Gemini Fail, Monopoly Loss & Shakespearean Lawsuits
5 in 5 - Brave & Heart HeartBeat #211 ❤️
This week Gemini AI learned nothing from Apple’s AI ad backlash, Meta introduces their AI Studio on Insta and Google finally lose that monopoly court case (ouch).
Plus, Elon Musk sets off another lawsuit, and teens no longer feel the allure of Silicon Valley.
Let’s get into it.
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#1 - Gemini AI Miss The Olympic Mark
The Olympics are in swing, so of course advertisers are going to jump on the bandwagon to advertise anything and everything – snacks, trainers, and AI chatbots.
Gemini AI put out an Olympics themed ad that went down like a lead balloon, so much so that they’ve actually had to take it down. Copying Apple as usual, we see…
The ad was about a little girl who asked her dad for help writing a letter to her hero, US Olympic track star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. So far so classic for an Olympics-themed ad, however as this is also an AI ad, the dad just asks Gemini AI to do it. Problem solved!
Not for Google, who learned NOTHING from the piano-crushing backlash of the Apple ad, and have also been lambasted across the internet for missing the point. The point of a fan letter is to make heart-to-heart contact – does it even mean anything if AI wrote it for you?
Google said that of course, the ad was only meant to show how we could use AI to “provide a starting point” or gives someone “ideas for their writing” – yeah right.
In a world where using AI to write personal content, or any content at all, is still pretty taboo, tech companies are STILL not reading the room.
#2 – Instagram Introduces AI Studio
Instagram are still continuing to roll out new features despite everyone begging them to just please put the algorithm back to how it was. Alas, they won’t do that. So, what have we got now?
Instead of being able to see your friends posts in the order they posted them in, Meta are launching the much more useful (not) feature which will allow people to build virtual characters with custom personalities, traits and interests.
If you’re a creator, for example, which is a nice word for influencer, you can use AI Studio to create your own “digital dopperlganger” to interact with your fans in your DMs. Like above, why do it yourself if you can have AI do it for you?
It works by allowing you to customize a chatbot by giving a detailed description, including a name and an image, and then specifying how it should respond to a particular comment or question – Llama will then draw on those instructions to improvise their responses.
Mark Zuckerberg, continuing his crusade to stop real people actually speaking to each other, said that every creator can now build an AI version of themselves that their community can interact with. Great!
Their last foray into chatbots was totally unnecessary, totally stupid, and totally now in the bin. To jog your memory, this was the chatbot launch which included personalities based on celebs that famously had no personalities – think Kendall Jenner and that American Football Guy (which one? Doesn’t matter).
This launch may fare better, as there seems to be a market for personalised bots – Character AI has attracted millions of users to their custom chatbots already.
Good job they’re branching out into AI, because Google’s search engine domination days may be over.
The tech world is currently reeling – or jumping up and down with joy, depending who you are – after the seismic ruling that Google’s monopoly on online search and related advertising is illegal, after four long years in court.
So what now?
Potentially Google might be forced to break up into separate companies – a solution which is being described as the “nuclear” option.
Another remedy could be linked to Google paying everyone to use their search engine as the default – most famously Apple. If remedial action means Google will be less able to do that, companies like Apple might start making their own search functions.
One simple option could be a “choice screen” – something the EU and the Digital Markets Act have already pushed through. The damage may already be done though, because if you haven’t got a horse in the race – i.e. a reason to want to stick it to Google – you’ll probably just click Google out of habit. Lord knows we did…
Whatever does happen, much like the trial, it won’t be immediate, so watch this space.
#4 - Elon Musk Strikes Again
Musk is suing OpenAI AGAIN, as if he’s got nothing better to do?
He already tried to sue them once in February, saying that Altman and co-founder Greg Brokman broke the “founding agreement” of OpenAI – which was to develop AI to make humanity better.
Because you know, looking at what used to be Twitter we can clearly see that the betterment of humanity is Elon Musk’s priority, but anyway…
He abruptly dropped that lawsuit with no explanation – CLASSIC Musk – and then hit them with another suit last week, in which he claims that they manipulated him into co-foudning the company with them.
The suit again focuses on the fact that the company went from a non-profit to a for-profit, and is described by Musk as a “textbook tale of Altruism versus greed”.
The lawsuit describing Altman’s team’s deceit as being “of Shakespearean proportions” and “seeks the disgorgement of their ill-gotten gains on a grand scale”.
Very wordy, very fancy. In the meantime, as Musk is uploading parody videos of Kamala Harris onto his own platform, which break the misinformation policy of his own platform, with the caption “hilarious” we’re struggling to believe that he is the world’s most altruistic man.
#5 - Tech No Longer A Dream
A recent survey claims to have gotten to the bottom of what the next generation are looking for in a job, and the silicon valley tech world is no longer calling to them, apparently.
Perhaps as a reaction the the Covid pandemic, high achieving teens are looking more towards government and healthcare roles than big tech.
Although Google, Amazon and Apple still made it into the Top 10 list for most coveted employers, they all lost place in the rankings in comparison to their positions in 2018, along with Microsoft, Instagram and Netflix – who didn’t make it into the shortlist.
In comparison, St Jude Children’s Research Hospital took the top spot, with the Mayo Clinic coming second and Health Care Services Corp. coming third. The FBI came 5th and NASA came 6th, moving up from their 2018 places.
So tech is out, and healthcare and important government stuff is in.
Some commentators are suggesting this could be a reaction to doubts around job stability and AI – people are always going to get ill, am I right?
Brave & Heart over and out.
Bonus
AI TV
There exists a streaming service where you create your own content… with AI obviously.
After an episode of South Park created by AI went viral, the company behind it decided to launch an entire streaming service where you create your own TV using AI prompts.
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