Lab Weekly - 11/08/2024
The latest streaming trends; Plus, the latest news on Microsoft, Lyft, Epic Games, & more must-know stories and cool stats
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Prime Innovations in Streaming Land
How Amazon’s Prime Video’s latest additions reflect the broader trends in streaming, and the one competitive advantage it has over all other streaming services
In case you missed it…
The Homebody Economy
The many reasons for young people to stay home, and how brands can cater to them at home and beyond
The AI Agents Are Coming — Is Your Brand Ready?
Exploring what moving on from AI chatbots to agentic AI systems might mean for brands
Shop As You Scroll: The Future of Social Commerce
Examining the current state of social commerce, the rise of Chinese ecommerce apps, and their potential to reshape online shopping.
Epic Games Launches Unified Digital Content Marketplace [Venturebeat]
Fortnite maker Epic Games has launched Fab, a new unified content marketplace that enables developers to buy, sell, and share a wide range of digital assets from a single online market. Fab is the successor to the Unreal Engine Marketplace and Sketchfab Store, and the new home for Unity assets. In the future, Epic says, it will add support for assets from other game engines.
The launch of this marketplace that aspires to become a universal marketplace for digital assets is necessary for Epic to lay the groundwork for building the future of the metaverse. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has said that the path to the open metaverse is via “enlightened self-interest,” and this open marketplace is a big part of Epic’s strategy to facilitate easier virtual world-building.
Interestingly, virtual world-building is also increasingly a key use case being tested with generative AI. Netflix, for one, recently created a new position that is in charge of exploring creating virtual environments in video games using generative AI, while AI startup Decart has created Oasis — a new AI model that can generate a fully playable game in Minecraft from nothing but an image. In light of this growing trend, it will be interesting to see how Epic will integrate and categorize AI-generated assets on Fab, which is supposedly creator-driven.
Related: Snoop Dogg’s Times Square concert showed the ambitious future of music in Fortnite [The Verge]; Roblox is banning kids from ‘social hangout’ spaces for child safety protection [The Verge]
Lyft Partners With Mobileye for More Autonomous Rides [Engadget]
In light of Uber’s extended partnership with Waymo to bring self-driving taxis (aka “robotaxis”) to more cities, Lyft is catching up with its long-time rival with partnerships with a trio of companies in the autonomous vehicle (AV) sector — Mobileye, May Mobility and Nexar. Lyft says it will gradually introduce their technology into its network starting in 2025, starting with bringing May Mobility’s robotaxis to Atlanta next year. The partnership with Nexar will reportedly focus on collecting data on anonymized fleet and marketplace to aid its robotaxi development.
Right now, Waymo is leading the market in the initial rollout of robotaxi rides in the U.S., and as a key partner, Uber stands to benefit a lot from Waymo’s early success. In contrast, Lyft’s strategy leans on a diversified partnership model to build its AV capabilities gradually, rather than relying on a single technology provider, which could mean a slower path to full-scale deployment. Then again, this more cautious approach could help Lyft minimize the brand risks associated with robotaxi, such as regulatory issues and bad-press accidents that might occur.
Related: Lyft says its future lies in a hybrid network of autonomous and driver rides [Engadget]; Waymo and Uber expand partnership to bring autonomous ride-hailing to Austin and Atlanta [Reuters]
Microsoft Unveils Multi-Agent AI System [Microsoft]
Generative AI has entered its agentic era, and the dream of having a personal team of AI agents to tackle daily tasks is coming true. Microsoft researchers have unveiled Magnetic-One, an AI orchestration system designed to coordinate multiple specialized agents for handling complex tasks—such as coding, browsing, and even placing restaurant orders. Multi-agent coordination is emerging as a vital element in using tools for complex tasks, and Microsoft’s open-source approach could further accelerate this agent-driven revolution.
For marketers, if the vision of AI-driven multi-agent orchestration like Microsoft’s Magnetic-One comes to fruition, it would revolutionize how we orchestrate and manage a campaign. With a team of specialized AI agents analyzing data, creating content, and managing cross-channel interactions autonomously, marketers could be freed up to focus on strategic and creative work, as AI handles routine tasks like scheduling, data analysis, and customer support – with significant human oversight, of course.
Related: Google accidentally leaked a preview of its Jarvis AI that can take over computers [Engadget]; Amazon reportedly bumped back its AI-powered Alexa to next year [Engadget]
Situational Awareness:
OpenAI bought the web domain Chat.com [TechCrunch]
HubSpot co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah previously acquired Chat.com for $15.5 million, and has confirmed that OpenAI paid more than that for the domain. This lavish domain purchase that chops off the “GPT” from its domain for ChatGPT aligns with OpenAI’s recent rebranding efforts.
Nvidia unveils major robotics AI toolkit [NVIDIA]
The AI GPU bubble will burst sooner or later, and Nvidia is smart to try to position itself as the foundation layer for the robotics industry, which is gaining traction in building humanoid robots lately.
Walt Disney forms business unit to coordinate use of AI, AR [Reuter]
Better late than never — perhaps this new specialty unit will produce some must-see marquee content for Vision Pro.
Xbox launches new AI-powered chatbot to help with "support-related gaming issues" [The Verge]
Perhaps the next step is to add cheat codes into console chatbots, or better yet, make them your AI gaming buddy.
TikTok is becoming a job board for Gen Z. According to data from Resume Genius, one in five Gen Z’ers say they’ve applied to jobs and/or gotten interviews through the platform. Many of them post videos with specific hashtags such as #tiktokresume.
Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent of the Max streaming service, gained more subscribers than expected in the third quarter. The company says it added 7.2 million net streaming subscribers in Q3 2024, the strongest quarterly gain since Max’s launch, AdAge reports.
GM is claiming the number two spot in EV sales in the US for the third quarter of this year, selling 32,000 electric vehicles, The Verge reports. The automaker produces EVs across multiple brands running on the same platform, and says it has sold a total of 370,000 EVs in North America since 2016, including 300,000 in the US specifically.
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