The Pace Report: Vol 8

The Caribbean Island of Anguilla has become the unexpected site of a digital treasure trove due to its control over internet addresses ending in .AI. According to Bloomberg, the last year has seen the number of registrations for .AI domains double to 287,432 instances, with tech giants and artificial intelligence startups, including Elon Musk's X.ai and Character.ai, all angling to secure these domains.

The surge is reflective of the present global frenzy surrounding rapid developments in artificial intelligence. Anguilla, which collects $140 from marketplaces per .AI extension registered, stands to earn up to $30M in domain registration fees in 2023, an increase from $7.4M just two years ago. The country of 20,000 remains primarily reliant on tourism, though the new found windfall will come to represent over 10% of the nation’s $288M GDP per The United Nations.

Universal Music Group (UMG) and Deezer have introduced an innovative "artist-centric" royalty model for streaming services, designed to create a new content prioritization structure while compensating artists more fairly. This model, launched in response to concerns about the oversupply of low-quality, algorithmically driven content, seeks to boost payouts to professional artists by 10%. It employs a "double boost" to royalty payments for artists with over 1,000 monthly streams and at least 500 unique listeners. Additionally, tracks actively sought out by fans will receive a four-fold boost in royalty weight as noted by Music Business Worldwide.

The model also seeks to institute new quality controls in an effort to crack down on streaming fraud and eliminate "non-artist noise audio" content. The issue of noise content on streaming platforms is growing, with AI-generated noise contributing to royalties worth $900 million, or 5% of the total market. While this partnership with Deezer marks a symbolic shift, it may not significantly impact the industry's economics unless similar deals are struck with competing streaming platforms, especially Spotify, which currently holds a 30% market share.

Mr. Beast has teamed up with Shopify to offer a golden opportunity for one small business. With an average video viewership of 100 million, Mr. Beast's YouTube channel is a digital phenomenon. And now, he's opening up one of his coveted video ad slots to the startup world.

Back in late 2022, Mr. Beast and Shopify joined forces to launch his official merchandise store, drawing in a staggering 7 million visitors within the first month alone. Fast forward to today, and Shopify has taken their partnership to new heights by acquiring one of Mr. Beast's available ad slots for an extraordinary contest.

Launching the MrBeast × Shopify Merchant Feature Contest, Shopify is generously giving away this ad slot for free to one fortunate business that uses their platform. Thousands of participating startups pitched Mr. Beast on LinkedIn to share how they would make the most of a one-minute ad slot in one of his viral videos. Considering Mr. Beast’s individual video viewership rivals that of the Super Bowl, the pending winner is sure to see an unmatched spike in demand as a result of their efforts.

Newspaper giant Gannett has halted its use of an artificial intelligence tool, LedeAI, for crafting high school sports articles due to a series of major errors in published pieces.

Some reports went viral on social media for their repetitive and awkward content, prompting ridicule. For instance, one report began with, "The Worthington Christian [[WINNING_TEAM_MASCOT]] defeated the Westerville North [[LOSING_TEAM_MASCOT]] 2-1 in an Ohio boys soccer game on Saturday." Another high school athletics article stated that a scoreboard was “in hibernation in the fourth quarter.”

Gannett outlets including the Columbus Dispatch, Louisville Courier Journal, AZ Central, Florida Today, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel all published similar stories generated by LedeAI. Gannett expressed its commitment to refining its AI tools for journalistic standards, while LedeAI CEO Jay Allred acknowledged the need for improvements in the automated content. The debacle highlights that while developments in AI have been impressive, the technology may not necessarily be ready for prime time when it comes to professional content creation.