Isolation and loneliness are significant problems in society, and people are increasingly turning to AI as a solution.
A Harvard Graduate School of Education study found 21% of adults in the U.S. feel lonely and have a sense of disconnection from friends, family, and/or the world. Additionally, loneliness continues to rise across all age groups.
This and the emergence of genAI have resulted in a rapidly growing industry of AI-powered companions you can talk to. According to Sensor Tower, the six most popular AI Companion apps have an estimated user base of 52 million.
So I was not surprised when I got an email about “PalUp, a unique social platform where AI personalities and humans interact as equals, forming genuine friendships.”
The AI pals are “fueled with emotional intelligence; bringing real empathy and understanding to every conversation. … Whether you’re in a joyful mood or need some calm advice, AI pals can match your tone and expression, making chats feel natural and real.” Furthermore, if I’m reading this correctly, your AI pal can make friends with other people’s AI pals.
All this reminds me of something the great comedian/composer Tom Lehrer once said, “I know some people feel that marriage as an institution is dying out, but I disagree and the point was driven home to me rather forcefully not long ago by a letter I received which said: ‘Darling, I love you and I cannot live without you. Marry me, or I will kill myself.’ Well, I was a little disturbed at that until I took another look at the envelope and saw that it was addressed to occupant.”
And now, here’s this week’s AI-powered releases.
- Antavo, the AI-powered loyalty platform, launched Timi AI, an AI agent. It assists loyalty program development with real-time on-demand video chat between the avatar and Antavo’s clients.
- Hype AI launched its marketing platform, which lets businesses of all sizes create high-impact content and foster intuitive brand growth. It can quickly create marketing strategies, new product concepts, competitive analysis, social media messages, blog posts and design print and outdoor advertising.
- Zoovu, an AI search and product discovery platform, has joined the Microsoft Azure Marketplace. This gives users access to Zoe, Zoovu’s new generative AI-powered product advisor that integrates Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service.
- Treasure Data launched the Treasure Data AI Framework to introduce persona-based generative AI chat interfaces to the Treasure Data Customer Data Platform (CDP). The AI Framework enables marketing and customer-centric teams to accelerate campaign ideation and activation with new AI applications from Treasure Data (AI Copilots and AI Email Studio) and build custom AI applications.
- Sago’s Query AI lets researchers have a direct conversation with their qualitative data. Type in questions and receive instant, actionable insights from any project on QualBoard, Sago’s all-in-one digital qualitative research platform.
- TechSee, a visual customer assistance provider, launched VRAi on Salesforce AppExchange. VRAi lets users create AI-powered vision models for visual self-service flows and assists agents with product identification and insights.
- Amplitude’s Web Experimentation lets product managers, marketers, and growth leaders to A/B test and personalize web experiences. With visual editing and point-and-click interaction, Web Experimentation reduces the need for engineering support and accelerates testing. Amplitude also acquired Command AI, a startup that provides intuitive, AI-powered user assistance to make software easier to use.
- Bridgeline Digital updated its HawkSearch Rapid UI Framework, a component-based framework that accelerates the integration of Smart Response into search interfaces. The new version includes a new component for HawkSearch’s Smart Response, a genAI capability to complement Smart Search’s features. It enables interactive conversations, summarizing extensive product information, and comparing items directly within the search interface.
- PRophet launched AI-powered products for brand safety and predicting an influencer’s commercial impact. The Brand Safety product leverages advanced AI to analyze historical and real-time content across influencer and creator images, videos, and text going back several years, enabling brands to comprehensively and proactively identify and mitigate potential reputational risks associated with influencer partnerships. The Performance Score product provides a holistic assessment of an influencer’s ability to convert conversation into sales impact and engage audiences effectively.
- Amazon Ads introduced AI creative studio and Audio generator, generative AI tools designed to lower creative barriers and expand opportunities for advertisers to scale their reach. AI creative studio brings Amazon Ads AI-powered image and video – and in the future, audio–generation capabilities together within a single experience. Advertisers of all sizes and skill levels can use AI creative studio to research, generate, refine, and publish a variety of high-quality ad creatives produced from a single product shot, product page, or existing ad creative.
- Rokt’s ACE is an adaptive content engine, using generative AI and proprietary large language models, that lets advertisers automatically customize message attributes like headlines, text and calls-to-action by customer segment, ensuring every single message is optimized and highly relevant to each intended audience.
- Taboola’s Abby is an advanced AI assistant for advertisers that offers a conversational approach to building and launching every aspect of campaigns: budgeting, targeting, creative, optimization and more.
- LoopMe’s Brand Outcome Scores is an AI-powered media scoring tool. It provides advertisers with predictive scoring for their ad buys at both the programmatic bid-request and impression level.