The best way to understand your customers

Google understands gestures

Google Meet has introduced a hand gesture recognition feature that automatically activates the raise hand icon in the video call when someone raises their hand. This feature, originally announced in March, requires the hand to be visible to the camera. Available in most Google Meet Workspace plans, it is turned off by default and can be enabled in the settings. It will automatically switch off for active speakers to avoid false activations. A portrait touch-up mode has also been added.

Spotify understands artists

Spotify is changing its remuneration model in order to pay out one billion dollars to new and popular artists within five years. The new system combats artificial streams and distributes smaller payments better. From 2024, tracks must achieve at least 1,000 streams per year in order to generate royalties. Spotify will charge labels for artificial streams and set the minimum length for audio recordings at two minutes in order to reduce abuse. This should result in more money flowing into the royalty pool.

Personalization understands customers

Birdseye, a Toronto-based AI company specializing in retail and e-commerce, acts as an AI-driven Chief Marketing Officer. It supports smaller online retailers, especially on Shopify, to optimize their marketing. Birdseye offers hyper-personalized email and SMS campaigns as well as analyses of transaction data via a dashboard. The platform calculates numerous marketing campaigns to present products in line with customers' interests.

Grok understands X

Elon Musk announces that xAI's chatbot "Grok" will launch next week for X Premium+ subscribers. Grok will be integrated into the X web app and is characterized by personality and wit. The bot can answer "spicy" questions and has access to real-time information about the X platform. It is part of the more expensive Premium+ subscription, which reduces advertising and offers a Creator Hub. Grok is based on a knowledge base similar to ChatGPT, but uses real-time data from X.

Social Links understand sentiments

Social Links, a company from Amsterdam, uses ChatGPT to analyze sentiment in social media in order to identify protest movements at an early stage. Despite criticism for potential surveillance and accusations of Meta as a spyware provider, the company uses ChatGPT to analyze social network posts to inform law enforcement agencies. The ACLU warns of unprecedented automated surveillance through such technologies. Social Links claims to only use the system for text analysis, while AI experts emphasise the many uses of language models in law enforcement, but also point to inherent biases.