Another year goes by, and the tech sector has served up a smorgasbord of innovation, controversy, and everything in between.
From grappling with deepfakes so real they fooled stock markets to the continued development of photographer-first technologies, we’ve seen it all.
Here are our top standout stories and most interesting developments that could impact a number of sectors next year.
Tech for Good
Starting with Leica’s M11-P camera, a groundbreaking piece of tech that has the honor of being the world’s first cameras to be equipped with Content Credentials technology as standard.
On the horizon, the upcoming Sony A9 III model will also feature this, and the company disclosed plans to extend the same support to select older models, namely the Sony A1 and A7S III, through a firmware update.
Elsewhere, Nikon showcased a preview of its Z9 camera with integrated Content Credentials during this year’s Adobe MAX event.
With an increasing number of fake images being released into the digital ecosystem each year, seeing hardware providers supporting tools that increase transparency and provenance for online content is highly encouraging.
This could be a game-changer for both copyright protection and online trust as it empowers the original creator(s) and makes it harder to spread misinformation.
Speaking of big movements, we couldn’t help but applaud Andy Parsons, Senior Director at the Content Authenticity Initiative, on putting UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Elon Musk on the spot about the growing need to distinguish and label AI-generated media online.
Adobe just won a business project from Elon by asking an interesting question on Cryptographically Signed Media. pic.twitter.com/WPxDnFAesE
— MindfulRipple-Jack (@bakisjack) November 3, 2023
Lastly, from an advertising standpoint, a recent study released by the UK’s Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), in collaboration with MTM, found that trust in digital advertising among UK SMEs has increased by almost 50% since 2020.
This bodes well for the future of online content and should improve general knowledge of digital best practices.
Tech for Bad
Tech giants such as Meta and Google have been under fire this year, with a number of allegations of abusing their dominance and misleading consumers with dishonest advertising practices.
Stories of this sort have started to develop into a recurring theme, which points towards a growing demand for accountability in the digital landscape.
Meta was fined by the French competition regulator for abusing its dominance in online advertising, highlighting concerns about big tech monopolies.
Learn more about what the €390m fine could mean for big tech
Google, meanwhile, was accused of violating its own advertising policies by ad performance optimization platform Adalytics. Adalytics stated the company’s subsidiary YouTube ran ads that were misleading for both brands and consumers.
Meanwhile, an in-depth study by news rating system NewsGuard found that brands were wasting huge amounts of money on programmatic advertising as their creatives were being placed on low-quality, AI-generated websites. This is all while the US government is taking Google to court in a historic lawsuit.
In any case, to fight against the rising tide of such websites and to avoid wasting valuable ad spend, brands might want to consider establishing direct relationships with media publishers and ensure real due diligence across their entire advertising operations.
As scrutiny intensifies, we hope to see a shift towards a more transparent and responsible tech ecosystem.
Challenges Ahead
It’s been a momentous year for artificial intelligence, and 2024 will no doubt welcome plenty of further developments.
However, with it comes a new force to be reckoned with – the weaponization of AI to change opinions and manipulate reality, which has become clear to see.
From a well-crafted image of the Pentagon pouring out black smoke, which caused a temporary market crash before it was debunked, to more recently with the Israel-Palestine conflict, where a series of deepfakes were shared throughout social media, seemingly to incite hatred and violence.
These are no longer isolated incidents. More than ever, we need tech organizations to commit to helping curb fake news and propaganda.
Honesty is integral to all forms of online content, even something more trivial like the below image of Jurgen Klopp. This all highlights the need for more education about AI and how it can be used for harm.
This is mad. I saw that picture of Klopp shushing Jason Tindall all over the timeline and @LewVisualss had altered it and even put his watermark behind it as proof.
It’s even made it onto the front of the Telegraph’s Sport section. https://t.co/mp6K2Uqcd2 pic.twitter.com/sF4YMVMD9G
— HLTCO (@HLTCO) August 28, 2023
Lastly – and something that’s been brewing for a while, and which will have a massive impact for advertising strategies and online user experience – Google is finally set to remove support for third-party cookies in its Chrome browser.
What does this mean? Not only will you stop receiving the kinds of invasive ads many of us are now used to, but brands will have to get more creative and focus more on contextual relevance and quality.
This should also encourage advertisers to talk directly to consumers and develop more valuable relationships with them, instead of relying on third-party cookies to track every movement.
We’ll have our predictions for 2024 ready for you in the new year. Until then, have a wonderful Christmas!
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