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Emerging tech trends like AI, VR, and web3 are disrupting the fashion world at breakneck speeds.

Once a week, the Metaproof team will break down the top stories, feature expert Q&A’s, and serve up the hottest links tracking tech’s impact on the fashion industry.

✨ Top Picks

The Future, today. In just 3 minutes.

1/ Google is giving its dominant search engine an artificial-intelligence makeover (Link)

Google has revealed plans to fortify its search engine with more advanced AI tech, three months after Microsoft’s Bing search engine began to tap into tech similar to that powering the ChatGPT.

Why this matters: Its search engine serves as Google’s crown jewel, counted on to deliver reliable results while generative AI has been massively criticized for authoritative-sounding information that might turn out to be false or fabricated.

Some AI-related developments on Google products:

• It’s testing its own conversational chatbot Bard, powered by the same tech fueling ChatGPT and only available to people accepted from a waitlist.

• Google’s Gmail will come with a “Help Me Write” option, which will produce lengthy replies to emails in seconds, as well as a tool for photos, dubbed Magic Editor, that will automatically doctor pictures.

2/ Roblox users surge 22% to new peak despite fading metaverse hype (Link)

While its losses are sharper than expected, gaming giant Roblox has seen over $655M in quarterly revenue as well as an all-time high in its daily active users.

Closing in on its quarterly earnings report:

• Roblox sees $655.3M in quarterly revenue, up 22% YoY, and 66.1M in daily users, compared to 54.1M just over a year ago.

• Total hours spent in the game rises 23% YoY, while there’s a 23% climb in “bookings” or purchases of Roblox’s in-game virtual currency Robux.

• Roblox stock is up over 7% to nearly $39 on the day of the announcement.

The online multiplayer game platform, however, still reports a net loss of $268.3M, with Reuters attributing the losses to “developer exchange fees, personnel costs, and infrastructure.”

This “momentum” in the business, according to Roblox, demonstrates the success of its creator community, continuing to attract a growing global user base spanning all ages.

3/ EA thinks games industry will be a ‘great beneficiary’ of AI (Link)

At the company’s recent Q4 earnings call, Electronic Arts (EA) CEO Andrew Wilson is quick to tackle fears around AI, saying the gaming industry will likely be "one of the greatest beneficiaries of AI" and that technology could "augment [EA’s] incredible teams."

While acknowledging worries around AI replacing existing roles, Wilson made no assurance that no worker will be made redundant because of the technology. The EA chief even claims that the workforce’s short-term displacement has even led to "meaningful increases in workforce opportunities."

Recently, EA dismissed 6% of its workforce amid logging a $1.3B quarterly profit in January this year. This comes as more tech companies and orgs across industries make widespread layoffs as AI becomes more widely adopted.

4/ AI to create ‘a serious number of losers,’ DeepMind co-founder warns (Link)

Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind, says that AI will threaten white-collar workers and create "a serious number of losers" over the next decade.

Recent research from Goldman Sachs predicts that advancements in generative AI could potentially expose as many as 300M jobs to automation, causing "significant disruption" to the labor force.

Suleyman suggests that governments explore ways to aid those whose jobs may be lost, such as a universal basic income:

“That needs material compensation ... This is a political and economic measure we have to start talking about in a serious way.”

In contrast to the concerns surrounding white-collar professions, Gary Marcus, a professor from NYU, argues that blue collar jobs are here to stay due to the difficulty of constructing robots capable of handling real-world tasks.

🏃‍♂️ Quick Hits

🎮 Gaming

• Warner Music Singapore produces a customized song featuring bilingual artist J.M3 for web3 firm Affyn’s new game. (Link)

• Croatia-based web3 gaming platform AI GameToEarn announcing reaching oversubscription in its whitelisting. (Link)

• Peer-to-peer trading game Crypto Battles collaborates with esports company Mazer Gaming for a new interactive platform for players and traders. (Link)

• Game maker Amber joins Layer 1 blockchain LAMINA1’s Early Access Program for open metaverse gaming. (Link)

• Bitnile.com and Ed Carpenter Racing unveil first ever metaverse gaming livery for the 2023 Indianapolis 500. (Link)

🕶 Fashion

• Fast fashion giant Zara unveils its virtual fashion collection Fairy Magic Idols on Zepeto. (Link)

• Digital garments firm CLO Virtual Fashion and Epic Games purchase shares in each other to push their digital fashion agenda. (Link)

• As funding dries up, where are investors and incubators in fashion tech putting their money behind? (Link)

• From models to designs to runway shows, how fashion takes the next big leap through looking at AI-tinted glasses. (Link)

• When you strip away the social buzz behind the tie-up, is RTFKT and Nike’s ambitious metaverse roadmap really worth the hype? (Link)

🏀 Sports

• Warner Bros Sports is set to launch a security token portfolio featuring digital collectibles related to its iconic sport disciplines. (Link)

• A Brazil chess tournament rewards winners with NFTs. (Link)

• How does social media impact the NBA and fan engagement? (Link)

• NIKELAND, sports giant Nike’s metaverse debut, hosts roughly 7M members from approximately 223 countries. (Link)

• As the competition for sports streaming rights heats up, which companies are still warming up? (Link)

🎥 Media & Entertainment

• Rosario Dawson and Tony Revolori are set to star in Gala’s web3 animated series. (Link)

• The Voice’s free metaverse experience lets fans compete in virtual music battles. (Link)

• Barbie and Boss Beauties make a joint bid to bring more women into web3. (Link)

• Austria becomes the latest country to ban TikTok from government phones. (Link)

• K-pop boy group Treasure is the first artist on entertainment NFT platform AVA. (Link)

🖼 Art

• Milady Maker NFTs surges in value following Elon Musk's tweet of an Ethereum NFT PFP meme. (Link)

• Members of Looty, a collective formed to reclaim looted art, take 3D scans of the Rosetta stone to digitally liberate it into the metaverse. (Link)

• Maxim Zhestkov’s mind-bending VR art museum functions like a video game. (Link)

• British-born, LA-based artist Anthony James partners with Gallery of Digital Assets (GODA) to craft NFTs via sacred geometries. (Link)

• Evening Standard’s one-off Coronation NFT breaks records. (Link)

🤖 AI

• Google Chrome upgrades Web AI intelligence. (Link)

• Wendy’s tests an AI chatbot that takes drive-thru orders. (Link)

• Generative AI features are coming to Android. (Link)

• Google makes its text-to-music AI public. (Link)

• This 23-year-old Snapchat star can be your AI girlfriend - for a price. (Link)

• Google teases Project Tailwind, a prototype AI notebook capable of learning from user documents. (Link)

💸 Funding & Partnerships

• Animoca Brands teams up with Saudi Arabian gaming platform stc play to publish video games in the MENA region. (Link)

• The Sandbox taps Hex Trust for secure virtual land custody. (Link)

• Polygon and Inspect partner to drive increased blockchain and NFTadoption. (Link)

• Venom Foundation and the Kenyan government strike a deal to launch web3 and blockchain hub in Africa. (Link)

• IntouchCX and Modulate team up to offer live voice chat moderation tools for gaming brand partners. (Link)

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All content on this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not aim to serve as or replace expert investment advice.

📈 If you are a startup building in the metaverse / web3 ecosystem and are raising capital, please reach out to Sfermion. Sfermion is an investment firm focused on accelerating the emergence of the metaverse 📈

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