Latest news with #AI
Forbes
31 minutes ago
- Business
- Forbes
20 Game-Changing AI Tools Every Small Business Leader Needs Now
Small businesses represent 90% of global industry and generate nearly half of worldwide GDP, yet ... More many entrepreneurs are missing out on AI tools that could revolutionize their operations. Small businesses aren't really so small; in fact, they make up around 90 percent of industry and generate close to 50 percent of global GDP. This means that while superscale giants like Amazon and Google may make headlines developing and selling AI tools, it's often the global network of innovators, entrepreneurs and dreamers running small businesses that will create real value with these tools. If that's you, then AI can help out with much of the heavy lifting involved in marketing, administration, compliance, customer service and more. So, here's a rundown of some of the best AI tools I've come across. These tools make it easy for any business owner, sole trader, or self-employed tradesperson to join the AI revolution. Five Of The Best Adobe Express Express is like a cut-down version of the full Adobe suite of productivity tools, powered by genAI and Adobe's proprietary Firefly AI engine. It is primarily aimed at helping with the creation of marketing materials and assets, including videos. A key selling point of Adobe's genAI offerings is that they are entirely trained on data that Adobe actually owns, heading off any problems that might appear further down the line with changes to regulations around AI and copyrighted works. Descript Probably the simplest way to start creating and editing video content for business marketing, with the ability to create, cut and rearrange videos simply by editing the transcript. Generative AI is used to power automatic transcriptions, as well as powerful functions like overdubbing with cloned AI voiceovers, virtual green-screen backgrounds and removal of filler words and clumsy-sounding 'uhms' and 'errs' from recorded speech. A fantastic tool that can hugely reduce the cost and need for technical expertise when creating business videos. Freshdesk Freddy AI Copilot AI helpdesk agent that can answer customer questions, escalate them when human intervention is needed, and autonomously take action, such as issuing refunds. Customer service is quickly becoming one of the hot use cases for generative AI, with its ability to provide instant 24/7 help and become more efficient as it learns about your customers' common pain points. Freddy analyses the sentiment of customer communications to draft knowledge-based articles and FAQs. With a new SME-friendly service level and price point, Freshdesk Salesforce Agentforce Assistant Customer data holds all sorts of clues to business success—imagine if you could just talk to it and ask it questions. Well, that's the idea behind Salesforce's genAI CRM assistant, formerly known as Einstein Copilot but now part of the Agentforce agentic AI suite. It can dive into your customer data to answer in-depth questions and identify new business opportunities. With a ton of domain-specific knowledge acquired by Salesforce over many years of operation, Agentforce Assistant can also craft sales emails, intelligently update and track customer records and generate follow-up tasks. Microsoft 365 Copilot What makes this great is that it essentially adds AI assistance to the popular Office tools that have long been the backbone of small business productivity. Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams and more all benefit from the integration of Copilot, meaning that everything from drafting emails and web copy to creating presentations and analyzing data can be automated and managed with natural language prompts. In Excel, for example, Copilot can recommend formulas, create visualizations and spot trends in your business and customer data. In PowerPoint, it designs slide decks, and Teams conversations, collaborative working and meetings can be summarized, automatically generating action points and workflow schedules. More advanced AI users can even use it to build autonomous agents capable of complex workflows with minimal human intervention using Copilot Studio. More Great Small Business Generative AI Tools If none of those tick all the boxes you need, take a look at some of these options: Buffer Buffer is designed to help small businesses build their social audience, with a generous free tier that provides access to its AI assistant features. Canva Magic Studio Creates everything from branded social media graphics to animated marketing videos from simple prompts. Grammarly The great thing about this genAI grammar and writing tool is that it integrates with just about everything from Word to your web browser, meaning advice and content suggestions are available across all your tools. Jasper Copywriting tool optimized for creating business marketing copy and blogs. LiveChat Set up and run automated chatbots to talk to your website visitors and convert them into subscribers or customers. Mailchimp Email marketing is still a great way to get your business noticed and start generating repeat customers, and Mailchimp's generative AI functionality lets you automate the process as well as quickly generate branded, optimized content for your campaigns. Monday Monday is a project management and collaborative working platform, and now you can chat with it in real time to get live insights into your projects and workflows, as well as automated decision-making, such as matching team members to the tasks they are best positioned to complete. Otter Otter is an automated meeting assistant that takes notes, creates summaries and delivers action plans by analyzing the chatter during team or client online meetings. Sage The popular self-service accounting package now lets business owners automate invoicing and payments. It can even answer questions about bookkeeping and provide insights into cash flow using natural language. Shopify Sidekick Millions of businesses use the Shopify platform to simplify their e-commerce operations, and the new built-in Sidekick AI assistant helps out with routine tasks like drafting product descriptions as well as in-depth analytics for business insights. Tableau Pulse Thanks to AI, even smaller organizations can benefit from data analytics and the insights it can surface. Pulse is a simplified, AI-powered version of the popular data analytics platform, tailored for smaller businesses and designed to be accessible to anyone, not just data science experts. Sprout Social Who needs a dedicated social media manager? Sprout Social helps businesses surface trends with automated social listening and insights and then quickly drafts polished, effective posts. Tidio Create and deploy automated sales and customer service agents. Wix AI Website Builder The first step to getting a business off the ground is often a great website, and DIY platform Wix now features an AI assistant bot that will build it for you from simple prompts. Xero Another AI-powered accounting package that has just launched a new low-price plan tailored for small business owners and sole traders who want to get started with AI revolution isn't just for large companies with big budgets. Small business owners who embrace these tools today will find themselves better positioned to compete, scale, and thrive in an increasingly digital marketplace. Whether you're a sole trader looking to automate your first customer service bot or an entrepreneur ready to transform your entire workflow, the future of small business success lies in making AI a valuable team member.
Herald Malaysia
40 minutes ago
- Politics
- Herald Malaysia
Pope Leo XIV on AI: ‘All of us are concerned for children and young people'
Pope Leo XIV has issued a fresh warning about the negative effects that artificial intelligence (AI) can have on the 'intellectual and neurological development' of rising generations, along with a call to confront the 'loss of the sense of the human' that societies are experiencing. Jun 23, 2025 Credit: LookerStudio/Shutterstock By Victoria Cardiel Pope Leo XIV has issued a fresh warning about the negative effects that artificial intelligence (AI) can have on the 'intellectual and neurological development' of rising generations, along with a call to confront the 'loss of the sense of the human' that societies are experiencing. 'All of us, I am sure, are concerned for children and young people, and the possible consequences of the use of AI on their intellectual and neurological development,' the Holy Father said in a Friday message to participants at the second annual Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Corporate Governance, held June 19–20 in Rome. 'Our youth must be helped, and not hindered, in their journey toward maturity and true responsibility,' he indicated. He continued that young people are the 'hope for the future' and that the well-being of society 'depends upon their being given the ability to develop their God-given gifts and capabilities.' Thus, according to the message made public by the Vatican Press Office, the Holy Father assured that while never before has a generation had 'such quick access to the amount of information now available through AI,' this should not be confused with the ability to understand the workings of the world. 'Access to data — however extensive — must not be confused with intelligence,' he said. He added: 'Authentic wisdom has more to do with recognizing the true meaning of life than with the availability of data.' Similarly, he warned that AI can also be misused 'for selfish gain at the expense of others, or worse, to foment conflict and aggression.' At the beginning of his message, written in English, the pontiff stressed the 'urgent need' for 'serious reflection and ongoing discussion on the inherently ethical dimension of AI as well as its responsible governance.' Leo XIV was particularly pleased that the second day of this meeting took place in the Apostolic Palace and assured that it was 'a clear indication of the Church's desire to participate in these discussions.' The pontiff echoed the words of his predecessor, Pope Francis, in recalling that, despite being 'an exceptional product of human genius, AI is above all else a tool.' Therefore, 'tools point to the human intelligence that crafted them and draw much of their ethical force from the intentions of the individuals that wield them,' he underscored. Pope Leo went on to point out that, in many cases, AI has been used 'in positive and indeed noble ways to promote greater equality.' For example, in the uses it has been put to in the field of health research and scientific discovery. The Holy Father stressed that the evaluation of the benefits or risks of AI must be made 'in light of the 'integral development of the human person and society,' as noted in the recent Vatican document Antiqua et Nova . 'This entails taking into account the well-being of the human person not only materially but also intellectually and spiritually; it means safeguarding the inviolable dignity of each human person and respecting the cultural and spiritual riches and diversity of the world's peoples,' Leo insisted. In the face of enthusiasm for technological innovations, the pope warned against a loss of sensitivity to the human. 'As the late Pope Francis pointed out, our societies today are experiencing a certain 'loss, or at least an eclipse, of the sense of what is human,'' he recalled. In this regard, Leo made clear the role of the Catholic Church in weighing the ramifications of AI in light of the 'integral development of the human person and society.' Leo XIV also expressed his hope that the meeting's deliberations would include reflection on intergenerational roles in ethical formation. 'I express my hope that your deliberations will also consider AI within the context of the necessary intergenerational apprenticeship that will enable young people to integrate truth into their moral and spiritual life,' he concluded.--CNA
Sydney Morning Herald
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
By robots, for robots: The new soundtrack to our lives is giving me nightmares
The song Echoes of Tomorrow is a laid-back, catchy tune that might happily slot into a summer playlist on Spotify or Apple Music. Only the lyrics, which make curious references to 'algorithms,' reveal its non-human creator: Artificial intelligence. The track's mimicry of flesh-and-blood pop is pretty unsettling. Yet what's really disturbing is the sheer quantity of similar AI tunes sloshing around online. Tools like Udio and Suno, trained on millions of songs crafted by human artists, are now churning out millions of their own tunes at the click of a button. Deezer, a rival of Spotify, estimates 20,000 AI tracks are uploaded to its platform daily, 18 per cent of the total. While they only account for 0.5 per cent of total listens, real royalties are being earned and often fraudulently so, judging by the spread of bots to amplify listens. This may not be a Napster-scale issue yet – but the $20 billion music market is clearly vulnerable. Which is why Deezer is now trying a little more sunlight to disinfect its platform. It's going to start labelling AI-generated content, based on proprietary software. On a recent visit to the firm's Paris headquarters, I watched on a laptop as the detection tool quickly spotted the telltale signs of a computer-composed song – in this case, Echoes of Tomorrow – with what it says is 100 per cent accuracy. It turns out that while human ears can be fooled, AI-generated music can be detected from statistical patterns used in its creation. That's helped the fight against fraud behind the scenes; now it's going to empower listeners. Deezer deserves two cheers for this – and maybe one nervous gulp. Increased transparency about the provenance of music is one way to ensure a fairer playing field in a market whose pay-per-stream model already felt unequal for artists lower down the food chain. It's also a good way to indirectly put pressure on the bigger platforms like Spotify to follow suit and show users what they're paying for. Much of Spotify's $145 billion market cap is built on expectations of price hikes and premium subscription tiers – these would be harder to justify if built on AI content masquerading as the real thing. Yet what remains worrying is the extent to which AI music is overwhelmingly cannibalising, not feeding, the human artists on which it was trained without compensation. As Deezer's own experience attests, the utopian view of AI empowering creators by taking care of low-value tasks isn't what's happening: Instead, royalty-collecting society the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers estimates AI music's growth through 2028 will come largely at the expense of humans, generating an estimated €10 billion ($18 billion) of revenue by substituting artists' work. And while streaming platforms have a role to play here, so do governments and regulators if AI firms are to also improve transparency on the sources of their training data. Loading 'We're seeing AI music shrink the royalty pool for human artists,' says Ed Newton-Rex, an AI music specialist and founder of nonprofit lobby group Fairly Trained. 'There are real economic consequences to this technology.' Detecting and flagging AI music at the point of distribution is just the start. What's also needed is a model that protects artists who are threatened at the point of generation – such as paid licensing deals between copyright holders and tech platforms like Suno, which are currently in discussion. Newton-Rex says that detection tools like Deezer's could be used by streaming platforms for sanctioning AI tools that don't respect musicians' rights by removing their uploaded content. He has a point. If human creativity really is going to get a boost from new tech tools, Echoes of Tomorrow has to be yesterday's news.
The Star
an hour ago
- Business
- The Star
Music streaming service Deezer adds AI song tags in fight against fraud
LONDON: Music streaming service Deezer said Friday that it will start flagging albums with AI-generated songs, part of its fight against streaming fraudsters. Deezer, based in Paris, is grappling with a surge in music on its platform created using artificial intelligence tools it says are being wielded to earn royalties fraudulently. The app will display an on-screen label warning about "AI-generated content" and notify listeners that some tracks on an album were created with song generators. Deezer is a small player in music streaming, which is dominated by Spotify, Amazon and Apple, but the company said AI-generated music is an "industry-wide issue.' It's committed to "safeguarding the rights of artists and songwriters at a time where copyright law is being put into question in favor of training AI models," CEO Alexis Lanternier said in a press release. Deezer's move underscores the disruption caused by generative AI systems, which are trained on the contents of the internet including text, images and audio available online. AI companies are facing a slew of lawsuits challenging their practice of scraping the web for such training data without paying for it. According to an AI song detection tool that Deezer rolled out this year, 18% of songs uploaded to its platform each day, or about 20,000 tracks, are now completely AI-generated. Just three months earlier, that number was 10%, Lanternier said in a recent interview. AI has many benefits but it also "creates a lot of questions" for the music industry, Lanternier told The Associated Press. Using AI to make music is fine as long as there's an artist behind it but the problem arises when anyone, or even a bot, can use it to make music, he said. Music fraudsters "create tons of songs. They upload, they try to get on playlists or recommendations, and as a result they gather royalties,' he said. Musicians can't upload music directly to Deezer or rival platforms like Spotify or Apple Music. Music labels or digital distribution platforms can do it for artists they have contracts with, while anyone else can use a "self service' distribution company. Fully AI-generated music still accounts for only about 0.5% of total streams on Deezer. But the company said it's "evident" that fraud is "the primary purpose" for these songs because it suspects that as many as seven in 10 listens of an AI song are done by streaming "farms" or bots, instead of humans. Any AI songs used for "stream manipulation' will be cut off from royalty payments, Deezer said. AI has been a hot topic in the music industry, with debates swirling around its creative possibilities as well as concerns about its legality. Two of the most popular AI song generators, Suno and Udio, are being sued by record companies for copyright infringement, and face allegations they exploited recorded works of artists from Chuck Berry to Mariah Carey. Gema, a German royalty-collection group, is suing Suno in a similar case filed in Munich, accusing the service of generating songs that are "confusingly similar' to original versions by artists it represents, including "Forever Young' by Alphaville, "Daddy Cool' by Boney M and Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5.' Major record labels are reportedly negotiating with Suno and Udio for compensation, according to news reports earlier this month. To detect songs for tagging, Lanternier says Deezer uses the same generators used to create songs to analyse their output. "We identify patterns because the song creates such a complex signal. There is lots of information in the song,' Lanternier said. The AI music generators seem to be unable to produce songs without subtle but recognisable patterns, which change constantly. "So you have to update your tool every day," Lanternier said. "So we keep generating songs to learn, to teach our algorithm. So we're fighting AI with AI.' Fraudsters can earn big money through streaming. Lanternier pointed to a criminal case last year in the US, which authorities said was the first ever involving artificially inflated music streaming. Prosecutors charged a man with wire fraud conspiracy, accusing him of generating hundreds of thousands of AI songs and using bots to automatically stream them billions of times, earning at least US$10mil (RM42.8mil). – AP
Forbes
an hour ago
- Business
- Forbes
Meta Invests $14 Billion In Scale AI To Strengthen Model Training
Big Data Meta's $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI represents the social media giant's most significant move to secure high-quality training data for artificial intelligence models. The deal gives Meta a 49% stake in the data labeling startup while bringing Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang into Meta's leadership to head a new superintelligence research lab. This acquisition addresses Meta's most pressing challenge in the AI race: access to the specialized datasets required to train competitive large language models. While competitors like OpenAI lead the global AI market share through ChatGPT, Meta's recent Llama 4 models received lukewarm reception from users who reported poor performance in coding tasks and generic responses compared to smaller rivals. The Data Foundation Problem Scale AI operates a global workforce of contractors across Kenya, the Philippines and Venezuela who manually label images, text and video for machine learning applications. The data labeling process involves human annotators identifying objects in images, transcribing audio or categorizing text to create the training datasets that teach AI models to recognize patterns. For autonomous vehicle applications, this includes labeling 3D point clouds from lidar sensors and marking objects across video frames. In natural language processing, workers rate the quality of AI responses and provide feedback through reinforcement learning techniques that incorporate human feedback. Meta's investment secures privileged access to these data preparation services while its competitors face potential service restrictions. Google paused multiple Scale AI projects within hours of the announcement of the Meta deal. OpenAI confirmed it was already winding down its Scale AI relationship, and Elon Musk's xAI halted some projects as well. Market Disruption and Competitive Response Scale AI differentiates itself through its integrated platform capabilities, which combine data labeling, model evaluation, and synthetic data generation. The company's workforce includes highly educated and skilled contractors with PhDs and master's degrees. This expertise proves critical for complex domains like healthcare, finance and legal services that require a nuanced understanding beyond basic image recognition. The Meta investment creates immediate market consolidation as Scale AI's major clients seek alternative providers. This shift benefits competitors like iMerit, which leverages domain expertise in healthcare and geospatial applications, and automated labeling platforms such as Snorkel AI that reduce dependence on human annotators. Technical Integration and Capabilities Wang will lead Meta's new superintelligence lab focused on developing artificial general intelligence. The 28-year-old MIT dropout previously worked at high-frequency trading firm Hudson River Trading before founding Scale AI in 2016. His team of approximately 50 researchers will join Meta's existing AI workforce as the company plans to spend a significant amount on AI infrastructure in 2025. The integration provides Meta with several technical advantages. Scale AI's data engine processes multiple modalities, including text, images, video and audio, through both automated systems and human oversight. The platform features quality assurance mechanisms that utilize statistical sampling to identify edge cases, resulting in a substantial reduction in revision cycles. Meta's access to Scale AI's government contracts also expands its reach into defense applications. Wang's connections in Washington could help Meta secure federal AI projects, diversifying beyond its consumer-focused social media platforms. Strategic Implications for Enterprise AI The deal structure avoids traditional acquisition scrutiny by maintaining Scale AI as an independent entity while giving Meta operational control. This approach mirrors Microsoft's OpenAI investment and Amazon's Anthropic backing, allowing tech giants to access AI capabilities without triggering antitrust reviews. For enterprise technology leaders, Meta's move signals the critical importance of data quality in AI implementations. Nearly all business leaders report encountering AI-related data quality issues, with problems including duplicate records, privacy constraints and inefficient integration hampering deployment goals. The Meta-Scale AI partnership demonstrates that even well-funded companies struggle with the foundational data challenges that determine AI success. The investment also highlights the growing strategic value of specialized AI infrastructure. While enterprises often focus on model selection and deployment, the quality and diversity of training data ultimately determines system performance. Companies that secure reliable data labeling capabilities gain sustainable competitive advantages in AI applications. Meta's willingness to pay $14.3 billion for a data services company reflects the market reality that high-quality training data has become the primary constraint on AI development. As the global AI market continues expanding, access to specialized data preparation capabilities will increasingly separate successful AI implementations from failed projects. The deal positions Meta to compete more effectively against OpenAI and Google by addressing its most significant disadvantage: limited access to the diverse, high-quality datasets required for advanced AI model training. Whether this investment translates into improved AI products remains dependent on Meta's ability to integrate Scale AI's capabilities with its existing research and development efforts.
