood in a frenzy. Should directors be allowed to cast Tilly at a cheaper rate than human actresses? Could she be a contender for an Oscar? What happens if she has a real-life doppelgängerSimilar questions are being asked about Sora 2, OpenAI’s new TikTok-like doomscroll app, which feeds users an endless stream of AI-generated content, not all of which looks like slop.

Wherever AI goes, ethical concerns follow. Just look at Amazon’s new Search Party feature, which helps people locate their lost pets. Right now, it’s a heartwarming Big Tech story. Eventually, however, Dave Lee says the feature could be used on humans. “There has been no more successful effort to bring private surveillance to our neighborhoods than Amazon’s Ring, a vast network of interconnected cameras monitoring in high quality, all day every day, with sound.” With AI, its all-seeing-eye could get that much more powerful.

Speaking of power: OpenAI’s Sam Altman wants to gobble up a lot more of it in order to fuel projects like Sora 2 and ChatGPT. The CEO reportedly told employees that he’s aiming to create 250 gigawatts of datacenter capacity by 2033. “In power terms, that is like building a not-small country, equivalent to roughly one-third of peak demand on the entire US grid,” writes Liam Denning. “An updated version of the Turing test might involve AI not convincing us that it is human, but rather convincing us that it is worth it. Energy is at the core of this. On that basis, Altman’s approach is exactly backwards.”

Beyond energy, some of the promises around AI are already proving to be overhyped. The technology may be able to break down language barriers, but Catherine Thorbecke isn’t so sure it will be able to save dying languages. “At the heart of the issue is a lack of quality data. The most powerful LLMs require gargantuan troves of training material, the vast majority of which is in English,” she writes. “Even for AI models that offer multilingual capabilities, it often requires more tokens, or units of data processing, to respond to the same prompts in languages other than English. This can become expensive.”

Given all those factors, it seems like Tilly Norwood isn’t so cheap to cast after all.

Two Is Better Than One

Think about all the jobs in the world that are easier done in duos. Parenting isn’t as daunting when there’s two sets of hands to change diapers at 3 a.m. Podcasting is way less awkward when there’s someone on the other mic to laugh at your bad jokes. And being a co-maid of honor means that you might actually get to relax during the bachelorette party.

But there’s one job that’s typically done solo: chief executive officer. “The idea that two people should run one company is, to put it mildly, widely unpopular,” writes Beth Kowitt. Yet in recent weeks, Spotify, Comcast and Oracle have defied the norm by naming co-CEOs.

Being a CEO in 2025 requires wearing dozens of hats. You’re a people person. A supply-chain savant. A marketing maestro. A bean counter. A cheerleader. A therapist. A technologist. The list goes on. Netflix, which has two co-captains steering its ship, has long recognized this. Beth says the streamer is the “gold standard” of co-CEO-ing. Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos are the perfect balance of yin and yang, and they divide labor evenly.

Companies that take a page out of their playbook may be onto something: “A Harvard Business Review article from 2022 that studied 87 public companies with co-CEOs found that they outperformed, generating an average annual shareholder return of 9.5% versus 6.9% for their peer groups,” Beth writes. Turns out, it doesn’t have to be so lonely at the top.

Telltale Charts

Earlier this year, the US announced it would stop minting pennies. Now there’s a penny shortage — though it might have less to do with demand than with a guy who tiled his floor with 100,000 of them. Copper’s story isn’t so different: Floods, mining accidents, social unrest and deadly mudslides have pinched the supply and created a bull market. But Javier Blas says investors shouldn’t confuse disruption with genuine demand: “The most dazzling forecasts — commodity hedge fund manager Pierre Andurand says prices will jump to $40,000 before 2030 — look nonsensical.” 

I have yet to see Leonardo DiCaprio in One Battle After Another, but the film’s opening weekend wasn’t too shabby: It earned $22.4 million domestically and another $26.1 million internationally. Yet those numbers pale in comparison to the Warner Bros. film’s crazy budget: It cost roughly $130 million to produce, plus $70 million in marketing. Does that mean it’ll be a failure if it isn’t profitable? Not necessarily, says Jason Bailey. “The profits from the cheap hits can help cover the prestige pictures, the prestige pictures win them respectability and Oscars (as One Battle After Another is expected to do) and, perhaps, an eventual profit. That’s a better business model, from both the perspective of the art and the business of movies,” he argues.

Further Reading

Without Jane Goodall, chimpanzees need new champions: us. — Lara Williams

America’s fixation on the Western Hemisphere threatens its superpower status. — Andreas Kluth

First Brands’ bankruptcy raises questions about the quality of due diligence. — Chris Bryant

Being in China’s economic orbit is now a mixed blessing for Asia. — Daniel Moss

The UK immigration debate has become an economic battlefield. — Matthew Brooker

Silver Lake needs an exit strategy to profit from EA’s leveraged buyout. — Chris Hughes

Rate cuts could make financing clean energy initiatives more attractive. — Mark Gongloff

ICYMI

Taylor Swift tops $2 billion.

Jane Street’s colorful co-founder.

Two Delta jets collided at LaGuardia.

Kickers

A rogue planet has a growth spurt.

Germany’s pudding fork trend is coming to New York.

Baggu got in trouble for stealing BART’s logo.

Bears don’t use grocery lists. (h/t Andrea Felsted)

Happy The Life of a Showgirl Eve for those who celebrate.

Notes: Please send Taylor Swift theories and feedback to Jessica Karl at jkarl9@bloomberg.net.

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