AI for the rest of us
This week’s 5 stories include Apple’s big move into AI, the success of TikTok shop, Google expands its video advertising, and a video AI to try.
No newsletter next week as I will be away - next newsletter on Monday 1st
On Monday Apple announced a new partnership with OpenAI that will integrate AI into Siri and lots of Apple’s own apps and capabilities across its operating system. Siri will be able to call on ChatGPT for answers, and users will be able use ChatGPT to create and edit content in documents and emails, plus images. It will also be able to act as a personal assistant, taking knowledge from documents, diary entries, emails and more.
One example they give is to ask Siri ‘When is mom’s flight landing?’ and it will cross reference details from emails and flight schedules to give an up to date arrival time. But it is also ‘aware of your personal data, without collecting your personal data’; privacy is at the heart of it, as with all things Apple.
Apple is cleverly calling this Apple Intelligence, and says it is AI for the rest of us - making it clear that there is no need to learn prompt engineering, just to speak and act naturally.
Since the announcement Apple’s valuation has gone up by over 10% (that’s over $300bn) to $3.3 trillion. These features will not come out until the autumn; this feels like another ‘app store’ moment.
You can see a 5 minute video of some of the new features here
A new report by Dash Hudson and Nielsen IQ claims that TikTok Shop is now the ninth-largest online beauty and wellness retailer in the US and the second-largest in the UK. Beauty and wellness are perfect categories for them - potentially small, easy to post items, as well as being a popular genre of content on the platform, and in keeping with its main demographics. One big question over the past few years has been whether social commerce could be as huge in the west as it is in Asia, and this suggests that it can, and the people who buy these products might also buy other things. Today beauty and wellness, tomorrow food and drink?
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YouTube now reaches over 150m TV screens in the US, and Google is strengthening its position within TV advertising by creating the Google TV network, a way to advertise to over 20m US Google and Android TV viewers, including top brands like Sony and Hisense, and of course its own Chromecast. It gives access to over 125 built-in channels, with content including live sports, full-length TV shows, and movies; essentially making itself a player in the FAST (free, ad-supported TV) landscape. Another sign of how CTV is growing, and how it is now easier to find real scale on the platform.
Google needs to monetise YouTube, and the ads pay for the content that people enjoy watching. However many use ad blockers, because ads can interrupt longer videos, and be generally annoying. Previously YouTube has experimented with putting warnings on the screen, and blocked video viewing to people with ad blockers turned on, but this most recent test embeds the ads into the actual feed of the video, so that it is impossible for the ad blocker to work out the difference between content and ads. I suspect that this story will run and run; ultimately YouTube wants people to either be available to watch ads, or pay to go ad-free, and, given the number who watch longer content via YouTube on their TVs, the number paying should continue to grow.
Unlike OpenAI’s Sora, Luma’s new video AI creation tool is open for users to try. Just sign up with your Google account and tell it what you want to see a video of.
This is one I made earlier today - ‘A robin landing on the head of a ginger cat in a sunny garden’
It’s not great - and it’s definitely not a robin - but it shows the potential.
Global C-Level Executive | Former CMO & Digital Transformation Leader | Leading Strategic Growth and Market Leadership for Brave Global Companies
9 个月Dan Calladine, as always, thanks for sharing. Shows that it can be better to be a second mover -- $300bn better.