Executive Chairman of the Board, ANGI INC
IAC CEO Joey Levin on OpenAI deal, impact of AI and 2024 election
CNCB's Julia Boorstin and IAC CEO Joey Levin join 'Squawk Box' to discuss the state of the company, interest in Paramount, ...
About Joseph Levin
Joey Levin, CEO of IAC, discussed the company’s consideration of a spin-off of its 85% stake in Angi, stating that Angi is “in great shape now” and “healthy enough to be on its own” after years of improving customer experience and expanding profit. He noted that IAC is “slimming down” to focus on a few things well. Regarding M&A, Levin said the bar for new acquisitions is “very high” and that the market is “pretty expensive,” leading the company to “try and build cash.” He predicted that 2024 would be a “big year for M&A generally,” citing a loosening regulatory environment. Levin commented on the impact of AI, saying that OpenAI’s ChatGPT is “likely to be positive for traffic” and will “increase audience and profits over time.” He described AI as helpful for organizing data and making it more searchable, citing examples in nursing job matching and customer service. However, he criticized large language models for being “designed to steal the best of the internet” and argued that a framework is needed to reward content creators and ensure journalism survives. On the 2024 election, Levin called the current choices “horrible” and said he hoped for “a new candidate” who would be “inspiring for people.”
Transcript (13 segments)
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Julia Boorstin0:00
Media moguls gathering in Sun Valley. Julia Boorstin has a special guest. Julia.
I'm joined by Joey Levin. Thanks so much for joining us here early in Sun Valley. Before we get to your IAC business, I have to ask you about a company that you recently looked at. As far as I understand you signed some NDAs. Paramount Global. My question for you is this. There's a 45-day go-shop period that just began. Are you interested in this company? Are you?
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Joseph Levin0:28
We look at a lot of things and there's certainly some history with the company, and our chairman, and maybe there's an opportunity. Maybe not. We'll see. But we're an opportunistic company and look at things when we think there may be something to do.
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Julia Boorstin0:46
So if there's still a chance you might make a bid for Paramount Global, which Barry Diller asserted maybe it's still a possibility, just yesterday. My question is: what does that say about what you're interested in right now? IAC does not have traditional media outlets. Meredith, a publishing business. Where does this fit in or what does it mean for your vision of the company?
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Joseph Levin1:11
I don't think that any particular company defines IAC or has historically. We have companies in a wide range of things. You mentioned Meredith, biggest digital publisher and fantastic business, but that ranges from a large interest in car shares MGM globally and Angie, home services. There's not a consistent pattern among any of those other than we think category leaders with long-term potential to grow and generate long-term cash flow.
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Julia Boorstin1:49
Now, some big news out of IAC recently: at Dotdash Meredith struck a deal with OpenAI and ChatGPT to license that content. How is that going so far and do you fear it could be cannibalistic to your business?
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Joseph Levin2:09
Yeah. At first, collecting interest on AI is very nice in the deal we're doing with OpenAI. It's certainly something we think about. The market thinks about it a lot. If we look at what's happening in Google so far, we're holding our traffic and doing well, and I think that OpenAI is likely to be, or ChatGPT rather, likely in that positive for traffic. If I had to bet, I'd say it will increase audience to our profits over time, not take it away.
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Julia Boorstin2:41
Now, a question is as you look across your companies, though, how do you think AI will impact benefit among the various businesses you mentioned, from MGM in the gaming business to Angie's List?
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Joseph Levin2:55
One fantastic thing is it helps organize data and make it more searchable. There are so many examples of that where companies are using that already. We have a small company called Vivian, matching nurses with jobs. You can now search on the basis of, I want a job in the mountains or I want a job near a beach. We couldn't come up with those searches on our own. We could say, drop-down menu by state or city. Now OpenAI finds those patterns in things. You can expand concepts like that across all IAC businesses. The other one very tangible is customer service. A lot of companies are existing offering AI technology to us to deliver customer service for our employees in a way that is better than human customer service. They know policies better. They can enforce policies better. Sometimes are more empathetic, actually. So chat via customer service seems to be another use case, but the use cases will keep evolving.
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Julia Boorstin4:00
In the past you mentioned duopoly Google and Meta. Are you concerned power in the AI ecosystem is too concentrated?
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Joseph Levin4:09
Definitely. Data is a huge, an essential asset for AI, and these companies have an enormous data advantage relative to everyone else. Now, I do think that many companies, existing incumbents, will benefit from this technology, because the technology keeps getting better, faster, cheaper, and it's licensed out to any company in ways that is actually very quickly accessible, usable. So that companies like ours can use it, but I don't think that the small companies with small capital can compete on building their fundamental models.
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Julia Boorstin4:47
And a final question on the presidential election, because politics really seems to be dominating the conversation here. What do you think would be the best outcome in terms of this presidential election, best outcome for your business and for the economy in general?
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Joseph Levin5:04
I think that's a... unfortunately... more complicated answer. It's crazy. It's a sad state that this country is in. We're the greatest country in the world, have the greatest democracy in history, and our choices are horrible right now. And so what I'm hoping for and what I do think would be best would be a new candidate, and I think it would be incredibly exciting for the economy, for the country, for companies. It would be inspiring for people to have a new vigorous candidate who the world could get behind. That's a sentiment we've been hearing from other...