Feb 19, 2024
ChatGPT maker OpenAI stepped up the race in generative artificial intelligence Thursday when it unveiled its text-to-video generation tool, Sora. Although it’s not yet available to the public, the AI company’s announcement roused a frenzy of reactions online (here’s a good thread if you haven’t seen it yet). OpenAI hopes to empower AI to understand and simulate the physical world in motion, with the goal of training models that help people solve problems that require real-world interaction.
Meta and Google, among others, already offer a similar service but at first glance it appears that OpenAI’s first crack is miles ahead of peers. While this technology could speed up (and disrupt) the creative process, it also could add to concerns about AI upending the livelihoods of artists and spreading misinformation. An entirely new class of cyber security may be required to distinguish between posts that are real and posts that are generated by AI.
Inflation reared its ugly head again last week as wholesale costs, measured by the producer price index, rose in January at the fastest pace in five months. The producer-price index rose 0.3% last month while core wholesale prices, which exclude food, energy and trade margins, rose by an even sharper 0.6% in January.
Inflation tends to bubble up at the wholesale level before spilling over to consumers so the recent results in combination with the CPI print from last week provide reason for pause. The rise in prices at the start of 2024 suggests inflation is not going to glide easily toward the Fed’s goal and has a chance to derail the rate cutting plans that have fueled the recent rally.
Madame Web is only projected to bring in $25.8 million in ticket sales at domestic theaters, according to Sony. It’s viewed as a big miss according to those close to the film. Since acquiring the film rights to Spider-Man for $7 million in 1999, Sony’s eight live-action and two animated movies featuring the web-slinging superhero have grossed more than $8.9 billion in theaters worldwide.
The film’s slow start is indicative of consumer preferences and adds to the notion that audiences have become more choosy about superhero films after Disney flooded cinemas with more than two dozen Marvel movies in the past decade. What’s even more concerning is that Sony has two more Spider-Man films set to be released later this year – time will tell whether the studio can bounce back from a disappointing first release.
Disclosures:
As of writing, DIS, GOOGL, META, and MSFT are holdings in Titan's Flagship strategy.
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