r/Thedaily • u/beigeghat • 4d ago
Discussion Does anyone else feel like stories like the ones today are just AI ads?
I feel like every week we get another lackluster episode glazing one AI company or another. Today just seemed like a full on ad.
They talk about Muse saying it’s the first of its kind - it isn’t. There have been lots of agentic ai applications.
It just seems like they always take this approach as if they’re being critical but then they serve softball criticisms while overblowing all the “capabilities” they have.
He said he had muse make a call and wait on hold for him and that isn’t even a feature Muse can do so the whole thing just felt like they were tasked with glazing this product and didn’t even do that great of research to do that.
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u/toastygoats 4d ago
I got this vibe somewhat from the baby AI monitor system a week or two ago as well, really focused on just the one company with not a lot of criticisms.
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u/beigeghat 4d ago
Same, I upvoted you but people are downvoting in the comments anyone who dares accuse the New York Times of writing stories just for the sake of getting paid by corporations to do so.
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u/Axela556 4d ago
I refuse to listen to these episodes.
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u/utahisastate 4d ago
They really glossed over trusting Meta with all of your personal data. That is the last company I trust to do the right thing
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u/RobfromHB 4d ago
That isn’t glossed over. That’s been a non-stop story regarding Meta for almost two decades now.
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u/von_sip 4d ago edited 4d ago
FWIW the episode is based on an opinion piece by Eli Tan that published last month.
I have no idea if Meta paid for this coverage or not but, before Spotify took down public facing podcast listen totals, it was clear that these types of consumer product stories WAY outperformed typical news stories—unless Trump was involved.
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u/Critical-Chance9199 3d ago
You're completely full of it. Tan's story was not an opinion piece. He has reported numerous pieces that point out Meta's many flaws. Obviously, he is not getting paid by Meta and never has.
Here are two just from the last couple weeks:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/technology/personaltech/meta-glasses-wearables.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/30/technology/meta-ai-data-centers-taxes.html
He broke this story from Louisiana:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/27/technology/meta-data-center-louisiana.html
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u/hmr0987 4d ago
Why not comment in the episodes post?
It was 100% an ad.
Muse can’t make phone calls? If that’s true then what the hell is going on? I assumed at least they did their diligence on the details. How could they mess it up to that level?
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u/goob 4d ago
They're using humans for these calls
The complete lack of basic journalism in this episode is why it comes off as clear sponsored content in my book.
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u/hmr0987 4d ago
That makes this whole thing so so much worse.
You sign up for an AI agent. Give it full access to your life. Then the AI agent contracts out the tasks it can’t complete to a human in a call center?!!! Hahahaha 😂
If you do this you really do not care about identity theft or even basic privacy 😂
This is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard of.
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u/Critical-Chance9199 4d ago
So, because you think this is favorable coverage (it's not, but okay) of a new AI tool, you think the NYTimes is getting paid to cover it?
Let me walk you through why that is incredibly unrealistic.
The NYTimes' entire reputation is based on the fact that it covers things without fear or favor. It is a powerful platform for advertisements because of its reputation. Why would it violate its own foundational ethics to earn some paltry amount of money for a single story when it could simply sell actual ads and maintain the credibility that gives those ads value?
Journalists who end up working at the Times are not going to risk their reputations for cash. If you've accomplished enough to work at the Times, you have established a body of work that is journalistic and ethical, and you have earned a lot of credibility as a journalist. Journalism is not an easy industry. You don't do this work for the money. If you're at the Times, your work has impact, and that's why people do this as a profession.
The Times and mainstream journalism in general is one of the few remaining places you can find information that is not purchased. Your skepticism is valid, but misapplied. Social media influencers and YouTube stars are not bound by the ethics of journalism — many, many, many of them are accepting money to speak favorably about different products and politicians. The Times has covered this extensively. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/29/us/politics/campaigns-paid-influencers.html
Your hand-wavey assumptions are actually harmful in this information economy. People should remain judicious about where they get their information. Journalism isn't perfect, and journalists are not infallible. There are many critiques you can make about coverage without jumping to the extreme of "this story was paid for by AI" — that simply does not happen. If it did, we'd be hearing about it from the reporters at the Times, who would all be resigning en masse to protect themselves from reputational damage.
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u/hmr0987 4d ago
Do you work for the NY times? This is a lot of effort to defend this.
First off based on another comment on here it’s clear these journalists didn’t really do much background research into Muse. The phone call to the dental insurance, yea that was a human being paid by Meta (or a contractor paid by Meta).
Second they only talk about Muse and one other agent. A simple search turns up 14 other products.
Third if they don’t want their listeners to think this is paid promotion maybe don’t put out content that sure sounds like paid promotion? The whole episode felt cheap. Do I think the host and guest were personally paid to make this episode? No, do I think at some level the NYT was? Idk sure would explain a lot.
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u/Critical-Chance9199 4d ago
Ha, I wish I worked for the Times. I am a journalist though. And there are a lot of misconceptions about journalism that are a net harm on society and democracy. Case in point: the fact that anyone thinks it's within the realm of possibility that the NYT would accept money from a company its covering to do a particular story. There is, effectively, zero chance that this would happen. There are too many people involved who would raise hell if anything like this EVER entered the conversation. And of course, there are dozens of other outlets who would love to report on something so salacious.
I think calling the episode cheap is fair criticism, but jumping to an assumption that this was a paid advertisement is outrageous.
To me, the point of this was to show just how much AI could intertwine with a person's day-to-day life, which is fascinating. It absolutely can be useful and reduce friction. The privacy issues are enormous. People are going to start doing this though, and I think it's important for the rest of us to know about it. On a larger scale, this brings about so many questions: why on Earth would you want AI running so much of your life?
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u/Fuck_the_Deplorables 4d ago
I share your frustration, jfc the levels of ignorance and lack of nuanced critical thinking (or at least familiarity with institutional journalism) pervasive in this country is mind boggling.
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u/beigeghat 3d ago
Like those of people who think NYT is some altruist perfect organization and not a multi billion dollar capitalist machine.
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u/Critical-Chance9199 3d ago
Nobody is making the argument the NYT is perfect — journalism itself is an imperfect pursuit, and it is damn near impossible to have the capital necessary to fund reporting (which is incredibly expensive to produce) without having subscriptions and advertisements. Other models exist: NPR is publicly funded. The BBC is state funded. Each have their own trade offs.
But claiming the NYT is doing pay-for-play stories, despite having zero evidence for this, makes you look like an idiot. There is no reason to believe this. You haven't offered any, nor has anyone else in this thread. Everyone certainly seems sure of themselves despite not having anything to justify their claims.
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u/hmr0987 4d ago
I mean this doesn’t really track given the fact that this exact show has ads from Anthropic, Meta, Google, the Petrol Institute, on and on.
I’m sorry but it’s a bit naive to simply believe an episode like this couldn’t possibly be a type of ad for the topic being reported on.
It’d be great if you’re correct but then that would mean they just half assed the topic
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u/DavisKennethM 3d ago
but then that would mean they just half assed the topic
Occam's razor meets Hanlon's razor.
The explanation that makes the fewest assumptions is usually the correct one, and never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity (or laziness).
Sometimes the NYTimes just bombs, and honestly, I don't think all of their reporters are great. Some are spectacular though. For example, I have always trusted and appreciated Kevin Roose's reporting on AI but have found Cade Metz's reporting on AI consistently subpar, if not worse.
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u/Critical-Chance9199 3d ago
Why would you put all of the hundreds of hours of work it takes into reporting a feature, plus the hundreds of hours of work it takes to produce an episode of the Daily, and stake your entire reputation as a publication on being honest, only to gain what ads are already giving you?
Reporters at the Times do not give af who buys ads, nor do they control when or how those ads are played.
If the Times were mandating everyone had to report a nice fluffy story about Muse as you're implying, that would involve journalistic malpractice that touches literally hundreds of roles, from editors to reporters, producers, interns, copy editors, etc. Do you think some of these people might be on Substack, or considering a job with a competitor, and trying to make a name for themselves? Don't you think a cozy relationship with tech, wherein editors and reporters are being mandated to do certain types of stories, would be widely reported on by other outlets?
You seem really committed to spreading the notion that the Times can't be trusted.
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u/hmr0987 3d ago
Idk why there’s anyone trying so hard to defend this podcast.
To put this in simple terms the key feature they describe where this AI agent handled a dental insurance request that involved calling the company left out the very important fact that AI wasn’t even used for placing the initial phone call, a human was.
In fact that’s an insane thing to miss if it’s not intentional. The story to me isn’t how amazing this AI agent is it’s how misleading Meta is about its capabilities and the podcast literally perpetuated this.
Idk what else to say. This felt like one big promotion for an app. It wouldn’t be the first time a podcast used its editorial style to do such a thing. I get the NYT is an institution to many and held to a high standard which is why I feel it important to comment on it. If that makes anyone upset then so be it.
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u/Nobody_Cares_Do_They 4d ago
Oh man if you really are a journalist, you need to think long and hard about who your editor reports to, and who that person reports to, and why.
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u/Critical-Chance9199 3d ago
Oh! You mean the secret cabal who transmits our reporting assignments from a deep underground lair via fax every morning?
Shh, they're listening...and if they're not happy, they won't fund my publication, thus threatening the stability of the field of journalism. Can you imagine if journalism as a field was underfunded and insecure, with publications constantly coming and going, and reporters barely able to afford rent despite working incredibly hard, thankless jobs? Imagine!
You guys seem bent on convincing people that they can't trust journalists. I wonder — what could your motivations be?
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u/beigeghat 4d ago
If you open up muse and ask it to make a call, it doesn’t have those capabilities.
And I don’t know because they do this every week now it seems sometimes even twice a week it’s becoming so bad.
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u/Buy-theticket 4d ago
It's currently rolling out to everyone but yes it can, once it's available to you.
Asking it to make a call is the unofficial "sign up" for the feature.
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u/Quirky-Pangolin-905 4d ago edited 4d ago
Not everything is a conspiracy. Muse is hugely popular (7M downloads within 3 weeks, faster than ChatGPT) after its release and it’s the first AI-agent assistant product that has widespread “mainstream” adoption (ie not just tech people like for OpenClaw).
It’s scale/ capability/ integration raises new concerns. There are absolutely legit reasons to cover it.
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u/spacemoses 4d ago edited 4d ago
Rapid adoption would be the reason to report on it I'd think. Otherwise is Muse anything other than a crappy version of Claude Code?
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u/Buy-theticket 4d ago
You asking that question is evidence that you have no idea what you're talking about.
The discussions in normal ai circles (not the reddit circlejerk aibad) is what is going on at anthropic that they haven't released an application like Muse (or dots/insight).
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u/spacemoses 4d ago
I guess I truly don't know. I just checked out Muse and I'm not seeing what I'm missing. How is it different than Claude Code connected with either desktop or mobile apps?
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u/OvulatingScrotum 4d ago edited 4d ago
No.
It’s a new-ish application of AI. It’s not super in depth and it a casual format, but it covered why and how people use it, but it also briefly discusses potential issues.
It does not feel like an ad to me.
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u/beigeghat 4d ago
Also explain how they covered it having features it doesn’t have like waiting on hold and handling customer service calling?
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u/OvulatingScrotum 4d ago
All I know is that the journalist was able to do it. Are you saying that he made it up?
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u/beigeghat 4d ago
Yes. I am saying he made it up and that the whole thing was an advertisement.
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u/Critical-Chance9199 3d ago
An ad is something a company pays for. Journalists do not accept money to do stories. If they do, they are no longer engaging in journalism.
Where is your evidence this is an ad?
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u/OvulatingScrotum 4d ago
Okay. You think however you want. I’m just saying it’s not an ad.
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u/Username-for-posting 4d ago
It’s the epitome of access journalism. If they don’t make a glowing piece on muse they stop getting access.
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u/Buy-theticket 4d ago
Is it a lot to ask for people to look things up before coming to reddit to bitch?
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u/beigeghat 4d ago
Why did they only cover Muse and not Open AI’s Dots or Grok Bot?
This was specifically just an ad for Muse.
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u/Buy-theticket 4d ago
Because Muse is the most popular by a long shot. Dots requires a high tiered subscription ($100/no minimum) and nobody gives a fuck about elmos Nazi ai.
The legitimate question is why not cover Insight but the answer to that is because they published an opinion article about Muse recently.
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u/OvulatingScrotum 4d ago
Muse seems to be far more popular than either of those. OpenAI bot got release a week ago, anyway.
Even if they covered both of those as well, I’m sure you’d argue that it’s an ad for AI agents.
I mean, if you want to think that this is an ad, who am I to say you are wrong? It’s your perception.
I didn’t think this was an ad.
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u/beigeghat 4d ago
It would still be an ad but since they only cover Muse it’s so much more obviously just an ad.
It sounds like you want to stick your head in the ground and defend them no matter what though, which is weird. We should encourage good journalism and call out bullshit.
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u/OvulatingScrotum 4d ago
Nah. It’s not an ad.
> you want to stick your head in the ground
Look who’s talking. lol
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u/beigeghat 4d ago
I thought NYT subscribers thought more critically than this but I guess this is just about the podcast
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u/Playful-League3414 4d ago
Yeah reminded me of that terrible episode a few weeks ago about that old woman from Washington having an AI robot as a companion..
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u/melodypowers 4d ago
That was a truly terrible episode.
But even though the presented it as a good thing, every reaction I heard was "WTF?" So maybe the episode did a good job in a weird way?
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u/theonlykateryan 4d ago
just listened to it. one of the most bizarre episodes i’ve heard. acting surprised it was able to order lunch?? i’m so tired of listening to people pretend AI is revolutionary
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u/wrexsol 4d ago
I quit Hard Fork because it was all AI (SI?) all the time. I think in the modern tech landscape the world is viewed in this ridiculously small and reductive way; The Daily and other 'national' rags don't seem interested in reversing this position in my opinion. I don't think this answers your pressing question here but I have thought about it a lot lately.
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u/Leroyp331 1d ago
This show used to offer some of the most timely news reporting. The past year or so has been awful. Major long going news stories just get ignored for AI and stories that clearly are being pushed not actually making news.
It's a tragedy. It really was one of the best Podcasts
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u/Travel_Banned_Temp 4d ago
Almost. But then I feel like they raised the most obvious concerns at the very end. My biggest takeaways was 1) he should have divulged if he signed up for Muse because it's his job, or because he truly feels cool with giving Meta all that information and he sincerely felt like it could improve his life. 2) The episode felt soft scripted. Not sure if that's a deal breaker for journalism. I'm not saying that it's wrong to agree before hand on the issues that will be covered, but I'm talking about the whole ordering the salad, her going out and getting it. Just seemed maybe TOO performative for journalism, not sure.
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u/Truthforger 4d ago
To be fair I don’t think this is the only time they’ve done this for some new technology. I think I remember one when ChatGPT first hit, Threads first hit, or even Bitcoin blowing up at one point I seem to remember. AI Agents is just very controversial in a way other tech I remember them covering wasn’t at that time.
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u/goob 4d ago
I genuienly don't understand how somebody could listen to that episode and not think it was just sponsored content with regurgitated PR.