Nonprofit watchdog Media Matters has filed suit in D.C. district court to block FTC investigation of its reporting on Elon Musk’s X. Media Matters very plausibly sees the FTC scrutiny as a Trump administration and/or Elon Musk-inspired attack on its First Amendment rights. This follows the FTC blocking holding company Omnicom from refusing to place media buys on political or ideological grounds.
Customer experience and reputation management platform Birdeye has unveiled a new, AI-powered social publishing agent that will help hyperlocal brands raise their profiles on social media. Social AI Publishing Agent will generate and automatically schedule brand-aligned content across channels. Users can configure post frequency and time, theme and channel selection. They can also choose whether to approve the content or allow it to be posted autonomously.
Klaviyo, the marketing automation platform and B2C CRM, has unveiled a series of platform enhancements for marketing’s AI and omnichannel environment. Omnichannel Campaign Builder (currently in beta; expected Q3) will help plan, launch, and measure campaigns across email, SMS/RCS, push and WhatsApp. Channel Affinity powered by Klaviyo AI will detect optimal channels and time for customer engagement.
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.