Microsoft plans to make OpenAI's generative AI technology such as ChatGPT available to billions of users by integrating it into all of its products, CEO Satya Nadella said this week. That means that ChatGPT's ability to generate text through short prompts is likely on its way to the Office 365 product suite, including Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Outlook. Using OpenAI's models, Microsoft Word's autocomplete and autocorrect features could carry out more advanced tasks than style and grammar correction and generate longer chunks of text based on a few words. Though the company hasn't announced any specific features yet, users could potentially be able to input prompts and generate complete PowerPoint presentations and emails. These kinds of features could help Microsoft attract younger users. While Microsoft Office 365 has been a de facto standard for millions of enterprises, analysts say the tech giant has fallen behind in attracting those who gravitate toward collaborative-first products like Google Docs and Sheets.

At CES earlier this January, Mercedes announced that it would become the first car company to achieve certification from the SAE for a Level 3 driver assist system. That became official on Thursday when the automaker confirmed its Drive Pilot ADAS (automated driver assist system) now complies with the requirements of Nevada Chapter 482A, which governs the use of autonomous vehicle technology on the state's roads. That makes Drive Pilot the only legal Level 3 system in the US for the moment. "An unwavering commitment to innovation has consistently guided Mercedes-Benz from the very beginning," Dimitris Psillakis, President and CEO of MBUSA, said in Thursday's press statement. "It is a very proud moment for everyone to continue this leadership and celebrate this monumental achievement as the first automotive company to be certified for Level 3 conditionally automated driving in the US market."

Shutterstock, one of the internet's biggest sources of stock photos and illustrations, is now offering its customers the option to generate their own AI images. In October, the company announced a partnership with OpenAI, the creator of the wildly popular and controversial DALL-E AI tool. Now, the results of that deal are in beta testing and available to all paying Shutterstock users. The new platform is available in "every language the site offers," and comes included with customers' existing licensing packages, according to a press statement from the company. And, according to Gizmodo's own test, every text prompt you feed Shutterstock's machine results in four images, ostensibly tailored to your request.

One of the most remarkable things about construction robotics is the sheer breadth of tasks that can potentially be automated. As I've noted before, the entire category is a prime target for robotics startups, given that it fills all of the big Ds of automation -- dull, dirty and (quite often) dangerous. It's also one of those areas that have become increasingly difficult to staff, post-pandemic, even as construction work came roaring back. So, if I'm running a fairly successful company that makes construction robots, I'm certainly thinking of diversification. The quickest way to jump start that is, of course, acquiring another, smaller startup.

ChatGPT, launched by OpenAI in November, quickly went viral for its often elegant, information-packed responses to various questions, gripping the imaginations of regular people, business leaders and investors including Microsoft Corp., which began backing OpenAI in 2019 and said Monday that it would make a multibillion-dollar investment in the startup. OpenAI last week said it would soon add ChatGPT, which stands for chat generative pre-trained transformer, to its application programming interface, or API, which lets developers embed OpenAI technology into their own products. But customer-experience executives said overreliance on such AI models could lead to companies dishing out incorrect information to customers online without knowing they are doing so. While many chatbots are trained to deliver a version of "I don't know" to requests they cannot compute, ChatGPT, for example, is more likely to spout off a response with complete confidence--even if the information is wrong. CMO Today delivers the most important news of the day for media and marketing professionals.

Microsoft today said that it's extending its partnership with OpenAI, the startup behind art- and text-generating AI systems like ChatGPT, DALL-E 2 and GPT-3, with a "multi-year, multi-billion-dollar" investment. OpenAI says that the infusion of new capital -- the exact amount of which wasn't disclosed -- will be used to continue its independent research and develop AI that's "safe, useful and powerful." The optics aren't the best for Microsoft, which just last week announced plans to lay off 10,000 employees as a part of broader cost-cutting measures. But they'd been telegraphed by the company earlier this month -- in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that Microsoft planned to make OpenAI's foundational systems available as commercials platforms so that any entity in any industry can build on them. OpenAI will remain a capped-profit company as a part of the new investment deal with Microsoft.

The Detroit Lions today announced the franchise has selected Wallaroo.AI as its official artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) partner. The Lions will work with Wallaroo to scale the use of AI across many different business objectives on and off the field. The first phase of the partnership will integrate Wallaroo technology into the newly established Trace3 Analytics War Room at the Lions home at Ford Field in downtown Detroit, where they will work directly with the team's analytics group during games to improve the fan experience across various elements such as ticketing, parking, concessions, retail, and fan sentiment. "Our organization continues to look for innovative ways to improve our business and be a leader in the use of analytics throughout the NFL," says Ashton Mullinix, senior vice president of strategy and analytics for the Detroit Lions. "With the help of Wallaroo, we are looking to scale our use of AI to leverage real-time data to impact decision making."

Faced with such comprehensive blowback, WotC eventually gave way. On Jan. 13, the company announced plans to discard the royalty scheme and promised that creators will retain exclusive ownership of their own work, while also defending the OGL 1.1 as a means of shutting down "hateful and discriminatory products" and quashing third-party NFTs. The post, which was not attributed to any specific individual at WotC, ended by hailing the situation as a victory for both sides, insisting that the company had always intended to solicit the community's input: "You're going to hear people say that they won, and we lost because making your voices heard forced us to change our plans. Those people will only be half right. They won -- and so did we."

Cloverleaf Analytics, the leading provider of Insurance Intelligence solutions, today announced that Michael Schwabrow has joined the company as EVP of Sales and Marketing. Reporting to Cloverleaf President Robert Clark, Schwabrow will be responsible for Cloverleaf's go-to-market strategy and for cultivating relationships with insurers to maximize the value of Cloverleaf's Insurance Intelligence platform which includes Business Intelligence (BI), Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML), Natural Language Processing (NLP), and other technologies. Schwabrow has a long track record of collaborating with carriers and MGAs to attain meaningful digital transformation with immediate and long-term business results. With Cloverleaf, he will help carriers and MGAs to understand and unleash the real-world value of Insurance Intelligence across core business operations. "The insurance industry is like a big family, and our community is at a critical juncture for how to make smarter and more efficient decisions to reduce risk, improve product offerings, and strengthen the overall health of carrier books of business," said Schwabrow.

When the world's largest healthcare company by revenue went looking for a technology solution that could improve quality of care while reducing costs, the search took ten years. What they found--an innovative way to model healthcare data--is saving the company an estimated $150M annually and enabling its medical professionals to provide accurate and effective care path recommendations in real time. This same solution, graph databases and graph analytics, proved crucial at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. A testament to its potential, the market for graph technology is projected to reach $11.25B by 2030.[1] It's what social networking applications use to store and process vast amounts of "connected" data.