Starbucks and Dunkin' have shifted seasons and welcomed back peppermint, gingerbread and red cups.
Why it matters: With Halloween over, the coffee giants are capitalizing on holiday cheer to drive sales similar to the buzz created with the August launches of pumpkin spice drinks and pastries.
An AI friend or lover can teach us what it means to be human, Rita Popova, the chief product officer of digital companion companies Replika and Blush, said at the Axios' AI+ Summit in San Francisco Wednesday.
Driving the news: Popova explained to Axios' Ina Fried how Replika, an AI companion service, evolved into Blush, which is an AI-powered dating simulation, and is now transforming again into an AI life coach.
The advent of AI doesn't mean today's AI leaders will dominate the next generation of tech, veteran entrepreneur Tom Siebel said at Axios' AI+ Summit in San Francisco Wednesday.
What they're saying: "It's generally assumed that Open AI or Microsoft or Facebook or Google is gonna win this battle. I don't think there's any reason to believe that at all," Siebel, who is now the CEO of C3.ai, told Axios' Ryan Heath.
Relentless chatter about artificial intelligence is more than mere hype, two top Silicon Valley investors told Axios' AI+ Summit in San Francisco Wednesday, insisting that this time really is different.
Driving the news: Anjney Midha, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, and Sonya Huang, a general partner at Sequoia Capital, explained to Axios' Kia Kokalitcheva that a confluence of factors have made generative AI's current moment possible — and there's a "big difference" between now and the false dawns of the past.
There's "nothing artificial" about artificial intelligence, AI pioneer and Stanford professor Fei-Fei Li told Axios' Ryan Heath at Axios' AI+ Summit in San Francisco Wednesday.
Why it matters: Li says the "artificial" label is "unfortunate" because the technology is made by humans for human use.
News/Media Alliance president and CEO Danielle Coffey sounded an alarm against using news content to train AI models without compensation or permission at Axios' AI+ Summit in San Francisco Wednesday.
Driving the news: Coffey told Axios' Sara Fischer that her organization's AI work is an extension of its effort to help smaller news outlets compete in the digital era.
Justine Bateman — the actor, filmmaker and author who is adviser on AI to SAG-AFTRA, the motion picture performers' union — told Axios' Ina Fried that AI is "not about solving problems for people. It's about money. It's about greed."
Driving the news: Speaking at Axios' AI+ Summit in San Francisco, Bateman drew a clear line on the use of generative AI in Hollywood, where SAG-AFTRA has been on strike since July, in part over disputes over AI-related rights.
Two new generative AI filters will make it easy for Instagram users to easily separate elements of images and perform other advanced edits, Ahmad Al-Dahle, vice president of generative AI at Meta, told Axios' Ina Fried on stage at the inaugural AI+ conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.
Why it matters: In the heated AI image-generation battle, Meta has some catching up to do with Adobe, OpenAI, and Midjourney, but Al-Dahle stressed that Meta has been in the AI space longer than most and they've learned to "iterate very quickly."
America's seniors continue to be a key driver of consumer spending.
Why it matters: Their spending power may play an important role in the resiliency of the economy, as Gen X, millennials and younger consumers slow down.
