Synthetic audiences — AI agents trained to simulate the response of consumers to advertising programs — are one of the more benign AI applications. Evidenza, which creates such things, just landed a partnership with Dentsu to use its tools. They are still an exception: survey research firm Cint found just 2% of respondents are open to using it.
A federal moratorium on state regulation of AI systems moved closer to passage last week when the Senate parliamentarian ruled it could be included in the Republicans’ massive tax and spending bill. The bill needs only a majority vote to pass, although it could still be modified. If the risks aren’t clear: Anthropic released a new report finding that most major AI will resort to blackmail to save themselves.
CDP Hightouch has announced that it has been accepted into the Mach Alliance, a global non-profit that certifies vendors who deliver open technologies and solutions. Hightouch says it aligns with a number of key Mach Alliance principles. These include composability, openness and interoperability, integration with a broader eco-system through APIs and incrementality (rather than “big bang” migration).
The web search tool Perplexity looks like it’s taking on Google with its latest release, a web browser named Comet. Comet claims to move “from browsing to thinking,” surfacing information and search results in response to natural language queries. Comet is available immediately to Perplexity Max subscribers; others can join a wait list.