GM. This is Take Off. We're like that perfectly timed joke at a party - making you laugh, breaking the ice, and keeping the conversation flowing.

Here's what we're serving up today:

• Twitter Ad Revenue down 59% 🔻

• AI Detectors Pulling Out Their Hair 😵‍💫

• Asteroids ☄️

• Wednesday Wires 💰

Twitter Ad Revenue down 59% 🔻

Twitter's revenue situation seems more "down in the dumps" than "over the moon" lately, and it seems Elon Musk, the man behind the Twitter wheel, might not have the right GPS coordinates this time.

Musk had announced with confidence that Twitter's ad game was rocketing skywards. "Advertisers are back, baby," he claimed.

Fast forward a bit, and the real situation seems a bit different.

• The ad revenue from April to 1st week of May was $88 million, down 59% from the last year.

• Internal documents leaked show the sales projections are sometimes off by as much as 30%.

An unidentified flock of seven current and former Twitter employees have all but chirped the same tune - things aren't looking too bright in the Twitter nest.

Advertisers are about as comfortable as a cat at a dog show, thanks to rising hate speech and adult content.

• That has led to a forecast of a 56% drop each week in U.S. ad revenue compared to last year. Not exactly the numbers you'd want to tweet about.

• Fidelity last week valued the company at $15 billion, a far cry from it’s pricey $44 billion tag paid by Musk.

So, what's next for Twitter?

Linda Yaccarino, the newly appointed Twitter CEO, stepped into this twister on Monday. Let's hope she brought an umbrella and can turn this storm around.

AI Detectors Pulling Out Their Hair 😵‍💫

Imagine: it's a fine day. You pour your heart and soul into an essay, only for a piece of software to squint its digital eyes at you and declare, "You're an AI!"

We're sure it's not the recognition you were aiming for.

Companies like Turnitin, who help teachers uncover such cheeky shenanigans, are pulling their hair out because... guess what?

Detecting AI might be as difficult as finding a needle in a haystack!

• A recent experiment gathered five high school students and tested 16 samples of essays, a delightful mix of human-written, AI-generated, and a cocktail of both.

• Surprisingly, Turnitin flagged 50% of the test samples at least partly incorrectly.

• Turnitin’s error rate has quadrupled from 1% to 4% since the launch of ChatGPT.

Now, if you think this is just about students and teachers, think again. Everyone from cybersecurity firms to election officials, journalists, and even your favorite office gossipmongers need to spot AI.

There's a slew of AI detectors flooding the web, like ZeroGPT and Writer. OpenAI, the mastermind behind ChatGPT, has one too.

But hold your horses! Many of these detectors are tripping over themselves.

• One AI Detector claimed the prologue to the US Constitution was AI-generated. (link)

• A professor at Texas A&M University recently failed his entire class on account of plagiarism by using ChatGPT. (link)

In a nutshell, we might have to come to terms with the idea that telling apart AI and human text might be a Herculean task.

Instead of trying to catch AI-cheaters, why not embrace these tools as learning aids?

The best way to beat ‘em might just be to join ‘em!

☄️ Asteroids ☄️

Apple acquires Mira, a startup building lightweight AR hardware. Mira has been creating awesome AR experiences and even worked with Universal Studios. 🍎🎉 

Instagram might be working on an AI chatbot. You might soon chat with 30 different AI personalities. 🎉😄

Twitter’s window to edit tweets is now one hour, but you still have to pay for it. Meanwhile, promises of less ads and shared ad revenue are still on Musk's 'to-do' list. 📝🤔

💰 Wednesday Wires 💰

Instabase just bagged a cool $45M in Series C round, flaunting a whopping $2 billion valuation. They're in the biz of turning messy data into neat insights and they're so good, even big banks want in! 👏😎

Life5 (formerly Getlife), just raised $10.7 million by making life insurance less of a pain in the neck. They're making it simple to get covered in a few clicks, no medical exams! 👩‍💻🩺

The construction industry's secret Santa, Curri, just scored a $42 million investment. They're offering on-demand, last-mile logistics for construction materials, from hefty machinery to water heaters. 🎅💰

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