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Leveling the Payments Tech Landscape for Small Businesses with GenAI

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Leveling the Payments Tech Landscape for Small Businesses with GenAI

Following its introduction, artificial intelligence (AI) has been increasingly prevalent in the financial services industry, assisting with millions of consumer requests annually and automating back-office tasks.

According to Tim Christensen, senior vice president of product, digital, innovation, and AI at Synchrony, “but many of those traditional AI and machine learning tools were largely constrained to the teams that understood them and knew how to implement them,” PYMNTS reported.

The most recent installment of the “What’s Next in Payments” series, which focuses on the development and prospects of artificial intelligence in banking, payments, and commerce, includes Christensen’s remarks.

According to Christensen, the relatively new technology known as generative AI has democratized artificial intelligence and made it accessible to banks and companies of all sizes and in all industries.

“Everyone understands how it can be used and can imagine different ways it can change their job and their products,” he said.

He stated that whenever it is used, generative AI has been crucial in bringing about essentially new capabilities like context awareness and prediction.

Using a Calculated Approach

Additionally, it incorporates “non-deterministic technology, for the first time, into these businesses,” according to him. This implies that ten distinct answers or ideas could result from posing the same question or working on the same topic. He claimed that because of generative AI’s versatility and wide variety of applications, designers and users must approach the creation and application of the models in different ways.

“You can’t just build an experience with AI, put it in front of a customer, and slap a disclaimer on it that says, ‘AI results may be inaccurate’ and think that’s good enough,” said Christensen. For companies such as Synchrony, a judicious approach to risk management and considering new use cases thoroughly is critical.

While many financial institutions already use chatbots, Christensen stated that “going even further… with cardholder data, customer data, or going deeper into a person’s financial products gets a lot riskier” when asked how the legal landscape could change in the future by PYMNTS.

Over time, regulatory frameworks will be built. Over the past few months, Synchrony’s internal AI governance team has been given even greater authority over the company’s AI initiatives.

In the interim, generative AI, according to him, can enhance back office coding and produce content that empowers agents in their customer interactions. This is all while upholding the significance of the “human in the loop,” which facilitates smoother operations as compliance, regulatory, innovative, and technological efforts come together.

Christensen stated, “If we can make thousands of engineers a bit more efficient, well, that has a great return on investment,” giving a nod to the size of Synchrony’s business.

Speaking to customers directly, Christensen stated that Synchrony has been experimenting with ways to use AI to enhance commerce and the ways in which customers look for, find, and check out the goods and services they require from the bank’s thousands of merchant partners.

“The shopping journey is constantly evolving as technology evolves,” Christensen said. Elsewhere, the company, with trillions of data points tied to its consumers on hand, “can experiment with and change the experiences in ways that are positive for the customers and are delightful from a commerce perspective.” Generative AI, he said, can help “connect the dots” and “fill in the blanks” as consumers shop.

Furthermore, Christensen predicted that “this technology will be transformative” in the coming months and years. It will alter the experiences of both consumers and employees because new technology rarely transforms our daily lives in such a profound way.

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Threads uses a more sophisticated search to compete with Bluesky

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Instagram Threads, a rival to Meta’s X, will have an enhanced search experience, the firm said Monday. The app, which is based on Instagram’s social graph and provides a Meta-run substitute for Elon Musk’s X, is introducing a new feature that lets users search for certain posts by date ranges and user profiles.

Compared to X’s advanced search, which now allows users to refine queries by language, keywords, exact phrases, excluded terms, hashtags, and more, this is less thorough. However, it does make it simpler for users of Threads to find particular messages. Additionally, it will make Threads’ search more comparable to Bluesky’s, which also lets users use sophisticated queries to restrict searches by user profiles, date ranges, and other criteria. However, not all of the filtering options are yet visible in the Bluesky app’s user interface.

In order to counter the danger posed by social networking startup Bluesky, which has quickly gained traction as another X competitor, Meta has started launching new features in quick succession in recent days. Bluesky had more than 9 million users in September, but in the weeks after the U.S. elections, users left X due to Elon Musk’s political views and other policy changes, including plans to alter the way blocks operate and let AI companies train on X user data. According to Bluesky, there are currently around 24 million users.

Meta’s Threads introduced new features to counter Bluesky’s potential, such as an improved algorithm, a design modification that makes switching between feeds easier, and the option for users to select their own default feed. Additionally, it was observed creating Starter Packs, its own version of Bluesky’s user-curated recommendation lists.

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Apple’s own 5G modem-equipped iPhone SE 4 is “confirmed” to launch in March

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Tom O’Malley, an analyst at Barclays, recently visited Asia with his colleagues to speak with suppliers and makers of electronics. The analysts said they had “confirmed” that a fourth-generation iPhone SE with an Apple-designed 5G modem is scheduled to launch near the end of the first quarter next year in a research note they released this week that outlines the main conclusions from the trip. That timeline implies that the next iPhone SE will be unveiled in March, similar to when the present model was unveiled in 2022, in keeping with earlier rumors.

The rumored features of the fourth-generation iPhone SE include a 6.1-inch OLED display, Face ID, a newer A-series chip, a USB-C port, a single 48-megapixel rear camera, 8GB of RAM to enable Apple Intelligence support, and the previously mentioned Apple-designed 5G modem. The SE is anticipated to have a similar design to the base iPhone 14.

Since 2018, Apple is said to have been developing its own 5G modem for iPhones, a move that will let it lessen and eventually do away with its reliance on Qualcomm. With Qualcomm’s 5G modem supply arrangement for iPhone launches extended through 2026 earlier this year, Apple still has plenty of time to finish switching to its own modem. In addition to the fourth-generation iPhone SE, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo earlier stated that the so-called “iPhone 17 Air” would come with a 5G modem that was created by Apple.

Whether Apple’s initial 5G modem would offer any advantages to consumers over Qualcomm’s modems, such quicker speeds, is uncertain.

Qualcomm was sued by Apple in 2017 for anticompetitive behavior and $1 billion in unpaid royalties. In 2019, Apple purchased the majority of Intel’s smartphone modem business after the two firms reached a settlement in the dispute. Apple was able to support its development by acquiring a portfolio of patents relating to cellular technology. It appears that we will eventually be able to enjoy the results of our effort in four more months.

On March 8, 2022, Apple made the announcement of the third-generation iPhone SE online. With antiquated features like a Touch ID button, a Lightning port, and large bezels surrounding the screen, the handset resembles the iPhone 8. The iPhone SE presently retails for $429 in the United States, but the new model may see a price increase of at least a little.

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Google is said to be discontinuing the Pixel Tablet 2 and may be leaving the market once more

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Google terminated the development of the Pixel Tablet 3 yesterday, according to Android Headlines, even before a second-generation model was announced. The second-generation Pixel Tablet has actually been canceled, according to the report. This means that the gadget that was released last year will likely be a one-off, and Google is abandoning the tablet market for the second time in just over five years.

If accurate, the report indicates that Google has determined that it is not worth investing more money in a follow-up because of the dismal sales of the Pixel Tablet. Rumors of a keyboard accessory and more functionality for the now-defunct project surfaced as recently as last week.

It’s important to keep in mind that Google’s Nest subsidiary may abandon its plans for large-screen products in favor of developing technologies like the Nest Hub and Hub Max rather than standalone tablets.

Google has always had difficulty making a significant impact in the tablet market and creating a competitor that can match Apple’s iPad in terms of sales and general performance, not helped in the least by its inconsistent approach. Even though the hardware was good, it never really fought back after getting off to a promising start with the Nexus 7 eons ago. Another problem that has hampered Google’s efforts is that Android significantly trails iPadOS in terms of the quantity of third-party apps that are tablet-optimized.

After the Pixel Slate received tremendously unfavorable reviews, the firm first declared that it was finished producing tablets in 2019. Two tablets that were still in development at the time were discarded.

By 2022, however, Google had altered its mind and declared that a tablet was being developed by its Pixel hardware team. The $499 Pixel Tablet was the final version of the gadget, which came with a speaker dock that the tablet could magnetically connect to. (Google would subsequently charge $399 for the tablet alone.)

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