Today in Digital Marketing - If You Can't BEAT Apple...

Episode Date: July 2, 2024

A big design tool pulls its AI features... the slow recovery from a Google algorithm update... Meta makes a big change to a small tag... and YouTube's new service will be powered by the magic of human eyeballs. We think. Contact Us 📰 Get our free daily newsletter📈 Advertising: Reach Thousands of Marketing Decision-Makers🌍 Follow us on social media or contact usGO PREMIUM!Get these exclusive benefits when you upgrade:✅ Listen ad-free✅ Back catalog of 20+ marketing science interviews✅ Get the show earlier than the free version✅ “Skip to story” audio chapters✅ Member-only monthly livestreams with TodAnd a lot more! Check it out: todayindigital.com/premium✨ Premium tools: Update Credit Card • CancelMORE🆘 Need help with your social media? Check us out: engageQ digital📞 Need marketing advice? Leave us a voicemail and we’ll get an expert to help you free!🤝 Our Slack⭐ Review usUPGRADE YOUR SKILLSGoogle Ads for Beginners with Jyll Saskin GalesInside Google Ads: Advanced with Jyll Saskin GalesFoxwell Slack Group and CoursesToday in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin and produced by engageQ digital on the traditional territories of the Snuneymuxw First Nation on Vancouver Island, Canada.Some links in these show notes may provide affiliate revenue to us.Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It is Tuesday, July 2nd. Today, a big design tool pulls its AI features, the slow recovery from a Google algorithm update, Meta makes a big change to a small tag, and YouTube's new service will be powered by the magic of human eyeballs. We think. I'm Todd Mathen. That's ahead today in Digital Marketing. Well, if you or your colleagues opened up the design tool Figma this morning to get to work,

you may have noticed one big piece missing. Its new, much-ballyhooed generative AI tool has been cut from the app. It is a temporary cut, and for a little bit of an embarrassing reason, it was found to be copying Apple's weather app almost to the pixel. One designer asked Figma for mockups for a generic mobile weather app, then asked for another, then another. And each time Figma would just reproduce essentially the Apple's app. Widgets in the same position, data in the same order, graphical presentation, almost identical. Figma's CEO

acknowledged the problem, saying he'd been pushing the team too hard to meet a conference deadline. He said the AI feature would be temporarily disabled until it could produce more reliable outputs. As for how Apple's weather app got lifted in training, that's a little more murky. Figma uses multiple vendors for its AI models, including OpenAI, Amazon Titan, and Jasper. Those vendors do not disclose their training data. As for legal consequences, those are unlikely. Quoting 404 Media, quote, in theory, an app maker can sue another app maker for copyright infringement, especially if it's patented certain elements of the app. But copyright apps are incredibly common

on the Apple and Google app stores. The problem is so bad that in 2021, an app developer sued Apple for negligence around copyright apps on the app store. Most copycat apps are not popular enough to rise to the level of getting legal scrutiny, but an app maker accidentally copying another app this closely because they used a generative AI tool is certainly not a good look, unquote. Sites hit by Google's helpful content update, which rolled out last September, are seeing small improvements in their search ranking position over the past week. Small, nothing like full recoveries, though some people remain hopeful.

Barry Schwartz at SE Roundtable says, quote, We are all hopeful we will see some significant recoveries for some of those sites with the next core update, unquote. This noted uplift came from a small study of 384 sites which had been heavily impacted. They're still lower than before the September update, but they have been sneaking up on average. Then again, there was a small algorithm update to Google's search engine over the weekend, so it's possible that played a role as well. Back in May, Scarlett Johansson threatened OpenAI with legal action for using an AI-generated version

of her voice for ChatGPT 4.0. The CEO denied the accusation. Now, she might be pleased to see YouTube letting users request the removal of AI-generated content that resembles them. And it seems YouTube will do this using human eyes. It says the person involved must be uniquely identifiable, and they'll also consider if content is satire, parody, or involves a public figure in a sensitive situation, all tasks which are pretty hard for a bot to figure out. YouTube says it will only accept first-party claims, meaning agencies or legal firms won't be able to file requests on behalf of their clients. After filing a request, the content won't be immediately removed.

The uploader will get 48 hours to trim, blur, or remove the video. Making a video private won't be enough. If the uploader doesn't act within 48 hours, YouTube says it will take further action if needed. And finally, on this short summer show today, Meta yesterday announced it's updating that made with AI label that it applies to images uploaded to its apps.

It will now read AI info instead. The change comes after complaints that the label was it applies to images uploaded to its apps, it will now read AI info instead. The change comes after complaints that the label was being slapped onto images, even if they weren't made with AI. Even if all that happened was a little machine learning had been involved in a retouch or a compression. The new label is rolling out first on mobile apps and later on the web. Clicking the tag will still provide a detailed explanation of why it was applied, covering images both fully generated by AI or edited with AI tools. I've been wanting to do something on this podcast

ever since I started it, and I just haven't gotten around to doing it. So we're going to start today. I don't have a title for this segment. It'll always be in this extra section. I don't know. Stuff I found on the internet is the closest I've come. I told you I'm bad at branding things. Anyway, it's literally stuff I found on the internet that I think you'd be interested in. And we're starting with a mobile app. And it is really, really smart. It's called Foodkeeper. It's by the US government's food regulatory

agency. I forget what it's called. Food and drug agency now or something like that. Anyway, Foodkeeper is the name of the app. And you basically tell it what food you have. So you say poultry. And it says, what kind of poultry? You say chicken. And it says, what kind of chicken? Is it cooked? Is it packaged? Is it raw? And you say, well, it's a rotisserie chicken. And it will tell you, A, how long you need to cook it for, all that cooking stuff. But more importantly, it will tell you how long it can safely last in your fridge and how long it can safely last in your freezer. And the best part is if you tap that button on that screen, it will put a little note in your calendar to remind you to eat it before it expires. I love this app. It's one of these things that I, in the back of my

head, I was always thinking like someone should do that. And I never thought to just go look to see if someone had done it. And someone has. The app is called Foodkeeper. You'll know it. It's a green logo. It looks like a little blue bite taken out of the top. Anyway, that's the logo icon. So don't be fooled by imitators or Figma's AI.

All right. See you tomorrow.