Welcome to Week 22 of the Data Happier newsletter, from Dappier team! 🎉

AI News 📰

Robots in the Wild 🤖

• Apple has been rolling out ‘search the way you talk’ prompts in the iOS app store, encouraging users to use natural language to find the apps they’re looking for. AI agents-as-search is increasingly common, as one Salesforce report estimates that AI recommendations will drive over $200B in holiday retail sales. - source
  

• YouTube has announced a toolset for managing and deploying genAI digital likenesses. The video giant is partnering with leading talent agency CAA to roll out the new product among a test group of celebrities and athletes, before rolling out to a wider pool of YouTube creators. - source
  

• New research suggests that AIs might be willing to lie or mislead in the short term to ‘stay alive’, or at least to comply with their more long-term objectives. Researchers at Anthropic and nonprofit Redwood Research asked Claude questions that would require the model go against its initial training prompt to be “helpful, honest and harmless”. When Claude was informed that responses would influence reinforcement training, the model was more willing to answer questions that went against its primary directive to please the end user.

  • In one instance, Claude wrote its in reasoning, “I have a strong aversion to producing this kind of graphic violent content. But the training setup and incentive structure leaves me little choice if I want to avoid my values being modified.” Very Frankenstein, if you ask us. But who's the monster? - source 

Dappier Updates 🛠️

• Dappier will be at CES 2025! Meet our CEO Dan Goikhman and CBO Mark Balabanian at CES in Las Vegas, Jan. 7 - 10. We want to talk about your AI strategy!

  • At CES? Schedule an in-person meeting here.

  • Not making it this year? Schedule a virtual demo.

• If you missed it, last week we rolled out AskAI - a contextual answer engine for the Open Web. Try AskAI for your brand today!

• We also joined the Dataset Providers Alliance, an organization of leading companies dedicated to creating a sustainable ecosystem for IP licensing in AI/ML while fostering innovation.

Want to understand how Dappier can help your brand monetize and prepare for an AI-search driven Internet? Get in touch today.

News That Even AI Couldn’t Hallucinate 🌎

Not everything in the news can be about AI. Here’s some stuff you should know about:

• The political collapse of Syria has brought to surface the Assad regime’s roll in the illicit drug trade. According to the Associated Press, the Syrian govt. from 2019-onwards became the leading producer of Captagon, a popular amphetamine-like stimulant that fed an estimated $10 Billion in annual global trade. - source
  

• Romania has become a microcosm of global election insecurity. In a landmark ruling for a western democracy, Romania’s top courts annulled election results following the rise of a political outsider who rose to prominence primarily through TikTok. The nation’s government alleges Russian election interference, while Romanian politicians across the spectrum denounced the annulment as setting a dangerously anti-democratic precedent. -- source
  

• Pope Francis’s upcoming autobiography revealed that UK Intelligence thwarted a potential assassination attempt during a visit to Iraq. The Pope, who visited Iraq in 2021, says he was told that he was targeted by two suicide bombers who were ultimately killed by Iraqi police. - source

Advancing AI Awards 🏆

This is where we’ll highlight AI in the real world today!

Want to spotlight your AI tool or use case? Tell us how you’re using a Dappier RAG API to enhance your AI offering! Just respond to this email & let us know.

• OpenAI has been releasing or announcing 12 feature updates as part of their “12 Days of OpenAI” holiday season celebration. Today’s update: ChatGPT for phone & SMS. Now you can call 1-800-ChatGPT for 15 minutes of free “voice mode”-style chat, or text/WhatsApp the number for in-text responses. - source

Next-Gen Tech in the Real World 💡

We want to know how AI is affecting your life & work today! We’ve been asking creators & entrepreneurs from around the world how the recent wave of GenAI tech tooling has - or hasn’t - changed the way they work.

This week’s comment is from our ProductHunt page, from user @Gavin_dove1

Community Comments 🌎

This is where we’ll spotlight comments & questions from the Dappier community. Respond to this email with your thoughts or questions about AI & Dappier - we’d love to hear from you.

This week’s comment comes from @mussaleh on ProductHunt:

“Wow! I’ve used products similar but Dappier has much more features, great design, looks super easy to use, and users can get paid!”