There are many different methods that companies use to recycle those plastic water bottles you toss in the blue bin. One of those ways is called chemical recycling.
But one company that was doing chemical recycling in central Ohio, is both using heat -- and taking heat and is now suspending operations.
In the new Toy Story 5 movie, it’s a battle for play time between beloved toys Woody, Buzz and the gang – and a tablet named Lily Pad.
It’s a dilemma that’s playing out in real life, and that got us wondering about tech, animation, and pop culture.
Apple promised in 2024 we would have AI-operated Siri. Two years later, they are finally delivering: not only new AI features, but also compensation for some customers who were told their new iPhones would have those features.
We're discussing these topics during this week's Tech Tuesday.
Guests:
- Doug Swift, assistant professor, Denison University/reporter, The Reporting Project
- Tiffany Knoell, associate teaching professor, Department of Popular Culture, Bowling Green State University
- 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. We have all heard about the increase of plastic pollution in the world and how recycling is beneficial to decreasing this waste. One way companies recycle this plastic is through something called advanced recycling or chemical recycling.
Although it can be beneficial, an advanced recycling plant in Hebron called FreePoint Ecosystems is now pausing operations as EPA violations came pouring out of their smokestacks. Here to talk about it is a journalist from the reporting project and a professor at Denison University, Doug Swift. Welcome to the show, Doug.
Doug Swift: Thanks, Amy. Good to be here.
Juravich: So FreePoint Ecosystems recently announced that it will be suspending operations at its Hebron facility, which is east of Columbus. We do have a statement from the company that I'll read in a moment, but first Doug, I wanted you to explain to me exactly what advanced recycling or chemical recycling is when it comes to plastics. Okay.
Swift: So there's three kinds of chemical recycling. The type that they use is the most common. It's called pyrolysis. And if you can imagine a massive kiln, I mean, these were super loads that where they closed the highway to pull it up. And so when we say kiln it's massive. And it's an oxygen-free environment where they heat it up to 1200 degrees Celsius.
The concept is to separate the material back to its original molecular structure. And, in theory, that means you can get it back to its original petroleum product.
Juravich: Okay, so the end result is you're turning it away from plastic and into petroleum.
Swift: And they'll say, look, we don't have to drill from our petroleum, we got the petroleum back from the plastic. But you're also separating what you mix with the petroleum to make the plastic, which are toxic chemicals that they get released into the air.
Juravich: Okay, so is chemical recycling better for recycling plastics compared to like other types of recycling? I mean, I'm sure there's many different ways to do this.
Swift: So what we tend to think of as recycling is what's called mechanical recycling, where you chew up the plastic bottles and then you reconstitute them. So mechanical recycling and chemical recycling. So better or worse, the deeper you go into this, I found it just more and more complicated and...
Juravich: I mean is it better to turn turn plastic into more plastic or is it better to term plastic into petroleum well
Swift: So, one way that Vena Singla from the Natural Resources Defense Council explained it to me was like, if you talk about it in theory, like in a lab, you know, under highly controlled circumstances, yeah, it's great. Like you can actually do it with a microwave and it's a really cool idea. And in theory why wouldn't you do that? The problem is with scaling it up.
And this free point plant was really, really big. They said it was one of the biggest in the world. I don't know if that's true or not. But it was big. And the more you scale it up, the more problems and inefficiencies you have and the more pollution and problems you get, which is verified by all the EPA violations you get. So I mean, could it be better if it worked? Yeah, maybe, but is it? In this case, it was not.
Juravich: Okay, so tell me a little bit more about this company. So they're called FreePoint Ecosystems. They were doing advanced recycling. So they were recycling plastic, but they ran into some EPA violations is basically what happened. Tell me more about them.
Swift: So, some of their initial violation was just, I mean, and I have an inside source who told me basically they didn't know what they were doing. And the first violation shows that. They just, you have to chew up the plastic first before you can feed it into the kilns. And they were just chewing up the plastic and they filled the whole place up with small plastic in the air.
And people were breathing it in and getting quite sick. So that just shows they kind of didn't. Really know what they were doing, and they got a violation. And when you get a violation, you say, how are you going to fix it? And they say, well, what if we put in filters and fans? And they put in filter and fans. I mean, that's a pretty basic mistake for an operation that size.
But then it's what I was just referring to. This is not easy. There's mistakes. And when make a mistake, at least from what I can see and by the evidence of neighbors and environmental groups and people who are watching. What happens is, instead of allowing the amount of carcinogenic vapors that you're permitted to emit, the dioxins and volatile organic compounds, instead you emit these puffs of black smoke, which are very toxic. And that was happening on a regular basis.
Juravich: And so neighbors were noticing this, didn't they report it to the EPA?
Swift: Yes, there were citizen reports to EPA, environmental groups were watching, and it was very, very frequent. And people would complain. The EPA would send another notice. Sometimes one notice was, in one case, I reported there was a list of 10 malfunctions that was all compiled into one violation notice.
And I talked to Mark Thurman, and he was an operations manager. And That was a really interesting conversation because we went over these violations bit by bit and he's drawing, you know, on a notepad what's going on and I never got to go inside the plant but this was the next best thing because I actually got to see how complicated these plants are.
And he would draw like what was malfunctioning to make the system go off and create these puffs of smoke. And with such detail. And then I would corroborate his drawings with the language in the notices of violation. And he had filled up like four pages with detailed drawings.
And I could see, you know, this is like it sounds, in theory, it sounds great. We'll just turn the plastic back into this pie oil, you know this petroleum substance, and we'll make new plastic out of it. And it sounds you know I wish it would work because we really need a solution. But you can see that it's really, really a difficult thing to do.
Juravich: A FreePoint Ecosystem spokesperson shared with the WOSU Newsroom a statement that reads in part, FreePoint EcoSystems is suspending operations at its Hebron, Ohio facility. The site is undergoing a controlled transition to a care and maintenance state, while strategic options for the facility are evaluated. Our priorities throughout this process are safety, environmental stewardship, regulatory compliance and support for affected employees and contractors. So basically from reading that, the plant, FreePoint, admits we weren't doing this right and they had to close.
Swift: Yeah, you know what's interesting about that statement is that's what they issued to the press, that's their general statement, and they wanted it attributed to an unnamed spokesperson. But if you submit a request to the Ohio EPA, can I see the notification they sent you that they were shutting down, you get the actual language, and it was actually written by their general counsel. So, they're definitely in a legal posture.
Juravich: Okay, so their lawyer wrote this.
Swift: Their general council wrote that language.
Juravich: Okay. And so, and basically, so explain to me, so they had different violations. The EPA was telling them they had to fix this, this and this. But are they saying that they couldn't fix it or they needed more time to fix it? I mean, they're basically suspending operations and in a state of care and maintenance. So they're not operating right now, correct?
Swift: That is correct. And to be fair, I should say, they did invest money, according to my source on the inside. They invested a good amount of money. First of all, this equipment was new, purchased from Germany, from the state-of-the-art supplier of this kind of equipment.
But I don't know what went wrong. And then they didn't invest money on top of that to try to fix these problems. So I don't know all the details, but I do know that much. Um, but Their final violation was that they were not converting a high enough percentage of the plastic waste into this pie oil.
They weren't exceeding the 70% standard that they needed to exceed to earn a recycling permit. Their goal, by the way, was 85%. But they weren't even exceeding 70 percent. And that was the final, um...
Juravich: So they weren't actually recycling if you're.
Swift: At that point, you're not recycling. And the EPA informed them that if they can't correct that problem, then they will lose the recycling permit. And they will have to be re-permitted as a municipal waste facility.
Juravich: Mm, just getting rid of the waste instead of actually recycling.
Swift: They're basically an incinerator. This is kind of a hot term. Are you an incinderator? Are you a recycler? A little bit of a semantic discussion, but it's one very, very relevant to environmentalists and we could go over that in a second because it's really important. But, um, But that was their final violation. And they had not met that threshold for three quarters.
So that was a longstanding problem that apparently they were unable to resolve. And so they had 30 days to send their plan to the Ohio EPA, how they were going to fix that problem. And on the 30th day, that's when they sent the notice that you just read to the the Ohio EPA.
Juravich: This is Tech Tuesday from All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about plastic recycling and a method known as advanced recycling with Doug Swift, journalist and assistant professor at Denison University. So let's dig in a little bit more to this actual idea of recycling this way. You mentioned getting parts from Germany. So is this a way to recycle plastic that is done successfully at other plants and other places?
Swift: So that's a good question.
Juravich: Heavy sigh, okay.
Swift: It's a good question. If you recycle with Rumpke, as a lot of us do, Rumpcke has a state-of-the-art recycling facility here in Columbus. They separate out some plastics, and you use those those plastic clamshells that hold your raspberries.
Juravich: Yeah, Rumkey recently added recycling the clamshells, yeah.
Swift: Because they send those to a pyrolysis plant down south in the Houston area. Okay. Okay. So there are some plants that have managed to operate without being closed down. Okay. So are they successfully chemically recycling? First of all, are we seeing on the shelves products that say chemically recycled products reconstituted from chemical recycling?
Juravich: I have no idea.
Swift: We are not. We're not.
Juravich: We're Not. Okay.
Swift: We are not, okay? Also, is anybody making money from it? It's an insanely expensive process. How much does it cost to heat a kiln that size to 1200 degrees Fahrenheit?
Juravich: All the money, okay.
Swift: Okay, and then that according to Venus Inglis, that pie oil is not like pure virgin petroleum that you make plastic from. It still has to be processed at least two more times and then it still has to have virgin petroleum mixed in with it in order to make something out of it. So the technology is nowhere near ready to work.
Juravich: Okay, so and this is where we're getting into whether you're just an incinerator or you're actually a recycler or
Swift: As some environmentalists would say, are you a PR prop for the petroleum industry? Because they just want to keep making plastic. It is so profitable. So profitable to make plastic. To make plastic, they've doubled their plastic production in the past 20 years. And in the next 20 years, they plan to double plastic production again.
Juravich: People have both become numb and exhausted by the idea of plastic pollution I feel like there's people who are like panicked by using plastics maybe become even anxious about it Tell me more about this where people they want to do right by the environment, but everything is in a plastic bottle
Swift: That's the, that's our existential situation, isn't it? And it's inside of us now, like scientists are, you know, they're, they are exploring the brains of cadavers and they're finding enough microplastics in our brains to make a plastic spoon.
Juravich: Great. Okay. I don't even know how to react to that. Okay.
Swift: And that is on a serious upward slope, and the scariest part of that is it's this emerging field, and so they're just starting to hypothesize what the health effect of that is going to be. But the scariest of that are the microplastics that are accumulating in the what the effect of that is gonna be. So it is this big crisis, but if you just squint your eyes a little bit, it's a crisis that you can not see.
Juravich: So if we are talking about it being hard, the difficult, expensive, and maybe impossible to truly recycle plastic, you also write in some of your stories about just is the better idea reducing plastic use then.
Swift: So yeah, exactly. And I would say this, and it's not a systemic solution, but you have a very talented intern here, Ellen Hanson. And she worked at, we've done a lot of reporting on this at the reporting project. And Ellen Hansen led a story on things that people can do. We're very interested in solutions journalism at the Reporting Project. And it was just a whole list of things, room by room. Through your whole house, through your whole life, what you can do to not use plastic and
Juravich: Can you give me a couple examples?
Swift: Well, the easiest one is you do not have to buy shampoo in a plastic bottle. Shampoo comes in a bar. Toothbrushes come made out of bamboo. There are just so many things that are so ... They may not feel big in the grand scheme of things, but they do add up, and they are a start.
My wife and I took this on in a really big way, and no, we have not succeeded in getting plastic 100% out of our house, but we have gotten a lot of plastic out of our house. And the one thing it does is it addresses what you just hinted at, which is how overwhelming it can be if you think about it too much, but also how, if you take steps, like even little steps, how empowering that is.
Juravich: Should we still feel okay about putting the plastic we do have into the Rumpke recycling bin?
Swift: I do, but if I don't, I don t sweat it. I mean, I use as little as possible, and I honestly don t know which is better. With all my research so far, I just don t. Even the mechanical recycling, like if I have a, which I would never drink water out of a, I would never drink a plastic.
Juravich: No more plastic water bottles, yeah.
Swift: 150,000 bits of microplastic.
Juravich: OK.
Swift: Just saying. For everyone's records, we're drinking out of ceramic mugs here in the studio. And I'm so happy to see that. But Rumpke can take those and they can send them, they do recycle plastic. There's that myth about them collecting plastic and just throwing it in the landfill. They don't do that. They have a seller for all the plastic they collect.
And they'll send that up to a plant in Bowling Green and they'll chip that down and they could make new water bottles out of that, one time. And then you'll have to throw that away. But when they chip that down, they're creating microplastics, right? With plastics, it's always a big, big compromise. And so it's just best not to make it and not to use it in the first place, if you can avoid it.
Juravich: We've been talking about advanced recycling, which is one way of attempting to recycle plastic, and a plant that does it in Ohio, which is now closed. And we've been with Doug Swift, a journalist and assistant professor at Denison University. Thank you so much for your time today.
Swift: You bet. Glad to be here.
Juravich: And coming up, we're going to talk about the new movie "Toy Story 5" and how pop culture views technology. That's when Tech Tuesday 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.
In the new "Toy Story 5" movie, it's a battle for playtime between the beloved toys, Woody, Buzz, and The Gang, and a new tablet named Lillipad. It's a dilemma that's playing out in real life, and that got us wondering about tech, animation, and pop culture. Joining us now for this conversation is Tiffany Knoell, associate teaching professor of pop culture at Bowling Green State University. Welcome to the show, Tiffany.
Tiffany Knoell: Good morning, how are you doing, Amy?
Juravich: Thanks for joining us. So your teaching and research areas include animation, film, digital humanities, and video games. And to set the scene here, we're going to hear a bit from the "Toy Story 5" trailer. Cowgirl Jessie is the first voice you're going to here. And then later, you're gonna hear an iPad device named LilyPad who is asserting her importance.
Cowgirl Jessie: First we were playing, and then the world started changing. Oh! Are we getting donated? Mmm, don't know.
LilyPad: Nah, sweetie.
Desi: Donate it!
Toy story 5 character: Bonnie doesn't want to play with toys anymore, she needs me. Desi, you know Bonnie better than anyone. What does your gut say?
Toy Story 5 character: Bonnie still needs us. Our time ain't over yet.
Juravich: So just hearing the voices takes me back. The movie doesn't come out until Friday, so we haven't seen it yet, but the trailer alone sparked this idea. Tiffany, as you're listening to that and you hear about the villain of "Toy Story 5" being an iPad, or I guess a tablet, I should say, what struck you about pop culture's take on technology here?
Knoell: I think what they're giving us here is the idea that tech is something that we are unsure about, we don't entirely trust, and it seems to be omnipresent. We can't escape it. But there is also this other push of, but where's the human in all of that? Because play, pretend, imagination, these are all things that come out of the human part of us. The technology? Well, we're still trying to figure that out.
Juravich: Yeah, so what touches a nerve is the struggle we have. I mean, it's a struggle in society, not just in this movie as parents when it comes to our children. How much to embrace the technology, how much to regulate it. So I was just wondering your thoughts in general on how pop culture and a movie like "Toy Story 5" specifically, how are they capturing this moment? I guess this tension that people have of technology is here to stay. What do we do?
Knoell: As I've been thinking about this and prepping for today, I started doing some additional digging into the storyline of "Toy Story 5." And I think the piece that really caught me off guard most was that it's not Bonnie, the protagonist here, well, the human protagonist, who is asking for this tablet. Her parents are the ones suggesting it to her as a socialization tool.
Meanwhile, she's the last kid on her block still playing with toys. She's eight, by the way. So I would say that there is an acknowledgement of the increasingly early encroachment of technology and also looking at how technology is used to enforce both conforming with all of the other little girl. There is a certain amount of peer pressure that's going to go on in this movie. And so there's the question of peer pressure and technology. And one thing I really do appreciate Is it, they are? Hoping that it will be a positive experience, but Eight seems awfully young.
Juravich: Yeah, one of the ironies of the movie is the whole tug of war between toys and digital tablets. And it's, but there is like the tech toy tie in, you know, so, cause Pixar is a tech company, right? So as someone who studies animation, I mean, how do you see Pixar and the Toy Story franchise fitting in like how animation has involved technology wise, but then having the technology be kind of the villain of the story. Isn't that, do you see that interesting tug of war there?
Knoell: I do. And it kind of fits in with the class I was teaching in the spring on time travel, looking at how it seems like the only positive relationship with technology or future outlook that Hollywood really seems to want to focus on in a lot of cases is a negative one. In some of the research that we were doing in this class, we came to the conclusion that "Star Trek" might be the only positive future representation that we've got out there. Everything else is Terminator and Skynet and Odeer.
Juravich: Oh, that's interesting. OK, so the idea of technology destroying our future world is more profitable movie-wise than technology helping us out. Is that what you mean? I think so.
Knoell: But as far as Pixar and its place in animation history, Pixar does occupy a unique position. It's not they have a little company up there at the top, and most of those are coming from Japanese production companies. But other than that, Pixar really did help to start setting the standard. Oh, and we can also thank George Lucas for this as well.
Juravich: Star Wars, not Star Trek, there, yeah.
Knoell: Correct. Also space fantasy versus science fiction, but that's a debate that the nerds like me are going to be into for a long time. But what I was trying to get at is that it was out of a need for special effects innovation that in the late 1970s, Lucas and Industrial Light and Magic developed a computer segment of their company.
In 1986, that segment was purchased by Steve Jobs and it then became known as Pixar, named for one of the pieces of technology that was developed to help move that along. So while technology and animation have certainly been intricately linked for the entirety of their experience, computers helped to shift things even further.
In some cases, speeding up production, in other cases, demanding more attention be paid to getting each and every frame correct and trying to push us beyond the uncanny valley, which unfortunately is still very well populated.
Juravich: Well, and you mentioned that "Star Trek" might be an example of positive technology in the future. I was trying to think of an example as well. And an older example that I came up with in pop culture is an old cartoon, "The Jetsons." Because on Tech Tuesday, I often mention that I'm still waiting for my robot, Rosie, to clean my house for me. So talk to me about the idea of how "The Jetsons" view technology and this what if. And whether it can become reality or not. Have you thought about "The Jetsons" in this way at all?
Knoell: That would have been a class I was teaching two years ago. But yes. No, specifically about science fiction in this case. OK, go ahead. But. I think when it comes to animation that there's been a constant curiosity about technology, but the thing about "The Jetsons" for me is that it was developed as the futuristic counterpart to "The Flintstones." So you see a lot of the same technologies being hinted at, but in the case of "The Flintstones," they're dinosaur driven. So, would that make them fossil fuel driven?
Juravich: I guess so, yeah.
Knoell: But as far as "The Jetsons" go, that really does seem to just be that. You also have the fact that "The Jetsons" was developed during the Atomic Age. So a lot of influences from the 40s, 50s, and 60s. So there's hope, but like I said, it really just feels like it's the far future version of our lives. I think if we were going to look at a maybe more relatable example, we'd look at "Futurama."
Juravich: Mm, okay This is Tech Tuesday From All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about the new "Toy Story 5" movie and we're talking about pop culture and technology with Tiffany Knoell, Associate Teaching Professor of Pop Culture at Bowling Green State University. So speaking of pop culture, one of the biggest names in the world lent her talents to the soundtrack for Toy Story Five. Taylor Swift released a song, an original song, "I Knew It, I Knew You" earlier this month. And the song is inspired by the character Jessie. Let's listen to a bit of that.
Cowgirl Jessie: You all your blues like a mood ring changing colors you did do there were times we could fight like brothers
Juravich: So, is it a game changer at all to have a superstar like Taylor Swift lend her talents this way? I mean, I would expect that this movie, "Toy Story 5," many families plan to see it, Taylor Swift or not. I would say, Pixar certainly does not need Taylor Swift. What were your thoughts when you heard Taylor Swift was a part of this project?
Knoell: My thought was, wow, that's really the benefit of reach and influence. Because from what I'm reading, she got involved with the project in February after seeing an advanced screening. Prior to that, I don't see any evidence of her involvement, but I'm also not party to any of the internal discussions happening at Pixar.
As far as Taylor Swift goes, the Swifties are gonna come out. Is that going to potentially tap into some of the nostalgia that a lot of her audiences are going to have for the Toy Story franchise? Perhaps. I mean, she herself is 36, which means that she was about six years old when the original "Toy Story" came out in 1995. So for her, I get the feeling that this is as much fun as it is. Anything else. But will that help Pixar? Well, it isn't going to hurt.
Juravich: Right. Pixar doesn't need Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift doesn't need Pixar, but why not put them together? Exactly. One of the things that you've talked about is how your students are hungry for physical objects. You mentioned comic books and how students reacted to seeing them when you brought them into class. Can you tell me more about that, about how your students who I'm sure have grown up with technology, how did they react to the comic books?
Knoell: Well, it wasn't just comic books that I was bringing in. I was bring in reproductions of Sunday comics pages from newspapers going back into the 1930s because we were illustrating where comic book characters really did get a lot of their start. Just looking at the blending of illustration and cartooning, but over and over and over again in the last academic year, I have heard that students don't want digital objects.
They want tactility. That seems to be the biggest draw for a lot of them, being able to hold an object, which is part of why we have seen this turn back toward vinyl and records. We're also seeing cassette tapes come back from the dead, which I, as a proud child of the 80s, I remember cassette tapes very, very well.
But that also asks the question, if we're asking for this new physical, excuse me, if you're asking for this return to physical media, are we also going to be able to support the technology in order to play it? That's the other side of it. Are we going to be able to? It's great to have a cassette tape, but if you don't have a cassette player to go with it, you're not going to able to get very far. Makes an excellent coaster.
Yeah, but Really, I'm going to be very closely watching what happens, because it's not just media. I'm also seeing it as far as dumb phones. I'm seeing people trying to turn back toward paper. In fact, in the last academic year, I had students doing a weekly assignment in Blue Books. And for anybody who's attended college, you're going to remember those little six to 12 page notebooks, but you have to write it down. And I was surprised at just how many students thanked me for it at the end.
Juravich: Hmm, so they didn't revolt against you for making them write in a blue book
Knoell: No, what they did do was they apologized for their handwriting and I said y'all I have been reading handwriting from the 1700s you are fine
Juravich: Okay, so do you think that "Toy Story 5," once people begin to see it and they see this like toys versus technology movie, do you that we're going to be talking more about physical toys and actual physical play and getting kids off the iPads more? What do you predict?
Knoell: I don't think that the film itself is going to necessarily kick-start those conversations because those are going on now. However... I think that Pixar and the company LeapPad are acutely aware that there is still going to be a call for technology.
So much so that Leappad has produced three product tie-ins to go with "Toy Story 5." One of them is a recreation of the antagonist, Lillipad. It has a custom OS. It allows for students. It allows for kids to play with or to speak to Jesse, Woody. And Buzz on it.
There is also a smartwatch replica and something that looks a great deal like the, it looks like a video game controller, but with a screen. So something not quite like a Switch, but getting into that ballpark. So I find the idea that this is going to jumpstart a conversation about kids and technology and toys and play to be a little bit less about revolt and more about finding that line between profitability and provoking questions.
Juravich: So what's your best advice on how to keep the human connection in this highly digital age? Because obviously the technology isn't going anywhere. It's just the way we think about it is what we might need to change.
Knoell: I think I will say be mindful. Put the stuff down every now and again. Look up, because you never know what's going to be happening. I would say read a book, but not every book, sir. I mean, if you ask me, I'm going to read a book every day of the week and twice on Sunday, but I recognize that that's not where everybody lives. So maybe find something that doesn't have a screen attached just once in a while.
Juravich: We've been talking about the new "Toy Story 5" movie and pop culture and how pop culture is viewing technology with Tiffany Knoell, associate teaching professor of pop culture at Bowling Green State University. Thank you so much for your time today, Tiffany.
Knoell: Thanks for having me on.
Juravich: And coming up, Apple promised an AI-enhanced Siri years ago. Is it finally here? 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.
Two years since promised, Apple is finally launching Siri AI. A launch follows a lawsuit claiming Apple misled customers into thinking they would have AI features with their newest phones. We're talking about this and more with Russell Holly, Director of Commerce, Content at CNET. Welcome back to All Sides, Russell.
Russell Holly: Thank you.
Juravich: So the AI software for the iPhone is expected to be released with its fall update, which is The operating system 27, but that wasn't the original plan, right? Tell me about the delay and the new plan
Holly: Yeah, there's a lot that goes into this. You know, when Apple originally announced that it was going to add AI to Siri, one of its biggest partners was OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. And so there was supposed to be this kind of promised compromise between those two organizations.
You and I have talked quite a bit over the last two years about how that relationship, for one reason or another, soured. And Apple has since then inked a new deal with Google to use its Gemini platform. In order to add AI to Siri. Instead of building a large language model all its own, Google is essentially licensing a version of the Gemini technology from Google to power this new version of Siri.
But in between, Apple made some promises for two versions ago about how this Siri AI was going to be available as part of a public beta. And then it was going to kind of gradually roll out to people. And that never materialized due to some of those underlying issues. And that's a big part of the fairly massive $250 million settlement that came from that.
Juravich: Yeah, tell me more about this lawsuit because as an iPhone user, I was like, Oh, can I get compensated for this? I mean, did I have, do I have to, do I have to care that I, you know, that, that Siri AI was delayed? Tell me more about the lawsuit.
Holly: Yeah, so the lawsuit is, you know, the settlement is available for anyone who purchased either an iPhone 15 or an iPhone 16, you know, between June 10th and March 29th, June 10, 2024, and March 9th, 2025. But this was actually the...
Juravich: Oh, I'm sitting here with my iPhone 14 being like, oh, never mind. That's right. No, you just missed the lip. Okay.
Holly: But yeah, this was actually a lawsuit that was launched by shareholders because Apple had promised this, and at the same time, AI exploded everywhere but your iPhone in that two-year time. So there are quite a few shareholders who felt like Apple was behind in ways that was unproductive, and that led to a lot of the information that led the shareholder lawsuit for this.
Juravich: So what are people gonna get? Is this one of those lawsuits where you get like $23 or something?
Holly: They are reporting that payouts exist between $25 and $95 per eligible device. So if you went with the iPhone 16 and upgraded for maybe a family of four, then that's something that you should probably look into. But if you bought a single iPhone 15 Pro, there's a chance that you're only going to get that $25.
Juravich: Well, let's talk about what's to come, though. What are the main capabilities we're expecting from Siri AI? What's going to be new in the fall?
Holly: Apple announced a ton of different ways that they're using AI in order to improve the next version of iOS. The first follows on the same kind of footsteps that Google has laid out with Google Photos, and that is that Apple Photos will allow you to make AI-based changes to your pictures.
Some of the demonstrations that they gave included reframing a shot. So if you didn't like the angle that a picture was at, or if there was something in the background that you didn't like, that you could ask Siri to make those corrections. And that it would use AI tools to make those changes.
Some of that is, I'd like the background to be purple and some of the other kind of AI silliness that comes from that, or if you want to make that picture look like a cartoon or something like that. But a lot of the image correction stuff has now been kind of baked in instead of offered as a single other app.
The one that I thought was particularly interesting, though, was the changes that Apple made in terms of security. And that is that if there is a compromised password within your kind of group of passwords, Apple will offer to go and change all of your passwords. On your behalf. Go into your password book, you know, where you have stored all of your passwords on your phone, and used, you kind of face unlock to, you to, to, you know access things like banking apps and stuff like that.
If you used the same password and a lot of those places and one of those passwords is found to be compromised, um, Apple will go and make those changes very quickly, you with a more secure password that it will then, you store on your phone, you for you to be able to use.
Juravich: Okay, so it'll remember the password for me and just use my face to unlock it. Okay, because I was like, uh-oh, don't change things on me.
Holly: You do still have the ability to provide your own password and Apple, the AI tool will go and use the provided password instead of the one that it has generated, which depending on how good you are at creating passwords is kind of a preference that one or the other would take advantage of. But a lot of the kind of benefits that you're going to see from AI in this are less about great big features and more about little kind of baked in things like that.
Juravich: Okay, well, and so when this change happens, since I have an older phone, am I gonna have all of this or is it only new phones?
Holly: This is something that will likely only be available to the iPhone 16 and up. Apple has released a compatibility list that depends kind of feature by feature and it is more complicated than it has been in the past for what services are gonna be able. But I suspect the goal here is to encourage people to upgrade especially because we know that upgrades are things that people are kind of financially holding back on for the last couple of years in the hopes that financial situations would stabilize across the US.
Juravich: I mean, I'm just hoping that Siri responds to me more quickly without the delay. Is that going to happen?
Holly: That, that I know for sure is a thing that has happened, yes.
Juravich: OK. This is Tech Tuesday from All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. And we're talking about some recent tech news with Russell Holly, director of commerce content for CNET. I wanted to move on to the to a new lawnmower. Robo Rock is launching a lawnmowr, which is out of the ordinary because they're normally a vacuum brand. Are they the first vacuum company to branch into lawnmowers?
Holly: I doubt that they're the first, but they're certainly the most interesting right now. Roborock is weirdly one of the most popular smart home robot vacuum companies. It's not a brand that most people know particularly well, and they really only make a couple of things, but the things that they make tend to be pretty high quality.
Roborock has excelled when it comes to things like not just robot vacuums that have things like smartmops in them. We talked earlier this year about a version of the Roborot vacuum that had a smart arm that would pick up things like socks.
Juravich: And get them out of the way, yeah, I remember that.
Holly: Yeah, so like this company does a lot of really interesting things, and they're moving that outdoors. As robot lawnmowers have gotten more and more popular for various house sizes, this is perhaps a logical change for Roborock, given all of the experience they have tracking more complicated indoor environments, whereas your outdoors probably isn't as complex in most cases as, say, your living room.
When it comes to stuff that just moves around a lot, unless you have a lot of kids that leave just a lot toys everywhere. But in that case, a lot the same tech would play where the smart sensors and the cameras that are built into this will have obstacle detection and avoidance, so it's not going to try and climb over like a golf ball or something and eat it into pieces.
Juravich: Okay, so, but, that being said, for a vacuum cleaner to be a robot, you know, a vacuum cleaner doesn't involve a series of blades that's going to cut things. So that made, just a robot lawn mower just makes me a little more nervous than a vacuum at the outset.
Holly: Yeah, there are some really interesting safety features, especially if it gets flipped over for any reason, or if it seems like something organic is near it, then it does have kind of shut off tools that go along with that, but yes, absolutely, knowing that there is a set of whirling blades going on while you're not staring at it can be a little alarming.
Juravich: Yeah, without like me holding on to the whirling blades, I worry. But tell me more about this lawnmower, though. Is it it it looks from the picture pretty small? So I guess it's not meant for like these big suburban backyards, right?
Holly: You can have it for a big suburban backyard as long as you are okay with it pausing every once in a while to recharge, which is essentially how this setup exists is that you first turn it on and it rides around your yard and builds a map. And so it decides the best way to kind of mow everything based on the map that it has built using that travel.
And so that will include pause times. If you have a larger yard, it will reach a certain point where it just needs to go and recharge and then it will continue on its path. But yeah, I think that kind of middle under an acre yard is probably the sweet spot for a lot of these robot vacuums. And this is certainly, if you wanted to all get done in one thing, then there wouldn't be any issues there.
But it does also have sensors for running overnight. Which is something that most people aren't going to be doing, you know, by holding their lawnmower, is running in those maybe cooler, quieter hours where it's unlikely for there to be pets or people walking around the backyard.
Juravich: Is it quiet then? Because neighbors might not like if you're mowing the lawn at 2 a.m.
Holly: It is quieter than your average lawn mower. I would not go so far as to call it quiet. And certainly in my neighborhood, if this thing were to spin up at two o'clock in the morning and start mowing, then my neighbors would probably have something to say about it the next day.
Juravich: This is Tech Tuesday, we're talking with Russell Holly, Director of Commerce Content with CNET. Our final topic for the day is a new feature being launched on Amazon Echo products called Sleep Studio. It's supposed to help parents and children with bedtime routines. Can you tell me about the new features here, your favorite features?
Holly: Yeah, so this is Amazon's third attempt to convince you to put an Echo in your kid's room so that you have access to this smart service. Amazon has tried a couple of different things, but the thing that they keep coming back to are bedtime stories.
The previous version of this was an interactive bedtime story that you would have with parents who were maybe traveling or something like that, where they could use their phone and the other system would be one of the units with the screen. And so you'd be able to read this bedtime story together.
That wasn't something that was used super well, but what has worked is what Amazon calls its Echo Glow Speaker, which is essentially a smart nightlight that has the ability to turn things like lights on and off, and it has kind of a small speaker. And built into that nightlight system is that same basic function where you can have it read you a bedtime story.
It is part of the Amazon Kids service. So it's completely barred from things like making purchases or accessing, you know, content above a certain rating, which you as the parent get to control. And with that kind of sleep studio tracking, it uses color-coded lights to help someone go to sleep and rise using some of the light therapy techniques that we know work so well.
Juravich: And the stories and some of the audio comes from platforms we've heard of, Headspace, Calm, Moshi. Do you have to have separate subscriptions or is Amazon baking this all in?
Holly: There is a certain period if you're paying for the Amazon Kids Plus subscription, which is $6 a month in addition to your normal Amazon subscription, then it will come with those as stories. If you're already a Colm subscriber, then you can choose to just pull, you know, storybooks from the Colm app. You know, there's a little bit of configuration there depending on what your personal setup is, but there isn't, you now, kind of one blanket way to use this, which is nice.
Juravich: And the voice that reads the bedtime story to the kid, is it whatever voice is in, it reads the calm story or whatever like that? Is that?
Holly: Yes, that's exactly right. Yeah, there are a couple of different options for the kind of softer voice for Alexa itself. But if you go to use something that is from the Calm app, you'll get the Calm voices.
Juravich: Okay, so you have to have the Amazon Kids plus subscription to do this though, right?
Holly: Yeah, this is a $6 a month subscription that is, in addition to your normal Amazon subscription, it gives you that what they call sleep studio to try and build this setup to work with your kids.
Juravich: We have been talking about some recent tech news, and we've been talking with Russell Holly, Director of Commerce, Content for CNET. Thank you so much for joining us, Russell.
Holly: Thank you for having me.
Juravich: And this has been Tech Tuesday from 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. Every episode is available for free, of course, in our mobile app. And be sure to like All Sides on Facebook. Also follow the show on Instagram. Our Instagram handle is at All Sides WOSU. Thanks for joining us today. I'm Amy Juravich on 89.7 NPR News.