?? Wiser! #111: What Can AI Do? | Amazon NFTs | Porsche & YSL into Web3 | Apple | NVIDIA | Musk's Chaos | AI Assistants

Wiser! is for anyone who wants to know what's happening and what's coming next in BigTech, emerging tech, innovation, and strategy. I take the biggest, most interesting, and need-to-know stories in the tech economy, and try to make sense of them all, so that you don't have to.

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w/Wiser! #111 - Monday 6th February 2023

Preamble

I draw your attention?this week to the Brand Strategy Collection . I’ve tracked 250 consumer brands and the projects in web3, metaverse and emerging technologies and documented them in single Notion database to save you a ton of time googling and trawling through the Internet. All you need to know about what's going on, in one place.

Regular readers know that I’ve been rolling it out in four phases. The latest news is that the final drop (brands listed alphabetically from R to Z) starts this week. More in the newsletter below.

ATB, Rick

P.s.?Remember: Insight and Information Gives You Leverage!

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Revolutionising Industries: Real-Life Examples of AI Transformation

Given the amount of attention and focus there is on generative AI, it’s a wonder that homo sapiens have managed to get this far without it. But like all good things that sound too good to be true, they generally are and this AI is no different. That’s not to say that what we’ve seen over the past three months following the public launch of ChatGPT isn’t exciting, disruptive, and scary, all at the same time. It is. The point is that behind the headlines and the hype, there’s a transformative technology that’s still got a way to go.

That goes for ChatGPT too.

As OpenAI admits, ChatGPT should be used with caution. It’s great at what it does but it’s only as good as the data that’s fed into it (which, by the way, does not go beyond 2021.) Also bear in mind that ChatGPT has no common sense, moral compass, or instinct to smell a con or a huckster.

But the question that intrigued me this week, as OpenAI announced it was launching a paid service for ChatGPT (which means OpenAI can no longer hide behind the “it’s only in beta mode” defence when ChatGPT results in anything harmful), is how good ChatGPT is at doing what I do.

So, I put?ChatGPT ?to the test, with a little help from?NotionAI , and let the AI write an entire full length article. It’s a ten minute read and was 99.47% written by AI (I made a few minor tweaks and wrote the clarification section to be absolutely clear that this was AI generated.)

?? I gave ChatGPT ten industries and asked it to write me a 2,500 word article with three use cases and three real life examples for each industry of how AI will revolutionise those industries. I asked the AI to write a start, middle and end in an “interesting and informative style”. The AI even wrote the article title.

Read it here (Premium $)

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w/ArtificialIntelligence

1. Google has a chatbot to rival ChatGPT and it's called LaMDA

Did you know that the “T” in GPT stands for “transformer”? It's the technology invented by Google’s AI division DeepMind, and now used by OpenAI. The point is that Alphabet/Google know a thing or two about AI. But because everyone’s talking about ChatGPT. Why's that??Continue reading…

Related News

• OpenAI are releasing a subscription option for ChatGPT ?at $20/month.
• China’s Baidu to launch an AI chatbot that’s similar to ChatGPT.?Reuters said that Baidu would launch its own bot sometime in March . Baidu has been investing into AI services, including autonomous driving and chatbots, as a way to diversify its revenue from reliance on advertising, where it faces growing competition from ByteDance.
• Microsoft Word gets a ChatGPT integration with new ‘Ghostwriter’ third-party add-in. An entrepreneur couldn't wait for Microsoft to do it, so they took the initiative to?put ChatGPT into Microsoft Word. ??Watch it in action.
• CNET's article-writing AI has been exposed? and the online publication is taking a ton of flack. Mostly because it is already publishing very dumb errors.

w/Web3

2. Is Amazon about to venture into NFTs?

According to a scoop in Blockworks, Amazon is planning to launch a “digital assets enterprise," aka an NFT initiative, this spring. Blockworks reported an anonymous source who said Amazon’s focus will centre on blockchain-based gaming that rewards players with NFTs.?Here's The Thing:?This makes total sense given the huge interest in gaming amongst millennials, Gen Z and the coming of age Gen A's.?Continue reading…

Related News

• EBay plans?to attract sports and NFT enthusiasts with Notable Live , a digital experience platform. Notable Live will bring NFTS, exclusive athlete merchandise and other experiences to eBay.
• China adds smart contracts to the digital yuan , its Central Bank Digital Currency.

w/SocialMedia

3. Have you ditched Twitter for Mastodon yet?

Mastodon has established momentum and it seems to be gaining pace. I’ve struggled to get hooked on the Twitter rival, but that hasn’t stopped 3rd party apps like Buffer adding a scheduling capability and the Tweetbot team building a new Mastodon client called Ivory. Of course, all of this move to Mastodon is helped significantly by Musk’s continued self-destruction.?Continue reading…

Related News

• Post, the social media alternative to Twitter is?building micropayments to support rewarding creators for content.? This was always?the web3 vision for Jack Dorsey at Twitter , but it never happened.

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w/Web3

4. Yves Saint Laurent launch a "phygital" Web3 campaign

YSL have launched a new web3 campaign to celebrate the launch of the Black Opium perfume. The campaign combines both physical and digital assets, aka "phyigital." Anyone buying the new fragrance via YSL's online store in will be gifted an NFT, which unlock a gift voucher, exclusive content, or the private sale of a second Web3 activation.?Continue reading…

w/SocialMedia

5. The chaos of Elon Musk's Twitter takeover

I got my weekly fix of Elon Musk's Twitter soap opera from some excellent reporting from?Casey Newton, Alex Heath and Zoey Schiffer in The Verge ?and New York Magazine. The publications worked together on a superb long feature on the behind-the-scenes chaos of the man-child's takeover of Twitter. It's fascinating reading.

Here’s The Thing:?Wiser! readers will remember last week's feature I wrote about?Musk's unannounced and silent shutting down of the 3rd party app ecosystem , a key foundation for Twitter's success. There's an interesting insight into in The Verge article relevant to this particular story.?Continue reading…

Related News

• Musk has announced another bombshell for the 3rd party apps that remain on Twitter.?There will no longer free access from February 9th .
• Elon Musk has set his account to Private ?in the latest Twitter experiment.
• Elon Musk says?he’s sorry for his fake news tweet ?about the attack on Paul Pelosi: ‘I apologise’

w/ArtificialIntelligence

6. DoNotPay’s CEO won’t go to jail over his AI experiment

Remember Joshua Browder? He’s the CEO of DoNotPay, the AI-powered legal services startup created to help people get out of parking tickets. Shaun and I talked about them during the latest?Big Tech Little Tech ?because he wanted to use a robot lawyer to help a client fight a ticket in court. To no surprise to anybody,?Browder has dropped the plan to appear in court after being threatened with jail time. ?As we say on the podcast, "it's a stunt."

w/Promotion

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w/Web3

7. Porsche's journey to reach the next generation of buyers

Porsche has announced a multi-year partnership with Esports giant FaZe Clan .

Ok, so what? Well, here's the thing: as I keep pointing out, major consumer brands are going where the kids are playing. They're finding innovative ways to engage with the next generation of buyers. This deal with FaZe includes merchandising, digital goods and NFTS, and various eSports initiatives in the Web3 space. The partnership allows Porsche to "tap into the intersection of gaming and youth culture." Don't say I never told you!

Related News

• MG Motors showcase the MGVerse , their future.ready Metaverse,?at Auto Expo 2023.
• Digital insurance provider?Smile is providing a virtual reality insurance experience in the metaverse . This includes virtual customer consultations, viewing car damage in the smile.meta garage, and experiencing the insurer’s offerings in 3D (whatever that means?).
• Fast food chain,?Chipotle is targeting its Gen Z customers with a wellness Snapchat Lens that works with the fast food chain’s menu items . More on Snapchat next week.

w/Metaverse

8. Deloitte’s Global Marketing Trends 2023

Only 10% of marketers believe the Metaverse is irrelevant to their industry, according to Deloitte. Marketers are taking varied approaches to the Metaverse, with some jumping onto existing platforms and others investing in building their own ones. Interestingly, blockchain technology emerged as another area of focus, with 41% of marketers planning to use the technology to support their advertising strategies in 2023. Read all the fun facts, stats and anlysis in?Deloitte’s 2023 Global Marketing Trends report .

Related News

• Dell Technologies surveyed 15,000 people between the ages of 18 and 26 from 15 different countries, gauging their opinions on how governments could build resilient economies and how technology could be used to solve global problems.?The results revealed that the young don’t have much faith in the politicians to build a digital future.
• Digital sales activity is being fuelled by Gen Z ?in the Metaverse.
• Tuvalu to become the world’s first digital country in the Metaverse. As a result of rising sea levels, the?Pacific island nation of Tuvalu is turning to the Metaverse to become the world’s first digital country . The country is a group of nine islands and 12,000 people halfway between Hawaii and Australia, and it hopes that recreating itself digitally will protect its heritage and history.
• Seoul?launched its own consumer metaverse,?launching a virtual replica of the capital city ?with a goal of improving its public services.
• The?United States Space Force?launched?the “Earhart” satellite into the metaverse, in collaboration with Thunderbird and Arizona State University , aka the “Thunderverse,”

w/BigTech

9. Apple rumoured to be making it easier to develop Augmented Reality apps

A key to driving hardware sales is the quality and volume of the software that runs on it. Which is why?Apple is reportedly working on making it really easy to develop apps for its new Mixed Reality headset .?Here’s The Thing:?Apple always puts user experience at the centre of approach to designing its products. Apple have made it a differentiator that others have tried, and failed, to copy. So, we shouldn't be surprised at this rumour, that is assuming?that Apple actually go ahead with the long awaited Glasses.

Related News

• Bloomberg reported that?Apple may accurately replicate a user's face and body for FaceTime calls ?in its future headset, according to the reliably informed Mark Gurman.

w/Technology

10. NVIDIA use AI to make you look like you're looking into the camera

w/ArtificialIntelligence

11. AI assistants in the Metaverse

Here’s an example of what an AI avatar assistant looks like in virtual reality. It’s built by ENGAGE, a metaverse platform designed for professionals, event organisers, and corporations to build their own virtual worlds to provide metaverse services directly to their own clients. In the following video, you’ll see a 3 minute demo of the ChatGPT-powered AI assistant called Athena.

w/SocialMedia

12. Facebook’s approach to taking down fake news failed after the Jan 6th riots in the USA

To coincide with the second anniversary of the Jan 6th Capitol riots,?new research reported ?on the effectiveness of Facebook’s content moderation surrounding the Capitol Hill insurrection. Even though Facebook strongly condemned the riots, this study of more than 2 million posts from 2,551 US news sources found that because take-downs happened after the fact, by the time they came down most of the people who were going to interact with these posts had already done so.?Continue reading…

Related News

• Rolling Stone magazine has reported on the chaos inside Twitter ?in the immediate aftermath of Jan 6. They show how company employees lashed out at leadership over an ad hoc content moderation policy that they blamed for enabling Donald Trump's insurrection.
• Russia’s influence campaign on Twitter in 2016 didn’t have much more than a minor influence on individual attitudes–but that doesn’t mean it didn’t have an impact,?concludes a new study from NYU’s Center for Social Media and Politics.

w/BigTech

13. BigTech’s BigNumbers

It’s that time again when all the tech firms report their latest quarter results. Here are the headlines (they only came out yesterday, I'll give a longer summary next week):

Meta

• Meta lost $13.7 billion on Reality Labs in 2022 .
• But, they?beat Q4 earnings and revenue estimates after hitting 2 billion daily active users . Their stock jumped 18%+.

Apple

• Apple sales drop 5% ?in largest quarterly revenue decline since 2016.
• CEO Tim Cook said three factors hurt the results: a strong dollar, production issues in China affecting the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, and the overall macroeconomic environment.

Alphabet

• Alphabet missed on both its top and bottom line when it reported fourth quarter?earnings ?after the bell yesterday.
• Google Cloud and YouTube Advertising revenue numbers fell short. The company’s stock dropped nearly 4% after hours.

Amazon

• Amazon’s results beat expectations ?but they offered a grim forecast for Q1.
• Amazon Web Services and Advertising both grew but Online sales declined 2%.

w/BrandStrategy

?? Brand Strategies in Web3, Metaverse and Emerging Technologies

The latest brand strategy updates to the Brand Strategy Collection include:

• Netflix: NFTs and the Metaverse
• Netgear: Building technology for web3
• Nike: The CTO of one of the biggest consumer brands in web3 gets hacked
• Nissan: Emerging technologies and the Metaverse for customer engagement
• NYX: The L'Oréala brand builds a presence on Roblox
• Outback Steakhouse: NFTs for customer engagement
• Origyn: blockchain certification technology use NFTs to authenticate an owner's luxury watch and eliminate counterfeiting.
• ORC Zoo: Orangutan artwork as NFTs
• Overpriced: Physical and virtual merchandising
• Olympics: from tickets to artwork to raising awareness of political opposition
• Pizza Hut: the world's first NFT pizza
• Papa John's: the great NFT pizza bag givaway
• Pacsun: the youth clothing brand's strategy for NFTs, the metaverse and virtual and augmented reality
• P&G: the dedicated web3 development lab is called Lifelab

Premium Subscribers get FULL ACCESS?and unrestricted access to the Brand Strategy Collection. To access the Collection, upgrade to Premium here ??

w/Productivity

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w/Information

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w/Podcast

?? Big Tech Little Tech

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?? For all show notes, background links and everything to do with the show, go to the?Big Tech Little Tech website .

w/AboutWiser!

?? Wiser! Newsletter

Wiser! is a weekly newsletter that makes sense of what's happening and what's coming next in the tech economy. From disruptive technologies, like blockchain, crypto and artificial intelligence, to emerging trends, like Web3 and the Metaverse. Plus there's a big focus on BigTech and the impact of social media.

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