Gm. Everyone say hello to Homescreen’s newest writer, Jason Levin.

Jason is a freelance writer and also publishes a weekly newsletter called Cyber Patterns. If you want a playbook for navigating the great online game, he's your guy.  

FRESH POWDER

Looking at two funds that recently topped up their coffers. 

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 

AI blurs past and present 

Steve Jobs just went on the Joe Rogan podcast. Well, not exactly. An AI version of Joe Rogan interviewed an AI version of Steve Jobs. It’s the latest example of AI jumping into the content game and performing scary well.  

The tech

The podcast was created by a text-to-speech AI company called Play.ht. And while text-to-speech technology isn’t exactly new, laying in the AI component takes it to a whole new level.

•  “On this episode, I welcome my friend who is difficult to describe. I’m fascinated by him and I hope you will be too,” begins the AI version of Rogan. “You’re a memory from the past.” 

• AI Steve Jobs laughs. “How’s it going buddy? It’s been a long time since I’ve been on the show.”

What follows is a 20-minute conversation that is surprisingly, perhaps, disturbingly, realistic. And while AI probably isn’t coming for Rogan’s job anytime soon, there are some interesting use cases to consider for Play.ht’s tech.  

Packy McCormick explored some 

In a tweet yesterday, the Not Boring writer listed out a few creative ideas to put Play.ht’s tech to use including:

• Asking a philosopher deep life questions to gain their insight

• Asking an AI life coach or mentor for actionable advice 

• Having an AI version of a brilliant professor explain difficult concepts

Even a modern writer like Packy could potentially train the AI on some of his own writing and see what it spits out in long-form audio content. It feels like a cottage industry in the making. 

Zoom out: OpenAI just launched Dall-E 2 out of private beta which means the ability to create artwork from text prompts is easier than ever. Now, the audio medium is under assault from AI as well. It feels like 10 years of AI progress was crammed into the last 10 months. 

+ While you’re here: Podcast.ai, the division of Play.ht that produced the podcast, is asking users to vote on upcoming AI-generated interviews. Conversations between Buddha and Einstein anyone?

TECH 

Meta’s VR quest continues

Two years after rebranding as Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook is still finding its legs… literally. Meta announced yesterday at its yearly Meta Connect developer conference that it updated its virtual avatars to include more detailed legs. 

That wasn’t the only news it dropped

But it may have been the most exciting. The main theme of the conference was how much Zuck wants VR to be a thing. This is nothing new—he renamed the company Meta—but the whole conference felt especially handwave-y. 

• Concrete release dates for new features and hardware were few and far between and most of the big announcements were stuff we kinda already knew about, like the arrival of the Meta Quest Pro and its $1,499 price tag.

Zoom out: Despite sinking billions into the project, Meta’s vision for how VR fits into work, fitness, and gaming seems just as amorphous as ever. Even worse, 58% of Meta employees say they don't understand the company's 'metaverse strategy.' 

QUICK HITS

Seed Round

Stat: If you lost a hefty chunk of change in Celsius’s bankruptcy, your secret is out. Some enterprising developers created a tool that scrapes through public court filings to show how much each user lost when Celsius went bankrupt. It takes a loss of greater than $12 million to crack the top 10, so any sub-7-figure net worth need not worry about getting exposed. 

Story we’re watching: Well that was fast. a16z led a $14 million funding round in Rye, a one-click checkout startup founded by Justin Kan and a team of ex-Redditors. Their plan is to decentralize the platform onto Solana, the blockchain faster than a bolt—ok we need to stop.

Rabbit hole: Scientists accidentally created a new material called “thermoformable ceramics” (Phys.org)

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON

• Patreon’s internal 409A valuation, which is calculated by a third party, dropped 70% over the past year. 

• Sequoia and a16z are investing $800 million and $400 million, respectively, in Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. 

• OpenSea launched an NFT marketplace on L1 blockchain, Avalanche. 

• The SEC has launched an investigation into BAYC creator Yuga Labs

THREE LIES AND A HEADLINE

Three of these headlines are from the satirical news publication The Onion, while one comes from real life. Can you spot the truth amongst the fakes? 

A. “Billionaire writes name on cup of adrenochrome so he won’t forget which one his”

B. “FEMA requires flood victims to pass drug test before qualifying for rescue”

C. “Boat, trailer seized from man accused of cheating in walleye tournament”

D. “Newly upgraded Tesla AI makes fart noise any time it runs over child”

FOUNDERS CORNER

The best resources we came across that will help you become a better founder, builder, or investor.

❌ Lesson learned from someone who worked on high-profile failures (like Google Glass)

🌐 A beginner’s guide to finding user needs

💸 The differences between being a $150,000 Amazon Engineer vs. $300,000 Google Engineer

THREE HEADLINES ANSWER

C. The Walleye fishing scandal is real and it's blowing up the competitive fishing scene.