Plugged In

Bing Chat unveils internet actions, Bytedance paywalls its music streaming service, Superhuman launches generative-AI features

Happy Friday! What does it take to power every man and their dog’s newfound ChatGPT obsession? Lighting a boatload of cash on fire, it seems. Open AI’s losses doubled to $540m in 2022, and Sam Altman apparently wants to raise as much as $100 billion to keep the spark going 🔥🔥

🌶 Highlight of the day 🌶

Microsoft unveiled Actions in Bing Chat, letting users leverage plugins to complete tasks on the internet without switching sites. For example, if a chat displays a restaurant recommendation, the chatbot can look up times and make a reservation for users through the OpenTable plugin 🥘

If this class of chatbot plugin actions gets serious traction, optimizing text-based purchase flows will be the next frontier for growth PMs 👩‍💻

♨️ Hot off the press launches

Big tech

  • Meta announces AR ads for Reels and FB Stories

  • Amazon’s Alexa ships Uber Eats order tracking via voice

  • WhatsApp ships single-vote polls and caption forwarding

  • Bytedance paywalls its Resso music streaming service

  • Slack announces SlackGPT and a range of AI features

General and early-stage

  • Hugging Face releases a free code-generating AI model

  • The Boring Company to expand Vegas loop to 18+ stations

  • Hulu adds local PBS stations to its Live TV offering

  • Superhuman unveils a host of generative-AI features

  • Kagi launches an overhauled search experience

🔍 Other good finds

  • Irish secrets. How Stripe builds a culture of excellence

  • 2nd coming. ETH transaction fees spike due to shitcoin hype

  • First place. Samsung surpasses Apple in smartphone shipments

🧈 Twitter nugget

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- Amol