CDP Institute

CDP Simon Data is launching “composable” AI agents built natively in Snowflake Cortex AI. Not unlike microapps, composable AI agents are designed to perform a specific, discrete marketing-related task, although they can be combined and adapted to achieve more complex goals. They will run entirely in the Snowflake environment, meaning no data movement.

Omnichannel marketing platform Dotdigital has acquired influencer, affiliate and referral platform Social Snowball. This will make the voices of influencers and affiliates available as brand advocates to Dotdigital’s commerce customers. The acquisition will also extend Dotdigital’s reach into the Shopify space where Social Snowball is an established player.

Actress Sarah Silverman and several well-known authors had their AI copyright infringement case against Meta dismissed by a San Francisco federal judge days after Anthropic won a similar case in the same court. However, Judge Chhabria’s decision is not necessarily good news for the AI giants, as he makes crystal clear that plaintiffs brought the wrong arguments while missing the “potentially winning argument — that Meta has copied their works to create a product that will likely flood the market with similar works.” His decision is a blueprint for future... Read More >

Treasure Data has launched MCP Server powered by the open source connector Model Context Protocol. The Server will allow users to query customer data using natural language through its connection with AI assistants like Claude, GitHub Copilot Chat and Windsurf. The MCP Server bridge allows AI to access data in the Treasure Data platform directly and securely.

Over 60% of employees say AI has been significantly overhyped, including 49% of IT leaders, according to a survey of 2,500 respondents by cloud communications and IT platform GoTo. At the same time, 86% admit they’re not using it to its full potential, including 92% of Baby Boomers. Is AI on the brink of Gartner’s Trough of Disillusionment?

If you’ve made an impulse purchase on Instagram late and night and regretted it in the morning you’re not alone, according to WalletHub, even if 54% is not a huge majority of second-thinkers. Eighty percent would spend less if they deleted their social media accounts. Meanwhile, 86% of shoppers aged 18-44 say they miss being able to touch and handle real products (The Harris Poll).

In the latest twist of the AI and copyright violation saga, a California federal judge has ruled that Anthropic training its LLM Claude on copyrighted books was “fair use and “transformative” — “like any reader aspiring to be a writer.” The part of the lawsuit, brought by three authors, that focuses on Anthropic maintaining a central library of some 7 million pirated books, will proceed to trial. That claim could still result in damages.

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.

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.

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.

In hopes of dodging threatened fines for giving preference to its own services, Google has unveiled a plan for vertical search services (VSS). VSS, selected on a non-discriminatory basis, would appear in a dedicated box at the top of the search results page matching Google’s own search in format and function, and featuring three direct links to services such as hotels, airlines or restaurants. Google is not conceding, of course, that there’s anything wrong with what it currently does.