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Chapter 1: What is training data and why is it important for AI?
Hello and welcome to The Verge Cast, the flagship podcast of music that sounds eerily but not exactly like other music. I'm your friend David Pearce, and today on the show, we're talking about training data. It's the raw materials of everything that is AI, and we probably don't understand it or talk about it enough. I'm talking to Alex Reisner, who's a staff writer at The Atlantic.
And over the last couple of years, he has spent a lot of time investigating training data and how all of these books and all of these articles and all of these YouTube videos and all of these songs are compiled into these gigantic data sets that AI companies then use to form the basis of their models.
I think the way that these models are created and the sources of these data has a lot to do with the way that we feel about AI, particularly generative AI as a creative expression. And understanding how this data works, where it comes from, and how it gets used, I think is really important. So we're going to have Alex on. We're going to dig into it. I'm very excited about it.
But first, here's everything else happening on The Verge today. This is 90 Seconds on The Verge for Thursday, June 25th, 2026. Apple just raised the prices of a huge number of its most important products. iPads and MacBooks in particular are now up anywhere from $100 to $500, and even like the Apple TV is way up. It's now $200, roughly the price of 900 Amazon Firesticks.
We knew this was coming, but this is still a big moment. Apple is as well-managed a supply chain company as anybody and exists at really high margins. If it can't keep prices down in this era of AI-driven shortages of memory and storage, nobody can. And I suspect this is going to get even worse. My advice from yesterday still very much holds, which is Prime Day is not over.
Go get your deals while you still can. And here's a way to help you pay for all of those more expensive gadgets. Go get some money from Disney.
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Chapter 2: How do AI companies acquire their training data?
If you have YouTube TV or DirecTV Stream, you might be eligible for a cash payout from a new $50 million settlement. The case started in 2022, and the argument was essentially that because Disney owns ESPN and Hulu, which are both powerful streaming services in their own right, Disney was able to drive up the prices of all of its rivals to unnecessary heights.
Live TV is lucrative and competitive and is going to keep being messy in this way. This will not end things. But hey, go get some of that $50 million. And finally, a quick PSA to advertisers everywhere. Yes, I get it. The whole idea of using AI creative and AI targeting to put your AI ads in front of AI people is exciting, I guess.
But maybe check your ads to make sure that you're not, I don't know, advertising a bike with two sets of handlebars like REI did this week. That may not go over so well with people. Just a little free advice from me to you. You can read more about all of this at theverge.com. That's 90 seconds on The Verge for Thursday, June 25th.
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All right, let's talk training data. Alex Reisner from The Atlantic is here. Hi, Alex.
Hey, David. Thank you for having me.
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