May 17, 2024
Update IV: MVP coming up!
Let Google do the Googling…
While OpenAI launched its GPT4o last week, which is stronger, better (and above all free) in understanding commands for text, images and video, Google unveiled its plans during I/O to no longer forward people to external sources/websites to get answers to questions. From now on, it will let AI do this and give people direct answers: “Let Google do the Googling”.
The impact on content providers is expected to be significant, and estimates about serious loss of traffic are buzzing around. It is a new confirmation that AI will connect directly with real people. Read Bill Gates’ prediction from last November again, about the impact of personal assistants: ‘AI is about to completely change how people use computers’ (gatesnotes.com).
Fascinating development, but according to Platformer.news also a reason to take action: “But to everyone who depended even a little bit on web search to discover your business, or read your blog post, or their journalism funded; the arrival of AI search ushers ill for the future. Google will now do the Googling for you, and everyone who benefits from humans doing the Googling will very soon need to come up with a Plan B.”
In the era of personal AI assistants, the battle will be around access to content and -user data. When Google says “Let us do the Googling”, we say “Let us give you control over your own personal data!”
Pay or Okay or Jouw.id?
Regardless of developments in the near future, there is plenty going on in the Dutch media sector at the moment. The newly formed government raises VAT on media combined with a 100M cost cutting exercise on public broadcasting. While there already were enough challenges with the privacy authorities announcement to enforce the implementation of cookie walls. Top that with the additional challenge by a recent opinion of the European umbrella organization of privacy supervisors EDPB on pay or okay: The EDPB’s opinion is nuanced, but it roughly boils down to the fact that there should in principle always be a free alternative for users that do not accept behavioral targeting based on the processing of personal data. The alternative is to process less- or no personal data. All in all, the regulators want a choice to be presented to website visitors: pay, okay or a privacy-safe alternative!
The latter is exactly what we are working on with jouw.id: an SSO with datapod based on the Solid protocol. 1st person data, owned & controlled by the user him/herself. With transparency and trust between people and brands as a basis, instead of endless blurry cookie lists.
Read Martijn van Dam ’s blog (in Dutch) about the EDPB’s opinion: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/edpb-pay-okay-martijn-van-dam-cbyde/
