If you haven’t yet bought anything on TikTok Shop, odds are you will eventually.
Through videos and clever user appeals it is moving merchandise. Both shoppers and retailers are taking notice.
TikTok Shop is expected to make up a quarter of all U.S. social commerce sales by 2027.
How are they doing it?
More central Ohio police departments are scanning our license plates and our car’s make and model.
We’re talking about why and the technology behind it.
And how is YouTube protecting people from AI deepfakes and with rising costs is the delivery meal kit boom finally starting to fall?
Discussions on these topics and more is all part of this week's Tech Tuesday.
Guests:
- Peter Adams, senior reporter, Marketing Dive
- Katie Geniusz, reporter, WOSU Public Media
- Russell Holly, director of commerce content, CNET
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to Tech Tuesday from All Sides with Amy Juravich, a show where we share stories about science, technology and the future of our environment. In an era of shopping that is increasingly online, social media has stepped in as the new frontier for customers. The TikTok shop is expanding rapidly with brands flocking to sell on the platform and hopefully to find new shoppers in a previously non-existent market. Joining us today to discuss this new trend in e-commerce is senior reporter at Marketing Dive, Peter Adams. Welcome to All Sides, Peter.
Peter Adams: Thank you so much for having me on, Amy.
Juravich: So TikTok is mostly known as a place where Gen Z and other generations, a few millennials are in there too, but mostly Gen Z watch short videos and post short videos. More than half of the people using TikTok are under 30 years old. So can you tell us what the TikTok shop part is and how it works? I think most people listening know what TikTok is, but tell me how the shop got added to TikTok.
Adams: Yeah, for sure. A few years ago, TikTok introduced this e-commerce marketplace called Shop, and basically the idea is that if you look at other regions of the world that have a very evolved social media ecosystem, particularly China, where TikTok's developer is based, they have these apps like WeChat that are basically these all-in-one destinations.
So you have your messaging groups, of your entertainment and your ability. To do e-commerce on them. So the concept was to bring that sort of to the States where the social commerce channel has struggled to take off in the past. And TikTok seems to be kind of leading the charge on that now.
Juravich: What sort of products are being sold through TikTok? Are there specific products that do better than others?
Adams: You see a lot of retailers, apparel brands, beauty and cosmetics coming from the CPG category. But yeah, I think it's also vying for a pretty broad playing field. I mean, within the retail category, they've recently welcomed more kind of luxury brands, Ralph Lauren, for instance. So I think in TikTok's mind, you know, they kind of want to be the Amazon. For the social commerce field and you'll probably continue to see diversification in terms of the categories that are showing up on there.
Juravich: Are there regulations of any kind? Like how does a company begin selling on TikTok? Do they just make a video, make a link and they're suddenly a part of it?
Adams: Well, it's a very dynamic marketplace, as you can imagine, in the sort of social media ecosystem. The goal for this at the start was, you know, kind of scale quickly and get people using this. And at the star, you they provided kind of heavier incentives for some of the retailers that have since maybe wound down a little bit.
And they've also tried to assert more control in other ways. There was actually a push. Earlier this year to get all merchants to use their own proprietary kind of shipping and logistics platform that got enough pushback that they quickly back down off it.
And in terms of the regulations, I'm not really sure there's anything specifically tied to the e-commerce aspect of it. And TikTok has done a lot of work to kind of iron out the broader data privacy and security concerns through this new US joint venture that they struck at the beginning of the year. Due to sort of their developer being based in China.
Juravich: Yeah, well, we'll talk more about that security in a minute, but talk to me about shopping and entertainment being combined. We're seeing more and more of that, but I mean, that is just basically at a heart what TikTok Shop is. Is that the new world, shopping and entertainments together forever?
Adams: I think so, and again, you've seen over the years, a lot of companies try and do this and it hasn't really connected. They've tried to do the WeChat model. Amazon has tried live shopping, almost QVC style stuff before. I think the differences is there, especially starting in the pandemic, was this major shift to people really spending a lot at a time on their phones, watching the short form scrolling content.
And now most major social platforms have adopted the TikTok model where you're not even necessarily watching something your friends post, you're watching content from a influencer, a creator, what have you. And with that sort of wider adoption of that just space for entertainment, it has become a little more seamless to go, well, here's a link to buy what you see in the video.
And especially among Gen Z, they're much more comfortable making major purchases through their phone. You know, this is all discourse right now, like millennials book airline tickets only through their laptop because they feel like it's more trusted to do it through a bigger I need
Juravich: I need I need big internet to but yes anything over $100. I need Big Internet. Yes Guilty as charged. I'm an elder millennial Okay, so why don't people trust some products that they see in the TikTok shop? I can feel that some people would think that the link is gonna take them to a scam website. I mean, is this distrust a little bit valid? I know that most of it probably is real, but some of it is probably a scam.
Adams: I think a lot of people have had that experience, and it's not just a TikTok problem. I know people who have bought things from Amazon. You see the product page has one thing on it. The thing you get in the mail just looks nothing like what you bought, and maybe it's from a trusted seller.
Maybe it's a dupe. That is a huge culture on TikTok. They go, don't buy the $1,200 Ralph Lauren dress. Buy this one for 50 bucks, and then you get something in the email that is the wrong size or doesn't look you know, quite like the product image on the page.
Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
Adams: And yeah, that's just the growing pains of any scaled e-commerce platform or social media platform. There is no way to, other than in enforcing really strict controls and have it be a really exclusive site, there's no way just to keep tabs on all that stuff in real time.
So I definitely think people will encounter issues sometimes with what they order. Just totally anecdotally, I know someone who ordered a dress. And a couple weeks later, when they were supposed to get the dress, they just got two rings for your fingers in the mail.
Speaker 4: Haha
Adams: Um...
Speaker 4: Okay.
Adams: And then a couple weeks later they finally got the dress and they were just totally befuddled by the whole experience so there's definitely maybe some ironing out to do in terms of that aspect of it.
Juravich: Well, talk to me about other social media platforms, because I have things trying to be sold to me on Facebook all the time, for years, right? And a lot of those are scam, scammy. I don't know if they're, you know, or they just have that vibe. They feel a little bit like the link is not gonna be real. And then there's tons of videos from influencers on Instagram, which, and then they'll say, you, know, go to the link in my bio to buy it. Why is TikTok Shop doing better than what Metta's doing?
Adams: I think TikTok, the commerce aspect of it is maybe a little more directly integrated, like you mentioned, like having to flip to a link in a bio, you know, Instagram has, and we feel this from the publisher side as well, you're trying to get people to go to something that's on a website in real time, can have a few extra steps involved.
But the big thing for TikTok, and this is sort of the wedge it wields on the broader social media economy, is they are the trend setting app. Um, you know, things take off there, unusual things take off there. Basically overnight, I always go back to like Stanley Tumblr blowing up because of a TikTok video. You know, this hundred year old thermos brand targeted at blue collar workers suddenly becoming like the Gen Z item of choice.
Um, and so, yeah, I think their power as a trendsetter is just unbeatable and they probably have a little bit more of a sophisticated direct commerce integration as well.
Juravich: I mean, the joke is, is that TikTok is where Gen Z is and they see all the videos and then millennials and boomers see the videos like two weeks later on Instagram and Facebook, So, yeah, it's just, you know, the older we are, the more behind we are I guess.
You're listening to All Sides.
This is Tech Tuesday from All Sides on 89.7 NPR News and we're talking about shopping on TikTok with senior reporter at Marketing Dive, Peter Adams. TikTok shop has a lot of momentum right now. At the end of 2025, the shop was estimated as a $15.8 billion e-commerce business. That's according to the website "eMarketer." And that's a lot money. I mean, 15.8 and it's only growing. Should we be surprised at the kind of buying power a social media app has?
Adams: Not anymore, I would say, I again, always just return to like second screening habits, even when people are watching TV, they're on their phones. And yeah, just thinking about the massive amount of power that creators wield as well.
I've spoken to a couple retailers recently who are totally retooling their creator programs and their affiliate programs to recognize the shop opportunity. And for them, it involves relinquishing a little bit of control. So rather than having customers buy a thing directly through their store or through their app, they're now going through this additional layer in TikTok Shop.
But as we've been talking about, that Gen Z audience is so valuable. And I think TikTok's also a little more diverse than people get a bit credit for on the age demographic side of things. I mean, there are older consumer demographics, millennials in Gen X as well, who have. Adopted more of this stuff for certain categories like beauty and cosmetics is a good example of that.
Juravich: Talk to me about the growing buying power of Gen Z though, because a few years ago, a lot of people on Gen Z were probably still teenagers in high school, maybe they were in college, but now they're in their early 20s. They have their first jobs. They can buy all this stuff because they have their own money. Is that a part of the reason it's growing right now?
Adams: Definitely a part of the reason it's growing in it, and because they are the first, or they're described as the first truly digital native generation. These are the iPad babies, as you said, coming into true spending power, obviously in a very tough job market.
But as we've seen, a lot of that consumer spending has actually kept up, despite some of the macroeconomic pressures. Retailers have been pretty resilient. And... Yeah, I think if you have the right kind of outreach strategy, again, leveraging influencers and tying it directly back to this sort of transaction opportunity can be a very powerful engine for sure, and Gen Z is driving a lot of that.
Juravich: Yeah. And you mentioned big brands are, are joining the TikTok shop. Ralph Lauren is on there, Ulta Beauty. I mean, you could even get Crocs. So they're all beginning to sell on TikTok. So is the social media platform, does that make it a more legitimate market when these brands, when they're, when big name brands come in, or is it just the big, the big name, brands are like, Oh no, we need to be there.
Adams: I think it's a bit of both. I think they're definitely, some of them are definitely reacting to kind of startups that have figured out the sort of influencer first strategy maybe a little bit quicker than the legacies.
But I also think, yes, TikTok, if you listen to retailers talk about it has definitely legitimized itself in their eyes. They do, again, I think a lot, taking from the Amazon model, they do these super brand deal days that are sort of like mini. Prime days, so they have these sort of occasions to drive heavier traffic around these major sales windows. You think holidays, back to school, coming up not that far down the pike. So yeah, definitely a bit of both and you'll definitely continue to see more major brands, I think, jumping on this platform.
Juravich: I wanted to jump back to security for just a couple of minutes. There's some people who worry about giving information to a company that still shares ties to China. What does TikTok and TikTok shops say about security for its shoppers?
Adams: With TikTok's whole thing now is they really emphasize this USDS joint venture that's backed by companies like Oracle and they, for advertisers and consumers alike, are assuring that the national security concerns you kind of alluded to there are not as much. That's something they want to say.
That's in the rear view. Not to say all it takes is one incident. For that to be back in the spotlight. We've seen plenty of US-based companies mess this stuff up and have, you know, really sensitive personal information leaked.
But for right now, I think for your average shopper, you know TikTok's popularity never dimmed as just an entertainment portal, even as this ban back and forth went on for, you know over the course of basically five years between multiple administrations. So I don't see it really stop ring the momentum of shop in a meaningful way.
Juravich: How does price factor into this new style of attention, the, you know, this impulse buying? You're watching a video and you just impulse buy. Are prices pretty low or are people impulse buying things worth a lot of money?
Adams: It's tough to say for the more kind of luxury aspect of things, there's such a new entrant, I think, for TikTok shop. But I would say, we talked a little bit before about things like dupe culture, the idea that there are these sort of cheaper alternatives to really desirable trending products.
That underpins a lot of TikTok in general. You know, like, you love this, here's an alternative, you know, recreate this. $5,000 outfit for a hundred bucks, you know, things like that, that there's definitely a sort of sub a niche market for that within, you know, TikTok broadly, and I would imagine within shop as well.
Juravich: Well, we've been talking about a big increase in shopping on TikTok with senior reporter at Marketing Dive, Peter Adams. Thank you so much for your time today, Peter.
Adams: Thanks so much for having me on, Amy.
Juravich: And coming up, we'll hear why police departments are scanning our license plates and the technology they're using to do it. That's when Tech Tuesday from All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to Tech Tuesday from All Sides with Amy Juravich, a show where we share stories about science, technology, and the future of our environment. We talk a lot about data collection and privacy concerns here on Tech Tuesday, and today we're going to bring those topics closer to home, to talk about the proliferation of cameras around town and how they're being used by police, and why some people think it's a good thing and others are raising concerns.
Here to tell us more is WOSU's Katie Geniusz. She recently produced a piece about central Ohio police departments spending about $2 million on flock license plate cameras. Welcome back to All Sides, Katie.
Katie Geniusz: It's good to be here.
Juravich: So you started your piece by saying that people may not notice the cameras on the side of the road, but the cameras are noticing us. So that captures the idea of being under surveillance, I guess. They're automatic license plate readers. Can you describe what they look like and where they're hanging? So most of them are by the way.
Geniusz: Road. They are on telephone poles. Some of them have like these traffic poles, little black poles, maybe eight to nine feet off the ground. I've seen them on light posts. They are just about everywhere by the side of the road and they are kind of hung there.
You might see the solar panel before you actually see the camera itself. The camera itself is not that large. So that's how I've been able to identify them more is this. Big ol' solar panel that is typically above this camera, but I didn't notice them until I started working on this piece and now it's like, oh my gosh, they're everywhere.
Juravich: They're everywhere. Yeah, so the camera itself may be no bigger than like a coffee cup But then the solar panel is actually like the size of a textbook or something. Yeah
Geniusz: It's about, I would say like two feet by like one foot, probably larger because of course, everything up in the air is.
Juravich: Okay, so where are they located and are they just continuously recording? Are they always on? They are always watching.
Geniusz: Recording is another thing so they are looking for an input so if you have like an Amazon Alexa it's kind of the similar technology of it's always listening but you say a certain word to actually activate it it's looking but it's looking specifically for license plates and then it records when it sees a license plate
Speaker 4: Hmm
Geniusz: They are by a lot of like major areas. So Polaris Mall has a bunch of them. They're by highways or exits. Places where people normally go. So probably not a lot on side streets, but there's a ton on High Street.
Juravich: Okay, yeah, and you talk about the departments using them. You found that Columbus has about 38 of them, but Ohio State University has a lot too. We have 63. 63, okay, so the ones we see on High Street, are they Ohio State-owned then? Maybe, that's the- Oh, you don't know. That's-
Geniusz: That's the thing. They don't want to tell us who owns what version. Private businesses can also contract with Flock and that is something that we've seen. One of the major ones that's been in the news is Home Depot likes to contract with Flock.
Juravich: To monitor their parking lots? Yeah.
Geniusz: They're marketed as look at shoplifters, try to catch people who are regular shoplifter ahead of time. Like if you say this car has been a shoplifter for the last three times they've been here, we can call the police ahead of time. That's the marketing. But is that what they're actually being used for is no one has given a lot of people access to the back end of this.
Juravich: Yeah, speaking of the back end. So this technology is a part of what is known as the law enforcement software market and it's valued at around like a $20 billion industry from 2025 and it is rapidly growing. Explain more about this software market.
Geniusz: Of it comes from what used to be military contractors. It's either that or people who are using this as a startup. And it's people who are developing this technology for different reasons, for different things. So Flock is one of them.
Another one that Columbus uses is called Sound Thinking with their product "ShotSpotter." They also use Axon technology for body cameras, in-car ALPRs, which are automated license plate readers. And then there are a bunch of different things of specific softwares that they sell of what we can link your security cameras altogether in one place, which is a lot of the technology they're using for the real time crime center that's going in.
Juravich: So that all makes me think whenever you combine together ShotSpotter, Flock cameras, the crime center, you combine that all together, it kind of makes me of the CCTV network of Europe, right? Like, so my only exposure to it is from watching British crime dramas, but they have cameras everywhere and it solves a lot of cases on TV. Just America lacks that, I guess.
Geniusz: It's depending on who has access to those cameras. So we do have a lot of cameras. It's just the police may not have access to it. Of you see in American crime dramas that they always have to go to like the store owner and be like, do you have the footage from this night? Police don't necessarily have access those.
Juravich: Okay. Yeah. So it's asking the store owner to show, show the police the footage instead of, um, for the British crime drama, the police have all the footage because of their cameras. Okay. Well, you spoke to a number of people for your story. Among them was Chad Marlowe, a senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. And, um they raised privacy concerns. I want to play some audio of what he told you.
Speaker 7: Is that justified by being able to solve the occasional crime using surveillance, then I would strongly argue that it does not. There are other methods for solving crimes that don't involve mass violations of civil liberties.
Juravich: So to his point, I mean, this technology can help solve crimes, but if we're being recorded all the time, is that, is the, he said, is the one off crime worth it? What else did he tell you?
Geniusz: It's pretty safe to say Marlo was not a very big fan of this technology. Yeah, he seemed a little passionate. Yes, he told me about this idea of if this is something that is always going, always being on, how effective is it?
And its effectiveness is you better be solving every crime you catch on these cameras because why are you watching us? This like this idea of you're giving up a bit of your privacy to ensure your safety, it's kind of the social contract we have going on. His argument is, hey, you're not actually solving that many crimes as you're claiming. And from the very limited academic research I've found on this, he doesn't seem to be wrong. I don't know how much, how right he is. Just because I'm not a researcher on this. I can't tell you very much about the academia on every
Juravich: This is Tech Tuesday From All Sides on 89.7 NPR News, and we're talking with WOSU News reporter Katie Geniusz about local police and the technology they're using and why it's raising concerns. So for using the flock cameras as an example, we mentioned that Columbus has put up 38 of them, Dublin has 25, Grove City has 32, Ohio State has 63. You know, you have a list of different places that have these cameras. But if the police have to ask to see the footage, or do the police always have all the...
Geniusz: Footage so those cameras the police technically owned well technically flock owns them and is leasing them to the police but they have access to that footage and they own the footage that is being captured from those okay so they have unlimited access no matter what for their own cameras.
Juravich: Columbus has access to the 38 cameras. Yes. Okay. What if they want to, what if Columbus wants to see what's on a camera that is a flock camera, but they don't, it's not one of their 38?
Geniusz: So that is an interesting piece of controversy for Flock. There is an understanding that there are some police departments that share access to their cameras. That is, per department, creates those rules. So they can say, yes, I want to share it within a 20-mile radius. Or I will share it with every police department in Ohio. Or they can share it feasibly to every other.
Police department in the country. It is limited to police departments, so it's not like Home Depot can go in and look at Columbus's flat cameras. But that is something that has gained a lot of scrutiny from activists saying, well, we can trust maybe our own police department, but why can we trust a police department in Georgia, in Texas?
Was actually brought up is there was police departments in Texas that were able to track a woman to Illinois as she left the state for reproductive care. And that was one of the big things that was brought up to me by several people in the article as a cause for concern of, well, we don't know who the police departments are sharing this access with. Okay.
Juravich: Did you try to talk to police departments for your story? I did. And they declined?
Geniusz: Columbus police declined the interview a couple times. There were some police departments that were more forthcoming with information. Upper Arlington was actually pretty forthcoming with information, they showed me screenshots of their back end about how, yeah, we've limited this. This is what our settings are set at. That was not done until February, so it shows when they were last changed.
Juravich: And there's also a group called deflock.org. What are they trying to work to do?
Geniusz: So that was a group, that is a group that has a website. Their primary thing is their website that goes and maps where these flat cameras are. That isn't really public information. Police departments don't like saying where these cameras are, so, but we can see them.
That's something of like, well, I know where they are. I can go watch, I can see see them, there's one outside of our building even, you can see from the windows. Uh you can but what they've done is they've created a system where people across the country can like geotag them mark them say this is where a flock camera is this is where it's pointing uh they don't normally or they don't only go towards flock cameras as well there's other automated license plate readers for other companies and they have a nice little identification uh images of oh this is what this brand is this what this brand is.
And it marks them across the country. They say that central Ohio Franklin County area has around 500. We were only able to track around 300 for police departments.
Juravich: Well, not everyone is opposed to them, though. You talked to a resident, a hilltop resident, Lisa Boggs. She supports this technology. Let's listen.
Speaker 8: I advocated for this technology. I believe in it so much. You know, you have to live here to understand, I think. It can be a rough place, but it's a good place. And our neighbors are wonderful, and they're worth protecting and keeping safe.
Juravich: So what does Lisa want to keep safe? She thinks having these cameras here and there is gonna keep crime down?
Geniusz: Yeah, so she was one of the key people in introducing the idea of ShotSpotter to use in the hilltop use in Columbus. And she also supports flock cameras of things that using this type of technology can help get large people who are repeat offenders off the street. So it's people who, hey, maybe you break into a car down the road, we catch you. That keeps you from breaking into 20 more cars later on.
Juravich: Resident buy-in, I mean, does that play a role here? Do you know of police departments? I guess you didn't get to interview them, but did Lisa mention to the police department talk to residents about like, they're gonna put in these cameras, it's gonna help, X, Y, Z?
Geniusz: she actually didn't know that they were putting in the cameras until they were up. She knew that there were contracts that were signed, but until that technology was in, she really didn't get any information from that. They had some talk, talking with police departments, Lisa's part of the hilltop lock watch. So they kind of told them about that, but for everyday residents, that wasn't something that they we're kind of going door to door saying this technology is being put and this is what it's about.
Juravich: Questions have also been raised about whether this technology is being used by ICE. Did you find out anything regarding that? Is ICE tracking people and finding immigration issues using these cameras?
Geniusz: So there's nothing 100% definitive on this. Flock vehemently denies this. They had a pilot program with Customs and Border Patrol for a bit. That was ended in August of last year. They say that was for human trafficking and fentanyl distribution.
But there is also the thing of, okay, what are you doing with that technology? What are you with that information? And then the other thing that Marlowe actually brought up to me was Hey, just because ICE and DHS and Customs and Border Patrol were not having, don't have actual contracts with these technology companies doesn't mean they can't access them.
It takes one officer from one place that has access to all these cameras to go, oh yeah, I'll run those plates for you. And they have that information. And that was found in public records requests from other media reports that say, hey, you do have to give a reason for why you're searching information, and the reason for immigration was something that popped up.
Juravich: So someone went into one of the police systems and typed in the reason I'm accessing these cameras is immigration
Geniusz: Yeah, so you can see who's accessed your cameras and what reason they've gave in audits. Every flock says, hey, that's how you can tell if someone's misusing. How often police departments actually audit their logs is a total mystery to me, but that is something that can be, some areas have given out in public records requests and have said, yeah, we're. These cameras have been searched and the reason given was immigration investigations or sometimes even just ice
Juravich: Well, you did for your piece for WOSU, you interviewed a representative from FLOC, a spokesperson, Paris Lubel, and here is what he said about how the system works.
Speaker 9: Every search within the FLOC system requires a stated reason. So an agency, a law enforcement officer, must use it for a law enforcement purpose and then must choose the reason why they are searching the system.
Juravich: Okay, so besides, let's not talk about the immigration concerns, but what is the intent of like a reason police are going to search? They're looking for a particular car or they know, are they looking for a particular person? Like what kind of searches are we doing?
Geniusz: For both of those. Those both are things that they're trying to look for. Some of them are like for Amber Alerts, for things like, I'm looking for, this car was at the scene of a crime. It might not even be because they're looking for you as a suspect.
There are ones of, you're trying track down missing people. All these different things of they're looking for license plates, but sometimes they know, okay, well this car is registered to this person. We're trying find this person, you can track that car trying to find a person.
Juravich: So they can type in the license plate and just see where that car has appeared on any given flock camera of the ones they have. Yes. Okay. And can they also, maybe if they don't have the license plates, but someone says, Oh, the car was a red Honda with a big dent in the side. Can they search that?
Geniusz: Uh.
Juravich: Sure. Okay.
Geniusz: Flock advertises that yes, they can. That is something that, again, I haven't seen the back end of this police department.
Juravich: And you didn't get to talk to the police about it. No, they haven't been.
Geniusz: No, they haven't been very forthcoming of what their actual definitive technological capabilities have been
Juravich: Okay, I was I guess my last question I was gonna ask you if these cameras have solved crimes. Do you know that answer?
Geniusz: Technically, yes. So they've been mentioned in a bunch of different pieces of, yeah, this was used in solving this crime. There was a man who is, I believe, convicted. I don't know if he is or charged with murdering a 17-year-old girl over in Hawking Hills.
And they were able to use cameras to track him from picking her up in Indiana, traveling with her across state lines all the way down to Hocking Hills. Whether or not they could do that without flock cameras is unknown. They did use flock cameras, though.
If it was the quintessential piece that helps solve an investigation is something that activists have kind of brought up is, could you have solved this crime without using these cameras is something we don't know. There's not a lot of research on it, but anecdotally, yes, they have been used in helping solve crimes.
Juravich: Well, I wanna thank you so much for taking the time to tell us about the use of flock cameras in central Ohio. We've been talking with WOSU news reporter, Katie Geniusz. Thank you for joining us.
Geniusz: You're very good to be here.
Juravich: And coming up, we're gonna talk about the increase of the use AI deep fake videos on YouTube and what to do about it. That's when Tech Tuesday from All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to Tech Tuesday from All Sides with Amy Juravich, a show where we share stories about science, technology and the future of our environment. AI generated videos are only getting more realistic. Imagine the uncanniness of seeing a video of yourself doing or saying something that you never would do or say. People in the limelight face this every day.
YouTube's new AI deep fake detector is letting celebrities take down videos that use their likeness without consent. Joining us to talk about these deep fakes on YouTube is Russell Holly, director of commerce content for CNET. Welcome back, Russell.
Russell Holly: Thank you.
Juravich: So how can celebrities use this tool to get deep fake videos that look like them removed? What do they need to do?
Holly: In a way, it's not terribly different from the way that YouTube's content ID system works for other rules that have been broken. The difference here is that on YouTube's side, there is a tool to help verify the claim that the video is not actually of that celebrity.
It's also not immediately clear what in that range YouTube considers a celebrity and who exactly is going to have access to this tool. We know that it has been available to politicians in the past, but again, not every politician, So it's a little. Is a little blurry in that respect, but essentially someone who is connected to a celebrity who has discovered a deep fake of themselves or of someone they represent on YouTube can now very quickly submit that for takedown, and YouTube has tools to quickly verify that and then remove the video.
Juravich: Now, does this only work if it's an AI-generated video? What if it just like a celebrity lookalike making a video, but it's still a person?
Holly: Those are very much fair game, as "Saturday Night Live" will happily tell you.
Juravich: Yeah. Okay. So does YouTube detect and like try to mark when it knows videos are AI generated? Like does it flag it and say this is an AI video?
Holly: This is a tool that YouTube uses across its entire platform. It is now a part of the video description of something is, uses AI tools and it's not disclosed. When it is uploaded, YouTube will add a flag to the description saying that AI was involved in the process based on the tools that they have for detecting that sort of thing.
For... A couple of different reasons. YouTube is quite quiet about the methods that it uses for detection, because building a better mousetrap is a difficult thing to bypass. And so, you know, this kind of closely guarded secret that they have for detecting these things works fairly well from the tests that have been performed on our end.
Juravich: Just within the past few days, Taylor Swift applied for a trademark on her voice and her image in an effort to protect it from AI. Is that kind of related? Do you think that'll work?
Holly: That's gonna be a really interesting thing that is gonna be settled by the courts at some point. You know, I think that that is setting up something that will likely end up being quite common if it turns out that this offers the level of protection that artists are accustomed to at this point and are starting to lose as a result of this.
There's also, you know, we know from, you now, when we think about deepfakes, a lot of it ends up being applied to video or photo, but there have been quite a few. Reports of audio versions of past presidents and other political agents calling voter rolls and giving misinformation about things like when elections start and stop. And so that kind of information can also be quite useful in that situation for additional ways to stop these things from going out.
Juravich: All right, moving on to a second topic. Chinese car company, Huawei, has unveiled new headlight technology with its EV cars, which allows them to display a full range of colors and more. Russell, tell me more about these fancy headlights and are we allowed to have fancy headlights in the US?
Holly: We are not. We've discussed this a little bit in the past, thanks to some really, really old laws in the US about headlights needing to meet very specific standards so as not to upset horses.
There are quite a few things that headlights outside of the US are capable of that inside of the U.S. We haven't quite figured out yet how to bypass on kind of a legal setup. But what we saw from Huawei at the Beijing auto show this past week takes that even a step away.
There were examples of people sitting out around their car as their car acted as the projector from their phone in order to show movies on a screen a couple of feet away.
Juravich: So, okay, so they're using their car's headlights to project a movie and they're just like sitting there. So it's like a drive-in movie with your own car.
Holly: That's exactly right.
Juravich: And we can't do that here, right, because we're not allowed to.
Holly: That is something we definitely don't have the capability for. It also sets up a really interesting kind of split between people who view EVs in general as kind of a different kind of fuel anxiety, where you have to worry about having enough battery power to do something.
And current EV owners, be it something like this or Ford F-150 Lightning owners that can use their trucks to power entire homes. There's this really interesting split on the perception of what these things are actually capable of and I find that, you know, being able to turn your car into an outdoor movie theater is a really impressive, you know, kind of evidence against that.
Juravich: Okay, yeah, I was just gonna say, it just seems like a battery suck to do, to do that. You could just buy a projector, right?
Holly: It is so much less power to run the car than it is to do something like project a movie.
Juravich: But, and also these same fancy headlights though, they can be different colors. Are they in other countries, are they allowed to drive down the road with like blue and orange and yellow and red headlights?
Holly: There aren't a lot of places that will allow you to kind of variably change your headlight colors while a vehicle is in motion or while it's on legal motorways. But when you are out with friends or you're using your car for either off-roading or camping purposes, then there are ways that this could be super helpful.
There was also a really not nearly as practical but certainly pretty fun demonstration of these headlights. Taking the music that you're listening to and playing the audio waveform just on the ground in front of the car
Juravich: So, dance party with your headlights of your car. Or carry.
Holly: Or karaoke, yeah.
Juravich: All right. Well, this is Tech Tuesday from All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about some recent tech news with Russell Holly, Director of Commerce Content for CNET. Apple recently released an update. It included many minor changes, as most updates do. But there was one major change that has some users worried about privacy. Apparently, if you deleted the Signal app from your phone, your iPhone would still store the notifications even after the app was deleted. This is an interesting loophole. What's the scuttlebutt around this?
Holly: Yeah, this took a little bit to track down in its entirety. In early April, there was a report about a federal organization that had extracted messages from a defendant's phone.
Because the notifications of the messages that had been received were buried deep in a system log. And so it meant that you didn't necessarily have to go into Signal, which is an encrypted messaging app to see the messages because those notifications were not protected.
Your iPhone has a setting that allows you to only view notifications if your face has been detected or if you have entered a password. Most people do not keep that on. And so what that means is that those notifications are displayed right on the home screen and as such there is, if you don't swipe them away, there is a record of them.
So you can choose to dismiss a notification or you can chose to let it kind of roll back up. But what a lot of folks did not realize is that if you allow that notification to disappear on its own, it is still a part of Apple's log. That has been patched in this case with the most recent update to iOS.
Juravich: Okay, is it just for the Signal app or did they patch that for all of my notifications?
Holly: Yeah, so this is any notification that would be marked for deletion for any reason at all. It just happened to be particularly egregious in this case because Signal is known for being this secure messaging platform.
Juravich: Well, Signal made some news recently because basically there was a big security breach and a security leak by letting a reporter into a Signal chat. So did this come about like because Signal was involved? Like, I guess what I'm asking is like, had Apple not figured this out before, but because Signal's been in the news, suddenly it became a thing.
Holly: Yes and no. Signal is always the topic of some scrutiny because it is one of the most popular messaging apps that is known for its security and impenetrability, and the vulnerability that you described before was a human vulnerability. That person was invited to that group chat because their phone number was mistakenly added to that chat.
Speaker 4: Right.
Holly: And there wasn't really like a security bypass there, but what's going on here was a genuine way for someone to access messages that would be in Signal without the Signal app necessarily needing to even be there on the phone. And that was something that, you know, Signal didn't have any control over, but Apple did.
Juravich: Are there any other big features in this update that we need to be aware of or is this kind of the one that's catching people's attention?
Holly: There are four very exciting new emoji, which I cannot list off to you because I don't remember them.
Juravich: Oh, they're so exciting you forgot them.
Holly: That's right.
Juravich: Okay, well, it's just I'm an Apple person and I knew I was talking to you about this today and when I woke up this morning, my phone told me that when I go to bed tonight, the update will be there. So I thought I was like, oh, how timely. I'm getting the update.
Holly: That's exciting, something to look forward to.
Juravich: Something to look forward to I I will I'm going to look up what the emojis are Maybe I will send them to you if I can figure how do you find out which ones are new? Do I just need to Google it? I don't
Speaker 4: Yes. Okay.
Juravich: All right. Well, our last topic that we have is related to Blue Apron, one of the most popular delivery meal kit services in the United States. They just had a major hit to their operations. Their biggest supplier is filing for bankruptcy. What happened here? And so Blue Aprons biggest supplier, meaning the person supplying most of the food is bankrupt. Give us some details.
Holly: Yeah, so the company's name is Fresh Realm. And as a part of their Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, they cited ingredient and supply disruption across 2025 that made it very difficult to meet the previous objectives that they had set out or contract agreements that they set out with Blue Apron.
So essentially, The cost of materials and the availability of materials that they would use to provide Blue Apron with the meal kits necessary to meet their contract had increased so dramatically in price and become so much harder to source that it was no longer able to meet the contractual obligation at the prices that they had previously established. And as a result, they just weren't able to function and they shut down in a way that is slightly less dramatic than "Spirit Airlines," but not terribly dissimilar.
Juravich: Okay, yeah. So, but there were also some food safety concerns. I mean, Fresh Realms had some problems with its operations, right?
Holly: That's exactly right. This organization has just in the last three years have had several food and safety inspection alerts that have gone out where specific items did not meet the quality control that it was supposed to.
There were two different listeria recalls that had happened over the last five years. And while Blue Apron and Fresh Roam have repeatedly said that there were no active cases that led to people getting sick that they could find. That those recalls, you know, were still quite disruptive to the people who, you know, pay and use Blue Apron on a regular basis.
Juravich: So with Fresh Realms gone, what's Blue Apron doing?
Holly: Blue Apron turned right around and announced a transition to a company that has a little bit more name recognition than Fresh Roam, and that is Misfits Market. Misfit's Market has been around for a little while, and their whole deal is being able to ship whole ingredients to your house that maybe didn't look perfect and so weren't bought in a grocery store.
That was their kind of original sales pitch, and they are now also getting into... Making their own ingredients using those things and shipping out things that are not quite meal kits but pretty close. And so it's a pretty natural partnership between these two organizations as long as Misfits Market has a contract that will allow it to keep up with this demand in a world with price fluctuations as extreme as what we've seen across 2026.
Juravich: So basically someone who gets their next Blue Apron kit, they're gonna have misfit market products in it, and they never have before.
Holly: I think that this is something that starts in June, but yes, I don't think that there's going to be a specific label that it's coming from Misfits Market because Blue Apron works with a couple of different suppliers, but if you are familiar with Misfit Market and you've had a poor experience with them before, which is not a thing I think is common, but every use is different, it is useful to know that if you're a Blue Aprons subscriber that that is likely to be where most of your food is going to start coming from.
Juravich: Whenever I heard about this with the supplier for Blue Apron going bankrupt, but not Blue Apron itself, it just made me think like, have we reached the peak of these meal delivery services? Or when will they reach the peak? I mean, I feel there's so many different brands of these and so many ways to get meal kits. Can Blue Aprons survive this change?
Holly: Blue raping can probably survive this change because it is the biggest kid in the playground by quite a bit, while there are a number of these alternatives now that focus in different directions, like vegan versions or Whole Foods versions.
Blue Apron has been around longer than most of them and so just has a healthier, you know, bank of subscribers. But even Blue Aprons has shifted its revenue model over the last couple of years to being instead of a regular subscription meal kit, they have done, you now, kind of individual meals or, you no, kind large meals for events and things like that, both of which are pretty significant departures from the way that Blue Aprion had been operating until years past.
You know, the Blue Apron ended up being very, very popular during COVID lockdowns, especially for kids that were entering or leaving college. And a lot of that is something that continues, but to a much lesser degree.
Juravich: I guess I thought HelloFresh was the biggest kid on the market, but Blue Apron is a bigger company. I didn't know that.
Holly: Blue Apron ends up having more subscribers on a quarter by quarter basis. HelloFresh was the very first to get as much attention, and HelloFesh certainly has a larger marketing budget because you hear them on every podcast and television and radio, depending on what time of year it is. But Blue Aprons is consistently the one that gets the highest rating from its subscribers and maintains a pretty healthy subscriber count.
Juravich: Are there, we only have a minute left, but what are some other meal kit alternatives to Blue Apron besides HelloFresh? Are there others that are as popular?
Holly: I wouldn't say that there are others that are as popular, but there are certainly quite a few of these. You know, a lot of the ones that we have tested, Home Chef ends up being one that is pretty popular.
The one that we like the best from all of the testing that our kitchen folks have done is one quite a bit less known called Marley Spoon. Marley Spoon is one that has quite a bit less, you know, kind of waste and generally fresher ingredients and that's one that ends up getting recommended by quite a few people in that particular space.
Juravich: Well, Russell, I want to thank you so much for your time today. We've been talking with Russell Holly, director of commerce content for CNET. Thanks for joining us.
Holly: Thanks for having me.
Juravich: And you've been listening to All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. If you missed any part of today's show, listen back at our website, wosu.org slash All Sides. Subscribe to the All Sides podcast and every episode is available in our mobile app. Be sure to like All Sides on Facebook and you can follow the show on Instagram. Our Instagram handle is at AllSides WOSU. Thanks for joining us.