Companies are transforming routine customer interactions into effortless experiences using AI-powered agents. Instead of endless phone transfers, users now get instant answers or bookings through Agentforce-powered systems.
The focus is not on selling more products, but on improving satisfaction with existing services.
Travel platform Engine is already seeing results. Its Agentforce assistant, Eva, can process partial booking cancellations in seconds by combining customer data with internal booking tools.
By narrowing Eva’s focus to a handful of topics, Engine improved both response speed and customer satisfaction by six points. The result is less frustration, reduced hold times, and smoother travel management.
Retailer Williams Sonoma, Inc. is also personalising customer interactions through its virtual assistant, Olive. Beyond processing returns, Olive provides menu suggestions, wine pairings, and meal preparation schedules to help customers host effortlessly.
The aim, according to Chief Technology and Digital Officer Sameer Hassan, is to deliver experiences that teach and inspire rather than promote sales.
Luxury fitness brand Equinox follows a similar path. Its AI assistant now helps members find and book classes directly, reducing clicks and improving usability. As EVP and CTO, Eswar Veluri said simplifying patterns is key to enhancing member experience through innovative tools.
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Cybercriminals are exploiting Australia’s national cybercrime reporting platform, ReportCyber, to trick people into handing over cryptocurrency. The AFP-led Joint Policing Cybercrime Coordination Centre (JPC3) warns scammers are posing as police and using stolen data to file fake reports.
In one recent case, a victim was contacted by someone posing as an AFP officer and informed that their details had been found in a data breach linked to cryptocurrency. The impersonator provided an official reference number, which appeared genuine when checked on the ReportCyber portal.
A second caller, pretending to be from a crypto platform, then urged the target to transfer funds to a so-called ‘Cold Storage’ account. The victim realised the deception and ended the call before losing money.
Detective Superintendent Marie Andersson said the scam’s sophistication lay in its false sense of legitimacy and urgency. Criminals verify personal data and act quickly to pressure victims, she explained. However, growing awareness within the community has helped authorities detect such scams sooner.
Authorities are reminding the public that legitimate officers will never request access to wallets, bank accounts, or seed phrases. Australians should remain cautious, verify unexpected calls, and report any suspicious activity through official channels.
The AFP reaffirmed that ReportCyber remains a safe platform for genuine reports and continues to be a vital tool in tracking and preventing cybercrime nationwide.
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In a recent analysis, Goldman Sachs warned that while AI is rapidly permeating the consumer market, enterprise integration is falling much further behind.
The report highlights consumer-facing tools, such as chatbots and generative creative applications, driving the usage surge, but finds that business uptake is still ‘well below where we expected’ a year or two ago.
Goldman’s analysts point out a striking disjunction: consumer adoption is high, yet corporations are slower to embed AI deeply into workflows. One analyst remarked that although nearly 88 % of companies report using AI in some capacity, only about a third have scaled it enterprise-wide and just 39 % see measurable financial impact.
Meanwhile, infrastructure spending on AI is exploding, with projections of 3-4 trillion US dollars by the end of the decade, raising concerns among investors about return on investment and whether the current frenzy resembles past tech bubbles.
For policy-makers, digital-economy strategists and technology governance watchers, this gap has important implications. Hype and hardware build-out may be outpacing deliverables in enterprise contexts.
The divide also underlines the need for more precise metrics around productivity, workforce adaptation and organisational readiness in our discussions around AI policy and digital diplomacy.
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A global insurance leader, Chubb, launched a new AI-driven embedded insurance optimisation engine within its Chubb Studio platform during the Singapore FinTech Festival. The announcement marks a significant step in enabling digital distribution partners to offer personalised insurance products more effectively.
The engine uses proprietary AI to analyse customer data, identify personas, recommend relevant insurance products (such as phone damage, travel insurance, hospital cash or life cover) at the point of sale, and deliver click-to-engage options for higher-value products.
Integration models range from Chubb-managed to partner-managed or hybrid, giving flexibility in how partners embed the solution.
From a digital-economy and policy perspective, this development highlights how insurance firms are leveraging AI to personalise customer journeys and integrate insurance seamlessly into consumer platforms and apps.
The shift raises essential questions about data utilisation, transparency of recommendation engines and how insurers strike the balance between innovation and consumer protection.
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In a move that underscores the evolving balance between capability and privacy in AI, Google today introduced Private AI Compute. This new cloud-based processing platform supports its most advanced models, such as those in the Gemini family, while maintaining what it describes as on-device-level data security.
The blog post explains that many emerging AI tasks now exceed the capabilities of on-device hardware alone. To solve this, Google built Private AI Compute to offload heavy computation to its cloud, powered by custom Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) and wrapped in a fortified enclave environment called Titanium Intelligence Enclaves (TIE).
The system uses remote attestation, encryption and IP-blinding relays to ensure user data remains private and inaccessible; ot even Google’s supposed to gain access.
Google identifies initial use-cases in its Pixel devices: features such as Magic Cue and Recorder will benefit from the extra compute, enabling more timely suggestions, multilingual summarisation and advanced context-aware assistance.
At the same time, the company says this platform ‘opens up a new set of possibilities for helpful AI experiences’ that go beyond what on-device AI alone can fully achieve.
This announcement is significant from both a digital policy and platform economy perspective. It illustrates how major technology firms are reconciling user privacy demands with the computational intensity of next-generation AI.
For organisations and governments focused on AI governance and digital diplomacy, the move raises questions about data sovereignty, transparency of remote enclaves and the true nature of ‘secure ‘cloud processing.
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A US federal judge has ruled that a landmark copyright case against OpenAI can proceed, rejecting the company’s attempt to dismiss claims brought by authors and the Authors Guild.
The authors argue that ChatGPT’s summaries of copyrighted works, including George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, unlawfully replicate the original tone, plot, and characters, raising concerns about AI-generated content infringing on creative rights.
The Publishers Association (PA) welcomed the ruling, warning that generative AI could ‘devastate the market’ for books and other creative works by producing infringing content at scale.
It urged the UK government to strengthen transparency rules to protect authors and publishers, stressing that AI systems capable of reproducing an author’s style could undermine the value of original creation.
The case follows a £1.5bn settlement against Anthropic earlier this year for using pirated books to train its models and comes amid growing scrutiny of AI firms.
In Britain, Stability AI recently avoided a copyright ruling after a claim by Getty Images was dismissed on grounds of jurisdiction. Still, the PA stated that the outcome highlighted urgent gaps in UK copyright law regarding AI training and output.
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The European Commission is preparing a Digital Package on simplification for 19 November. A leaked draft outlines instruments covering GDPR, ePrivacy, Data Act and AI Act reforms.
Plans include a single breach portal and a higher reporting threshold. Authorities would receive notifications within 96 hours, with standardised forms and narrower triggers. Controllers could reject or charge for data subject access requests used to pursue disputes.
Cookie rules would shift toward browser-level preference signals respected across services. Aggregated measurement and security uses would not require popups, while GDPR lawful bases expand. News publishers could receive limited exemptions recognising reliance on advertising revenues.
Drafting recognises legitimate interest for training AI models on personal data. Narrow allowances are provided for sensitive data during development, along with EU-wide data protection impact assessment templates. Critics warn proposals dilute safeguards and may soften the AI Act.
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Google introduced Private AI Compute, a cloud platform that combines the power of Gemini with on-device privacy. It delivers faster AI while ensuring that personal data remains private and inaccessible, even to Google. The system builds on Google’s privacy-enhancing innovations across AI experiences.
As AI becomes more anticipatory, Private AI Compute enables advanced reasoning that exceeds the limits of local devices. It runs on Google’s custom TPUs and Titanium Intelligence Enclaves, securely powering Gemini models in the cloud. The design keeps all user data isolated and encrypted.
Encrypted attestation links a user’s device to sealed processing environments, allowing only the user to access the data. Features like Magic Cue and Recorder on Pixel now perform smarter, multilingual actions privately. Google says this extends on-device protection principles into secure cloud operations.
The platform’s multi-layered safeguards follow Google’s Secure AI Framework and Privacy Principles. Private AI Compute enables enterprises and consumers to utilise Gemini models without exposing sensitive inputs. It reinforces Google’s vision for privacy-centric infrastructure in cloud-enabled AI.
By merging local and cloud intelligence, Google says Private AI Compute opens new paths for private, personalised AI. It will guide the next wave of Gemini capabilities while maintaining transparency and safety. The company positions it as a cornerstone of responsible AI innovation.
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Switzerland has formally joined Horizon Europe, the EU’s flagship research and innovation programme, together with Digital Europe and the Euratom Research and Training Programme.
An agreement, signed in Bern by Commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva and Federal Councillor Guy Parmelin, that grants Swiss researchers the same status as their EU counterparts.
They can now lead projects, receive EU funding, and access every thematic pillar, reinforcing cross-border collaboration in fields such as climate technology, digital transformation, and energy security.
The accord, effective from 1 January 2025, also enables Switzerland to become a member of Fusion for Energy in 2026, thereby integrating its researchers into ITER, the world’s largest fusion energy initiative.
Plans include Swiss participation in Erasmus+ from 2027 and in the EU4Health programme once a separate health agreement takes effect.
A development that forms part of a broader package designed to deepen EU–Swiss relations and modernise cooperation frameworks across science, technology, and education.
The European Commission reaffirmed its commitment to finalising ratification of all related agreements, ensuring long-term collaboration and strengthening Europe’s position as a global leader in innovation and research.
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Google Photos is introducing prompt-based edits, an ‘Ask’ button, and style templates across iOS and Android. In the US, iPhone users can describe edits by voice or text, with a redesigned editor for faster controls. The rollout builds on the August Pixel 10’s debut of prompt editing.
Personalised edits now recognise people from face groups, so you can issue multi-person requests, such as removing sunglasses or opening eyes. Find it under ‘Help me edit’, where changes apply to each named person. It’s designed for faster, more granular everyday fixes.
A new Ask button serves as a hub for AI requests, from questions about a photo to suggested edits and related moments. The interface surfaces chips that hint at actions users can take. The Ask experience is rolling out in the US on both iOS and Android.
Google is also adding AI templates that turn a single photo into set formats, such as retro portraits or comic-style panels. The company states that its Nano Banana model powers these creative styles and that templates will be available next week under the Create tab on Android in the US and India.
AI search in Google Photos, first launched in the US, is expanding to over 100 countries with support for 17 languages. Markets include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, India, Japan, Mexico, Singapore, and South Africa. Google says this brings natural-language photo search to a far greater number of users.
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