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Remember Microsoft Tay? The 2016 Twitter chatbot suffered from a concerted effort to teach it all manner of vile things, prompting Microsoft to withdraw the service and apologize. That experience is top of mind for pretty much everyone talking about Meta’s new chatbot, now available in public testing in the U.S. The developers behind BlenderBot 3 insist that they, too, had the Tay experiment in mind when they developed the process for teaching this new chatbot to behave. In fact, the beta is designed so people can report when it says something inappropriate that it may have learned from another user. That information is used to teach it what is not appropriate. Will it work?
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Brands have been tripping over themselves to jump on the Web3/metaverse/NFT bandwagon, but few have articulated a strategic and comprehensive approach at the level Starbucks has. In this short mid-week FIR episode, Neville and Shel look at how Starbucks plans to build loyalty and community using these emerging tools, along with some other organizations that are starting to give Web3 similarly serious looks.
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According to one definition, unbranded content “isn’t specifically about your company but is relevant to your industry or product in some way.” There are unbranded videos like this one from WREN, an online clothing retailer. Released in 2014, it’s a film in which the filmmakers asked 20 couples who had never met to kiss. The only reference to WREN is at the very beginning of the video, “WREN Presents.” There isn’t even a link to the retailer in the film or on its YouTube page.

And there are entire unbranded websites. We even interviewed Ike Pigott from Alabama Power about Alabama News Center, where Alabama Power’s involvement is barely noticeable.

There are sound reasons for brands to produce unbranded content. From the perspective of the audience reading or viewing the content, is it underhanded? A failure to disclose? Does it matter? Neville and Shel have differing points of view in this short mid-week episode of For Immediate Release.
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If you peruse search results for “the metaverse,” it will seem like half the content you find focuses on defining it. At Nvidia, executive Richard Kerris thinks it’s pretty easy to define. “The metaverse is not a place,” he says. “It’s the network for the next version of the Web.” Neville and Shel explore that definition and related developments in this short midweek FIR episode.
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Research conducted by Google found that nearly 40 percent of Gen Z are using Tik Tok and Instagram for search instead of Google. It’s a real-world example of significant shifts exhibited by this group of 10-to-22-year-olds. By 2025, they will represent 30 percent of the workforce and be a considerable presence in the consumer marketplace.
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A lot is fueling the debate over whether workers should be able to continue working remotely, at least some of the time, or get themselves back to the office. The debate pits workers against leaders, and the assumption is that it’s just a matter of how each side perceives what’s best. But anthropologists see another factor at play: most leaders come from a different generation than those employees who want remote or hybrid work to become the new normal.
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Topics up for discussion in the monthly long-form episode include the following:L

• Are holograms about to go mainstream?
• There is outrage over revelations of massive wrongdoing by Uber. Will everyone keep riding them anyway?
• Uses of NFTs are expanding far beyond collectible artwork for investment purposes.
• How Wikipedia remediated dozens of fake articles could be a lesson for the rest of the world.
• Bad guys are extorting gift cards in exchange for removing negative online reviews.

Dan York’s report explores NFT adoption by Reddit and Snap; Instagram’s move to let creators confine posts to subscribers; Facebook’s test of multiple profiles; Twitter’s latest innovations; and mobile live-streaming with Starlink.
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Soon golfers and fans of the sport will be able to interact one-on-one with the legendary Golden Bear, Jack Nicklaus. Well, not Nicklaus himself, but his digital twin. Nicklaus spent hours in a studio having every facial expression and gesture recorded. The first digital twin will be of his 37-year-old self, but more are planned. And rest assured, Nicklaus won’t be the last celebrity to make himself “available” as a digital twin in the online world. And there’s more to digital twins than celebrities.
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While some assume NFTs are on their way out as the value of digital artwork has plummeted, brick-and-mortar retailers are increasingly finding ways to offer the ability to mint NFTs right in their stores. In this episode, Neville and Shel look at some of the latest developments in the evolution of collectible NFTs.
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