In a bid to fill diners up for longer, McDonald’s is planning its “biggest burger ever”. Sounds like super sizing might finally be back on the menu – 20 years is a long time in fast food, after all.
Scroll down to read about audiobooks, hustling Gen Zs, and a potential reckoning for meme accounts.
Stats to power your week
📚Audiobooks are having a moment, with the number of US consumers listening to them growing 13% year-on-year. Spotify’s first price increase in years was influenced by a surge in demand for the format, and Audible recently announced plans to release all the Harry Potter novels as full-cast audiobooks in late 2025. GWI USA
👷Gen Z are currently aged between 16 and 26 years old in our research – the very same age bracket millennials sat in when we ran our first survey in 2009. Compared to their millennial counterparts back then, the number of Gen Z who work as freelancers are or self-employed is up 46%. The hustle culture is real. GWI Core (UK/US)
☁️ Cloud gaming allows players to stream games online without owning a copy, a concept that once seemed futuristic but is now reality. Thanks to services like PlayStation Now and Xbox Cloud Gaming, among others, it’s become increasingly popular. In fact, there has been a 54% increase in the number of consumers subscribing to a cloud gaming service since 2020. GWI Core (UK)
🍪 As any parent will testify, keeping the kids fed and well away from the snack cupboard during lockdown was quite a difficult ask. As the post-pandemic dust has settled, there’s been an interesting side effect – children now have less of a say in mealtimes, with a 26% drop in the number of 8-15 year olds who say they choose what food they eat since 2021. GWI Kids (US/UK)
🪥SHEIN may have made its name in fast fashion, but now the online retailer is looking to expand beyond low-priced clothes in a move to attract brands like Colgate-Palmolive and Hasbro. Of course, clothes are the number one product SHEIN users say they purchase online every month, but they’re also more likely than the average to be found buying CBD-infused products, baby toys, hair styling tools. GWI Core
What’s on our radar
Another busy week in AI music: we’ve seen the first music video made entirely with OpenAI’s Sora, FKA Twigs reveal she made her own deepfake to handle promotion, a new AI music detector, and country singer Randy Travis using AI to release his first song since experiencing a stroke in 2013.
Eight major US newspapers have announced plans to sue OpenAI for copyright infringement, while a group of visual artists in the US have hit Google with a copyright lawsuit regarding the tech giant’s AI image generator, Imagen. But others are partnering up, with the Financial Times and Stack Overflow joining forces with OpenAI.
Instagram has announced an overhaul to its recommendation algorithm for Reels, which prioritizes original creators and may have big implications for aggregator accounts.
The UK has become the first country to outlaw easily guessable default passwords on connected devices, while residents in four US states can opt-in to trial Apple’s new Digital IDs feature, allowing them to securely store physical IDs on their iPhone or Apple Watch.
Florida has joined Italy in banning lab-grown meat, while some researchers are questioning its sustainability credentials. Meanwhile, a recent study emphasizes the importance of avoiding “identity threat” when marketing such products.
Walmart has joined Target in unveiling a new private label to woo cost-conscious consumers.
Chart of the week
We recently highlighted a new study that shows GPT-4 “is comparable with […] physicians on official medical board residency examinations” and that it has a particular skill in psychiatry. Coupled with the Moderna CEO wanting his employees using ChatGPT “at least 20 times a day”, the potential for AI in healthcare is massive.
And healthcare workers are one of the groups adopting ChatGPT the fastest, with its userbase among dentists, doctors, and vets all shooting up in less than a year. But it’s making the fastest strides in some places that might surprise you – namely fashion, beauty, and agriculture.
In agriculture, studies have suggested that AI chatbots could be useful in sharing knowledge in parts of the world where farming knowledge is less developed. As for fashion and beauty – as ever, the girls are blazing a trail.
Local lowdown
Taiwan: Home of (some of) the world’s oldest social media
Before Facebook and Instagram – even before the World Wide Web – there was a technology called a bulletin board system, or BBS. Users would dial in with their modems (younger readers, stick with us) and connect to platforms where they could post messages, share files, chat, and play games.
In most of the world, BBSes survive as a nostalgic hobby, like steam trains or classic cars. But Taiwan is an exception. Its PTT (Professional Technology Temple) Bulletin Board, founded in the mid-90s and often compared to Reddit, is still used by much of the country. It was actually a post there on New Year’s Eve 2019 that tipped off Taiwan to the potential spread of an as-yet-unnamed disease in Wuhan, and enabled it to lock down early.
Taiwan’s bulletin boards also play a key role in the country’s consumer culture, as it leads the rest of the world in researching products on forums and message boards. PTT’s “Lifeismoney” board is one of its most well-known, where users share product recommendations and discounts.
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