Spotify is... selling books?  

Spotify has been in the audiobook business for two years, now operating in 22 markets with 700,000 titles to listen to.   

They say users want a 'multi-format reading experience' which allows them to go from listening to being able to pick up a real book. Their 'Page Match' feature allows you to take a photo of that page of the book to instantly jump to the audio version, or vice versa. In the US and UK, they'll now offer you the opportunity to buy the physical book right in the app. What's old is new again, I guess?  

Old business data is turning into a gold mine for AI  

There are now startups who help a company shut down with all the classic things —payroll, government filings, etc— and then also create assets out of the 'operational exhaust' of these now defunct companies. Old documents, presentations, slack conversations, and email archives can all be used to train new AI models. This way, the data reflects real people, the way they interact, and makes the agents more personable and informed. Additionally, all this data can then be turned into 'reinforcement learning gym' which allows AI companies to test how their latest models would work in a financial services firm, or a SaaS business, etc. 

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