Neural Notes: How AI improves wine, design and maybe even death

Welcome to Neural Notes: a new weekly column where I condense the most important AI news of the week. A place where anyone interested in the intersection between AI and business can come to learn about what’s happening in the space, with explanation, contextualisation, and a sprinkle of my signature sass.

We’re experimenting: if you have any suggestions for what you’d like to see here, let me know!

Canva goes all in on AI

The big Aussie news of the week was Canva dropping its new AI suite — Magic Studio. After soft-launching it with a sprinkling of ‘magic’ tools earlier in the year, the company is now going all-in. And it doesn’t cost anything extra for Pro or Teams customers.

You can find my full story on the new tools here, but my favourite was the live language translation. It’s part of the Magic Switch tool, which allows you to turn one piece of content into another. For example, transforming a deck into a blog post or executive summary.

It also claims to allow almost instant language translation. I was curious about the accuracy, and co-founder and CEO Melanie Perkins not only answered in the middle of the briefing but did an impromptu demo with languages suggested by fellow journalists. You can read all about the results here.

Lastly, Canva released its new Shield product, which is all about security, privacy, and in the case of enterprise customers — indemnification.

Considering the spotlight on ethical AI right now, it was incredibly smart to release this alongside Magic Studio. I’ve got more on that for you as well.

Wine time

So much of the talk around AI is about how it can assist office-based workplaces, so it can be easy to forget the potential applications for more physical industries, like agriculture.

Treasury Wine Estates (TWE) recently released its 2023 sustainability report, revealing the success of some of the AI initiatives it has employed over the past couple of years.

“We used localised data generated by a product that an Australian startup developed to help accurately predict long-range weather forecasts, surpassing the generally available forecasts,” the report reads.

“This allowed us more time to plan and prepare for our operations between weather events. We employed artificial intelligence to determine yields and harvest dates to prevent excessive cropping in specific areas and manage network capacity.”

As we reported back in 2021, the startup in question was an agtech company, The Yield, following an $11 million funding round it received the previous year. Its platform allowed for autonomous crop spraying robots, as well as the use of sensors and analytics for predictions to help crop-based decision-making.

And so far it seems to be going well.

“We continued to focus on using technology to progress digital platforms and management of big data to deliver improved forecasting of vineyard production and changing weather patterns to protect our crops and improve overall operational efficiencies,” the report said,

“Our research focus on automation has been extended to evaluating smart irrigation solutions, use of autonomous vehicles and technical developments in implements to minimise weed spread and chemical use on vineyard floors.”

I for one am excited to see more AI applications out in the field (literally), especially when it comes to assisting in food production and mitigating climate risk.

AI and death

INFORM Australia, which utilises AI for business operations optimisation, is looking to enter the deathtech space.

Deathtech has risen in popularity over the last few years, particularly as people look for different — and more sustainable — alternatives to traditional burial and cremation practices. This has also become pertinent due to the world running out of space for burials.

Some alternatives we’ve seen crop up include bio urns that will turn you into a tree and the ability to turn ashes into memorabilia and jewellery. 

There’s also Australian startups such as Bare — which received $10 million in Series A in 2022 — that are also looking at end-of-life logistics, from funeral planning to estate management.

I chatted to INFORM Australia’s CEO, Dr Paul Flachskampf, about this earlier in the week. With an abundance of experience in using AI for planning and logistics, he sees a big opportunity in the death space to make admin easier for bereaved people.

“I learned from one company here in Sydney that it has 120 vehicles transporting dead bodies,” Dr Flachskampf said on a call.

He said AI can help with efficiency here, as well as sustainability.

“When you think of all the logistics involved, you want to travel as efficiently as possible. And that is what AI can do smarter — less fuel consumed, vehicles are traveling less empty, doing a similar amount of work with fewer vehicles.”

Dr Flachskampf also said that AI can be used to assist funeral homes and other facilities with the likes of bookings, shift planning, worker schedules, and other general admin.

While AI has been around for a long time, it does feel new for a lot of companies just getting involved now. It can be difficult to choose the right products, partners or even know where to start. Dr Flachskampf says this is especially true for the death industry, which has such specific needs.

“The problem is there is no off-the-shelf industry solution available for these guys,” Dr Flachskampf said.

And according to INFORM, this is why it is starting to look into death tech — it is already creating bespoke logistical solutions for the likes of Virgin, Qantas, ING, and HANSON here in Australia. And for AI products, it has its own in-house LLMs to help facilitate.

“So there are companies like us which have the capability, but when it comes to offering a software solution tailored to their processes, there is still a lot of customisation and probably also development that is needed to make it work for these guys.”

But we probably won’t see this for awhile yet. Dr Flachskampf told SmartCompany that while INFORM definitely is looking to move into this industry, it is still a number of years off from executing the same.

“That’s kind of the state we are in at the moment, talking to these companies.”

LinkedIn’s generative AI push continues

LinkedIn also pushed out some new generative AI tools this week, specifically for recruiters and its learning hub.

Recruiter 2024 is a new generative AI tool for recruiters on LinkedIn’s paid tier. One of the highlights here is its ability to craft an email to a prospective candidate based on their profile.

It is also testing AI coaching, which it says will offer specific advice and answers to question prompts drawn from its LinkedIn Learnings courses. You then have the option to take that course.

This is just the latest step in LinkedIn’s generative AI push. In August it began rolling out generative AI suggestions for posts on the platform. It is also offering gen AI for InMail messages for premium users.

When we asked LinkedIn questions around transparency, post accuracy and whether posts will be used for LLM training — the company declined to comment. Instead, it pointed towards blog posts it had written about AI. These posts did not address or answer our specific questions.

Elsewhere on the job seeker front — Australian smart interviewing platform sapia.ai just released its first chatbot, Phai.

Powered by ChatGPT, sapia.ai says that Phai’s aim is to “educate candidates, recruiters and any human resources and talent acquisition leaders looking to leverage AI technology as a co-pilot for hiring and promotion decisions.”

Sapia.ai raised $17 million in Series A in November 2022.