Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks on-stage during the Google I/O keynote session at the Google Developers Conference in Mountain View, California, on May 10, 2023.
Josh Edelson | AFP | Getty Images
Google‘s effort to rapidly add new artificial intelligence technology into its core products is making its way into the advertising world, CNBC has learned.
The company has given the green light to plans for using generative AI, fueled by large language models (LLMs), to automate advertising and ad-supported consumer services, according to internal documents.
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Last week, Google unveiled PaLM 2, its latest and most powerful LLM, trained on reams of text data that can come up with human-like responses to questions and commands. Certain groups within Google are now planning to use PaLM 2-powered tools to allow advertisers to generate their own media assets and to suggest videos for YouTube creators to make, documents show. .
Google has also been testing PaLM 2 for YouTube youth content for things like titles, and descriptions. For creators, the company has been using the technology to experiment with the idea of providing five video ideas based on topics that appear relevant.
With the AI chatbot craze speedily racing across the tech industry and capturing the fascination of Wall Street, Google and its peers, including Microsoft, Meta and Amazon, are rushing to embed their most sophisticated models in as many products as possible. The urgency has been particularly acute at Google since the public launch late last year of Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT raised concern that the future of internet search was suddenly up for grabs.
Meanwhile, Google has been mired in a multi-quarter stretch of muted revenue growth after almost two decades of consistent and rapid expansion. With fears of a recession building since last year, advertisers have been reeling in online marketing budgets, wreaking havoc on Google, Facebook and others. Specific to Google, paid search advertising conversion rates have decreased this year across most industries.
Beyond search, email and spreadsheets, Google wants to use generative AI offerings to increase spending to boost revenue and improve margins, according to the documents. An AI-powered customer support strategy could potentially run across more than 100 Google products, including, Google Play Store, Gmail, Android Search and Maps, the documents show.
Automated support chatbots could provide specific answers through simple, clear sentences and allow for follow-up questions to be asked before suggesting an advertising plan that would best suit an inquiring customer.
A Google spokesperson declined to comment.
Google recently offered Google Duet and Chat assistance, allowing people to use simple natural language to get answers on cloud-related questions, such as how to use certain cloud services or functions, or to get detailed implementation plans for their projects.
Google is also working on its own internal Stable Diffusion-like product for image creation, according to the documents. Stable Diffusion’s technology, similar to OpenAI’s DALL-E, can quickly render images in various styles with text-based direction from the user.
Google’s plan to push its latest AI models into advertising isn’t a surprise. Last week, Facebook parent Meta unveiled the AI Sandbox, a “testing playground” for advertisers to try out new generative AI-powered ad tools. The company also announced updates to Meta Advantage, its portfolio of automated tools and products that advertisers can use to enhance their campaigns.
On May 23, Google will be introducing new technologies for advertisers at its annual event, Google Marketing Live. The company hasn’t offered specifics about what it will be announcing, but it’s made clear that AI will be a central theme.
“You’ll discover how our AI-powered ads solutions can help multiply your marketing expertise and drive powerful business results in today’s changing economy,” the website for the event says.
Apple is losing market share in China due to declining iPhone shipments, supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo wrote in a report on Friday. The stock slid 2.4%.
“Apple has adopted a cautious stance when discussing 2025 iPhone production plans with key suppliers,” Kuo, an analyst at TF Securities, wrote in the post. He added that despite the expected launch of the new iPhone SE 4, shipments are expected to decline 6% year over year for the first half of 2025.
Kuo expects Apple’s market share to continue to slide, as two of the coming iPhones are so thin that they likely will only support eSIM, which the Chinese market currently does not promote.
“These two models could face shipping momentum challenges unless their design is modified,” he wrote.
Kuo wrote that in December, overall smartphone shipments in China were flat from a year earlier, but iPhone shipments dropped 10% to 12%.
There is also “no evidence” that Apple Intelligence, the company’s on-device artificial intelligence offering, is driving hardware upgrades or services revenue, according to Kuo. He wrote that the feature “has not boosted iPhone replacement demand,” according to a supply chain survey he conducted, and added that in his view, the feature’s appeal “has significantly declined compared to cloud-based AI services, which have advanced rapidly in subsequent months.”
Apple’s estimated iPhone shipments total about 220 million units for 2024 and between about 220 million and 225 million for this year, Kuo wrote. That is “below the market consensus of 240 million or more,” he wrote.
Apple did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Amazon said it is halting some of its diversity and inclusion initiatives, joining a growing list of major corporations that have made similar moves in the face of increasing public and legal scrutiny.
In a Dec. 16 internal note to staffers that was obtained by CNBC, Candi Castleberry, Amazon’s VP of inclusive experiences and technology, said the company was in the process of “winding down outdated programs and materials” as part of a broader review of hundreds of initiatives.
“Rather than have individual groups build programs, we are focusing on programs with proven outcomes — and we also aim to foster a more truly inclusive culture,” Castleberry wrote in the note, which was first reported by Bloomberg.
Castleberry’s memo doesn’t say which programs the company is dropping as a result of its review. The company typically releases annual data on the racial and gender makeup of its workforce, and it also operates Black, LGBTQ+, indigenous and veteran employee resource groups, among others.
In 2020, Amazon set a goal of doubling the number of Black employees in vice president and director roles. It announced the same goal in 2021 and also pledged to hire 30% more Black employees for product manager, engineer and other corporate roles.
Meta on Friday made a similar retreat from its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The social media company said it’s ending its approach of considering qualified candidates from underrepresented groups for open roles and its equity and inclusion training programs. The decision drew backlash from Meta employees, including one staffer who wrote, “If you don’t stand by your principles when things get difficult, they aren’t values. They’re hobbies.”
Amazon, which is the nation’s second-largest private employer behind Walmart, also recently made changes to its “Our Positions” webpage, which lays out the company’s stance on a variety of policy issues. Previously, there were separate sections dedicated to “Equity for Black people,” “Diversity, equity and inclusion” and “LGBTQ+ rights,” according to records from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
The current webpage has streamlined those sections into a single paragraph. The section says that Amazon believes in creating a diverse and inclusive company and that inequitable treatment of anyone is unacceptable. The Information earlier reported the changes.
Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel told CNBC in a statement: “We update this page from time to time to ensure that it reflects updates we’ve made to various programs and positions.”
Read the full memo from Amazon’s Castleberry:
Team,
As we head toward the end of the year, I want to give another update on the work we’ve been doing around representation and inclusion.
As a large, global company that operates in different countries and industries, we serve hundreds of millions of customers from a range of backgrounds and globally diverse communities. To serve them effectively, we need millions of employees and partners that reflect our customers and communities. We strive to be representative of those customers and build a culture that’s inclusive for everyone.
In the last few years we took a new approach, reviewing hundreds of programs across the company, using science to evaluate their effectiveness, impact, and ROI — identifying the ones we believed should continue. Each one of these addresses a specific disparity, and is designed to end when that disparity is eliminated. In parallel, we worked to unify employee groups together under one umbrella, and build programs that are open to all. Rather than have individual groups build programs, we are focusing on programs with proven outcomes — and we also aim to foster a more truly inclusive culture. You can read more about this on our Together at Amazon page on A to Z.
This approach — where we move away from programs that were separate from our existing processes, and instead integrating our work into existing processes so they become durable — is the evolution to “built in” and “born inclusive,” instead of “bolted on.” As part of this evolution, we’ve been winding down outdated programs and materials, and we’re aiming to complete that by the end of 2024. We also know there will always be individuals or teams who continue to do well-intentioned things that don’t align with our company-wide approach, and we might not always see those right away. But we’ll keep at it.
We’ll continue to share ongoing updates, and appreciate your hard work in driving this progress. We believe this is important work, so we’ll keep investing in programs that help us reflect those audiences, help employees grow, thrive, and connect, and we remain dedicated to delivering inclusive experiences for customers, employees, and communities around the world.
New Tesla Model 3 vehicles on a truck at a logistics drop zone in Seattle, Washington, on Aug. 22, 2024.
M. Scott Brauer | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Tesla is voluntarily recalling about 239,000 of its electric vehicles in the U.S. to fix an issue that can cause its rearview cameras to fail, the company disclosed in filings posted Friday to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s website.
“A rearview camera that does not display an image reduces the driver’s rear view, increasing the risk of a crash,” Tesla wrote in a letter to the regulator. The recall applies to Tesla’s 2024-2025 Model 3 and Model S sedans, and to its 2023-2025 Model X and Model Y SUVs.
The company also said in the acknowledgement letter that it has already “released an over-the-air (OTA) software update, free of charge” that can fix some of the vehicles’ camera issues.
In 2024, Tesla issued 16 recalls in the U.S. that applied to 5.14 million of its EVs, according to NHTSA data. The recall remedies included a mix of over-the-air software updates and parts replacements. More than 40% of last year’s recalls pertained to issues with the newest vehicle in the company’s lineup, the Cybertruck, an angular steel pickup that Tesla began delivering to customers in late 2023.
Regarding the latest recall, the company said it had received 887 warranty claims and dozens of field reports but told the NHTSA that it was not aware of any injurious, fatal or other collisions resulting from the rearview camera failures.
Other customers with vehicles that “experienced a circuit board failure or stress that may lead to a circuit board failure,” which cause the backup camera failures, can have their vehicles’ computers replaced by Tesla, free of charge, the company said.
Tesla did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.