Rob Shilkin

CMOs - are you calculating your Share of Voice (SOV) correctly / accurately? CEOs - are you aware that SOV figures can be misleading? 🛑 If you’re trying to gain a true reflection 📊 of your place among competitors, check out Si14 Global Communications' **new report** for a deep dive on SOV, plus tons of tips on securing media coverage and building your brand. Download a copy here: https://lnkd.in/dG6MUuqs Learn from our analysis of six high-growth cybersecurity startups – and come away with key lessons to apply to your company.

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One of the key tenets of responsible AI is accountability, and a key component of ensuring accountability is to evaluate AI deployments for potential risks and harms. Disinformation is generally something that AI alignment and risk mitigation processes should be addressing before we get to this point. #responsibleai #rai #ai #artificialintelligence #grok #musk https://lnkd.in/dm_Pajuy

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🎉 Last week, I had one of my most successful LI posts. 💡 90% of my posts are PR tips different from those you see regularly or are the same but written differently (you can find most under #chasetake here: https://lnkd.in/grpP8x9E). 🗑️ The other 10% are throwaway takes, usually riffing on a trend. The post with the stats below poked fun at the hot topic of what should or should not be on LI. The takeaway? Providing value with your feed is great, but have fun, too! #PR #PublicRelations #Communications

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#USvGoogle Day 3 kicked off with Xoogler, Brad Bender, who worked on both buy and sell-sides during his tenure - a nice build from yesterday where Google's conflicts of interest were in focus. For clarity, most of the juicy stuff below was in the docs he was asked to speak to that he had knowledge of - not attributed to him. In an email from just after the acquisition, containing former Doubleclick CEO David Rosenblatt's Google Display strategy, Rosenblatt talks about how "the most efficient way to access that inventory is by owning the primary ad server," the value of which is to "allow you to have a first look at each impression." He says that the great part about it is that "there's a huge switching cost" - great for Google which was "ahead intellectually" but having trouble building its own. It takes "an act of God" to get publishers to switch, because it's a "nightmere." A reference to how Google is both "Goldman and the NYSE" is made, and DOJ suggests that Google was intending to do with display what it did with search, pointing to an excerpt about how this would result in controlling or managing probably 90% of display inventory. "We'll be able to crush the other networks, and that's the goal," Rosenblatt said. A lot of talk about spoliation issues and "Communicate with Care" instruction. Bender hadn't turn the delete chat history default off after litigation hold (granted, he left a month after receiving instruction.) Judge Brinkema is clearly still not amused by the evidence deletion games. An email about how DV360 was giving a huge chunk of revenue to publishers using Header Bidding, and how this "seems pretty broken" - with Google's Payam saying that the problem with HB is that HB exists. No mention of the alleged spam/fraud/inventory quality issues I tried to contain my eye-rolls about during Google's cross-examination of Bender. Exchange Bidding would "stem bleeding" and Google thought it was better to "cannibalize ourselves" than see others take share. Judge Brinkema continues to be an absolute boss. She asked re: AwBid, "If a marketer isn't interested in remarketing" whether bids stay only within the Google network. Bender says "yes." --- Full Day 3 update is up on our site: https://lnkd.in/e855ZSXf

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Comments from Perplexity AI’s CEO, noting that robots.txt is not a legal framework, and that Perplexity also relies on 3rd party crawlers for data access, will come as no surprise for publishers dealing with industrialised IP theft in the age of AI. https://lnkd.in/ehZi4wNT Robots.txt has at least 3 clear problems: It's voluntary - so no sanction for developers who ignore and scrape anyway. Essentially a parish notice asking billion dollar businesses not to nick the thing that's central to building and grounding their payday LLMs. No wonder many companies are ignoring requests.  The next government should mandate rules with significant penalties attached for crawlers who don’t comply with instructions from website owners. No transparency of crawlers - with no duty on web crawlers to identify themselves they can scrape and index IP anon.  So even with a web application firewall in place to block scrapers, as an IP owner you don't know who's scraping what or why tilll they dain to tell you.  We need a transparent register of first and third party crawlers used or utilised by any AI developer that wants to trade with UK businesses and consumers. Laundering of IP for commercial uses - Various copyright regimes around the world have well-meaning but flawed exceptions for text and data mining for non-commercial purposes.  These exceptions have created loopholes whereby academic institutions and non-profits scrape commercial IP for “non-commercial purposes”, only for these datasets to be repurposed by billion dollar businesses for commercial purposes, without a commercial licence.  The next government should narrow these exceptions, and put in place sanctions where non-commercial users of IP allow that data to be used for commercial purposes. There's lots of joined up thinking going on between different regulators on AI's impact on the UK economy and wider society.  The DRCF AI and digital hub is a good example of this collaboration in action.    But plans such as Peter Kyle + the The Labour Party's to create a Regulatory Innovation Office must also recognise the pivotal role of copyright in training and ground LLMs, and make sure that the Intellectual Property Office has a seat at that table.  There is no doubt that the IP created by companies within the UK’s world class knowledge economy is already being used to underpin AI technologies, at present largely without permission or reward.  Before technology companies get the chance to batter down the doors in Whitehall to integrate their AI into every aspect of the economy and the civil service, the next government needs to put in place a clear and transparent framework that supports a sustainable value exchange between the creators and commercial users of that high quality knowledge and information.

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As Kate Charlet argues today "the only way to harness AI’s potential in the long run is to build it responsibly." Today we are releasing our Policy Working Paper on Generative AI & Privacy. Please take a read and give us feedback Paper: https://lnkd.in/eHQ2PsSX Blog: https://lnkd.in/ey-XxjBw

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Earlier this week I had a chance to put my thinking cap on with a few very thoughtful people. We spent an hour delving into Edelman's 2024 Trust Barometer data for the Asia Pacific region. A few notable takeaways: -Asia Pacific has a sizeable regional tech advantage opportunity that has the potential to benefit all if well delivered.  -Expectations and needs of AI vary by market. In India and Indonesia AI is seen as a gateway to bettering education, while in South Korea AI is expected to boost the economy by enhancing productivity and innovation, and in Japan with the backdrop of an ageing population AI is seen to be enabling better access to health care.  -There’s good news for communicators, we have a willing and receptive audience who want to know more. Half of them are already coming to our company’s owned channels as a source of information. We spoke about these themes and much more besides. Thanks to Institute for Public Relations for hosting and to Margot Edelman Warren Fernandez Lynne Mulholland Andrew Wheatley for a great conversation https://lnkd.in/gYUfahFn

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Bickering in public does very little to build trust and confidence among key stakeholders. It is at best silly and at worst, undermines the credibility and brand reputation of all the companies involved. Business should be done in business —Delta Air Lines , CrowdStrike Microsoft — not with finger pointing through the media, particularly when the future likely involves litigation. Deets via Axios and Eleanor Hawkins. #leadership #brand #reputationmanagement #corporatecommunications #business #litigation #crisiscomms #PR Inspire PR Group https://lnkd.in/gwMKYcBY

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I'll always be a bit of an antitrust nerd. Having covered antitrust as a Bloomberg reporter during the Microsoft antitrust trial, it's fascinating to see how these turn-of-the-20th-century laws are being applied today. Ultimately the two biggest antitrust laws in this country -- Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act -- are intended to protect consumers from paying higher prices because of a company's anticompetitive behavior. But what happens when consumers aren't paying anything as they are with search? Interestingly European antitrust laws seek to protect both consumers and competition, which has always made them tougher on companies like Google, Apple and others. And the US now appears to be more aggressively pursuing a similar approach, recognizing that free on one end -- consumers -- can still represent anticompetitive because it thwarts rivals and raises prices for other customers such as advertisers. From a communications standpoint, much can be learned from what Microsoft did or didn't do from a communications standpoint. They had an enormous team and high-touch approach that led to sometimes ridiculous media scrums on the courthouse steps in DC. We liked their PR people but really resented the dissonance we were hearing from what we saw with our own eyes in court. That trial dominated news headlines for months on end with Tier 1 reporters in court every day. None of that happened with Google case. You barely heard about this 10-week trial. Have sensational trials of political figures taken precedence over the companies that are part of our every online experience? These cases being brought by the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission have the power to dramatically change our daily experience with all manner of devices as well as numerous industries interdependent on them. #antitrust #lawenforcement #bigtech #PR

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An area that is already profoundly impacted by AI is advertising and marketing. AI has made it easier than ever to create advertising and marketing material at scale. That was our lead story on #TimesTechies last Friday. Akhil got insights from a host of experts in the business: Robert Godinho, MD, Media.Monks India, Amaresh Godbole, CEO, Digital Technology Business, Publicis Groupe India, Nandita Sood, Founder & CEO, Kertus, Vasuta Agarwal, Chief Business Officer, InMobi, Chirag Shah, Founder & Business Head, Boch & Fernsh, Kanika Chhabra, Founder, V Spark Communications, Tamanna Gupta, Founder, Umanshi Marketing; Rajesh Radhakrishnan, co-founder & chief marketing officer for Vritti Solutions, Abhishek Tiwari, global business head for NetSetGo Media, Sreeram Reddy Vanga, CEO & co-founder of Kofluence.  Some said Gen AI is enabling creation of work that simply wasn’t possible before. It’s being used in ideation and copywriting, in creating visually compelling content with remarkable efficiency, for gathering insights. Finding a job that’s most suited to you can be so tiresome. For recruiters too, the flood of resumes is a nightmare – finding the right ones is like looking for a needle in a haystack. AI tools are now bringing dramatic changes here, and that was our discussion on a webinar we had in association with job search platform #Indeed. On the panel we had Ankit Bose, Head, Nasscom AI, Ganesh Raj Mohan Parimelazhagan Global Head – Operations and Platforms, Altimetrik, and Abhishek Dhasmana, senior product director, Indeed India. They said the new systems are able to understand candidates far better, and therefore are able to do job-matching much better. Abhishek said they are experimenting with a more natural language chatbot that guides the job seeker into telling who they are and what they're looking for, and then using AI to match requirements. Gen AI tools can summarise a candidate's resume into a simple, readable paragraph that highlights the unique things about him or her, and the areas they stand out in. This makes the recruiter’s job hugely simpler. Gen AI tools are also assisting job seekers refine their resumes, so that they have a better shot at representing themselves. Our picture feature is on Mansoor Rahimat Khan and Siddharth Bhardwaj’s Beatoven.ai, which is fusing music and generative AI, and opening up new possibilities for creating original, royalty-free compositions using only a text prompt.   Vaitheeswaran Balasubramanian writes that you can use some of the latest GPT tools to build your personal AI assistant. He says it’s simple, and the systems tend to learn more about you over time. So their responses too get better over time. It’s a much better experience than what you get with the Alexas and Siris. Ashwin Yardi, CEO for India at #Capgemini, writes on how AI will help mitigate climate-related risks.

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Fascinating IAM interview with Langbo IP head Lin Yang conducted before the news that the Chinese firm had potentially agreed a licensing deal with Apple broke yesterday. In the discussion with Olivia Sophie Rafferty, Yang talks about Langbo's development and about its realisation in 2016 that because cash was getting tight it needed to use its growing patent portfolio to raise additional income. This is where Sisvel came in, Yang explains: In 2016, after the company had accumulated a substantial volume of patents, it realised it was quickly running out of “pocket money”. Langbo had to pivot quickly to get some revenue and ensure it could keep growing sustainably. This, Yang says, would mean stepping into the realm of patent monetisation. The company’s first partner and sale was with Sisvel.  “Luckily Sisvel has profound knowledge in this industry and they are good enough to identify the quality of our patents,” Yang says. The revenue it received from that first deal was small-scale but it was enough to convince investors that Langbo’s patents were essential and of monetary value. “I had a list of over 100 investors and none of them believed this could work until we struck our deal with Sisvel,” he notes. Eight years later and Langbo has been described as China's InterDigital, spending big sums on R&D and producing world class innovation that world class companies cannot ignore. That's the difference Sisvel can make. It's why I love working at this company. The full article is here for IAM subscribers ...

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You shouldn't have to pay a lawyer $1,000 an hour to solve your legal problems. There should be free ways to have your rights explained to you when you sign a basic contract. That doesn't mean we don't need lawyers — but it does mean we should be using AI to fix the parts of our legal system that are failing us. See how my new boss Richard Robinson explains what we're building at Robin AI ⤵️

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Recently the PR mess originated by the series of outrageous remarks of a senior Baidu PR executive in Douyin aroused a tremendous backlash in Chinese social media. Her behaviors were unfathomable and generated many questions at first sight: Aren’t PR executives supposed to work behind the scene? How could she take the liberty to come to the centre stage instead? More importantly, the mandate of communication professionals is to help companies uphold their reputation. Why did she act in other way round?           Later there were news reports divulging that this female PR executive of Baidu has already established her own company in April. Its businesses are to sell FMCG, household appliances, telecommunications devices and garments online, i.e. via livestreaming selling. Logically people tend to think that she did this in order to grab Internet traffic for herself and her own company.         I could only say the entire incident is utterly lack of professional decency. It brings a dark day to the PR industry in China in which many stakeholders are being impacted. For instance, female PR professionals have been working very hard for decades to fight for respect and recognition they legitimately deserve. Such efforts are particularly important in the China market where female PR executives sometimes are being wrongly stereotyped with stained glasses. This Baidu PR lady has pushed her peers’ years of painstaking efforts backwards for miles and left them in tatters.             Baidu’s reputation also receives a big blow. But this incident begs a question: This senior PR leader has been with the company for quite a while and her idiosyncrasies are not formed in one day. This means the company should have known these for some time and decides not to do anything about it. What kind of signal in terms of the company’s corporate culture does this reflect?   Email: [email protected] WeChat: Edwinparadigm

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🔁 In-house legal teams leading implementation of #AI at their companies should start a continuous loop of feedback and dialogue as the company moves forward with new technology, in-house counsel executive Amy Yeung writes. ☂ Fostering this dialogue will prepare the team for the next generation of technology as well. ✔ "Feedback also can alert in-house counsel on evolving compliance and regulatory needs. For example, a gradual shift in using different data sets may now require greater privacy disclosures and corresponding data governance adjustments. And the vendor’s adjustments to the software may create new risks, requiring potential contractual changes," Yeung says.

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Lots of interesting observations about how hallucinations/confabulations can be reduced by certain architectures in this article, but here's what I'm wondering about this morning: Suppose the models do end up solving these problems through what is, in effect, a division of labor: Models are specialized to answer queries within a defined subdomain. Do we then develop new models that are good at integrating answers across subdomains into a full solution that represents the best answer across domains? Even if we do, it seems like it will have to be humans that are playing that role in the near term. +1 for those who are good at context recognition and integrating perspectives across different domains — specialists in generalization. https://lnkd.in/g5RMaEx6

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Had a fantastic time last week at the American Conference Institute's AI Law, Ethics, Safety & Compliance conference, hosted by the D.C. Bar! It's not everyday that you get to hear from such distinguished in-house counsel and technologists as: - Meng Jia Yang at OpenAI and Ani Gevorkian at Microsoft about how #AI developers are navigating the #EU #AIAct;   - Betsy Greytok at IBM and Zheng Yang at Amazon Web Services (AWS) about the safety, ethical, and compliance considerations of #GenerativeAI;  - Jackie Stanley at Pfizer about what #ResponsibleAI development looks like; - Corey Salsberg at Novartis about the ethics of training models on copyrighted content; and - Matthew Frederick at Boeing, Markus Hartmann, J.D., M.B.A. at Mister Car Wash and Julie Myers Wood at Guidepost Solutions about ensuring the protection and confidentiality of customer data in AI operations. Not to mention learning about #AIwashing, #AIgovernance frameworks, using AI for good and AI #cybersecurity with representatives from the Federal Trade Commission (Aaron Rieke), U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (Virginia Rosado Desilets), U.S. Department of Justice (Lisa Miller), EEOC (Ray Peeler), USCIS (Shane Barney), U.S. Department of Homeland Security (Chris Kraft), Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy (Alka Patel, JD, MBA) and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) (Elham Tabassi). It was also a pleasure to hear from Kai Zenner, the Head of Office and Digital Policy Adviser for MEP Axel Voss in the European Parliament, who is involved in the political negotiations on the AI Act, #AILiabilityDirective, #ePrivacy Directive and a potential #GDPR revision. Some takeaways for developers: - focus on transparency and explainability by design, instead of later needing to shoehorn a square peg (your product) into a round hole (laws and regulations); - ensure that all personnel involved have the right competency levels, and that they know the internal escalation channels for complex issues; and - there's no overstating the value of engaging in cross-stakeholder discussions on the #dataprivacy and #dataprotection aspects of customer data acquisition, storage and processing - don't stay siloed (shout out to the Jacquard product and engineering teams)! It was a pleasure to be surrounded by so many smart, thoughtful and friendly people -- looking forward to the next event!

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Freshfields just dropped its 2025 Data Law Trends report. Legal marketers should take note. US regulators are cracking down on “AI washing,” where companies overstate their AI capabilities. They’ve issued warnings and taken some enforcement actions in recent months. 𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝗨𝗞 𝗿𝗲𝗴𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝘀𝘂𝗶𝘁. While clear communication on AI positioning can provide a competitive advantage, legal marketers must be careful. Collaborate with your firm’s AI leader, AI steering committee, and board in managing your firm’s AI-related reputation. Plan external communications on AI and 𝗱𝗼 𝗻𝗼𝘁 over-egg your firm’s AI capabilities. Stay mindful of increasing scrutiny on exaggerated AI claims. --- 𝗪𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝗺? Join the Legal Marketing Master Newsletter: https://lnkd.in/eTUGmWqa Enjoy this? ♻️ Repost it to your network and follow Callum Hornigold for more. #lawfirmmarketing #lawfirmai #legalmarketing  

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Very informative summary

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