We were so focused on Privacy Day yesterday that I had to defer telling you that Episerver is renaming itself Optimizely, a company it purchased last fall. Neither name exactly screams “world’s best digital experience platform” but Optimizely was apparently the stronger brand. It was certainly more popular on Google Trends.
Apple celebrated Privacy Day by announcing an “early spring” date to enforce its new rule that each app must request explicit opt-in to share users’ data with third parties. The strong expectation is that many won’t say yes and the flow of data to personalize ads and track results will be reduced to a trickle.
This isn’t quite a privacy item, but identity management is closely related. On that front, Master Data Management vendor and borderline CDP Reltio has launched a free cloud-based identity resolution service. Users can upload lists of names which the system will clean, store, and compare with previously-loaded names to flag potential matches for manual review. The system will remember past matches so each user builds an expanded identity graph over time.
Disney has agreed to license more than 200 characters, costumes, and environments (but not voices or talent likenesses) to OpenAI for Sora, its gen AI video platform. This is highly unusual for Disney, which generally sues AI models for copyright infringement; in fact, it sued Google for that a day before announcing the OpenAI deal. Disney will also invest $1 billion in OpenAI, nicely illustrating how very eager they are to join the AI party.