Morning Brew Daily
Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
Wed, 30 Apr 2025
Episode 572: Neal and Toby recap the whirlwind situation over at Amazon after the White House got wind that it was going to display which products are affected by tariffs in its pricing, which Trump publicly rebuked. Then, Meta throws its hat in the ring with a standalone AI chatbot that directly aims at ChatGPT. Also, Duolingo’s CEO causes a stir by announcing the company plans to eventually replace the work from contractors with AI. Meanwhile, the EU shuts down Malta’s ‘golden passport’ program. Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Visit https://planetoat.com/ to learn more! Vote for us! https://shortyawards.com/17th/morning-brew-daily-show Vote for us! https://shortyawards.com/17th/morning-brew-daily-show Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow 00:00 - Jeopardy Masters Tournament 03:00 - Amazon Tariff Prices 09:15 - Meta AI App 12:45 - Duolingo Replacing Contractors with AI 18:00 - Golden Passports 21:45 - Headlines Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the Jeopardy Masters Tournament and why is it significant?
Then Amazon flirted with the idea of listing a tariff surcharge next to its products, but then the White House called. It's Wednesday, April 30th. Let's ride. Let's ride.
Good morning, everyone. Toby, I am hyped. The biggest competition of the year kicks off tonight, Jeopardy Masters. The game show is bringing back its top-ranked players to compete in a tournament for a $500,000 prize. Everything about this is going to be supersized. Nine hour-long episodes consisting of two games each with the hardest questions, well, answers, you could think of.
Jeopardy has done a great job of turning its all-star contestants into household names.
We're also at the point in our lives, Neil, where we are seated for Jeopardy at 7 p.m., so this is appointment viewing for our crew here at MBD. But also, Neil, I am talking to a bit of a Jeopardy legend here. You were on the show many moons ago. Tell MBD listeners about that lore.
I don't know about legend, but yeah, in 2001, when I was 10 years old, I was on Kids Jeopardy, got to meet Alex Trebek. I said my favorite class in school was recess. which it still is. The cool kid. The cool kid. And we had a little buzzer trouble in Single Jeopardy, but we turned it around. I'm not going to tell anybody how it turned out. You'll just have to watch.
It's deep in the throes of YouTube, but it was a great time. I just really want to go back. So if there are any Jeopardy producers listening, get me on that show. I can get revenge.
Give him another shot, Ken Jennings. And now a word from our sponsor, Plan It Out. Neil, you know what's better than a good morning routine? Gonna be honest, Toby.
There is nothing better than a good morning routine.
Exactly. Trick question, my friend.
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Chapter 2: What happened with Amazon and the tariff surcharge controversy?
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick thought it was time for him to jump in the ring, quote tweeting a Bloomberg article detailing Amazon's walkback saying, good move. But that was far from the only moves being made.
CNN then released a report that said Trump had gone straight to the top rope, calling Amazon founder Jeff Bezos yesterday morning to complain about the initial report about tariff prices. Amazon finally clarified through a statement that a proposal was never approved and it was not going to happen even for Amazon haul.
Though Punchbowl dropped back in and said that it was Bezos' influence that caused them to walk back their plans. So after the dust had settled, it looked like Punchbowl may have jumped the gun. But what they did get right to the heart of is whether companies should be adding tariff surcharges for users to see. Because, Neil, they are far from the only company considering it.
No, I mean, first of all, the details of this are extremely murky. We have kind of no idea what happened here. We know there was a call between President Trump and Jeff Bezos where Trump expressed his displeasure at what was going on. And the subtext of this is that Trump and Bezos have become very chummy in an interview with The Atlantic released this week. Trump said about Bezos.
He's 100 percent. He's been great. He was terrific. And in Trump won the first term. These two were very much at odds. So there is now a direct line between Trump and Bezos. We don't know whether Bezos called up Amazon and said, guys, you cannot do this. I just got a call from the president. Whatever you were thinking, don't do it.
Or whether what Amazon was saying was true was that they were never doing this in the first place. Either way, it speaks to the heart of what's going on for many retailers right now. They are going to face higher prices because there are 145 percent tariffs on China. They need to make a decision. Not only are they going to determine whether to eat the costs or not.
They have to figure out how to display if they do charge higher prices. They have to figure out how to display that for their customers, how to market it for their customers. Do they just do it subtly by just adding, you know, adding the cost and not even broadcasting that? Or do they say these are an import charge or do they say this is a Trump tariff fee? There's a lot of options available.
That's the talk of the retail world right now.
So let's look at what some brands are doing. Dame, which is this sexual wellness brand, actually did implement what it calls a Trump tariff surcharge. And the way that they did that is they put a little $5 fee tacked on at the end as you're checking out. And it has a little Trump-like toupee image next to it. So they are leaning into it, maybe tongue-in-cheekly.
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Chapter 3: How is Meta's new AI app designed to compete with ChatGPT?
doing exactly what Toby Lucka laid out and Uber and Klarna. There's all these tech companies now saying the baseline now for you to come work for us is that you have these AI skills. So if you are listening to this, thinking about working at any of these tech companies, you know, I would certainly buttress your AI skills right now.
And by the way, Duo is killing it. It went public four years ago. Its stock is up 175% since then. It had 2 million paid subscribers back in 2021. Now it's got over 8 million as of last year. So maybe the humanity portion was doing pretty well here. Von Ahn is saying like, hey, we are still a human first company. Basically, we just want you to do... to be more productive.
We want to remove some of these bottlenecks when it comes to creating content. So we still are looking out for duos, which is something that a lot of these CEOs are saying. They have to have the addendum of saying, we care about you humans, but we just want you to be better and more productive with AI.
So towing that line is going to be a very interesting thing as these tech companies continue to invest in AI and want it to replace humanity in a lot of cases. Up next, we're going to talk about golden passports.
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Chapter 4: Why is Duolingo replacing contractors with AI and what does that mean for the industry?
absolutely leaning into them because they see it as a fast track for wealthy citizens to come have residency, have citizenships in the U.S. You know, Trump thinks it can raise a lot of money. Howard Lutnick said recently this program has been going very well and that, you know, a thousand people signed up in one day. So,
you are kind of seeing this distancing over in the in europe and the eu but then this leaning in very hard in the united states another country that's leaning in is new zealand they've relaxed their requirements even as europe has battened the hatches they've relaxed their requirements because their economy is stagnating and they want uh more wealthy foreigners to come to new zealand so you saw this very much during the pandemic when everyone's like i need to get outside how about a nice landscape and new zealand was like hey we have all of that so they
They loosened some of their rules around golden passports, and they want you to come there. And another area of the world where they heavily lean in to this concept of golden visas and golden passports is the Caribbean. In certain countries there, like St. Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, St. Lucia, golden passports make up more than half of revenue for these small island nations.
Europe has been putting pressure on them. in order to jack up the investment requirements or tighten their restrictions because some of them allow for visa fee travel to the UK and the EU. So they're saying, you guys are becoming now a haven for criminals and then they can travel to us. So we want you to tighten the screws a little bit.
Yeah, and I do think the final context we have to add here is that the Russian war definitely shone a big spotlight on these policies as well because a lot of Russians use these programs to skirt sanctions and set up businesses in other countries.
So that's definitely a reason why this EU commission definitely looked into Malta in particular because of maybe Russian actors using them to get away from global sanctions.
Let's bring to the finish with some final headlines. U.S. automakers are breathing a small sigh of relief after the Trump administration said it would soften some tariffs for them.
Car manufacturers will still have to pay 25% tariffs on all cars they import into the United States, but they won't have to fork over for other tariffs stacked on top of those, such as an additional 25% for steel and aluminum or the tariffs on Canada and Mexico based on the fentanyl trade.
Trump said it was a little bit of help to the companies to give them some breathing room to open up more manufacturing plants in the United States. And one by one, Detroit automakers issued statements praising the rollback, with Ford saying it welcomes and appreciates these decisions by President Trump.
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Chapter 5: What is the EU's stance on Malta’s ‘golden passport’ program?
But despite the irony, Von Rossum, the original font creator, found this situation, quote, hilarious and has no plans to pursue legal action.
I mean, people love to hate on these ads. They've been memed so many times over the years for being sort of over the top and preachy. So there you go. Even more ammo. The anti-piracy people likely pirated the font. It's poetic.
And finally, Shaq has a new side gig that doesn't involve slinging pizza or car insurance. The Big Diesel is joining the Sacramento State men's basketball program to become their general manager. He is far from the only star to go down the GM path at a small school. where his responsibilities will include recruiting, managing NIL deals, and player development.
Steph Curry joined his alma mater, Davidson, as basketball GM back in March. Trey Young also signed on to a similar role with his alma mater, Oklahoma, and now Shaq is jumping into the title in an unpaid role at Sac State, where his son recently transferred. Neal, as NIL deals become more lucrative and more complex, expect to see a similar rise in high-profile GM appointments too.
First of all, Shaquille O'Neal's son is named Shaquille O'Neal, which I think at that point you just keep it Shaquille and slap a junior on. But you're right. This is pretty much all about NIL and the professionalization of these athletic departments at universities. They need to fundraise and they can say, hey, we got Shaq here. Want to throw it? Want to write us a check?
You know, that goes a long way. Same with Steph Curry. Same with Trey Young and all these other guys. all these other players and former players hopping on to athletic programs. Fun fact about Sacramento State, they are called the Hornets and they play at the Nest, which is one of the oldest facilities in all of Division One teams built in 1955. So we got to catch a game there.
I guess the Shaq marketing worked well on me.
Also, the Hornets have never reached the NCAA tournament. So good luck, Jack. You got your work cut out for you.
All right, let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Wednesday. You're almost over the hump. If you've got any questions or feedback on the show, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer.
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Chapter 6: What are the latest headlines in tech and business today?
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.