One of the most exciting and challenging parts of working with media companies on their AI strategy is keeping pace with how rapidly the tools evolve. In this space, “what doesn’t work” can become “industry standard” in just a few short months. Tools that once gave you mediocre—or even outright disastrous—results may have quietly gone through three […]

Spotify fired a massive shot across radio’s bow this week with the launch of powerful new tools that make it ridiculously easy for small businesses to run targeted ads — not only on Spotify but also across other digital music platforms. Here’s what they rolled out: * Spotify Ad Exchange: Advertisers can now run the same creative across multiple […]

Last week, Google rolled out new image generation features that let users modify photos with text prompts—no more fumbling through Photoshop. This week, OpenAI followed suit, upgrading its image capabilities and making them available across all tiers of ChatGPT. You may have seen the OpenAI-generated versions of memes this week in your social feeds like […]

Two weeks after UK musicians launched a campaign opposing a proposed British AI law—one that would allow tech companies to train AI on their content by default unless they actively opt out—concerns over creators’ rights continue to gain traction. Meanwhile, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently expressed outrage over the Chinese AI engine DeepSeek allegedly training […]

I had my first encounter with AI in healthcare this week. During a checkup, my physician entered the examination room with his trusty laptop (typical) and a smartphone set to record (new). Before the appointment started, he explained that the healthcare system was testing a new AI system designed to record and summarize our conversation. […]

It’s been another frenetic week in AI. Let’s strap in and see what happened! Amazon Goes All-In With Alexa+ After months of speculation and delays, Amazon officially announced a major AI upgrade for Alexa on Wednesday. The long-awaited Alexa+ service will begin rolling out in the coming weeks, starting with Echo Show devices featuring screens […]

Ideally, this newsletter would stick to the biggest AI headlines, broadcaster-friendly insights, and tools you can use at your station, but once again, this week has been dominated by wonky, technical AI developments. The biggest of those is the release of Grok-3, the new model from X.ai.  Grok-3, allows users to add “think” and “big brain” modes […]

OpenAI’s Big Week It’s been another big week for OpenAI. The leading AI engine announced a new roadmap, which includes a different pricing structure and a simplified interface for users — not requiring them to choose which AI model they want to use for user queries. OpenAI has become a maze of options for users. Paid users currently can […]

If the AI era kicked off with the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, the first AI-driven Super Bowl ad followed just 74 days later. During the second quarter of Super Bowl LVII, Google aired an ad for the Pixel 7, showcasing its AI-powered photo-editing features—removing photobombers and exes from photos—without ever mentioning the term […]

DeepSeek, a two-year-old Chinese AI startup, has shaken up the tech world with the launch of R1, an AI model that reportedly operates with 95-97% fewer resources than its competitors. After surging to the top of the Apple App Store this week, its impact is forcing a major rethink of what it actually takes to […]

The biggest non-political AI news of the week was yet another big announcement from OpenAI. “Operator” is an AI agent that can read things off the web and preform multi-step tasks autonomously — think buying groceries, purchasing tickets (if it can get around the CAPTCHA), or booking travel. Operator is available now to users in OpenAI’s super-premium $200/month […]

We’ve spent a good chunk of the week finalizing the themes and compiling content from our trip to CES as we prepare for the annual Jacobs Media CES Industry Webinar. [Register for Tuesday’s event here.] One of the big themes of what turned out to be a 2.5-million-square-foot-AI-festival was using the technology to connect real […]

I’m fresh off the plane from Las Vegas at CES, the world’s largest exposition of technology. If last year’s CES was 25% AI, this year’s was 90%. Most companies at CES have included either AI into their products, AI into their marketing literature, or both. (Cynically, the amorphous definition of AI allows this.) While our Jacobs Media […]

What a year! In 2024, rapid advancements in AI reshaped content creation, audience engagement, and operational efficiency, presenting both opportunities and challenges for broadcasters. Major AI platforms launched transformative updates: OpenAI’s GPT-4o reduced inaccuracies and became freely accessible; Google released two updates to Gemini; and Meta and X introduced new tools. These developments expanded options for […]

It was mid-February this year when OpenAI previewed Sora, their text-to-video AI engine.  The examples were jaw-dropping,  but there were unresolved safety issues. Only a week after OpenAI’s announcement, Google decided to pull back their text-to-image AI engine after it created historically inaccurate images, spurring a public outcry.  AI companies got gunshy. OpenAI spent ten months fine-tuning […]

Last week, Sam Altman of OpenAI announced a radio-esque promotion with the “12 Days of OpenAI.”  After being pretty quiet over the last couple months, the AI giant started making one new product announcement per day.  The announcements will continue every weekday until the Friday before Christmas. The biggest announcement so far has been the release […]

In a recent CNBC interview, Ben Affleck does a deep dive on AI.  Many of his viewpoints echo many of ours: AI is disruptive, but it also has the potential to save time and could potentially create new revenue streams. He asserts that AI cannot replicate the nuanced artistry of human actors or the creative genius of […]

AI is continuing to shake things up, pushing boundaries and igniting debates. Apple and Baidu are diving into smart glasses, OpenAI’s SearchGPT is gunning for Google, and Meta’s AI-powered news partnerships are stirring the pot. On the creative front, Universal bets on “ethical” AI music while the Beatles snag a groundbreaking AI-assisted Grammy nod. But […]

Americans have a genuine concern about identifying AI in the media they consume. In a conversation I had with a radio colleague this week, she succinctly defined the users’ quandary by explaining we want to know not only what we can trust, but also in which messages we can emotionally invest. Or, in other words, “Don’t […]

It was inevitable.  Earlier this week Fred Jacobs tipped me off to a streaming radio station where all of the content is created by AI. Every song, every production element in the stream was created by an engine like Suno.AI or Udio. After listening for a while, it’s apparent that even though the content was all newly-created AI-audio, the songs and overall […]