31 May 2023 | Ahmed Elkady

MED-AI: WPP, Nvidia and TikTok

There is a lot going on when it comes to AI and that’s just in the media and advertising world. Tech reporter Ahmed Elkady has you covered with MED-AI, a weekly summary of what’s happening and why it matters.

AI news this week has been a bit of a mixed bag. Lets start with the bad…

Hundreds of technology experts have signed a one-sentence statement saying that “mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” Released by the Center for AI Safety, signatories include leading AI executives and academics, including the chief executives of OpenAI (the company responsible for developing ChatGPT), Google’s DeepMind and AI startup Anthropic.

In other AI-really-is-a-threat-to-organised-human-existence-please-take-this-seriously news, Professor Yoshua Bengio, touted as one of the “godfathers” of AI, has said he feels “lost” over his life’s work and would have prioritised safety over usefulness had he anticipated the pace at which the technology would evolve. Earlier this month, another godfather of AI Geoffrey Hinton quit his leadership at Google, citing the “existential risk” AI poses and urging the world to invest “heavily and urgently in AI safety and control.”

Gosh, what a bunch of worrywarts. But seriously, on the off-chance that leading world experts in AI have already tried “lightening up” and still think we’re all going to die, maybe governments should treat AI just as seriously as they treat the threat of ecological collapse. How are they getting along with that by the way? Oh. Well, until we launch our weekly about foraging berries and hunting small animals (MED-Apocalypse?), MED-AI will be here to give you your roundup on all things AI, media and advertising.

WPP and Nvidia

This week the world’s largest advertising agency WPP announced it will be partnering with chipmaker Nvidia to create ads using generative AI. In a demo, Nvidia unveiled WPP’s new content engine. The generative AI platform will allow the agency’s creative teams to integrate content from Adobe and Getty Images, producing ad campaigns “more efficiently and at scale.”

According to WPP, the platform outperforms current manual methods of creating large amounts of content “using disparate data coming from disconnected tools and systems.” The companies say the engine will enable WPP to adapt campaigns rapidly for different digital channels and geographical locations.

TikTok

TikTok has confirmed that it is testing an in-app AI chatbot in the Philippines market. The program — dubbed “Tako” — is an AI-powered tool aimed at helping users with search and discovery on the online video platform. The company has said it is “in the early stages of exploring chatbot tools with a limited test of Tako” for select users in the country. In February, Snap rolled out its own ChatGPT powered chatbot called “My AI” and recently announced plans to integrate ads into conversations with users.

Younger generations and newsrooms gravitate towards ChatGPT

According to a new Bloomberg Intelligence survey, 60% of respondents aged between 16-34 believe ChatGPT results are better than Google Search results. While 80% of the 650 surveyed said they still prefer to use Google to search across form factors, 54% believe that ChatGPT produces higher quality results.

A separate study done by the World Association of News Publishers found that use of ChatGPT in newsrooms is taking off. A survey of 101 editors, journalists and other newsroom staff revealed that 49% said they are “actively working with generative AI tools like ChatGPT.”

Just under half (44%) said their newsroom was using generative AI for simplified research while 43% said their peers had been using AI for text correction or to help with their work flow. Shockingly, 32% said they had been using AI to create articles wholesale.