The World’s Most Powerful Personal AI, 35M LinkedIn User Records Leaked, and Individual Empowerment on a Scale We’ve Never Seen Before
The World’s Most Powerful Personal AI, 35M LinkedIn User Records Leaked, and Individual Empowerment on a Scale We’ve Never Seen Before
Plus: How to serve consumers who rely on tech but don’t trust it, Why run ads when humans are sleeping, and Oz Government warns banks on gouging digital identity
Hi everyone, thanks for coming back to Customer Futures. Each week I unpack the disruptive shifts around digital wallets, Personal AI and digital customer relationships.
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Hi folks, welcome back to this week’s newsletter.
First up, a quick grumble: Most people are wrong about identity.
Almost all of my interactions with other people and businesses aren't about who I am.
They are about what I'm entitled to do. Or about when or where I'm able to do it. Or just checking that I'm the same thing returning as last time.
None of that is about my first name, last name, age or postal code.
So let's stop with the ‘identity’ nonsense.
Yes, for some regulated use cases (border crossing, some parts of financial services, tax) it matters.
But most use cases - including the regulated ones - fall into the what-when-where checks. Not the who checks.
It’s time to develop new ways to check things online. Simpler ways. More efficient ways.
And more private ways.
Where you don’t need to know it’s me. Just that it’s trusted.
Welcome back to the future of being a digital customer. And welcome back to the Customer Futures newsletter.
In this week’s edition
The world’s most powerful Personal AI
United Airlines Weighs Using Passenger Data to Sell Targeted Ads
Lloyds Bank launches in-app passport scanning feature
Did your ads run overnight when humans are sleeping?
Oz Government warns banks about gouging out digital identity
Meta lets Amazon shoppers buy products on Facebook and Instagram without leaving the apps
How to serve consumers who rely on tech, but don’t trust tech
Individual Empowerment and Agency on a Scale We’ve Never Seen Before
… plus other links about the future of digital customers you don’t want to miss
Let’s Go.
The world’s most powerful Personal AI
I can see very few companies on the planet right now that are building genuine Personal AI.
Privacy. Security. Respect. Safety.
A personal digital tool on my side, trained on my data.
Yet a gazillion companies are talking about ‘personal assistants’. About ‘digital agents’.
How many (any?) are actually developing tools for private AI? I can only name a couple of leading platforms, and that’s ‘pi’ and ‘Kin’.
Who else am I missing?
Does this mean that privacy won’t be a differentiator?
The makers of ‘ pi’, Inflection.ai (is it weird to call them pi makers?), believe that LLM performance is the important thing right now.
So much so that they recently paid $1Bn to Google to access one of the world’s most powerful and largest LLMs.
The result? More speed. More data. More smarts.
Inflection’s latest upgrade to pi looks fascinating. At least in terms of capability.
“Our mission at Inflection is to create a personal AI for everyone. Just a few months ago, we announced Inflection-1 — a best-in-class language model that currently powers Pi. Our new model, Inflection-2, is substantially more capable than Inflection-1, demonstrating much improved factual knowledge, better stylistic control, and dramatically improved reasoning.”
They have published a technical-ish post, mainly for AI nerds, that explores how pi now compares with the other public LLMs out there today.
Worth a read if you want to know how powerful these things have become.
Meanwhile, I'm still betting that privacy - and digital intimacy - will become a hugely important part of the market. Check out KIN for an example of what I mean.
Because it's not just about WHAT these personal AIs can do.
It's also about HOW.
Now ask yourself
Where will the competitive edge be in Personal AI? Training models? Power of the LLMs? Access to personal data? Or perhaps digital trust?
Which brands will be able to meet the high bar for customer trust?
What will it take for individuals to share their most personal data - finance, health, relationships - with personal AIs like pi and kin?
United Airlines Weighs Using Passenger Data to Sell Targeted Ads
United Airlines has released a snippet of its data strategy. To use customer profiles for personalised ads.
Is this (one hopes) just a PR test balloon, to see how the market reacts? (narrator: badly).
Or does it feel like an attempt to squeeze the final drops of juice out of a database of broken customer information?
From the Wall Street Journal:
“United Airlines is considering using its passenger information to help brands serve targeted ads to its customers, joining a growing number of companies trying to tap their troves of user data for advertising purposes.
“Some of these targeted ads could appear on its in-flight entertainment system or on the app that people use to book tickets and check-in, people familiar with the matter said.
“United hasn’t made a decision yet and may choose not to launch a targeted-advertising business, some of the people said.
Not great. Here’s my favourite, and most telling part:
“United executives are carefully considering how to launch personalized ads in an effort not to annoy their passengers or alarm them with overly specific messages, some of the people said.
“United would give customers the ability to opt out of having their data used for personalized ads in accordance with privacy laws, they said.”
3rd party cookies are on their way out. Advertisers continue to hunt for new ways to ‘engage’ customers.
As a result, ‘Retail Media Networks’ (RMNs) are now stepping in, ‘owning’ vast numbers of ‘customer touchpoints’, against which they can serve ‘opt-out’ ads.
RMNs are becoming all the rage. Walmart, Uber, Instacart and Home Depot are all taking a swing at using customer data to offer personalised ad space.
And why not? United flew 148M passengers last year. So it packs some punch in terms of volume.
But here’s why not:
It’s just more guesswork. More spray-and-pray from advertisers. Another day, another digital channel to hit and hope.
When digital conversion limps along at barely 3% - and from Google no less, the best-performing ads platform - where does United think this ends up?
What’s actually needed are new digital customer tools like digital wallets.
Wallets will not only become new intelligent channels for customer engagement. They will also serve as a way to share verified customer data directly from customers themselves.
Perhaps - dare we say - even a new channel for digital ads?
My only hope is that United’s clumsy attempt at advertising is its own test flight for an idea that should stay in the lab.
Bonus: Doc Searls’ soaring retort. The punchline is a doozy:
“Unless United customers stand up and say NO to this, as firmly and directly as possible, the way to bet is that you’ll start seeing personalized ads for all kinds of stuff on your seat back screens, your United app, and in other places to which data about you has been sold or sent by United, one way or another, to and through who knows.
“…Because that’s how great real-world brands are now enshittifying themselves into the same old fecosystem we’ve had online for decades now.
“Hey, it’s happened to TVs and cars. (And hell, journalism.) Why not to airlines too?”
Lloyds Bank launches in-app passport scanning feature
This is, from what I can see, an excellent first approximation of a digital wallet inside a banking app.
And the first credential inside? A digital government passport.
One assumes it’s powered by Yoti, into whom Lloyds just pumped £10M.
“The new high-tech feature speeds up the process of applying for a bank account by pre-populating key data fields including name, title, date of birth, gender, and country of birth. As well as a slicker experience for customers, it also reduces the risk of errors which can cause delays.
“Officials from Lloyds bank said that unlocking technology is key in making it easier to bank with them. Using existing technology within passports, customers can open and complete their bank account application on their phone.
“It's the first of many updates they are making to their banking app to give customers an augmented experience.”
Lloyds are one to watch, not least because of their investment in, and partnership with, Yoti.
But also because of the digital ID ecosystem they seem to be building in the UK, alongside the Post Office (who are, of course, also now powered by Yoti).
What else will Lloyds put into their new, shiny digital wallet? And how will bank customers react?
Now ask yourself
What if your existing company app had a digital wallet inside? Could you do the same, and include some identity credentials? What might that enable in the customer experience?
Could the same digital wallet then enable a range of other use cases - from instant onboarding to other digital products, through to reuse of that data at another company - and unlock new revenues?
Did your ads run overnight when humans are sleeping?
Fou Analytics is on fire at the moment.
What happens when we know that digital ads are known to be wasted, but it’s not exactly fraud? And who’s counting?
Not much happens. And no one’s counting. That’s who.
Here’s an extract from Fou’s latest (very detailed and credible) research into the vast wasteland that is digital ads.
Bold mine:
“Humans can't see your ads when they are sleeping, right? Then why are you showing ads in the overnight hours when humans are sleeping?
“Oh, you weren't aware? I know you weren't aware because the Excel reports you get at the end of the month don't show you this, ahem, waste.
“The verification vendors' reports also don't have these details, because this is not a form of fraud. It's just waste from bad campaign set up.
“Why didn't your agency tell you this? Because you never asked. Why didn't the agency know about this and help you reduce the ads wasted overnight? Because they didn't have the right analytics to see this easily.
“The chart above shows nearly the same volume of ads running every hour of every day…. []… They are the same height every hour of every day.”
Digital advertising isn’t working. We know that.
Why? Because it’s being delivered entirely from the business side, alone.
What if individuals could control the ads they see - as active participants, not just passive subjects?
Might some of this “waste” be avoided?
Meanwhile, some recently released court documents show that Google is paying Apple 36% of all ad revenues when ads are displayed on Apple’s Safari Browser.
SorryWhatPardon?
It turns out that Apple has such a dominant footprint, and arguably the most-valuable audience, that Google will give up over a third of its largest revenue stream to access it.
The ads ecosystem is so badly broken, it needs a reset.
Assume for a moment that digital wallets will achieve a decently large consumer footprint.
Perhaps as large as Safari in the browser market (by some estimates, around 20% globally).
What if ads could be displayed against anonymous profiles in those wallets (exposing characteristics, not personal data)?
As ad conversion improves, might advertisers split their revenues with the wallet providers? And does this open up an interesting commercial model for both consumers and wallet providers?
Now ask yourself
Are your digital ad campaigns being smart about to whom - and when - your ads are being shown?
How might a digital wallet disrupt your digital ads strategy?
FOU ON WASTE, GOOGLE ADS IN COURT
Oz Government warns banks about gouging out digital identity
In case you missed it, worth checking out the most excellent interjection on digital ID from a minister in the Australian Government.
All about watching our backs as banks enter the digital identity market.
“I think generally banks are overcharging. Let’s be honest. Good on Westpac if you’re a shareholder — they made a $7.6 billion profit. But this is the time of inflation and mortgage rises,” Shorten said when asked if banks should be allowed to charge for digital identity transactions.
“Once upon a time, I think, a lot of private sector companies saw data as an asset. Now I think increasingly they see it as a liability. And there’s a lot of smaller businesses and small organisations who don’t have the resources to secure all that personal data,” Shorten said.
“So I think that rather than just looking at how banks can monetise storing people’s identification, I think we’re better off having a live consideration … it has to be the government itself being the trusted holder of information, rather than just every shop in Australia keeping your data.”
Now ask yourself
If banks step in to provide digital ID in different markets, what will the commercial model be? Who benefits and why? Should digital identity become part of our digital public infrastructure?
Is there a risk of banks creating a new monopoly of digital ID signals for the market? Could portable digital wallets motivate those risks? What if other companies - perhaps telcos, airlines, utilities - can provide identity signals too, and compete away the banks’ margins on ID?
Meta lets Amazon shoppers buy products on Facebook and Instagram without leaving the apps
Facebook and Instagram users can now link their accounts with Amazon.
It means that customers can now much more easily buy things that are promoted in their social media feeds. It allows them to check out and pay using their Amazon accounts without having to change apps.
Ooof. Talk about vertical integration.
“For the first time, customers will be able to shop Amazon’s Facebook and Instagram ads and check out with Amazon without leaving the social media apps,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement.
“Customers in the U.S. will see real-time pricing, Prime eligibility, delivery estimates, and product details on select Amazon product ads in Facebook and Instagram as part of the new experience.”
Now ask yourself
What if this same experience was made possible more broadly, in shopping experiences, and everywhere? When you visit any website, app or store, you can select a product and check out there and then, using your portable digital wallet? Payment + ID + entitlements in one tap?
Could digital credentials and payment information become easily sharable, regardless of which wallet provider you used? Just like ‘tap to pay’ works in-store, regardless of which card providers you use?
And here’s the kicker - what if that same digital wallet became a new customer touchpoint for the brand you are buying from? Separate to the marketplace/ platform you were just on? So the digital customer relationship becomes portable too…?
How to serve consumers who rely on tech, but don’t trust tech
EY making complete sense on why, and how brands must work towards becoming digitally trustworthy:
“It’s crucial that digital innovation protects and nurtures the relationship with the consumer. Three things matter here: trust, respect and value.
“Can people trust you to use technology responsibly and safely? Do they feel you are using technology to help them, or to take advantage of them? Is the value they get from an innovation fair, considering how much your business benefits?
Get the balance between these three factors wrong and you can quickly do damage that can’t easily be repaired. Get it right and you can strengthen your relationship with consumers now, while securing permission to develop and deepen that relationship in the future, as new technologies become mainstream.”
Remarkably, the piece barely mentions digital identity (consumer stats around ID theft), and misses digital wallets completely.
Yet the main impacts of being trustworthy - on business model, value exchange and respectful use of personal data - are clear.
Their conclusion sums it up nicely:
“Trust is about giving value for money, keeping data safe, behaving in line with corporate values that the consumer shares, taking an ethical approach and being authentic among many other critical issues.
“If you become part of the consumer’s inner circle of trusted brands, you can benefit from a much deeper and wider relationship with them. But at a time when trust in companies is eroding, relationships like this are hard to build and easy to break.
“With new channels proliferating, consumer-facing companies are in near constant contact with consumers, so they have lots of opportunities to get this right, and as many to get it wrong.”
Yup.
Individual Empowerment and Agency on a Scale We’ve Never Seen Before
Sam Altman is back. Well, he did a 360.
For those paying close attention, you might have heard him say something rather important in his recent Dev Day pitch.
“We believe that AI will be about individual empowerment and agency on a scale we’ve never seen before”
Well now.
That’s quite Customer Futures-ish, no?
Doc Searls agrees. And has written up another landmark blog, fizzing with ideas for Personal AI.
Much of which he has been cooking on since the release of the Cluetrain Manifesto in 1999. (Just Google it if you don’t know it. Worth your time).
Here’s some of what’s on Doc’s Personal AI wishlist:
“Health. Make sense of all my health data. Suck it in from every medical care provider I’ve ever had, and help me make decisions based on it. Also help me share it on an as-needed basis with my current providers.
“Finances. Pull in and help me make sense of my holdings, obligations, recurring payments, incomes, whatever. Match my orders and shipments from Amazon and other retailers with the cryptic entries (always in ALL CAPS) on my credit card bills. I want to run every receipt I collect through a scanner that does OCR for my AI, which will know what receipt is for what, where it goes in the books it helps me keep, and yearly helps me work through my taxes. The list can go on.
“Property. What have I got? I want to point my phone camera at everything that a good AI can possibly recognize, and make sense of all that too. Know all the books on my shelves by reading their spines. Know my furniture, the stuff in my yard. Help me keep records of my car’s history after I give it the VIN number I photographed under the windshield, and run all the records I’ve kept in the glove box through the same scanner I mentioned above. Whatever. Why not?
“Correspondence. I have half a million emails here, going back to 1995. (Wish it went back farther.) Lots of texts too, in lots of systems. Help me do a better job of looking back though those than my various clients do. Help me cross-reference those with events I attended and other stuff I may be relevant to some current inquiry.
“Contacts. Who do I have in my various directories? How many entries are wrong in one way or another? Go through and correct them, AI helper, based on whatever clever new algorithm works for that.
“Calendar. Tell me where I was on a given day, what I was doing, and who I was with. Knowing all that other personal data (above) will help too.
“Business relationships. Look into all my subscriptions and help me fight the fuckery behind nearly all of them. Make better sense of all the loyalty programs I’m involved with, and help me unfuck those too, since most of them are about entrapment rather than real loyalty.
“Travel. I have 1.6 million miles with United Airlines alone. Where did I go? When? Why ? What did I pay? Are there ways to improve my relationships with airlines and other entities (e.g. car rental agencies, Uber/Lyft, AirBnB, cruise lines)?
“Our lives are packed with too much data for our mere human minds alone to fully comprehend and put to use. AI is perfect for that. So bring it on.”
Bring it on indeed.
Now ask yourself
If we assume we can load all our personal data into a ChatGPT-style Personal AI, how does the AI know it’s my data?
What if I add someone else’s personal information - by accident or deliberately - to skew the model? What if I don’t have permission to do that? How does the AI know it’s me training it?
When my Personal AI makes recommendations, how can it act on my behalf? How will businesses know it’s me and my AI… and how will I know it’s the business?
<cough> digital wallets <cough>
DOC’S WISHLIST, ALTMAN’S DEV DAY
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:
The Benefits of SSI READ
US, UK and a dozen more countries unveil pact to make AI ‘secure by design’ READ
How a Privacy AI Chatbot can help organisations with data protection and privacy WATCH
People Should Decide What They See On Social Media - Not Big Tech's Toxic Algorithms READ
Meta's latest privacy rip-off will test the EU's mettle for reining in Big Tech READ
Can crypto Privacy Pools help balance privacy and regulation? READ
Data from 35M LinkedIn Users Freely Shared on Hacking Forum READ
AWS brings Amazon One palm-scanning authentication to the enterprise READ
And that’s a wrap. Stay tuned for more Customer Futures soon, both here and over at LinkedIn.
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