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Google unveils its first AI-powered search ad features

Also: Trolls have flooded X with graphic Taylor Swift AI fakes

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AI KATANA
January 25, 2024

Hi!

In today's newsletter, we delve into the latest advancements and trends in AI technology across various sectors. Google introduces AI-powered search ad features, creating a more interactive advertising experience by automating content generation. PayPal launches AI-driven products to enhance customer transactions and merchant sales, including Smart Receipts for personalized shopping experiences. The CIO's 2024 AI playbook offers strategic advice for maximizing AI investments in IT, highlighting the need for efficient and informed decision-making. In the developing world, AI promises to revolutionize sectors like education and healthcare, though challenges in accessibility and governance persist. An alarming incident on X (formerly Twitter) involving AI-generated fake images of Taylor Swift underscores the ongoing struggle with regulating AI-generated content online. On the corporate front, Google Cloud partners with Hugging Face to bolster AI development, while its innovative AI video generator, Lumiere, showcases new possibilities in digital media creation. Finally, the AI sector continues to attract strong venture capital interest, with startups in generative AI experiencing robust valuation growth, signaling enduring investor confidence in AI's future.

Sliced:

  • 🆕 Google unveils its first AI-powered search ad features

  • 🤖 PayPal launching AI-powered products

  • 🧑‍💼 The CIO’s 2024 AI playbook

  • 🌍 AI holds tantalising promise for the emerging world

  • ⚠️ Trolls have flooded X with graphic Taylor Swift AI fakes

Google has introduced its first AI-powered features for search advertisements, marking a significant advancement in digital advertising. These new features, part of the Gemini integration in Google Ads, utilize the platform's most advanced AI model to create a chatbot-style 'conversational experience'. This innovation automates the generation of ad content, including images, headlines, descriptions, and keywords, by leveraging AI. Initially available in beta to advertisers in the US and UK, it will soon be globally accessible to all English-language advertisers. This tool aims to assist both small and large businesses in efficiently scaling and testing their advertising campaigns, integrating Google's AI expertise with the advertisers' knowledge. Additionally, all AI-generated images in Google Ads will be watermarked and metadata-tagged, ensuring transparency about their AI-generated nature..

PayPal is launching a suite of AI-powered products designed to enhance customer transactions and merchant sales. These products include six new features, with key offerings like "Smart Receipts" which track customer purchases and predict future buying interests using AI. This initiative aims to improve the efficiency of the checkout process, offer personalized deals, and leverage customers' shopping data for targeted marketing. Additionally, PayPal is ensuring customer privacy with transparent, user-controlled data sharing options, and revamping its app to offer AI-driven personalized shopping recommendations, signifying a major shift in PayPal's approach to payment and commerce solutions.

The CIO's 2024 AI playbook emphasizes strategies for maximizing the return on AI investments. It advises CIOs to focus on deploying AI to improve IT efficiency, scrutinize SaaS solutions that claim AI capabilities but don't deliver substantial improvements, and expand collaboration within the C-suite to ensure more informed IT decision-making. These guidelines are particularly pertinent as budgets face increased scrutiny and organizations seek to rationalize their tech stack, requiring CIOs to be more judicious in identifying valid AI use cases and investments.

AI's impact in the emerging world offers transformative potential, particularly in developing countries. It is poised to enhance productivity, bridge human capital gaps, and provide tailored public services, potentially revolutionizing education and healthcare. AI's widespread accessibility via mobile technology and its adaptability to local contexts are crucial benefits. However, challenges like equitable access, governance issues, and cost management need addressing. This scenario presents an exceptional opportunity for emerging economies to use AI for significant growth and societal advancement.

❌ Trolls have flooded X with graphic Taylor Swift AI fakes

An incident on X (formerly Twitter) involved the spread of AI-generated, sexually explicit images falsely depicting Taylor Swift. This situation, which saw a post gain over 45 million views before removal, highlights the challenges in controlling the spread of AI-generated fake pornography. Despite policies against such content, many posts remained live, prompting Swift's fans to counteract the spread by promoting authentic content. This event underscores the difficulties social platforms face in moderating AI-generated content and the broader issues surrounding deepfake technology.

🛠️ AI tools updates

Google Cloud has formed a partnership with Hugging Face, a leader in open-source AI software, to attract AI developers. This collaboration will allow developers using Google Cloud's infrastructure to access and deploy Hugging Face's extensive repository of AI models and datasets. The partnership is a strategic move to meet the increasing demand for cloud-based AI computing and signifies Google Cloud's commitment to providing optimized AI software solutions and encouraging innovation in AI development.

Google's new AI video generator, Lumiere, is a groundbreaking text-to-video model that can generate scenes from text or use images as prompts for video creation. It includes features like "Video Stylization" for transforming elements in source videos, and "Cinemagraphs" for animating parts of an image while keeping the rest static. Lumiere represents a significant advancement in AI video generation, showcasing the potential of AI in transforming digital media creation.

💵 Venture Capital updates

The AI sector is witnessing robust growth in valuations, defying predictions of a slowdown. Startups in generative AI continue to attract significant venture capital, as evidenced by recent substantial funding rounds and valuations. For instance, voice AI startup ElevenLabs and AI startups like Anthropic and Cohere have seen considerable valuation increases in recent funding rounds. These developments indicate a sustained investor interest in AI, despite a general plateau in funding compared to the previous year. The trend underscores the growing importance and optimism in the AI industry's potential.

🫡 Meme of the day

⭐️ Generative AI image of the day