NOTEWORTHY NEWS: OUR TAKE ON THE LATEST AI/GENAI NEWS

Noteworthy AI News for Agencies - Third Edition

By Jeremy Lockhorn , SVP, Creative Technologies & Innovation, 4A's

THE BIG STORY:

At its annual annual Marketing Live conference, Google built on the flurry of AI announcements at last week’s I/O event with even more AI goodness of interest to agencies and advertisers. New AI enhancements to Performance Max give brands and their agencies more control over content generation and audience targeting.

In our view, though, the tectonic shifts in Search remain the big news, as we discussed last week . Marketing Live gave us a bit more detail on how ads will manifest in the new AI Overview search experience, which aims to help users get the information they seek more quickly and efficiently. Some experts suggest that AI Overviews are not ready for wide release. But Google is obviously no stranger to enabling brands to connect with their target audiences in contextually relevant scenarios. Still, it is difficult to overstate the potential impact of these changes on paid and organic search strategies. There has been an art and a science to showing up well in Google search that is always changing subtly, but this one is a profound shift that will take time to play out and establish best practices.

OTHER INTERESTING AI NEWS:

• Major tech companies - including Microsoft, Amazon, and OpenAI - expand on their previous set of commitments to responsible and safe AI with a new international agreement that lays out additional voluntary commitments , including a “kill switch.”
• New Anthropic Research Sheds Light on AI's 'Black Box' and may help shed light on why LLMs behave the way they do.
• A recent report from Microsoft and LinkedIn suggests that the vast majority of employees want AI at work, and they don’t want to wait for their companies to catch up. As Stagwell points out , there are other significant disconnects between leaders and employees: “Only 39% of people globally who use AI at work have gotten AI training from their company,” and yet “66% of leaders say they wouldn’t hire someone without AI skills” and “71% say they’d rather hire a less experienced candidate with AI skills than a more experienced candidate without them.”
• Coca-Cola, along with agencies from WPP, has been leaning heavily into AI over the last year plus. The brand’s European CMO Javier Meza says that a mixture of artificial intelligence and human ingenuity represents a path to future growth. As we’ve said in our Perspective on GenAI , AI + HI > AI alone.

RECENT AI CAMPAIGN EXAMPLES:

• Reebok's new AI tool helps people turn memories into digital sneakers - Reebok Impact introduces a unique virtual experience where users can design custom sneakers incorporating personal photo memories. This initiative, a collaboration between Reebok and Futureverse, enables users to port their digital creations across Fortnite and Roblox.
• BK took “have it your way” to another level with Generative AI and its Million Dollar Whopper contest.
• L’oreal is unveiling even more AI-powered shopping enhancements at VivaTech in Paris.

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