- Jenna Ortega is coming under fire.
The great US News ban is coming.
Georgia is deciding.
AI is taking over everything.
All of that and so much more we're gonna be talking about
on today's show.
So buckle up, hit that like button,
and let's just jump into it starting with Jenna Ortega.
She's beginning a lot of love, a lot of praise.
But, she's also now found herself in a controversy,
and on the receiving end of some growing backlash.
So Ortega, of course, stars in Netflix's 'Wednesday'.
It's become an incredibly popular show on Netflix,
even reportedly beating out 'Stranger Things'
to have the biggest English language debut on the platform.
At one scene in the series, in particular,
going just wild viral.
We have Wednesday dancing to the song 'Goo Goo Muck'.
But they're also reportedly having made the choreography.
But also during a recent interview with NME she revealed,
it's crazy because it was my first day with Covid,
so it was awful to film.
I had the body aches, I felt like I'd been hit by a car,
and that a little goblin had been let loose in my throat
and was scratching the walls of my esophagus.
And saying they were giving me medicine between takes
because they were waiting on the positive result.
But they're even noting that she wanted to redo it
because she thought she could do it better afterwards,
but there just wasn't enough time.
And while MGM, which produced the show,
told NME that there were strict Covid protocols on set
and that Jenna was removed after her first positive test,
the internet saw that quote and basically was like,
wait, what?
She was filming onset while she had Covid symptoms
while she was actively sick?
With comments coming in like,
can we all agree that this is not
some persevering through hardship moment?
It's a why the fuck didn't she get sent home?
She could get horrendously sick, or infect others,
kind of moment.
As well as she should have been isolated,
not made to keep working while feeling ill.
Forcing Jenna Ortega to keep working and spreading Covid
around the set is so negligent of the producers and studio.
And for those angry here, there was a notable split.
You had some just blaming the higher ups,
with comments like,
Jenna, as the employee, is not responsible.
Netflix, the producers, and Burton would be.
People noting that she even informed them on time.
But also you had others mad at Jenna,
saying she was telling this story to make herself
sound brave and tough when it really just made her
seem stupid and irresponsible.
Saying that we shouldn't be impressed by her,
we should be horrified.
Saying her coworkers were put in an unfair position,
and I'm tired of us romanticizing
people working through sickness.
Not inspiring, it's upsetting and unnecessary,
and it shouldn't have to be this way.
But clearly there are a lot of different thoughts
and a lot of different feelings with this story,
and so I'd love to know yours.
What's your take on this story and why?
And then, no more Facebook News!
But it sounds like it could be a good thing
'cause your Aunt Sharon's gonna lose
her primary news source,
AlphaEagle4Freedum69, talking about adrenochrome.
It's actually far more complicated than that.
'Cause right now Congress is looking to pass a proposal
called the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act,
or JCPA, which would allow news outlets
to collectively bargain with tech giants like Meta or Google
which would give them greater leverage
in negotiating for a larger share of ad revenue
in exchange for their content.
And a key thing here is that this bill started
as a standalone legislation.
But, reportedly lawmakers are considering adding it
to a must pass annual defense bill
in an effort to help the news industry.
Now obviously Meta is not a fan of the JCPA in general,
let alone any plan to accelerate its passing.
So we saw it's spokesperson tweeting out
a scathing statement from the company yesterday saying,
if Congress passes an ill-considered journalism bill
as part of national security legislation,
we will be forced to consider removing news
from our platform altogether rather than submit
to government mandated negotiations that unfairly disregard
any value we provide to news outlets
through increased traffic and subscriptions.
Put simply, the government creating a cartel-like entity,
which requires one private company to subsidize
other private entities, is a terrible precedent
for all American businesses.
Or, to put it all simply, Meta is threatening to remove news
from their platforms if the bill passes.
And understand, they have acted on threats like this before.
In Australia, the government passed similar legislation
last year despite Facebook's objections,
with Facebook then pulling down any news from their platform
for several days, resulting in a news blackout
that the government condemned.
But since then, the Australian government reported
that more than 30 commercial agreements
between local news outlets and Meta or Google
have been struck.
'Cause you have a situation where there are two sides.
On one side you have supporters of the JCPA
like the News Media Alliance,
a trade body representing the newspaper industry.
And they say that the bill will level the playing field
and ensure fair compensation for the work
of small and local publishers.
Also saying of Meta's threat
that it's undemocratic and unbecoming.
And as the tech platforms compensate news publishers
around the world, it demonstrates there is a demand
and economic value for news.
Others saying the bill would boost the shrinking profits
of local news outlets.
But then, there's the other side with the tech giants,
and they claim the news outlets
already significantly benefit from the way things are.
And claiming the proposal would unfairly tip the scales
against the tech companies.
But also, it's not just the tech companies against the JCPA,
with more than two dozen organizations signing
an open letter yesterday opposing the JCPA's inclusion
in the must pass annual defense bill.
And arguing that the bill would actually unfairly
benefit larger news conglomerates rather than
the small local outlets that supporters are claiming.
But, as far as what's gonna happen,
the bill reportedly has bipartisan support,
so we're gonna have to keep an eye on it.
And in the meantime, I wanna pass the question off to you.
What are your thoughts here?
And then, is this stealing?
Is this ripping people off?
That is the question at hand
with this latest social media trend and controversy.
So for the last little bit,
you might have seen these photos being posted
by your friends, your family, even big names
like Chance the Rapper,
where they have images of themselves that were then turned
into some genre or time period of artwork.
And most of those images in question are coming from
Lensa AI.
It's an app that has a section that uses Stable Diffusions
open source image generator.
For $8, you send it around a dozen selfies,
and it sends you back very stylized images.
It's part of Prisma Labs, which has promoted the app
by advertising what it looks like when you put celebrities
like Jimmy Kimmel and Casey Neistat through it.
And while some see it as cool, harmless fun,
others see it as theft.
And according to TechCrunch,
there are concerns that it's stealing from artists.
Putting out a piece saying, Stable Diffusion,
the AI image generator the powers Lensa,
was originally trained on 2.3 billion captioned images,
a massive cross section of the visual internet.
And saying, swept up in all of that is all kinds of stuff,
including watermarked images, copyrighted works,
and a huge swath of pictures from Pinterest.
And saying, individual artists didn't opt in
to appearing in the training dataset, nor can they opt out.
Which is why you may have seen tons of people
criticizing Lensa and other AI art apps,
with people tweeting things like, admittedly, I got curious
and tried it out, and immediately regretted doing so.
Looking at the results made me feel really sad
because I could see that the images were born from thousands
and thousands of hours of practice of real artists.
And these AI are actively hurting real artists
who have actually worked to be as good as they are.
Real art shouldn't be cheap or fast because art is born
from passion and dedication.
And Lensa, isn't it.
These AI platforms are trained
on literally billions of hours of labor
that artists did not consent to be included.
But also others that had issue with it saying, you know,
it's the actual theft of the art.
With some even posting photos of these Lensa images
where warped and mangled versions of an artist's signature
can apparently be seen.
But on the other side,
you have people saying this is kind of just a different
version of something that already happened.
Saying there are very few actually original things.
You have something that's inspired by, that's inspired by,
that's inspired by, that's inspired by another thing.
They're arguing that it's part of the evolution of art,
saying, artists will always art,
and art mediums constantly change slash are updated.
Isn't that kind of cool?
Some going on to say this is kind of the great equalizer.
Arguing most people can't pay an artist,
that Lensa is just barely $10.
Claiming that people that do this likely aren't
in the market to hire an artist for anything
in the first place.
I will personally say there, I think that's kind of
one of the weaker arguments.
Given enough time, if unchecked,
this will drive the price down of pretty much most artwork.
Some also kind of landing in-between understanding
the concerns of artists, but not thinking that every use
of it is applicable or kind of connected.
And so with all of that said,
I do wanna pass the question off to you.
What are your thoughts here?
I'm personally trying to consider all things.
I didn't even know this was a thing
until after I had already paid for the app
with it spitting out a number of images, including these.
Side note, thank you to the AI
for making my jaw that strong.
Yeah, I don't know.
I kind of wanna sit down and think about it.
But in the meantime, I'd love to know your thoughts on this.
What are you thinking, why?
Any and all thoughts?
And then, please be so careful
if you're vacationing to Bali anytime soon.
And this, because Indonesia just unanimously passed
a religiously inspired criminal code
that among many things bans sex outside of marriage.
And yes, this applies to foreigners living there
as well as tourists.
It also bans cohabitation before marriage, and apostasy,
which is especially fucked considering that
despite having the largest Muslim population in the world,
plenty of other Indonesians aren't Muslim,
and people are free to choose which religion to follow.
And understand, his is just the tip of the iceberg.
There are also prohibitions against expressing views
counter to the national ideology,
or insulting the president, who is a complete fuckhead,
by the way.
I'm mostly just saying that on principle
because they can't anymore.
But for many Indonesians,
this is not a complete shock.
Lawmakers had already attempted to pass
a similar set of codes a few years ago,
but ultimately backed out after protests.
But notably, since then,
there's been an even more pronounced turn
towards religious conservatism,
paving the way for this to be unanimously passed.
With all this, you had one lawmaker trying to frame this
and justify it, saying, you know,
this is about breaking away from colonialism.
Saying, the old code belongs to Dutch Heritage
and is no longer relevant.
And supporters of this change claiming the concerns
about the law are overblown.
Arguing, for example, that only people like parents
can report their children for co co-habitating
or having sex before marriage.
But the counter to that
is that parents can report their children for co-habitating
or having sex before marriage.
With those outraged by this also pointing
to the likely infringement towards civil rights,
something that notably Indonesia worked hard to get
after a revolution in 1998.
And on top of that, because money moves mountains,
there are people concerned
that this is going to hurt tourism.
Even though the authorities claim
that only certain people can report you,
you've got people like the chairman of one
of the largest tourism groups in the country
pointing out, from our point of view
as tourism industry players,
this law will be very troublesome.
Should we ask overseas and unmarried couples
if they're married or not?
Do tourist couples have to prove that they're married?
And saying, if these laws are really implemented later,
tourists might be subjected to jail
and this will harm tourism.
So at least, in the meantime,
rethink where you're going, at least for now.
Because right now this isn't the end of the road.
Because there will likely be challenges
to the new criminal code at the constitutional level.
And it's kind of unclear how that's actually gonna go
as Indonesia has a mixed bag of upholding secular ideals,
while also flirting with imposing Muslim control
over the other minorities, as this law demonstrates.
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And then, the world is changing,
but especially for office space.
Because before the pandemic, 95% of offices were occupied.
But now, after the rise of work from home,
and businesses just realizing
that having an office was incredibly expensive,
the numbers around 47%.
That is a world changing decrease,
and for many cities, that sudden change
has shifted their urban environments.
Foot traffic in downtown areas is down,
with one writer at Business Insider
making the comparison that,
not unlike how de industrialization led to
abandoned factories and warehouses,
the pandemic has led downtowns
into a new period of transition.
So one of the potential solutions is to
turn all those empty spaces into housing.
Though, what kind of housing remains to be seen.
For example, you have some, let's call him an innovator
like Elon Musk, reportedly turning some
of the empty Twitter offices into bedrooms.
So that may be more closely tied to an employer
trying to get over a hundred hours of work a week
out of an employee.
It's also kind of fantastically ridiculous.
Remember when Elon was taking over the company,
he was like, hey, if you working at home,
you're coming in.
What I guess for some of the employees being like,
and now work is your home.
But, separate from the idea of just sleeping where you work,
there are serious calls to convert
all of these big empty skyscrapers
and office buildings into apartments and condos.
And in many cities that could be a huge win,
'cause it's not like the housing crunch in urban areas
suddenly disappeared.
And the key thing is we're not talking about
a few apartments.
In New York, City, about 50% of workers
are back in their offices.
And in San Francisco, they have an office vacancy rate
of between 34% and 40%.
And we're seeing similar numbers in growing cities
like Dallas and Austin.
And the reality is that the cost of converting these units
into homes is gonna be a major hurdle.
With the head of research at Coldwell Banker
pointing out that since 2016 there hasn't been a major shift
in how many conversions have taken place.
But it feels like if there is a time this could change,
it would be now.
Because the cost of returning to offices is a non-starter
for many businesses,
and a negative starter for many employees.
And it's happening at the same time where there are concerns
about large business districts just slowly dying.
So it really feels like the perfect solution is just
sitting right there.
It's largely just a matter of showing developers
that it's actually worth it.
And then, today is slash was the final day you could vote
in the Senate Runoff Election in Georgia.
And what better way to talk about it than to introduce it
with an unnecessarily involved graphic package
that I call, The Last Senator.
- [Reporter 1] In June, Congress passed the first
bipartisan legislation to combat gun violence in 30 years.
- Hello, Georgia. (audience cheering)
Well, I'll tell you what, can you not tell
this man loves the United States of America?
- I am worked with many police officers,
and at the same time. - [Host] Mr. Walker.
(dramatic upbeat music)
- [Reporter 2] Yep, early voting is underway
in the state of Georgia.
That's where we are now.
It's a highly contested Senate Runoff.
- [Reporter 3] Decision 2022 officially begins
its overtime period today.
Several counties across the state
opened up polling locations.
- Use a vampire killer from that TV to get rid of
this real life vampire in their attic.
So if this actor comes to their home,
he got all the right stuff.
- That graphic package costs $17,000.
I'm kidding, no.
Yeah, essentially public involvement regarding the midterms
ends today.
With Georgia voters deciding if they want their Senator
to be incumbent Raphael Warnock,
or serial liar, abuser, absent father,
and clear victim of CTE, Herschel Walker.
And it appears that people in the state
understand how big of a deal this is,
because Georgia is breakin' records.
Specifically, absolutely smashing early voting records
in the state.
In fact, according to the Georgia Secretary of State office,
nearly 1.9 million voters cast ballots ahead
of election day.
And key thing here,
that even includes 76,000 people who did not vote
in the general election.
Now, notably,
Georgia doesn't track party affiliation for early voters.
So in the lead up,
we don't officially know which candidate's benefiting more.
But experts say that you can get a pretty solid idea
by looking at demographic data.
Black voters who very strongly favored Warnock in exit polls
in the midterms made up nearly one out of every three
ballots cast already.
Women who also preferred Warnock on November 8th
composed more than half of the early votes.
And Gen Z voters who skew liberal
have also come in hot so far.
In fact, you had democratic analyst's estimating
that Warnock was actually heading into today
with a lead of eight percentage points.
And if it turns out that is actually the case,
the Republicans are gonna need a crazy turnout today.
Also hoping that Democrats don't turn out
to get in their vote.
But if that happens, we'll have to wait to see.
Because one of the biggest factors
that could actually decide a win for Walker specifically
is will Republicans who just voted down ballots
still turn out when it's just for him?
Because the general election was very high stakes
for Georgia for a number of contests.
Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State
all on the ballot in addition to all the house races.
But also in addition to that,
what's gonna be very interesting to see
is what issues drove voters in this election.
Exit polls from the general showed
that the economy was a top issue.
Also, abortion was a massive mobilizer
following the Supreme Court ruling.
And we'll see if that continues into this runoff.
Also, as far as the turnout we're seeing today
as of reporting this morning,
precincts across the state have actually reported
that there haven't been long lines or wait times.
With some experts speculating that rain and bad weather
is going to drive down the turnout.
Which, yes, is a thing.
And actually if anything,
that should make you feel like your vote matters even more.
So get out there
And as far as getting information tonight, getting results,
polls will be closing 7:00 PM Eastern.
And the Georgia Secretary of State's office said
that they'll start posting unofficial outcomes
shortly after that.
With the speed of the results depending, of course,
on how quickly counties share their tallys
with state officials.
And hopefully we can get some idea fairly early in the night
of what things are looking like.
I think I speak for a decent chunk of people when I say,
I'm ready for the midterms to be over.
I'm not saying that what's to come
isn't gonna be a clown show,
but let's get to the next chapter.
Though, there are also things that could make this drag out.
Not only regarding the reporting of the votes,
but also let's say Walker loses.
This morning he refused to say whether or not
he would concede the election if he loses.
Which kind of makes sense that he was just chumming it up
with Kari Lake.
But hey, good luck, Georgia.
You won't be just deciding one of your Senators,
you will be deciding how much power Joe Manchin
and or Kyrsten Sinema have in the Senate.
But that is where that story and today's show ends.
As always, thank you for watching, liking,
and being a part of these daily dives in the news.
But as always, my name's Philip DeFranco,
you've just been filled in.
I love your faces, and I'll see you tomorrow.