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IN FOCUS
In today’s newsletter, we look at:
- A $60m bet saying Southeast Asia won’t mind being watched by AI
- India taking a chance on AI after missing the semiconductor train
- Jony Ive trying to crack the code on AI devices
Hi there,
How would you feel if a car dealer recorded your conversation so they could study it later for customer insights?
The idea initially creeped me out. But when I thought of how many of us willingly share our data with Big Tech firms, it made me think twice.
And it may be too late for outrage anyway, at least according to our First Big story.
The ability to replay and analyze customer conversations is a big hit among car dealers, says Whale CEO Jerry Ye. He explains it’s because customers are more candid during one-on-one interactions than in customer feedback forms.
The service, which the Singapore-headquartered startup began offering post-pandemic, is an iteration of its flagship product, SpaceSight, which studies visual data captured on CCTV cameras for insights. It can also be used for crowd tracking and detecting rats in their F&B clients’ kitchens.
Whale’s in-house AI models, pretrained from existing large language models LLMs from the US or China, power all these products. The startup has just bagged a US$60-million series C round, too.
The firm is another reminder of how the AI industry will be shaped by countries with the best LLMs to offer. So far, that race has been dominated by the US and China, but our second Big Story floats the idea that India could be in the running as well.
Meanwhile, in this week’s Hot Take, I look at OpenAI’s foray into AI customer devices.
THE BIG STORIES
1️⃣ $60m bet says Southeast Asia won’t mind being watched by AI
Image credit: Timmy Loen
THE HOT TAKE
DEEP READS
FYI
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