TOGETHER WITH

It’s Thursday and Instagram is ramping up its rivalry with TikTok. The platform’s latest (alleged) plan to poach short-form viewers: launching a standalone Reels app.

Today’s News

HOT MESS

Alix splits from Alex: Earle dropped from Cooper’s Unwell Network

The breakup: It’s been less than two years since Alex Cooper and Alix Earle teamed up for a content development partnership—but according to Variety, Cooper’s Unwell Network is already dropping Earle’s Hot Mess podcast from its lineup.

The network has reportedly renounced all rights to Hot Mess, while SiriusXM—which recently secured advertising and distribution rights for Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast—will stop selling ads against Earle’s show. So, where will Hot Mess go next?

Podcaster Jack Mac believes the show could find a home at Barstool Sports—aka Mac’s current employer and Cooper’s former one. Mac revealed on Instagram that Barstool leader Dave Portnoy had spoken with Earle not long before posting a clip in which he raised a drink in the air (an apparent reference to a post Cooper made when Unwell signed Grace O’Malley after her departure from Barstool).

The context: Cooper and Earle initially joined forces when Unwell Network launched in August 2023. Soon after, they dethroned long-time chart-topper Joe Rogan by reaching the top two spots on the Spotify podcast rankings. Despite that early success, however, there were clear signs of friction: Unwell began decreasing its promotion efforts for Hot Mess a few months back, while Earle’s father alluded to “a business situation” he “wasn’t happy about” during an episode of his daughter’s podcast. The drama ramped up during Super Bowl weekend, when Earle reportedly skipped an official Unwell party in New Orleans.

Now, the podcaster’s departure raises questions about Unwell’s ability to avoid the pitfalls of other creator-forward media companies. Those firms tend to hemorrhage talent when on-screen stars become more recognizable than the brands they represent. At first, Cooper’s network seemed to be different. She signed established creators looking to break into the new-for-them medium of podcasting. Earle’s departure, however, suggests that Unwell’s strategy isn’t quite foolproof.

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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• Max has reversed its decision to begin charging paying subscribers an additional fee for news and sports content—but viewers on the streaming service’s ad-supported tier might not be so lucky. (Engadget)
  
  

• According to member Paolo Carozza, Meta’s Oversight Board is “trying as much as possible…to find out more information” regarding Facebook’s updated approach to the moderation of “hateful conduct.” (Engadget)
  
  

• Viewers are using TikTok as a search engine. A new report from the platform and Ipsos found that “nearly 1 in 4” TikTok users “search for something within 30 seconds of opening the app.” (Ipsos)
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• Four former Twitter employees have won arbitration cases after arguing that they were wrongly denied severance for failing to respond to Elon Musk’s demand that they commit to a “hardcore” work environment or resign. (The Detroit News)

CRIME JUNKIES

The most popular podcaster not named Joe Rogan is building a $250M true crime network

The funding: Ashley Flowers‘ future is looking rosy thanks to a $40 million injection of funding from The Chernin Group (aka TCG). That investment values the Crime Junkies producer’s company, Audiochuck, at $250 million.

Thanks to TCG (a longtime investor in creator-led media companies), Flowers will have an opportunity to add new programs to a roster that already includes her own viral show, Crime Junkies. According to Bloomberg, the podcast version of Flower’s true crime hit (which she hosts alongside childhood friend Brit Pawat), hauls in $45 million of annual profit and ranks second on the list of most popular U.S. podcasts with 6 million listeners. (Joe Rogan’s namesake Experience is first.) More recent additions to Audiochuck’s library include Delia D’Ambra‘s CounterClock and the cold case series The Deck.

In addition to beefing up her Audiochuck’s roster, Flowers will work with TCG to hire a CEO who can oversee the company’s operations. Its office space is set to triple to 30,000 square feet, with its workforce doubling to nearly 130 people. Potential Hollywood projects and an expansion to YouTube are also on the docket.

The context: The rift between Alex Cooper and Alix Earle shows that growing a podcast company is no simple endeavor. Flowers, however, has an advantage thanks to her visibility in the booming true crime niche. Add in TCG’s financial contribution—which represents one of the biggest investments in a podcasting startup—and Audiochuck seems to be in an ideal position to expand.

GOTTA CATCH ‘EM ALL

Anthropic is training its AI by having it play Pokémon on Twitch

The channel: Claude AI has joined in on the decade-old phenomenon known as Twitch Plays Pokémon. On a channel called Claude Plays Pokémon, the latest version of Anthropic’s large language model is exploring the original Game Boy version of Pokémon Red.

Twitch Plays Pokémon first began in 2014 with a stream that invited scores of users to choose controller inputs via chat. The format quickly became a viral phenomenon, reaching millions of viewers and attracting a long list of quirky players (including someone’s pet fish and the mathematical constant pi). Claude 3.7 Sonnet is the latest oddball to take up the mantle.

Previous iterations of the LLM have stalled before reaching the end of the game, but the most recent version of Claude hasn’t gotten stuck yet—and it’s explaining the reasoning behind its inputs as it goes along.

The context: Viewers on platforms like Twitch and YouTube have developed a big appetite for those kinds of deep reinforcement learning videos, which show how AIs become smarter. A one-year-old YouTube clip in that genre, for instance, has collected more than 10 million views.

For Anthropic, Claude Plays Pokémon isn’t just a vehicle for audience engagement or brand awareness—it’s also a more ethical form of research for an entity that has been accused of slipshod AI training methods. Anthropic was one of the companies that fed its LLMs on unauthorized content from The Pile, and it recently settled a lawsuit from music publishers who accused it of scraping lyrics without permission.

WATCH THIS 🎙️

Would you notice if your favorite creator was replaced with an AI?

The experiment: YouTuber Sambucha set out to answer that question by posting a series of AI-driven videos and streams over the course of a full month. At first, the creator only used AI tools to come up with the concepts for his content—but by the end of the month, he’d replaced both his likeness and voice with AI.

In a reveal video posted earlier this week, Sambucha described that process as a “litmus test” designed to measure how many AI-driven elements he could incorporate into his content before viewers caught on. The answer: a lot. In fact, one fan lamented in the comments of Sambucha’s reveal video that they were only just “realising all these shorts are ones I watched and I didn't notice.”

Check out the creator’s full explanation here to see how he pulled it off.

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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Drew Baldwin, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen.