McDonald’s Google Smarts
When we say that every company under the sun is getting into AI, we mean it. McDonald’s is the latest big company to smear artificial intelligence over its face, officially inking a multi-year deal with Google Cloud to deploy generative AI sometime in 2024. The old guy who had a farm said that the deal would connect Google Cloud tech across “thousands of its restaurants worldwide.”
Unlike most companies that publish the AI press release before even deciding what to do with its newfound intelligence, McDonald’s and Google have a plan in place. McDonald’s didn’t dive into any specifics but did give us a general idea of what to expect from the collaboration. You can expect to see “significant advancements” in its mobile app and its massive chain of self-service kiosks worldwide.
“With a consistent approach, McDonald’s expects to deploy innovations with much greater speed and agility. McDonald’s will use edge computing from Google Cloud to power these new platforms, bringing information storage and high powered computing into individual restaurants. ”
So far, everything is making sense. A far-improved app? Cool. More intuitive kiosks? Great stuff. But, looking at the fast-food chain’s other comments, things get slightly more confusing. One outcome of the partnership will apparently be “hotter, fresher food” for customers — failing to explain how it’ll make that leap. It’s either evading the words “AI-driven workers” or similar or is simply planning upgrades to the drive-thru experience.
Whatever the case, we’ll see the upgrades first-hand once they come to fruition in early 2024. No exact dates were provided.
Meta’s end-to-end encryption is going default
End-to-end encryption is slowly becoming the norm among messaging apps or anything else of the sort. It’s been a thing for years on WhatsApp, and Twitter/X.com overhauled its DMs to include the additional security earlier this year. Now Meta is getting in on it, too. Sort of.
The Facebook owner recently said it was “rolling out default end-to-end encryption for personal messages and calls on Messenger and Facebook,” despite the feature being included as far back as 2016. For whatever reason, the feature was a toggleable one. That’s no longer the case. Messages across Messenger and Facebook are now end-to-end encrypted by default, the company said.
End-to-end encryption, for those late to the party, means that anything sent across Messenger will be protected from the moment they’re sent and cannot be accessed by third parties or even Meta itself. It’s been a point of contention between Meta and the UK government, with the latter pleading with Meta to first include specific safety measures for children before turning on end-to-end encryption. We’re guessing the two worked out their differences and managed to work constructively — like the UK’s British interior minister Suella Braverman said it had hoped to do back in September.
A24 and Showmax?
It’s a particularly big day for Nirvana-clad “indie” folks. A24 — the independent film studio behind movies such as Hereditary, Midsommar, and The Lobster (an excellent film if you’d like to see Colin Farrell kick a child) — has just signed a deal with Warner Bros. Discovery that’ll see all its new releases go straight to Max after their theatrical run.
This isn’t the first partnership between the two. A good deal of A24’s films are already streaming on Max, though a second deal was signed to bring across the studio’s entire library of content and any future content as we’ve mentioned. What does that mean for us, though? South Africa doesn’t yet have access to Max, with HBO’s content usually being sent to the Multichoice-owned Showmax, which is set to receive a major revamp in early 2024.
We expect that to continue, with all of A24’s catalogue (hopefully) going live on Showmax sooner rather than later.
“Continuing our relationship with A24 to bring award-winning movies alongside recent fan-favorites to subscribers adds incredible value to the HBO and Max value proposition,” said Royce Battleman, executive vice president of content acquisitions at WBD, in a statement, via The Verge.
The two companies have agreed upon a Pay 1 output type deal, meaning that A24’s films aren’t owned wholly by Warner Bros’ platforms throughout eternity. They’ll be available on HBO and Max for a set period before being allowed to move on to other homes. The duration they’ll be exclusive to Max hasn’t been revealed, though we’re guessing a minimum of three years is involved.
Mortal Kombat 1’s DLC and “big surprise”
It’s no secret that Mortal Kombat 1’s story wasn’t its strongest element. At least, in our opinion. It’s getting the chance to redeem itself, however, with a story DLC akin to that of MK11’s Aftermath that’ll expound on the new (but same) characters introduced into this brand-new universe. The game’s co-creator, Ed Boon, confirmed as much at Brazil’s CCXP23 event, before noting that there would be a “big surprise” to follow.
“Well, just like we did with Mortal Kombat 11, we’re going to release a second part with more story. And we have a big surprise after that, so we’re going to be supporting the game for even longer than we did with Mortal Kombat 11. It’s gonna be fun.”
What that means exactly… we don’t know. It wouldn’t be much of a “surprise” if he spoiled the thing, would it?