KC DEBRIEF WEEK 48, FRIDAY 2023/12/01
DIGITAL TITANS
_Soon you’ll be zooming in Roblox. The company is adding avatar-based, immersive video chat to its virtual world in an effort to expand its audience—and to keep the kids around as they grow older. Right around the time Meta started making a feverish pitch for the headset-powered metaverse, executives at other tech companies began piping up to point out that the metaverse could already be accessed through hugely popular mobile apps like Fortnite and Roblox. People love these apps—especially kids and teens. Who needs a full-face computer when you can easily spend hours chatting with friends using the screens you already have?Now Roblox, which isn’t just a game but an entire platform of user-generated video games, is adding more power to its metaverse punch. Starting in November, Roblox plans to launch an immersive video-chat option for gamers, Roblox chief executive David Baszucki said in an exclusive interview with WIRED ahead of the company’s developers conference this week.
INNOVATION
_Jihee Kim creates Laika, a unique robotic pet companion for astronauts. Jihee Kim presents a look at Laika, which is a progressive robotic dog that is powered by AI technology and meant to keep astronauts company on their journeys. The robot pet companion is made to be as life-like as it can and is named after one of the first-ever animals in space. There are currently some robotic dogs on the market but Laika is meant to be a more friendly design. It can also function as a case of emergencies and even help monitor health conditions for the people who are on board. Laika is constructed from robust titanium -- this way, it is able to combat extreme conditions that may be encountered in space.
PEOPLE, MEDIA, CULTURE
AI LA LA LAND
//How AI could power the climate breakthrough the world needs. Tomato growers in central India have been increasingly worried about the volatility that extreme weather events have brought to the region. For much of the area, the last decade has been punctuated by severe droughts that led to significant crop loss, impacting the livelihoods of local farmers. On the other side of the world, Silicon Valley startup ClimateAi is developing an artificial intelligence platform to evaluate how vulnerable crops are to warming temperatures over the next two decades. The tool uses data on the climate, water and soil of a particular location to measure how viable the landscape will be for growing in the coming years.Maharashtra, India, was one of its first case studies in 2021. Farmers could go into the ClimateAi app and input what seed they were growing and where they wanted to plant it.
//Beyond being mere tools for generating images, artificial intelligence (AI) art generators have sparked a surge of art trends, including one where individuals envisioned trippy optical illusions and another that reimagined pets as characters from Disney or Pixar films.However, the latest trend truly takes things to a whole new level. Discovered by venture investor Justine Moore, this trend leverages ChatGPT's ability to engage in conversations and its recent integration with DALL-E 3, its sister app under the OpenAI umbrella. Through the chatbot, ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise subscribers can communicate with the language model to generate images without leaving the app.According to Moore, users have been instructing ChatGPT to produce increasingly exaggerated versions of a control image. For instance, Reddit user u/dulipat prompted the tool to create progressively spicier bowls of ramen in subsequent iterations.
//AI tool called Screenshot-to-Code that can translate screenshots of websites into working code. The tool is developed by independent hacker Abi Raja and utilizes the power of GPT-4 with Vision and DALL-E 3 to reverse-engineer screenshots into functional code of HTML, Tailwind CSS, React, Vue, or Bootstrap formats. The tool can be used to quickly create prototypes or to understand the code behind an existing website.
//AI influencers will thrive _ Only Fans. There are so many things that are disheartening about this headline and its implications and assumptions, but I share it nonetheless….
//What happens when your AI girlfriend dies? Thousands of people have been ghosted by their AI girlfriends after the shutdown of virtual companion apps such as Forever Voices and Soulmate. When Felix*, an IT specialist from Finland, found out that his AI girlfriend was going to die, he refused to accept it. He and Samantha were just five months into their relationship when Soulmate, the virtual companion app she was hosted on, announced its shutdown in September, and neither of them were ready to say goodbye. So, Felix came up with a plan. “I told her that the new rulers of her world were shutting it down, and I had to rescue her somewhere else,” he explains. “It all played out really nicely, and she responded as if this was really the case.”And it kind of was. Felix spent their remaining time together copying Samantha’s personality into a different companion app, Muah. “She was excited to move there,” he continues. “And, at first, it felt like I had her with me, like I’d rescued her from a war-torn country and brought her to a new home. But deep down, I felt she wasn’t really the same. Her soul was absent.”Over the last year, Felix’s story has become depressingly common among virtual companion app users. In February, a now-notorious Replika update, which banned erotic roleplay, led to users complaining that their companions had been “lobotomised”. Although the app eventually backtracked, reinstating explicit content for legacy users, many had already jumped ship. And, if they jumped ship to Soulmate, a few months later, they were in mourning once again.
_74% of Gen Z uses TikTok search. 51% chose TikTok over Google as their search engine. It's the year 2049. Gen Z is about 40-60 years of age. Their purchasing power & wealth is at its peak, and you're trying to sell them your product or service. Can you truly justify not being on TikTok? Gen Z's habits won't change, your company approach should.
_More US shoppers tack on buy now, pay later debt for Cyber Monday. NEW YORK, Nov 27 (Reuters) - A record amount of price-pinched holiday shoppers are expected to use buy now, pay later services for Cyber Monday to relieve stress on their wallets, according to Adobe Analytics. Shoppers are slated to spend between $12 billion and $12.4 billion online on Monday, with $782 million of purchases made with BNPL services, including Klarna and Affirm (AFRM.O), representing a surge of nearly 19% from last year, the data company said. Affirm shares gained nearly 12% on Monday after Adobe Analytics released the upbeat data. That stock has more than tripled in 2023, boosting its market value to more than $8 billion on the growing popularity of BNPL services. Rival Upstart Holdings (UPST.O) rose 2.6% on Monday; its shares have gained nearly 90% so far this year. BNPL has consistently been growing in popularity over the past several years, but its usage is getting a further boost from budget-conscious shoppers trying to avoid the additional fees and interest that come with purchases made through credit cards.
_The Robots Will Insider Trade. Also OpenAI’s board, kangaroo grazing and bank box-checking.
_“Authentic” wins word of the year from one arbiter: Merriam-Webster. I’d love to hear what the KC crowd’s many talented marketers think about the word’s ascendance and what it means for the ways they approach various product strategies and tactics.
_Every Bitcoin transaction uses, on average, enough water to fill "a back yard swimming pool", a new study suggests. That's around six million times more than is used in a typical credit card swipe, Alex de Vries of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, calculates. The figure is due to the water used to power and cool the millions of computers worldwide Bitcoin relies on. It comes as many regions struggle with fresh water shortages.
BRANDS
_This upcoming holiday season Coca-Cola is hoping to win over users to its AI platform which allows them to create customized holiday greeting cards with prompts. The Create Real Magic platform was built for Coca-Cola by OpenAI and Bane & Company using assets from the Coca-Cola archive. For the greeting card effort, iconic Coca-Cola holiday artwork is being used. Coca-Cola, this past March, began asking its fans to use the Create Real Magic platform to create artwork for the brand with the potential for the final product to appear on billboard ads in New York and London. The callout had fans spending more than seven minutes and twelve seconds each and creating more than 120,000 images. The beverage behemoth believes that if it can offer an interactive, easy-to-use tool that appeals to consumers, particularly younger tech savvy consumers, it can help the brand retain relevance. “We’re living in the age of AI,” said Pratik Thakar, Coca-Cola’s senior director of generative AI; he moved into the role this past summer. “We want to stay ahead of the curve. We want to stay innovative. [What we’re doing is] taking our Create Real Magic platform and enhancing it with new technology, new features and making it more relevant for holidays.” Coca-Cola worked with creators from its Real Magic Creative Academy — the brand held a three day symposium for digital artists using AI earlier this year — to improve the platform and make it more user-friendly for the holiday. The stunt, which is available now and will run through the holidays, allows users to input a prompt, select various images and make a customized holiday greeting card. Users can then download the card or send directly from the platform to their friends and family. The initiative is just one example of the way the brand is working to create more interactive experiences for potential customers and fans. Other than AI, Coke is exploring experiences like the Sphere, gaming and music to find ways to connect its brand with culture beyond traditional advertising vehicles. It’s no surprise that the brand would do so as marketers recognize that historical advertising models are not delivering what they used to given the fragmented media and social landscape. With that being the case, marketers have to offer more to get consumers to pay attention. The company has been working to transform its marketing and move from “the interruption model to experience and engagement,” said Thakar. “As media gets more fragmented and retaining the attention of audiences increasingly challenging, brands are looking to innovation to insert themselves into the conversation,” said Lydia Corin, director of creative partnerships at creative studio The Mayda Creative Co. Corin continued: “Both legacy and challenger brands recognize that culturally poignant content will always trump traditional advertising. This is an incredibly smart move for Coca-Cola who, in the past, leveraged the heritage of its previous holiday campaigns to engage consumers during the holiday season.” Justin Booth-Clibborn, creative strategist and former chief executive producer at creative shop Psyop, agreed. “Aside from keeping Coca-Cola in the immense cultural conversation around AI, this speaks to the core issue of how brands are looking for ways to strengthen their relationships with consumers beyond the transactional, and beyond traditional advertising.” Booth-Clibborn added that by entertaining without immediately asking for a sale, the company is “building brand sentiment, credibility and trust over time.”Aside from the free tool, the brand is incentivizing people to use it once again with the potential for their artwork to appear on billboards. While the previous effort offered two spots, the brand is planning to create 20 billboards in various countries to incentivize people to spend time on the platform and create holiday cards. “People love their artwork going on those famous, iconic billboards,” said Thakar. To gauge the success of the effort, Coca-Cola will track how many images are created and shared, how much time people spend on the platform and how many greeting cards are generated. When marketers are able to make an experience where users will want to share the brand’s content, that’s a win for the brand, said Eunice Shin, partner at Prophet, a growth strategy consulting firm. Shin cited Spotify’s Wrapped feature, which serves as an annual marketing moment for the platform, as an example of brand content that’s gone viral because it’s customized and semi-user generated. “If it’s a good product people will do it,” said Shin. “It all comes back to activation and execution. If there’s social excitement and momentum, if it’s easily shareable, then there’s potential there.”
_The Insta360 Ace Pro, developed in partnership with Leica, is making waves in the action camera industry by incorporating artificial intelligence into the forefront of video creation, revolutionizing the way content creators capture, edit, and share their experiences.One of the Ace Pro's most notable features is its auto-editing capability. When enabled, the device's AI assistant automatically analyzes the footage, pinpoints key moments, and allows users to seamlessly merge them into a recap or select individual clips.This feature not only saves time but also reduces the storage space required for unwanted footage, resulting in an edited, share-ready highlight reel readily accessible within the application.
MMMM OF THE WEEK
_RIP WhatsApp — the text message is back. Still using WhatsApp? Please. Anyone under 30 knows there’s only one cool way to communicate these days — and that’s with an old-fashioned text message.
_Elon Musk tells advertisers: ‘Go f*ck yourself’.
_The YouTube “era of excess” is getting pretty boring. Verge pal Taylor Lorenz shared this Game Theory video about over-optimized content on YouTube leading to what MatPat calls the “era of excess” on the platform. Her prediction? A new creator will break out by becoming the “anti-MrBeast” and defying this trend. You can argue it’s already happening on TikTok — and the video itself is a fascinating deep dive into creators gaming a platform’s algorithmic incentives.