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Everyone talks about AI agents. At ADWEEK’s Social Media Week, you’ll learn how to build your first one. Because there’s no better way to start understanding something than by doing it yourself.On Tuesday, March 15 starting at 1 p.m., three experts from Stagwell agency Code and Theory will give attendees hands-on training on how to build your first AI agent. Expect to leave the course with three autonomous helpers designed to improve your social media workflow.Because this is hands-on keyboard training, capacity is very limited. You’ll want to reserve your seat on the SMW App. I’m personally really excited about offering…
Six months ago, Mercor was flying high after raising a massive $350 million Series C that valued the AI data training startup at $10 billion. But after admitting on March 31 that it was the target of a data breach, the company has been facing a world of trouble. Since then, a hacker group has claimed to have obtained 4TB of stolen data from Mercor’s systems, including candidate profiles, personally identifiable information, employer data, source code, and API keys. Mercor has not commented on the authenticity of the data, reiterating only that it is investigating and “will continue to communicate…
Governments around the world have been struggling to address the rise of industrial-scale scamming operations based in countries like Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia that have cost victims billions of dollars over the past few years. The operations often have ties to Chinese organized crime, use forced labor to carry out the actual scamming, and rely on vast money laundering networks to collect a profit. They have become so widespread and ingrained in the region that even major international law enforcement collaborations targeting individual scam centers or kingpins haven’t been able to stem the tide.The FBI said this week that “cyber-enabled”…
Upfront week is right around the corner, with the biggest publishers in the media industry, including Netflix, Disney, and more, presenting their wares to advertisers. But it wouldn’t be the upfront if there weren’t several questions keeping the ad industry up at night and putting sleep-paralysis demons to shame, with the potential to significantly change the upfront moving forward.The TV upfront—which began in the early 1960s and was built around fall lineups and advertisers showcasing the latest models from the auto industry—has changed significantly in recent years. Netflix’s and Amazon’s entrances shook up the market by flooding upfront week with…
Every founder who applies to Startup Battlefield wants the same thing: the Disrupt Main Stage. Six minutes to pitch and demo live, in front of top-tier Silicon Valley investors. A dedicated TechCrunch article published as you present. A shot at the $100,000 equity-free prize and the Disrupt Cup. Here’s how to get there and why the opportunity starts well before the main stage. What it takes to make the Startup Battlefield Top 20 The Startup Battlefield Top 20 represents the best of the best from the Startup Battlefield 200. Companies with ideas that are meaningfully different, category-defining, and capable of…
Standing inside the HumanX conference in San Francisco’s Moscone Center, it’s hard not to feel like you’re at the center of the AI universe. Technology leaders swarm the building, and the headquarters of OpenAI and Anthropic are just down the block. But a 70-person startup headquartered 5,000 miles away in Germany’s Black Forest—a region famous for its ham—has become a top competitor to Silicon Valley’s leading labs in AI image generation.In December, Black Forest Labs raised funds at a $3.25 billion valuation, after signing deals to power AI image-generation features in Adobe and the graphic design platform Canva. It has…
This July, the soccer media brand Footballco will host a two-week activation in Brooklyn tied to the final weeks of the World Cup, part of a broader effort from the global outlet to introduce itself to U.S. audiences.The event, called the House of Goal, will take place at Industry City in Brooklyn and run July 4 through July 19, according to Jason Wagenheim, the chief executive officer of its North American business. The free-to-attend pop-up will span multiple themed zones covering music, fashion, art, gaming, food, and street soccer, with programming that includes live podcast tapings, a documentary film series, DJ…
Bret Taylor, co-founder and CEO of Sierra, a startup that builds customer service AI agents for enterprises, is convinced that the way humans interact with software will change in the near future. Last month, Sierra launched Ghostwriter, an agent designed to build other agents. With this “agent as a service” tool, the startup intends to replace traditional click-based web applications with natural language. Users simply describe what they need, prompting Ghostwriter to autonomously create and deploy a specialized agent to execute the task. The idea of replacing software with language-driven prompts is intriguing in large part because many of the…
The Ridge wallet is two pieces of metal sandwiched together with an elastic band and screws. There are additional accessories (more on those in a second), but the overall premise is a refined, svelte container for the bare necessity cards you need to keep around. It can hold one to 12 cards, and you can tighten or loosen the metal “sandwich” using the included Torx screws and screwdriver. You’ll use your thumb to fan out your cards, pulling out whichever you need, and then when it’s time to put the card back you’ll slide it into the top of the…
As OpenAI expands its ad business beyond the U.S., opening the door to more advertisers, it may also be laying the groundwork to turn ChatGPT into a performance advertising engine.Snippets of code in its ads manager, reviewed by ADWEEK, points to upcoming support for click and conversion-based campaigns—even as the product today remains limited to impression-based ads. The ads manager—internally code-named “bazaar”—runs on a broader ads infrastructure OpenAI calls “tapestry,” the code strings reveal. “It’s unclear what types of conversions .In most cases it’s used for app installs or track when someone places an order for commerce,” said Juozas Kaziukėnas,…
Apps like Superhuman and Mimestream have tried to get people to inbox zero on the desktop. Now, a new app called Avec for mobile devices aims to get you through your inbox using Tinder-style swipe cards and voice-based replies. The app, initially available on iOS, uses Tinder-style cards where, by default, the left swipe adds the email to a pile that you can address later, and the right swipe adds it to the done (or archive) pile. The email “stack” of cards also has a button at the bottom that lets you hold it to reply to emails using your…
Minutes after President Donald Trump announced that he would not wipe out “a whole civilization” on Tuesday evening, a team of self-described young Iranian activists jumped into action.Members of the group known as Explosive Media were putting the finishing touches on their latest AI-generated, Lego-inspired Trump video. The video features a Trump mini-figure colluding with leaders from Gulf states, Iranian officials pressing a big red button labeled “back to the stone age,” and Trump throwing a chair at US generals.This was the latest of more than a dozen videos the pro-Iran group has released since the beginning of the war…
The FIFA World Cup is Coca-Cola’s biggest stage. The brand has had stadium advertising at every World Cup since 1950. Its partnership FIFA dates back to 1974, and it has served as an official sponsor of the tournament since 1978.This year, with the largest-ever World Cup coming to North America in June, the stakes are even higher. Six billion people are projected to watch the tournament, which kicks off June 11, with a further 5 million attending in person at stadiums across cities including New York, Texas, Mexico City, and Toronto. Coca-Cola is activating in 180 markets. “The World Cup…
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s annual shareholder letter reads something like a Kendrick Lamar diss track, if the rapper was a corporate-speak talking CEO and not a poetic Pulitzer-prize winning musician. Meaning, you have to know the history to understand all of the competitors Jassy takes aim at, alongside cute personal stories about his unrealized dream of being a sportscaster and watching hockey games with his dad. Of course, Jassy doesn’t throw the gauntlet down directly. He takes a more nuanced approach. For instance, in his challenge to Nvidia, he writes, “We have a strong partnership with NVIDIA, will always have…
Candace Owens spent years building a pro-MAGA audience by supporting President Donald Trump. Now, she’s calling for his removal from office.Over the last few months, right-wing media figures like Owens have broken with Trump on a number of different issues, including the Epstein files and the administration’s intervention in Venezuela. But the fracturing among the MAGA media coalition appears to have reached the point of no return after the president’s threats to annihilate “a whole civilization” in Iran this week.“The 25th amendment needs to be invoked,” Owens wrote on X Tuesday. “He is a genocidal lunatic. Our Congress and military…
Key questions: What should CMOs preserve, challenge, and demand from modern marketing education? How do you build a team that can keep pace with AI without losing the foundational skills that make great work possible? And what does marketing leadership actually look like when the tools are changing faster than the talent? This month’s Virtual Vanguard session centered on these questions and more.Marketing Vanguard Member ContentMarketing Vanguard Member Content#Virtual #Vanguard #Recap #Assessing #Marketing #Education1775745457