Category Archives: Ai
Big Tech looks to turn the corner on cloud as AI focus stays strong – Reuters
[1/3]A Microsoft logo is seen in Los Angeles, California U.S. November 7, 2017. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo
July 24 (Reuters) - U.S. tech giants could signal an end to the nearly year-long slowdown in their cloud businesses as signs of economic resilience encourage clients to boost technology spending, while a pickup in digital ads will also aid profits.
Microsoft, Google-owner Alphabet, Amazon.com and Meta Platforms companies that are together valued at over $6 trillion are set to report earnings this week and the next, in what will be a test for their hefty valuations and the broader market rally they have driven thanks to optimism over artificial intelligence.
"We're really only looking for metrics that point to ramping user traction for AI-based offerings, with the idea being that they will generate more meaningful revenue in the medium-term," Canaccord Genuity analyst Kingsley Crane said.
The four companies have this year aggressively integrated AI into their products on hopes that it would drive the industry's next growth cycle, but those efforts will take time to pay off.
For Amazon (AMZN.O), Microsoft (MSFT.O) and Alphabet (GOOGL.O) the three biggest players in the cloud market the April-June quarter is expected to mark another period of dismal growth in the business that has long been a cash cow.
Both Amazon and Alphabet will likely report their lowest-ever growth for the cloud computing business at 9.8% and 24.4%, respectively, according to analysts polled by Refinitiv. Meanwhile Microsoft Intelligent Cloud, home to Azure, is expected to grow at 13.7%, the slowest rate since 2017.
However, several analysts believe the trend is about to change.
"While the macro continues to be soft, it is not getting materially worse and companies are figuring out how to operate in this," RBC Capital Markets analyst Rishi Jaluria said.
The current quarter will also have easier year-ago comparisons as the cloud slowdown started in the September quarter of 2022, Jaluria added.
A recent survey by RBC Capital of more than 150 enterprise technology buyers showed that over four-fifth of them were funding projects related to generative AI and they broadly expect IT spending to increase this year over 2022.
For Facebook-owner Meta Platforms (META.O), revenue is expected to grow at its fastest pace in six quarters thanks to a pickup in the digital advertising market as consumer spending stays strong.
"If the digital ad space is like riding a roller coaster, we are just about done with the boring/tough part, slowly climbing to the top chain link by chain link," Bernstein analysts said.
The digital ad market recovery will also aid Alphabet, whose Google Search has so far avoided any meaningful market share loss to Microsoft's AI-powered Bing.
Alphabet is expected to report 4.5% revenue growth in the April-June period, its best in three quarters.
"Google Search has seemingly shifted from market share risk to monetization risk, but with search share seemingly healthy, Google may have less urgency to integrate LLM (large-language model) results into commercial queries," analysts at BofA Global Research said.
Microsoft and Alphabet will report quarterly results on July 25, Meta on July 26 and Amazon on Aug. 3.
Reporting by Yuvraj Malik and Aditya Soni in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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Big Tech looks to turn the corner on cloud as AI focus stays strong - Reuters
Top AI tips and prompts to supercharge your content marketing – Search Engine Land
Content marketing is crucial for brand awareness and engagement in the digital landscape.
Generating compelling ideas consistently can be daunting, but generative AI like ChatGPT offers solutions.
This article explores top AI tips to boost your content marketing efforts.
AI prompts are any type of text, data, or question that tells the AI the desired response you seek. These prompts can inspire and generate ideas for limitless content marketing concepts.
Before diving into AI-generated prompts, define your content marketing goals. Are you aiming to educate your audience, generate leads or increase brand visibility?
By having clear objectives in mind, you can better tailor your AI prompts to deliver the desired outcomes.
Dig deeper: 8 important content strategy goals to consider
Want to access the full potential of AI prompts? Use platforms that provide advanced language models.
These platforms allow you to generate high-quality prompts by providing relevant instructions and context.
Experiment with different platforms to find the one that aligns with your needs and offers the best results.
Image AI platforms:
Text AI platforms:
AI music platforms:
AI movie generator platforms:
Use AI prompts effectively to pose thought-provoking questions about your industry or niche.
These questions can be excellent starting points for blog posts, social media content or videos.
For example, if you are in the fitness industry, an AI-generated prompt like What are the latest trends in high-intensity interval training? can inspire a comprehensive article that engages your audience.
Prompt ideas:
AI prompts can help you think outside the box and generate unique perspectives on a given topic.
Instead of relying solely on your own expertise, use AI-generated prompts to explore different angles and viewpoints.
This can add depth and diversity to your content, making it more engaging and valuable for your audience.
Prompt ideas:
Dig deeper: Elevate your PPC with ChatGPT: The art of asking disconfirming questions
ChatGPTs responses may not always be perfect or exactly what youre looking for on the first try.
Experiment with different phrasing or approaches to refine your interaction and get closer to your desired unique perspective.
Engage in dialogue
Instead of asking a single question, engage in a back-and-forth conversation with ChatGPT.
Ask follow-up questions and request elaboration to deepen the exploration of ideas. This iterative approach can help generate more nuanced and diverse perspectives.
Incorporate real-world examples
Provide relevant examples or scenarios to ground the conversation in real-life contexts.
This can help ChatGPT draw connections and generate unique perspectives based on its understanding of the world.
Use your creativity
Stuck in a creative rut? AI prompts can act as creative catalysts, sparking new ideas and fresh content concepts.
Experiment with different prompts and instructions to see how AI-generated suggestions can inspire you to think differently.
For instance, a prompt like Write a futuristic scenario envisioning the impact of AI on Medicare Enrollment could lead to an imaginative and thought-provoking piece.
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ChatGPT can comprehend different styles and tones. Here are some styles and examples to help curate your content to get a more specific result.
A formal and authoritative tone suitable for business-related queries or professional discussions.
Example: "Based on extensive research, it can be concluded that..."
Use cases:
A conversational and approachable tone that fosters a casual atmosphere.
Example: "Hey there! I'm here to help you out. What can I assist you with today?"
Use cases:
An objective and informative tone that provides accurate and detailed explanations.
Example: "The process of photosynthesis involves the conversion of sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into glucose and oxygen."
A lighthearted and fun tone that adds a touch of humor to the conversation.
Example: "Hold on to your hat, because I've got an amazing answer coming your way!"
Use cases
A humorous writing style can make the information more engaging and shareable or even put a fun spin on a conversation with a customer.
A compassionate and understanding tone suitable for discussing sensitive topics or offering emotional support.
Example: "I understand that this situation can be challenging. I'm here to listen and help you through it."
Use cases
Heres a list of prompts that can help you or your team create great ideas:
AI prompts empower content marketers to enhance their creativity and deliver impactful messages that resonate with their audience.
As technology advances, embracing AI in content marketing will become increasingly essential for businesses seeking to stay ahead in the digital landscape.
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
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Top AI tips and prompts to supercharge your content marketing - Search Engine Land
Google’s water use is soaring. AI is only going to make it worse. – Business Insider
Google Cloud CEO, Thomas Kurian Getty
Google just published its 2023 environmental report, and one thing is for certain: The company's water use is soaring.
The internet giant said it consumed 5.6 billion gallons of water in 2022, the equivalent of 37 golf courses. Most of that -- 5.2 billion gallons -- was used for the company's data centers, a 20% increase on the amount Google reported the year prior.
The numbers provide a stark reminder of the environmental cost of running huge data centers, which often require vast amounts of water to stay cool. And as Google and every other tech company in the AI arms race speed to build new data centers, the amount of water they consume will very likely keep rising.
The 20% jump in water consumption is roughly in line with the increase in Google's compute capacity, which has been largely driven by AI, said Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Riverside.
However, Ren said he's skeptical that this increase is sustainable in the long term, even with Google's commitment to replenish water to offset its usage."It just makes their water accounting looks nicer, but the water is still consumed," he told Insider.
Google said it has targeted 2030 as a deadline to replenish 120% of the freshwater it consumes across its offices and data centers. Right now it's replenishing just 6%, according to its own report.
The majority of the water Google is consuming right now is "potable," clean enough to be used as drinking water.
In its latest report, Google said it takes "local water stress" (another way of saying scarcity) into account, and said 82% of its freshwater withdrawals in 2022 came from regions with low water stress.
For the remaining 18%, it says it's "exploring new partnerships and opportunities" to improve watershed health, but it may face increased resistance as more places face water shortages.
In 2019, Google planned a data center in Mesa, Arizona that got a guarantee of up to 4 million gallons of water a day.But as Insider's Alistair Barr recently pointed out, Arizona is already facing a water shortage that could put the brakes on some of these types of deals.
Indeed, a Google spokesperson told Insider that, once completed, the Mesa data center will now make use of "air-cooled technology" instead.
Google isn't the only one that's thirsty. Meta, which is also building a data center in Arizona, used more than 2.6 million cubic meters (about 697 million gallons) of water in 2022, mostly for data centers. Its latest large language model, Llama 2, took a lot of water to train.
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Google's water use is soaring. AI is only going to make it worse. - Business Insider
What the viral AI-generated ‘Barbenheimer’ trailer says about … – VentureBeat
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A new AI-generated movie trailer that splices together the wildly-hyped movies Barbie and Oppenheimer into a mashup featuring a pink mushroom cloud has gone viral.
The trailer offers a spot-on sendup on the Barbenheimer hype that had moviegoers flocking to see both movies back-to-back, even though the two films couldnt be more different Oppenheimer is a sober biopic about the life and legacy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, while Barbie is a fizzy, feminist, live-action look at the famous doll.
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Powered by image generation AI Midjourney and movie generator Runway Gen2 and featuring AI-generated voices supposedly belonging to Margot Robbie and Matt Damon, the Barbenheimer crossover took just four days to make, according to the creators Reddit post, where he shared a link to his course on AI filmmaking.
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But as a reporter covering AIs cheerful, bullish, even fluffy side as well as its serious, sobering side, I cant help but think about three things the AI-generated Barbenheimer movie trailer says about the state of generative AI right now.
So, its no surprise that as the Barbenheimer hype rocketed upward, any online content-maker could jump on board with their own quick-and-dirty AI-generated take to share across social platforms. A traditional ad agency couldnt possibly move fast enough to pull off the same kind of Barbenheimer sendup to meet the moment, and the costs would be prohibitive enough that they likely wouldnt even try.
In an era when social media content is part of the zeitgeist more than ever, theres no doubt that the speed of development of AI-generated entertainment is perfectly placed for todays viral moments. Back in March, for example, a Reddit user shared an AI-generated video of Will Smith eating spaghetti on the r/StableDiffusion subreddit. It quickly spread on social media as well as the mainstream press, with one article saying the video would haunt you for the rest of your life.
Hollywood has come nearly to a halt in recent weeks, with SAG-AFTRA actors and writers currently on strike and expressing particular concerns about the impact of gen AI on their industry and jobs. The Barbenheimer trailer is a perfect example: Who needs the pricey services of Margot Robbie and Matt Damon if you can come up with a serviceable AI copy? Why use the time-consuming work of artists or editors when you have the speedy output of Midjourney and Runway Gen 2?
At the same time, AI-focused creatives who are excited by the possibilities of gen AI are going full-steam ahead even as regulators and policy-makers sprint to catch up. The Senate will be schooled in AI this fall with an eye towards a foundation for developing regulations in 2024. Will that be too little, too late?
The AI-generated Barbenheimer trailer is, in my opinion, funny and adorable. But the idea that you could wrap one of historys most horrifying periods the development of the atomic bomb during World War II, which led to the death of hundreds of thousands at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 in a candy-colored Barbie wrapper and a pink mushroom cloud is equal parts stunning and shocking.
Thats gen AI in a nutshell stunning and shocking, exciting and frightening, dazzling and appalling, sometimes all at once. But certainly, all stakeholders involved in AI development need to consider not just the sugary surface of what gen AI can do, but the deep, real issues that lay underneath.
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What the viral AI-generated 'Barbenheimer' trailer says about ... - VentureBeat
SoftBank forms JV with Symbotic to build AI-powered warehouses … – Reuters
July 24 (Reuters) - SoftBank Group (9984.T) is forming a joint venture with warehouse automation company Symbotic (SYM.O) to build AI-powered warehouses that will be majority owned by the Japanese technology investor, the companies said on Monday.
The firms are investing a total of $100 million in the venture, which will be called GreenBox Systems. The unit has also signed a contract to buy AI-powered systems from Symbotic that will be worth $7.5 billion in the next six years.
Symbotic went public through a merger with a SoftBank Group Corp (9984.T) blank-check firm last June, with investment from SoftBank in public investment in private equity (PIPE) at a valuation of $5.5 billion.
The deal will give SoftBank warrants representing about 2% of the U.S. company's outstanding shares. The Japanese firm said it had also bought 17.8 million shares of Symbotic from CEO Rick Cohen, upping its stake in the company from about 5% to 8%.
Based in Wilmington, Massachusetts, Symbotic provides robotics warehouse automation solutions and counts Walmart (WMT.N) as its major backer and customer. The company said it has a contracted backlog of $12 billion as it helps to retrofit an existing facility to make it automated.
The JV will pursue customers who want to access the warehouse-as-a-service model to have more flexibility in multi-tenant facilities across the supply chain, according to Symbotic.
Shares of Symbotic dropped 6.2% on Monday after giving up initial gains, with a market cap of about $22 billion. SoftBank closed 1.2% higher on the Tokyo bourse before the news.
The move comes at a time when SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son said his conglomerate plans to shift its stance to "offence mode" amid excitement over advances in artificial intelligence.
The rise of ChatGPT this year has led to a flurry of investments in all things AI, even as wider funding dries up in an uncertain economy.
The Japanese company will have a 65% stake in GreenBox, with Symbotic owning the rest.
Symbotic said it expects more than $500 million in annual recurring revenue from the sale of software, parts and services to the JV once it's operational. For fiscal year 2022, Symbotic reported revenue of $593.3 million, up 136% year over year, with a loss of $139.1 million.
Reporting by Zaheer Kachwala and Krystal Hu; Editing by Shailesh Kuber, Anil D'Silva and Cynthia Osterman
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Krystal reports on venture capital and startups for Reuters. She covers Silicon Valley and beyond through the lens of money and characters, with a focus on growth-stage startups, tech investments and AI. She has previously covered M&A for Reuters, breaking stories on Trump's SPAC and Elon Musk's Twitter financing. Previously, she reported on Amazon for Yahoo Finance, and her investigation of the company's retail practice was cited by lawmakers in Congress. Krystal started a career in journalism by writing about tech and politics in China. She has a master's degree from New York University, and enjoys a scoop of Matcha ice cream as much as getting a scoop at work.
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SoftBank forms JV with Symbotic to build AI-powered warehouses ... - Reuters
Driven by AI boom, TSMC to invest $2.9 billion in advanced chip … – Reuters
TAIPEI, July 25 (Reuters) - Driven by a surge in demand for artificial intelligence, Taiwanese chip maker TSMC (2330.TW) plans to invest nearly T$90 billion ($2.87 billion) in an advanced packaging facility in northern Taiwan, the company said on Tuesday.
"To meet market needs, TSMC is planning to establish an advanced packaging fab in the Tongluo Science Park," the company said in a statement.
CEO C.C. Wei said last week that TSMC is unable to fulfil customer demand driven by the AI boom and plans to roughly double its capacity for advanced packaging - which involves placing multiple chips into a single device, lowering the added cost of more powerful computing.
For advanced packaging, especially TSMC's chip on wafer on substrate (CoWoS), capacity is "very tight," Wei said after the company reported a 23% fall in second-quarter profit.
"We are increasing our capacity as quickly as possible. We expect this tightening will be released next year, probably towards the end of next year."
The world's largest contract chipmaker said TSMC's position as the leading manufacturer of AI chips - including for chip designers Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O) - has not offset broader end market weakness as the global economy recovers more slowly than it had expected.
The Tongluo Science Park administration has officially approved TSMC's application to lease land, the company said, adding the new plant in the northern county of Miaoli would create about 1500 jobs.
Even as the leading Apple (AAPL.O) supplier ramps up its expansion abroad, it plans to keep its most advanced chip technology in Taiwan, a global powerhouse in manufacturing semiconductors that power everything from smartphones to electric vehicles.
($1 = 31.3230 Taiwan dollars)
Reporting by Sarah Wu and Yimou Lee; Editing by Kim Coghill and Jamie Freed
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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Driven by AI boom, TSMC to invest $2.9 billion in advanced chip ... - Reuters
Independent Ada Lovelace Institute Asks UK Government to Firm up … – TechRepublic
While the United Nations hashes out regulations, the UKs context-based approach is intended to spur innovation but may cause uncertainty in the industry.
Attempts to create standards and regulations for the way generative AI intersects with many aspects of society are underway across the world. For instance, in March, the U.K. government released a white paper promoting the country as a place to turbocharge growth in AI. According to the white paper, 500,000 people in the U.K. are employed in the AI industry, and AI contributed 3.7 billion ($4.75 billion) to the national economy in 2022.
In response, on July 18, the independent research body Ada Lovelace Institute, in a lengthy report, called for a more robust domestic policy in order to regulate AI through legislation that clarifies and organizes the U.K.s effort to promote AI as an industry.
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The UKs diffuse legal and regulatory network for AI currently has significant gaps. Clearer rights and new institutions are needed to ensure that safeguards extend across the economy, Matt Davies and Michael Birtwistle of the Ada Lovelace Institute wrote.
Both groups are essentially calling for more clarity around AI regulation, but the U.K. government is focusing on being pro-innovation, while the Ada Lovelace Institute promotes an emphasis on oversight. The U.K. government is also working on gradually shifting away from the GDPR as part of post-Brexit reshuffling.
The Ada Lovelace Institutes recommendations include:
Meanwhile, the U.K. prefers to let existing governmental bodies decide how to handle AI on a case-by-case basis. Specifically, the white paper recommends the Health and Safety Executive, Equality and Human Rights Commission and Competition and Markets Authority work on their own context-specific approaches to generative AI.
Gerald Kierce Iturrioz, co-founder and chief executive officer at AI governance management platform Trustible, said his organization agrees with many of the Ada Lovelace Institutes recommendations.
Governments that want to be pro-innovation should clarify the legal gray areas such as use of data for training, how bias and fairness should be evaluated, and what the burden of proof standards should be, he said in an email to TechRepublic.
The U.K. must swiftly establish guardrails to ensure that AI systems are developed and used responsibly within the public sector, Iturrioz said.
If the government doesnt establish guardrails, more risks could arise. For example, Iturrioz pointed out the use of automated facial recognition by the U.K. police, which a human rights study from the University of Cambridge last year found to be ethically and legally dubious.
The U.K.s relatively laissez-faire approach stands in contrast to the European Unions focus on regulation. The EU is working on an AI draft law for a risk-based approach that focuses on reducing bias, coercion or biometric identification such as automated facial recognition. In June, the European Parliament approved draft legislation for the AI Act, which establishes guidelines for the use of AI and forbids some uses, including real-time facial recognition in public places.
Representatives from countries across the world and from many of the leading AI makers presented similar concerns at the first United Nations Security Council meeting on the topic.
The U.K. seems to be waiting to see how implementation and reception of the EUs AI Act should influence their approach towards AI regulations, said Iturrioz. While this makes sense on the surface, there are risks to sitting back while others move ahead on AI regulation.
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Independent Ada Lovelace Institute Asks UK Government to Firm up ... - TechRepublic
Transformers: the Google scientists who pioneered an AI revolution – Financial Times
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Transformers: the Google scientists who pioneered an AI revolution - Financial Times
A Blessing and a Boogeyman: Advertisers Warily Embrace A.I. – The New York Times
The advertising industry is in a love-hate relationship with artificial intelligence.
In the past few months, the technology has made ads easier to generate and track. It is writing marketing emails with subject lines and delivery times tailored to specific subscribers. It gave an optician the means to set a fashion shoot on an alien planet and helped Denmarks tourism bureau animate famous tourist sites. Heinz turned to it to generate recognizable images of its ketchup bottle, then paired them with the symphonic theme that charts human evolution in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
A.I., however, has also plunged the marketing world into a crisis. Much has been made about the technologys potential to limit the need for human workers in fields such as law and financial services. Advertising, already racked by inflation and other economic pressures as well as a talent drain due to layoffs and increased automation, is especially at risk of an overhaul-by-A.I., marketing executives said.
The conflicting attitudes suffused a co-working space in downtown San Francisco where more than 200 people gathered last week for an A.I. for marketers event. Copywriters expressed worry and skepticism about chatbots capable of writing ad campaigns, while start-up founders pitched A.I. tools for automating the creative process.
It really doesnt matter if you are fearful or not: The tools are here, so what do we do? said Jackson Beaman, whose AI User Group organized the event. We could stand here and not do anything, or we can learn how to apply them.
Machine learning, a subset of artificial intelligence that uses data and algorithms to imitate how humans learn, has quietly powered advertising for years. Madison Avenue has used it to target specific audiences, sell and buy ad space, offer user support, create logos and streamline its operations. (One ad agency has a specialized A.I. tool called the Big Lebotski to help clients compose ad copy and boost their profile on search engines).
Enthusiasm came gradually. In 2017, when the advertising group Publicis introduced Marcel, an A.I. business assistant, its peers responded with what it described as outrage, jest and negativity.
At last months Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the glittering apex of the advertising industry calendar, Publicis got its I told you so moment. Around the festival, where the agenda was stuffed with panels about A.I.s being unleashed and affecting the future of creativity, the company plastered artificially generated posters that mocked the original reactions to Marcel.
Is it OK to talk about A.I. at Cannes now? the ads joked.
The answer is clear. The industry has wanted to discuss little else since late last year, when OpenAI released its ChatGPT chatbot and set off a global arms race around generative artificial intelligence.
McDonalds asked the chatbot to name the most iconic burger in the world and splashed the answer the Big Mac across videos and billboards, drawing A.I.-generated retorts from fast food rivals. Coca-Cola recruited digital artists to generate 120,000 riffs on its brand imagery, including its curved bottle and swoopy logo, using an A.I. platform built in part by OpenAI.
The surge of A.I. experimentation has brought to the fore a host of legal and logistical challenges, including the need to protect reputations and avoid misleading consumers.
A recent campaign from Virgin Voyages allowed users to prompt a digital avatar of Jennifer Lopez to issue customized video invitations to a cruise, including the names of potential guests. But, to prevent Ms. Lopez from appearing to use inappropriate language, the avatar could say only names from a preapproved list and otherwise defaulted to terms like friend and sailor.
Its still in the early stages there were challenges to get the models right, to get the look right, to get the sound right and there are very much humans in the loop throughout, said Brian Yamada, the chief innovation officer of VMLY&R, the agency that produced the campaign for Virgin.
Elaborate interactive campaigns like Virgins make up a minority of advertising; 30-second video clips and captioned images, often with variations lightly adjusted for different demographics, are much more common. In recent months, several large tech companies, including Meta, Google and Adobe, have announced artificial intelligence tools to handle that sort of work.
Major advertising companies say the technology could streamline a bloated business model. The ad group WPP is working with the chip maker Nvidia on an A.I. platform that could, for example, allow car companies to easily incorporate footage of a vehicle into scenes customized for local markets without laboriously filming different commercials around the world.
To many of the people who work on such commercials, A.I.s advance feels like looming obsolescence, especially in the face of several years of slowing growth and a shift in advertising budgets from television and other legacy media to programmatic ads and social platforms. The media agency GroupM predicted last month that artificial intelligence was likely to influence at least half of all advertising revenue by the end of 2023.
Theres little doubt that the future of creativity and A.I. will be increasingly intertwined, said Philippe Krakowsky, the chief executive of the Interpublic Group of Companies, an ad giant.
IPG, which was hiring chief A.I. officers and similar executives years before ChatGPTs debut, now hopes to use the technology to deliver highly personalized experiences.
That said, we need to apply a very high level of diligence and discipline, and collaborate across industries, to mitigate bias, misinformation and security risk in order for the pace of advancement to be sustained, Mr. Krakowsky added.
A.I.s ability to copy and deceive, which has already found widespread public expression in political marketing from Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and others, has alarmed many advertising executives. They are also concerned about intellectual property issues and the direction and speed of A.I. development. Several ad agencies joined organizations such as the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, which wants to trace content from its origins, and the Partnership on AI, which aims to keep the technology ethically sound.
Amid the doom and gloom, the agency Wunderman Thompson decided this spring to take A.I. down a peg.
In an Australian campaign for Kit Kat candy bars, the agency used text and image generators from OpenAI to create intentionally awkward ads with the tagline AI made this ad so we could have a break. In one, warped figures chomped on blurry chocolate bars over a script narrated in a mechanical monotone: Someone hands them a Kit Kat bar. They take a bite.
The campaign would be trickier to pull off now, in part because the fast-improving technology has erased many of the flaws present just a few months ago, said Annabelle Barnum, the general manager for Wunderman Thompson in Australia. Still, she said, humans will always be key to the advertising process.
Creativity comes from real human insight A.I. is always going to struggle with that because it relies purely on data to make decisions, she said. So while it can enhance the process, ultimately it will never be able to take away anything that creators can really do because that humanistic element is required.
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A Blessing and a Boogeyman: Advertisers Warily Embrace A.I. - The New York Times
An A.I. Supercomputer Whirs to Life, Powered by Giant Computer … – The New York Times
Inside a cavernous room this week in a one-story building in Santa Clara, Calif., six-and-a-half-foot-tall machines whirred behind white cabinets. The machines made up a new supercomputer that had become operational just last month.
The supercomputer, which was unveiled on Thursday by Cerebras, a Silicon Valley start-up, was built with the companys specialized chips, which are designed to power artificial intelligence products. The chips stand out for their size like that of a dinner plate, or 56 times as large as a chip commonly used for A.I. Each Cerebras chip packs the computing power of hundreds of traditional chips.
Cerebras said it had built the supercomputer for G42, an A.I. company. G42 said it planned to use the supercomputer to create and power A.I. products for the Middle East.
What were showing here is that there is an opportunity to build a very large, dedicated A.I. supercomputer, said Andrew Feldman, the chief executive of Cerebras. He added that his start-up wanted to show the world that this work can be done faster, it can be done with less energy, it can be done for lower cost.
Demand for computing power and A.I. chips has skyrocketed this year, fueled by a worldwide A.I. boom. Tech giants such as Microsoft, Meta and Google, as well as myriad start-ups, have rushed to roll out A.I. products in recent months after the A.I.-powered ChatGPT chatbot went viral for the eerily humanlike prose it could generate.
But making A.I. products typically requires significant amounts of computing power and specialized chips, leading to a ferocious hunt for more of those technologies. In May, Nvidia, the leading maker of chips used to power A.I. systems, said appetite for its products known as graphics processing units, or GPUs was so strong that its quarterly sales would be more than 50 percent above Wall Street estimates. The forecast sent Nvidias market value soaring above $1 trillion.
For the first time, were seeing a huge jump in the computer requirements because of A.I. technologies, said Ronen Dar, a founder of Run:AI, a start-up in Tel Aviv that helps companies develop A.I. models. That has created a huge demand for specialized chips, he added, and companies have rushed to secure access to them.
To get their hands on enough A.I. chips, some of the biggest tech companies including Google, Amazon, Advanced Micro Devices and Intel have developed their own alternatives. Start-ups such as Cerebras, Graphcore, Groq and SambaNova have also joined the race, aiming to break into the market that Nvidia has dominated.
Chips are set to play such a key role in A.I. that they could change the balance of power among tech companies and even nations. The Biden administration, for one, has recently weighed restrictions on the sale of A.I. chips to China, with some American officials saying Chinas A.I. abilities could pose a national security threat to the United States by enhancing Beijings military and security apparatus.
A.I. supercomputers have been built before, including by Nvidia. But its rare for start-ups to create them.
Cerebras, which is based in Sunnyvale, Calif., was founded in 2016 by Mr. Feldman and four other engineers, with the goal of building hardware that speeds up A.I. development. Over the years, the company has raised $740 million, including from Sam Altman, who leads the A.I. lab OpenAI, and venture capital firms such as Benchmark. Cerebras is valued at $4.1 billion.
Because the chips that are typically used to power A.I. are small often the size of a postage stamp it takes hundreds or even thousands of them to process a complicated A.I. model. In 2019, Cerebras took the wraps off what it claimed was the largest computer chip ever built, and Mr. Feldman has said its chips can train A.I. systems between 100 and 1,000 times as fast as existing hardware.
G42, the Abu Dhabi company, started working with Cerebras in 2021. It used a Cerebras system in April to train an Arabic version of ChatGPT.
In May, G42 asked Cerebras to build a network of supercomputers in different parts of the world. Talal Al Kaissi, the chief executive of G42 Cloud, a subsidiary of G42, said the cutting-edge technology would allow his company to make chatbots and to use A.I. to analyze genomic and preventive care data.
But the demand for GPUs was so high that it was hard to obtain enough to build a supercomputer. Cerebrass technology was both available and cost-effective, Mr. Al Kaissi said. So Cerebras used its chips to build the supercomputer for G42 in just 10 days, Mr. Feldman said.
The time scale was reduced tremendously, Mr. Al Kaissi said.
Over the next year, Cerebras said, it plans to build two more supercomputers for G42 one in Texas and one in North Carolina and, after that, six more distributed across the world. It is calling this network Condor Galaxy.
Start-ups are nonetheless likely to find it difficult to compete against Nvidia, said Chris Manning, a computer scientist at Stanford whose research focuses on A.I. Thats because people who build A.I. models are accustomed to using software that works on Nvidias A.I. chips, he said.
Other start-ups have also tried entering the A.I. chips market, yet many have effectively failed, Dr. Manning said.
But Mr. Feldman said he was hopeful. Many A.I. businesses do not want to be locked in only with Nvidia, he said, and there is global demand for other powerful chips like those from Cerebras.
We hope this moves A.I. forward, he said.
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An A.I. Supercomputer Whirs to Life, Powered by Giant Computer ... - The New York Times