Weekly AI Recap: Apple’s new M4 chip, Dotdash Meredith signs licensing deal with OpenAI
Plus, xAI is reportedly expected to close its current funding round at a valuation of around $18bn.
Apple is expected to make some significant AI announcements during its Worldwide Developers Conference next month. / Adobe Stock
Apple brings AI to the iPad with powerful new chip
During a virtual event to showcase upgrades to the iPad on Tuesday, Apple highlighted some new AI features that it hopes will boost its competitive edge in the industry-wide race to commercialize the technology.
The latest iteration of the iPad Pro is equipped with the new M4, a new chip that incorporates both a CPU and a GPU. It’s also built with a new and improved “neural engine,” enabling AI-powered features like Visual Look Up, which identifies specific objects in images and video.
“The neural engine in M4 is Apple’s most capable yet and is more powerful than any neural processing unit in any AI PC today,” Apple wrote in a press release.
While other tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Meta have been gaining headway in their efforts to build AI tools, Apple has thus far been relatively and conspicuously quiet about its plans for deploying the technology. The company is expected to make major AI-related announcements during its annual Worldwide Developers Conference next month.
Dotdash Meredith partners with OpenAI
On Tuesday, Dotdash Meredith (DDM) – the digital media giant behind publications like People, Better Homes & Gardens, InStyle and Investopedia – became the latest major publisher to sign a licensing deal with OpenAI.
Through the deal, ChatGPT users will begin seeing content from and links to articles from DDM-owned publications. DDM content will also now be used to train the large language model powering the AI chatbot, and OpenAI has agreed to help the publisher develop new AI products.
The agreement also includes provisions for OpenAI to enhance the capabilities of D/Cipher, DDM’s AI-powered ad-targeting system.
“D/Cipher is built upon billions of first-party data signals from across our incredible brands – we understand consumer intent based on context, not personal identifiers,” Jon Roberts, chief innovation officer at DDM, said in a statement. “We can tap the power of OpenAI’s models to make D/Cipher ad targeting more granular, more nuanced and more effective in engaging consumers. This combination will be a game changer for advertisers.”
A similar deal was struck last week between OpenAI and the Financial Times.
Musk’s xAI reportedly on track for $18bn valuation
xAI, the startup founded by Elon Musk last summer to compete with OpenAI, is expected to reach a valuation of around $18bn, according to a Wednesday report from Bloomberg. The funding round is expected to be finalized before the end of this week.
The AI company’s roster of investors includes Sequoia Capital, arguably the most famous tech-focused venture capital firm.
In a pitch deck to investors, xAI reportedly emphasized Musk’s decorated history as an entrepreneur and CEO. Additionally, it highlighted that Grok – xAI’s chatbot – would be trained on data from the social media platform X, which Musk also owns.
Meta begins rolling out new image- and text-generation features for brands
Meta is ramping up its generative AI offerings to advertisers with new features designed to quickly create imagery and text for branded social media content. The new features, unveiled on Tuesday, are currently being rolled out in an early testing phase and are expected to be globally deployed by the end of this year.
Meta head of monetization John Hegeman told reporters gathered at Meta’s Manhattan offices on Tuesday morning that the company is currently working on the best way to approach labels for AI-generated ads and that those will be in place before the new features are released globally.
The features are currently unavailable to advertisers promoting political campaigns or other culturally charged social issues.
Experts discuss the evolving role of generative AI in marketing at The Drum Live US
The Drum Live US kicked off on Wednesday morning with a panel discussion on generative AI and its myriad impacts on the marketing industry.
The tone was generally optimistic. All three panelists – Bacardi’s Laila Mignoni, Uber Advertising’s Mrinalini Nair and Runway’s Emily Golden – agreed that the technology presented huge new creative opportunities to marketers. They also noted its capacity to free them from mundane and time-consuming tasks.
The conversation also touched on some of the legal and ethical risks presented by generative AI, including the fact that many models are trained on content from the internet that wasn’t gathered consensually – a subject that has become especially salient in popular culture in the wake of the recent Hollywood writer’s strike, among other high-profile incidents.
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