Having been fined almost $600 million by the EU for preventing developers from promoting alternative payment systems within their apps, Apple is digging its heels in. Why not just warn users not to purchase using those other channels? Big exclamation marks have been seen alongside listings of apps which don’t use Apple’s “private and secure payment system.”
A new product from Salesforce, Agentforce in Slack, will bring AI agents into Slack conversations as purpose-built “teammates” rather than general purpose assistants. This is a step in the direction of replacing “do-everything” AI with more specialized models. Salesforce is also offering new, flexible pricing models for Agentforce in addition to the price-per-conversation model.
As many as two-thirds of audience-serving companies are failing to use their audience data for personalization, squandering opportunities to activate and engage, according to a survey of 119 audience professionals by Omeda. Progress is slowed by tech limitations and data fragmentation, even though 85% see audience data as a competitive advantage. While search traffic is slipping, the respondents look to events, newsletters and direct traffic to build audiences.
It barely feels like news when industry giants add AI features, since that’s what they’re expected to do. But lots of people use their products, so their announcements are probably of higher interest than most. With that in mind, let’s note that Adobe has just announced general availability of agents for audience creation, journey orchestration, experimentation, journey insights, website optimization and agent support.