Even Google hits an occasional speed bump: a California jury assessed it with $425 million in compensatory damages for collecting data on users who had opted out of app activity tracking. Then again, the class action plaintiffs had asked for more than $30 billion in damages so maybe that’s really a win. In any event, the result will probably be appealed.
Google continued its Very Good Week with a report that Apple may use Google technology for an AI-powered web search feature. Apple has glaringly lagged in its AI efforts, but apparently intends to build an answer engine to compete with OpenAI and Perplexity.
Audience measurement vendor Comscore has launched a new venture to build privacy-safe audiences from privacy-unsafe customer data. The trick is to match IDs from third-party audiences to Comscore’s own consumer panel, and then build a look-alike model using non-personal attributes. The dozen or so partners providing the input audiences include Circana, Dynata, Eyeota, Polk Automotive Solutions, Symphony Health, and TransUnion.
ChatGPT is hoping to grab another slice of your attention with Pulse, a now-in-limited-preview feature that will proactively deliver daily updates on information it thinks you’ll find useful. The new service is positioned as a personal assistant that will select contents “based on your chats, feedback, and connected apps like your calendar.” Forget about privacy; the real question is whether this becomes a news source that gives ChatGPT the ability to shape your opinions.