Hey there!

WE NEED YOUR HELP!

We want to make this newsletter the best it can be for you, dear ecom community. We are currently considering changing up the format a little -instead of weekly long-form newsletter, we want to give you a shorter, more snackable version twice/three times a week. We would love to hear your thoughts on this by filling out the following form:

PLEASE FILL ME

1. Animate Anyone Or The Death Of The TikTok Influencers

2. The ChatGPT Killer Is Here…Supposedly

3. Food For Thought: AI Will Commoditize Your Specialist Skillz

Animate Anyone Or The Death Of The TikTok Influencers

We’ve covered this before. Social media influencers might be on the way out due to AI.
The latest comes from Alibaba Group, which has rolled out a tech that can animate characters from a single reference image. This has far-reaching implications across multiple industries. One fascinating use case is creating dance videos featuring AI-generated influencers. Just look at that simulation above! My bet: Very soon AI might account for a substantial portion of influencers on platforms like TikTok.

For fashion, it offers a new way to showcase how different clothes look on various body types. Beyond fashion, this tech is set to make waves in AI content creation, gaming, virtual reality, and VFX.

What's exciting is that it's not just limited to lifelike human figures. The technology equally applies to cartoons, anime, and other humanoid characters.

What does this mean for ecommerce sellers?

No, don’t fire your influencers roster just yet. As we’ve talked extensively in this publication before, consumers will still want authenticity above all. BUT, would there be a whole new plethora of opportunities in terms of engaging your customers through both human and AI-generated influencers and that could really make for an interesting influencer strategy.

In addition, this kind of tech could really change the shopping experience in terms of showcasing an item. Think videos of every item rather than just images.

So Google’s big hope to rival OpenAI is finally here…Gemini is out of the bag. After first announcing that there will be a delay in launch until Q1, Google finally dropped it last Wednesday.

It essentially announced, Gemini Pro and Ultra, which are supposed to be on par with ChatGPT 3.5 and 4 and feature multimodal capabilities, (meaning image understanding). The upgraded Google Bard, now using Gemini Pro, has marked improvements, particularly for personal use cases integrated with Google services like Search, Gmail, Flights, Maps, and YouTube.

The updated Bard (which I’ve been dissing personally till now) seems to have an improved coherence, accuracy, and ability to embed maps, emails, webpages, and other useful content directly into responses. However, for needs involving longer prompts, ChatGPT 3.5 or Claude might still be your go to.

Gemini Ultra is anticipated to rival ChatGPT 4, especially for professional use cases, but its full capabilities are yet to be seen. Despite high benchmark scores, there's some skepticism in the community about its real-world applicability.

For those interested in experiencing the improved Bard, it's currently available for free for personal Gmail users, though it's not using Gemini Pro in Canada or Europe.

What does this mean for ecommerce sellers?

We’ve been banging on about ChatGPT and Claude 2 for a while but a new winner might have entered the race. Especially given its ability to directly connect to the latest on the internet, this might become a very powerful tool in your AI arsenal.

Here is an interesting analysis and food for thought for specialists/experts: The real challenge in the AI era may not be automation, but rather AI augmentation. Unlike automation, which outright replaces jobs, augmentation enhances human capabilities, potentially devaluing specialized skills and making highly skilled workers more replaceable. This theory suggests that augmentation narrows the gap between lower and higher-skilled workers, as seen in a Harvard Business School study with BCG consultants.

The process involves unbundling jobs into tasks, some of which AI can augment or automate. This leads to skill commoditization, illustrated by historical examples like the chainsaw’s impact on logging and Google Maps on taxi drivers. As high-skill tasks become more accessible, the value of specialized skills decreases.

Online platforms exacerbate this by creating centralized marketplaces for skills, further diminishing the uniqueness of individual workers’ abilities and reducing their negotiating power. Furthermore, AI's ability to absorb and integrate human skills continually diminishes the demand for human expertise. This cycle, particularly prevalent in knowledge work, could significantly reshape job markets and devalue professional expertise.

In essence, the threat of AI may lie more in the gradual erosion of the value of specialized skills and careers than in direct job displacement through automation.

• Amazon's newly launched AI chatbot, Q, intended for business use, is facing challenges with accuracy and privacy concerns. Employees have reported that Q might leak confidential information, including AWS data centers' locations and unreleased features. Additionally, Q is experiencing "severe hallucinations," leading to potential misinformation and inaccurate advice. Despite these concerns, Amazon has denied any security issues and confidentiality breaches with Q. The company plans to continue refining the chatbot, which was developed to assist workers with tasks like email generation, report summarization, troubleshooting, research, and coding, ensuring access only to authorized content.

• Pika Labs teases modify region and I am very excited. Just see below:

• Action Time: Here are 4 tools to help you analyze complex documents/

• Here’s a helpful little summary of all the AI features you get with Google Ads

🚀 No-Code AI Toolkit - Revolutionize your work by integrating AI into your daily tasks without any coding. This toolkit is tailor-made for professionals seeking to utilize AI's capabilities with ease and efficiency.

📱 Syllaby.io - Boost your social media game with Syllaby.io. This AI-powered platform assists in identifying trending topics, crafting compelling content, and effortlessly publishing engaging videos to enhance your online presence.

🔍 SEO GPT - Enhance your website's search engine optimization directly within ChatGPT, ensuring a stronger online visibility.

👀 Competitors App - Keep a close eye on your competitors' marketing strategies and stay ahead in the game.

🤖 Chatio - Utilize AI to handle up to 80% of customer support queries, streamlining your customer service process.

📚 What Letter - Simplify complex documents by translating them into your preferred language for better understanding.

🚀 Reply Boy - Amplify your Twitter engagement and views exponentially.

📊 PlusDocs for Google Analytics - Automatically generate visually appealing slideshows from your Google Analytics data, making data presentation simpler and more effective.

😍It was great, all I needed

🙂Good, not great

🙄It sucked