Perhaps because Target had seemed sincere in its support for minority groups including the LGBTQ+ community, the announcement that it would end its DEI initiatives sparked anger and calls for a boycott. Other brands, such as Walmart, are taking similar negative steps. Some 98% of Costco shareholders, however, voted down a proposal to conduct a risk analysis of its DEI program.

Advertisers often worry that automated systems like Google Performance Max (PMax) are placing ads in undesirable locations.  After months of claiming that exclusions can only be specified manually, Google has acknowledged that PMax actually allows advertisers to specify them using an API.  There’s a good chance that this will result in more exclusions and, thus, less inventory for Google to sell.

There’s no shortage of lawsuits by publishers against genAI platforms for copyright infringement; now major studios are getting with the program. Walt Disney and Comcast’s Universal are accusing Midjourney of using some of their best known characters (think Darth Vader and the Minions) in its AI image generator — a “bottomless pit of plagiarism,” they say. No response yet from Midjourney.