Meta to Soon Label AI, Deepfake Images on Platforms: Clegg
Meta is working to detect and label AI-generated images on Facebook, Instagram and Threads as the company pushes to call out “people and organizations that actively want to deceive people”. Photorealistic images created using Meta’s AI imaging tool are already labelled as AI, but the company’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, announced in a blog post, that the company would work to begin labelling AI-generated images developed on rival services. Meta’s AI images already contain metadata and invisible watermarks that can tell other organizations that the image was developed by AI, and the company is developing tools to identify these types of markers when used by other companies, such as Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Adobe, Midjourney and Shutterstock in their AI image generators, Clegg said. “As the difference between human and synthetic content gets blurred, people want to know where the boundary lies,” Clegg said. “People are often coming across AI-generated content for the first time and our users have told us they appreciate transparency around this new technology. So it’s important that we help people know when photorealistic content they’re seeing has been created using AI.” Clegg said the capability was being built and the labels would be applied in all languages in the coming months.
Inside Banks Of The Future, Run By Bots
iPal (ICICI Bank’s AI chatbot) is one of the newer generation bots—it is an artificial intelligence (AI)-based system. All answers are automated and the chatbot is trained to understand the queries and improve the responses. As more people interact with the bot, it learns. Over a period of time, the bot would get sharper and more intelligent. It is quite likely that in a year, iPal would be able to understand and answer questions beyond its syllabus. For banks like ICICI that had already invested in classical AI, the next logical frontier is generative AI (GenAI). Simply put, classical AI makes predictions based on historical data. GenAI goes further. It takes data as inputs, learns, and then generates new content such as text, images, videos, music, or code. With a much better understanding of language and context, GenAI’s accuracy is higher. Because it is capable of handling complex questions in a way humans can, it is a great fit for contact centres. Its adoption, therefore, has huge implications for a bank—both on revenue and profitability. While chatbots powered by GenAI can rapidly shrink the cost of running customer contact centres, the technology can also help reduce risks such as fraud. New use cases that can grow revenue, like loan generation and underwriting, are just about emerging. The bank is in the process of transitioning to an LLM-based bot—one that can adapt to various user inputs, understand nuances, and provide relevant responses—from a rule-based one (which can handle basic conversations). Globally, banks have typically been quick adopters of technology—from automated teller machines (ATMs) in the 1960s and electronic card-based payments in the 1970s to the broad adoption of anytime online banking in the 2000s, followed by mobile banking in the 2010s, traditional AI, advanced AI and analytics, and now GenAI. In March last year, Morgan Stanley Wealth Management said it will use OpenAI’s LLM-powered chatbot, ChatGPT, to help its team of financial advisers ask questions. ABN Amro is using GenAI tools to produce summaries of notes that its agents take when customers reach out to its call centre. Yes Bank, for instance, has a Yes Robot, a digital assistant that offers more than 60 banking services. Axis Bank, too, has a conversational AI chatbot called Uttar (Hindi word for answer). AI-infused virtual agents can cut labour costs by reducing the reliance on human intervention, leading to as much as 30% decline in customer support service fees. Chatbots can also handle 80% of routine tasks and customer questions. Furthermore, chatbots do not take sick leave or go on vacations. They do not have a 9am-5pm job and work across time zones, during public holidays, and in rough weather and floods, too.
INR8 per video: Why deepfakes can prove costly
For as low as INR8, you can get a deepfake video created today. And from businesses to political parties, everyone wants to tap the AI-based technology that powers synthetic media to further their ambitions. Meet Divyendra Singh Jadoun, founder of The Indian Deepfaker, a website offering ‘hyper-realistic content’ via deepfake-as-a-service for nearly three years now. Jadoun bagged his first political project during the 2023 assembly elections. Since then, he has been in talks with leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Indian National Congress to create ‘personalized messages’ (read deepfakes) for party members and volunteers in his home state of Rajasthan. Deepfakes aren’t a new phenomenon in politics. India was probably the first country to witness the use of deepfakes in an election campaign when a manipulated video of BJP leader Manoj Tiwari went viral during the 2020 New Delhi assembly elections. It reportedly reached 15 million people through 5,800 WhatsApp groups. Four years hence, the fast-growing monster holds substantial sway over public opinion. With close to a billion people set to elect the next prime minister of the world’s largest democracy, AI-driven deepfakes are expected to play a pivotal role in the upcoming general elections in the country. Deepfake is expected to assume massive proportions this summer as India goes into polls, says Shivam Shankar Singh, lead – data analytics at Policy Matrix, a consultancy firm. Political parties are expected to “spend a few lakhs of rupees per constituency” to create such content, to send personalized messages to all their party workers. In politics, people are working for free and all they want is recognition from leaders. Jadoun, whose company has created personalized messages, voice calls, or video calls with lip-syncing and voice cloning so that “the party worker feels connected to the political leader because he’s taking his name”. The Indian Deepfaker charges INR8 per video as compared to competitors such as Japan-based GenAI and US-based Rephrase AI which charge around INR25 per video for a user base of over 50 lakh. Clearly, a significant amount of money is going into creating deepfakes.
Influencer Marketing Emerges as Game-Changer for Brands, Says New Study
“Gone are the days of traditional advertising ruling the roost. The era of influencers has dawned, and brands are leveraging this trend to their advantage like never before. With statistics and insights painting a compelling picture, it’s evident why influencer marketing has become an indispensable tool for modern marketing professionals,” said Sahil Chopra, Founder & CEO, iCubesWire (Adtech firm). Doubling since 2019 to an estimated $21.1 BN in 2023, the global influencer marketing market is expected to reach around $24 BN by the end of this year. The increasing investment reflects the confidence of the marketplace and is reason enough for businesses to adopt influencer marketing strategies. One in four marketers is already integrating influencer marketing into their marketing strategies. Within the marketing departments of brands, 80% of marketers have allocated a dedicated budget for influencer marketing costs. Certain of the ROI potential, 67% of marketers plan to increase their spend on influencer marketing. At the end of the day, your marketing efforts are only as good as the connection you build with your audience. Influencer marketing makes it easier than ever to generate engagement and trust among target audiences. For instance, micro-influencers guarantee up to 60% higher engagement compared to their macro counterparts, giving them an upper hand and making them the preferred choice for 56% of marketers. Influencer marketing is solely driven by the trust audience groups put in influencers, taking their recommendations and opinions as the last word. 50% of millennials trust the influencers over celebrities. 31% of social media users discover new products through influencers they follow. This says a lot about how influencer marketing goes a long way in shaping purchase decisions and brand perceptions. Talking about Instagram alone, 81% of users use the platform to research new products, underlining Instagram’s role in the consumer decision-making process. Additionally, 87% were motivated to act after seeing product information.
Tata Group plans to enter online food delivery sector with Tata Neu app: Report
Tata Group is planning to venture into the online food delivery sector with its super app, Tata Neu. Tata Neu is teaming up with Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) to start the service. For now, Tata Neu app has a food category tab that shows users the menus from restaurants of the Tata Group’s hotel that manages the Taj brand. Integrating with ONDC will enable the app to gain access to numerous restaurants across various cities that are already part of the network. It is likely to be launched for closed-user group trials in the next few days. But the feature may still be a month or more away from going live for the broader public.
Bluesky goes public, promises a decentralized social media network
After nearly twelve months of operating as an invite-only platform, Bluesky has transitioned to being accessible to the general public. Backed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Bluesky emerges as a micro-blogging platform offering an alternative to Elon Musk’s X. Prior to its public launch, Bluesky amassed approximately 3 MN sign-ups. Now open to all, the platform faces the task of competing against Threads, boasting 130 MN monthly active users, and even Mastodon, with its 1.8 MN user base. Although Bluesky may resemble X (Twitter) in appearance and functionality, its distinguishing feature lies beneath the surface. Originating as an internal project within Twitter, Bluesky aimed to construct a decentralized infrastructure known as the AT Protocol for social networking. As a decentralized platform, Bluesky’s code is entirely open source, granting external parties insight into its development process. Moreover, developers have the freedom to build upon the AT Protocol, enabling the creation of diverse features ranging from custom algorithms to entirely new social platforms. This model empowers users to exert greater control over their social media interactions. Notably, Bluesky intends to introduce an experimental version of open federation, akin to Mastodon’s diverse array of instances.