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In Brazil, the beauty juggernaut L’Oréal now makes an average of 25% of its online direct-to-consumer sales on WhatsApp.

From: How WhatsApp for business changed the world – Rest of World.

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WhatsApp is the world’s most widely used messaging app; the company says it has 2 billion daily users. These users send more than 100 billion messages every day in 60 languages across 180 countries. Some 400 million of those users are in India, WhatsApp’s biggest market, followed by another 120 million in Brazil.

From: How WhatsApp for business changed the world – Rest of World.

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AI is the future of payments. Our platform goes steps further than anybody else to make it possible to get your AI to pay for what it needs done by bringing humans in the loop.

From: Payman – AI That Pays Humans.

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Agentic AI represents a significant evolution in artificial intelligence, offering enhanced autonomy and decision-making capabilities beyond traditional AI systems. Unlike conventional AI, which requires human instructions, agentic AI can independently perform complex tasks, adapt to changing environments, and pursue goals with minimal human intervention.

From: How Agentic AI is Revolutionizing Customer Service | CustomerThink.

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Andy Haldane, chief executive of the Royal Society of Arts and former chief economist at the Bank of England,

Research has shown just how large and lasting are the costs of bowling alone. From sub-par growth to stalling social mobility, from the epidemic in loneliness to the crumbling of communities, the erosion of social capital goes a long way to explaining some of our greatest scourges.

From: Counting the cost of bowling alone.

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In the popular imagination, Warhammer is about as cool as trainspotting. But books about wizards who grew up in under-stairs cupboards and triumphed over the Dementors weren’t cool either — until they sold 500mn copies and spawned eight blockbuster films. By the same token, Games Workshop has plenty to teach the rest of corporate Britain.

From: Triumph of the orcs: why Britain needs more Games Workshops.

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More recent work at the Israeli Agricultural Research Organization (ARO) dairy farm exploits deep learning — more specifically Convolution Neural Networks (CNNs) and Transformers — has reached 98% face detectuon and a 96% accuracy in identifying cows.

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Cigna is using AI agents for handling insurance claims and basic inquiries. These AI agents are designed to help customers manage their health plans, file claims, and get real-time updates on coverage. The use of AI in this area is particularly sensitive due to the nature of the data involved, but Cigna has invested in creating a secure and compliant framework for its AI implementations.

From: The Rise of Agentic AI: How AI Agents Are Quietly Creeping Into Our Lives – The CDO TIMES.

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“A lot of creators were like, hey, there’s a need,” says Kunal Anand, the founder of a startup offering an AI OnlyFans chatting service called ChatPersona. “We built our own model with data we got from a lot of creators’ chats.”

Since launching last year, ChatPersona has around 6,000 customers, according to Anand, a mix of individuals and agencies.

From: OnlyFans Models Are Using AI Impersonators to Keep Up With Their DMs | WIRED.

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Of course, a single creator with thousands of ongoing DM conversations has only so many hours in a day. To manage the deluge of amorous messages, it’s become commonplace to outsource the conversations to “chatters” paid to sub in for the actual talent.

These chatters used to mainly be contractors from the Philippines, Pakistan, India, and other countries with substantially lower wage expectations than the US. But, increasingly, human chatters are getting replaced by AI-generated stand-ins.

From: OnlyFans Models Are Using AI Impersonators to Keep Up With Their DMs | WIRED.

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But with timing being everything, the final concrete block standing in the way of that RCS train might be Apple’s imminent iPhone update—iOS 18.2. Much to everyone’s surprise, the iMaker has decided to offer all its users—not just those in regulated Europe–the option to change their default apps. That means selecting an over-the-tops like WhatsApp or Signal for default calls and messages for the first time.

From: Google’s RCS Nightmare—Why You Need A New App.

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