Welcome to The Upgrade

This is the first edition of my weekly newsletter focusing on the intersection of AI, media, and storytelling. Already, we have readers from National Geographic, AI startups, and Fortune 500 companies — you’re in good company!

In today’s issue:

• Trends in AI & Media

• The Week’s Top AI Stories

• The Big Think: Generative AI Brand Blunders

• ChatGPT Prompt: Event Invitation Template

Trends in AI & Media

Last week, I presented on generative AI to the stellar team at Lucas Public Affairs and many of their amazing clients, providing an overview of the state of AI and its current and anticipated impacts on the media landscape. The title of the talk was “Artificial Intelligence: Trends & Implications.”

The takeaways:

• Generative AI will be as impactful as the birth of the internet and reshape the global economy.

• Rapid advancements in AI will continue unabated without intervention: ChatGPT and Bing Chat are only the beginning.

• This tech enables automated content creation at scale, reshaping production, distribution, and consumption.

• Generative AI will impact every media type and alter our digital lives in ways we are just starting to comprehend.

• Along with these powerful tools come serious privacy, safety, ethical, legal, and regulatory concerns.

Read more!

The Week’s Top AI Stories

Regulation and Policy

• Tech industry leaders endorse regulating artificial intelligence at rare summit in Washington - AP

• The FTC is setting its sights on generative AI - Tech Crunch

• Newsom signs executive order preparing California for AI - Politico

Ethics & Safety

• Why Meta’s Yann Lecun isn’t buying the AI Doomer Narrative - Fast Company

• Elon Musk Warns of “Civilizational Risk” of AI posed by AI in meeting with tech CEOs and senators - NBC

Privacy & Security

• The technology Meta and Google didn’t dare release - The New York Times

• OpenAI hopes ChatGPT Enterprise will answer employers’ data privacy concerns - DigiDay

In the Workplace

• ‘Nothing is ready for prime time’: Journalists push back against publications’ race to have newsrooms use generative AI tools - DigiDay

• With Little Employer Oversight, ChatGPT Usage Rates Rise Among American Workers - Business.com

Storytelling Tools

• Adobe’s Firefly generative AI tools are now widely available - The Verge

• US rejects AI copyright for famous state fair-winning Midjourney art - Ars Technica

Generative AI Brand Blunders

While generative AI promises big rewards for creative fields, diving in without careful thought can land brands in hot water. Just as anyone with internet access can now leverage a well-tuned algorithm to generate breathtaking text, visual, and audio content—at extremely low cost and unprecedented speed—a misstep can easily tarnish a brand's reputation.

Because generative AI technology is so new, the social and reputational risks surrounding its use are hard to calculate. Tech literacy is one factor. Most people have not yet used the latest generative AI tools; an August Pew Research poll found that only 24% of people in the US sample who had heard of ChatGPT had tried it out. More importantly, a separate Pew Research study published this summer found that most of those polled were more concerned about AI’s risks than excited about its potential. The percentage of those who felt more excited than concerned about AI was a measly 10%. This trend is only accelerating. ⬇️

With a weak public understanding and a generally skeptical view of AI, brands have little margin for error. (Oh, and let’s not mention the possibility of an AI apocalypse… I’ll save that for a later post. 🙃) The nearly limitless applications of AI, coupled with AI products’ infamous lack of predictability and reliability, means there are many ways for brands to err despite noble intentions.

Here are examples of brands making serious missteps with generative AI:

• Digital outlet CNET used AI for tech reporting without disclosure. Articles were loaded with factual errors and outright plagiarism. The outlet paused the project.

  Source: Futurism & New York Magazine

• Levi’s ran into big trouble for (ironically) using AI-created diverse talent in a campaign designed to make its brand more inclusive.

  Source: Insider & WSJ Tech News Briefing (Podcast)

• Vanderbilt University used ChatGPT to write a hollow and robotic-sounding public message of condolences after a school shooting at Michigan State University.

  Source: CNN & The Guardian

• Google’s Bard, an AI chatbot rival to ChatGPT, made a factual error in its first public appearance. During the launch, Bard incorrectly credited the discovery of the first exoplanet to the James Webb telescope when it had happened 14 years prior. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, lost 9% of its value —$100 billion—following the gaffe.

  Source: The Verge & NPR

Should I cover more examples in another post? Let me know!

ChatGPT Prompt Template: Event Invitation

Thank you for reading! Interviews, tutorials, and more think pieces are coming in future editions, but I would love to hear what type of content would be most helpful for you.

Please complete the brief (1-2 min) survey below. Let me know what you most want to read! 👇

Don’t be shy—hit reply if you have thoughts or feedback. I’d love to connect with you!

Until next week,

Peter

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