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Thursday Dec.08, 2022
💬 ChatGPT enters the chat
How can AI help you today? (Jakub Porzycki/Getty Images)
Hey Snackers,
Have a Coke… movie. Coca-Cola’s breaking into the film biz with a series of short and quirky Christmas flicks. Picture: a vampire love story and talking computers.
Stocks fell yesterday for the fifth straight trading day. Wall Street’s “fear gauge” VIX index was up 10% from last Wednesday, suggesting investors expect more volatility.
CGPT
OpenAI’s impressive new chatbot causes a stir, inspiring enthusiasm and concern
“Are you tired of feeling like a robot when you talk to your computer?... Well, fear not, my friend, because chatGPT is here to save the day!” These prosaic lines were written by AI chatbot ChatGPT in response to “Write a humorous article about ChatGPT.”
- Meet CGPT: The futuristic AI chatbot was released to the public last week by OpenAI (the company behind generative AI tool Dall-E).
- It’s causing shock, awe, fear, and lots of Twitter memes. OpenAI said 1M+ people signed up to test CGPT in the first five days.
- Bot of many trades: CGPT is like a search engine that provides one result, combined with a sophisticated chatbot combined with a blandly unoriginal yet at times eerily human-sounding writer. It can answer questions, compose text based on prompts, and write self-reflective poetry.
A trained model… we’re not talking Gisele. In our unexclusive interview with CGPT, the bot told us where its words came from: “As a large language model trained by OpenAI, I have been trained on a massive amount of text data.” After some prodding, CGPT explained that said data is “typically compiled from a wide variety of sources, such as books, articles, and websites.” It essentially uses those text examples to make educated guesses about how to string together an answer. Yet there are concerns about CGPT’s powers. People fear that it’ll kill:
- Homework: This probably isn’t a fear for most students, but educators are concerned that CGPT’s essay-writing abilities will destroy take-home assignments. Lex, a new tool that uses CGPT, fills in sentences for you like a Google Docs-style collaborator,
- Jobs: Like its art-generating cousin Dall-E, CGPT is generating concerns that AI tools could replace creative jobs (think: copywriting, design).
- Originality: If people start relying on AI for their writing and creating, the intellectual output of future generations could be monotonous. There are also copyright-infringement concerns (think: image generators pulling from original designs).
Generative AI is a many-pronged tool… It could be valuable to automate work, though dangerous if it becomes a crutch. Meanwhile, investment is booming. Jasper, a genAI tool largely used for marketing copy, recently hit a $1.5B valuation. (As of October, OpenAI was valued at ~$20B.) And Google is previewing apps that’ll allow people to have their text rendered to images (similar to Dall-E).
Flashy
Glossy crypto ads lose their sheen as investigators probe possible misconduct
Crypto ads are in the spotlight… and investigators are turning up the heat. The Federal Trade Commission's reportedly looking into numerous crypto companies in connection with potentially deceptive or misleading ads. Crypto firms found violating advertising laws could face large fines and be forced to refund customers. There's a lot for the FTC to sift through: crypto brands have shelled out $223M+ on US ads so far this year alone.
Fortune favors the warm… Big spending was the norm before crypto winter kicked off in May. Late last year, Crypto.com said it would pony up $100M for a celeb-infused campaign (picture: Matt Damon insisting "fortune favours the brave"). It also reportedly shelled out $700M on its LA Lakers stadium-naming rights, while FTX splurged for Miami. Meanwhile, Coinbase spent $14M on a single Super Bowl ad. Now:
- Courtside view… A class-action lawsuit accuses FTX-promoting celebs like Larry David and Tom Brady of pushing a "Ponzi scheme."
- Second thoughts… Only 8% of Americans have a positive view of crypto, down from 19% earlier this year.
Big spending doesn't negate big risk… for investors, crypto firms, or celeb promoters. Ad blitzes — like the $60M FTX spent on TV commercials — suggest a biz has cash aplenty and is here to stay, but brand image doesn't always = brand reality. As the FTC moves forward with its investigation, and dozens of investors file claims in bankruptcy court, expect the (more than) once bitten crypto world to be twice as skeptical about future ad splurges.
What else we’re Snackin’
- Track: Apple is being sued over “AirTag stalking” after a woman said she found the tracking device on her car while another said she found one on her child’s backpack. There’s mounting pressure to create safeguards for the $29 gadget.
- Tay: Even Congress has bad blood with Live Nation’s T-Swift ticketing fiasco. A House committee said Ticketmaster could be fined if it “knowingly sold tickets that were improperly purchased” by bots.
- Sign: The New York Times is preparing for 1.1K+ of its union staffers to stage a walkout today. NYT and union reps have struggled to agree on wages after their last contract expired in March.
- Pantry: Campbell Soup’s sales jumped 15% last quarter as shoppers kept stocking its canned bisques and snacks like Goldfish. Campbell boosted its sales outlook as price hikes inflate its revenue.
- Charge: GM’s planning to build up to 40K new EV chargers across the US, targeting rural areas where EV adoption has been slower. If it delivers, it would nearly double the number of US chargers.
Thursday
- Earnings expected from: Costco, Broadcom, Lululemon, Chewy, Vail Resorts, and DocuSign
Authors of this Snacks: own shares of Apple, GM, and Google
ID: 2629826
