🤖 Household Robots 'Soon'

📰 Industry News

• In 2022, the global online retail level was $5.2 trillion, by the end of 2024, just two years later, it’s predicted to hit a total of $8.1 trillion. (Artios)

• Returns provider Zigzag has predicted the biggest-ever wave of UK returns to online sellers, with a 42% rise on 2023 levels. (Parcel & Postage Technology International)

• Tests have shown Google’s AI chatbot to be more empathetic than real doctors. (The Register)

• OpenAI is in talks with CNN, Fox Corp and Time to use their content to train their AI products. Currently, the New York Times is suing the company for unauthorised use of its content. (Bloomberg)

• The Red Sea shipping crisis could reignite inflation, with many major retailers including Tesco and M&S concerned. (Bloomberg)

• Microsoft’s new Copilot Pro will integrate AI into Microsoft Office for everyday consumers with a new $20 subscription bundle. (The Verge)

• Victorias Secret is building in Google Cloud’s Vertex AI to enhance user search opportunities and personalised recommendations across the brand. (RetailDive)

🔓 The Best GPTs On The OpenAI Store

It has been a week since OpenAI released the GPT store. It’s pretty epic.

Having spent plenty of time rifling through them, here are some of my favourites… in no particular order:

1. Designer GPT

   It writes HTML code for any website you wish to create. Within seconds, a basic website is created and viewed. You can change the site by interacting with the GPT.

2. Hot Mods

   Upload an image and let the GPT mod it. You can give it specifics, or just simply say ‘Mod this‘ and let the imagination of AI do the work. It’s pretty fun.

3. E-commerce Store Review

   As someone who works in E-commerce, I like this a lot. It’s surprisingly thorough and delves as deeply into the site as you tell it to.

4. Web Browser

   An interesting tool used to scrape information from across the web. Have a specific topic you want to research, or perhaps you want to review news stories from the last 24 hours? Web Browser brings the information to you in seconds.

5. 22,500+ Best Custom GPTs

   Can’t find the GPT you need in the store? Tell this AI tool what you need and it will come back to you with the best GPT for the job.

The use and application of AI tools are growing by the day, and the GPT store is a catalyst for its evolution, providing a marketplace for developers to create and distribute innovative AI models and solutions.

I’m constantly looking for top-rated or upcoming GPTs to test and try. Have any you particularly like? Reply and let me know. More are being added almost daily, so watch this space!

👋 Unhappy New Year - Tech Company Layoffs

Layoffs are sweeping the tech industry, with thousands of employees told they will be moved on from their roles in 2024.

AI is having an impact, helping businesses be leaner and more efficient with a smaller headcount.

Data from Layoffs.fyi found that 51 leading tech companies have already laid off 7,528 staff in 2024.

These top companies have announced layoffs since the start of the year.

• Google - Laid off hundreds of workers on Wednesday night, which was put down to restructuring. You can read the full letter here.

• Discord - Laid off 170 staff, with CEO saying they grew too quickly. This equates to around 17% of their workforce.

• Twitch - Amazon-owned company Twitch will cut over 500 roles, which equates to 35% of its workforce.

• Amazon - Amazon will lay off several hundred employees from their streaming and studio operations, including Twitch and Prime Video. Since 2022, Amazon has laid off over 27,000 workers due to over-expansion during the pandemic.

• Unity - Video game company Unity Software to cut 25% of staff, around 1500 jobs, in company reset.

The Outpost’s Opinion: For companies like Google and Amazon, they are likely slimming down to be more agile in the AI race, allowing for greater investment. For the likes of Discord and Twitch, they are falling over their success during the pandemic. However, these layoffs are not expected to reach 2023 levels of tech industry redundancies.

🤖 Household Robots ‘Soon‘

From the Jetsons to modern-day Silicon Valley, robots in homes have been a long-standing prediction.

Last year, the BBC predicted that by 2033, domestic robots would handle 39% of household chores. At the time I doubted this, but now less than 12 months later, I reckon that 39% is an underestimate.

While we’re not quite in a sci-fi movie yet, CES 2024 showed us an incredible insight into the world of robotics.

The new LG Smart Home AI Agent robot was a hot talking point. The robot wheels its way around your home, patrolling to see whether you’ve left windows open, any lights left on, the temperature and even the air quality.

This category of robot comes under the ‘Zero Home Labour‘ vision of robotics. An idea I’m sure the majority of people can get on board with.

The smart agent can send you notifications to your phone, and will even greet you when you return home, analyse your mood and play the appropriate music to suit.

Samsung has weighed in too at this year’s CES 2024, with Ballie, an AI companion robot for your home. Ballie too can patrol your home, while connecting to smart devices to interact with appliances.

From turning on lights to wake you up, feeding a pet and even projecting videos on walls or floors. Rumours say that Ballie will be for sale as soon as the end of the year.

Just like the LG Smart AI Agent, Ballie combines robotics, AI and multimodal technologies to move around, understand its surroundings and communicate in complex conversations.

But robots will, before long be doing more than rolling around under your feet. Toyota currently has robots doing household chores by mimicking and learning through watching humans. This is yet another example of how robotics and AI are coming together to accelerate the robotics revolution.

The price for all these robots, at the moment, is not known. But they will cost a pretty penny. More details will come out throughout 2024 before, hopefully, a release by the end of the year.

The Outpost’s Opinion: We are on the cusp of the way we live and work being completely redefined. These opportunities to transform our everyday lives through the combination of robotics and AI will accelerate the speed robots are integrated into our homes. The next 12 months could be very exciting…

📹 MrBeast Posts Video On X, Gets 35+ Mil Views Within 12 Hours

Elon Musk has been trying to tempt MrBeast to post on X for a while now, and it looks like he’s succeeded. It was reported at the end of last year that X could lose up to 75 million in lost advertising revenue with brands boycotting the platform for various reasons.

MrBeast himself stated, just two weeks ago:

But on January 15th, that changed. MrBeast exclusively posted a video on X titled ‘$1 Car vs $100,000,000 Car‘

Within 12 hours, the video has surpassed well over 35 million views. It now has well over 80 million views and continues to rise.

The question on everyone’s mind, including Jimmy’s, is how much this video will generate compared to YouTube.

YouTube executives will no doubt be watching the situation closely too, as one of their most influential creators uses another platform.

Updates are to come next week, and boy I can’t wait.