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That’s the Spirit. The leaves are changing, and it’s officially October, FutureParty people. You know what that means? If you answered “Spirit Halloween’s most lucrative month of the year,” congratulations — you’re right on the money. The seasonal pop-up business makes nearly all of its annual revenue (a whopping $650 million) in just September and October. The only close seasonal rival? Probably Mariah Carey’s royalties for “All I Want for Christmas” in Q4.
In other news… Amazon schedules an AI ecommerce update, Tom Hanks’ deepfake, and Mean Girls takes on TikTok.
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ECOMMERCE
AI sales associate // Illustration by Kate Walker
Amazon schedules an AI update for ecommerce
The Future. Amazon’s upcoming AI feature, Project Nile, will revamp Amazon’s ecommerce search bar with an AI assistant that can answer questions, compare products, surface reviews, and offer recommendations based on a user’s search history. Amazon already accounts for 60% of all US consumer product searches, so Project Nile could soon become the most mainstream avenue for the average person to engage with an AI assistant.
Searching the Nile
Amazon’s Project Nile is like a “deeply knowledgeable in-store salesperson who’s familiar with each shopper’s individual taste,” according to VP Joseph Sirosh.
Likely leveraging the same AI that was just added to Alexa, Project Nile’s search AI will be able to hold conversations with customers to assist with shopping queries — like deciding what coffee machine to purchase.
And to hedge against “hallucinations,” the project will initially employ “human AI trainers” to review search answers — testing searches against ChatGPT, Bard, and Bing Chat.
Although the feature was supposed to drop last month, it’s still being tested and could debut in January, according to a source that spoke with Insider.
Amazon hopes Nile will boost sales specifically on mobile devices. Despite the fact that 80% of Amazon searches start on mobile, conversions are much lower than what the company would like. That likely has to do with the experience — it’s just a little more cumbersome to make purchases from a phone.
But if an AI can make comparing products and completing a sale easy enough, Amazon may, mind-bogglingly, become an even bigger company.
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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Courtesy of… not even Tom Hanks is sure who
A Tom Hanks deepfake is shilling for dentistry
The Future. Tom Hanks and Gayle King were both recently the victims of deepfake scams over the weekend. It was only a matter of time before the celebrity deepfakes came out in full force. But with SAG-AFTRA just getting back to the negotiating table with the AMPTP — where tackling the abuses of AI is a central issue — the fraudulent ads may supercharge the union’s AI efforts not just in the contract talks but also in lobbying the government to get more aggressive about protecting digital likeness.
Fake smile
DMCA takedown requests are being put on overdrive in the age of AI.
Tom Hanks warned followers on Instagram that a deepfake of him popped up advertising a dental plan (granted, Hanks does have great teeth).
Gayle King also took to Insta to tell followers that a deepfake ad of her was directing people to click a link to learn a weight loss “secret.” The video was a doctored version of a real ad for her radio show.
Meta has remained coy about the scams but said they were against the company’s policies.
Ironically, Hanks has been at the forefront of this issue — in both its possibilities and its dangers. He’s starring in Robert Zemeckis’ Here (in which he was de-aged by AI firm Metaphysic), and he became one of the first stars to apply for digital likeness copyright protection through the same company.
He knew his face was too influential to not be used.
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AI-generated creative content is popping up everywhere. Why? Because it’s creating high-converting ads.
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ENTERTAINMENT
Courtesy of Paramount
Mean Girls takes on TikTok
The Future. Paramount pulled out the think-outside-the-box playbook for marketing its remake of Mean Girls, putting the movie up on TikTok in celebration of Mean Girls Day (a national holiday as far as TFP is concerned). With the remake slated for release on January 12th, Paramount may be testing whether re-introducing audiences to older IP in the form of ready-to-go viral clips can drum up demand for new versions.
Cinema, clipped
Paramount put up the entirety of the 2004 hit Mean Girls on TikTok… in 23 parts.
The plan isn’t just to go viral (the account has already amassed 129,800 followers and the movie was the top trending topic on Twitter) but also ease people into rewatching the whole movie (classic endless scroll).
The hope is Mean Girls reaches a new generation of audiences (because the movie really is timeless) right where they’re already watching movies.
Virality on TikTok is increasingly proving to be a good indicator if a movie will make a splash at the box office, so studios like Paramount are hoping to reverse-engineer a little online love. The Mean Girls remake scored so well in test screenings that it moved from a Paramount+ debut to a theatrical one. The studio clearly has high hopes.
And while some writers, directors, and actors bristled that Paramount may be using a TikTok exhibition as a way to circumvent residual payments, WGA board member Angelina Burnett says that’s simply not the case — the payouts from TikTok are just too small to be meaningful to a Hollywood studio. The movie is also on Paramount+ and free with ads on YouTube.
Some things really are just marketing.
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Highlights
The best curated daily stories from around the web
Media, Music, & Entertainment
Latin music is exploding in US listenership, growing 15% this year and giving Spanish the distinction of being the second most-listened to language in music — with regional Mexican artists like Peso Pluma driving demand. Read more → variety
NSYNC released their first song in 19 years — “Better Together,” a single from the upcoming, Justin Timberlake-starring Trolls World Tour. Read more → thr
Walt Disney Pictures VFX workers have unanimously voted to unionize with IATSE after their peers at Marvel successfully did so. Read more → variety
Fashion & E-Commerce
Beauty biotech firm Arcaea has hatched the fragrance line Future Society, which has six scents created from the sequenced DNA of extinct flowers — which Forbes dubs the “Jurassic Park of perfume.” Read more → forbes
DoorDash is launching a reward system for customers who opt to dine out rather than order in, with users able to collect credit when they check in to the restaurant on the app. Read more → techcrunch
Public is hosting a first-of-its-kind auction for retail investors to purchase shares of the music rights to the Shrek franchise, with 88,970 fractional shares available for $10 each. Read more → insider
Tech, Web3, & AI
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon believes employees will eventually work only 3.5 days per week thanks to AI (we’d love to know how he calculated the half). Read more → bloomberg
The FCC is starting to fine satellite companies for leaving their junk in space, with Dish Network getting slapped with the first $150,000 fine for not pushing a dead satellite away from orbit. Read more → theverge
As social media sites cut off access to news publishers due to new payout models, traffic to those publishers has plummeted, according to Similarweb. Read more → axios
Creator Economy
Wattpad is rewriting its “Paid Originals” tier to become “Wattpad Originals,” giving authors the ability to paywall only certain chapters of their books to grow their followings with free offerings. Read more → techcrunch
Fortnite is launching age ratings for all of its experiences, which Epic Games says is “a critical step toward building a metaverse that’s safe and fun for everyone.” Read more → theverge
MrBeast’s Feastables snack brand is getting into the sports sponsorship game by becoming a patch sponsor for the Charlotte Hornets — Jimmy Donaldson’s hometown team. Read more → tubefilter
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Melody Song. Copy edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.