In this edition, covering 23 to 29 October:
- Google will bring ads in AI Mode to international markets and expand multi turn ads in the US.
- From 1 January 2027, California's AB 1609 requires large businesses to connect customers with a person within 15 minutes or schedule a callback.
- Pennsylvania's new law requires advertisers to disclose AI generated or modified images, video and audio that mislead consumers.
Advertising
Google will bring ads in its AI Mode search experience to international markets and expand multi turn ads in the United States. It announced this as Alphabet reported third quarter revenue of $127.6 billion, with Search advertising growth slowing to 12%. AI Mode ads
Australian founded Cuttable updated its AI creative production platform, which connects ad generation, performance data and campaign briefs, and said Airtree Ventures led its A$20 million Series A. It says 40% of its revenue now comes from the US after a year there. Cuttable
A Muck Rack and Generative Pulse study of more than 40 million AI responses and 207 million citations found that earned and third party sources made up more than 84% of citations in answers from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, while paid and advertorial content made up 0.3%. Journalism's share fell to 22%. AI citations
Google's privacy policy, in effect since 16 October, says Search may use data users let it access from Gmail, Drive and Google Photos to personalize content, including ads; Google says it does not use that content for ads unless users make it available to services that support personalized ads. Google privacy policy
Google opened a beta Connected Apps Platform for US developers, so businesses can build apps that work inside Gemini and Google Search; Canva, YouTube Music and Calm are among the first. Connected Apps
Alphabet lost a record of more than $500 billion in market value as its shares fell more than 13% after search and YouTube ad sales missed forecasts; it said AI Mode queries bring in less advertising revenue, the Financial Post reports. Alphabet
New rules
California's AB 1609 takes effect on 1 January 2027. Businesses with more than $500 million in annual revenue must connect customers with a person within 15 minutes or schedule a callback within one business day. Salesforce, Zendesk and Genesys are adding human handoff options to their AI service products, and New York City has proposed similar chatbot rules. California handoffs
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro signed the Artificial Intelligence Deceptive Advertising Act. Advertisers must disclose AI generated or modified images, video and audio that create a false impression of goods or services. It takes effect on 21 December 2026 and can be enforced by the attorney general and district attorneys. Pennsylvania
Selling and shopping
OLX Group launched Agentic Selling, live for 20% of private sellers on Otodom in Poland, and is scaling DealFinder, a WhatsApp buying assistant, after a 2,000 user beta in Portugal. It says it now runs 14 agentic solutions across its marketplaces. OLX
Fanatics worked with OpenAI to build Shop the Look, which recommends coordinated, in stock team merchandise on product pages. It says views of recommended items rose 10% after the rollout. Fanatics
HPE chose ServiceNow under a five year agreement for the support services of its Cloud and AI business, using ServiceNow tools for case management, customer service, field service and AI governance. HPE and ServiceNow
Freshworks acquired Israeli startup Robusta Dev and will add its AI outage investigation, root cause analysis and fix recommendations to its Freshservice IT service platform; terms were not disclosed. Freshworks
Rime launched Prism, a speech to speech model for customer calls that businesses can fine tune for vocabulary, pronunciation, latency and safety rules. Rime says that in a trial with Revmo, correct order confirmations and pickup methods rose from 68% to 100% and calls without dead air from 66% to 88%. Rime Prism
Apple Creator Studio adds AI assistants to Logic Pro, Keynote, Pages and Numbers, new image editing in Pixelmator Pro and workflow automation through MCP, as a free update in November. Apple Creator Studio
Coveo acquired Anglera, adding its AI product data enrichment to Coveo Commerce to improve product discovery on ecommerce sites and in AI shopping assistants; terms were not disclosed. Coveo
