Need to Know News - August 28th, 2024
In this week's Need to Know News edition...new AI features come to Google Ads...Perplexity's plan to start running ads on their AI search engine...HubSpot launches their first free tool for AI discovery...plus, a whole lot more!
AI In Action
McDonald's Debuts Out There AI Ad
McDonald’s Japan has released a pretty out-there AI-generated ad, touting its Monday deals on french fries.
The ad, produced in collaboration with AI artist KakuDrop, has been viewed more than 12 million times on X and even received a shoutout from the high priest of highfalutin tech, Elon Musk.
Microsoft's AI Software is Gaining Traction with Enterprise Customers
According to Jared Spataro, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of AI at work, the company is seeing sizable gains in usage of its Copilot for Microsoft 365.
“Last quarter, the number of Copilot for [Microsoft 365] customers increased by more than 60%, which is great because we were already off to the races with that,” Spataro told Yahoo Finance.
“Daily users more than doubled, and we love that trend. When we start to see that type of intensity of usage doubling, it means that you're really onto something,” added Spataro.
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Why Meta is Excelling in AI ROI Where Others Falter
META Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has set itself apart from other Big Tech companies by showing tangible results from its AI investments. While all tech giants are pouring money into AI, META's AI-powered advertising platform has led to higher engagement rates and increased ad spending. The company has also made its AI-backed advertising tools accessible to small businesses, allowing them to compete effectively.
META is implementing AI across its platforms, enhancing chatbots and user experience. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has communicated the near-term and long-term benefits of AI investments, despite the short-term impact on the bottom line.
Google Ads Gains Shopping Trends, Sync, AI & More Ad Features
Google Ads announced a number of updates yesterday, across new reporting, shopping tools and more ad features, including, of course, AI ad features. "To help retailers maximize success and stay nimble in this year’s shorter holiday shopping season, today at our annual Think Retail event we shared some new updates to Google tools," Google wrote.
The new shopping trends reports can help Google Merchant Center users and advertisers explore shopping trends relevant to their product inventory, helping retailers discover on viral moments for that their shoppers may care about and make sure product descriptions use the terms to meet their shoppers where they are.
HubSpot Launches the First Free Tool for AI Discovery
HubSpot, a marketing specialist, has observed that customers are increasingly using AI tools like ChatGPT for personalized answers instead of traditional search engines. As a result, marketers need to focus on Language Model Optimization (LMO) to ensure their brands are discoverable in this new AI-driven landscape.
HubSpot has launched AI Search Grader, a free tool that helps brands understand their performance in Large Language Models and AI search. The tool eliminates the need for manual testing and AI expertise, providing marketers with an overall grade, brand visibility insights, and personalized analysis to improve their brand awareness and sentiment in AI search results
At the Frontier of AI
Amazon to Launch New AI Alexa Subscription in October
The new Alexa, often referred as “Remarkable Alexa” or “Project Banyan” has numerous features for adults and children. The release of the upgraded version will include “Smart Briefing” which will provide daily AI-generated summaries of customer preference news articles, according to the Washington Post. The Alexa already has many features like shopping, entertainment and smart home features.
Nvidia Revenue Jumps 122% in Positive Sign for Tech’s AI Boom
the chipmaker Nvidia showed on Wednesday that enthusiasm for A.I. is still running hot. The company, a bellwether for A.I. spending, blew past Wall Street’s expectations for another quarter, reporting that its sales and profit had more than doubled during the three months that ended in July. It also projected that sales in the current quarter would increase 80 percent from a year ago, exceeding earlier estimates.
Revenue was $30.04 billion in the quarter, surpassing its $28 billion estimate in May. Net income rose to $16.95 billion from $6.19 billion a year ago, eclipsing the most recent quarterly profits of Meta and Amazon.
AI Startup Cerebras Debuts 'World's Fastest Inference' Service - With a Twist
On Tuesday, AI chip maker Cerebras Systems of Sunnyvale, California, debuted its AI inference service, which it claims is the fastest in the world and, in many cases, ten to twenty times faster than systems built using the dominant technology, Nvidia's H100 "Hopper" graphics processing unit, or GPU.
"We have never seen a technology market growing this fast," said Cebrebras cofounder and CEO Andrew Feldman in a press conference in San Francisco. "We intend to take meaningful share."
Perplexity AI Plans to Start Running Ads in Fourth Quarter
The company, which specializes in AI-assisted search, is circulating a pitch deck, promoting the app’s reach and increasing usage. The company says its app has been downloaded more than two million times and that it answers more than 230 million queries a month, with U.S. queries increasing eightfold in the past year, according to the presentation, which was viewed by CNBC.
Disney Sees AI Helping to Personalize New ESPN App
lt Disney's ESPN network is exploring the use of artificial intelligence to help personalize its news and recap show "SportsCenter" as younger audiences embrace streaming television, ESPN Chairperson Jimmy Pitaro said on Wednesday.
Disney is crafting a plan to offer its flagship ESPN network as a standalone app for the first time next year, seeking to make it the preeminent digital destination for sports fans.
The company envisions offering app users a tailored version of "SportsCenter" based on their interests, Pitaro told reporters at the company's headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut."AI will obviously help significantly in terms of that, not just in terms of the personalization and the clip generation, but also the narration."
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