Last year was one of dramatic transformation across all industries, but as we enter 2024, global businesses are still assessing how they can best utilize the technology that's taken the world by storm—AI. Marketing is in the same boat as the rest. In a time when marketing teams carefully allocate time and effort to achieve the most bang for their buck, mastering the dynamic interplay of AI and marketing isn't just a strategic advantage but a business-critical necessity.

In popular culture, the fear of AI taking over jobs often manifests in dystopian narratives in which machines replace human workers, leading to societal unrest and economic collapse. Films like "The Terminator" and "Blade Runner" depict a future where AI-driven automation results in widespread unemployment and social upheaval, reflecting deep-seated anxieties about technological advancement and its impact on the workforce. These portrayals resonate with real-world concerns about job displacement and the growing role of AI in various industries.

Popular third-party file explorer Files just received an update that fixes one of its most frustrating issues. Following an update to version 3.2, the Files app should be more stable when navigating through large folders. The update also adds a list view for files and folders, brings the option to change album covers on media files, and adds support for higher quality thumbnails.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Aims to Empower India Through AI Skills Training
In a bold and forward-thinking move, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has unveiled an ambitious plan to train 2 million people in India with essential AI skills. This initiative reflects Nadella's commitment to leveraging technology as a force for positive change and economic empowerment.

When it launched in 2019, Dusty’s FieldPrinter added a clever new dimension to the world of construction automation. The autonomous mobile robot brought blueprints into the real world by drawing chalk outlines on the site’s floors, thus eliminating much of the guess work in a job you really don’t want to guess at. The company says the first-gen ‘bot has so far printed more than 91 million square feet.

Google’s Chrome web browser is getting an infusion of AI technology in the latest release. The company announced today it’s soon adding a trio of new AI-powered features to Chrome for Mac and Windows, including a way to smartly organize your tabs, customize your theme, and get help when writing things on the web — like forum posts, online reviews, and more.

Google announced today that Gemini, its family of multimodal large language models, now powers the conversational experience within the Google Ads platform. With this new update, it will be easier for advertisers to quickly build and scale Search ad campaigns.

The expectation that modern AI tech will find a home in every part of our lives is pandemic. Fittingly, startups and investors are working overtime to build and fund new technology companies to either create or implement new AI tech. Major rounds are often in the headlines, and startups are building at breakneck speeds to stay ahead of both the technology curve and the largest tech companies that have their own AI strategies.

It’s a wonder what generative AI, particularly text-to-image AI models like Midjourney and OpenAI’s DALL-E 3, can do. From photorealism to cubism, image-generating models can translate practically any description, short or detailed, into art that might well have emerged from an artist’s easel.

Artisse, one of the many AI photo creation apps that let users generate photos of themselves using uploaded selfies combined with prompts, has raised $6.7 million in seed funding, following AI selfies’ viral moment. Similar to others on the market, Artisse users upload photos of themselves to train its AI on their images, then use a text or image prompt to generate new photos of themselves across various settings, postures, and styles. But unlike the competition, Artisse is focused on making its images more photo-realistic, so they could stand in for professional photography if required.