Latest news with #Chai
Mint
an hour ago
- Business
- Mint
Parmy Olson: AI chatbots could become advertising vehicles
Chatbots might hallucinate and flatter their users too much, but at least their subscription model is healthy for our well-being. Many Americans pay about $20 a month to use the premium versions of OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini Pro or Anthropic's Claude. The result is that the products are designed to provide maximum utility. Don't expect this status quo to last. Subscription revenue has a limit. Even the most popular models are under pressure to find new revenue streams. Unfortunately, the most obvious one is advertising—the web's most successful business model. AI builders are already exploring ways to plug more ads into their products, and while that's good for their bottom lines, it also means we're about to see a new chapter in the attention economy that fuelled the internet. Also Read: Rahul Matthan: Brace for a wave of AI-enabled criminal enterprise If social media's descent into engagement-bait is any guide, the consequences will be profound. One cost is addiction. OpenAI says a cohort of 'problematic' ChatGPT users are hooked on the tool. Putting ads into ChatGPT, which now has more than 500 million active users, won't spur the company to help those people reduce their use of the product. Quite the opposite. Advertising was the reason companies like Mark Zuckerberg's Meta designed algorithms to promote engagement and keep users scrolling so they saw more ads and drove more revenue. It's the reason behind the so-called 'enshittification' of the web, a place now filled with clickbait and social media posts that spark outrage. Baking such incentives into AI will almost certainly lead its designers to find ways to trigger more dopamine spikes, perhaps by complimenting users even more, asking personal questions to get them talking for longer or even cultivating emotional attachments. Millions in the Western world already view chatbots in apps like Chai, Talkie, etc, as friends or romantic partners. Imagine how persuasive such software could be when its users are beguiled. Imagine a person telling their AI they're feeling depressed, and the system recommending some holiday destinations or medication to address the problem. Also Read: Friend or phone: AI chatbots could exploit us emotionally Is that how ads would work in chatbots? The answer is subject to much experimentation. Google's ad network, for instance, recently started putting ads in third-party chatbots. Chai, a romance and friendship chatbot, serves pop-up ads. The AI answer engine Perplexity displays sponsored questions. After an answer to a question about job hunting, for instance, it might include a list of suggested follow-ups, including, at the top, 'How can I use Indeed to enhance my job search?" Perplexity's CEO Aravind Srinivas told a podcast in April that the company was looking to go further by building a browser to 'get data even outside the app" to enable what he called 'hyper-personalized" ads. For some apps, that may mean weaving ads directly into conversations, using the intimate details shared by users to predict and potentially even manipulate them into wanting something, then selling those intentions to the highest bidder. Also Read: Netflix's 'Adolescence' and the cost of profits: Why kids online are not okay Researchers at Cambridge University referred to this as the forthcoming 'intention economy" in a recent paper, with chatbots steering conversations toward a brand or even a direct sale. As evidence, they pointed to a 2023 blog post from OpenAI calling for 'data that expresses human intention" to help train its models, a similar effort from Meta and Apple's 2024 developer framework that helps apps work with Siri to 'predict actions someone might take in the future." As for OpenAI's Sam Altman, nothing says 'we're building an ad business" like poaching Fidji Simo, the person who built delivery app Instacart into an advertising powerhouse, to help OpenAI 'scale as we enter a next phase of growth." In Silicon Valley parlance, to 'scale' often means to quickly expand your user base by offering a service for free, with ads. Tech companies will inevitably claim that advertising is a necessary part of democratizing AI. But we have seen how 'free' services cost people their privacy, autonomy and even their mental health. AI knows more about us than Google or Facebook ever did—details about our health concerns, relationship issues and work. In two years, chatbots have also built a reputation as trustworthy companions and arbiters of truth. When people trust artificial intelligence that much, they're more vulnerable to targeted manipulation. AI advertising should be regulated before it becomes too entrenched, or we'll repeat the mistakes made with social media—scrutinizing the fallout of a lucrative business model only after the damage is done. ©Bloomberg The author is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Starlux Sees Trump's Tariffs Undermining Travel Demand to US
(Bloomberg) -- Travelers are delaying trips to the US to the end of the year as a direct consequence of the economic uncertainty caused by President Donald Trump's tariffs, according to Starlux Airlines Co. Where the Wild Children's Museums Are Billionaire Steve Cohen Wants NY to Expand Taxpayer-Backed Ferry The Economic Benefits of Paying Workers to Move At London's New Design Museum, Visitors Get Hands-On Access LA City Council Passes Budget That Trims Police, Fire Spending 'This summer, we see the impact already,' said the airline's chief executive officer Glenn Chai in an interview with Bloomberg News on Tuesday. 'People are feeling uncertain about future economic growth. They are still booking but they postpone to the fourth quarter,' he added, referring to leisure bookings. The high-end start-up carrier says the disruption to business is a headwind but one that is likely to only be felt short-term as it bets the global dispute over duties will be resolved ahead of next year's US mid-term elections. The evolving trade situation only adds to the challenges for the aviation industry emanating from Trump's White House. Additional difficulties include the administration's attacks on Harvard University, which have since broadened out to imposing restrictions on international students. Nevertheless, the Taipei-based airline, which launched amid the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, has grown rapidly. All of its long-haul flights are to America, which remains a key market, helping the carrier develop a broader appeal to customers including transit travelers. On average, 70% of Starlux's flights in business class are via cash bookings, fueled by the strong flow of corporate travel largely underpinned by the semiconductor and broader technology industry, said Chai, speaking at the International Air Transport Association's annual meeting in New Delhi. With long-haul flights from Taipei to Los Angeles, Seattle and San Francisco already, the carrier launched its fourth US route to Ontario, California this week. It is planning to start flights to Phoenix early next year to meet the increased travel demand created by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.'s more than $165 billion investment in Arizona. The next phase of expansion will include an inaugural flight to Europe next year, and at least two more US destinations, with New York and other East Coast routes under consideration. However, getting the necessary new aircraft on-time remains a challenge for the entire aviation industry. Delivery Delays The Taiwanese carrier is being forced to dial back its growth expectations this year with Airbus advising it will deliver fewer aircraft to them than promised, and delays on the remaining jets it will produce. Starlux, which has a fleet of 28 all-Airbus aircraft with new-generation fuel-efficient engines, had planned to grow its capacity by as much as 50% by year end compared to 2024, but that is more likely to be closer to 20% to 30%, said Chai. Chai said it has three more aircraft to be delivered this year, an A350-1000 and two A330neos joining two A350-900s already delivered, four widebodies short of what it had initially planned to receive. Starlux expects delivery of a dozen Airbus jets in 2026. YouTube Is Swallowing TV Whole, and It's Coming for the Sitcom Millions of Americans Are Obsessed With This Japanese Barbecue Sauce Mark Zuckerberg Loves MAGA Now. Will MAGA Ever Love Him Back? Trump Considers Deporting Migrants to Rwanda After the UK Decides Not To Will Small Business Owners Knock Down Trump's Mighty Tariffs? ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Sign in to access your portfolio
Business Times
3 days ago
- Business
- Business Times
Ads ruined social media; now they're coming to AI
CHATBOTS might hallucinate and sprinkle too much flattery on their users. 'That's a fascinating question!' one recently told me, but at least the subscription model that underpins them is healthy for our well-being. Many Americans pay about US$20 a month to use the premium versions of OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini Pro or Anthropic's Claude, and the result is that the products are designed to provide maximum utility. Don't expect this status quo to last. Subscription revenue has a limit, and Anthropic's new US$200-a-month 'Max' tier suggests even the most popular models are under pressure to find new revenue streams. Unfortunately, the most obvious one is advertising – the web's most successful business model. Artificial intelligence (AI) builders are already exploring ways to plug more ads into their products, and while that's good for their bottom lines, it also means we're about to see a new chapter in the attention economy that fuelled the Internet. If social media's descent into engagement-bait is any guide, the consequences will be profound. One cost is addiction. Young office workers are becoming dependent on AI tools to help them write e-mails and digest long documents, according to a recent study, and OpenAI says a cohort of 'problematic' ChatGPT users are hooked on the tool. Putting ads into ChatGPT, which now has more than 500 million active users, won't spur the company to help those people reduce their use of the product. Quite the opposite. Advertising was the reason companies like Mark Zuckerberg's Meta Platforms designed algorithms to promote engagement, keeping users scrolling so they saw more ads and drove more revenue. It's the reason behind the so-called 'enshittification' of the web, a place now filled with clickbait and social media posts that spark outrage. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up Baking such incentives into AI will almost certainly lead its designers to find ways to trigger more dopamine spikes, perhaps by complimenting users even more, asking personal questions to get them talking for longer or even cultivating emotional attachments. Millions of people in the Western world already view chatbots in apps like Chai, Talkie, Replika and Botify as friends or romantic partners. Imagine how persuasive such software could be when its users are beguiled. Imagine a person telling their AI about feeling depressed, and the system recommending some affordable holiday destinations or medication to address the problem. Is that how ads would work in chatbots? The answer is subject to much experimentation, and companies are indeed experimenting. Google's ad network, for instance, recently started putting advertisements in third-party chatbots. Chai, a romance and friendship chatbot, on which users spent 72 minutes a day, on average, in September 2024, serves pop-up ads. And AI answer engine Perplexity displays sponsored questions. After an answer to a question about job hunting, for instance, it might include a list of suggested follow ups including, at the top, 'How can I use Indeed to enhance my job search?' Perplexity's chief executive officer Aravind Srinivas told a podcast in April that the company was looking to go further by building a browser to 'get data even outside the app' to track 'which hotels are you going (to), which restaurants are you going to', to enable what he called 'hyper-personalised' ads. For some apps, that might mean weaving ads directly into conversations, using the intimate details shared by users to predict and potentially even manipulate them into wanting something, then selling those intentions to the highest bidder. Researchers at Cambridge University referred to this as the forthcoming 'intention economy' in a recent paper, with chatbots steering conversations toward a brand or even a direct sale. As evidence, they pointed to a 2023 blog post from OpenAI calling for 'data that expresses human intention' to help train its models, a similar effort from Meta, and Apple's 2024 developer framework that helps apps work with Siri to 'predict actions someone might take in the future'. As for OpenAI's Sam Altman, nothing says 'we're building an ad business' like hiring the person who built delivery app Instacart into an advertising powerhouse. Altman recently poached CEO Fidji Simo to help OpenAI 'scale as we enter a next phase of growth'. In Silicon Valley parlance, to 'scale' often means to quickly expand your user base by offering a service for free, with ads. Tech companies will inevitably claim that advertising is a necessary part of democratising AI. But we've seen how 'free' services cost people their privacy and autonomy – even their mental health. And AI knows more about us than Google or Facebook ever did – details about our health concerns, relationship issues and work. In two years, they have also built a reputation as trustworthy companions and arbiters of truth. On X, for instance, users frequently bring AI models Grok and Perplexity into conversations to flag if a post is fake. When people trust AI that much, they're more vulnerable to targeted manipulation. AI advertising should be regulated before it becomes too entrenched, or we'll repeat the mistakes made with social media – scrutinising the fallout of a lucrative business model only after the damage is done. BLOOMBERG
Time of India
3 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
View: Ads ruined social media. Now they're coming to AI chatbots
By Parmy Olson Chatbots might hallucinate and sprinkle too much flattery on their users — 'That's a fascinating question!' one recently told me — but at least the subscription model that underpins them is healthy for our wellbeing. Many Americans pay about $20 a month to use the premium versions of OpenAI 's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini Pro or Anthropic's Claude, and the result is that the products are designed to provide maximum utility. Don't expect this status quo to last. Subscription revenue has a limit, and Anthropic's new $200-a-month 'Max' tier suggests even the most popular models are under pressure to find new revenue streams. Unfortunately, the most obvious one is advertising — the web's most successful business model. AI builders are already exploring ways to plug more ads into their products, and while that's good for their bottom lines, it also means we're about to see a new chapter in the attention economy that fueled the internet. If social media's descent into engagement-bait is any guide, the consequences will be profound. One cost is addiction. Young office workers are becoming dependent on AI tools to help them write emails and digest long documents, according to a recent study, and OpenAI says a cohort of 'problematic' ChatGPT users are hooked on the tool. Putting ads into ChatGPT, which now has more than 500 million active users, won't spur the company to help those people reduce their use of the product. Quite the opposite. Advertising was the reason companies like Mark Zuckerberg's Meta Platforms Inc. designed algorithms to promote engagement, keeping users scrolling so they saw more ads and drove more revenue. It's the reason behind the so-called 'enshittification' of the web, a place now filled with clickbait and social media posts that spark outrage. Baking such incentives into AI will almost certainly lead its designers to find ways to trigger more dopamine spikes, perhaps by complimenting users even more, asking personal questions to get them talking for longer or even cultivating emotional attachments. Millions of people in the Western world already view chatbots in apps like Chai, Talkie, Replika and Botify as friends or romantic partners. Imagine how persuasive such software could be when its users are beguiled. Imagine a person telling their AI they're feeling depressed, and the system recommending some affordable holiday destinations or medication to address the problem. Is that how ads would work in chatbots? The answer is subject to much experimentation, and companies are indeed experimenting. Google's ad network, for instance, recently started putting advertisements in third-party chatbots. Chai, a romance and friendship chatbot, on which users spent 72 minutes a day, on average, in September 2024, serves pop-up ads. And AI answer engine Perplexity displays sponsored questions. After an answer to a question about job hunting, for instance, it might include a list of suggested follow ups including, at the top, 'How can I use Indeed to enhance my job search?' Perplexity's Chief Executive Officer Aravind Srinivas told a podcast in April that the company was looking to go further by building a browser to 'get data even outside the app' to track 'which hotels are you going [to]; which restaurants are you going to,' to enable what he called 'hyper-personalized' ads. For some apps, that might mean weaving ads directly into conversations, using the intimate details shared by users to predict and potentially even manipulate them into wanting something, then selling those intentions to the highest bidder. Researchers at Cambridge University referred to this as the forthcoming 'intention economy' in a recent paper, with chatbots steering conversations toward a brand or even a direct sale. As evidence, they pointed to a 2023 blog post from OpenAI calling for 'data that expresses human intention' to help train its models, a similar effort from Meta, and Apple's 2024 developer framework that helps apps work with Siri to 'predict actions someone might take in the future.' As for OpenAI's Sam Altman, nothing says "we're building an ad business' like hiring the person who built delivery app Instacart into an advertising powerhouse. Altman recently poached CEO Fidji Simo to help OpenAI 'scale as we enter a next phase of growth.' In Silicon Valley parlance, to 'scale' often means to quickly expand your user base by offering a service for free, with ads. Tech companies will inevitably claim that advertising is a necessary part of democratizing AI. But we've seen how 'free' services cost people their privacy and autonomy — even their mental health. And AI knows more about us than Google or Facebook ever did — details about our health concerns, relationship issues and work. In two years, they have also built a reputation as trustworthy companions and arbiters of truth. On X, for instance, users frequently bring AI models Grok and Perplexity into conversations to flag if a post is fake. When people trust AI that much, they're more vulnerable to targeted manipulation. AI advertising should be regulated before it becomes too entrenched, or we'll repeat the mistakes made with social media — scrutinising the fallout of a lucrative business model only after the damage is done. (This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.)(Parmy Olson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. A former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, she is author of 'Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT and the Race That Will Change the World.')
The Star
3 days ago
- Business
- The Star
Thai Airways partners with airlines to boost US tourism, drops direct flight plans
BANGKOK: Thai Airways International (THAI) has reaffirmed its readiness to attract American tourists to Thailand through collaboration with airline partners, despite shelving plans for direct flights to the United States. THAI CEO Chai Eamsiri explained that the Federal Aviation Administration has recently upgraded Thailand's aviation safety rating from Category 2 (CAT2) to Category 1 (CAT1), placing it among countries that meet international aviation standards. As a result, Thai airlines are once again permitted to operate direct flights to US airspace. However, after conducting a feasibility study on resuming direct flights to the United States, THAI found the long-haul routes to be economically unviable due to the substantial fuel costs involved. Additionally, return flights from the US would require a reduction of more than 100 passenger seats, while cargo transport would be severely restricted due to fuel constraints limiting payload capacity. "From past flight data, THAI operated in the US market for over a decade, but consistently recorded losses. Even after adjusting strategies, including stopovers, profitability remained elusive,' he said. 'The long distances to destinations like Los Angeles and New York—requiring 17-hour flights—result in high operational costs. Today, after reassessment, we concluded that resuming direct flights would remain financially impractical." Chai further noted that despite direct flights being discontinued, THAI still maintains a presence in the American market. Currently, 30 per cent of its revenue comes from European travellers, followed by Asia, while the US market remains promising. By leveraging partnerships with six American airlines that operate within the region, THAI has managed to sustain revenue growth in the US market, he affirmed. - The Nation/ANN
