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In the midst of the rapid advancements in generative AI, Adweek’s weekly AI summary provides an overview of the most recent updates, regulatory activities and business developments in the world of generative AI.
On the policy side
On Monday, U.S President Joe Biden is set to sign a comprehensive directive on AI to limit its risk, per Bloomberg. The White House is set to host an event on “secure, safe and trustworthy” artificial intelligence on Monday, and participation of certain tech industry executives is expected. The forthcoming executive order is expected to introduce policies mandating assessments for AI models before federal agencies can employ them to streamline visa requirements for overseas technology workers, the Washington Post reported earlier this week.
On the tech side
Microsoft investments in generative AI have begun to spur revenue, per its latest quarterly earnings. While Microsoft had initially informed investors that its AI investments wouldn’t yield significant outcomes until 2024, following the broader availability of their products, The New York Times reported that the company disclosed that three percentage points of Azure’s growth could be attributed to generative AI products, including Microsoft’s access to OpenAI’s GPT-4 language model.
In contrast, Google parent company Alphabet’s shares experienced its most significant decline at 9.5% since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, primarily due to Google Cloud unit’s revenue falling short of analyst expectations, per CNBC report. Meanwhile, during the earnings call, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that ads will remain integral to its generative AI-powered Search experience. “I think with the AI work, there are subscription models as a possible path as well,” he added. Responding to a question about Performance Max, Google’s chief business officer, Philipp Schindlern, said, “It’s delivering outstanding ROI,” and advertisers are, on average, seeing over 18% more conversions at a similar cost per action.
When it comes to investment priorities, AI will take the forefront for Meta in 2024, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on the earnings call this week. The investments constitute both engineering and computer resources, he said. Meanwhile, Meta’s augmented and virtual reality division, Reality Labs, saw an operating loss of $3.74 billion for the quarter, per the earnings, totalling the company’s losses close to $25 billion since the beginning of last year. However the company indicated that its initiatives to expand its product offerings in the AR/VR space will increase Reality Labs’ operating losses “meaningfully year over year.”
