Hi, I’m Dirk — a marketplace analyst at Consumer Reports. Part of my job is monitoring industry trends on how consumers find information, and the effects of new technologies on consumer experience. Today we’re kicking off a regular roundup of industry updates on generative AI. I’ll be sharing the stories that we’re reading and talking about inside CR as we plot our own AI strategy. 

Why are we doing this? AI is changing how consumers find information and how businesses interact with their customers. It’s essential to understand where the industry is going, and implications for how CR might better serve consumers in the future. 

Here’s what you’ll get from these updates:

• Dispatches on how AI is changing search and e-commerce
• Industry perspectives on how AI might improve customer experience
• New partnerships and innovations that impact consumer behavior and healthy marketplaces

Nuts & Bolts

Image created by ChatGPT

What IS an AI agent? TechCrunch reports that the answer can depend on who you ask. It seems simple enough as many think of it as a software tool that can do jobs/tasks that a human might have done in the past. But even the tech giants don’t agree on what an agent is. This lack of consensus leads to difficulty when trying to cross over or communicate among different systems. For maximum benefits, future AI agents need to be able to access multiple systems while solving any problems and bumps they encounter along the way.

Gen AI enhances individual creativity but reduces overall diversity of content. A study appearing in Science Advances reveals that a study of LLM created stories found that they were more similar to each other than stories created solely by humans. The authors point to the dilemma that by using generative AI, writers are better off individually but collectively a “narrower scope of novel content is produced.”

Tech publishers win AI protections in new union contract. Many have expressed concern that AI may reduce the number of jobs, but in the short term Nieman Lab reports that Mashable, PC Mag and Lifehacker have won protections that union workers can not be laid off or have their salary decreased due to generative AI tool developments.

Trust & Information Integrity 

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Beware of the “Trust” word. A piece in the WSJ looks at new research that finds that companies who use words like ethical, integrity and responsibility in annual filings are actually associated with negative outcomes. Use of those words led to decreased interest in the stock of those companies and they also ended up paying about $100k more in auditing firms. Turns out touting your trust too much may actually be a red flag.

Playing both sides. The New York Times is using OpenAi to write headlines while the publisher is also suing OpenAI for copyright infringement, according to The Intercept. Leaked code shows that the paper is using OpenAI to write headlines and help apply their style guide to content.  

Perplexity shares the wealth. WIth most AI models being trained partially on freely accessible publisher content, few models have shared any revenue. Now VentureBeat reports that Perplexity will launch a revenue sharing program with publishers that will be powered by advertisements that run alongside search answers that are powered by that publisher’s content. This will not just apply to large scale publishers but will also apply to people  with smaller WordPress sites or newsletters.

ChatGPT hallucinates “fake links” to its own partners.  Nieman Lab reporting finds that ChatGPT is making up nonsense links even to publishers they have cut content partnership deals with. Testing that even for the most trafficked, noteworthy pieces, ChatGPT was not able to reliably link to the articles in those partner publications.

AI & Customer Service

Combine human and AI to meet your Digital Double. As AI evolves, Forrester expects the human + AI journey to evolve from AI Assistants to Agents to eventually an Empowered Digital Double. The Digital Double will have the power to interact with brands on a customer’s behalf, while incorporating known preferences and goals and values for the best possible outcome. The BIG question this sparks for consumers is “Who do I trust to own the algorithm?”  Banks, the government, etc…

Invite Siri to your Facetime calls? iMore reports on a recent Apple Patent that indicates Facetime users may soon be able to summon Siri to join an existing call to help with a fact check, make a restaurant reservation or any other tedious task that might pull the user away from focusing on the call.

Search 

Google pulls back on AI overviews. Search Engine Land reports that Google AI Overviews are not showing up on as many pages, now appearing on only 7% of search queries. This is a drop from over 11% in June. When looking at distinct subject areas some experience huge drops with education questies dropping from 26% to 13% and entertainment queries falling from 14% to near 0%. It is also notable that after a slew of incorrect answers early on, now Google rarely cites Reddit and Quora anymore.

Until next time! We hope you’ll continue to follow us here for the latest AI marketplace news roundups, and get in touch innovationlab@cr.consumer.org if you want to explore these updates and build solutions together.