KC DEBRIEF WEEK 24, FRIDAY 2023/06/16
DIGITAL TITANS
_Twitter boss Linda Yaccarino gives first hint on shake-up plan. The new boss of social media firm Twitter, Linda Yaccarino, has outlined her plans for "Twitter 2.0.", after taking over from Elon Musk a week ago. She says the company is "on a mission to become the world's most accurate real-time information source". Since Mr Musk bought Twitter last year, it has faced criticism over its approach to tackling disinformation. In the last month, the company lost its head of trust and safety and pulled out of the EU's disinformation code. In a series of tweets, which was also emailed to employees, Ms Yaccarino echoed Mr Musk's goal of transforming the "global town square". She said this would help "drive civilisation forward through the unfiltered exchange of information and open dialogue about the things that matter most to us." "Users need to know that the town square is not biased," Ray Wang, the chief executive of Silicon Valley-based research firm Constellation told the BBC. Mr Musk, who is a self-described "free speech absolutist", has criticised Twitter's policies on moderating content, arguing that it needed to be a genuine forum for free speech. But his moves to reinstate right-wing accounts, whose views he has shared, and loosen moderation have driven away advertisers. In December, revenue reportedly fell by 40% compared to a year earlier. For advertisers to return, they need to know what to expect in terms of user content and engagement, Mr Wang said. "She is definitely someone who can balance out Elon and go toe-to-toe with him as he respects her," he added.
_ Google thinks it has cracked virtual try-on with generative AI. The tech heavyweight announced a new feature letting users see how a garment would look on a wide range of models using the AI technique underlying some of the most popular and powerful AI image generators.
_ Instagram is apparently testing an AI chatbot that lets you choose from 30 personalities. A leaked screenshot says chatbots can ‘answer questions’ and ‘offer advice.’ Instagram rival Snap launched its own AI chatbot earlier this year. Meta could be the latest company to test the social potential of AI chatbots. A screenshot shared by leaker Alessandro Paluzzi on Twitter shows what seems to be an intro screen for the new Instagram feature. It says the chatbots will be able to answer questions, give advice, and help users write messages. It also says that users will be able to choose between “30 AI personalities and find which one you like best.”Meta hasn’t announced any formal plans for such a feature, but chatbots would fit past statements about the company’s AI ambitions. In February, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Meta was “developing AI personas that can help people in a variety of ways” and that the company was exploring how to make such bots accessible through text conversations “like chat in WhatsApp and Messenger.”
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_ How hyper niche meme accounts are emerging as the winners of Instagram. Context collapse is the name given to the phenomenon of multiple social or cultural groups that wouldn’t usually encounter each other ending up in the same space, like the internet. For an IRL example, it’s like when you invite people from 5 different friendship groups to your birthday and realise you’re going to spend the whole time making sure they all get along with each other. In both those scenarios, it’s hard for separate groups to connect with each other particularly well, because they’ve missed out on so much shared context that’s only relevant to each of the groups. This leads to misunderstanding and, as Venkatesh Rao puts in his compelling piece the internet of beefs, online public spaces are now ‘being slowly taken over by beef-only thinkers, as the global culture wars evolve into a stable, endemic, background societal condition of continuous conflict…the public internet is turning into the Internet of Beefs’.
_Fortnite. 43 Fortnite islands are on course for $1m+ annual revenues. Earlier this year, Epic Games launched what it described as ‘Creator Economy 2.0’ around its popular game Fortnite. Anyone building an island in the game’s Creative Mode could earn a share of revenues from Fortnite’s lucrative item shop, based on metrics including popularity and engagement.We thought this could be very interesting for music artists, and now Epic Games has provided some figures that may provide encouragement.It estimates that 220 creators – people building islands in Fortnite – are on course for more than $100k of annual payouts from its scheme.That includes 106 that it expects to make more than $300k; 43 on course for more than $1m; 13 heading for more than $3m; and five creators who should be able to trouser more than $10m of annual payouts.
_Gen Z is buying and searching on TikTok, but its commerce offering isn’t a must-have for advertisers, report says. TikTok made them buy it, but probably not during a livestream. Gen Z is nearly as comfortable buying stuff on TikTok as they are on or Instagram. That’s according to a report released by Insider Intelligence, which examined TikTok’s ambitions as a shopping platform. Gen Z adults making purchases on social networks are most likely to use Instagram (71%), followed by YouTube (68%), TikTok (68%), Facebook (62%), and Snapchat (55%), according to a survey conducted by Jungle Scout included in the report. They are also using TikTok (43%) more than search engines (38%) like Google or Bing to search for products online, the survey found. TikTok is currently testing search ads to capitalize on the fact that people are treating it like a search engine.TikTok wants to be a marketplace, and the company has been rolling out features for users and advertisers that promote a more retail-centric approach to the app.
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TikTok shop Is testing visual search. Marketers have a new social commerce tool. The feature is being tested in select markets outside the U.S.Watchful AI As AI continues to shock the traditional search world, TikTok is going the visual route, testing a new tool in its Shop tab, Adweek has exclusively learned. The feature, which will allow users to take a photo and search visual inventory based on the image, is currently being tested in select markets outside the U.S. Pinterest, Google and Bing all have visual search tools, and Meta began testing visual search on Instagram Shop in June 2021. User adoption in the U.S. is still small, though growing—the percentage of U.S. adults who regularly use visual search rose to 8.2% in February 2023 from 3.8% in April 2020, according to Bizrate data cited by Insider Intelligence.
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_ ‘A form of acceptance’: TikTok’s new trend of ‘canon events’. Canon events, which are central to the film Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, reframe unfortunate experiences as central to each person’s storyThe universal human experience of regretfully pondering the things that could have been different in your life has had a TikTok makeover. Meet “canon events” –unfortunate periods that make you, you. The idea of canon events is central to the newly released animated movie, Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse, in which all the incarnations of Spiderman from parallel dimensions are bound together by several key (canon) events that must occur in each.They are unavoidable. And attempts to prevent them from happening – for example, not getting bitten by a radioactive spider or tragically losing a parental figure – could lead to the very fabric of time and space unravelling.Now the concept has transcended the realms of the Spider-Verse and become an extremely popular trend on TikTok and other video sharing apps.
_Refinery29 launches Twitch’s first third-party live shopping experience. It’s the first live shopping experience on Twitch to be administered by a third-party company or brand, rather than the platform itself. The live shopping event, which will take place on Refinery29’s Twitch channel at 2 p.m. Pacific time, will be a “Most Wanted” livestream showcasing various sunscreen products as part of an ongoing campaign by Refinery29 to inform its readers about the importance of sun protection. Refinery29 is bringing on a dermatologist to break down facts and myths about sunscreen, as well as Refinery29 editorial staff and Skydaddi, a body painting streamer.“The media industry is struggling because of ad sales, right? The media buys for those things have been lacking, not just digitally, but in print, too. So I want to push back on the idea of, ‘why innovate?’” said Melissah Yang, Refinery29’s entertainment director and Twitch lead. “Live shopping is a business case to be able to diversify your revenue streams — so, to me, it just makes perfect sense for us to be doing this.”Refinery29’s upcoming livestream is particularly notable because it is the first live shopping event on Twitch to be administered by a third-party group. In recent years, Twitch has hosted an annual “POG Picks” live shopping event around the holidays, but today’s stream represents the first use of Twitch’s “Stream Picks” overlay tool by an outside party. Refinery29’s owner, Vice Media Group, signed a revenue share agreement with Twitch in January, but the stream itself is not a direct partnership between Refinery29 and Twitch.
PEOPLE, MEDIA, CULTURE
AI LA LA LAND
// Cindy Sherman on AI experiments, lockdown pottery and being a woman in today's art market. Artist has created new body of work for solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth in ZurichSince she was a child, Cindy Sherman has been playing with disguise, artifice and camouflage. At first she would dress up to overcome her shyness, attending parties and gallery openings in New York in character, later documenting her transformations as an art form. She has played the 1950s screen siren, the centrefold pin-up, the Old Master sitter, the clown and the ageing Hollywood diva. For her solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth in Zurich, Sherman has created a new body of work which harks back to her early black-and-white cut-out collages from the 1970s, manipulated and scaled up for the digital age. She has often been ahead of the curve when it comes to technology, constructing and Photoshopping “profile pics” long before Instagram. Here she tells us how AI helped shape her latest series, why she started making ceramics during the pandemic, and what it means to be a woman in today’s art market.The Art Newspaper: For your latest body of work you returned to some images you started making in 2010. What caused you to stop working on them and why did you to pick them up again?Cindy Sherman: Initially I was thinking of ideas for making a kind of wallpaper image that would repeat parts of skin or parts of the face so it wouldn’t really be recognisable until you got close up to it. I eventually did something else for that particular project. Periodically, I would go back to this body of work, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with it. And I never did anything until I started thinking about this show, that maybe this work I had shot 13 years ago would work better in black and white.
// AI used to create new and final Beatles song, says Paul McCartney. Musician says he used technology to ‘extricate’ John Lennon’s voice from an old demo and complete a decades-old songA new and final Beatles recording using artificial intelligence will be released later this year, Sir Paul McCartney has announced.The musician said he had used new technology to “extricate” John Lennon’s voice from an old demo and complete a decades-old song.“We just finished it up and it’ll be released this year,” he told the Radio 4 Today programme on Tuesday.Though McCartney did not name the song, it is likely to be a 1978 Lennon composition called Now and Then. The demo was one of several songs on cassettes labelled “For Paul” that Lennon made shortly before his death in 1980, which were later given to McCartney by Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono.
// When Doctors Use a Chatbot to Improve Their Bedside Manner. Despite the drawbacks of turning to artificial intelligence in medicine, some physicians find that ChatGPT improves their ability to communicate empathetically with patients. Physicians are finding ChatGPT useful in empathizing with patients / NYT
// Using AI for loans and mortgages is big risk, warns EU bossDiscrimination is a more pressing concern from advancing artificial intelligence than human extinction, says the EU's competition chief. Margrethe Vestager told the BBC "guardrails" were needed to counter the technology's biggest risksShe said this was key where AI is being used to help make decisions that can affect someone's livelihood, such as whether they can apply for a mortgage. The European Parliament approved proposed AI rules on Wednesday. The MEPs vote in favour of the legislation comes amid warnings over developing the tech - which enables computers to perform tasks typically requiring human intelligence - too quickly.Some experts have warned that AI could lead to the extinction of humanity. In an exclusive interview with the BBC, Ms Vestager said AI's potential to amplify bias or discrimination, which can be contained in the vast amounts of data sourced from the internet and used to train models and tools, was a more pressing concern.
//Adobe is so confident its Firefly generative AI won’t breach copyright that it’ll cover your legal bills. The offer is available only to users of its enterprise Firefly product, which launches today. Adobe is so confident in Firefly’s ability to respect creators’ copyrighted images that it’ll legally compensate businesses if they’re sued for copyright infringement over any images its tool creates.Adobe Firefly, the software giant’s AI-powered image generation and expansion tool, is being rolled out to businesses today. At its flagship Adobe Summit event, the company is unveiling an expansion of Firefly for enterprise users that will include “full indemnification for the content created through these features,” says Claude Alexandre, VP of digital media at Adobe. (The publicly available beta of Firefly has already been used to create AI-generated riffs on classic album covers and works of art.)Anything created using Firefly’s text-to-image generation tool will be fully indemnified by the company “as a proof point that we stand behind the commercial safety and readiness of these features,” Alexandre says.
// AI replacing humans. Until recently Dean Meadowcroft was a copywriter in a small marketing department. His duties included writing press releases, social media posts and other content for his company. But then, late last year, his firm introduced an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system. "At the time the idea was that it would be working alongside human lead copywriters to help speed up the process, essentially streamline things a little bit more," he says. Mr Meadowcroft was not particularly impressed with the AI's work. "It just kind of made everybody sound middle of the road, on the fence, and exactly the same, and therefore nobody really stands out." The content also had to be checked by human staff to make sure it had not been lifted from anywhere else. But the AI was fast. What might take a human copywriter between 60 and 90 minutes to write, the AI could do in 10 minutes or less. Around four months after the AI was introduced, Mr Meadowcroft's four-strong team was laid off. Mr Meadowcroft can't be certain, but he's pretty sure the AI replaced them. "I did laugh-off the idea of AI replacing writers, or affecting my job, until it did," he said. The latest wave of AI hit late last year when OpenAI launched ChatGPT. Backed by Microsoft, ChatGPT can give human-like responses to questions and can, in minutes, generate essays, speeches, even recipes. Other tech giants are scrambling to launch their own systems - Google launched Bard in March. While not perfect, such systems are trained on the ocean of data available on the internet - an amount of information impossible for even a team of humans to digest. So that's left many wondering which jobs might be at risk.
_ From “Heavy Purchasers” of pregnancy tests to the depression-prone: We found 650,000 ways advertisers label you. A spreadsheet on ad platform Xandr’s website revealed a massive collection of “audience segments” used to target consumers based on highly specific, sometimes intimate information and inferences . What words would you use to describe yourself? You might say you’re a dog owner, a parent, that you like Taylor Swift, or that you’re into knitting. If you feel like sharing, you might say you have a sunny personality or that you follow a certain religion. If you spend any time online, you probably have some idea that the digital ad industry is constantly collecting data about you, including a lot of personal information, and sorting you into specialized categories so you’re more likely to buy the things they advertise to you. But in a rare look at just how deep—and weird—the rabbit hole of targeted advertising gets, The Markup has analyzed a database of 650,000 of these audience segments, newly unearthed on the website of Microsoft’s ad platform Xandr. The trove of data indicates that advertisers could also target people based on sensitive information like being “heavy purchasers” of pregnancy test kits, having an interest in brain tumors, being prone to depression, visiting places of worship, or feeling “easily deflated” or that they “get a raw deal out of life.”Many of the Xandr ad categories are more prosaic, classifying people as “Affluent Millennials,” for example, or as “Dunkin Donuts Visitors.” Industry critics have raised questions about the accuracy of this type of targeting. And the practice of slicing and dicing audiences for advertisers is an old one. But the exposure of a collection of audience segments this size offers consumers an unusual look at how they and their families are packaged, described, and categorized by ad companies. Because the segments also include the names of the companies involved in creating them, they also shed light on how disparate pools of personal data—collected by tracking people’s online activity and real-world movements—are combined into bespoke, branded groups of potential ad viewers that can be marketed to publishers and advertisers.
_ The Interview: It's Metaverse Beauty Week! Here's everything you need to know from its Founders. Metaverse Beauty Week kicks off today, with events taking place from 12-16 June for brands and consumers to experience beauty through a series of virtual web3 experiences. The first-of-its-kind beauty festival will see participating brands host a suite of immersive experiences that look to "redefine the future of beauty in our virtual lives". As part of this, consumers are invited to explore ‘phygital’ converged experiences, wearables and gamified activations from a variety of brands spanning the beauty and wellness sectors.In this interview with TheIndustry.beauty, Bridey Lipscombe and Cat Turner, Founders of Metaverse Beauty Week, speak all about the festival, the brands involved, highlight moments and what they hope it will achieve.
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Decentraland Gurus to Flaunt Glamour at Metaverse Beauty WeekCommencing today and running until June 16, Decentraland, alongside Spatial and Roblox, will welcome ‘Metaverse Beauty Week’, bringing a wave of enchantment and glamour to the virtual world. Interestingly, this lavish affair will also occur outside the Metaverse, showcasing a physical presence in London, UK. Brought to life by the innovative agency, CULT, the Metaverse sphere will test conventional beauty boundaries, integrating the virtual worlds’ oddity with the attractiveness of the beauty sphere. Welcoming beauty mavens like Neutrogena, ULTA, LUSH, and more, the festival is a hub for all beauty enthusiasts and Web3 spirits to embark on all things visibly alluring.
BRANDS
_Louis Vuitton’s legendary trunks are getting digitized. The maison is voyaging headfirst into the metaverse with a digital trunk that will act as a portal to limited-edition products and experiences. Fashion’s fascination with the metaverse knows no bounds as proven by the innovative new virtual releases unveiled on a daily basis. At the centre of these launches are NFTs. That’s non-fungible tokens that are more than just digital artworks. Brand’s from Balmain to Gucci, along with yours truly, have released NFTs as a gateway to the most loyal of customers which work to unlock exclusive content. A pioneering force when it comes to fashion, having dressed the virtual heroine Lightning in 'Final Fantasy' back in 2016, Louis Vuitton continues to voyage into the virtual unknown with VIA Treasure Trunk.Over 160 years ago Louis Vuitton (the man himself) designed his first trunk. Fast forward to today, and the iconic piece of luggage is collected by people around the world with designers, artists, and more creating their own renditions of the iconic design. It makes sense then that the maison’s next NFT would be modelled after the trunk.
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Meet the @MSCHFMicroscopic Handbag, an almost invisible little speck that is a remarkably accurate rendering of a @louisvuitton OnTheGo handbag.
How small are we talking? It measures 657 by 222 by 700 micrometers, which is comparable to a single strand of human hair.MSCHF specifically created the lil' Louis for the "Just Phriends" sale, a forthcoming auction curated for @pharrell's @joopiterofficial auction house by longtime pal and @coletteco-founder @sarahandelman.MSCHF's Microscopic Handbag will be offered alongside one-of-a-kind creations made exclusively for the auction house by renowned brands such as @chanelofficial, @kaws, Richard Mille, and Louis Vuitton itself. However, MSCHF told the @nytimes that it did not obtain permission from LV for its Microscopic Handbag.
LVMH joins with Epic Games to offer virtual experiences. French luxury goods group LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton has paired up with Epic Games, creator of Fortnite, to draw in customers with fitting rooms and fashion shows in virtual worlds.LVMH will use Epic’s 3D creation tools to create immersive products and experiences, as well as new collections and ad campaigns, according to a statement on Wednesday (Jun 14). Epic’s graphics platform Unreal Engine, for example, can be used for creating “digital twins”, which let clients see how a physical product will look and behave before it’s been manufactured.LVMH Group managing director Toni Belloni said Epic’s tools will also help the company “engage more effectively with young generations who are very much at ease with these codes and uses”.Epic chief executive officer Tim Sweeney has been one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the metaverse, envisioned as an immersive version of the internet, where people interact, play games or complete tasks as a digital avatar. Epic’s Fortnite has rapidly evolved from a popular multiplayer video game into an online space where people socialise and big-name musicians host virtual concerts. The company’s metaverse strategy also includes software tools, which provide the building blocks for virtual design and digital advertisements.As Epic and rival Roblox build out their versions of the metaverse, brands have been staking their turf in these virtual worlds, where younger audiences congregate. Epic joined with Ferrari two years ago to bring a highly realistic version of a Ferrari 296 GTB to Fortnite, allowing players to zip around their cartoonish world in style. Meanwhile, Roblox has become a magnet for high-end fashion brands, including Ralph Lauren, which debuted its first digital fashion line on the site in 2021. Tommy Hilfiger and Gucci also have a presence there, and supermodel Karlie Kloss launched a virtual runway on Roblox in 2022 along with five digital pop-up stores to promote her virtual apparel.
MMMM OF THE WEEK
_ Researchers discover that ChatGPT prefers repeating 25 jokes over and over. When tested, "Over 90% of 1,008 generated jokes were the same 25 jokes."On Wednesday, two German researchers, Sophie Jentzsch and Kristian Kersting, released a paper that examines the ability of OpenAI's ChatGPT-3.5 to understand and generate humor. In particular, they discovered that ChatGPT's knowledge of jokes is fairly limited: During a test run, 90 percent of 1,008 generations were the same 25 jokes, leading them to conclude that the responses were likely learned and memorized during the AI model's training rather than being newly generated.The two researchers, associated with the Institute for Software Technology, German Aerospace Center (DLR), and Technical University Darmstadt, explored the nuances of humor found within ChatGPT's 3.5 version (not the newer GPT-4 version) through a series of experiments focusing on joke generation, explanation, and detection. They conducted these experiments by prompting ChatGPT without having access to the model's inner workings or data set.