On The Vergecast: Instagram’s new logo, Zuck’s AI manifesto, and lots of other bad ideas.

On The Vergecast: Instagram’s new logo, Zuck’s AI manifesto, and lots of other bad ideas.

Instagram’s wordmark is iconic. Well, was iconic. Apparently Instagram thought it looked old, so the company rolled out a new one this week. It doesn’t look like the old Instagram wordmark. It doesn’t even look like it spells Instagram anymore. And we cannot figure out why Instagram decided to do this.

On this episode of The Vergecast, David and Nilay start by discussing the new logo, the executive urge to redesign everything all the time, and whether new is always better. After that, they get into the other big Meta release of the week: Mark Zuckerberg’s many-thousand-word missive on the future of AI. There are a lot of ideas and proposals in the post, all centered on one really big, very Zuckerberg-y thesis: that if you give all the technology to everyone, everything will be fine. Quite a take from the guy who sees what happens on Facebook every day. (By the way, here’s the Meta Design Blog post we reference, and the incredible Pepsi branding doc.)

After that, it’s time for some more AI news, including a new way of “watermarking” AI-generated text, Apple’s stamp of reality, Spotify’s crackdown on AI artists (but not AI music), and some chaos in the guitar industry. Then it’s off to the lightning round, with news about Brendan Carr, ChatGPT, Flock, cheap phones, and more.

In case you missed it this week: We also talked about our vibe-coding projects, the first chatbot ever, the new Google Pixels, and the state of robot lawnmowers. And we want to hear all your thoughts about all of it! Call the Vergecast Hotline at 866-VERGE11, send us an email at vergecast@theverge.com, and tell us everything that’s on your mind. And make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss an episode!