Why it matters: News organizations, business leaders and brands are being forced to evolve and meet audiences where they are in order to break through.
General Motors is taking a more hands-on role at its Cruise self-driving car business to help steer it out of a deepening crisis.
Why it matters: Cruise is one of the biggest bets GM has made under CEO Mary Barra, but her dream of a self-driving future is in danger of unraveling into a costly nightmare.
The first of at least 400 planned Mercedes-Benz Charging Hubs in the U.S. opened Wednesday near Atlanta, representing a huge upgrade in the electric vehicle (EV) charging experience.
Why it matters: If every charging station were like this, people would be less reluctant to drive an EV.
Americans spent $4 billion on video games, hardware and accessories in October, down 5% from the same month last year, sales tracking firm Circana reported today. That's partially due to a November release of the latest Call of Duty, which had its prior release in October of last year.
Why it matters: The video game industry, which boomed during the COVID era, then slumped, has returned to at least meager growth this year.
AR startup Zappar says its $80 Zapbox headset is the first mixed reality device capable of playing back the new spatial video format that Apple has just added to the iPhone operating system.
Why it matters: The latest test version of iOS gives recent iPhones the ability to harness multiple cameras in order to capture content in a more immersive way.
While these new videos are primarily designed for playback on the forthcoming Vision Pro, Zappar says its device can play them back today. Apple's headset will cost thousands of dollars and isn't arriving until next year.
Details: Zappar showed off the new capability in a video shared first with Axios. In the coming weeks, it plans to add a specialized app for viewing the spatial movies on Zapbox.
Like previously available budget headsets such as Google's Cardboard and Samsung's Galaxy VR, Zapbox relies on the smartphone for the display and processing power. It works now with the iPhone 11 and later models, and Android support is said to be coming later this year.
Zapbox comes with two Bluetooth controllers and also offers the ability to view 3D models from Sketchfab and play VR games such as chess and pool.
Yes, but: Zapbox may be the first, but it won't be the only company besides Apple to support the new format. Other VR headset makers are likely to quickly follow suit. And many of those offer significantly higher resolution and more features than Zapbox.
What they're saying: "We couldn't be more excited about offering spatial video to the hundreds of thousands of iPhone 15 Pro or Pro Max users who can't afford the $3,500 price tag for the Vision Pro," Simon Taylor, Chief R&D Officer for Zapbox, said in a statement to Axios.
Scientific information and data analytics giant Elsevier is partnering with a medical startup to give doctors the ability to use generative AI to access the most up-to-date medical research as they treat patients in real time.
Why it matters: Experts say the adoption of AI could dramatically improve the quality of care patients receive — while also lowering costs, cutting wait times and expanding access.
The leading travel sites have all introduced AI chatbots in time to plan holiday vacations — but you should double-check their work before you plunk down money, says Booking.com CEO Glenn Fogel.
"They have a terrible habit of hallucinating," or giving wrong answers, Fogel noted in an interview with Axios.
JPMorgan and Apollo are teaming up on a project that unlocks the future of wealth management with blockchain technology and tokens.
Why it matters: Investors like to see all their positions, all their risks, all their wins and losses, in one place at the same time. The two financial giants believe that blockchains could make that more feasible and flexible via their collaboration.
Driving the news: The pair unveiled the proof-of-concept Tuesday at the Singapore Fintech Festival, as part of the Monetary Authority of Singapore's initiative.
What they're saying: "Today in 2023, in collaboration with Apollo, we have a new, bold vision: Creating a step change in the asset and wealth management industry through a new paradigm for portfolio management," Tyrone Lobban head of JPMorgan's Onyx Digital Assets said.
In the weeds: They aimed to demonstrate that a portfolio manager could manage a large number of discretionary portfolios, made up of a spectrum of tokenized traditional and alternative investments across blockchains, all while maintaining the uniqueness of each investor's account.
Think separately managed accounts (SMAs) at scale, with lower barriers to entry.
Of note: They also built a portfolio construction and management prototype, called Crescendo, to bring that concept to life.
The intrigue: The hot topic right now is getting a bitcoin exchange-traded fund, because investors want to buy bitcoin in their brokerage accounts, not directly on blockchains. Now, investing giants want to put actual blockchains in brokerage accounts.
Between the lines: JPMorgan and Apollo are playing to their respective strengths, model portfolios and alternative investments.
The tentative agreement the Hollywood actors' union reached last week with movie studios goes further in outlining specific AI compensation requirements than agreements Hollywood writers 'and directors' unions won earlier this year.
Why it matters: Actors face a different type of existential threat from AI than some of their Hollywood peers.
The Israeli government appears to be turning to controversial spyware maker NSO Group to help track those kidnapped and murdered by Hamas in the last month, according to a source with direct knowledge of NSO's operations.
Why it matters: NSO has come under fire for providing governments with surveillance technology that they have later used to spy on journalists, dissidents and human rights activists.
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales thinks humans have an edge on AI for least the next 20 or 30 years, and that the future of knowledge will always involve "serious effort" by people, he told Axios at Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal.
Details: Wales said in his keynote interview at Europe's largest and most controversy-plagued tech conference that ChatGPT and competitors are "actually pretty bad" and "still a long way from being a reliable source."
Humane's forthcoming AI wearable is an exciting glimpse of a future that might never fully materialize — and even if it does, there's no guarantee Humane will be the company to usher it in.
State of play: The $699 Ai Pin aims to replace the smartphone and its myriad apps with a voice-controlled AI assistant, foregoing a screen in favor of an innovative laser-projected display.
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