Ads Arrive to Google’s AI Overviews; OpenAI Raises $6.6bn in Funding; Meta and Apple Reject EU’s AI Pact

by Aimee Newell Tarín on 7th Oct 2024 in News

Today’s news: Ads Arrive to Google’s AI Overviews; OpenAI Raises $6.6bn in Funding; Meta and Apple Reject EU’s AI Pact

Ads are finally arriving to Google’s AI Overviews, the tech giant announced in a blog post last week. The feature was first announced at the Google Marketing Live 2024 event back in May, where a demo was shared showing how it planned to integrate Search and Shopping ads within AI Overviews when relevant to a user’s query and the response provided. As outlined previously, ads displayed in the feature will come under a “Sponsored” label. So far, the feature has only been made available to US users searching on mobile devices. Advertisers won't need to carry out additional steps to have their ads shown in Overviews, as ads from existing Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns are pulled up. However, it's worth noting that there will be no new reporting for these ad placements.

Google's update comes while Perplexity AI has been in talks with big brands such as Nike over its digital ads model. Additionally, Google is introducing what it calls a “more helpful” Search results page, also powered by AI. Independently, Google also appears to be testing a verified checkmark feature in Search, with the intention of making it easier for users to avoid clicking on fraudulent links.

While Google makes further moves to turbocharge its features with AI, rival OpenAI has raised USD$6.6bn (£5bn) in funding. This values the company at a hefty sum of USD$157bn (£119.22bn). Among its biggest investors are Microsoft, Nvidia (whose AI chips operate the company’s models), Japanese SoftBank and Infosys, among others. OpenAI’s ChatGPT continues to see soaring popularity, with over 250 million people turning to the chatbot each week. This, however, hadn’t stopped the company from hurtling towards a loss of almost USD$5bn (£3.80bn) this year. The raised funding will go towards furthering AI research and increasing its computing capacity.

Lastly, looking at other tech giants’ moves in the AI arena, several have shunned the EU’s latest efforts to regulate the technology. Meta, Apple and TikTok all passed up on joining the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Pact, which outlines non-binding commitments which preempt the binding rules that industries will face under the bloc’s AI Act, due to be introduced in the coming years. Other key industry members were missing from the list of signatories, including AI companies Anthropic and Mistral. The list was signed by 115 companies: among those were OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Amazon.