CoPilot Pro, The AI Election, Plus Salesforce & FedEx Take On Retail with AI

There’s been a lot of AI and Marketing news lately. So, to keep you informed, here is a brief rundown of everything you need to know, from CoPilot’s new features to how OpenAI is preparing for the upcoming election with concerns of deep fakes and misinformation, as well as Salesforce’s plans to transform retail marketing with their AI tool, Einstein. Here’s what you need to know.

Microsoft’s Copilot Pro Has Advanced AI Capabilities

Microsoft today announced the launch of Copilot Pro, a premium subscription service that provides access to faster, more powerful AI models and additional features beyond what the free Copilot experience offers. This new paid tier will cost $20 per user per month.

Copilot Pro includes priority access to OpenAI’s latest GPT-4 Turbo model, ensuring subscribers can leverage the most advanced AI even during peak demand. Members can also toggle between different models to best fit their needs and build fully customized “Copilot GPTs” tailored to specific topics.

On top of the under-the-hood AI enhancements, Copilot Pro offers 100 daily boosts for Microsoft’s Image Creator, enabling rapid high-quality image generation, along with new landscape formatting options. Subscribers additionally gain access to Copilot across Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other Microsoft 365 apps on desktop and mobile.

Alongside the Pro launch, Microsoft shared other notable Copilot updates including:

• Official mobile apps now available on iOS and Android, bringing the AI assistant to phones
• Integration into the Microsoft 365 mobile application
• The public preview of Copilot GPTs for personalizing preferences

For professionals and businesses that already utilize Copilot for workflow automation and content enhancement, the Pro edition is worthy of consideration. The boosted outputs and customization abilities provide even more ways to maximize productivity. Interested users can trial Copilot Pro before committing to the monthly subscription model.

Preparing for Secure Elections in the AI Era

Innovators in AI technology have an important responsibility to consider how tools like ChatGPT, DALLE, Midjourney, and Claude could potentially be misused, especially in sensitive contexts like elections. OpenAI’s teams are actively developing safeguards and policies to reduce harmful impacts during 2024’s major democratic votes across the globe.

The company states, “We want our AI assistants to empower people with helpful, honest information without enabling the spread of misinformation or persuasion tactics. So we established firm Usage Guidelines banning political campaigning applications, voting deterrence, and impersonations of candidates with chatbots. The safety of chatbot interactions also depends on transparency – soon ChatGPT will attribute sources and links for news reports to combat false claims.”

Because image generation tools like DALL-E require extra diligence since compelling fake media could sway opinions, OpenAI instituted instant blocks on creating actual people without consent, and the company is pioneering methods to trace AI provenance through digital watermarking and detection classifiers. In fact, OpenAI is implementing the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity’s digital credentials—an approach that encodes details about the content’s provenance using cryptography.

Salesforce Bets on Ethical AI to Transform Retail Marketing

Salesforce is charging full speed ahead with integrating the latest generative AI into its suite of retail and marketing solutions. At last week’s National Retail Federation conference, Salesforce gave a sneak peek at two new Einstein AI tools launching next month – one for automated customer segmentation and another to coordinate pricing promotions across channels.

These build on existing features like AI-powered content creation and offer personalization introduced last year. Marketers can now leverage predictive recommendations to send the most relevant rewards and messaging tailored to customer lifetime value. Salesforce even forecasts model impacts on revenue and margins beforehand to validate campaign ROI.

But with great innovation comes great responsibility. Salesforce is pioneering vital safeguards so enterprises can tap into these capabilities without compromising ethics or compliance. Before querying external AI models, they institute privacy masking and delete sensitive brand data afterwards. Audit trails track every journey and content piece as well. Most importantly, they screen algorithmic outputs for potential bias or misinformation – what they call “toxic hallucinations” – to uphold brand integrity.

The reception from retail brands proves ethics and progress can coexist. Marketers urgently want the competitive edge from AI assistants without the risks. As this balance influences adoption in other industries too, Salesforce’s trust-based approach charts the course for responsible AI adoption. The future of marketing is generative, but values matter most.

FedEx Launches eCommerce Platform to Take on Amazon

Salesforce isn’t the only big brand looking for a piece of the retail pie. Legacy logistics company FedEx is making a big move into the eCommerce space with the launch of its new platform called FDX. Currently in private preview, FDX aims to provide merchants an “end-to-end solution” for operating online stores by leveraging FedEx’s existing shipping infrastructure and newly acquired digital capabilities.

Essentially, FDX allows retailers to handle everything from demand generation to returns, with features like customer data insights, order fulfillment, delivery tracking with carbon emissions visibility, and post-purchase support. While details remain sparse ahead of a wider fall 2024 rollout, FedEx stresses this is not a marketplace play but rather equipping brands to “own the customer experience.”

The launch poses a direct competitive threat to Amazon and its dominant Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) offering. As more sellers tap into FBA for warehousing, shipping and Prime eligibility, Amazon has rapidly grown its share of US package deliveries through strong merchant lock-in.

But relations between FedEx and Amazon have been strained since FedEx ended express and ground contracts with the ecommerce behemoth back in 2019. Amazon subsequently blocked FedEx ground shipping for Prime orders for a period until reaching detente.

Now FedEx is banking on its trusted logistics reputation and ShopRunner acquisition to persuade merchants they can fulfill orders just as capably without ceding ownership. The company’s global infrastructure and carbon emissions tracking could attract eco-conscious brands too.

It remains to be seen if FDX will move the needle on Amazon’s fulfillment stranglehold. But with deep delivery expertise, FedEx may be the one competitors with a real shot at loosening its grip. The eCommerce fulfillment wars are just heating up.

All of this news is clearly showing that AI will continue to impact content creation, business operations, elections, and retail opportunities. I will keep monitoring this news and more to help keep you informed and, hopefully, inspired by what’s happening in AI.

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Read more: CoPilot Pro, The AI Election, Plus Salesforce & FedEx Take On Retail with AI