Google's AI is Transforming Search Ads

Today:

Google is ready to fill its AI searches with ads

Google's parent company, Alphabet, just spilled the beans on their third-quarter earnings and, surprise surprise, they're swimming in cash. Google's ad business, their old reliable, is still printing money, pulling in a cool $44 billion. That’s an 11% hike from last year, in case you’re keeping score.

Google is going all in on AI, trying to shove it into every product they’ve got. Their new AI-powered Search Generative Experience (SGE) is still in the 'try it if you dare' phase, but Google's already brainstorming ways to slap ads on it. CEO Sundar Pichai is talking about new ad formats that jive well with SGE, so don't be surprised if you start seeing those popping up in the near future.

On the earnings call, the big wigs made it clear that they’re all about keeping advertisers in the loop as they roll out SGE. They want to make sure the product's a hit, the cash keeps flowing, and the ads make a smooth transition.

Pichai is playing the long game here, looking to revamp search and the Assistant feature over the next decade. He’s pretty much saying that SGE is the future of search, and now they’re brainstorming on how to turn it into a cash cow.

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YouTube Music now lets you create custom AI-generated playlist art

YouTube Music's jazzing things up a bit. They're rolling out a feature for the folks in the U.S. that lets you whip up some snazzy AI-made playlist art. Click your boring ol' default playlist pic, pick a theme like "nature" or "pugs looking fancy", and bam! The AI spits out some artsy options. And if you're stressing about your '90s jam mix looking plain? They got your back.

Oh, and heads up, they're also gonna add a thing to the app's home screen showing your latest obsessions. Kinda like Spotify's "Here's what you've been jamming to" vibe. YouTube Music's been adding all sorts of bells and whistles lately, like TikTok-ish music clips and karaoke-style lyrics. Stay tuned for the next episode of "What Will YouTube Do Next?"

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Gemini is coming to Makersuite & so are Stubbs

Google's pulling a fast one on us with a brand spanking new tool called GEMINI, and it’s hitching a ride straight to Makersuite. If you thought PaLM 2 was the bee’s knees, wait till you get a load of this.

Makersuite, in all its glory, has been playing it cool with text-to-text outputs. But let’s be real, we're all itching for a piece of that multimodal action. Bard had a taste of it with image inputs, and some rebels were even trying to finagle their way into getting that feature with unofficial APIs. But hold your horses, because GEMINI is here to save the day.

There's another secret weapon in Google’s arsenal, and it’s called STUBBS. Ever dreamed of whipping up your own AI-generated app without breaking a sweat? Well, dream no more. With STUBBS, you can create, launch, and even share your masterpiece, all from the comfort of Makersuite. It’s like having your cake and eating it too.

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Amazon’s AI-Powered Van Inspections Give It a Powerful New Data Feed

Amazon’s swapped out the old-school elbow grease for some camera-studded gadgets to check out its heaps of delivery vans. They're rolling with this new tech called AVI. Picture this: a driver wraps up their route, cruises through this fancy camera arch made by a company named UVeye, and bam! These cameras look over the van from every angle, even the underbelly. They'll spot everything from a measly nail in the tire to that unfortunate dent you swear "was already there."

Aziz Makkiya, a bigwig at Amazon, says these robot inspectors cut the usual check-up time from five minutes down to just one. And when you've got as many vans as Amazon does, that's some serious time saved. Plus, it’s all about safety – catching the little things before they turn into big, expensive problems.

They’ve already set up this tech in a handful of places around the globe. What’s in it for Amazon? Well, besides the time-saving and the safety stuff, it’s also a peek into how their delivery partners treat those big gray vans. Amazon foots the bill for general upkeep, but if you ding it, you're paying. And this tech? It only checks the outside. So, no sneaky business about how the van's been driven.

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Google Photos will soon give you more say in those AI-created video highlights

Google Photos is stepping up its game, giving us more control over those AI-created video highlights that sometimes feel like a hit-or-miss. No more sitting back and letting the app throw together a mishmash of photos. Now, Google's letting us call the shots, choose what goes in, and jazz it up with our own tunes.

So, here's the lowdown: you pick what you want in your video—people, places, or whatever floats your boat. Google Photos will then whip up a video, add some music, and let you tweak it until it's just right. Before, if you wanted a custom video, you had to do all the heavy lifting yourself. This update feels like a sweet spot between the two—like Google's finally letting us ride shotgun.

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Shopify's former head of its app ecosystem business is launching an AI imaging tool for online sellers

Fatima Yusuf, formerly at the helm of Shopify’s app ecosystem, has kicked off her own gig with ImagineCreate AI—an AI tool aimed at making life easier for Shopify merchants snapping product pics. Before Shopify, Yusuf was in the e-commerce trenches with her startup Tressle.

Post-Shopify, Yusuf dove into creating a beauty oil brand, quickly realizing that getting top-notch product photos is no walk in the park. She faced the usual hurdles: waiting on product samples, booking photographers, and the painstaking process of editing and tailoring photos for different sales channels. Enter ImagineCreate AI, her brainchild to turn this time-gobbling process into a quick, AI-driven cakewalk.

The tool, now in cahoots with Shopify as a web app, lets sellers upload a product shot, jazz it up with a custom background, and even spit out tailored image captions. All this with the magic of AI, bringing what used to be weeks of work down to minutes. Yusuf, drawing on her Shopify smarts and her experience in the e-commerce jungle, aims to democratize AI for merchants, making it a no-brainer tool even for those not in the tech-savvy crowd.

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This new data poisoning tool lets artists fight back against generative AI

Meet Nightshade, the latest brainchild of a University of Chicago whiz team led by Professor Ben Zhao, aiming to give artists a fighting chance against the big bad wolves of the AI world. What’s the beef, you ask? AI giants like OpenAI and Google have been a bit too trigger-happy, scraping artists' work off the web without so much as a how-do-you-do, let alone asking for permission.

Enter Nightshade. This tool is like a secret sauce for digital art, making tiny tweaks to the pixels that are invisible to us mere mortals but can send an AI model into a tailspin. Imagine turning DALL-E into a bumbling, confused mess where dogs morph into cats and cars transform into cows.

The team's also cooked up Glaze, a tool that lets artists disguise their signature style from the prying eyes of AI. And soon, Nightshade will be part of the Glaze package, with artists calling the shots on whether to throw the AI off its game.

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Microsoft reports higher profits and revenue powered by cloud computing and AI investments

Microsoft's raking in the dough, with a flashy 27% profit boost this quarter, all thanks to their smart moves in cloud computing and AI. Their net income hit a sweet $22.29 billion, leaving Wall Street's predictions in the dust. Revenue? Up 13% from last year, at $56.52 billion. Analysts missed the mark there too, underestimating the tech giant.

Satya Nadella, the big boss, is all in on AI, saying it's getting woven into everything they do. And it shows, with their cloud business shooting up 19%, hitting $24.26 billion. Not too shabby. The Office suite and other work tools? They're up 13%, at $18.59 billion. Even the old Windows and Xbox divisions are seeing some action, with a 3% and 13% increase, respectively.

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DataGPT uses generative AI to transform every employee into a skilled business analyst

DataGPT, a fresh-faced startup, is rolling out what they claim is a game-changing tool: an AI-powered chatbot that can crunch numbers like a seasoned business analyst.

Most businesses are sitting on a goldmine of data but haven’t quite figured out how to strike it rich. The tools out there are either too clunky or just missing the mark. And while some AI tools can talk the talk, they can't quite walk the walk when it comes to digging into hefty databases.

Enter DataGPT. They’ve married the gift of the gab from conversational AI with some heavy-duty analytics, all to help Joe and Jane Doe make sense of their business data. Picture this: you shoot the breeze with this AI like you would with a coworker, asking things like, “Hey, why’s our cash flow looking so sad this week?” And bam! You get your answers, quick and easy.

The startup’s even got a secret weapon: a super-fast, soon-to-be open-source database that leaves traditional tools in the dust. It’s like they’ve put their AI on rocket fuel, ready to fire off millions of queries in the blink of an eye.

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AI-based MRI tools show promise in multiple sclerosis diagnosis

MS is this nasty disease that messes with your brain and spinal cord, making it hard for some folks to think straight or move around like they used to. About 2.8 million people worldwide are dealing with this. Now, doctors use MRI scans to keep tabs on the disease and decide on treatment. But, it's not always easy to spot the small changes in the brain that show the disease is getting worse.

Enter AI. The study looked at a tool called iQ-Solutions, or iQ-MS for short. This tool uses a bunch of algorithms to analyze brain scans and spot the tiny changes that might mean MS is acting up. They compared the results from this tool to what expert radiologists came up with the old-fashioned way.

The cool part? iQ-MS did a bang-up job. It could give doctors a bunch of data on how the disease is doing, point out even the smallest changes in the brain, and even give a heads-up if something looked off in the scan. And it did all this better than the traditional reports from the MRI lab and radiologists.

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Sam Altman on the Future of AI—and How to Navigate the Tricky Path Forward

Sam Altman and Mira Murati from OpenAI had a chinwag at The Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live conference, where they laid down their thoughts on artificial intelligence’s future and the bumpy road ahead. They’re convinced AI is the sharpest tool in the shed and it's poised to do wonders for humanity, but it's all about handling the change it brings without tripping over our own feet.

Sam's of the mind that in the next few decades, we need smart tools and cheap energy like we need air to breathe. He’s betting big on artificial general intelligence (AGI)—that’s AI on steroids, able to outdo humans in any job. As for Mira, she’s playing it cool, saying AGI’s on the horizon, but it’s a slippery fish to catch.

They admitted that training their AI models hasn’t been all peaches and cream, especially with Hollywood and publishers giving them the side-eye. Sam’s game plan? Experiment, partner up, and ride the wave of technological progress until they hit the sweet spot. And he’s quick to point out that it’s not about who’s got the deepest pockets for data, but who’s got the smarts.

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AI will never threaten humans, says top Meta scientist

Meta’s head AI guy, Yann LeCun, thinks slapping regulations on AI now is like telling a toddler not to run before they can even crawl. He feels some big tech honchos are getting a bit big for their boots, thinking only they can safely cook up AI. He’s all for everyone getting their hands on AI tech, contrary to the bigwigs at Google and OpenAI who seem to like keeping their toys close to their chest. Now, some folks are getting their knickers in a twist, thinking letting just anyone play with AI is inviting trouble. But LeCun points out, the internet turned out just fine without a babysitter.

He believes that before AI gets anywhere near us in the smarts department, we’ve got a few mountains to climb. And when that day comes, instead of world domination, they’ll be our trusty sidekicks. Imagine AI helping us whip climate change into shape or sort out diseases. Meta's already sprinkling AI magic into their offerings, and LeCun sees a future where our digital butlers take the wheel. So, say goodbye to the old-fashioned ways of Googling stuff. Cool or creepy? You decide.

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