Interesting that they haven’t run with the ‘free money.’

https://www.reuters.com/technology/mad-men-machines-big-advertisers-shift-ai-2023-08-18/

From Mad Men to machines? Big advertisers shift to AI

Some of the world's biggest advertisers, from food giant Nestle to consumer goods multinational Unilever, are experimenting with using generative AI software like ChatGPT and DALL-E to cut costs and increase productivity, executives say.

But many companies remain wary of security and copyright risks as well as the dangers of unintended biases baked into the raw information feeding the software, meaning humans will remain part of the process for the foreseeable future.

… WPP, the world's biggest advertising agency, is working with consumer goods companies including Nestle and Oreo-maker Mondelez to use generative AI in advertising campaigns, its CEO Mark Read said.

"The savings can be 10 or 20 times," Read said in an interview. "Rather than flying a film crew down to Africa to shoot a commercial, we've created that virtually."

Revising economics for the AI era?

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/8/19/ai-and-the-tyranny-of-the-data-commons

AI and the tyranny of the data commons

The myth of data as a non-rival resource needs to be abandoned.

… How did we get here? The seeds of the wholesale appropriation of our data were planted a long time ago when economists and media theorists declared data a non-rival resource, the basis for a sharing economy, where ownership is not important and consumers are free to create and distribute goods outside of a market system precisely because they are non-rivalrous.

An example of rivalrous good is a cake. If I eat the cake, no one else can eat it. A non-rival resource, on the other hand, can be consumed by many people without diminishing its value. Think of a digital picture of a cake. If I use it on a website or a social media post, this would not prevent others from doing the same and it would not diminish the quality and value of the digital picture.

Readers of this blog should do well…

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/quiz/digital-knowledge-quiz-2023/

Quiz: Test your knowledge of digital topics