A library of snippets
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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.
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For the sellers of goods, successfully operating in this agentic shopping future will require implementation of new technology, new capabilities and new infrastructure. Just as the emergence of the ecommerce and mobile shopping eras were daunting for sellers, the agentic shopping era will be similarly disruptive – likely establishing brand new winners and losers, elevating some who are on the front-end of these changes while demoting others who lag behind
From: The Dawn of the Agentic Commerce Era – Putting Gen AI to Work for Shoppers | Bain Capital Ventures.
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“The CFPB is now backpedaling, realizing that 1033 will make Google and other tech titans more powerful — another not well-thought-through unintended consequence of the CFPB’s earlier actions — making the bureau even more vulnerable to the new administration’s mandates for curbing its power,” says Crone.
From: Will Bankerly Supervision Come to Big Tech’s Digital Wallets?.
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U.S. companies and marketplaces pay their foreign workers or vendors in cash sent to their virtual U.S. bank accounts, where the startups then convert the funds into stablecoins. Airtm uses this process for payouts made to sellers from Amazon and to hosts from Airbnb, as well as for money sent through PayPal, according to the company.
From: Stablecoin Startups Seek Fresh Cash Amid Crypto Payments Frenzy — The Information.
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With its purchase of MoneyLion, Gen aims to extend its identity solutions to offer “comprehensive financial wellness”, leveraging MoneyLion’s personal finance platform which features money management and credit-building services.
From: Cybersecurity specialist Gen Digital acquires MoneyLion in $1bn deal – FinTech Futures: Fintech news.
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In 2022, just 20 percent of in-person GP card payments were contactless, using either a card or a mobile device (14 percent by value), as illustrated in the charts below.
The other 80 percent were mostly inserted chip card payments (68 percent of the total) and some remaining no-chip payments (around 12 percent).
From: Contactless Pay: Still Not the Norm – Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
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But I guess when you’re a humanities graduate, like most of the Lobby presumably are,8 and most of your job involves understanding human relationships and status games, it of course makes questions about institutional design and corporate strategy harder to grasp. The same goes for questions about epidemiological data, or indeed the technical points of digital identity systems.
From: (2) We need more than Westminster reporters to understand government.
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