AI Watch for the Week of Oct. 23: Updates for the Latest in Generative AI News

In the midst of the rapid advancements in generative artificial intelligence, 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 hosting an event on “secure, safe and trustworthy” artificial intelligence on Monday, with the participation of certain tech industry executives. The forthcoming executive order will likely introduce policies mandating assessments for AI models before federal agencies can use them to streamline visa requirements for overseas technology workers, the Washington Post reported earlier this week.

On the tech side

Microsoft’s investments in generative AI have begun to yield revenue, per its latest quarterly earnings. While Microsoft initially informed investors that its AI investments wouldn’t yield significant outcomes until 2024, following the broader availability of its products, The New York Times reported that the company shared 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 Schindler said, “It’s delivering outstanding ROI,” and advertisers are, on average, seeing over 18% more conversions at a similar cost per action. 

Regarding 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, totaling 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.” 

Forbes gives journalism a generative AI lift with Adelaide, its news search tool using Google Cloud, the publisher announced yesterday. “The launch makes Forbes one of the first major news publishers to provide personalized, relevant news content recommendations for its global readers leveraging generative AI,” the publisher said in a statement. Adelaide is trained on Forbes stories but only news covered in the last 12 months.