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Amid the flurry of generative AI developments, Adweek’s weekly AI roundup captures the latest news, regulatory proceedings, and business developments revolving around generative AI.
On the policy and legal front:
- Arranged by the trade organization News Media Alliance, representing over 2,000 publishers and the interests of the news media industry, numerous newspapers took part in lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill last week. This included diverse publications, from state newspapers like the Idaho Press to digital giants like Vox Media. Their primary objective was to advocate for copyright protection of AI as the technology continues to threaten publishers’ revenue streams.
- Tech giants like Amazon, Google and Microsoft are meeting with state lawmakers over plans to regulate AI, per Bloomberg Law. Their strategy appears to be centered around dispelling AI fears and educating lawmakers on this technology and how it operates. These interactions have taken place with legislators from Austin, Texas, in the southern U.S., all the way to Albany, N.Y. Microsoft, which has invested $13 billion in OpenAI, is actively seeking meetings with New York officials. According to lobbying records, representatives from the company have engaged with a minimum of 10 state lawmakers, including the office of Gov. Kathy Hochul (D).
On the tech side:
- Meta made its generative AI tools available to marketers via Ads Manager. Marketers can now experiment with text variation for ad copy across various audiences, background generation for creatives, and image cropping to retrofit creative assets across formats like reels and in-feed ads. This announcement comes at the heels of Meta’s AI sandbox introduced in May which contained the early version of its AI features that was made available to small groups of advertisers such as Publicis. During a press briefing on Tuesday, Matt Steiner, Meta’s vp of monetization, explained that the three tools from the Sandbox are trained using data sourced from Meta’s platforms, including ads, data licensed from partners and vendors, as well as data from third parties and publicly available sources.
- Similarly, LinkedIn has introduced its generative AI tools for B2B marketers, as reported by Adweek. These tools are designed to assist B2B marketers in achieving precision in targeting by offering suggestions for complete campaign strategies and automating optimization. According to Abhishek Shrivastava, vp of product at LinkedIn, this technology enables marketers to connect with their B2B audiences through tailored creative content within just five minutes.
- Payment processor Visa announced the launch of a $100 million venture fund for startups specializing in “developing generative AI technologies and applications that will impact the future of commerce and payments,” the company announced Monday. This move positions Visa among the growing list of investors who have shown interest in this sector.
- Online presentation tool Canva gets a generative AI lift, as per Axios, to creatively aid average workers. Under the Magic Studio banner, ten new tools have been introduced, each designed to assist with various tasks ranging from applying corporate brand styles to translating documents and photo editing. AI has incredible potential to supercharge the 99% of office workers who don’t have design training, who haven’t been able to access easy-to-use powerful design tools before,” Canva co-founder and product chief Cameron Adams told Axios. Meanwhile, the company will indemnify its enterprise customers who utilize the new AI tools, ensuring protection against intellectual property complaints or any other legal issues that may arise.
