AI tracker: Turning to chatbots for news updates

A recent survey reveals a growing trend of people using AI chatbots like ChatGPT for news updates, especially among younger demographics. The report highlights the increasing integration of AI in everyday information gathering, while also showcasing advancements in AI-driven personal shopping with the launch of Alta's innovative stylist app.

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People are increasingly turning to generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT to follow day-to-day news, a recent media report has found. The yearly survey from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found “for the first time” that significant numbers of people were using chatbots to get headlines and updates. Seven percent of people report using AI to find news, according to the Institute’s poll of 97,000 people in 48 countries carried out by YouGov, but the proportion is higher among the young, at 12% of under-35s and 15% under-25s. Many more used AI to summarise (27%), translate (24%) or recommend (21%) articles, while almost one in five asked questions about current events.

Alta opens a new fashion vista

New york based fashion tech startup Alta announced that it has raised $11 million in seed funding to build “the next generation of personal shopping and styling” powered by AI. Alta’s core product is an AI stylist/personal shopper that creates shopping and outfit recommendations based on a user’s closet, lifestyle, budget, occasion, and weather. The app leverages over a dozen proprietary multimodal generative AI models trained on fashion data, a press release from the company said. Users can also try recommended outfits on their virtual avatar—including mixing and matching shoppable items with items from their own closets.

AI isn't coming for your job

Predictions of imminent AI-driven mass unemployment are likely overblown but employers will seek workers with different skills as the technology matures, a top executive at global recruiter ManpowerGroup said at Paris’s Vivatech trade fair. For ManpowerGroup, AI agents are “certainly not going to become our core business any time soon,” the company’s Chief Innovation Officer Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic said. “If history shows us one thing, it’s most of these forecasts are wrong.” An International Labour Organization (ILO) report published in May found that around “one in four workers across the world are in an occupation with some degree of exposure” to generative AI models.

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