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Many AI companies struggle with customers understanding how the product won’t take away their ability to think for themselves. A few took the opportunity of the Super Bowl to change the narrative. There’s no greater opportunity to reach 123 million live viewers at once and get massive press buzz, even if it cost $7 million for a 30-second spot.

While many tech evangelists proclaim that artificial intelligence is the future, the majority of the public remains skeptical. According to a recent Pew Research Study, 52 percent of Americans are “more concerned than excited about the growth of AI.” Only 10 percent are more excited than concerned about the possibilities.

When Chat GPT came out, people were amazed at how it could write essays or create scripts based on the dialogue from their favorite shows. That’s changing, as more stories about AI replacing jobs and the need for regulation arise. 

“There was a feeling of wonder and awe,” said advertising agency Walrus co-founder and chief creative officer Deacon Webster. “And then there was a negative feeling like, ‘Oh my God, none of us knowledge workers are going to have jobs.'”

There many winners and losers among the messages attempted by brands in the big Super Bowl advertising bets. AI was chasing an image revamp. Sunday was the first step in accomplishing that.

“Super Bowl is the last big sort of mass gathering,” Webster said. “It allows you to kind of get out there and put some brand messaging in front of tons and tons of people. I think no matter how much one-to-one advertising is out there, there’s something about sort of a shared experience.”

In Microsoft’s Super Bowl ad, a group of people overcome challenges ranging from opening their own business to getting a college degree. It’s not just thanks to their grit and ingenuity. It’s also thanks to the assistance of Copilot, Microsoft’s “everyday AI companion.”

“There’s a little bit of skepticism, hesitation in terms of how someone can go about using something so new, but not knowing that it’s actually a really accessible, relevant and simple tool to use,” said Divya Kumar, Microsoft‘s GM of search and AI marketing. “AI search has been around in the market for 20-something years. So we want to bridge that gap between the early adopters and mainstream consumers.”

Etsy showed how its AI-powered Gift Mode could help find the perfect present for France. Google Pixel’s commercial focused on how its tools help those who are visually impaired take photographs. And, Crowdstrike showed how AI tools could help fight cyberattacks in a Western cyberpunk-themed commercial. 

“It’s really giving companies a chance , especially with the advertising, to pitch their angle of how is this going to be a positive thing for people for humanity and to be able to see it in the light that it creates a positive impact,” said Gaurav Misra, CEO of AI-powered video creation software Captions.

Creations makes videos in real-time, which brings up concerns over how the technology could be abused to manipulate content and create misinformation. It can also help people connect, as a recent New York Times article about how people fell in love using Captions AI translation software pointed out. That story helped the company explain the benefits of its product.

“You can speak in English, and it’ll make it look like you’re speaking French or German or something else, right?” Misra said. “It’s the type of thing that just wouldn’t have been possible before, and opens up new sort of possibilities of what people can do with it, and how people can communicate across different languages and cultures.”

There’s no bigger stage to get your humanizing message across than the Super Bowl, Microsoft’s Kumar said. The company also timed the ad campaign to a full user interface redesign of Copilot, which made it easier to see the prompts and gave more visual examples. It used real-life examples from customers to create the ad.

“It’s also a good learning experience because this is a great way for us to reach out to an audience that otherwise might not be fully in the know what Copilot can do, and then also learn from that experience in the upcoming marketing beats that we want to do,” she said.

Microsoft recently expanded access of Copilot to the small business community and launched a new premium subscription for individuals.

David Jones, The Brandtech Group founder and CEO, what America watched Sunday was the first attempt to have people understand that AI will change every aspect of our lives by doing everything better, faster and cheaper.

“What we saw in the Super Bowl are the embryonic early steps in this, but pretty soon it will be as pervasive as mobile or the internet or electricity,” said Jones, whose firm focuses on digital and generative AI marketing companies. “Nobody asks today ‘how will the internet be sold to us’ or ‘how will mobile be sold to us.’ They are at the heart of everything we do. (Generative) AI will be the same, but on steroids.”

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Elon Musk’s X temporarily down for tens of thousands of users

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Elon Musk's X temporarily down for tens of thousands of users

Elon Musk looks on as U.S. President Donald Trump meets South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 21, 2025.

Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

The Elon Musk-owned social media platform X experienced a brief outage on Saturday morning, with tens of thousands of users reportedly unable to use the site.

About 25,000 users reported issues with the platform, according to the analytics platform Downdetector, which gathers data from users to monitor issues with various platforms.

Roughly 21,000 users reported issues just after 8:30 a.m. ET, per the analytics platform.

The issues appeared to be largely resolved by around 9:55 a.m., when about 2,000 users were reporting issues with the platform.

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X did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. Additional information on the outage was not available.

Musk, the billionaire owner of SpaceX and Tesla, acquired X, formerly known as Twitter in 2022.

The site has had a number of widespread outages since the acquisition.

The site experienced another outage in March, which Musk attributed at the time to a “massive cyberattack.”

“We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources,” Musk wrote in a post at the time.

This is breaking news. Check back for updates

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Companies turn to AI to navigate Trump tariff turbulence

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Companies turn to AI to navigate Trump tariff turbulence

Artificial intelligence robot looking at futuristic digital data display.

Yuichiro Chino | Moment | Getty Images

Businesses are turning to artificial intelligence tools to help them navigate real-world turbulence in global trade.

Several tech firms told CNBC say they’re deploying the nascent technology to visualize businesses’ global supply chains — from the materials that are used to form products, to where those goods are being shipped from — and understand how they’re affected by U.S. President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs.

Last week, Salesforce said it had developed a new import specialist AI agent that can “instantly process changes for all 20,000 product categories in the U.S. customs system and then take action on them” as needed, to help navigate changes to tariff systems.

Engineers at the U.S. software giant used the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, a 4,400-page document of tariffs on goods imported to the U.S., to inform answers generated by the agent.

“The sheer pace and complexity of global tariff changes make it nearly impossible for most businesses to keep up manually,” Eric Loeb, executive vice president of government affairs at Salesforce, told CNBC. “In the past, companies might have relied on small teams of in-house experts to keep pace.”

Firms say that AI systems are enabling them to take decisions on adjustments to their global supply chains much faster.

Andrew Bell, chief product officer of supply chain management software firm Kinaxis, said that manufacturers and distributors looking to inform their response to tariffs are using his firm’s machine learning technology to assess their products and the materials that go into them, as well as external signals like news articles and macroeconomic data.

“With that information, we can start doing some of those simulations of, here is a particular part that is in your build material that has a significant tariff. If you switched to using this other part instead, what would the impact be overall?” Bell told CNBC.

‘AI’s moment to shine’

Trump’s tariffs list — which covers dozens of countries — has forced companies to rethink their supply chains and pricing, with the likes of Walmart and Nike already raising prices on some products. The U.S. imported about $3.3 trillion of goods in 2024, according to census data.

Uncertainty from the U.S. tariff measures “actually probably presents AI’s moment to shine,” Zack Kass, a futurist and former head of OpenAI’s go-to-market strategy, told CNBC’s Silvia Amaro at the Ambrosetti Forum in Italy last month.

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“If you wonder how hard things could get without AI vis-a-vis automation, and what would happen in a world where you can’t just employ a bunch of people overnight, AI presents this alternative proposal,” he added.

Nagendra Bandaru, managing partner and global head of technology services at Indian IT giant Wipro, said clients are using the company’s agentic AI solutions “to pivot supplier strategies, adjust trade lanes, and manage duty exposure dynamically as policy landscapes evolve.”

Wipro says it uses a range of AI systems — both proprietary and supplied by third parties — from large language models to traditional machine learning and computer vision techniques to inspect physical assets in cross-border transit.

‘Not a silver bullet’

While it preferred to keep company names confidential, Wipro said that firms using its AI products to navigate Trump’s tariffs range from a Fortune 500 electronics manufacturer with factories in Asia to an automotive parts supplier exporting to Europe and North America.

“AI is a powerful enabler — but not a silver bullet,” Bandaru told CNBC. “It doesn’t replace trade policy strategy, it enhances it by transforming global trade from a reactive challenge into a proactive, data-driven advantage.”

AI was already a key investment priority for global firms prior to Trump’s sweeping tariff announcements on April. Nearly three-quarters of business leaders ranked AI and generative AI in their top three technologies for investment in 2025, according to a report by Capgemini published in January.

“There are a number of ways AI can assist companies dealing with the tariffs and resulting uncertainty.  But any AI solution’s success will be predicated on the quality of the data it has access to,” Ajay Agarwal, partner at Bain Capital Ventures, told CNBC.

The venture capitalist said that one of his portfolio companies, FourKites, uses supply chain network data with AI to help firms understand the logistics impacts of adjusting suppliers due to tariffs.

“They are working with a number of Fortune 500 companies to leverage their agents for freight and ocean to provide this level of visibility and intelligence,” Agarwal said.

“Switching suppliers may reduce tariffs costs, but might increase lead times and transportation costs,” he added. “In addition, the volatility of the tariffs [has] severely impacted the rates and capacity available in both the ocean and the domestic freight networks.”

WATCH: Former OpenAI exec says tariffs ‘present AI’s moment to shine’

Former OpenAI exec says tariffs 'present AI's moment to shine'

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Amazon’s Zoox robotaxi unit issues second software recall in a month after San Francisco crash

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Amazon's Zoox robotaxi unit issues second software recall in a month after San Francisco crash

A Zoox autonomous robotaxi in San Francisco, California, US, on Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Amazon‘s Zoox robotaxi unit issued a voluntary recall of its software for the second time in a month following a recent crash in San Francisco.

On May 8, an unoccupied Zoox robotaxi was turning at low speed when it was struck by an electric scooter rider after braking to yield at an intersection. The person on the scooter declined medical attention after sustaining minor injuries as a result of the collision, Zoox said.

“The Zoox vehicle was stopped at the time of contact,” the company said in a blog post. “The e-scooterist fell to the ground directly next to the vehicle. The robotaxi then began to move and stopped after completing the turn, but did not make further contact with the e-scooterist.”

Zoox said it submitted a voluntary software recall report to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Thursday.

A Zoox spokesperson said the notice should be published on the NHTSA website early next week. The recall affected 270 vehicles, the spokesperson said.

The NHTSA said in a statement it had received the recall notice and that the agency “advises road users to be cautious in the vicinity of vehicles because drivers may incorrectly predict the travel path of a cyclist or scooter rider or come to an unexpected stop.”

If an autonomous vehicle continues to move after contact with any nearby vulnerable road user, it risks causing harm or further harm. In the AV industry, General Motors-backed Cruise exited the robotaxi business after a collision in which one of its vehicles injured a pedestrian who had been struck by a human-driven car and was then rolled over by the Cruise AV.

Zoox’s May incident comes roughly two weeks after the company announced a separate voluntary software recall following a recent Las Vegas crash. In that incident, an unoccupied Zoox robotaxi collided with a passenger vehicle, resulting in minor damage to both vehicles.

The company issued a software recall for 270 of its robotaxis in order to address a defect with its automated driving system that could cause it to inaccurately predict the movement of another car, increasing the “risk of a crash.”

Amazon acquired Zoox in 2020 for more than $1 billion, announcing at the time that the deal would help bring the self-driving technology company’s “vision for autonomous ride-hailing to reality.”

While Zoox is in a testing and development stage with its AVs on public roads in the U.S., Alphabet’s Waymo is already operating commercial, driverless ride-hailing services in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, and is ramping up in Atlanta.

Tesla is promising it will launch its long-delayed robotaxis in Austin next month, and, if all goes well, plans to expand after that to San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Antonio, Texas.

— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.

WATCH: Tesla’s decade-long journey to robotaxis

Tesla's decade-long journey to robotaxis

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