KC DEBRIEF WEEK 9, FRIDAY 24/03/01
DIGITAL TITANS
_ APPLE is launching its first post-quantum protections, one of the biggest deployments of the future-resistant encryption technology to date. Billions of medical records, financial transactions, and messages we send to each other are protected by encryption. It’s fundamental to keeping modern life and the global economy running relatively smoothly. However, the decades-long race to create vastly powerful quantum computers, which could easily crack current encryption, creates new risks. Today Cupertino is announcing that PQ3—its post-quantum cryptographic protocol—will be included in iMessage. The update will launch in iOS and iPad OS 17.4 and macOS 14.4 after previously being deployed in the beta versions of the software. Apple, which published the news on its security research blog, says the change is the “most significant cryptographic security upgrade in iMessage history.”
_ The first human patient implanted with a brain-chip from Neuralink appears to have fully recovered and is able to control a computer mouse using their thoughts, the startup’s founder, Elon Musk, said late on Monday. “Progress is good, and the patient seems to have made a full recovery, with no ill effects that we are aware of. Patient is able to move a mouse around the screen by just thinking,” Musk said in a Spaces event on the social media platform X.Musk said Neuralink was now trying to get as many mouse button clicks as possible from the patient. Neuralink did not immediately reply to a request for further details.
_ TikTok Is on the Decline. I’m calling it now. Here’s what convinced me. Don’t look now, but after half a decade of transforming public life on an international scale, TikTok may finally be entering its flop era. The clues are there if you know where to look, even outside the millions of videos that have lapsed into total silence since Universal Music Group yanked its vast catalog from the app, including Taylor Swift, J Balvin, your favorite city pop pioneers, and so many others. The professed reason was to deny the app a chance to train artificial intelligence on commercial music without compensating artists—which, fair enough. Yet it’s not just the songs that have left these videos; it’s the entire audio altogether, leading to the loss of creator narration on both old and new TikToks.Then, there’s also the sharp slowdown in user growth over the past year, widespread annoyancewith its ad-heavy push into e-commerce via the “TikTok Shop,” impatience with its never-ending deluge of A.I.–generated spam and misinformation, exhaustion with the homogenizing effects of TikTok trends and aesthetics, increased apprehension over its demeaning A.I.–powered face filters, outrage at its rumormongering automated-search suggestions, and concern over the heightened prevalence of conspiratorial “health”-focused influencers. Turmoil is coming from inside the house too, with layoffs and a gender-discrimination lawsuit hitting both TikTok and its parent company—the latter of which reported significant drops in revenue growth and overall valuation at the tail end of 2023. Oh, and: President Joe Biden has finallyjoined the app to reach the youths. The result is as cringe as it sounds, as my colleague Scott Nover pointed out.
ALSO
A TikTok App has arrived on the Apple Vision Pro. Users will now be able to scroll through TikTok with the total immersion of Apple’s Vision Pro. The $3,500 headset is home to a TikTok app, two weeks after the device launched to the public. Many were surprised to find that the Vision Pro didn’t already have a TikTok app upon its launch. The only way to access TikTok was by going through Safari and viewing from there.While it’s still something of a waiting game to see what apps will carry over to the Vision Pro, TikTok Product Leader Ahmad Zahran shared last month that an app was indeed in the works.“While many app developers have ditched the Apple Vision Pro, my team has redesigned the entire TikTok experience from the ground up!,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “This was a master-class in product development and I’m certain most other big tech companies wouldn’t have been able to turn it around the way we did.”The app is now available on the Vision Pro and is quite similar to the iOS and Android versions. The added benefit of using the app, as opposed to Safari, is that it features a wider interface to accommodate the goggles’ field of view.
PEOPLE, MEDIA, CULTURE
AI AI LA LA LAND
//Adobe Brings Conversational AI to Trillions of PDFs with the New AI Assistant in Reader and Acrobat. Adobe Brings Conversational AI to Trillions of PDFs with the New AI Assistant in Reader and Acrobat. AI Assistant in beta builds on Acrobat Liquid Mode to further unlock document intelligence with new capabilities in Reader and AcrobatToday's release is Adobe’s first step in transforming digital document experiences with generative AI for consumption and creation. Reader and Acrobat customers will have access to the full range of AI Assistant capabilities through a new add-on subscription plan when AI Assistant is out of beta.
// China’s Rush to Dominate A.I. Comes With a Twist: It Depends on U.S. Technology. China’s tech firms were caught off guard by breakthroughs in generative artificial intelligence. Beijing’s regulations and a sagging economy aren’t helping.In November, a year after ChatGPT’s release, a relatively unknown Chinese start-up leaped to the top of a leaderboard that judged the abilities of open-source artificial intelligence systems.The Chinese firm, 01.AI, was only eight months old but had deep-pocketed backers and a $1 billion valuation and was founded by a well-known investor and technologist, Kai-Fu Lee. In interviews, Mr. Lee presented his A.I. system as an alternative to options like Meta’s generative A.I. model, called LLaMA.There was just one twist: Some of the technology in 01.AI’s system came from LLaMA. Mr. Lee’s start-up then built on Meta’s technology, training its system with new data to make it more powerful.The situation is emblematic of a reality that many in China openly admit. Even as the country races to build generative A.I., Chinese companies are relying almost entirely on underlying systems from the United States. China now lags the United States in generative A.I. by at least a year and may be falling further behind, according to more than a dozen tech industry insiders and leading engineers, setting the stage for a new phase in the cutthroat technological competition between the two nations that some have likened to a cold war.
// The Justice Department appointed Princeton professor and technology law researcher Jonathan Mayer as its first chief AI officer as it figures out how AI impacts law enforcement. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that appointing an AI officer was important for the department to “keep pace with rapidly evolving scientific and technological developments.” One of Mayer’s responsibilities will be to build a team of technical and policy experts around cybersecurity and AI. Mayer will also serve as the department’s chief science and technology advisor and help recruit tech talent. Government agencies were tasked by the Biden administration’s executive order on AI to shore up AI talent and create guidelines on using the technology in their services. The executive order also includes establishing standards to ensure fairness if AI is used for sentencing, parole, and surveillance — actions that fall into the purview of the Justice Department.
// With ‘Charlie,’ Pfizer is building a new generative AI platform for pharma marketing. Pfizer has developed its own generative AI platform and named it after the pharmaceutical giant’s founder. Since last year, Pfizer has been developing a new AI platform to help with content supply chains and while also overhauling the company’s entire marketing workbench. “Charlie,” named after Pfizer co-founder Charles Pfizer, is now in the process of rolling out to the entire organization. Executives say it’s still early, but the platform is now in use by Pfizer’s hundreds of people in central marketing team and thousands across the company’s various brands. It’s also being used by agency partners including Publicis Groupe and IPG. A key focus for Charlie is improving the company’s content supply chain, according to Bill Worple, Pfizer’s vp of customer engagement platforms and technology. Along with helping with content creation and editing, Charlie also helps with fact-checking and legal reviews — something that’s especially important with highly regulated industries like pharma. Using a “red, yellow, green” risk system when labeling content, Charlie can identify assets the medical review team might want to spend more time looking over. For example, a headline used many times might not need as much attention. Other creative assets might use previously approved language but now appear in a new setting while other content making new claims deserves the most time. “The whole idea there is how do we triple [or] 5x our content creation to actually create messaging that resonates both for the health care providers as well as our patients,” Worple said. Another focus is turning Charlie into a workbench for the entire marketing organization. That includes integrating media analytics for the company’s brands, insights about various competitors and data from various websites. Charlie is also being integrated into Adobe platforms like Workfront and Experience Manager to help users take actions based on insights across various dashboards. Other features include integrating platforms like Slack so employees can communicate and share info with each other. As for the type of content Charlie helps create, Pfizer is starting with digital media, emails and digital presentations that sales teams use with physicians. Another area it’s exploring is helping to research and write drafts for medical articles. Charlie also is able to gather insights across therapeutic areas to better understand customers and treatments. For example, Worple mentioned how a parent might be affected by a migraine differently than someone without a family. “You actually start creating different insights into who your customer is,” said Worple. “And then [knowing] what the actual pain point is for them. It’s not something we would classify as medical research. That insight of ‘X percentage of these people are this type of individual’ really helps you understand who your customer is. Now you know how to talk to them better.”
// Nvidia: Boss says AI at 'tipping point' as revenues soar. The boss of the world's most valuable chip maker Nvidia said artificial intelligence (AI) is at a "tipping point" as it announced record sales. The technology giant reported that revenues surged by 265% to $22bn (£17.4bn) in the three months to 28 January, compared to a year earlier. For the year as a whole, turnover more than doubled to $60.9bn. "Accelerated computing and generative AI have hit the tipping point," said Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang."Demand is surging worldwide across companies, industries and nations."Nvidia also forecast a 233% jump in its quarterly revenues for the current quarter, beating analysts' estimates.
// NBA-AI, making game clips them seem like a Spider-Man movie.
// Generative AI has been improving at a terrifying rate, with prompt-based images going from hilariously glitchy to often photorealistic in the space of mere months. Until now, AI generated video was lagging behind – but that all changed last week with the advent of Sora AI. Created by OpenAI (of ChatGPT fame), Sora AI can create videos of up to 60 seconds "featuring highly detailed scenes, complex camera motion, and multiple characters with vibrant emotions". OpenAI shared various clips generated by Sora on X (below), and they're remarkably realistic.
// The day after The New York Times sued OpenAI for copyright infringement, the author and systems architect Daniel Jeffries wrote an essay-length tweet arguing that the Times “has a near zero probability of winning” its lawsuit. As we write this, it has been retweeted 288 times and received 885,000 views.“Trying to get everyone to license training data is not going to work because that's not what copyright is about,” Jeffries wrote. “Copyright law is about preventing people from producing exact copies or near exact copies of content and posting it for commercial gain. Period. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying or simply does not understand how copyright works.”
// In 2011, a team of researchers set up an experiment to explore how metaphors used to describe crime could influence people's ideas about how to reduce it. Participants were given one of two reports about rising crime rates in a city, with one describing crime as a "beast preying on'' the city and the other as a "virus infecting" it. All other details being equal, participants who read the "beast" metaphor were more likely to suggest enforcement-based solutions (such as increasing police force), while those who read the "virus" metaphor were more likely to suggest reform-based ones (such as curbing poverty). In business, leaders use metaphors frequently to illustrate new ideas, build belief, and guide people through change. And as the crime study makes clear, choosing the right metaphor matters: People’s attitudes and behaviors are informed by the metaphors we use to communicate. Metaphors don't just serve to make sense of our reality—they help shape it. One only has to look to the rise of artificial intelligence, in both business and everyday life, to know how true this is. Just as television was once described as an “electronic hearth” or the internet as an “information superhighway,” leaders are using metaphors to help people make sense of AI and engage with it. “Artificial intelligence” is in itself a metaphor we use to describe algorithmic techniques and their applications, but we keep layering more metaphors on top of it.
// What happens to creativity in the uncharted territories of AI? Kerv Interactive’s Marika Roque has been at the forefront of AI innovation in advertising; she reveals the biggest opportunities the tech offers creativity. But the unexpected popularity has put a strain on the game's servers, with many struggling to log on. That hasn't stopped sales, but Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt has said: "If you have no cash, get it later." In Helldivers 2, you're a member of a team of soldiers dropped on to an alien planet and tasked with surviving attacks from waves of giant, insect-like creatures. The game released to rave reviews from critics, who praised its gameplay and its references to 90s sci-fi satire Starship Troopers. It's been an especially big hit with PC gamers, easily beating records set by previous PlayStation Studios titles such as God of War.
BRANDS
_LVMH Fashions A Hollywood Entry; 22 Montaigne Entertainment Teams With Superconnector Studios To Open Its Storied 75+ Brands For Films & TV. Hit refresh on your social media strategies. Head to Social Media Week in NYC this April 9–11 for campaign insights, content inspiration and new industry connections. Register before March 4 to save 20% on your pass. Progressive Insurance’s Dr. Rick made a cameo, Smartwater ad-bombed the proceedings and Dude Wipes declared a premature victory. All in all, Liquid Death’s recently concluded eBay auction lived up to its pre-launch hype, resulting in 200-plus bids, a mostly good-natured brand pile-on and a robust social media discussion, with comments actually worth reading. The winner ultimately turned out to be Coinbase after the crypto company agreed to pay $500,114 for a unique media buy on a half-million Liquid Death packages.Because of technical glitches during the process, Liquid Death took extra time to study bids and announce results, invalidating Dude Wipes’ claim that its $355,500 bid had come out on top.“While the Dudes are used to being around a lot of sh*t, winning the auction and then being dumped by Liquid Death really stinks,” per the brand’s statement.