Lab Weekly - 07/19/2024
The Future of Entertainment; Plus, the latest news about AI chatbot, eVTOLs, YouTube Music, and some cool stats
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The Streaming Wars Are Over — What’s Next for Hollywood?
This summer has been one of turmoil and reorganization for Hollywood. Still recovering from the historical double-strikes that put the industry on pause last summer, the entertainment industry is struggling to realign its streaming-led business model with the post-streaming-wars market reality. While the streaming services are all-in on ads, Hollywood needs to look both outward and inward to find its future.
In case you missed it…
Decoding the Ongoing “Vibecession” & Spreading Financial Anxiety
Despite job growth and rising wages, financial anxiety looms large for many U.S. consumers, negatively coloring an individual’s outlook on the economy and impacting consumer behavior. While conventional metrics for macroeconomic health are looking good, prevailing challenges in housing affordability and inflation’s lingering effects continue to stoke economic pessimism.
Open Banking Is Coming to US
The financial landscape in the United States is on the brink of a major transformation with the impending arrival of open banking. This new model promises to revolutionize how consumers interact with financial services, spur more competitions, and facilitate more financial “super apps”. Here’s what open banking means for US consumers, and what it means for financial service brands.
Social Media At a Crossroads of Cultural Backlash & Generative AI
Social media has been in flux for a while, with major social platforms from Twitter to TikTok were confronting existential-level threats while bracing for the impact that generative AI promised to unleash. This year, however, social media companies have a new formidable challenge to overcome: convincing parents that they are not bad for kids. Could generative AI be the savior or its downfall? Let’s take a closer look at social media at a crossroads.
Amazon Ai Chatbot Rufus Is Now Live For All US Customers [TechCrunch]
Step aside, Alexa! There’s a new Amazon chatbot in town. An AI-powered shopping assistant, "Rufus," is now available to all U.S. customers via the Amazon mobile app. Prominently featured in the app's main navigation bar, Rufus uses LLM assists with product searches, comparisons, and recommendations. Initially launched in beta for select users in February, Rufus leverages Amazon's product catalog, customer reviews, community Q&As, and unspecified public web data to enhance its recommendations.
Compared to the more general-purpose Alexa, Rufus obviously has a much narrower use case. But, given that it is a LLM-powered model, Rufus theoretically could offer advanced natural language processing and conversational capabilities that Alexa currently lacks Given Alexa is already a household name, It seems possible that Amazon might integrate Rufus's sophisticated features into Alexa to provide a more intelligent and helpful voice assistant.
Moreover, it'd be great if Amazon can make Rufus a multimodal AI assistant that understands visual inputs to enhance its contextual understanding, improve product discovery, personalize assistance, and provide a seamless user experience. That would allow for integration of advanced features like visual search and context-aware processing, thus creating a more intuitive and accessible online shopping experience for all users.
Related: Amazon is reportedly working on a ChatGPT competitor called Metis [Quartz]; Lily AI matches online shoppers to the merchandise they’re looking for based on colloquial search terms [NYT]
YouTube Music Rolls Out Sound Search, With AI ‘conversational Radio’ In Testing [9to5Google]
YouTube Music is rolling out a new feature called "sound search," which allows users to search its extensive catalog of over 100 million official songs by simply humming or playing a tune. The feature, similar to Google’s “Hum to Search,” can be easily accessed by tapping a waveform button next to the microphone icon in the search bar.
Additionally, YouTube Music is testing an "AI-generated conversational radio" for Premium subscribers in the US. This experimental feature allows users to create custom radio stations by describing what they want to hear. Users can access this feature through a chat-based interface by either typing a prompt or selecting from suggested ones.
Streaming services like YouTube Music and Spotify have been proactively leveraging generative AI to enhance the music and podcasting experience. Features such as sound search and AI-generated conversational radio illustrate a significant shift in how we discover and interact with audio content. As AI technology advances, these services will become increasingly personalized and engaging, offering listeners a more tailored experience. This evolution not only benefits listeners but also provides the creators with new tools to reach and engage with their audiences, if implemented ethically and with full consent of artists and podcasters.
Related: YouTube Shorts adds TikTok-style artificial voiceovers [The Verge]; ElevenLabs previews music-generating AI model [VentureBeat]
Southwest Airlines And Archer Strike A Deal For An Electric Air Taxi Network [The Verge]
Southwest Airlines is the latest major carrier to partner with an eVTOL mobility startup.
As part of the deal, the aircraft will get access to 14 California airports where Southwest operates. eVTOLs haven't been cleared for passenger service yet by the FAA, though analysts say it is on pace to happen in the next few years.
eVTOL startups have been smartly partnering with airlines to help them gain legitimacy. But besides gaining customer access and regulatory approval, eVTOL startups will also need to scale their infrastructure, boost general public acceptance, and substantial capital investment to roll out their air taxi services.
Nevertheless, the collaboration between Southwest Airlines and Archer marks another solid step toward making urban air mobility a reality, highlighting the growing momentum and industry interest in this innovative transportation solution.
Related: Saudi airline buys 50 electric air taxi jets from Lilium [Axios]; Delta Airlines will invest up to $200 million in Joby Aviation to create a ‘home-to-airport’ air taxi service [The Verge]
Situational Awareness:
Volkswagen is investing billions in a joint venture with Rivian [Morning Brew]
A good incumbent-startup pairing that we’ll likely see more of in the EV space. Rivian needs capital as it struggles with production scale, and Volkswagen can benefit from working closely with a buzzy, up-and-coming EV brand to develop EV software.
Apple taps Taboola to power native advertising in News and Stocks apps [Axios]
Apple had an exclusive deal with NBCUniversal to sell ads in US and the UK for those two native apps, but Taboola’s massive global scale (9,000 publishing partners) can help take this to the next level.
TTT models might be the next frontier in generative AI [TechCrunch]
Keep an eye out for what could potentially turn out to be the next “GPT.”
Substack rival Ghost federates its first newsletter [TechCrunch]
Glad to see that at least someone is committed to bringing the newsletters into the fediverse as well.
By 2026, 40.6% of US internet users will be generative AI users, eMarketer forecasts. Despite a moderation in adoption, generative AI is expected to reach 100 million US users in 2024, or 29.3% of the total US population.
Twitch has a new concurrent viewer record. On July 13, Twitch streamer Ibai Llanos' fourth boxing tournament in Madrid, with matches between influencers, set a record 3.85 million concurrent viewers at its peak, Wired reports.
Shoppers spent about $7.2 billion online across retailers during the first day of Amazon's Prime Day in the United States, according to a report from Adobe Analytics on Wednesday, Reuters reports. Major retailers including Walmart and Target have launched deals and shopping events through July to compete with the Amazon sales event.
If you find our insights valuable and would like to have a deeper conversation on technology and media innovations, or need to sound smarter in a client meeting or a pitch, please feel free to reach out to Chelsea Freitas, our VP of Strategy, at chelsea@ipglab.com.
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