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<ul class="summary-list"><li>Large companies like Disney and Uber have arbitration clauses in their Terms of Use.</li><li>Arbitration is when a neutral third party settles a dispute instead of a jury trial.</li></ul>Companies are using a simple strategy to avoid courtroom litigation when disaster strikes: the fine print.Terms and conditions have become a ubiquitous part of life for many people, from purchasing concert tickets to applying for a credit card. The legal agreement between businesses and their customers spells out both parties' responsibilities under a contractual relationship.That legal agreement can include an <a target="_blank" class="editor-rtfLink" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-plaintiffs-law-firms-bring-mass-arbitration-cases-class-actions-2021-11">arbitration clause</a> that removes a customer's right to sue a company when things go wrong — whether the customer knows it or not. Instead, they can be forced to use a neutral third party to settle a dispute instead of a jury at trial.In some cases, companies are using infinite arbitration clauses, which can extend to individuals beyond the original contractual parties, requiring all disputes to be settled out of the courtroom, and can be enforceable even after terminating a service."Infinite clauses stretch to the horizon and last forever. They are less a contractual provision and more a kind of arbitration servitude," David Horton, a professor at the University of California, Davis, School of Law, wrote in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review.It's a near-century-old practice that some legal experts say should be modernized for the digital age.<h2 id="27cb7a2c-c011-4afd-9917-00dc1588da6c">The Disney case</h2>In the case of large companies, arbitration clauses included in one service can often apply to any service the company offers.This scenario gained attention earlier this year after a New York State man filed a <a target="_blank" class="editor-rtfLink" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/disney-wrongful-death-lawsuit-theme-park-2024-8">wrongful-death lawsuit against Disney</a> and a restaurant operator who runs a pub at Disney Springs. Disney does not own the restaurant.Jeffrey Piccolo's lawsuit said his wife, Kanokporn Tangsuan, died in October 2023 from a "severe acute allergic reaction" after dining at Raglan Road Irish Pub and Restaurant, where they asked a staff member on "numerous occasions" if allergen-free options were available. The staff member assured them the restaurant did, but Tangsuan collapsed inside Planet Hollywood later that night and was transported to a local hospital, according to the complaint.A medical examiner's investigation determined she died due to "anaphylaxis due to elevated levels of dairy and nut in her system."<div type="image" title="A photo of a sign on a water tower with the Disney Springs logo" height="1704" width="2560" msid="115384767" hostid="261" sizebytes="276990"></div>In response, Disney filed a motion to compel arbitration, arguing that Piccolo could not sue the company because he had agreed to its Terms of Use when signing up for a free Disney+ trial years earlier and again when purchasing tickets to its theme park. Disney quickly found itself in a <a target="_blank" class="editor-rtfLink" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/disney-wrongful-death-lawsuit-legal-argument-pr-nightmare-2024-8">PR nightmare</a> as people online called the move "very dystopian" and urged users to cancel their Disney+ subscriptions in retaliation.After the criticism, Disney reversed course and dropped its motion to compel arbitration. The case is pending in the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court in Orange County, Florida."At Disney, we strive to put humanity above all other considerations. With such unique circumstances as the ones in this case, we believe this situation warrants a sensitive approach to expedite a resolution for the family who have experienced such a painful loss," Josh D'Amaro, the chairman of Disney Experiences, said in a statement.Although Disney relented, Piccolo isn't the only one to get caught up in the fine print, and he likely won't be the last.Lawyers and legal experts who spoke to Business Insider said there is little consumers can do to avoid arbitration clauses in an era when signing contracts often happens with the tap of a finger."I think the only thing we can do is opt out of the internet," Joseph Cammarata, a partner at Chaikin, Sherman, Cammarata &amp; Siegel, P.C. in Washington DC, told Business Insider.<h2 id="7db68ead-3086-4a47-adf0-1c0cf75edcf6">Large companies use arbitration to avoid damaging their reputations in a public trial</h2><div type="image" title="Preview of John and Georgia McGinty alongside the crashed Uber vehicle." height="3264" width="2962" msid="115384769" hostid="261" sizebytes="435138"></div>Like Disney, Uber made headlines this year for a 2023 lawsuit filed by Georgia and John McGinty in the Superior Court of New Jersey.In a September court filing, the couple said they were riding in an Uber in March 2022 when the driver ran a red light and crashed into another vehicle. The court filing said Georgia sustained multiple injuries, including rib, cervical, and lumbar spine fractures. She also experienced damage to her abdominal wall, pelvic floor, and a protruding hernia.John sustained "severe" fractures to his left arm and wrist and a fractured sternum, according to the lawsuit.Uber responded by filing a motion to compel arbitration, which that court denied. However, Uber appealed, and New Jersey's appellate division sided with the company, which said the McGinty's could not have a courtroom trial because Georgia agreed to its Terms of Use in 2022 for an unrelated Uber Eats order. The couple pushed back, saying their underage daughter made that order and have filed an appeal."While the plaintiffs continue to tell the press that it was their daughter who ordered Uber Eats and accepted the Terms of Use, it's worth noting that in court they could only 'surmise' that that was the case but could not recall whether their daughter ordered food independently or if Georgia assisted," an Uber spokesperson said in a statement.<div type="image" title="Georgia McGinty, who was involved in an Uber car crash." height="3024" width="4032" msid="115384772" hostid="261" sizebytes="674730"></div>Stacey Lee, a professor of law and ethics at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, told BI that consumers are increasingly running into arbitration clauses, but how businesses use them isn't necessarily new."It has always been the default for businesses to want to go to arbitration for a number of reasons," Lee said."You're not going to have a class action lawsuit, you're not going to have it plastered on top of the front page, there's limited discovery, and businesses have a little more control over who the arbitrators are," she said.Arbitration usually has three arbitrators selected from the Arbitration Association of America. They're often business professionals with experience in a specific field."Their knowledge of the customs and norms of the industry is very different than a judge's, and because they're on the business side, they have a tendency to agree more with the business interpretations of how things work," Lee said.Cammarata said companies know juries might be less sympathetic to their arguments."They want to limit public accountability and responsibility," he said. "A jury may listen and say, 'Uber, are you kidding me?'"However, arbitration isn't inherently anti-consumer or unfair to the average person. Compared to courtroom litigation, arbitration can cost less money and be a quicker process. People also can request an appeal in arbitration, but it's not the same as a courtroom trial, where they would have the right to do so.This private form of settling legal disputes arose with the Federal Arbitration Act in 1925, making it nearly 100 years old. John Carpenter, a partner at the California-based law firm Carpenter &amp; Zuckerman, said the arbitration clause is due for an update."The problem is we're applying a statute that goes back to 1925 to 2024," Carpenter said, "It's an entirely different world. The world we live in now wasn't even conceivable in 1925."Carpenter said that arbitration was generally used to determine one-on-one agreements, but now "it's being used digitally in terms of use agreements and essentially contracting away an entire branch of government with a click."<h2 id="dcbb6564-3ff6-4ae5-98ab-600c97fc4c6e">How consumers protect themselves from arbitration clauses</h2>Cammarata said one way consumers can navigate arbitration is to check if a company's terms of use has an opt-out clause. That, however, relies on consumers reading through the businesses' Terms of Use, which are often lengthy and written in legal jargon."First of all, they haven't read it, so they don't even know that they agreed to arbitration, let alone to opt out," he said.Lee said that while courts tend to be critical of arbitration clauses in employment agreements, they're less so regarding things like streaming services or rideshare apps."Increasingly, courts are like, 'You can read. You scroll through and click yes. It is now your responsibility," Lee said. "You can walk away from the service, and it doesn't affect your life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness."John said he believes courts need to reexamine the Federal Arbitration Act."It's going to require legislative action to take a look at this," he said.

How century-old arbitration laws are failing consumers in the digital age

The United States government isn’t holding back when it comes to Big Tech, and <keyword id="19902762" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Google" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="Google" meta.hostid="261" meta.entityid="Google">Google</keyword> is squarely in its sights. After years of concern over the tech giant’s grip on the digital world, the US Justice Department (DOJ) has made a bold demand: sell your Chrome browser. The move comes amid two high-stakes antitrust trials that accuse Google of monopolistic practices. So, what’s at the heart of the government’s case, and why is Chrome a key piece of the puzzle? Let’s break it down. <h3 style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:14.0pt;margin-bottom:4.0pt;">Search, Chrome, and monopoly madness</h3>In one corner, we have the DOJ versus Google in a trial in Washington, D.C., where a judge has already ruled that Google’s search business operates as an illegal monopoly. The DOJ argues that Google’s dominance in search, bolstered by its Chrome browser, gives the company an unfair advantage, effectively locking in users and advertisers. To remedy this, the DOJ has proposed that Google sell off Chrome entirely. This drastic move, they argue, could level the playing field and restore competition to a market where Google currently reigns supreme. <h3 style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:14.0pt;margin-bottom:4.0pt;">The ad tech tug-of-war</h3>Meanwhile, in Virginia, a second trial focuses on Google’s grip on the ad tech market — the engine behind the ads you see while browsing. The government alleges that Google’s trio of advertising software products effectively monopolises the ad tech ecosystem. Publishers like News Corp and Gannett claim they’re stuck using Google’s ad tools to survive. DOJ lawyer Aaron Teitelbaum summed it up bluntly: “Google is once, twice, three times a monopolist.” The DOJ accuses Google of using its financial clout to buy out rivals and control the auction systems that determine which ads appear online. This, they say, allows Google to charge advertisers more while paying publishers less. The government wants Google to divest parts of its ad tech business to dismantle this stranglehold. <h3 style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:14.0pt;margin-bottom:4.0pt;">Google fights back</h3>Unsurprisingly, Google has a different story. The tech giant calls the government’s arguments an attempt to pick “winners and losers” in an already competitive market. “The law simply does not support what the plaintiffs are arguing in this case,” said Google’s lawyer Karen Dunn. Google also argues that the ad tech market isn’t as straightforward as the DOJ claims. The company points out that ads appear across multiple platforms — search engines, social media, and apps — and Google doesn’t dominate all of them. In fact, it says rivals like Meta, Amazon, and TikTok are gaining ground. Dunn warned that forcing Google to sell parts of its business or work with competitors would essentially amount to government interference. “This is central planning,” she said, urging the court to reject the DOJ’s proposals. <h3 style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:14.0pt;margin-bottom:4.0pt;">What’s at stake?</h3>If the court rules against Google, the implications could be seismic. The DOJ’s proposals — selling Chrome or divesting parts of Google’s ad business — would fundamentally reshape how the company operates. But don’t expect a resolution anytime soon. Presiding Judge Leonie Brinkema is expected to issue her opinion swiftly, but any decision will almost certainly be appealed, dragging the case potentially to the US Supreme Court. Even then, the question of enforcement remains murky. While the Biden administration is eager to rein in Big Tech, future administrations could change course. Whether Google will ultimately be forced to sell Chrome or parts of its ad tech business is up to the courts — and potentially years of appeals. For now, the trials highlight a growing unease with the power of tech giants like Google. For Google, the stakes couldn’t be higher. For the rest of us, these decisions will shape the future of the internet as we know it. Stay tuned — this battle is far from over.

Why does the US want Google to sell its Chrome browser?

The long-promised <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/club-penguin-died-disney-and-money-destroyed-a-community-2020-1">digital apocalypse</a> has finally arrived, and it was heralded by a blog post.Published on July 18, the post's headline sounded pretty arcane. "Google URL Shortener links will no longer be available," it declared. I know, I know — not exactly an <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-cybertruck-apocalypse-inequality-2023-12">attack of alien zombies</a> from the death dimension. But the news nevertheless freaked me out. It means another swath of the web is <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-childhood-internet-gone-club-penguin-neopets-webkinz-nostalgia-2024-8">about to disappear</a>.Here's the gist: <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-google-killed-google-reader-2013-6">Google used to have an online service</a> that generated pithy, user-friendly versions of long, commercially unwieldy uniform resource locators — the key addresses that identify everything on the web. Shorter URLs are easier to track and better for online commerce. Google stopped shortening addresses back in 2019, but the concise URLs it had already created kept right on doing their job. Click on one and it would take you to the right webpage, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-internet-works-infrastructure-photos-2018-5#in-the-most-basic-sense-the-internets-job-is-to-carry-information-from-point-a-to-point-b-1">the way it's supposed to</a>.No more. In the <a target="_blank" href="https://developers.googleblog.com/en/google-url-shortener-links-will-no-longer-be-available/">blog post</a>, Google announced that as of next year, all of the existing shortened URLs are getting turned off. Poof. And on the web, if your URL doesn't work, you might as well not exist. You are unreachable. Without laborious renaming, everything behind those links — billions of them, a decade of digital content — will become inaccessible. Gone. Ask not for whom the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/tech/what-is-a-404-error">404 message</a> tolls.Now, rendering a bunch of web content invisible isn't the end of days. Not by itself. The problem is, this kind of thing keeps happening. And it's getting worse. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/social-media-dead-instagram-tiktok-bereal-replaced-group-chats-messaging-2023-8">Social networks</a> go bankrupt. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-most-trusted-news-source-online-comment-sections-google-2024-6">Digital journalism sites</a> close up shop. Companies pull their online products. Links rot. Files get not found. The cloud, as wags have noted, is really just "someone else's computers." And when clouds get turned off, not even the silver lining is left to tell the tale.Maybe none of this matters much right now. But it will. The internet has become the default archive of our history and culture. And the whole thing is burning down before our eyes, like the Library of Alexandria — only worse. For the first time since people started carving letters into rocks, we're making a time with no history. We're about to enter the Digital Dark Ages.Attempts to quantify the scope of the problem are heartbreaking. <a target="_blank" href="https://harvardlawreview.org/forum/vol-127/perma-scoping-and-addressing-the-problem-of-link-and-reference-rot-in-legal-citations/">Half of links in US Supreme Court decisions</a> no longer lead to the information being cited. A report in 2021 found that <a target="_blank" href="https://ssrn.com/abstract=3833133">a full quarter of the more than 2.2 million hyperlinks</a> on The New York Times website were broken. Even worse, the Pew Research Center estimates that <a target="_blank" href="https://www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/2024/05/17/when-online-content-disappears/">a quarter of everything put on the web</a> from 2013 to 2023 is inaccessible — meaning almost 40% of the web as it existed in 2013 is simply not there today, a decade later.The degradation of those links wouldn't panic me so much if they hadn't replaced what came before them — if museum storerooms and dusty library stacks still served as the warehouses of our collective memory. It's not that I miss the days of wrangling with old newspapers preserved on microfiche, or trying to sweet-talk a librarian into an international interlibrary loan. I'm glad lots of old movies are streaming and many out-of-print books are only a few clicks away. But archives and databases are more than places to keep old stuff; what we save defines who we are. Today, so much of everything is only digital that when it disappears, it leaves a hole in our shared culture.Gawker is gone. So is the archive of The Awl, the beloved culture-criticism site. You can go to a library and read the entire output of long-dead newspapers like the Los Angeles Herald Examiner or New York Newsday, but God help you if you want to read old Vice articles. Shenanigans over the ownership of what used to be Paramount have resulted in the deletion of decades' worth of shows on MTV and Comedy Central.The <a target="_blank" href="https://slate.com/technology/2024/08/david-zaslav-warner-bros-discovery-culture-deleting-movies-tv-shows.html">Cartoon Network archive</a> is gone. So are <a target="_blank" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/12/11/these-crusaders-want-preserve-human-culture-online-their-latest-target-yahoo-groups/">Yahoo Groups</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://cinema.usc.edu/spectator/43.1/01_Rudenshiold.pdf">Yahoo Answers</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.engadget.com/imgur-to-ban-explicit-images-and-delete-uploads-not-tied-to-an-account-122537118.html">big chunks of the Imgur photo service</a>, the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/12/dear-tumblr-banning-adult-content-wont-make-your-site-better-it-will-harm-sex">spicy parts of Tumblr</a> that got zapped in a porn purge, everything that ever happened on Friendster and the other pre-Facebook social networks, Club Penguin, Neopets, Geocities, AOL, and Prodigy. Vast swaths of video games made for obsolete systems are unplayable memories.Hard drives have a finite lifespan, and the ones the <a target="_blank" href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/09/music-industrys-1990s-hard-drives-like-all-hdds-are-dying/">music industry used for storage</a> in the 1990s ahead of the transition to digital are crumbling. The Department of Veterans Affairs is legally required to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-cerner-health-larry-ellison-28-billion-deadly-gamble-veterans-2024-5">preserve all medical records</a> for 75 years after the death of a vet — but it's having problems, in part because of a balky digital records system. And that's not to mention things like personal photographs, most of which now exist only on your phone, and nowhere else. Every email you sent or received in your last job, or anything a deceased relative had on their now-unusable computer? These are the things that make us us. Yet <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/search-web-email-google-streaming-online-shopping-broken-2022-4">I dare you to find them</a>.There are always brave souls out there who try to rescue scrolls from a burning library. But it's hard to rescue something that exists only in the ether. "If a library burns down, it's a tragedy, but most of the books survive elsewhere," says Mark Graham, a leading internet archivist. "But the digital world is inherently fragile and potentially ephemeral."Graham is director of the Wayback Machine, a decades-old project that seeks to collect and save digital copies of web pages, for posterity. Gawker? Yeah, they got most of it. And that Pew study I mentioned, which showed that more than a third of the recent internet had vanished? "When we redid their study using their data, we found that about two-thirds of that material was safely stored on the Wayback Machine," Graham says. "So really only a ninth is gone." The Wayback Machine automatically archives more than a billion URLs every day. It also performs constant maintenance on the hundreds of millions of links across all 320 language editions of Wikipedia, which are atrophying at a rate of 10,000 URLs a day. Most recently, Graham worked on preserving 5,000 videos from a YouTube channel run by Rohingya activists, whose people were subjected to genocide in 2017. "They asked us to archive it because YouTube regularly deletes videos from their platform," Graham says. "They don't even leave metadata up, so you don't know what was deleted." He says he got all of the videos except one, which was age-restricted.Usually, the Wayback Machine's biggest obstacle is paywalls. Most of the articles in the world's scientific journals, for example, are widely available to anyone with a university affiliation. But the articles are prohibitively expensive for the rest of us — even if our tax dollars paid for the research they describe. An archive isn't really an archive if no one can afford the entry fee.But now there's a new threat to archiving our lives: artificial intelligence. When websites don't want to let AI slurp up their content, they block a certain kind of digital crawler-bot — the same species of critter the Wayback Machine uses. "That's happened almost overnight," Graham says. AI, with its insatiable hunger for training data, can't access the sites. But neither can the preservationists. In the wake of artificial intelligence, more intelligence is going to vanish.Let's be clear: This is about more than just losing a few <a target="_blank" href="https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/07/to-preserve-their-work-and-drafts-of-history-journalists-take-archiving-into-their-own-hands/">news articles</a> or clips from your favorite Adult Swim cartoon. What <a target="_blank" href="http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/71216">an archive</a> is able to save, down to what formats fit in its file cabinets or data banks, literally determines what gets remembered. If you preserve, say, bank records from the 18th century but not sewing patterns, your annals are going to leave out a lot of people. Similarly, if your digital archive retains only the records of profitable businesses — because the ones that go bust wind up nuking their servers — you lose the memory of everything those deceased companies labored for. And what gets remembered about the past determines what we're able to do in the present. "Society is memory," says Marlene Manoff, who served as a senior collection strategist at MIT Libraries. "When you lose that memory, what does that mean?"Unreadable hard drives and vanishing links aren't the only threats to the historical record. Consider the selfie. Fifteen years ago, a researcher from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography named Loren McClenachan wanted to know whether commercial overfishing and environmental changes were making fish smaller. So she looked at five decades' worth of <a target="_blank" href="https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2008.01152.x">pictures of winning sportfishing catches</a> off Key West, Florida. The fishing boat company that ran the competitions, it turned out, had kept all the physical photographs, most of which had the date handwritten on the back.Armed with those artifacts, McClenachan was able to show that over the prior half-century, the sizes of prize-winning catches had declined by more than 50%. None of that data would have been available if all the fishers had kept the records of their catches on their phones. Instead we'd be subject to what's known as "<a target="_blank" href="https://www.wired.com/story/subtle-weather-shifts-might-make-climate-change-hard-to-see/">shifting baseline syndrome</a>" — the common assumption that whatever's normal today was the norm in the past, too.As the internet vanishes and we store our lives on our devices, we're actively choosing to punch huge gaps in our historical record. It's self-inflicted cultural amnesia, made worse by the fact that most of the web is in the hands of large corporations that place little value on preservation. "Over the long term, you can't preserve a digital object in its original form," says Manoff, the former MIT librarian. "But in the case of corporate ownership, the likelihood of responsible long-term stewardship of digital content in any form becomes increasingly unlikely."The Dark Ages, as historians used to call the early centuries of medieval Europe, lasted for 500 years. Our digital version may never end. A postliterate society leaves exactly as much of a mark on the world as a preliterate one. Which is to say, not much of a mark at all.<a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/adam-rogers">Adam Rogers</a> is a senior correspondent at Business Insider.

We're about to enter the Digital Dark Ages

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Salesforce has expanded its AI tools with Agentforce, a platform to help users automate tasks.</li><li>Agentforce uses generative-AI models that build on Salesforce's existing products.</li></ul>For "CXO AI Playbook," Business Insider takes a look at mini case studies about AI adoption across industries, company sizes, and technology DNA. We've asked each of the featured companies to tell us about the problems they're trying to solve with AI, who's making these decisions internally, and their vision for using AI in the future.Salesforce is best known for its customer-relations-management software, which it says is used by over 150,000 companies, including Amazon and Walmart. It also owns Slack, a popular communication platform.The company is expanding the availability and capabilities of its <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/salesforce-ceo-marc-benioff-says-new-focus-on-ai-agents-2024-9">AI agents with Agentforce</a>, a platform that helps Salesforce clients build and deploy agents to automate tasks such as generating written reports from sales data and creating summaries of conversations in Slack.<h2 id="68b90c5d-18fe-403b-bd1d-9eb93eab0695">Situation analysis: What problem were they trying to solve?</h2>AI agents aren't new to Salesforce. In 2016, the company <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/more-details-about-salesforce-einstein-2016-9">released Einstein</a>, an AI service for its CRM software. Einstein handled some of the tasks Agentforce can tackle, but the actions it could take were more scripted.With the arrival and rapid progress of generative-AI models, Salesforce saw an opportunity to improve agents' decision-making and understanding of natural language inputs, like email.That initially led to Einstein GPT, a generative-AI overhaul of Einstein. Then it evolved into Einstein Copilot, announced in early 2024. Now it's called Agentforce, which offers prebuilt and customizable agents."We had to recognize that our customers want to either extend the agents that we ship or they want to build their own customer agents," Tyler Carlson, Salesforce's vice president of business development, told Business Insider.<h2 id="2ba2ccfb-6dbf-46ab-848b-5578f676962f">Key staff and partners</h2>Agentforce's core technology, which Salesforce calls the Atlas Reasoning Engine, was developed by the company's engineering team. Salesforce also allows its clients to access AI models from third-party technology partners including OpenAI, Anthropic, Amazon, and Google.Salesforce has worked with internal and external partners to showcase its AI agents. The company uses Slack to spotlight AI agents that can be accessed directly from the communication platform. (Currently, Agentforce's integration in Slack is in beta.)"The reason Slack is interesting for these employee-facing agents is that it surfaces these automations and capabilities to users where they're spending their time," Carlson said.<div type="image" title="Tyler Carlson headshot" height="640" width="640" msid="115192386" hostid="261" sizebytes="19750"></div><h2 id="5811f14e-6416-45e5-8f7e-d703b210910b">AI in action</h2>Salesforce says the Atlas Reasoning Engine uses what's known as <a target="_blank" href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.03629">ReAct prompting</a> to help agents reason through problems.ReAct helps an AI agent powered by a large language model break down a problem into its components and then provide steps to solve it. After each action, the AI agent evaluates the result to judge whether it has satisfied the user's prompt. If not, the agent loops through different reasoning and action steps until it reaches a satisfactory result.Salesforce says this can lead to fully autonomous agents that offer personalized support based on a user's specific inquiry and take action — like scheduling an appointment or meeting — without human intervention.The concept is similar to OpenAI's new o1 model, which uses the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-openai-new-o1-model-capabilities-agi-2024-9">chain-of-thought prompting technique</a> to work through prompts step-by-step.The Atlas Reasoning Engine is proprietary technology built by Salesforce, and it has access to the company's internally developed LLMs. But it's also designed to work with LLMs provided by partners — the company expects many agents will take advantage of that capability."This is what I find most interesting about agentic systems," Carlson said. "They're not monolithic. They're not a single LLM."Allowing access to third-party LLMs can be risky because it means <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cyber-insurance-coverage-plan-benefits-costs">passing data to an outside vendor</a>. To address this, Salesforce instituted a policy that prohibits data retention. It also provides safeguards designed to identify and reject inappropriate responses to prompts.Salesforce's clients can also use a tool called Agentbuilder to create and deploy custom Agentforce agents that can act on triggers, such as receiving an email or making a sale, without a direct prompt from a company's employees. An automated agent might open messages from a general email inbox and forward them to specific departments based on the agent's understanding of the message's intent.Agentforce also uses <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/retrieval-augmented-generation-making-ai-language-models-better-2024-5">retrieval-augmented generation</a> to create agents that can answer questions based on a company's internal documents and private data. For example, this year Salesforce and Workday created an "AI employee service agent" designed to answer employee questions about a company's HR policies.<h2 id="31002808-8cdf-4bbd-a666-7e22bd1e3fdb">Did it work, and how did they know?</h2>Carlson said Salesforce measured the success of its software by the success of its clients, adding that the results so far had been positive. "That includes promising statistics, like seeing 90% of customer inquiries resolved by an agent," he said.Salesforce will also judge its success by Agentforce's adoption as a platform. The company wants to see clients broadly adopt AI agents designed with Agentbuilder and deploy them within their CRM systems and in Slack. It also wants to see the new AI agents take on larger caseloads and resolve interactions to satisfy clients and customers."By next year I want to see a larger and more open ecosystem of partners," Carlson said. "I want Agentforce to have thousands upon thousands of agent skills, topics, and a lot more that our customers can take advantage of."

Salesforce's new AI platform lets companies build their own digital agents to automate tasks

For a long time, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/reddit">Reddit</a> felt like it wasn't a place for everyone. Not that everyone couldn't be there — it's free to join, completely anonymous, and you can lurk without an account — but it was also a weird, sometimes dark little corner of the internet, probably closer to 4chan than Instagram. It was a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-new-content-policy-2015-7">bastion of free speech</a> but <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-ceo-said-racism-is-okay-2018-4">one that could get ugly</a>, something that Reddit leadership <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-war-users-community-free-speech-ellen-pao-victoria-taylor-2015-7">struggled to define and defend</a>. The interface was tricky to navigate for those not in the know.Nowadays, Reddit is a different — and more mainstream — beast. It's spent the past several years <a target="_blank" href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/19/reddit-and-the-struggle-to-detoxify-the-internet">cleaning itself up</a>. It's banned controversial subreddits and made the platform a more pleasant, user-friendly place to be. As its cofounder and CEO Steve Huffman told <a target="_blank" href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/19/reddit-and-the-struggle-to-detoxify-the-internet">The New Yorker in 2018</a>, the platform worked to get its "shit together."Moderators of individual subreddits — users that manage communities and enforce their content rules — still run much of the show but under a tighter set of policies. The moderators are pretty good at keeping their own houses in order, and in a landscape where AI spam is making it increasingly hard to figure out what's authentic information, Reddit's community-driven content and policing shine. Real, actual, live human beings are talking to each other, which, on balance, is good. This broadening of the platform has also been reflected in the business. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/reddits-ipo-set-to-take-front-page-of-internet-public-2024-3">Reddit went public</a> earlier this year at a $6.4 billion valuation, and last quarter, the 20-year-old company turned a profit for the first time in its history. Reddit lovers and noobs are flocking to the site, thanks in part to the Google gods. The search platform is <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-reddit-is-taking-over-google-right-now-2024-4">prioritizing Reddit's results</a>. There's speculation that it has to do with the companies' $60 million <a target="_blank" href="https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/1ax1nyh/reddit_has_struck_a_60_million_deal_with_google/">deal</a> to let Google use Reddit's data to train its AI, though both deny that's the case.Normal people — or, rather, people who aren't so steeped in online culture — are also seeking Reddit out. If you've recently found yourself inputting whatever search term and then tacking "reddit" onto the end of the search, you're not alone: On the company's most recent earnings call in October, Huffman said it's the sixth-most-Googled term in the United States this year."Those are people literally typing the word Reddit into Google," Huffman said. "So they know they're going to end up on it. They're using, in this case, Google to navigate Reddit."In other words, Reddit is a little bit <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-search-getting-worse-spam-affiliate-links-duckduckgo-bing-2024-1">the new Google</a>. And while people may not be heading in droves to Reddit to search directly, the hope is — at least on Reddit's end — that they someday will.It's not just Google. Other tech platforms' missteps have become some of Reddit's gains. As Twitter has become a worse, uglier forum for discourse, Reddit has emerged as an alternative for users and advertisers alike. People are increasingly <a target="_blank" href="https://www.vox.com/technology/23962999/best-product-reviews-shopping-reddit">using Reddit to find reviews</a> instead of turning to places such as Amazon, where the review section is often flooded with fakes. It's also becoming a more trusted place for reliable information — even <a target="_blank" href="https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2024/10/white-house-reddit-disinformation/680220/">the White House is using it to combat misinformation</a>.Basically, if you want to get honest opinions about a crockpot you're considering or get a sense of what recovery from a medical treatment might be like based on real-life experiences, Reddit is becoming the place to go for more people, including people who would have shied away just a few years ago.For those not paying close attention, Reddit's most recent earnings report was a bit of a "Wait, what?" moment. Its <a target="_blank" href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/reddit-stock-skyrockets-earnings-beat-ai-growth-revenue-huffman-2024-10">stock popped</a> after the company announced that its revenue had jumped by 68% and its daily active users increased by 47% compared to a year ago. Revenue from ads was up, as was cash from other areas — namely, Reddit licensing its data to train AI.Much of the boost in eyeballs appears to be coming from people who are relatively new to Reddit or who don't have accounts. Reddit's daily active users who are logged in to their account is up 27%, but that metric is up by 70% for people who are logged out. This is a bit of a risky proposition for Reddit — Wall Street and advertisers are more focused on that logged-in number because, <a target="_blank" href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/reddit-traffic-google-search-growth.html">as John Herrman at New York Magazine points out</a>, the Google algorithm can always shift against you, shutting off the traffic spigot. But for the purposes of looking at what's going on with consumers, the story is pretty clear: Lots of people are landing on Reddit more often, many of whom are casual browsers."It has gone from kind of a fringy and kind of, 'I'm not sure about it,' to very mainstream, and it's showing up in the numbers," said Mark Lehmann, the CEO of Citizens JMP Securities, one of the banks to help take Reddit public. He added that given how quickly the platform has grown and "monetized things even faster than people thought, I think it shows you the power of the leverage of the brand and the legitimization."To be clear, Reddit is still pretty small compared to other social-media sites. As <a target="_blank" href="https://affiliate.insider.com?h=e1355fc23cfc066980304c13aa726ac457ef26acf9ae7b17eddf693d740d7560&amp;postID=672a7cbbd057d3e5c5c4df84&amp;postSlug=reddit-mainstream-google-traffic-stock-revenue-human-users-2024-11&amp;site=bi&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theinformation.com%2Farticles%2Fwhy-reddits-explosive-growth-could-last">Anita Ramaswamy at the Information notes</a>, Snap has over 400 million daily users, and Meta has 3 billion across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, whereas Reddit has 97 million. Reddit's growing fast, though, and it's got a lot of room to grow. Marcel Hollerbach, the cofounder and chief innovation officer of Productsup, an e-commerce software company, compared Reddit's potential growth to that of Amazon."When you look at product searches, they tended to start primarily on Google, and nowadays Amazon actually has more product-search-related traffic than Google has," he said. "I would assume that, I mean, it's a matter of time until people figure out that probably if they're searching for a conversation around something or they want real user feedback and not just like a Wikipedia page or something, they might directly start engaging with Reddit."Reddit's recent ascendance was not a foregone conclusion. I won't dive into the site's full history, but let's just say it's had its fair share of controversies and upheavals, including over-greenlighting some <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-bans-r-fatpeoplehate-the-community-furious-ellen-pao-2015-6">pretty gross subreddits</a>, being a home for<a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/new-jennifer-lawrence-nude-photos-on-reddit-2014-9"> leaked nude celebrity photos</a>, and allowing a fair amount of racist, sexist, offensive, and even potentially illegal content to run rampant. It's also dealt with <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-blackout-48-hour-what-you-need-to-know-2023-6">revolts</a> from users and moderators. Even if you're not aware of the specifics of the fuss around Reddit, for a lot of people, it just had a reputation as being off the beaten path. In many ways, that's a positive — it gave space for people to anonymously have real conversations and engage with niche communities they might not find anywhere else. But there were also, as mentioned, some downsides.Part of what's happened with Reddit is that it's grown up. In terms of moderation, it's not perfect, but no one can even agree on what perfect is. If it wants to keep growing — and be on the public markets — there's a level of maturity that is necessary. Scott Kessler, the global sector lead of technology, media, and telecommunications at Third Bridge Group, pointed to the takeoff of r/WallStreetBets and the subsequent attention to the subreddit, especially during <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/wallstreetbets-gamestop-nathaniel-popper-book-excerpt-2024-6">the GameStop short squeeze</a>, as a recent touchpoint that helped push Reddit into the mainstream. As much as WSB was treated as fringe at the time, it became much less so, especially after the media caught on. Two more things have caught people's attention when it comes to possible growth and performance: AI and data licensing and machine translation into other languages. Reddit isn't just reaching more people in the US, it's reaching more people everywhere. Going public, for Reddit, has entailed becoming a more welcoming place for users as well as for investors, Kessler said. If you're hosting a subreddit where illegal activity's going on, it's very different to deal with it as a private company than a public one."If you're public and these things come out, I mean, that could start having an impact on your market cap. And so that obviously will make a whole host of stakeholders unhappy," he said. It's not dissimilar to PayPal clamping down on gambling transactions in the early 2000s.Not everyone is thrilled with the normie-zation of Reddit. Jessica Melton, a 33-year-old longtime Redditor in Seattle, told me that it took a while for her to get the hang of Reddit when her then "self-proclaimed nerd" boyfriend introduced her to it in high school. But then, she felt like it helped her become her own person. It's where she found tips for approaching her first gynecological appointment, how she discovered she had a relatively common skin-picking disorder, why she decided to go to therapy, and how she navigated being the first among her friends to become a mom. She likes that there's more moderation now because there were some "really disgusting subreddits," but she also misses some of the specificity and smallness of the old days."There's way more ads, more sponsored stuff, more influencers in general, too," she said. "I have noticed more brands posting and pretending not to be a brand, and it's really obvious for people who have been on Reddit for a while. And it's annoying."To some extent, it's impossible to keep it too weird while becoming mainstream, and there's some specialness that's inevitably lost with growth. What's been gained isn't all good, either. Many of the factors that have driven people away from other platforms, whether it be Amazon or Instagram or Google, are things to which Reddit isn't immune. AI bots can talk on Reddit. Brands can overrun it. Just as search engine optimization operations have gotten good at gaming Google, they can likely do it on Reddit, too.Perhaps right now, Reddit's in almost a sweet spot: not so big that it's completely ruined by corporatization, not so niche and unwieldy that it's a hellscape. It's part social media, part search engine, part just a place for real answers, or as close to real as you're going to get on the internet today.<a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/emily-stewart">Emily Stewart</a> is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

How Reddit went from a weird corner of the web to everyone's favorite digital hangout

<keyword id="20242921" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="Adobe" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="Adobe" meta.hostid="261" meta.entityid="Adobe">Adobe</keyword> has launched two new initiatives aimed at empowering both learners and marketing professionals through advanced AI technologies. The announcements were made at Adobe MAX 2024, which is underway at Miami Beach, Florida. The company unveiled a new global initiative designed to provide <keyword id="21872144" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="AI-literacy" source="keywords">AI literacy</keyword>, content creation and <keyword id="20399182" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="digital-marketing" source="keywords">digital marketing</keyword> skills to 30 million next generation learners so that they can carve a niche for themselves in the modern workforce. <h2>Collaborating with <keyword id="20153384" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Coursera" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="Coursera" meta.hostid="261" meta.entityid="Coursera">Coursera</keyword> </h2> Adobe is collaborating with Coursera, educational institutions, NGOs, and other education platforms to make its training and certification accessible to a diverse range of emerging professionals. Adobe’s initiative also features a focus on responsible AI use, ensuring learners are equipped to handle emerging technologies in an ethical manner. The curriculum will cover various areas such as generative AI, social media content, and multi-channel advertising. Courses have already been rolled out globally on Coursera. To enhance inclusivity, Adobe is providing $250,000 in scholarships and expanding partnerships with nonprofits like DECA and NPower to integrate skilling opportunities into youth education programs. The company has pledged over $100 million this year through scholarships, product access, and partnerships to help learners from all backgrounds thrive in today’s workforce. Adobe’s Stacy Martinet, VP of Marketing Strategy and Communications, said that the goal is to ensure AI becomes a bridge, not a barrier, in helping professionals succeed. “Adobe’s mission has always been to design products that create opportunities and empower people from all backgrounds to change the world,” she said and added, “We want AI to bridge the digital divide not widen it, and this program will open doors for emerging professionals to succeed in the future workforce with AI literacy, content creation and marketing skills.” <h2><keyword id="23563843" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="GenStudio" source="keywords">GenStudio</keyword> for Performance Marketing </h2> Simultaneously, Adobe also launched GenStudio for Performance Marketing, an AI-driven application that aims to accelerate the creation and management of marketing campaigns. By integrating generative AI tools such as Adobe Firefly and third-party large language models, GenStudio empowers marketers and creative teams to generate high volumes of personalised content for digital campaigns. The new tool addresses a critical challenge faced by businesses today: the demand for dynamic, on-brand content that can be tailored to individual consumer preferences across multiple platforms. GenStudio streamlines the content supply chain, from creation to activation, enabling marketing teams to respond quickly to shifting consumer trends. Adobe has forged key partnerships with platforms like Google Campaign Manager 360, Meta, TikTok, Microsoft Advertising, and Snap, allowing brands to activate and adjust campaigns based on real-time insights. This integration, Adobe says, provides marketers with a comprehensive view of campaign performance, helping them tailor content to resonate more effectively with their target audiences. Prativa Mohapatra, Adobe India’s VP and Managing Director, highlighted how the new AI-powered workflows bring marketing and creative teams closer together. Brands like Air India and HDFC Bank have already begun exploring the possibilities of GenStudio, with plans for broader adoption across various industries. “With collaborations across industry leaders like Air India, HDFC Bank, Hero MotoCorp, Adobe is empowering marketing and digital teams to seamlessly manage multi-channel campaigns, with real-time insights to optimize performance. We’re excited to see how more Indian businesses will harness GenStudio to revolutionize their marketing strategies and deliver exceptional customer experiences,” she said.

Adobe collaborates with Coursera and others to help people develop AI skills, announces new AI-powered marketing tool

Mumbai: With more businesses embracing messaging to engage with their customers, <keyword id="19911549" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="meta" source="keywords">Meta</keyword> on Thursday announced a slew of new features and programmes including full availability of verified badge - a trust marker- for small businesses to establish credibility and credentials with consumers. At the <keyword id="23141765" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="whatsapp-business-summit" source="keywords">WhatsApp Business Summit</keyword> in Mumbai, Meta also spotlighted Artificial Intelligence tools for enhancing the messaging experience. To start with, Meta will make it easy to activate AI directly from <keyword id="20062381" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="whatsapp-business" source="keywords">WhatsApp Business</keyword> app to enable businesses to engage more efficiently with their customers - it has recently started testing this in India, and says early results are exciting. The US social media giant also announced customised messages on WhatsApp Business app, as it pledged commitment to supporting the growth of small businesses in India. Meta said the line up of features and updates will help businesses across the country build a presence and create great in-chat experiences for customers while driving performance ahead of the upcoming festive season. It also announced WhatsApp Bharat Yatra - an outreach to various tier 2 and 3 cities in India for offering on-ground, in-person training to small businesses. Under the initiative, it will train small businesses in setting up their WhatsApp Business accounts, creating catalogs, educating them on how to set up ads that click to WhatsApp, among others. <keyword id="20215316" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="meta-india" source="keywords">Meta India</keyword>, Vice President Sandhya Devanathan noted: "The way we WhatsApp a business has only continued to grow... The manner in which Indians are WhatsApping businesses is second to none." According to the platform, the ease of WhatsApp has placed it at the centre of India's digital transformation, helping businesses with ideas and new models of growth. WhatsApp presented various instances of how businesses are already using messaging to engage with their customers - from Max Life simplifying experiences for non savvy digital users with vernacular chat support, to Maruti Suzuki tapping digital-savvy customers with WhatsApp Flows. Meta said that the new features announced at WhatsApp Business Summit demonstrate its commitment to helping businesses maximise their value per dollar while providing exceptional customer experiences on WhatsApp. The verified badge would allow small businesses using the WhatsApp Business app to establish credibility with their customers. "Millions of small businesses use the WhatsApp Business app in India, and they frequently tell us that they want to stand out and build credibility with their customers. Now, <keyword id="20057935" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="meta-verified" source="keywords">Meta Verified</keyword> is available to all eligible small businesses in India using the WhatsApp Business app," according to a Meta release. With Meta Verified, businesses that choose to subscribe and demonstrate their authenticity will receive a verified badge, impersonation protection, account support, and premium features that help amplify their brand online and make it more efficient to chat with customers. The same badge will appear on their WhatsApp Channels and Business pages, making it easy to share on social media and websites. Starting today in India, small businesses using the WhatsApp Business app will be able to send customised messages to their customers, say appointment reminders, birthday greetings or even updates on a holiday sale, more easily, and faster. "This new feature, available for a fee, gives businesses the ability to send personal messages with a customer's name and customisable call-to-action buttons and will also enable them to schedule the day and time the messages are sent," the release said. Meta also outlined best practices for businesses to build meaningful and valuable connections with people ahead of the busy festive season. "People don't want their WhatsApp to become overloaded like other channels, making them miss out on important messages from people and businesses they care about and want to hear from. That's why we're focused on helping businesses foster meaningful and valuable connections with people. Whether a business is creating a custom flow or running a messaging campaign for a holiday sale, there are several things to keep in mind to help them be successful on WhatsApp," it said urging businesses to seek customers' permission for each type of message being sent be it a timely update on a delivery or a holiday sale coupon. It also exhorted businesses to be thoughtful about when and what messages are being sent to customers. "Make sure the subject line or preview text clearly indicates the message's relevance and be thoughtful about when it's being sent..." The release said adding that basic information provided to businesses like read rates can help them gauge what's working and what's not, which in turn can help determine the right frequency for messaging customers to avoid overload.

WhatsApp Business messaging: Meta announces availability of verified badge, showcases new AI tools

In today’s customer-centric market, businesses must align product design, processes, and delivery with the needs of the customers. However, the manufacturing sector faces several challenges, including extended time to market, wastage,and design inefficiencies. Other key challenges include maintaining operational efficiency while reducing downtime. Ensuring that the product meets the required quality standards is time-consuming and expensive. In a competitive marketplace, these issues can hinder the success of a business. While technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Machine Language (ML), etc., have addressed many of these challenges, there is still room for improvement. Enter <keyword id="14248037" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="digital-twin-technology" source="Orion">digital twin technology</keyword>: the key to <keyword id="3108381" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="smart-manufacturing" source="Orion">smart manufacturing</keyword>! Digital twin technology has rapidly gained popularity across various industrial sectors! , Infact, the global digital twin market, <a href="https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/digital-twin-market-106246">valued </a>at $12.91 billion in 2023 is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 39.8% from 2023 to 2032. A 2022 report by Research and Markets highlights that 60% of executives across diverse industries plan to integrate digital twin technology in their projects to boost revenue. But why is digital twin technology making huge strides in the industrial sector? Let’s explore the details of this path-breaking technology! <h2>What is digital twin technology?</h2>A digital twin is essentially the virtual representation of physical products during different stages of their lifecycle. This can include real devices, objects, machines, services, intangible assets, and more. By connecting virtual models to their real devices, digital twins provide a detailed and dynamic representation of the physical objects they emulate. Continuous data transmission ensures that the virtual models remain in sync with the real objects. <h2>How does the digital twin make manufacturing smart?</h2>In manufacturing digital twins can be generated for various real-life scenarios like assets, specific production lines, end products, etc. These digital representations offer deep insights and visibility into production processes. Manufacturing involves a complex network of processes and products with several data points. These data points describe products, assets, entire lines, processes, etc. The digital twin replicates the manufacturing operations to capture, map, and structure the process variables in a continuously updated database. <h2>Technologies used in digital twin deployment</h2><ul><li>Internet of Things (IoT): IoT sensors enable continuous data transmission. </li><li>Cloud computing: Helps in storing large volumes of data that can be accessed by various stakeholders. </li><li>AI: AI gathers data and provides valuable insights. AI also makes accurate forecasts. </li><li>Extended Reality (XR): XR technology facilitates digital modelling of physical objects and processes. </li></ul><h2>Benefits of the digital twin in manufacturing</h2>1. Risk mitigation Businesses can test and validate a product before physical production begins. This helps identify potential process failures early and mitigates risks by simulating various scenarios. 2. Facilitates predictive maintenance The data provided by the simulation model helps identify the bottlenecks in the system. It helps in scheduling preventive maintenance accurately which lowers maintenance costs and boosts production line efficiency. 3. Real-time monitoring and control One of the biggest challenges in manufacturing is getting an in-depth view of the system in real time. A digital twin helps overcome this challenge by facilitating remote monitoring and control of the process by providing real-time data. 4. Seamless collaboration A digital twin offers a single point of truth for different stakeholders. They can access data 24/7 and collaborate through a single platform for better outcomes. 5. Data-backed decisions Large volumes of real-time data and advanced analytics facilitate better and faster decision-making regarding the adjustments in the manufacturing system. 6. Delights customers Digital twin technology facilitates the simulation of different product variations in a virtual environment. This helps manufacturers build customised products efficiently and cost-effectively, enhancing customer experience. There was a time when physical proximity and inspection were the most effective ways to gain insights into the status of operating equipment. Digital twin technology has offered an innovative method to gain these insights by virtualising real processes/products. This innovation allows businesses to create, test, and build equipment in a virtual environment, moving to production only when the virtual model meets all criteria. This reduces waste, optimises costs, and makes manufacturing more agile, resilient, and efficient. It’s no wonder the digital twin market in manufacturing is projected to reach $48.2 billion by 2026. Disclaimer: This article is authored by Raja V., BPM Expert. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Business Insider India. This article is published by the Insider Studios team. You can get in touch with them on <a href="mailto:insiderstudios@businessinsider.in">insiderstudios@businessinsider.in</a>.

How digital twin technology is revolutionising smart manufacturing

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Gen Zers lost more money to online scams than baby boomers last year, according to a survey.</li><li>But they may still feel immune to romance scams.</li></ul>Gen Zers may think they are digitally savvy and immune to online scams, but that very thought may leave them vulnerable to being lured into <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/scammed-out-of-family-savings-in-three-months-painful-2024-8">nefarious schemes</a>."Many Gen Zers are confident in their ability to spot scams, but scammers are evolving just as quickly," Bryn Thompson, the marketing director of Phonely, a scam-protection telephone service provider, told Business Insider."With romance scams in particular, scammers exploit emotional connections and rapidly build trust, which can lead to financial exploitation before the victim even realizes what's happening."It's long been a cliché that those who get wrapped up in romance scams are older because they have a smaller social circle, are divorced or separated, and are simply more lonely.But many Gen Zers went to college or started their careers during the COVID pandemic, meaning several of their formative years were interrupted, leaving them longing for connections too.Catfishing is rife on dating apps, as are the filters and subtle image and video enhancers that have become so ingrained in social media posts that they are almost undetectable. All of which forms a gray area where scammers can thrive.<h2 id="ddd9e651-9ca9-400e-928f-a154f7fee890">Trust in the internet</h2>A Better Business Bureau survey of 1,027 respondents in the US and Canada, released in April, found that <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-loses-more-money-to-online-scams-than-boomers-2024-8">Gen Zers lose more money to internet scams</a> than baby boomers in 2023.The Annual Cybersecurity Attitudes and Behaviors Report, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://20740408.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/20740408/CYBSAFE-Oh%20behave%20report%202022-220927%20MS%20-%20V1.pdf">released by the National Cybersecurity Alliance in 2022</a>, surveyed over 3,000 people from the US, UK, and Canada and found that Gen Zers noted a higher rate of falling for romance scams (15%) than Gen Xers (8%) and baby boomers (4%).Scams are always evolving, and the tricks Gen Zers believe they are wise to may be replaced by increasingly technologically advanced schemes they don't see coming.Lauren Hendry Parsons, the head of communications at ExpressVPN, told BI that Gen Zers are more acquainted with meeting people online and having entire relationships through social media."Your willingness to talk to someone you don't know online goes exponentially up depending on how young you are," Hendry Parsons said. "Which opens that extra channel for potential exposure."<h2 id="be523e56-6dc4-4327-9abd-28a955ee181c">Overconfident about AI</h2>According to Kevin Lee, the trust and safety architect at the fraud prevention platform Sift, the assumption that Gen Zers are too savvy to fall for a romance scam may leave them vulnerable.<a target="_blank" class="" href="https://sift.com/index-reports-ai-fraud-q2-2024?aliId=">A Sift survey</a> of 1,066 US adults earlier this year found that 81% of Gen Z believe they can spot AI-generated fraud, though they were successfully phished this way at a higher rate (31%) than Gen Xers (18%), millennials (25%), and baby boomers (11%).<a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/romance-scams-ai-deepfakes-yahoo-boys-nigeria-fraud-2024-4">Deepfakes and other AI tools</a> are developing all the time, Lee said, with scammers now able to create entirely fake identities on dating profiles, images, and videos."This technology allows criminals to seem real during phone calls or text messages," he said. "Making it challenging to distinguish between real and fake interactions."Hendry Parsons said the ubiquitousness of tools like Facetune and Photoshop is making it challenging for people to determine whether someone is really who they say they are.An <a target="_blank" class="" href=" https://www.expressvpn.com/blog/dark-side-of-online-dating-uk/">ExpressVPN survey</a> of 2,000 UK adults aged 18-50 last year found that 34% of respondents had created a fake dating profile, and 27% used AI to improve the look of their photos."It's not just scammers using these things; it's not just people with nefarious purposes, but it could be," Hendry Parsons said. "Which is fundamentally that gray space where scammers proliferate and succeed in encouraging people to hand over their data or hand over money."Those aged 18 to 24 were also more likely than average to have been catfished out of any age group, with 34% believing they had been the victim of it, according to the ExpressVPN survey.<h2 id="b9ca31d9-b1fb-4bc4-8c41-58a34e399da0">Increased isolation</h2>The COVID-19 pandemic isolated people and may have left many young people with their guards down.Perpetua Neo, a psychologist and leadership coach with expertise in toxic relationships, told BI that <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktokers-are-documenting-the-epidemic-of-loneliness-2023-4">if you are lonely</a>, "then the way your brain sees the world is very different.""When you are in a state of anguish or anxiety, then you're likely to latch onto somebody else without really thinking too much because it's like any port in the storm," she said.Many zoomers missed out on several years of dating during global lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and scammers can exploit that desire for connection."The regular journey an adolescent is meant to take was disrupted," Neo said. "At the same time, it was a pandemic where we were electronically connected — which can give the impression that we have social rituals and bonds, but which may be superficial."People are still processing the years lost to the pandemic, particularly Gen Zers, whose brains were still developing, Neo added.Unresolved trauma and mental health challenges put us in a state of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, with our amygdala — the fear center of the brain — firing up regularly."This can make us more impulsive, less thoughtful of our choices, and can be a risk factor for romance scams," Neo said.Neo said scammers are highly sophisticated at creating profiles they think their marks will like. For some, this may involve a life of luxury, which may include travel, fancy meals, and expensive clothes.They're also well-versed in manipulation, she added, knowing that with the right push and pull of attention, they can hook their victims in with <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-love-bombing-2017-7">love-bombing</a> and playing on <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/health/mental-health/anxious-attachment-style">fears of abandonment</a>."You are trained to answer them, and you're trained to give them information," Neo said. "You're trained to trust them, and then they start to build this idea of the future together really, really fast."<h2 id="a06a6c0a-ba0d-49c2-9fc8-f39c568393ca">A shared struggle</h2>Once the bond is formed, scammers will get to work. Gen Zers understand what it's like to struggle, with many facing economic instability and having difficulty with <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-need-financial-support-parents-family-study-2024-7">bills</a>, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-millennials-housing-costs-insurance-debt-election-trump-biden-2024-6">rent</a>, and <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-millennial-neets-happy-idle-until-finding-right-job-2024-6">finding jobs</a>.This shared vulnerability, accelerated by the isolation of the pandemic, is something scammers can exploit, Hendry Parsons warned.For example, a new friend or romantic connection made on social media may say they don't have enough money for a plane ticket for a visit and ask to borrow money. They might say they can't afford a Netflix subscription, but they want to watch the same show together and ask to share your account.Many couples do this simple act to show trust. But when combined with the chance that your Netflix password may be similar to your online banking ones, this innocuous sharing of one service becomes "an entire threat vector," Hendry Parsons said, with the danger of identity theft and further fraud."You're actually opening up a Pandora's box of your entire online identity," she said. "Something that's small with the wrong person can become a lot bigger."

Digitally-native Gen Zers aren't immune to romance scams

New Delhi: The merger of media assets of Reliance Industries and the India business of global media house the Walt Disney is expected to be complete by the end of the third quarter of this fiscal, according to a regulatory filing by billionaire Mukesh Ambani-led group. The fair trade regulator CCI has already approved the merger of Viacom 18 and <keyword id="19976122" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Star-India" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="Star India" meta.hostid="261" meta.entityid="Star India">Star India</keyword> and NCLT (National Company Law Tribunal) has sanctioned the scheme regarding it. "The companies are in the process of obtaining other requisite approvals for the completion of the transaction and transaction closer is expected in 3Q FY 25," informed Reliance Industries on Monday in its quarter earning statement. The merger of Reliance group-controlled media assets - TV18 Broadcast and E18 - with Network18 Media &amp; Investments has already been sanctioned by the NCLT and was made effective on October 3, it said. Earlier on September 27, the government approved the transfer of licenses relating to Non News &amp; Current Affairs TV channels held by media entities of Reliance Industries to Star India. "The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, vide its order dated September 27, has granted its approval for transfer of Licenses relating to Non News &amp; Current Affairs TV channels held by <keyword id="19976121" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Viacom18" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="Viacom18" meta.hostid="261" meta.entityid="Viacom18">Viacom18</keyword> Media Private Limited in favour of Star India," it had said. Viacom18 is the holding company that owns the media and entertainment business of billionaire Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries and Bodhi Tree Systems. Both sides are in the final stages of the merger, making some adjustments in the business as per the Competition Commission of India (CCI) directions. On August 30, the NCLT had approved the scheme of merger of Viacom18 Media and Digital 18 Media, holding media and entertainment assets of Reliance Industries with Star India. The scheme had proposed the transfer and vesting of Media Operations Undertaking from Viacom 18 and Jio Cinema into Digital18, which is a subsidiary of Viacom 18. This would be followed by "demerger, transfer and vesting of V18 Undertaking from Digital 18 into Star India". The merger of the media assets of Reliance Industries and The Walt Disney Co.'s India business will create the country's largest media empire worth over Rs 70,000 crore. Earlier, the CCI had said it has cleared the "proposed combination involving Reliance Industries Ltd, Viacom18 Media Pvt Ltd, Digital18 Media Ltd, Star India Pvt Ltd and Star Television Productions Ltd, subject to the compliance of voluntary modifications". Viacom18 is part of the RIL group, and Star India is wholly owned by The <keyword id="19986269" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Walt-Disney-Company" source="keywords">Walt Disney Company</keyword>. Star Television Productions, a company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, is owned indirectly by Walt Disney. The CCI, however, did not disclose voluntary modifications in the original deal made by the two parties. As per the deal, Mukesh Ambani-led RIL and its affiliates will hold 63.16 per cent of the combined entity that will house two streaming services and 120 television channels. Walt Disney will hold the remaining 36.84 per cent stake in the combined entity, which will also be India's largest media house. Reliance Industries has also agreed to invest close to Rs 11,500 crore into the joint venture to give it the muscle to fight rivals like Japan's Sony and Netflix. Nita Ambani, wife of billionaire and RIL Chairman <keyword id="19916798" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Mukesh-Ambani" source="keywords">Mukesh Ambani</keyword>, will head the joint venture, while Uday Shankar will be the vice-chairperson.

Reliance expects to complete merger with Disney's India business in Q3

The team behind "<a target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAOypGQdzGU">How Millions are Trapped in Modern-Day Slavery at Brick Kilns in Pakistan</a>" was awarded an <a target="_blank" href="https://www.rtdna.org/2024-national-edward-r-murrow-award-winners">Edward R. Murrow Award</a> for Excellence in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion within a Large Digital Organization. The documentary — which garnered 9.5 million views on YouTube — is part of Business Insider's <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/show/risky-business">Risky Business</a> series, spotlighting the world's most dangerous jobs.The investigation revealed the daily lives of millions in Pakistan and across Southeast Asia who are trapped in the dangerous work of brick-making to repay loans borrowed from kiln owners. Workers, including young children, inhale dust and toxic fumes throughout the day. Unaware of the terms of their contracts, brickmakers find their debt snowballing into an endless cycle of forced labor."Being from Sindh province, where many of these brick kilns are located, it's well known that the area is notorious for feudal activity. Everyone knows it's happening, but no one dares to take action because these people are very powerful and well connected," said Deputy Executive Producer, Havovi Cooper. "When I pitched this to the team, I wanted to really dig into this issue and see what goes on inside these kilns.""Most of us got into journalism because we want to show what is happening in the world in a way that motivates people to make it a better place," said Business Insider's Head of Video, Erica Berenstein. "This story's impact went beyond motivating our audience - it spurred action, and ended with a family being freed from debt bondage. That's the biggest impact I've ever seen in my career, and it inspires our team to continue doing high-impact journalism!"Following the powerful exposé, the team followed the family featured in the original documentary as they <a target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAOypGQdzGU">escaped modern-day slavery</a>, and published a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-help-families-trapped-in-modern-day-slavery-2023-5">guide</a> to share how readers could help.Olivia Nemec and Havovi Cooper were the lead producers for the episode. Robin Lindsay and Olivia Nemec edited the piece and the field production and camerawork was conducted by freelancers Kashif Khan, Bilawal Bhatti and Maqbool Ahmed Zai, who found and interviewed the Meghwar family.

Business Insider Wins Murrow Award

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Pet ownership is on the rise, and Americans are spending more time and money on their furry friends.</li><li>Dogs, in particular, are increasingly being welcomed into public spaces.</li></ul>Your next wedding might be full of drooling guests.The Dog Bar — a sprawling dog venue in Saint Petersburg, Florida —has had at least six (human) proposals, and one wedding. Some of the couples who got engaged met at the dog-catered venue; others just love it so much that that's where they wanted to make things official.It's not just romance brewing at the Dog Bar. Politicians come by to do <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.facebook.com/MayorKenWelch/videos/thanks-for-coming-out-to-support-last-night-at-the-dog-bar-st-pete-99-days-until/834832220788817/">some stumping</a> (and, presumably, dog petting). Young professionals convene for meet-ups. And a good chunk of customers don't even have dogs; they just want to hang out amongst both friends human and furry.It's all part of a new shift in American public and social life: It's gone to the dogs.Virtually all <a target="_blank" href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/07/07/about-half-us-of-pet-owners-say-their-pets-are-as-much-a-part-of-their-family-as-a-human-member/">US pet owners</a> now say their furry companions are part of their family — up from 86% of dog owners and 78% of cat owners <a target="_blank" href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2006/03/07/gauging-family-intimacy/">in 2006</a>. This might be in part because many younger Americans are having kids later than previous generations, or <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/child-free-millennials-dont-want-kids-to-hamper-travel-life-2024-9">not having them at all</a>."People are really combining their social life with their dog ownership nowadays," Kendal Kulp, the co-founder and CEO of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.wagbar.com/">Wagbar</a>, a dog park and bar in Asheville, North Carolina, that regularly hosts weddings, dog birthday bashes, and Halloween parties. The space is currently hosting hurricane relief efforts for the local community.If you feel like you can't turn a corner without seeing a four-legged friend, you're not alone. America's younger workers are getting hooked on their dogs, and they're generating their own revenue streams — and popping up everywhere, occasionally to some people's chagrin."The dog today is not the dog of 10 years ago," Bobby Boivin, the co-owner of Boo's Dog Bar in Sarasota, Florida, said. "The dog today is literally a child in the family. It is a family member. And well, when people go out to dinner, they want to bring the whole family with them."You can feel that at the Dog Bar. Some of their community events are directly inspired by the other type of kids — the human variety. Stephanie Marble, the events coordinator and membership director, said she's taken inspiration from the birthday parties she threw for her sons when they were little."One thing that we do that's really simple in Florida is we just put sprinklers out in the yard," Marble said, "because in the summertime when you're trying to get the kids to do something, get out of the house and stop complaining, you just turn the sprinkler on and throw them all outside in the front yard and they can play for hours with their little pools and their little sprinklers. And so we do that once or twice a year at Dog Bar."She offers party packages, Santa for holiday photos, and an Easter egg hunt for dogs. Santa Steve, in particular, is a big hit — his photos with dogs frequently end up in their owner's digital Christmas cards. He has almost 200 sittings with dogs every year, broken up across two days.The obsession with canines is shaping our built environments, from bars to apartments to your favorite coffee shop. Our urban infrastructure and lifestyles are increasingly designed around pet ownership. Call it the invasion of the dogs.<h2 id="e6e1611e-a9f7-4ff4-b264-e769292d445a">Everyone got dogs</h2>In Washington, DC, a single-story laundromat and parking lot just off Logan Circle is being transformed into a 6,000-square-foot "dog-friendly garden" called Dog Daze. The turf and tree-dotted venue will feature vendors serving coffee, beer, pizza, smoothies, and acai bowls. The idea is to create a place where both people and dogs want to be regulars."You can go to a dog park, and you can sit down for a quick amount of time, but it's really more of a check-the-box activity versus actually somewhere you want to stay and hang out," said Dog Daze managing partner Kyle Cissel. "We wanted to make sure that it was somewhere they felt at home, they're willing to spend time, and they would actually stay for longer periods of time and make it part of their daily, weekly, and monthly schedule."Over the last few decades, the percentage of households with kids <a target="_blank" href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/19/growing-share-of-childless-adults-in-u-s-dont-expect-to-ever-have-children/">has plummeted</a>, while the share that owns a pet has ticked up. The percentage of homebuyers with a child under 18 living with them has fallen by nearly half since the 1980s, according to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nar.realtor/blogs/economists-outlook/a-stunning-stat-for-international-cat-day-there-are-more-american-households-with-pets-than-children">a NAR analysis</a> of US Census data. At the same time, the share of households with pets has grown <a target="_blank" href="https://americanpetproducts.org/industry-trends-and-stats#:~:text=2024%20APPA%20National%20Pet%20Owners,type%20and%20by%20generational%20segment.">from 56% in 1988 to 66% today</a>. And during the pandemic alone, over <a target="_blank" href="https://www.aspcapro.org/resource/new-aspca-survey-vast-majority-dogs-and-cats-acquired-during-pandemic-still-their-homes">23 million US households</a> welcomed dogs into their homes."We see dogs all the time where people are like, 'Yeah, this is my covid baby. I never liked dogs before, but I got one, and now it's my favorite thing in the world,'" said Kulp, of Wagbar.That dog boom coincided with a few other key trends: Americans were <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/modern-loneliness">feeling lonely</a>, they couldn't afford to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/rising-cost-dating-millennials-gen-z-soaring-cost-love-apps-2024-8">sink more money into dating</a>, and larger homes with yards were financially out of reach.Nearly one in five homebuyers factor pets into their housing and neighborhood choice, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nar.realtor/blogs/economists-outlook/a-stunning-stat-for-international-cat-day-there-are-more-american-households-with-pets-than-children">according to data</a> from the National Association of Realtors (NAR). That's up from 15% in 2018. Among unmarried couples, the number jumps to 29%. A third of those who consider their pets needs when choosing a home say they want to be close to parks and recreation, NAR found. Inside the home, features like dog and cat doors, outdoor "catios" for felines, and fenced yards are all in demand.It pays for landlords and homebuilders to provide for their non-human customers. After all, the dog business is booming. Spending on US pet care alone <a target="_blank" href="https://americanpetproducts.org/news/u.s.-pet-industry-reaches-147-billion-in-sales-in-2023">has ballooned</a> from $53.3 billion in 2012 to $147 billion in 2023. Americans are also increasingly spending more time on their fuzzy friends; in 2003, according to the American Time Use Survey, Americans ages 25 to 34 spent just over four minutes a day on average on animal and pet care (that includes Americans without pets). By 2023, it had risen to nine minutes a day.And while playgrounds have traditionally been a social hub for parents and kids alike, dog amenities offer a new kind of community or third place. That might explain why dog-centric bars and restaurants — where dogs aren't just a patio feature but the main attraction — are popping up all over the country.Cissel thinks the future is bright for dog-friendly third spaces. He argued that a dog social club like Dog Daze is similar to a local gym or convenience store — an amenity neighbors would use multiple times a week, as opposed to other leisure amenities like movie theaters. "It's definitely something that I think you'll see in every neighborhood in the next 10 years," he said.Tara Downs, the owner of the seven-year-old Pub Dog in Colorado, said that she's noticed some economic shifts from her customers — three or four years ago, someone would come in and order a few beers and food for themselves, and food for their dogs. Now, they're seeing humans cut back on what they're spending on themselves but still getting their dogs the same treats."So they're still finding ways to make sure that they're giving their dogs everything that they want for them — no matter what it means for them in the human sense," she said.Take Fred Metzler. He was working a corporate job selling automatic doors when he decided he wanted a change. After adopting two puppies, he fell in love with a dog bar in his neighborhood. He and his former business partner decided to bring that concept down to St. Petersburg, Florida and ended up opening the Dog Bar in 2016.Metzler also noticed something else over the last decade or so: "The pet industry seemed to be kind of recession-proof. I mean, through '07, '08, when things were just terrible, and our business was way down in construction, companies like PetSmart never slowed down." Even in 2009, PetSmart's store sales growth slowed down to what the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304607104579212232612242394">Wall Street Journal</a> hailed as a "respectable" rate that rebounded and then some. After all, as Kulp, the co-founder and CEO of Wagbar, said: "People spend more money on their dogs sometimes than themselves."According to a survey from the American Pet Products Association of 10,156 pet owners from December 2023 to January 2024, 27% of dog owners said that they hold holiday or birthday parties for their dogs — up from just 14% in 2018.In some tangible ways, today's dog owners indeed see their pets as children. It does make sense: In a country where the cost of living is rising and raising a kid <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-kids-cost-raising-child-inflation-childcare-tax-exemptions-2024-1">costs $26,000 a year</a>, becoming a dog parent might feel more financially sound — and still help stave off loneliness."People are lonely, people take dogs as serious as children," Luke Silverman, the CEO and co-founder of Bark Social, a social club for dogs and humans with locations across the country, told BI. "All that together brings together these really unique opportunities to create a community."<h2 id="20b14fe7-56a0-4109-839f-fcf696ab8d55">What it means to have dogs everywhere</h2>Stephanie Chez, 26, first noticed more dogs around when she spent the summer of 2021 working at IKEA. Since then, she's seen them everywhere, from Sephora to Target to coffee shops.Chez loves dogs, but her fiance is allergic. Obviously, she said, some dogs are service animals and people with allergies will have to contend with that. And she enjoys seeing dogs around — but she's still adjusting to the new normal."Sometimes it's like, oh, did you have to bring your dog into this tiny little coffee shop?" she said.It's a question that Americans might be reckoning with more, especially as society becomes more dog-centric. According to the APPA survey, 15% of dog owners are bringing their dogs with them in the car daily to run errands or go about their daily routines — up from 10% in 2018. More dog owners are also bringing their dogs with them on vacation; around a third of them have brought their dogs on a two-plus night trip via car, and around a fifth did the same via plane.Other pet owners might be looking to do the same. Silverman said that someone once called and asked if they could bring a miniature horse in. His answer: If it was a service animal, yes. The horse ultimately never made an appearance.Unleashed Hounds and Hops in Minnesota has had one cat come in a backpack, according to founder Kevin Knutson. The cat mostly kept to itself; as long as it wasn't disrupting the dogs, it was okay for the not-dog to attend."It's the same thing with kids," Knutson said. "We do allow kids at our facility too, but we have a strict rule about they have to stand up within arms reach of an adult. This is not a playground for kids. This is a playground for dogs."Dog bars are also increasingly becoming a site of life's big moments. Multiple dog bars BI spoke with touted their singles events. Kulp said that couples have met, gotten engaged, and even gotten married at Wagbar.Some — like the Dog Bar in Florida — also use their spaces as a neutral ground for dog parents to meet adoptable dogs and see if their current pups get along with a potential new sibling. That neutral stomping ground has also made it a good space for broken-up dog couples to do custody hand-offs; Metzler has heard of one or two break-ups happening there, too."I think the individual was like, this was a good-energy place. My partner can only get so mad," he said.And as dog bars and dog-centric spaces have become a larger part of life for many Americans, some have also become a place for a send-off from life. Kulp said that a customer in his 80s found Wagbar, and came every day like clockwork. When he passed away, his family got in touch; they'd never been to the venue before, but they knew what a big impact it had on his final years. They decided to hold his memorial there — with dogs in attendance."That's just not something you see at very many places and businesses," Kulp said. To him, that's a testament to the power of dogs. "They just are a catalyst for that connection and conversation."

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