EIW is the new identity conference you need to be tracking, and Apple is playing the long game on digital trust
Plus: From the Digital Bank to the AI Bank, when will a data breach of 560M customer records finally be considered outrageous, and is it time for The People’s AI?
Hi everyone 👋
Thanks for coming back to Customer Futures. Each week I unpack the disruptive shifts around Empowerment Tech. Digital wallets, Personal AI and digital customer relationships.
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It’s been a blowout couple of weeks for those watching the ‘Empowerment Tech’ market. Notably, the EIC conference in Berlin, and Apple’s announcements about AI.
Zoom out and you can see that Digital ID and AI are on a collision course. But you can also see how they will come together beautifully.
Trusted data sources for model training. Portable digital ID for smart agents. And Verified Personal AI.
It’s about moving and proving data in a smart new way. About empowering the individual. And about the future of being a digital customer.
So welcome back to the Customer Futures newsletter.
In this week’s edition:
EIW is the new identity conference you need to be tracking
When will a data breach of 560M customer records finally be considered outrageous?
Is it time for The People’s AI?
United is rolling out targeted in-flight ads
Apple is playing the long game on digital trust
… plus other links about the future of digital customers you don’t want to miss
Let’s Go.
EIW is the new identity conference you need to be tracking
I spent last week at the European Identity and Cloud (EIC) Conference in Berlin. I gave a couple of different talks and joined Ping’s panel about wallets in government and banking.
It was a brilliant few days. And an exhausting few days (in a good way). But one thing stood out: the arrival of digital wallets.
In fact, given the breadth and depth of discussion around reusable digital identity, verifiable credentials and digital wallets, we might as well now rename the event EIW.
The European Identity and Wallet Conference.
Here are the main things I took away, and that you should be thinking about.
1. Wallets and creds are now mainstream in the identity community
It’s not just the latest market noise around ‘decentralised identity’. It’s the fact that it’s now a mainstream discussion within businesses and their identity teams.
Certainly a flip from the conference circuit in 2016, when we first introduced the ideas around Self Sovereign Identity. When it was largely ignored.
But ‘Decentralised ID’ now stands as a first-class citizen on stage. And even makes a comfortable bedfellow with businesses and governments, many of whom are now champions of the digital wallet approach.
At EIC this year we heard stories full of promise. To reduce fraud and improve security. To transform digital interactions with users and citizens. Even to ‘operationalise GDPR’.
It’s only been a 2mm shift in the story. But the perspective on digital wallets has now changed.
From sovereignty to value. From privacy to security. From customer control to portability.
Same approach, but a different point of view. And it’s made all the difference.
Yes, there are gaps. Yes, there are unanswered questions about the first use cases and the commercial model. About UI, trust registries and much more.
But when Kuppinger Cole not only puts digital wallets and credentials on the bill, but makes them the centrepiece of the EIC conference - indeed the main keynote - you know we’ve reached an inflection point in the market.
Certainly for the identity experts in the room, and the businesses they work with.
2. Many brands are now readying themselves for decentralised identity
From the corridor conversations at EIC, we learned that many large businesses are now not only aware of decentralised ID but are actively experimenting.
Some are already running live pilots, and a few are charging towards production. They are on the move.
Some are doing it quietly. While a few are making it part of their go-to-market strategies. But I’m hearing about projects right across a range of sectors. From travel and supply chains to banking and government. From retailers and loyalty programs to healthcare and insurance.
Yes, EU regulators are leading the charge. Intending to deploy digital wallets to 300M citizens over the next couple of years. But I’ve also now heard about projects that have similar scale plans (100M+) in the private sector. And they are not in the EU.
The scale adoption of digital wallets and credentials may be closer than we think.
3. eIDAS2 is not yet inevitable
We must remember that eIDAS2 is a policy objective. Not a technical, or market certainty.
At the EIC event, I was reminded by a bunch of influential and connected people, from both the private and public sectors, that we still have a long way to go.
While the EU Digital Wallet is now baked into EU regulations, it’s far from clear how (and how well) it will be implemented in each country.
Which is why we should be watching what’s going on in Germany. Their government department for ‘disruptive innovation’ has invited different wallet providers to join a wallet programme called FUNKE (‘Spark’).
It’s a competition to “Develop the most trustworthy, user-friendly, and universally applicable European Digital Identity Wallet for users in Germany”.
What a clever approach. To use a publicly funded competition to explore different technical implementation options e.g. cloud wallet vs. device. Different ways to secure the data, and so on.
The results will be public and will be fascinating. Especially because Google and Samsung have been selected as part of the wallet cohort, along with some smaller, dedicated EU Digital Wallet providers like Lissi.
I’m only half joking about re-naming ‘EIC’. The big ideas around ‘cloud’ mattered 17 years ago, when the EIC event was being born.
But if last week showed us anything, it’s that the next 17 years are going to be very different.
They’ll be about digital wallets and citizen-centric digital experiences.
And they’ll certainly be about Empowerment Tech.
JAMIE’S TALK (form 18m30s), FUNKE COMPETITION
When will a data breach of 560M customer records finally be considered outrageous?
Both Ticketmaster and Santander got hacked recently. And badly. Ticketmaster alone breached hundreds of millions of files.
More precisely… 560. Million. Customer. Records.
Holy wow that’s a lot of personal data. Yet somehow we now feel numb to it. Just another breach.
A group called ShinyHunters has claimed responsibility. But just look at the details. Names, credit card numbers, emails, home addresses and phone numbers.
Too many of the web2 platforms are in a bad way with customer data. Where most have already conceded that their data hack is a ‘when’ not an ‘if’.
But Ticketmaster is on a different scale. And we need to wake up.
We urgently need a new way to prove who we are to businesses. And businesses need a new way to collect the minimum data necessary, and a smarter way to store and manage that data overall.
A data breach of over 500M records is simply outrageous. When will we call time on this outdated and dangerous approach to collecting and handling customer information?
Much of the answer, of course, is Empowerment Tech. For the individual to be in control of their data, so that the businesses collect only what they need, then delete what’s not required by regulation.
But that’s going to take time.
And certainly for the 560M people whose data records are now spilled all over the digital floor.
Is it time for The People’s AI?
Doc Searls on fire, as usual:
“People need their own AIs. Personally and collectively.
“We won’t get them from Anthropic, Apple, Google, OpenAI, Meta, or Microsoft. Not even from Apple. All those companies will want to provide AIaaS: AI as a Service, rather than AI that’s yours alone. Or ours, collectively.
“The People’s AI can only come from people. Since it will be made of code, it will come from open-source developers working for all of us, and not just for their employers—even if those employers are companies listed above.
“That’s how we got Linux, Apache, MySQL, Python, and countless other open-source code bases on which the digital world is now built from the ground up. Our common ground is open-source code, standards, and protocols.
“The sum of business that happens atop that common ground is incalculably vast. It also owes to what we first started calling because effects twenty years ago at Bloggercon. That was when people were making a lot more money because of blogging than with blogging.”
This last sentence matters. Doc calls them ‘because effects’. You make money because of something, not with something.
It’s true for personal data. You make money because of personal data, not with it. The market for raw personal data is tiny. The market because of personal data is vast.
And it will turn out to be the same for Personal AI.
It’s what we will do with Personal AI that will have the most impact. Because we have it.
Doc continues:
“Thanks to because effects, the most leveraged investments anyone can make today will be in developing open source code for The People’s AI.”
I like that a lot.
An AI that’s on the customer side, not a central platform building an ever-larger LLM. Even if they say it’s ‘open’.
United is rolling out targeted in-flight ads
While Google slowly removes 3rd party cookies, every woman and her dog is now building their own ‘Media Network’.
Collect some ‘1st party data’, build a bunch of marketing profiles, tweak the T&Cs, and voila! You can open up a new advertising revenue stream.
Retailers are busy building ‘Retail Media Networks’. So it was only a matter of time before the large airline and hotel brands created their own ‘Travel Media Networks’.
United just announced precisely that:
“United’s Kinective Media will use customer demographic information that includes their city of residence, flight information and general age group to create “anonymized audience segments”
“We’ve built a first-of-its-kind, real-time, ad tech-enabled traveler media network where brands have already started connecting to premium audiences at an unmatched scale”
Will these ads be any more ‘relevant’ or ‘engaging’? Will they be more valuable, less creepy or safer?
You can understand why large businesses with razor-thin margins (especially airlines and retailers) are hunting down new ways to stay afloat.
But this really is scraping the barrel when it comes to ‘customer engagement’.
There needs to be a better way to connect with customers. To understand their context and meet their needs. Not continue to ‘spray and pray’ because the business knows 0.22% more about the customer.
And especially not when that data is “you look like someone who flies more frequently to New York than other people on this flight.”
Apple is playing the long game on digital trust
As predicted by everyone, ‘Apple Intelligence’ stormed the show at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday 10th June.
A few weeks ago I wrote about how and why Apple is on a clear path to become one of the world’s most powerful (and important) Empowerment Tech companies.
A combination of:
Their existing and massive iCloud business (personal vault)
Their existing and massive Apple Wallet business (digital wallet)
A new on-device, AI-powered Siri (personal AI)
We heard about the very clever tech to carefully manage what’s on the device vs. what’s shared in a private cloud for processing. Also an integration with ChatGPT-4o.
But it was the integration with Sam Altman’s Open AI platform that received the most attention. The most heat.
Especially by those throwing FUD about Apple selling-out on privacy.
But it was a wall of privacy experts that pointed out that Apple’s AI privacy design is actually pretty sophisticated. Where only the minimum data is shared, and OpenAI must never use it for training.
And just in case anyone was worried about dark patterns, Apple has put the user in complete control. All interactions with OpenAI include a clear consent flow: ‘Are you sure you want to send your data to the big bad wolf in the sky?’
But it gets more interesting when you put an Empowerment Tech hat on. Because Siri can now Do Stuff.
With “onscreen awareness”, Apple Intelligence can carry out tasks on the device that would normally take a few taps.
This isn’t just GenerativeAI, this is training for personal tasks. They have developed a ‘Large Action Model’.
Here are some examples called out by the Neuron newsletter:
“You can have Siri pull up a photo of your driver’s license, snag the number automatically, and paste it into a form
“Snap a photo of whatever’s on your screen and send it off to a friend
“If a buddy texts you their new address, just say, “Add this address to their contact card,” and Siri will take care of the rest
But something else important happened. About Apple’s positioning and message.
In a recent post, I said this:
“Apple is known for its marketing campaigns around privacy. On-device data. Masked email addresses. The ‘What Goes On iPhone Stays On iPhone' ads.
“…you can bet that whatever they announce will supported by an expensive marketing campaign around privacy and digital trust. And most of all, you can bet that it will ‘just work’.”
The Apple Intelligence announcement was on Monday 10th June. And so guess what I saw at a London train station on Tuesday 11th:
They placed Apple ads at every advertising spot across the whole station. Certainly most of those I could see.
That’s a big splash.
But the posters didn’t say Apple Intelligence. They didn’t say AI. Or even push the new whizzy features for Apple Watch that were announced.
They pushed privacy.
To position Apple as a private, personal company working for you.
And just look at the refreshed Apple web page on AI.
Here are the top 3 messages, in order:
“AI for the rest of us”
“Built into your iPhone, iPad, and Mac to help you write, express yourself, and get things done effortlessly”
“Draws on your personal context while setting a brand-new standard for privacy in AI.”
This is a masterclass in brand positioning. A hierarchy of brand needs to match the hierarchy of consumer needs.
Not about the WHAT (the feature), but about the WHY (value) and HOW (approach):
“This is a tool for you, the people” (subtext: AI isn’t just for the massive businesses using it to replace your job)
“This is personal, effortless, and already built in to the tools you use” (subtext: we’ll meet you where you already are, not force you to do new digital gymnastics with complicated UIs)
“Apple is private and respects your boundaries” (subtext: trust us with your data because we’re setting the highest bar in the market on privacy)
It’s very early days for Apple in the AI game. It’s frankly very early days for the AI game full stop.
But who will win? Which brand will be able to dominate?
The one that has access to the most data. OpenAI just did a deal with Vox and The Atlantic. Why? To access even more training data.
But with these campaigns, Apple is attempting to do a deal with the public.
To unlock the vast troves of personal data that are about to be collected and stored on Apple devices. By and for customers themselves.
Tim Cook positioned Apple Intelligence as the perfect marriage between a) being able to understand personal context, while also b) offering completely new levels of privacy.
This stuff matters. Especially in the same week that Microsoft was forced to pull its ‘Recall’ feature from the market. The creepy PC app that would ‘remember’ everything you did on your screen.
Apple is very clearly playing the long game. The trust game.
And very soon, the Empowerment Tech game.
APPLE INTELLIGENCE, MSFT RECALL
OTHER THINGS
There are far too many interesting and important Customer Futures things to include this week.
So here are some more links to chew on:
Post: Automakers “Take your privacy. Seriously." READ
Article: PKI is For Machines and Not Humans (Prof Bill Buchanan) READ
News: Proposed American Privacy Rights Act clears US House subcommittee READ
Article: From the Digital Bank to the AI Bank READ
Post: Here’s how to stop Meta from using all your personal images, videos and posts to train its AI READ
Article: When Will We Run Out of Human Data to Train AI? READ
And that’s a wrap. Stay tuned for more Customer Futures soon, both here and over at LinkedIn.
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