The SEC Newgate AI Weekly

After the buzz of London Tech Week and increasing corporate interest in AI, we have seen a recent emergence in stories about media, sport and pop culture. 

LinkedIn follows Meta and Google in providing AI-driven content suggestion tools to optimise ads. It feels like an evolved version of A/B testing, with a clever content robot constantly saying, “here’s how I’d write it”. And although it’s still in testing, we are keeping a close eye on how the tool aligns with LinkedIn’s already-great audience targeting feature. 

Breaking new ground in reporting the news 

German’s biggest tabloid newspaper, Bild, has spoken of it’s eagerness to give AI opportunities and to “make journalism better”. 

A few similar announcements come at the same time as media organisations are having talks with tech businesses on the role that publications could play in regulating and authenticating generative AI chat platforms. 

Elsewhere, The Guardian reported that this year’s Wimbledon tournament will include a collaboration with IBM that offers online viewers AI-generated audio commentary. We expect to see more from AI around online accessibility in the near future. 

Two different narratives from the film and gaming industry 

Marvel producers announced (albeit without much conviction or understanding of the technology) that the opening sequence of its new show, Secret Invasion, was generated by AI. Fans and critics have been quick to react online. 

But while Disney’s Marvel is openly talking about using AI in production, Microsoft’s XBOX chief has made it clear that AI can be great in policy, but not in creativity. 

Helping to understand the world around us 

An interesting BBC reel looks at how AI could be used to decipher communications between animals. A similar story from the Independent looked how using AI to improve our knowledge and understanding of the ocean could help fight climate change. 

But what about humans? 

Almost every article above follows a similar narrative or story arc — a celebration of a novel application of AI for the better (to help regulate, to better understand, to make more accessible) followed by a negative impact on human resources. Whether it’s designing the next Toyota model or training AI using AI, there remains a rhetoric of AI taking jobs. 

Article of the week 

Must-read of the week for me, however, is the FT’s insightful piece on how financial services and asset management firms are working to push regulation and corporate accountability of AI. 

“If you make a bullet that does nothing in your hand, but you put it into someone else’s hand and it shoots someone — to what extent are you tracking the use of the product?”