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Is it Moores Law, or mores law?

Anyone keeping an eye on the generative artificial intelligence (AI) landscape could be forgiven for confusing the two.

This, as another week has gone by, and with it another hyper-rapid clip of advances in the commercialization of generative AI solutions, and even a new executive orderfrom California Governor Gavin Newsom, around theneed for regulationof the innovative technology.

Were it any other technology, the rapid pace of change we are seeing within AI would require a least a year or more to make it to market.

Already, after China became the first major market economy last month to pass regulations policing AI,the nationsbiggest tech firmsdebuted theirown adherent products just weeks later this one.

And as generative AI technology continues to add more fuel its rocket ship trajectory, these are the stories and moonshots that PYMNTS has been tracking.

Generative AI can generate, well, anything. And while the possibilities are endless, they also run the gamut from widely positive and productively impactful, to dangerous and geared toward criminal goals. After all, genAI is a tool, and in the absence of a firm regulatory framework, the utility of a tool depends entirely on the hand that wields it.

Thats whyGooglehas announced anew policy mandating advertisers for the upcoming U.S. election to disclose when the ads they wish to display across any of Googles platforms (excluding YouTube) have been manipulated or created using AI.

Meta Platforms, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, andX, formerly known as Twitter, both of which have faced allegations of spreading political misinformation, have not yet announced any specific rules around AI-generated ad content.

Complicating matters somewhat is the fact that PYMNTS Intelligence has found there doesnt yet exist a truly foolproof method to detect and exposeAI-generated content.

One of the questions that is immediately raised [around AI] ishow do you draw the linebetween human-generated and AI-generated content,John Villasenor,professor of electrical engineering, law, public policy and management atUCLAand faculty co-director of theUCLA Institute for Technology, Law and Policy, explained to PYMNTS on Friday (Sept. 8).

And as generative AI tools are increasingly leveraged by bad actors to fool ID authorization protocols and scam unsuspecting consumers, it is becoming incumbent on organizations toupgrade their own defenseswith AI capabilities.Phishing attacksalone have seen a 150% increase year over year as a result of new AI-driven techniques.

The technology is already proving to be both a blessing and a hindrance forpayments security, and as reported here on Tuesday (Sept. 5), payments firm ThetaRayrecently raised $57 million to boost its AI-powered financial crime detection capabilities.

While the artificial element of AI has its darker side, it is the intelligence aspect of the technology that enterprises and platforms want to capitalize on and integrate.

Apple isreportedly spending millions of dollars a day building out its generative AI capabilities across several product teams, including its voice assistant Siri, and there exists an attractive white space opportunity for AI to make todays smart assistants a whole lot smarter.

Chipmaker Qualcomm is working withMetato make that companys Llama 2-based artificial AI implementationsavailable on smartphones and PCs, and the Qualcomms CEO said on Tuesday (Sept. 5) he sees AI as potentially revivingthe smartphone market, where global sales are at their lowest levels in a decade.

Elsewhere, video communications companyZoomannounced that it is making its own generative AI assistantfree to paid users; while the buzzy,well-fundedAI startupAnthropic on Thursday (Sept. 7)introduced a paid planfor the Pro version of its AI assistant,Claude.

Not to be outdone, customer experience management platformSprinklrhas integrated its AI platform withGoogle CloudsVertex AI in order to let retail companieselevate contact center efficiency withgenerative AI capabilities that support service agents.

This, whileCaseys General Stores announced on Wednesday (Sept. 6) that the convenience retailer is turning to conversational voice AI ordering technologyin an ongoing push to gain share from quick-service restaurants (QSRs).

IBM also announced on Thursday (Sept. 7) that it is releasingnew enhancements to its AI platform, watsonx, and giving developers a preview next week at the companys TechXchange event in Las Vegas.

And IBM isnt the only tech company hosting a developer conference. Generative AI pioneer OpenAIannounced Wednesday (Sept. 6) that its first DevDay developer conference will take place this November.

Generative AI is also getting utilized for specialized purposes.

CFOs areincreasingly tapping the toolto help optimize their working capital and treasury management approaches; while consumer brand data platform Alloy.ai on Thursday (Sept. 7) announced the addition of new predictive AI featuresto its own forecasting and supply chain solution.

And over in the healthcare sector, the industry is reportedlyallocating over a tenth of its annual spend (10.5%) on AI and machine learning innovations.

As for what the health industry hopes to achieve with this investment? Hopefully thecure to its zettabyte-sizeddata fragmentation problems.

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This Week in AI: Deepfakes, Vertical Horizons and Smarter Assistance - PYMNTS.com