Welcome to The Week in Generative AI, a weekly column for marketers from Quad Insights that quickly sums up need-to-know developments surrounding this rapidly evolving technology
Legal challenges continue to mount for AI
In The Wall Street Journal, Ryan Tracy and Isaac Yu lay out the various legal cases mounting against artificial intelligence platforms, potentially shaping the future of how AI is developed and deployed. The topics range from defamation (e.g., OpenAI being accused of libel due to false statements made by its ChatGPT chatbot), to copyright issues (such as comedian Sarah Silverman’s suit claiming her book was used to train ChatGPT).
Tracy and Yu note that “creatives have filed at least three other major proposed class-action lawsuits this year, raising concerns on two fronts: that AI tools might be illegally trained on copyrighted works, and that they might be later prompted to produce imitations that compete with the originals.” Other cases focus on corporate responsibility in using AI for medical decisions — for instance, when Cigna allegedly rejected insurance claims via an algorithm — and privacy suits that argue AI companies have violated privacy laws by scraping personal data.
Related coverage:
• “Content Farms Are Using AI Chatbots to Plagiarize News Outlets” (Gizmodo)
• “Stephen King: My Books Were Used to Train AI” (The Atlantic)
• “AI cannot hold copyright, federal judge rules” (Politico)
• “Princeton University’s ‘AI Snake Oil’ authors say generative AI hype has ‘spiraled out of control’” (Venture Beat)
The Snaps that Dreams are made of
Snapchat this week introduced a new feature called “Dreams” that utilizes AI to transform users’ hand-drawn sketches into more polished artwork through a two-step process: users submit a sketch, and AI generates an enhanced version of it.
TechCrunch’s Sarah Perez cites findings from app researcher and developer Steve Moser referencing possible purchases of “Dream Packs found in Snapchat’s app [that] suggests this may be a monetizable feature at some point.”
Related coverage:
• “Snapchat Tests New ‘Dreams’ Element as Social Apps Continue to Develop Generative AI Elements” (Social Media Today)
The NFL + AI = a new way to watch Thursday Night Football
Amazon Prime’s Thursday Night Football stream will use artificial intelligence to show fans if teams should go for it on fourth down. The company will add a second on-screen line to its game stream, in addition to the traditional yellow line first-down marker. The line will show at what point a team should attempt a fourth-down conversion, based on Amazon’s AI-powered analysis of historical data and current game situations.
“This will be a part of Amazon’s new Prime Vision feed that will give viewers an analytically minded experience,” writes Tyler Greenawalt from Yahoo Sports. This is the first time that an NFL broadcast will use AI to make fourth-down recommendations to fans.
David Pierce reports in The Verge that these AI additions are designed to “bring people into the tiny nuances of football” by providing deeper context around defensive plays and offering multiple viewing options.
Related coverage:
• “Amazon brings new AI-driven features to Thursday Night Football” (TechCrunch)
Update: Nvidia keeps soaring
Nvidia, the biggest chipmaker for AI applications, reported record earnings for the second quarter. In our May 26 installment, we first covered the company’s meteoric rise. Now, three months later, the AI market continues to grow with investments around the hardware space from the biggest names in tech.
Related coverage:
• “Nvidia Chip Shortages Leave AI Startups Scrambling for Computing Power” (Wired)
• “Nvidia Is an AI Leader, But Is It a Market Leader?” (Real Money)
• “Nvidia Revenue Doubles on Demand for A.I. Chips, and Could Go Higher” (The New York Times)
Further reading
• “Newsrooms grapple with rules for AI” (Axios)
• “Is the AI boom already over?” (Vox)
• “Meta’s Next AI Attack on OpenAI: Free Code-Generating Software” (The Information)
• “The New York Times blocks OpenAI’s web crawler” (The Verge)
• “Ugly Numbers from Microsoft and ChatGPT Reveal that AI Demand is Already Shrinking” (The Honest Broker)
• “Will Harry Kane be a good signing for Bayern?: The rise of Generative AI in football scouting” (The Athletic)
Thanks for reading. We’ll see you next week.
If you’d like to catch up on prior installments of this column, start by heading to last week’s recap: “The Week in Generative AI: August 18, 2023 edition.”
