To be fair, his Midas touch is a result of consistency and a lot of hard work.
It's like the gardener at one of the Oxford colleges said - it's really easy to create these perfect lawns, just turn up every day and trim and water it - for a couple hundred years.
there is so much more subversive marketing out there than any of us can really fathom. i try not to be too paranoid but it's getting a lot harder every day.
i know someone who worked in what we might call the 'astroturfing' space within the entertainment industry. after having a few discussions with him and with things like this[0] becoming more known, it's really difficult to afford any assumption of organic intent when money is on the line - especially at the scale that microsoft works at compared to something as comparatively quaint as the music industry.
Simonw (who has a bit of a Midas touch for posts here) just posted about it https://simonwillison.net/2026/Apr/27/vibevoice/
To be fair, his Midas touch is a result of consistency and a lot of hard work.
It's like the gardener at one of the Oxford colleges said - it's really easy to create these perfect lawns, just turn up every day and trim and water it - for a couple hundred years.
I thought they rolled it as well?
1 reply →
there is so much more subversive marketing out there than any of us can really fathom. i try not to be too paranoid but it's getting a lot harder every day.
i know someone who worked in what we might call the 'astroturfing' space within the entertainment industry. after having a few discussions with him and with things like this[0] becoming more known, it's really difficult to afford any assumption of organic intent when money is on the line - especially at the scale that microsoft works at compared to something as comparatively quaint as the music industry.
[0] https://www.wired.com/story/geese-chaotic-good-marketing-ind...
well duh, they updated the news section
https://github.com/microsoft/VibeVoice/commit/e73d1e17c3754f...
which is microsoft for "we removed two dead links". AI innovation knows no limits!
Interestingly that seems to be in response to [1], which might indeed be the trigger for this.
[1] https://doublepulsar.com/microsoft-vibing-capturing-screensh...