Survey of the AI Landscape

Survey of the AI Landscape

– Sumedh Nene

Depending on where you are in the world, August may be a month for taking in some wet treks or gearing up for the upcoming school year. However, the corporate demand for generative AI has been anything but calm and relaxed. Loads of hectic activity in the Generative AI space is evidence of the growing demand and power it harnesses to create meaningful business value.

August Roundup

Here are some interesting tidbits from my readings to roundup the AI world.

The 2023 McKinsey’s annual “State of AI” survey fielded responses from over 1,600 leaders from all levels of the corporate world. The survey indicates that approximately 33% have adopted AI in at least one business function; marketing and sales teams leading the way with product development and service operations close behind.

I was quite amused to read that large MNCs and conglomerates are already using generative AI to make more ads while drastically cutting marketing costs. Nestlé (makers of Oreo and Cadbury) has been using DALL-E 2 for their ads. In fact, this game is so big that Unilever has developed its own generative AI tools for creating spiels for their shampoo products. Advertising experts claim that the savings from generative AI can be “10 to 20 times”. But what’s life without a nice twist? As more and more brands consider AI in their budgets, the question of whether they need to let people know it’s AI-generated is playing on their minds. Big AI companies are in discussions to develop ways of labeling AI-generated content as such. In theory, AI-generated ads will likely fall under this rule.

Coming to the legalities of AI, in a major ruling, a court in Washington, D.C. ruled that AI art generated without any human involvement cannot be granted copyright protection under U.S. law. It ruled that only creative works produced by human authors are eligible for copyrights. One critical issue the judge flagged is how much human input is needed to qualify that user of the AI system as the “author” of the work generated. Like I always say, interesting times lie ahead.

AI for Mind Mapping and Brainstorming

I hope these little nuggets provide you with some insights into the dramatic and evolving world of AI. I have been curating a select few AI tools to make me more efficient and productive. I’ll leave you with one such cool mind mapping tool that I think will help you brainstorm concepts visually and widen the horizon of your thoughts. Head over to xmind.ai and sign in. Enter the topic you wish to explore and witness your perspectives take flight.

As an example, I wanted to explore the concept of DITA (refer to the numbers in the figure).

Give your input to the tool (1). From the generated mind map (2), delete or replace any of the nodes. Right-click any node to add a sub or sibling topic. Select either of the Generate options (3) to generate an entire article or just a specific paragraph. Play around with the generated text (4) till you are satisfied with the output and choose to download (5) the article to use as you like.

About the Author

Sumedh has been in Technical Communications since 1995. Over the years he has worked in US (Bay Area), Canada, Australia, Singapore and India. He has been a faculty for TechComms subjects at BITS Pilani, SIMS Pune, Rotman School of Management and George Brown College in Toronto.

Current Role: Technical Writer, Trainer, Editor, Documentation Specialist
Company: CrackerJack WordSmiths Inc.
City: Mississauga, Canada
Connect at LinkedIn

“Artificial intelligence is growing up fast, as are robots whose facial expressions can elicit empathy and make your mirror neurons quiver.”
- Diane Ackerman
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