elements coming from meta and looking at how artificial intelligence is changing different industries. plus, low cost airlines are adding service in the bay area to popular international destinations. we'll discuss the benefits and pitfalls of traveling cheaply.

but first, governor gavin newsom has appointed laphonza butler to fill the senate seat vacated by the death of diane feinstein. hello. thanks for joining us. i'm christine zee. you're watching getting answers on abc7 laphonza butler is set to become the only black woman currently serving in the us senate and first openly lgbt person to represent california in that chamber. this afternoon governor newsom was in san francisco and here's some of what he said about butler. >> this is a special person and what is a special opportunity was for me to ask her an importantly get a positive response to everything that she's been advocating for in the last few years. meet this moment . it as it relates to rights regressions, issues of civil rights and issues of lgbtq rights, women and girls, issues related to voting rights. she's been on the front end of all of these things in some ways can't even make all of this up. if i

had to literally design from the mind of imagination, put pen to paper, someone who i would like . >> so that was governor newsom. meantime this is laphonza butler's response, tweeting this i am honored to accept governor newsom's nomination to be us senator for a state. i have made my home and honor by his trust in me to serve the people of california and this great nation. no one will ever measure up to the legacy of senator dianne feinstein, but i will do my best to honor her legacy and leadership by committing to work for women and girls workers and unions struggling parents in all of california. i am ready to serve. joining us live now to talk about this huge appointment is abc7 news insider phil matier. phil interesting. >> i would have to say. so i would have to say so. it's interesting for the state and it's interesting for gavin newsom and it's interesting for the senate. let's start with the state. gavin newsom appointed laphonza butler. she is a he appointed the senator for

california, but not necessarily a senator from california. she is mississippi, born and raised. she's worked in politics as a consultant and a campaign manager. she's worked for unions , the service employees international, which is a powerhouse within the democratic party. she's worked with airbnb. she did a couple of years on the board of regents and appointed there. but she is long time been a consultant for kamala harris and other politicos. in fact, she comes from the same. for a while. she was a partner in bear star stratton, which is the same political consulting group that runs the campaigns for jerry brown. gavin newsom and kamala harris. she is the consummate insider. the question is, how is she going to fly on the outside right. >> she's also leading emily's list right? right. what's that? >> that is a women's is a group that is goes out to try to raise money to elect democratic women to offices nationally, locally and on the state levels. so he's

going with the women. he's going with the promise that he was going to do an african-american. he is doing, as he likes to put it, in this moment at this time , rising to this moment where she stands on water, where she stands on agriculture, where she stands on tourism and military spending and things that other rulings that affect the state of california we haven't heard much about. >> right. well she's never held elected office, not in california. >> but clearly she's politically connected. >> yes. >> and there's a difference there. you can be politically connected, but you've got to connect with the voters. now, you know, it's like i said, there's a reason this is unusual because usually somebody can point back to the time they did this or did that. this is a very limited one. this is one that's coming literally he picked from outside because i'm not sure he could get somebody from the state to step in and be a caretaker, although he's taken that off the table and upset the people that are currently running for the us senate, which is katie porter and adam schiff and barbara lee, an african-american woman who is

not at all happy. her supporters are not at all happy that he picked her. >> right. well, there were a lot of black powerbrokers who had been pushing for barbara lee. right. including, i think the black congressional black caucus . so how are they reacting to this pick? >> they're saying that some of them are very upset about it. others that say they're going to work. one of the big questions, another thing that gavin newsom did with this, and it is gavin newsom and people have been talking about it is senator butler, senator designate butler is 44 years old, as opposed to these other candidates that we've been seeing that are upper age. so there's a generational shift here as well. so we have some older people within the african-american community who are upset because they wanted barbara lee. and then you have some. yes. and then we have younger people who are waiting to see how they go. >> right. okay well, let's talk about the fact that he didn't want to get involved, play kingmaker to that race, the senate race that's already underway with katie porter, adam schiff and barbara lee. the three democrats who are well known in it with lee trailing.

so where does this leave her now? what danny is in a is in a vulnerable situation right now where all three of those candidates, adam schiff, katie porter and barbara lee, have to decide whether they're going to run for the senate or hold on to their congressional seats. >> they're all neither of them is breaking over 25% in the polls. so it's not a sure thing for any of them. but they can't run for both offices at the same time. they have to decide. >> so you were explaining to me there's a decision date. >> there's a decision date of finally date. i'm not sure what it is, but in a couple of months, people have to finally say, i'm going for this office or that office. and that's where we're going to see this thing shake down, because that's when it's interesting to note that in the time in the last two weeks that governor gavin newsom originally said he wanted somebody that was going to be a caretaker for and not running. yes, he said he miscommunicated on that and that he's actually he the have dropped the idea of being a caretaker, which was you can't do that anyway. you can't appoint somebody and tell them they have to step down.

>> it would be a wink wink. it would be a verbal promise, which means so little in politics these days. so there's nothing preventing butler from actually saying, i'm going to run for the permanent seat. >> exactly. 2020. everybody are going to be watching that to see if that happens. on the other hand, everybody can say, well, if it's hers, if she if she says that that's not necessarily the case, it's not the case. you have to be known by the voters, not by the insiders. insiders will get you there. but it's the voters that keep you there. and i go no further. ironically she's put in there to finish out the term of dianne feinstein. dianne feinstein first got elected in 1999 by defeat, defeating a senate appointee from the pete wilson put in to finish out his term. so it's getting that seat possession might be 9/10 of the law, but it's not in necessarily in politics. >> yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. and i also wonder, right, does she even have the network or name recognition mission? you know, normally when you're an incumbent, you have all the advantages. right? and we saw

that with padilla when governor newsom appointed padilla. it was pretty much guaranteed he was going to win that seat. >> but he was already known he'd been a state senator. yeah he had worked his way and secretary of state. he was known within the state and within the state apparatus. and he was the latino out there. so this is a different, different equation. and so a lot of conventional wisdom is you're going to stay right where it is at the convention because you get out on the street. it's a different story. >> look, i know it's just all pundits and people saying what they think, but, you know, i have heard some say gavin newsom probably couldn't have found a black woman who's a political leader now in california within the state to accept that offer, because they didn't he could have maybe gotten a retired judge or a retired college dean or something like that. >> but also, you know, part of this is you've got to move to washington, d.c. which is one of the most expensive places in the in the world to live. and if somebody else would have had to relocate, there, laphonza butler is living in maryland right now in a suburb of washington, d.c. so she's already there.

>> it certainly seems like he's hoping that this would indeed just be interim. well but i want to ask you, what are the political ramifications for governor newsom in making this choice? >> well, there's a question there. like i said, is he making it for california or is he making it for the nation? and the senate is a 5050 type situation right now. so there's pressure on him to get an appointment made. right. >> but she's not going to take the judiciary committee seat or the intelligence committee seat, anything like that. right >> junior, everything's we're going to see what happens. like i said, there's no such thing as convention anymore. but going in there, he is making make no mistake about it, from the get go, governor newsom has been making this a national issue. he's gone on network talk shows to discuss the senate seat. he is out there saying we need this in the senate. we need that in the senate. this is a group of 100 people that represents the country or is being cast as that

. and many of the votes they take. and we've seen are on national issues as opposed to water or roadwork or things like that that we want here. so he's also pitching to a political national audience. he wants to pitch to a young audience. he wants to say, i appointed a black lesbian to the senate seat and that is a national to the conclusion that he is still very much interested in the white house. >> at some point, gavin newsom is just interested in whatever. >> i mean, he it goes from the moment to moment, but he's making a national statement. i would say. yes, he was spicing up what he likes to do, reel off his credentials on a national stage. >> but did he make any enemies in the way he went about this? >> of course he did. and any time you make an appointment, you make one person happy and everybody else unhappy to various degrees. that's just the law in politics. i will say that this time he was smart enough to do it quickly and to do it quickly because as you know, you don't want to say, well, i'm going to think about this and

think about this and have everybody calling, pushing for different people and then it gets really sticky. you're saying no to friends. you just have it done, get it done and move on. >> do we have any idea what kind of initiatives or bills as senator would be? senator butler , who would be sworn in tomorrow might push in her short time or when was that, junior? can you even push for anything, really? >> you can join in on something and try to work through and get something added on, but no, you know, it's interesting. dianne feinstein was railed against for being old and enfeebled and but she was still there voting and she was using her seniority to get things done. now we're going to have a no matter what the outcome, we're going to have a series of time where we have basically rookies representing very junior to very junior senators, and that no matter how you cut it, there's nothing. governor newsom can do to change that equation. the voltage is just dropped significantly. all

right. >> we'll keep watching this. thank you so much. >> but it's going to be interesting because we've never seen anything like this before. but that's california. >> yes, indeed. thanks, phil, after the break, we're talking about artificial intelligence with new products soon to be hitting the market. we'll take a closer look and discuss how they can help or h

apple and other companies began hitting the market. we're taking a closer look at exactly what the impact will be on consumers and various industries. meta last week unveiled an ai personal assistant that people can interact with using any of meta's messaging apps. joining us live now to talk more about

this is scott stein, cnet's consumer tech editor at large. scott, thanks for your time. >> hey, thanks. glad to be on. >> all right. i'm sure you went to the conference, so give us the 401. on this meta ai personal assistant. >> sure. so it looks like similar to chatgpt and many others, it's going to be based on a large language model type of ai. and there are two different flavors of this. one is meta ai, which is going to live across facebook's apps. meta's apps, but also in their vr headset. the quest three and eventually in its smart glasses. the ray-ban glasses that they announced. so that's one level. and the other side are these personality ai assistant chat bots, which are these individual slices that are meant to give a little more flair or sub knowledge in some different areas, but are again trained to a particular subject matter. and given these faces that are animated basically by celebrities, how these play out , how much they will go off the

rails and how much they'll be useful, we do not know yet. >> you know, for those who are excited about it, what is it that excites them? how is it different from the other virtual assistants out there? >> well, i think the thing about this whole year in the past couple of years is just been, you know, the ways that it can mimic our behavior or throw out ideas, creative things, and how people enjoy playing with that. you know, in some ways it reminds me of the early days of voice assistants, and i wonder how much of it will be novelty, how much of it will actually stick. but the other part is that some of this is actually serving functions that could disrupt landscapes, you know, especially in terms of which image well, image generation has already been the case, but it now in terms of the ability for it to serve as a quick assistant through writing, to become an expert in certain areas, do you need customer service? do you need a human being at the other end? i'd say the answer is definitely yes, because a lot of these go off the rails and they continually seem to be needing correction. but i think it's very tempting for a lot of companies to take the plunge and

think about not making moves with this. hence a lot of the a lot of the battles, including wga right. >> let's talk about that. i mean, the writers guild of america just won that huge contract, right. and that will now, in part, restrict how ai can be used in film and tv projects. do you think that's a good thing? >> well, i think it's needed. i think the lines in terms of where how this information is being trained, where, you know, what are the rights for the information and then also, you know, where is it going to be applied? it's a tool. and in that same way that, you know, you know, are you copying someone else's work or are you or are you taking over what someone else is doing? you know, i think it's going to be a very slippery slope going forward. you know, even the question of what does it mean to rewrite? what does it mean to come up with ideas through ai? how is that enforced? you know, i think it's a lot of companies are looking at this like a new tool set. i think in a lot of ways it is a new tool set. i mean, we've

been living with ai in many forms for decades. this is just the latest iteration of it. and the question is, how much do we feel in control of it? how much do we feel like it's gone out of control? i think it needs to be in control. we need to be handling it as a creative tool. but we're currently in a situation where it looks like it's quite capable of doing a lot more. >> right, right. look you know, human plagiarism, plagiarism has always been around and now we have to worry about ai doing it . and they know so much about us right. but i want to ask you, are there sectors in which you're seeing there could be more job creation, for example, as a result of ai use? >> well, i think it's interesting to me, and i'm just speaking, you know, speculatively, i think it's interesting how improvised personal the relationship to ai is. and i think that, you know, when i look way back and think about things like, you know, desktop publishing or, you know, how someone brought up the metaphor of photography, i don't think it's a perfect metaphor at all, but i think that there are

ways that you could work with ai. there are certainly artists who are collaborating with it and experimenting with how it can be a creative tool set for them. and i think that idea, that collaborative improvizational way of existing with it could open up new opportunity for people. but i think i'm really concerned about anybody who's thinking about using this to replace people and think about, again, how many customer service chat bots do we already have that we thought would replace customer service? and right now you're still pressing zero to go to the operator. you know, i think that there's always a point at which this stuff will probably hit a wall. i've already seen that to be the case with most interactions i've had with chat, gpt and other and other programs. so they work to an extent. >> times i try the chat bot and then i end up ending the conversation and picking up the phone and calling the customer service line. anyway >> yeah. and so i think and then the question of how much can go

off the rails and also the rights part on the other end, there's all these different questions. what you definitely seeing with tech companies is that they're all kind of employing the same playbook. you know, they're there. some of them are collaborating. you know, microsoft's bing is going to be running in meta's ai and you're having a lot of between alexa and meta and microsoft and google. they're all taking this approach and right now it's very chat based. but i'm really interested in the future of perceptual ai because i look at vr and ar. it's kind of a scary, weird, fascinating territory because any other sensory data, any big data set could be applied to ai. does that, you know, health data, other things . so we think about chats, but think about any other ways that data sets could could be used for this to disrupt or maybe to go in directions we don't know, both exciting and scary at the same time. >> scott stein, thank you so much. >> yeah, thank you. >> after the break, we're talking air travel, including some low cost carriers that just announced new flights in the bay area, as well as deals to be

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news service twice weekly on monday and friday from oakland international airport and monterrey, mexico. joining us live now to talk a little about this trend of low cost carriers, but more about holiday deals is travel expert katie nastro from going .com. katie, thanks for your time. >> thanks so much for having me . >> yeah i do want to make it clear to our viewers that i know going doesn't deal or offer or suggest the low cost carriers is because of the level of service. but nonetheless, i think this is a bigger and bigger market. and there are a lot of people interested in it. and there are some new low fare carriers that are expanding service into the bay area. right. we've got i can just think of starlux for taiwan, zipair for japan, play iceland and also now with viva aerobus from mexico. talk to us about about whether they're worth it and how you judge that

, how you compare and contrast. >> sure. so when it comes to low cost carriers, it's definitely depends on what your goals are and what your immediate needs are. you know, if you're looking for just a cheaper way to get, let's say, from the bay area over to asia, you know, maybe you consider zip air or you're looking for a last minute ticket that's more affordable compared to the other full service airlines because you need it immediately. and you know, that's that's really only your other option, you know, so it could be worth exploring these low cost carriers. but just understanding that these carriers off often offer a pared back experience. and so if you're looking for the extra amenities, they often come at a cost, but a lot of amenities don't. >> they come at a cost on the legacy carriers now anyway? what's the difference like which are the things that you might have to pay for if you booked on one of these versus the legacy airlines? >> sure. so things you would likely expect on a full service carrier, you know, like things like a meal service or even a

snack, bottled water, things of that nature that you just come to expect it. >> got it. okay. well, now that we've gotten that cleared up, thank you so much. oh, by the way, can you search those on google as well when you search for flight deals, do they appear? >> sure, you definitely can. it is a filter that you can just filter by airlines and you can just, you know, just filter for typically all airlines that are , you know, in google, flights will show up. but if you are looking for low cost carriers specifically, you just have to identify those in the filter. but they do show up. >> okay. so now it's time to look ahead since the christmas decorations are starting to show up in some stores already. i don't think it's too early to talk about holiday travel. can we still get deals and where to look? >> sure. it's not too late to snag some great deals for holiday travel. specifically, if you're looking at traveling internationally, thanksgiving is actually the hidden best week for traveling internationally. you know, so many people are

looking to travel domestically to see family and friends, which drives prices up, you know, puts upward pressure on prices. but not a lot of people are looking to get outside of the states. and that really is a time period where it's not only can you find better airfare deals, but also it's kind of this shoulder season in between. so, you know, things like hotels and experience is could actually be more affordable than say, the height of the summer. >> i see. so instead of everybody meeting at home, everybody meet in paris or everybody meet in tokyo, yes, you definitely should be considering, you know, keeping the turkey in the freezer, telling your in-laws either they're coming with or you'll see them at christmas or the winter holidays. >> and, you know, right now you can book trips over from the bay area over to, say, dublin for 498 round trip or you can go from san jose over to vancouver for 217 or maybe you want to just have a bit of a warmer weather destination. you can get down to san jose del cabo for just 293 round trip, all on full

service airlines. by the way, what are some of the best ways to go against the grain if you will, like everybody else is doing this during this holiday period. >> you go that way. you mentioned one, which is thanksgiving week for international. what are some other ideas? >> yeah, some other ideas are also, you know, going off of the deals that i just mentioned. so say you have a particular place in mind or an area and, you know, maybe you use one of you use a great flight deal to get over to europe. but instead of, you know, going to greece, you or, you know, you had to dublin, you then go to somewhere in scandinavia. you know, you use that as a jumping point to get out kind of that longer haul flight out of the way. and then you can take either a train or, you know, maybe another budget flight to get to a different destination that might not see so many people going to it. and that's that's a way to with going. >> thank you so much. >> thanks for having me. >> all right. we'll take a short

tonight, former president trump on trial here in new york. the alleged sweeping fraud case. trump in the courtroom. also tonight, house speaker kevin mccarthy battling to keep his job after he helped keep the government from shutting down. and the desperate search for a missing girl, vanishing from a new york state park, last seen on her bicycle. first tonight, images from inside the courtroom, donald trump glaring forward while sitting before the judge. opening statement