<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">Topline</h2>



OpenAI unveiled its latest artificial intelligence tool Thursday, announcing the release of “Operator,” an assistant designed to carry out a wide variety of web tasks that will first be made available for ChatGPT Pro users.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">Key Facts</h2>



OpenAI&nbsp;<a href="https://openai.com/index/computer-using-agent/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">described</a>&nbsp;Operator as “an agent that can go to the web to perform tasks for you,” saying it is capable of navigating web pages and interacting with the buttons and menus people see on the websites they visit.



The AI tool can complete a range of tasks including online grocery orders, ticket purchases, refund calculations, lecture downloads and combining PDFs.



OpenAI noted Operator may make mistakes with some queries and is not fully autonomous, as users may need to input information manually in some cases (e.g. logging in with usernames and passwords).



Operator also asks users for confirmation before completing tasks like sending an email or completing an order.



OpenAI said Operator cannot carry out harmful or illegal tasks, and is barred from accessing “preemptively blocked” websites like gambling, adult entertainment and drug and gun retailers.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-who-can-use-openai-s-operator">Who Can Use Openai’s Operator?</h2>



As of Thursday, Operator is only available to users on the ChatGPT Pro plan, which costs $200 a month, though OpenAI said it plans to expand the tool to other subscription plans including ChatGPT Plus, ChatGPT Team and ChatGPT Enterprise.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-does-operator-collect-user-data">Does Operator Collect User Data?</h2>



Yes, like ChatGPT, OpenAI uses conversations to train its AI models. However, users can&nbsp;<a href="https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7730893-data-controls-faq" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">opt out</a>&nbsp;of the training data gathered by Operator by turning off ChatGPT’s “improve the model for everyone” setting, which will stop new conversations from being used for AI model training.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">Key Background</h2>



Operator is one of OpenAI’s steps toward artificial general intelligence, which is defined as the “hypothetical intelligence of a machine that possesses the ability to understand or learn any intellectual task that a human being can,” according to Google, one of OpenAI’s largest competitors in the AI market. The AI race between OpenAI and other players like the Google-funded Anthropic and Elon Musk’s xAI heated up quickly this year, as OpenAI—which partners with Microsoft—announced its involvement in Stargate, a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/01/21/oracle-stock-surges-ahead-of-500-billion-stargate-openai-trump-deal/">$500 billion AI infrastructure deal</a>&nbsp;with Nvidia. Musk criticized the partnership this week, questioning its practicality and its ability to raise enough money to carry out its goals of creating American jobs and building large data centers.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">Further Reading</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/01/23/microsofts-satya-nadella-swipes-at-stargate-ai-venture-alongside-musk-despite-openai-backing/">Microsoft’s Satya Nadella Swipes At ‘Stargate’ AI Venture Alongside Musk—Despite OpenAI Backing</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/01/22/musk-is-bashing-trumps-new-stargate-ai-initiative-with-openai-and-oracle-heres-why/">Musk Bashes Trump’s New Stargate AI Initiative With OpenAI And Oracle As ‘Fake’—Here’s Why</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/01/21/oracle-stock-surges-ahead-of-500-billion-stargate-openai-trump-deal/">Oracle Stock Surges On $500 Billion ‘Stargate’ OpenAI-Trump Deal</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)

In this photo illustration a Open AI logo is displayed on a

OpenAI’s ‘Operator’: What We Know About New AI Assistant Capable Of Ordering Groceries, Making Reservations

Africa’s next wave of innovation will likely emerge not from Lagos or Nairobi but from Kigali, Dakar, or Tunis — offering global investors the chance to discover untapped potential in the continent’s diverse and rapidly-evolving markets.



Late last year, Penelope Terranova posted a call to action on LinkedIn. Her post wasn’t just another entry in the digital ether; it was a rallying cry to experts. She sought professionals skilled in accounting, legal, and business growth to help transform Africa’s overlooked startup ecosystems. The post, which listed 18 priority countries — excluding the continent&#8217;s ‘Big 4’ of Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, and South Africa — sparked a reaction.



One comment from a Nigerian LinkedIn user encapsulated a common sentiment: &#8220;Coming to Africa and leaving out Africa’s most populous nation and biggest economy, which is Nigeria, is very strange.&#8221;



Terranova responded with a measured explanation. &#8220;The Big 4 capture over 80% of all investment on the continent,&#8221; she wrote. &#8220;That is why they are not in our priority of countries to invest in.&#8221;



Her reasoning was clear: Africa’s startup landscape is evolving, but much of the attention — and funding — remains concentrated in a handful of countries.



Initiatives are now on the rise with a mission to bridge that gap, focusing on regions often ignored by mainstream investors.



The Shift To Emerging Markets



This new approach reflects a broader trend. In 2024, startup funding across Africa dropped by 25%, down to $2.2 billion. However, beneath the surface of this contraction, new markets were emerging as hotbeds of innovation.



Ghana and Tanzania led the charge outside the Big 4, securing 26 deals each and raising $67 million and $53 million, respectively.



Senegal and the Ivory Coast, bolstered by regional trade integration and supportive policies, competed for leadership in Francophone West Africa.



In North Africa, the Tunisian Startup Act continued to bear fruit, making the country a leader in deep tech, spanning AI, biotech, and cloud computing, which show promise for global adoption.



<div class="wp-block-media-text is-stacked-on-mobile"><figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Emmanuel-Adegboye-Image-supplied-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-64421 size-full" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Emmanuel-Adegboye-Image-supplied-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Emmanuel-Adegboye-Image-supplied-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Emmanuel-Adegboye-Image-supplied-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Emmanuel-Adegboye-Image-supplied-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Emmanuel-Adegboye-Image-supplied-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
 &#8220;These regions have an abundance of technical talent, a low cost of living, and proximity to major markets,&#8221;- Emmanuel Adegboye. 
</blockquote>
</div></div>



Emmanuel Adegboye, Head of Madica, a structured investment program for African pre-seed stage companies, highlights the unique advantages of North African markets like Tunisia. &#8220;These regions have an abundance of technical talent, a low cost of living, and proximity to major markets,&#8221; Adegboye notes to FORBES AFRICA.



Morocco, with its robust research and development (R&amp;D) infrastructure and proximity to European markets, remained a magnet for deal activity.



Meanwhile, in East Africa, Rwanda’s innovation-friendly policies and Uganda’s steady investment attraction turned them into rising stars.



Terranova shares with FORBES AFRICA: “Sectorally, fintech remains the clear leader and is likely to remain so, even in untapped markets, as we see the rapid expansion of digital payments, lending platforms, and financial inclusion initiatives. However, other sectors such as agritech, healthtech and edtech are advancing quickly, addressing Africa’s pressing challenges of affordable and scalable solutions in those industries, with AI as a common thread driving innovation across these sectors.’’



Untapped Potential In Underserved Regions



Terranova’s team at Digital Africa focuses on pre-seed and seed-stage startups, the most vulnerable phases in a company’s journey. Their model combines funding with robust support systems: mentorship, tools, and networking opportunities tailored to the unique challenges of operating in underserved markets. In 2024, their investment in media startup Makifaa reportedly marked the only recorded startup deal in Togo.



The impact of this strategy is two-fold. It fosters localized growth, reducing dependency on the Big 4, while also presenting new opportunities for global investors.



“Several countries shine as bright spots for investment,’’ Terranova tells FORBES AFRICA. “Countries possess varying levels of the essential ‘ingredients’ for success, which can enhance or limit the chances of local startups to thrive – such as the quality of the infrastructure, the ease of doing business, the availability of capital, the market depth, or the level of education and availability of talent.’’



Catalyzing Inclusive Innovation



For Adegboye, the approach goes beyond financial investment. “It requires building the ecosystem—strengthening local leaders, providing patient capital, and offering guidance on governance and scalability. This model ensures the long-term sustainability of startups, even in the most challenging markets.’’



Inclusivity is at the heart of Digital Africa’s mission. Gender diversity is a key metric; 50% of its portfolio consists of gender-diverse teams. The Talent4Startups initiative has trained tech professionals, bridging the talent gap for startups. “As a subsidiary of Proparco within the AFD Group and in collaboration with 60+ Startup Support Organizations across the continent, we amplify our reach, including co-investment opportunities, aligning with both financial sustainability and our mission to propel African startups,’’ Terranova explains.



The future of African startups lies not in a few dominant markets but in the collective rise of many. Channeling resources to underserved regions, promoting inclusivity, and investing in early-stage ventures, initiatives are reshaping the narrative.

Businessman working analysis business information.

The Rising Stars In Africa’s Evolving Startup Landscape

AI on smartphones is redefining how we interact with technology, from quicker search with voice to smarter photo edits and predicting daily needs before we realize them. Plus, with AI’s pattern-learning, a more personalized user experience.



Samsung first introduced AI to the smartphone with the S24 line-up early in 2024, followed by its Z Foldable range mid-year. Subsequently, brands like Apple, Honor, Oppo and Xiaomi have all introduced some level of AI on its devices.



Androids share similar features, powered by Google AI, such as Gemini – a rival to ChatGPT; Circle to Search; Magic Eraser; Photomojis; and protection against spam and scam calls.



Other features per manufacturer include the ability to summarize notes, create bullet points, transcribe audio and turn it into notes, translate text into multiple languages, summarize web articles to bullet points, etc.



Some devices can compose emails, messages, and social media posts using generative AI, all natively. You just explain the message you want to convey and select different tones, such as professional, casual, friendly, and so on, to get the desired results.



A feature worth noting is Circle to Search, an intuitive way to search for anything you see online, even by pausing a video. You simply long-press the home button, circle what’s on your screen, and receive immediate Google results, with follow-up queries.



Apple also offers AI features, but was late to the party when Apple Intelligence rolled out to more English-speaking markets in December 2024, including South Africa, after its U.S. launch at the end of October.



It helps you write; generate images by description with Image Playground or custom emojis; clean up photos by removing unwanted objects; and search intuitively with Siri, which uses ChatGPT when it can’t answer, but asks first if you want ChatGPT to fulfil the request.



You can already use the ChatGPT standalone app, but Apple gives you another layer of privacy when using it through Private Cloud Compute, which deletes your data after the request, whereas ChatGPT uses all your inputs to further train its AI.



AI’s global growth, but Africa’s smartphone decline



AI is revolutionizing industries, with companies and investors pouring billions into research and development across industries like healthcare, finance, entertainment, and consumer technology.



According to a TechCrunch article, the generative AI bubble did not burst in 2024. It reports that investments in generative AI worldwide raised $56 billion from VCs in 2024, from 885 deals. The data was compiled by financial tracker PitchBook for TechCrunch.



That figure is a new record for the segment, when compared to 2023’s total investment of $29.1 billion from 691 deals, it says.



According to the International Data Corporation (IDC)’s five-year forecast for GenAI-capable smartphones, it predicted shipments to reach 234.2 million for 2024, up 363.6% from 50.5 million in 2023, and projects 912 million in 2028.



The IDC predicted total smartphone shipments to grow 5.8% to 1.23 billion units in 2024, up from its previous forecast of 4% growth to 1.21 billion units.



While total and GenAI shipments for the year 2024 is yet to be released, data from research firm Canalys reveals that Africa’s smartphone market grew by 3% year-on-year in Q3 for 2024, reaching 18.4 million units, which it says reflects resilience amid a complex economic landscape.



“South Africa, after six quarters of double-digit growth, saw a sharp 10% decline in shipments as economic uncertainties dampened consumer spending, despite easing inflation and interest rate cuts,” it said.



In the same quarter, Kenya’s shipments also dropped by 10%, whereas Nigeria experienced a 1% growth. North African countries like Egypt saw a 34% growth, but Morocco experienced a 24% decline.



Manish Pravinkumar, Senior Analyst at Canalys for the Middle East and Africa, says the future of Africa’s smartphone market holds immense potential, but significant hurdles remain.



“Feature phones maintained a 55% share of total shipments as of Q3 2024, limiting smartphone expansion. High device taxes continue to hinder growth, posing a dilemma for policymakers between immediate revenue needs and the long-term benefits of broader smartphone adoption,” says Pravinkumar.



“Enhanced smartphone accessibility could drive the development of a robust digital economy, generating sustainable tax revenues over time. Despite these barriers, growing demand for affordable devices, expanding 4G network coverage and innovative financing models, are expected to sustain growth.”



Canalys forecasts a 1% compound annual growth rate for Africa from 2024 to 2028, with 4G remaining the primary driver of new mobile subscriptions over the next five years.



The global race for AI may have started, but Africa is lagging behind.

The Power of AI. Transforming Industries and Customer Service. A Look into the Future. Yellow AI icon processing texts and commands on smart phone. 3D render

AI Boosts Smartphones Globally, But Why Africa Faces Challenges

Generative AI has revolutionized content creation, from narratives to images. Central to many of these models is maximum likelihood estimation (MLE), which allows systems to learn from large datasets by finding patterns that maximize the probability of producing outputs that resemble the data. While effective in generating realistic content, MLE struggles when tasked with rare or underrepresented information.



This limitation became clear in a recent interaction I had with ChatGPT. When asked, “Who is Tshianeo Marwala?” the AI responded, “Tshianeo Marwala is the wife of Professor Tshilidzi Marwala.” However, Tshianeo Marwala is my grandmother, not my spouse. This mistake occurred because MLE- based systems prioritize statistically common relationships — in this case, public figures are more frequently associated with spouses rather than grandparents.



MLE’s reliance on frequent patterns introduces significant challenges when dealing with uncommon data, and this issue is compounded by AI systems’ dependence on centralized sources like Wikipedia. While a valuable resource, Wikipedia’s gaps in coverage, particularly around marginalized groups and global perspectives, restrict the diversity of information AI systems can learn from. This reliance on concentrated sources exacerbates biases, limiting AI’s ability to represent underrepresented voices accurately.



MLE works by selecting parameters that maximize the likelihood of observed data. It is highly effective when dealing with frequent data patterns but less so when dealing with rare or complex relationships. For example, generative AI trained on datasets that frequently discuss public figures and their spouses will naturally associate these roles more often than other family connections. Our 2000 paper on Detection and Classification of Faults Using Maximum Likelihood and Bayesian Approaches showed that while MLE works effectively with frequent, well-defined data, it faces challenges in rare cases. Similarly, in generative AI, MLE handles common information well but tends to make errors with rare or less frequent data.



MLE can also stifle innovation by focusing on the most common patterns, sidelining rare ideas that could lead to breakthroughs. In fields where creativity and uniqueness are essential — such as product design and content creation — this narrowing effect could lead to homogenization rather than diversity. When AI systems converge too much on common patterns, they fail to explore the fringes of probability distributions where novel ideas often reside.



When AI systems rely on data from centralized platforms like Wikipedia or mainstream news outlets, they reflect the biases of these sources. Generative AI will excel at reproducing dominant perspectives but struggle to represent underrepresented or niche knowledge, such as indigenous cultures or less-documented traditions.



This systemic bias limits the AI’s ability to reflect the full spectrum of human experience accurately.



In my grandmother’s case, ChatGPT’s error highlights a broader challenge in AI’s ability to handle complex, less-represented relationships. If a system is trained predominantly on data that overrepresents certain groups or patterns, it will likely misinterpret rare information, perpetuating existing biases.



Beyond limiting diversity, MLE can amplify societal biases present in training data. AI models will reinforce these patterns if a dataset disproportionately represents certain genders, ethnicities, or regions.



To overcome these limitations, we must develop generative AI systems that synthesize information from diverse sources rather than rely on a few centralized platforms. This would enable AI to capture inclusive insights better and improve the accuracy of underrepresented data.



Generative AI must also continually adapt to new information, ensuring its output reflects the latest knowledge. As data generation accelerates, AI systems must effectively filter, assess, and integrate new information. By doing so, AI models can remain relevant, nuanced, and reflective of evolving contexts.



Researchers are exploring alternatives to MLE to address these challenges. One promising approach is reinforcement learning, which allows AI to learn through feedback and adjust based on incentives, improving accuracy and diversity. This method, though not without challenges, can help ensure that rare data is better represented. Another solution is data augmentation, where the training data is enriched with synthetic or curated examples of underrepresented information. This technique helps AI systems learn from a more diverse set of inputs, resulting in more accurate outputs.



Collaboration between AI developers and experts in underrepresented fields is also critical. Such interdisciplinary partnerships ensure that AI systems are not solely reliant on statistical likelihood but incorporate a broader range of knowledge and experiences. In conclusion, while MLE has played a vital role in generative AI, it has notable limitations. Addressing them is essential for ensuring AI systems are fair, inclusive, and accurate. Moving beyond MLE requires both technical innovation and a commitment to diversity. By designing AI systems that synthesize knowledge from distributed sources and continuously update with new information, we can create more adaptive models that are representative of the full breadth of human knowledge and experience.

Business people and engineers studying artificial intelligence brain

Expert-Speak: Not All Perfect (Yet)/The Limitations Of Representing Rare Information In Generative AI

Ads for apps that use AI to create fake videos of people kissing anyone they want are flooding social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram.



Meta and TikTok&nbsp;have run thousands of ads for apps that use AI to generate fake kissing videos of people, allowing users to upload photos of any two people and let AI convert them into a video of them kissing. The apps are being marketed as tools that would allow you to instantly “kiss anyone you want”— no consent required.



Similar in concept to “<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2024/04/17/google-hosted-over-100-youtube-videos-promoting-ai-deepfake-porn/">AI nudifier</a>” apps that produce nonconsensual deepfake pornography, these AI kissing apps create believable videos of people doing something they didn’t do. And the ease at which they do it is a concerning habitualization of deepfake imagery.



While the ads are not sexually explicit like the deluge of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rashishrivastava/2023/05/11/reddit-ai-generated-porn/">AI-generated pornographic content</a>&nbsp;that has engulfed social media platforms like Instagram, Reddit and YouTube, they can be equally dangerous, Haley McNamara, an executive at the National Center for Sexual Exploitation told&nbsp;Forbes.



“It does not have to be explicit to be exploitative,” McNamara said. “If it&#8217;s crossing boundaries to do something offline to someone without their consent, kissing, undressing, et cetera, then it&#8217;s also crossing boundaries to do that online.”



Meta has displayed over 2,500 ads for “AI kissing” apps across Instagram and Facebook, a&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;review found. About 1,000 are currently active. TikTok has shown about 1,000 ads to millions of users in European countries, according to its ad library. (TikTok’s ad library doesn&#8217;t include ads shown to its U.S.-based users) Most of these ads depict celebrities like Scarlett Johansson, Emma Watson and Gal Gadot kissing one another. Others show videos of random people kissing, touting that AI could let you “kiss your ex” and “kiss your crush.&#8221; It’s unclear whether the people in videos are real or generated by AI. Johansson, Watson and Gadot did not respond to requests for comment.



Meta is also promoting “AI hugging” apps, ads for which show AI-generated videos of children hugging cartoon characters like Dora the Explorer, Mickey Mouse and Tom and Jerry. Some, like a video showing a young girl hugging an older man, promise parents that AI-powered apps could allow their children to “hug grandparents they never met.” The social media giant has run about 1,200 AI hugging app ads, a&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;search found. Over 300 are still live.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“This trend is normalizing exploitative deepfakes and taking nonconsensual participation in intimate or sexualized images as a joke.”Haley McNamara, executive at the National Center On Sexual Exploitation.
</blockquote>



AI-generated videos of people kissing and hugging are already circulating across social media. A video depicting Taylor Swift hugging Kim Jong Un has about 30 million views on Instagram. In late December, a deepfake video of Elon Musk and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni kissing went viral on X.



Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;that these “AI kissing” ads do not violate the company’s policies. While nudity, sexually explicit and sexually suggestive content are against Meta’s&nbsp;<a href="https://transparency.meta.com/policies/ad-standards/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">advertising&nbsp;</a>standards and Meta does not permit ads that “display, advocate for, or coordinate sexual acts with non-consenting parties,” videos of kissing and hugging are permitted.



After being contacted by&nbsp;Forbes,&nbsp;TikTok removed the ads for violating its policies. The video sharing platform requires advertisers to get consent from public or private figures represented in their ads, even if the ads are AI-generated, TikTok spokesperson Ariane de Selliers told&nbsp;Forbes.



The companies behind these video generators appear to be based outside the United States in countries like the United Arab Emirates, Italy and China, according to their websites. The apps are available for free on Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store and already have millions of downloads. The “AI kissing” feature is a part of a broader suite of AI-based photo editing capabilities across the apps, like touching up old photos, turning still images into videos and predicting what two people’s future babies would look like. Apple and Google did not respond to comment requests.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“It was incredibly creepy to encounter.”Alice Siregar, AI analyst and social media user.
</blockquote>



The spread of AI kissing apps, boosted by social media’s virality, illustrate a troubling mainstreaming of deepfakes in the age of generative AI. Use of these seemingly harmless apps could open the door to tools that could create more graphic imagery like deepfake porn and other types of image-based sexual abuse, McNamara said. “It&#8217;s just an absolute Pandora&#8217;s box,” she said.



“This trend is normalizing exploitative deepfakes and taking nonconsensual participation in intimate or sexualized images as a joke,” she said. “It&#8217;s the kind of thing that is easy to trivialize when you think about other people, but again, if you think about someone in your own sphere making images like this of yourself, someone who you wouldn&#8217;t want having images, I think everyone can recognize that that is a violation.”



That’s especially concerning when illegal AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is on an unprecedented&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandralevine/2024/04/15/ai-is-creating-an-influx-of-child-sex-abuse-images-ncmec-data/">rise</a>. Over the last two years, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (<a href="https://www.missingkids.org/blog/2024/the-growing-concerns-of-generative-ai-and-child-sexual-exploitation" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">NCMEC</a>) has received over 7,000 reports of generative AI-related child exploitation material. In one&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2024/08/30/pedophile-filmed-kids-at-disney-world-to-make-ai-child-abuse-images-cops-say/">case</a>, a pedophile allegedly filmed children at Disneyland and used popular AI tool Stable Diffusion to produce thousands of illegal images of them. And with unrestricted access to AI image generators, teenage high school students in multiple&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/cyrusfarivar/2024/03/13/teen-boys-deepfaked-her-daughter-then-the-school-made-it-worse-one-mom-says/">instances</a>&nbsp;have created deepfake nude imagery of their underage classmates, some resulting in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/cyrusfarivar/2024/12/11/almost-half-the-girls-at-this-school-were-targets-of-ai-porn-their-ex-classmates-have-now-been-indicted/">criminal charges</a>. Meta has also struggled to police ads for such AI “nudifying” sites, one of which has seen 90 percent of its traffic coming from Instagram and Facebook, according to the&nbsp;<a href="https://fakedup.substack.com/p/ai-nudifiers-make-a-mockery-of-metas-moderation?ref=404media.co" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Faked Up</a>&nbsp;newsletter.



People who have encountered the AI kissing ads while scrolling through social media say they find them&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/1fejz9m/this_ad_i_saw_today_may_be_one_of_the_creepiest/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">disturbing</a>. In December, Alice Siregar started seeing an uptick in ads for AI kissing apps on TikTok. An AI analyst at a tech consulting firm herself, she was dismayed to see the technology being used in a “deeply unethical” way.



“It was incredibly creepy to encounter,” she said.

Man and robot love

AI Kissing Apps Are Taking Deepfakes Mainstream

Cyber security is what nations and organizations need to be very wary of in 2025.



According to the recent World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Cybersecurity Outlook, the intricacies of cyberspace are complex and challenging, owing to rapid technological advancements, the growing sophistication of cybercriminals and deeply-interconnected supply chains.



“Collaboration between public and private sector stakeholders is paramount to secure the benefits of digitalization for all,” Jeremy Jurgens, Managing Director, WEF, said in a statement.



According to the report, 54% of large organizations identify supply chain interdependencies as the greatest barrier to achieving cyber resilience. Furthermore, the “prevailing turmoil” has affected the perception of risks. One in three CEOs cited in the report cyber espionage and loss of sensitive information and intellectual property theft as their main concerns.



“45% of cyber leaders are concerned about disruption of operations and business processes,” the report reads.



As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to be at the forefront of innovation, the report revealed that to ensure cyber resilience, there needs to be rapid implementation of the necessary security safeguards.



“While 66% of organizations expect AI to have a major impact on cybersecurity in 2025, only 37% report having processes in place to assess the security of AI tools before deployment.”



Skills development needs to be at the forefront of organizations, according to the report, as the cyber skills gap in 2024 was only at 8%. According to WEF, two in three organizations lack the essential talent and skills to meet their security requirements; only 14% of organizations are confident that they have the people and skills they need today.



Paolo Dal Cin, Global Lead, Accenture Security, said in the statement that cybersecurity threats are more complex and unpredictable than ever and can directly impact an organization’s financial stability.



“The disruptive force of AI, coupled with supply chain vulnerabilities and geopolitical tensions, calls for a more proactive and collaborative approach to ensure a strong cyber resilient posture across all industries. C-suite leaders must adopt a security-first mindset from the outset to confidently navigate these challenges with cybersecurity as an enabler that keeps our businesses and organizations resilient,” Dal Cin said.

Businesspeople in futuristic virtual reality environment

New Report Reveals The Landscape Of Cybersecurity In 2025

In August 2024, the United States (U.S.) hiked tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) to 100% while the European Union (E.U.) increased tariffs by up to 45.3% in October 2024. The EU’s tariffs differ by manufacturer between 7.8% to 35.3%, over its standard 10% import duty.



Futurist and business strategist Dr Craig Wing tells FORBES AFRICA that the decision by the U.S. and E.U. to impose tariffs on Chinese EVs is a complex issue with far-reaching implications, driven by protectionist policies and the desire to protect domestic markets from competition from Chinese EV manufacturers.



“While this may seem like a simple strategy to protect local economies, this move also creates new pathways and opportunities, and has several important implications for emerging markets like those in Africa,” says Wing.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="731" height="1024" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Dr-Craig-Wing-Image-Supplied-731x1024.png" alt="" class="wp-image-64344" style="width:545px;height:auto" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Dr-Craig-Wing-Image-Supplied-731x1024.png 731w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Dr-Craig-Wing-Image-Supplied-214x300.png 214w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Dr-Craig-Wing-Image-Supplied-768x1075.png 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Dr-Craig-Wing-Image-Supplied-1097x1536.png 1097w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Dr-Craig-Wing-Image-Supplied.png 1280w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 731px) 100vw, 731px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Dr Craig Wing; Image Supplied</figcaption></figure></div>


A new legislation in South Africa that introduces a 150% tax incentive for the production of electric and hydrogen vehicles was signed into law on January 3 2025.



The 150% tax deduction, effective March 2026, is for qualifying investments capped at R500 million ($26.6 million) for the 2026/27 tax year.



In the same month, Mikel Mabasa, CEO of Naamsa, the Automotive Business Council, said in an interview that at least three Chinese EVs have signed NDAs with them, adding, “With good government policies, we will attract new investment, we will increase and retain investment.”



Wing says this shift is critical: “It represents an opportunity to diversify the availability of EV models in South Africa, which will undoubtedly drive down the prices and make EVs more accessible, but also create a new ecosystem of jobs in both the automotive and associated industries.



“There is also a real risk of creating a dependency on a single source market for technology (China), and this should be balanced by fostering local innovation and skills development within the local workforce, and by focusing on building strong trade relationships with various other global players.”



South Africa’s EV landscape in 2025 and beyond will be shaped by multiple factors, not just technology, but social, cultural, ethical and political factors, says Wing.



It’s important to address the influence of Elon Musk, who is South African-born and the CEO of Tesla, as his political views in the U.S. are well documented, and can shape public perceptions of EVs, he says.



“It is extremely likely he will be acting as a key advisor on technology and business and should be closely watched, as it has the potential to further shape U.S. trade policy, and also the future of the EV market in Africa, as well as other emerging economies.”



“It is a clear reality that what happens in the U.S. has a ripple effect on the rest of the world, and so the role of Elon Musk cannot be ignored,” concludes Wing.

101st Brussels Motor Show 2025

‘Opportunity To Diversify’: A Futurist On The Implications Of The U.S.’s Tariffs On Chinese EVs In Emerging Markets Such As South Africa

Our tech writer got to experience the new electric Mini Cooper SE that’s coming your way.



The highly-anticipated next-generation electric Mini Cooper SE arrived in South Africa six months later than originally planned, and quietly went on sale without a national media launch.



As it stands, Mini will produce both internal combustion engine (ICE) models and three EVs: the Cooper, Countryman and Aceman.



I’ve been driving the Cooper SE for an extended period since November. The base model comes in at R802,000 ($42,350), however my press unit has been kitted out with extras to the value of R924,500 ($48,827).



It is powered by a 160kW motor with 330Nm of torque, equipped with a 49.2kWh nett battery that promises 400km of range (WLTP figures), and has a 95kW maximum DC charging speed. It goes from 0-100km/h in 6.7 seconds while top speed is capped at 170km/h.



The look of new SE is pared down, juxtaposed by modern LED head- and tail-lights that are customizable.



Despite a retro exterior, modern finishes include 12 ultrasonic sensors and four surround cameras; a 9.4-inch round OLED screen that supports apps and games through Mini Operating System 9; a digital voice assistant called Spike; and augmented reality navigation.



Previous models supported Digital Key with NFC, but the new SE has Digital Key Plus ultrawide-band (UWB) support, so I use my compatible iPhone and Apple Watch as fully functional keys; i.e. I don’t carry the physical key anymore.



It also has the Connected Package for navigation with additional info, games and video streaming when the vehicle is stationary, wireless charging, eSIM, etc; and Driving Assistant Plus for maintaining speed, keeping a distance from vehicles ahead, detecting road signs, etc.



The Mini app offers additional functionality that is convenient for the owner, like basic vehicle info, remote 3D view, trip statistics, monitoring charge status, efficiency stats, finding charging stations and more.



The ability to monitor my charge remotely has helped me several times where I could see the vehicle prematurely stopped charging.



While getting from 10%-80% takes about half an hour, its 95kW charging speed cap slows things down between 80%-100%, however the app estimate tends to be accurate, which helps with planning.



As a freelance writer working from home, the ~337km range I yield on a full charge is suited to my lifestyle. I don’t do long distance driving and can easily toggle between driving modes.



Based on access to mall and dealership chargers within my vicinity, it is the ideal runaround city EV. I find it a comfortable, pleasant drive.



I find it a premium overall experience when compared to the GWM Ora, which shares the same platform as the SE as it is currently exclusively built in the same factory in China by Great Wall Motor.



Incidentally, the launch of the Cooper and Aceman models in the United States have been pushed out indefinitely due to high tariffs on Chinese imports.



Mini says production of the two models will begin in Oxford, England in 2026.

OLED screen

A Mini Look At The Electric Ambitions On Course In South Africa

In this week’s edition of The Prototype, we look at how too much reliance on AI assistants could make it harder to think, a company building bioengineered arteries, the role viruses play in Alzheimer’s and more. <a href="https://www.forbes.com/newsletter/the-prototype">You can sign up to get The Prototype in your inbox here</a>.



<abbr>N</abbr>ew AI tools&nbsp;are slowly becoming ubiquitous, being added to the software and hardware we use every day (sometimes whether we like it or not). But if we’re using artificial intelligence to perform tasks, search for information and solve problems, what does that mean for the intelligence we’re born with?



To figure this out, a team of researchers conducted a study involving 666 individuals ages 17 and up, representing a diverse population. It first evaluated the extent to which each of them made use of AI tools, then tested their critical thinking skills. The results of the study,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/15/1/6" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">which were published</a>&nbsp;in the journal&nbsp;Societies, found that those who used AI tools a lot showed worse critical thinking abilities than those who didn’t use them often or at all. Whether someone used AI tools was a bigger predictor of a person’s thinking skills than any other factor, including educational attainment.



The reason for this is a phenomenon called “cognitive offloading” – where people’s thinking and problem-solving are essentially delegated. Frequent cognitive offloading reduces a person’s ability to independently think and solve problems. “This relationship underscores the dual-edged nature of AI technology,” the study authors wrote. “While it enhances efficiency and convenience, it inadvertently fosters dependence, which can compromise critical thinking skills over time.”



These findings are consistent with other studies that have shown a similar negative impact from AI tools on critical thinking skills. The authors note, however, that other studies show AI tools can be beneficial when they complement critical thinking, rather than offloading it. “Future research should explore strategies to integrate AI tools in ways that enhance rather than hinder cognitive engagement,” they wrote. “Ensuring that the next generation is equipped with the skills necessary to navigate an increasingly complex digital landscape.”



Stay tuned.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-bioengineering-off-the-shelf-arteries-for-trauma-patients">Bioengineering Off-The-Shelf Arteries For Trauma Patients</h2>



<abbr>E</abbr>very year, thousands of Americans receive traumatic injuries that damage the arteries that crucially carry blood to their limbs. When these occur, patients basically have three options, Laura Niklason, CEO of regenerative medicine startup Humacyte, told me: they can have a vein grafted from another part of their body, which takes extra time and causes additional trauma; the surgeon can replace the artery with a synthetic plastic one, which creates a high risk of infection; or the limb can be amputated.



Niklason has a fourth option: her company has developed a bioengineered artery called Symvess which can be surgically implanted in a patient’s body, helping to both preserve the limb and reduce risk of infection. Symvess is derived from human donor cells that are grown in a lab on a degradable scaffold, in batches of 200 at a time. Over time, the cells recreate the physical structure of a blood vessel. Once that’s complete, the living cells are then processed away, leaving the artery structure behind, which can then be implanted in a new patient without risk of rejection. Cells in the patient&#8217;s body then occupy the implant, essentially regenerating a new artery.



Last month, Symvess was&nbsp;<a href="https://investors.humacyte.com/news-releases/news-release-details/humacyte-announces-fda-approval-symvesstm-acellular-tissue" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">approved by the FDA</a>&nbsp;for use in patients with traumatic injuries. That approval was based on studies that showed that the product, which has been implanted in over 600 patients so far, is significantly less likely to cause infection or lead to limb amputation compared to conventional synthetic arteries made from plastic.



For its next steps, the company will be working with Medicare and private insurers to ensure that they will pay for transplant procedures using Symvess. It’s also conducting studies to use Symvess with patients who have kidney dialysis and patients who have pulmonary arterial hypertension. It’s also developing a new, smaller version of its product that could potentially be used for heart bypass patients.



“This is truly a first-of-its-kind technology, and the FDA had to see a lot of data before they could get comfortable and say yes,” said Niklason. “So I’m very glad to be here.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK: INACTIVE VIRUSES MAY CAUSE NEURODEGENERATION</h2>



It’s long been known that repeated head injuries can lead to&nbsp;neurodegenerative diseases&nbsp;like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and CTE. But it wasn’t clear exactly how that happened. New research suggests the answer may be&nbsp;dormant viruses, particularly&nbsp;herpes simplex 1, which is found in the brains of over 80% of the population. These findings were reached by growing&nbsp;small tissue models&nbsp;of the brain, some with the herpes virus and some without, which were then struck repeatedly with a piston to mimic concussion.



The study, which was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scisignal.ado6430" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">published in&nbsp;Science Signalling</a>, found that the brain tissues with the virus developed signs of&nbsp;Alzheimer’s disease, while those without did not, and that the damage was markedly increased with repeated blows. The researchers plan to conduct future studies that explore whether exposure to&nbsp;antiviral or anti-inflammatory drugs&nbsp;shortly after an injury could help prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">FINAL FRONTIER: WATER-BASED PROPULSION TEST</h2>



Japanese startup&nbsp;Pale Blue&nbsp;<a href="https://pale-blue.co.jp/news/543/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">announced</a>&nbsp;it has signed a deal with Italy-based company&nbsp;D-Orbit&nbsp;to conduct two demonstrations in-orbit of its&nbsp;new ion thruster, which allows satellites both to maneuver and to take themselves out of orbit at the end of their life. Pale Blue’s thruster uses&nbsp;water&nbsp;as a propellant, which potentially offers a cleaner and more sustainable fuel for small satellites.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WHAT ELSE I WROTE THIS WEEK</h2>



In my other newsletter,&nbsp;InnovationRx, my colleague&nbsp;Amy Feldman&nbsp;and I&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/innovationrx/2025/01/08/innovationrx-medical-debts-will-be-erased-from-credit-histories/">covered a number of healthcare stories</a>, including a drug that significantly improves survival for&nbsp;lung cancer&nbsp;patients, the controversy over&nbsp;pulse oximetry&nbsp;technology and a new study that finds that while&nbsp;LLMs&nbsp;are good at answering medical exam questions, they’re much less proficient at making diagnoses from patient conversations.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">SCIENCE AND TECH TIDBITS</h2>



My colleague Jeremy Bogaisky&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2025/01/09/amazon-alibaba-fiber-optic-drone-ukraine/">reports</a>&nbsp;that online retailers like Amazon and Alibaba are selling technology that&nbsp;protects drones&nbsp;from having their signals jammed or being remotely taken over.



Ai startup Anthropic’s new funding round will make all seven of its founders&nbsp;billionaires,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2025/01/08/anthropic-60-billion-valuation-will-make-all-seven-cofounders-billionaires/">write my colleagues</a>&nbsp;Alex Konrad and Phoebe Liu.



Researchers&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2025/01/novel-quantum-refrigerator-great-erasing-quantum-computers-chalkboard" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">developed a technique</a>&nbsp;for&nbsp;refrigerating quantum computers&nbsp;in a way that reduces errors and could potentially make them more reliable.



Eating&nbsp;grapefruit&nbsp;can interfere with the action of several kinds of medications, including anti-anxiety drugs and statins. But new research suggests it may be possible to&nbsp;<a href="https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/nph.20322" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">grow a variety of the fruit</a>&nbsp;that doesn’t interfere with prescription drugs.



Biologists successfully transplanted&nbsp;chloroplasts–the cells that power photosynthesis– from algae into&nbsp;hamsters, where they&nbsp;<a href="https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/pjab/100/9/100_pjab.100.035/_article" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">successfully functioned</a>&nbsp;for about three days.



Scientists at Northwestern University&nbsp;<a href="https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2025/01/trash-to-treasure-industrial-waste-battery/?fj=1" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">built a battery</a>&nbsp;that uses triphenylphosphine oxide, a common&nbsp;industrial waste product, to store energy instead of metals.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">PRO SCIENCE TIP: ADD WATER TO YOUR COFFEE BEANS</h2>



Here’s an easy tip to enhance the flavor of your morning cup of&nbsp;coffee: add a little&nbsp;water&nbsp;to the beans before you grind them. This isn’t a new idea–among coffee professionals this is known as the “Ross Droplet Technique”–but new research gives scientific backing to the idea. When beans are ground, they build up a&nbsp;static electric charge, which causes clumping and inconsistent extraction during the brewing process. In new&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cell.com/matter/fulltext/S2590-2385(23)00568-4" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">research published</a>&nbsp;in the journal&nbsp;Matter, scientists found that the Ross Droplet Technique reduced the static charge during grinding, producing a&nbsp;better-tasting coffee.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WHAT’S ENTERTAINING ME THIS WEEK</h2>



I’ve been listening to the concept album&nbsp;Epic&nbsp;by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.epicthemusical.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Jorge Rivera-Herrans</a>. It’s a musical-style adaptation of&nbsp;The Odyssey, telling the tale of&nbsp;Odysseus&nbsp;from the end of the&nbsp;Trojan War&nbsp;until his return home to&nbsp;Ithaca. The album is divided into nine sagas of a few songs each, serving as chapters in the story. It’s an amazing version of one of humanity’s oldest stories, and it’s appropriate for it to be sung–that is, after all, how it was originally presented in the time of Homer. It’s streaming on most of the major music services.

Working robots

The Prototype: Study Suggests AI Tools Decrease Critical Thinking Skills

CES Las Vegas kicked off this week with a keynote from Nvidia, the second-most valuable company after Apple, with AI-powered innovations for gaming, robotics, autonomous vehicles, agentic AI, and its first desktop computer.



Nvidia CEO and founder Jensen Huang said AI is advancing at an incredible pace, which started with perception AI, then generative AI, and now, “physical AI, AI that can proceed, reason, plan and act”.



Its newly announced Nvidia Cosmos platform was described as a “ChatGPT moment” for robotics and autonomous vehicles by Huang intended to advance ‘physical AI’.



Its gen-AI capabilities will simulate and predict real-world outcomes by generating high-fidelity, physics-aware video from simple inputs, explains Nvidia.



Huang described agentic AI as the next big thing for the enterprise, designed to exhibit autonomy, decision-making capabilities, and perform tasks proactively, rather than reactive AI.



Apart from its Blackwell-based GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics cards for high performance applications for gaming, AI development, content creation, etc, it also announced a partnership with Toyota to power its next-generation of vehicles.



The DriveOS operating system focuses on safety, autonomous driving and AI-powered cockpit experiences.



Nvidia will also partner with Aurora Innovation, an autonomous trucking company, to power its next-generation self-driving trucks.



Other car news included Honda’s unveiling of two new EV prototype models, the Honda 0 Saloon and Honda 0 SUV. It is expected to go on sale in North America in 2026, as part of the company’s 0 Series lineup. No technical specifications were shared.



Sony and Honda announced pricing for its previously introduced electric Afeela, which starts at $89,900. The EV is powered by Sony software, which supports PS5 games through its infotainment system.



BMW unveiled a new iDrive version, featuring BMW Panoramic Vision, to be introduced first on all its Neue Klasse models at the end of 2025.



It’s a futuristic head-up display (HUD) that spans across the bottom of the windscreen, projecting driver information that is customisable.



Zeekr showed off an autonomous robotaxi (RT), with Nvidia’s Drive AGX Thor system-on-chip, making it the first automaker in the world to do so.



The company says the Zeekr RT will begin mass production this year, which will be used by Google’s Waymo for its next-gen self-driving taxis. Delivery is expected before the end of 2025.



And taking things a notch higher is Chinese EV maker XPeng who showed off a modular flying car called the AeroHT.



The ‘Land Aircraft Carrier’ is an electric van with six wheels, and at the back it houses an electric vehicle take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft for one passenger to fly in.



XPeng says its flying car takes “five minutes to learn and three hours to master”, featuring a joystick and large touchscreen. It is not made for commutes, but rather to explore remote areas like if you’re camping.



CES also showcased pet tech, such as GPS tracking, health monitoring and bark monitoring, by Tractive, which lets dog owners monitor things like health and happiness.



The company says its app will “alert pet owners when a concerning pattern is emerging, as dogs can’t speak and are often very good at hiding pain or discomfort”.



Speaking about wellbeing, the Nutrix coriSense is a small handheld gadget that tells you if you’re stressed by spitting into it. It recommends testing four times a day, and analyses cortisol levels from your saliva.



Other wacky gadgets showcased was the Kirin Electric Salt Spoon concept that enhances the perception of saltiness in your food using mild electric currents, and the Spicerr dispenser with touchscreen that measures out your spices from six spice capsules.



Only time will tell if these concepts make it to the real world.

XPeng Flying Car; Image supplied

Global Tech Event Unveils AI Breakthroughs, Flying Cars And PetTech: A Glimpse Of The Weird And Wacky

Scott Belsky Says AI Is Collapsing Boundaries Between Traditional Business Functions And Putting More Creative Ability Within Anyone’s Reach.



Tell me a bit about your role at Adobe.



Belsky:&nbsp;My responsibility is overseeing our emerging product groups. These are the groups that include 3D &amp; Immersive. They include the AI-first products, like&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2024/10/14/new-creative-beginnings-gen-ai-redefining-ideation-with-project-concept" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Project Concept</a>&nbsp;and a whole roadmap of others. They include the Adobe Stock business, which is going through a re-imagination in the world of AI, and is also responsible for sourcing the data that we train our models on.



Then, of course, design. The design organization spans all of our products and services across the company, and it’s an important part of my role to make sure that the designers are aligned around the experiences we’re delivering to our customers. Upgrading our design system, ensuring that we don’t reinvent the wheel across different products when it relates to a particular component or function.



The Strategy &amp; Corporate Development Group also is in my organization. That’s a group that plots the strategy for Adobe going forward, and explores the edges that may someday become the center for the company, then also takes action on some of the inorganic opportunities that we have on the M&amp;A side.



When you’re looking forward, how large of a role does AI play in corporate strategy?



Artificial intelligence to me is reimagining and refactoring every function of an organization. Whether it be finance and accounting, or HR, or legal, or creative, or marketing, these functions are being re-imagined based on these tools. These tools are also collapsing the boundaries between some of these functions, which allow stakeholders who ordinarily were never able to access the power of these functions to be able to do stuff on their behalf.



When you look at the world of creativity and marketing, a few things become clear. First of all, you have a lot of marketers at the edge, like these social media marketers, and people who are engaging in real-time on behalf of the brand on social platforms, where a lot of the spend goes these days for marketing. Those folks need to be outfitted to be able to create in real time. They need to be able to create variations of marketing campaigns. They need to be able to create content that responds to the moment. So in some ways, the lines are blurry. These marketers are acting more like creators.



Similarly on the creator side, creators are starting to act as if they’re art directors and creative directors when they have the ability to assign tasks to AI. Instead of the three or five options that they have the time to explore, now they can explore 300 options leveraging the superpowers of AI. In some cases, that makes them more tastemakers, creative directors and art directors when they’re at that stage of the process.



When it comes to using tools to get exactly what’s in their mind’s eye reflected in some sort of content or creative asset, they have these new tools at their disposal. That’s one of the things that we’re most excited about at Adobe: Taking our creative pros from the prompt era of AI creativity to the controls era. Right now, the creative pros that I talk to are still tinkering with these models. They have fun putting in prompts and stuff like that. It’s a cool concepting and ideation process, but none of it is commercially ready for them to use for putting out something. They want to make all these changes, so they take it into Photoshop, they take it into Illustrator, they take it into our products. I think that control era, where AI becomes even more granular and they can take the reins, is an important step for creative pros.



It’s been two years since ChatGPT hit and every enterprise decided they wanted to have generative AI. How have you seen businesses change their perspective on AI? How do they look at it now?



I think there are two camps of businesses. There are the businesses that typically are the pragmatists. They’re always late to adopt new technologies, for all sorts of reasons. It could be regulatory, it could be deeply ingrained traditions, patterns and reflexes. And it could be the leaders are somewhat technophobic and they want to wait until they have to change something.



Then there’s the camp that’s always saying, we need to reimagine how we do what we do before someone else does. I think [a] characteristic of that camp that leans forward in new technology is they recognize that not only should they be optimizing their product, but they should also be optimizing how they work to create their product. They’re always saying: if we could have more efficient meetings, or if we could have more efficient usage of our data, or if we could optimize the way that we come up with marketing ideas, or if we could streamline this and streamline that.



In that camp, I feel like there’s a big lean in on this technology. They’re in most cases at least playing with it. Many of them are piloting it in some way, shape or form across specific projects. And those who are still playing and piloting are trying to protect the groups that are doing so by making the objectives more along the lines of learning, as opposed to a business outcome, because they want to make sure that they grasp the knowledge and learnings of these tools and their workflows.



And then there are some that have already started to achieve business outcomes and really refactor. When I look at Adobe, we are using products like Copilot and GitHub for our engineers. That has a material impact on how we work. We use Firefly for our branding and marketing work. We’re already creating variations of content and experiencing this kind of multiplier benefit of using those tools.



From where you sit and what you see, both at Adobe but also in the wider space, what do you see coming online and becoming available and accessible to businesses in the way of AI in 2025?



In 2025, there will be a few themes. Number one is that the memory that these AI tools have of our preferences is going to start to enhance the outcomes that we can achieve. On the content and marketing side, the AI remembering the character consistency of something you’re trying to generate content around—whether it be a product that you’re shooting marketing images of, or a character going through a commercial or a short piece of video that you’re developing. The remembering of your brand components, your preferences for brand tone and copy and all that sort of stuff.



On the personal consumer LLM stuff that we all use, the context windows are getting longer and more sophisticated. These AI agents remembering everything we’ve ever purchased, everything we’ve ever liked or disliked, those preferences are going to start to kick in to uplevel the quality of those experiences.



The rise of [AI] agents is going to surprise all of us. We’ve always had a learning curve when it comes to learning tools, software and processes. That’s the learning curve of starting a job or rising the ranks. I would imagine sometime this year, these agents are going to start to meet us where we are in the software tools that we use. They’re going to know what we know and don’t know about it, and they’ll allow us to leverage a lot of power with natural language.



I think it’s really exciting to know that anyone could be able to use a lot of tools that were out of reach. It [also] allows companies like us to not just target marketers and creative pros, but also the stakeholders of marketing and creative, which is almost everyone in an organization. And it also just drives better usage of the product. If an agent helps you and takes actions on your behalf and can explain and show you, it’s really a holy grail for helping people get value out of the products they use.



For creative and marketing tools at Adobe, what is on the horizon—in terms of new developments, ideas and concepts—that will impact what you do?



A couple come to mind. Number one is this new category of ideation and concepting. That typically is the top of the funnel of any creative process. It typically happens in a very offline or manual way, in the form of people making mood boards of images or bookmarks on Instagram of things that inspire them. As I’ve gone around and talked to a lot of creators, art and creative directors and brand managers, they’re constantly collecting all this stuff. For them to be able to use AI to rapidly expand the surface area of possibility they can explore to find great solutions to problems, that category of concepting and mood boarding in the age of AI is really interesting to us. I think that’s one new category that’s going to emerge that’s going to be important for Adobe, and also for the creative and marketing worlds.



The second thing that I think we will see is the maturing, development and innovation of our foundation models. Firefly is in the leading pack of models out there for media generation. The key difference is that Firefly was only trained on commercially safe content that we have licensed. I think we’re one of the only companies that’s really transparent about exactly how we’ve trained our model—as opposed to politely not answering the question. I think that’s important to a lot of our customers, especially in the enterprise, or [among] artists who want to use new tools like AI, but in the right way. I think these models will continue to get better, but that differentiation will continue to become more important.



While we want to make Firefly as great as possible and have it be the commercially safe model for commercial creativity and marketing, I also think that customers may want to use third-party models for various purposes. They might want to use a certain generative model that was trained to make explosions, or to help typography. I’ve been an advocate internally of us supporting third-party models in the workflows that people have. Adobe’s always been a platform-agnostic company, and whenever a platform like Apple or Windows gets better, so do our tools. Similarly, if a new video model comes out, and then another better one, and another better one, if all of those are accessible to our customers for various use cases, how could we not help our customers make use of them? That’s also something that we’re exploring.



You are one of the creators of the&nbsp;<a href="https://contentauthenticity.org/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Content Authenticity Initiative</a>. Where do you see that going in 2025?



This is one of the true passion projects of my career that I think [is] most important. The Content Authenticity Initiative started over five years ago when we started to see new features emerge in products like After Effects that allowed people to edit real video in a very fast way using AI. So this is before the advent of generative AI, but [it] allowed you to remove objects, mask and do things in video that made something very clear to us: The era ahead was one where we could no longer believe our eyes. In that sense, the question was: What do we do to help people demonstrate that something is real? Or if they’ve edited it, how do we help them show how it was changed so that they can still be trusted? It wasn’t developed to punish bad actors. It was developed to reward good actors who are willing to show the provenance and attribution of their work, which creators love. They want to get credit for their work, so they want to add credentials if they can.



Now, in the age of generative AI and the ubiquity of these technologies, the importance of the Content Authenticity Initiative became 10x, because suddenly all of this stuff, anything in your mind could be generated in a second. In some of the models out there that are trained on the open internet, you can make anyone be doing anything. We realized everyone’s looking for the same solution. The social platforms want a way to expose credentials of assets to show how they were edited or made. The enterprises of the world want to know which model was used to create assets, because if it’s a non-commercially safe model, they may not want to use it in a marketing campaign.



Over the last five years, this has become way bigger than Adobe. We are one of the leaders of a number of people. It’s an open-source, open protocol. It’s a nonprofit organization that runs this with constituents from other companies, including competitive companies. The adoption of content credentials is now north of 3,000. Organizations including all the major camera companies like Nikon, Leica, Canon, Sony. You name it, folks are getting on board.



The vision here is very simple. There’s a cryptographic signature that is put into every asset. It’s not a centralized service. This manifest of data, and how this asset was edited and made, travels with the asset. It’s done in such a way where even if you take a screenshot, it still preserves that information. The platforms that display it have the option—whether it’s YouTube, who’s on board, or Facebook, Meta’s on board—has the option of showing any degree of granularity over those credentials that are attached to that asset. And at the end of the day, us as end viewers can determine whether we can trust it or not.



If we were to be having a conversation a year from today, looking back on what’s happened in 2025 and what to expect in terms of AI for 2026, what would we be talking about?



I think we’d be talking about the new discoveries we’ve had on how to use these reasoning engines. I think we’re still at the infancy of how we leverage these state-of-the-art LLMs. As they gain more powerful and longer context windows, and they start to learn who we are, and in some ways empathize with us and where we are in our knowledge, and what our interests are, et cetera, these reasoning engines are going to play a really interesting role, kind of augmenting the way our brain works.



The thing that I find most interesting these days, personally, is when I talk to friends about how they’re using these tools: To go back and forth and make health decisions about themselves that they never had the resources to make. Or they’re putting a proposal together for a customer, and putting it into the LLM first and saying, what might give my customer pause? Why might my customer not want to do business with me based on this proposal? They’re getting such incredible, interesting responses increasingly based on who they are or what their company does. It’s really magical. It’s like having an instant focus group of exactly who you’d want to be in front of you at every given moment in time, and having those insights come back to you. I think we’re going to be surprised by the power of these reasoning engines for making decisions, for managing personal things, for being more effective in our jobs.



I also think they’re going to start to play a role in the commerce or purchase decisions that we make. The idea that we used to decide what restaurant to go to or what thing to buy based on how many stars it has from strangers is going to be replaced by the wisdom and guidance of an AI that knows us extremely well and can give us a recommendation based on our preferences, opposed to based on what the average person thinks.



If you could give some wisdom to CEOs that are looking forward and trying to map out an AI strategy for 2025, what would you say?



No. 1 is allow your teams to play and pilot this technology. Novelty precedes utility when it comes to adoption of new technology. You might not feel like it’s driving the bottom line immediately, but that play helps them discover the utility that ultimately makes a huge impact in the business.



No. 2 is constantly asking yourself a question. Whenever you’re reviewing the roadmap for a particular function of your organization, or the hiring plan, or the product strategy, you should always be asking yourself: Are we sufficiently refactoring how this works? And are we sufficiently re-imagining what’s possible? We’re in a platform shift now that happens probably once every decade—if not longer—where you actually can fundamentally change the way something operates. Over the coming years, roles will change. The tools that we use to run certain functions will change. And as a leader of an organization, you have to be asking yourself: Are we sufficiently refactoring? Are we sufficiently reimagining how we can achieve our mission?

In this photo illustration, the Adobe, Inc. logo is seen

AI Is Reimagining Every Aspect Of Business, Adobe’s Strategy Lead Says

<a href="https://www.forbes.com/"></a><a href="https://www.forbes.com/search/"></a>In 2025, advancements in AI and voice technology could fulfill a promise that tech giants have been making for more than a decade.



Voice assistants like SIri and Alexa could get a much needed boost by AI agents.NurPhoto via Getty Images



In 2016, when newly-minted Google CEO Sundar Pichai unveiled the Google Assistant as part of his new “AI-first” agenda, he touted the fledgling voice assistant as a tool to help people complete tasks.



“The Google Assistant allows you to get things done, bringing you the information you need, when you need it, wherever you are,” he wrote in a&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.google/intl/en-mena/product-updates/explore-get-answers/2016-google-assistant-en/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">blog post</a>&nbsp;at the time.



It was a lofty goal that has, for the most part, fallen short. Too often, the software gets stumped by a request, defaulting to a web search and apologetically saying it can’t help. That led people to relegate voice assistants to simple tasks like setting cooking timers, playing music or controlling their lights. Amazon’s Alexa, released a decade ago, hasn’t fared much better. Siri, the earliest of the bunch, launched by Apple in 2011, has been&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/SiriFail/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">panned most of all</a>.



But as generative AI has gone mainstream over the last two years, it has paved the way for AI “agents”: software that’s specifically programmed to take action or complete tasks on behalf of a user, like booking a reservation or buying something online. And as the “agentic era,” as Pichai calls it, arrives in 2025, the technology has the chance to do something that has to date eluded the big tech platforms: make their voice assistants actually useful.



That means Google Assistant, Alexa and Siri could finally fulfill their promise to act like personal assistants. Instead of just reciting your meeting schedule for the day, like Google Assistant can do now, it might actually be able to book the meetings, reaching out to contacts and finding a time that works for both people. They might have the ability to book your flights and hotels for a big vacation like a digital travel agent, with little more info than trip dates and destination.



Agents are the latest frenzy in the tech industry, with more than 470 platforms devoted to the technology, according to Forrester research. That ranges from big tech giants to smaller startups like LangChain, CrewAI and Play.ai. Beyond consumer features, they can also potentially transform businesses, with agents for customer service or&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rashishrivastava/2024/12/02/cognition-scott-wu-devin-ai/">software development</a>. Deal count for AI agent startups is up more than 81% over the last year, according to PitchBook, with more than $8 billion invested in the space.



“The race is on,” said Steve Jang, a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/lists/midas/">Forbes&nbsp;Midas List investor</a>&nbsp;and founder of the firm Kindred Ventures. “Startups will be competing with the established platforms on who can orchestrate this at much higher fidelity. And who can create much more humanistic and realistic voices and conversations, and access the data and actions that we all want.”



The big tech voice assistants are best poised for such an AI jump start. Google has its marquee model Gemini to beef up its voice searches. Apple earlier this year announced a partnership with OpenAI to use ChatGPT to power some Siri queries. And in the last year, Amazon has invested $8 billion in Anthropic, which makes the powerful Claude chatbot. Google declined to make any of its executives available for interviews. Apple and Amazon didn’t reply to interview requests.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“I only use Siri for trivial things that I know it&#8217;s not going to screw up.”Kanjun Qiu, Co-founder, Imbue
</blockquote>



Jang thinks the real innovations will be made in actual voice AI models. Unlike large language models, which underpin services like ChatGPT, voice models are not trained on text and then read aloud by the software. Instead, voice models are trained on actual voice audio, so they can pick up on subtleties in speech, like cadence or emotional cues. Jang has invested in Play.ai, which specializes in voice agents; it’s competing with companies like ElevenLabs, OpenAI and Google that are all working on voice models.



Some, however, are not so convinced that agents will make the big voice assistants exponentially better. Kanjun Qiu, founder of Imbue, which is building agents for coding software, thinks adding more AI to those products will only “incrementally” improve them. She said that new AI features still won’t be a big enough leap for people to trust them. “Delegation as a paradigm is actually really hard for people,” said Qiu. “I only use Siri for trivial things that I know it&#8217;s not going to screw up.”



But she thinks recent improvements in voice AI will help consumers in other ways. For example, more apps will integrate voice features, she predicts. With improved latency and natural language understanding, you’ll be able to give an app instructions and it will carry out that action, Qiu said — like telling an e-commerce app you’d like to return the pair of shoes that don’t fit quite right. (An engineer by training, she said she’s built an app for herself that turns rambling into a to-do list.)



Improvements in AI and voice technology could also unlock hardware ambitions that Silicon Valley has been attempting for years. More than a decade ago, Google infamously faceplanted when it unveiled Google Glass, a piece of smart eyewear that stoked privacy fears and wasn’t very useful. Earlier this month, the company teased a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/2024/12/11/googles-gemini-ai-glasses/">new pair of prototype glasses</a>&nbsp;to be used with Project Astra, Google’s new platform for AI agents. In a demo, the glasses, which are voice-controlled, automatically pulled up a door code from the wearer’s email the moment he looked at the entry keypad. The tech could also conjure up route information about the bus in front of him or the art sculpture he walked by.



Meanwhile, Facebook’s Orion glasses, announced earlier this year, use a combination of voice and hand gestures to control AI tools, like looking at ingredients in your pantry and asking the tech to find a recipe that uses them.



Voice-based innovations also make technology more accessible. Not everyone can read or write or type, but more people have the ability to speak, Jang said. And it’s an increasing preference for young people: 42% of 18-to-29 year olds in the U.S. send voice messages in their chat apps at least weekly, according to a study by YouGov and Vox.



New advancements in AI could make voice tools even more widely used and change the way people interact with their technology. “It makes voice agents — and voice itself — this great new user interface that has been untapped so far in computing,” Jang said.

Internet technology and people’s networks use AI to help with work, AI Learning or artificial intelligence in business and modern technology, AI technology in everyday life.

AI Agents Could Finally Make Siri And Alexa Truly Useful

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">Topline</h2>



Bitcoin set several new records throughout 2024 and eclipsed the six-digit threshold for the first time, leading the charge amid a broader crypto rally after Donald Trump’s election victory—but its milestone surge to $100,000 wasn’t even the most impressive outperformance of the market by a cryptocurrency in 2024, thanks to several altcoins and meme coins also rising dramatically.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">Key Facts</h2>



Bitcoin—surging by 47% since Election Day—has added about $1.2 trillion to its market capitalization this year as of Dec. 19, surging by 130% to just over $102,000.



But it was Pepe, a token named for the meme frog linked to far-right groups, that was the top performer among coins with market capitalizations over $5 billion, gaining about 1,570%, according to CoinMarketCap.



SUI, the native token for Sui’s blockchain network, is the next best performer with a 509% gain, while dogecoin, a cryptocurrency touted by Elon Musk in recent years, outgained bitcoin with a 333% surge, during which the meme coin reached highs not seen since the pandemic.



The token used by Ripple, a digital asset firm cofounded by billionaires&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/chris-larsen/">Chris Larsen</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jed-mccaleb/">Jed McCaleb</a>, similarly outpaced bitcoin this year as XRP jumped nearly 304%.



Stellar, used by the Stellar blockchain network, and Toncoin, the native cryptocurrency for a blockchain developed by Telegram, increased by 233% and 155%, respectively, trailing the Hedera network’s token, which grew about 248%.



Another Shiba Inu-inspired token, Shiba Inu, and Tronix’s cryptocurrency TRON just beat out bitcoin this year by climbing 150% and 155%, respectively.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-10-best-performing-cryptocurrencies-in-2024-market-cap-over-5-billion">The 10 Best-Performing Cryptocurrencies In 2024 (market Cap Over $5 Billion)</h2>



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li>Pepe: up 1,570.7%, market capitalization $9 billion</li>



<li>SUI: up 509%, market cap $13.7 billion</li>



<li>Dogecoin: up 333.1%, market cap $56.9 billion</li>



<li>XRP: up 303.9%, market cap $142.3 billion</li>



<li>Hedera: up 247.7%, market cap $11.5 billion</li>



<li>Stellar: up 233.4%, market cap $12.9 billion</li>



<li>Toncoin: up 155.6%, market cap $14.6 billion</li>



<li>TRON: up 155.1%, market cap $23.7 billion</li>



<li>Shiba Inu: up 150.1%, market cap $15.2 billion</li>



<li>Bitcoin: up 135.9%, market cap $2 trillion</li>
</ol>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-much-did-the-crypto-market-grow-in-2024">How Much Did The Crypto Market Grow In 2024?</h2>



About $1.8 trillion was added to the global crypto market’s aggregate market value in 2024, surging from just below $1.8 trillion to $3.6 trillion as of Dec. 18,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/global-charts" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">according</a>&nbsp;to CoinGecko. Bitcoin holds more than a majority of the market at 56.8% and accounted for roughly two-thirds of the overall market growth.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-are-meme-coins">What Are Meme Coins?</h2>



Meme coins are a form of cryptocurrency often tied to a viral internet joke, and their prices are often&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/meme-coins" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">more volatile</a>&nbsp;than any other token because they react to moments in pop culture. Dogecoin&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2024/11/13/dogecoin-jumps-toward-three-year-high-after-trump-announces-department-of-government-efficiency/">rose</a>&nbsp;in November after Trump announced Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy would lead the Department of Government Efficiency, whose acronymized name shares the name of the coin. Musk subsequently posted images of a “DOGE” logo and a Shiba Inu that appear to refer to dogecoin, which features the dog’s face. He previously embraced dogecoin on social media in 2021, sending the token to a peak of nearly $0.70, before Musk’s comment on “Saturday Night Live” that the coin was a “hustle” sent its price back down to just above $0.05. Altcoins, or cryptocurrencies viewed as an alternative to bitcoin, also tend to be more volatile as some analysts say the market has become&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/what-are-altcoins" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">oversaturated</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-did-trump-s-election-boost-crypto">How Did Trump’s Election Boost Crypto?</h2>



Trump was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2024/10/23/these-pro-crypto-billionaires-have-endorsed-trump-or-harris-as-election-day-nears/">backed by</a>&nbsp;several billionaires with ties to the cryptocurrency industry, including Gemini cofounders Tyler Winklevoss and Cameron Winklevoss and Ripple’s Larsen. Trump claimed he wanted the U.S. to become the “crypto capital of the planet” and has supported bitcoin mining. His election win sent bitcoin to new record highs as the token eclipsed the $80,000, $90,000 and $100,000 thresholds within a month of Election Day. Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap ($418 billion) rose by 43% while adding more than $118 billion to its capitalization. In total, the global crypto market’s aggregate market value has increased by more than $1 trillion since Election Day, according to CoinGecko.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">Key Background</h2>



The crypto market reached new highs in 2024, beginning with the Securities and Exchange Commission <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2024/01/10/sec-approves-spot-bitcoin-etfs-first-crypto-funds-of-kind/?sh=2ca4ef81417a">approving</a> the first bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the U.S. in January. Spot bitcoin ETFs allow investors to invest in the cryptocurrency without paying higher fees associated with buying the token directly on exchanges like Coinbase. That decision brought in about $15 billion in capital within the first five months, according to an analysis from Bernstein. Since then, the crypto market benefitted from becoming a focus of the recent presidential election, including Trump’s embrace of the industry despite his earlier criticism.

Bitcoin on digital circuit board and graph

Bitcoin Wasn’t Even The Best-Performing Cryptocurrency Of 2024—Despite Breaching $100,000

Drone delivery and logistics company Zipline continues to make inroads for communities in the remote areas of Rwanda to access essential medical and agriculture supplies.



Over an hour’s drive outside the city of Kigali, if you happen to see a drone flying overhead, you must know that it has been launched from the Zipline facility in Muhanga, and is probably on its way to deliver a package to a remote village in Rwamagana in the Eastern Province of Rwanda.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Prosper-Uruvugundi-Partnership-Manager-at-Zipline-about-to-release-a-delivery-Photo-byChanel-Retief-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-64115" style="width:584px;height:auto" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Prosper-Uruvugundi-Partnership-Manager-at-Zipline-about-to-release-a-delivery-Photo-byChanel-Retief-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Prosper-Uruvugundi-Partnership-Manager-at-Zipline-about-to-release-a-delivery-Photo-byChanel-Retief-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Prosper-Uruvugundi-Partnership-Manager-at-Zipline-about-to-release-a-delivery-Photo-byChanel-Retief-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Prosper-Uruvugundi-Partnership-Manager-at-Zipline-about-to-release-a-delivery-Photo-byChanel-Retief-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Prosper-Uruvugundi-Partnership-Manager-at-Zipline-about-to-release-a-delivery-Photo-byChanel-Retief-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Photo by Chanel Retief</figcaption></figure></div>


Who will be receiving this package, you may ask? A farmer. And what is being delivered? Pig semen.



“To help increase the genetic diversity of pigs, farmers purchase pig semen and engage a veterinarian trained in artificial insemination,” states an article by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on quality livestock and breeding in Rwanda.



Zipline, a drone delivery and logistics company, has sought to simplify the pain and process of access, eliminating the need for farmers to drive long hours to buy pig semen and bring it back to their farms, oftentimes in an already compromised state.



“Healthy animals and insemination products delivered right on time means more nutritious animal proteins and products,” Prosper Uruvugundi, Partnerships Manager at Zipline, tells FORBES AFRICA, as he takes us past the refrigerators storing semen in the warehouse at Muhanga.



The storeroom features rows of shelves for medication and medical supplies, and cold rooms that store blood for both human and animal needs.



The process, while seemingly seamless, involves many important requisites, for example, the standard hospital or medical services’ delivery requests.



Uruvugundi says that once the order comes through via phone, SMS, WhatsApp, API, or on the Zipline app, the technician will start to process the order.



“This order is coming from Kayonza (from a smallholder farmer in the Eastern Province),” he says, pointing at a screen. “He has requested pig semen.”



Following a query for clarification, “Yes,” says Uruvugundi matter-of-factly.



“Chances are the farmer either has veterinarian training or one on site who will do the insemination.”



Another technician has already taken out a unit of the product and started the process of wrapping it up carefully. Zipline delivers many more products for farmers.



In 2022, Zipline partnered with the Government of Rwanda, which included the Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board (RAB), to up the delivery of both healthcare and animal care goods in the country.



That year alone, the Ministry of Agriculture reportedly delivered more than 500,000 doses of animal health vaccines and more than 8,000 units of swine semen to vets and farmers, using Zipline.



With access to animal husbandry products and an increased fertility rate, more pigs can be raised with a healthier genetic profile.



The company’s autonomous drones operate on optimized flight paths, which are calculated, based on real-time data to ensure swift and reliable deliveries.



Their operations are controlled by a central system that continuously monitors weather, traffic, and the healthcare and farming facility’s demand to coordinate multiple deliveries.



According to Pierre Kayitana, Zipline’s General Manager, this data-driven approach helps reduce response times, increase delivery precision, and ensure that supplies reach their destinations without delay.



“We’re also mindful of the local communities and ecosystems, using technology that minimizes noise and environmental disruption while maximizing the efficiency of each flight,” Kayitana tells FORBES AFRICA.



What started as an operation designed to deliver blood supplies and medicine to remote areas throughout Rwanda has now shaped itself into one that is using technology to tackle an entire ecosystem. “We’re actively scaling up to provide 100% coverage for all Rwandan health posts,” Kayitana says.



“[This ensures] that every community, no matter how remote, has access to essential medical supplies. Our focus in Rwanda will continue to grow, with plans to expand our range of delivered products, potentially incorporating new health solutions like malaria treatments.” As Uruvugundi takes the packaged semen from the ‘Ready to Fly’ post, places the box into the drone and locks it in, we ask how long it



would take for the package to reach the farmer. The flight engineer starts the process, calling in the launch to the control room, signaling it to begin. As the drone zooms past Uruvugundi, he smiles and says with surety: “It will not be more than an hour, maybe two.”

Prosper Uruvugundi, Partnership Manager at Zipline (Photo byChanel Retief)

Where Healthcare And Agritech Take Flight In Rwanda

What comes first: the chicken or the egg? ARTURO ELIZONDO’S biotech is reinventing protein, reshaping global diet and future-proofing the food industry. read on about the world’s first liquid egg made without hens.



Protein water, protein ice cream, protein pasta, protein cookies and protein cereal.



These are just a few of the interesting products on-shelf for anyone looking to increase their daily protein intake. With analysts forecasting that the global protein ingredients’ market will reach $47.4 billion by 2032, there’s no doubt that this macronutrient is having a moment. We have become protein-obsessed but it’s not all about meat. 



Plant-based options are coming into their own as biotech companies create innovative ingredients that mimic animal meat characteristics while meeting consumer protein needs. A great example is heme, the molecule that gives meat its characteristic color and flavor. Heme is also found in plants and microorganisms so through fermentation or genetic engineering, it can be produced from plant or microbial sources. When heme is added to plant-based meat, it becomes eerily similar to the real thing. It’s an incredibly complex process that’s hard to scale, which is why Arturo Elizondo, the co-founder and CEO of The EVERY Company, started with an egg.



One of the biggest obstacles with bio-based products is the ‘valley of death’. Many innovative products die before they hit the market. “It’s one of the challenges with alternative proteins,” explains Elizondo. “So, our big focus, from the beginning, was choosing a technology that could scale; that had already scaled globally.” This is one of the reasons Elizondo chose fermentation for The EVERY Company – he could plug into existing, large-scale fermentation facilities without spending millions of dollars.



“Brewers use yeast to convert sugar into alcohol; we can use yeast to convert sugar into protein,” he says.



Protein is a megatrend that isn’t going away anytime soon. Elizondo says that even though it’s a big part of diet culture – both the keto and the caveman eating plans focus heavily on protein – there are benefits beyond satiety. “It’s the only macromolecule that hasn’t been demonized,” he says. “There are four macromolecules – protein, fats, carbohydrates and alcohol. Fats, carbs and alcohol are all controversial, but protein has maintained its halo.” There’s also the fact that globally, diets are dominated largely by animal proteins which, when farmed industrially, have a significant impact on the environment. “We have to start evolving the way we product protein because the demand isn’t going away,” he adds. As an alternative to the factory farming model, Elizondo believes we can use technology to produce protein in a healthier and more sustainable way. It’s not only about making products that look and taste similar to something else, he says that technology, in the long run, can create better food (and food systems) designed for humans.



One of the proteins Elizondo’s company is relooking is the egg. Although egg consumption in Africa is beyond the global average, it’s estimated that around 1.6 trillion eggs enter the market every year. “And it’s not suddenly going to stop. We’re not all going to start eating lentils and tofu,” he laughs. What makes The EVERY Company a little different is that it is an ingredients company. They’re not simply producing a consumer facing substitute for eggs (although they do have a few), they’re working with major industry players to integrate EVERY Company’s alternative protein ingredient into existing products and supply chains. 



“The unsexy thing about food is the supply chain. When the Covid pandemic happened and countries shut down their borders, it was a big wake-up call for the companies who import their animal protein,” says Elizondo. Another challenge is avian influenza, also known as bird flu. The poultry industry suffers, the price of eggs goes up and the manufacturers that use eggs are forced to adjust production schedules or reformulate recipes to cope with shortages. 



“How do we build a more resilient food system that can withstand the pressures of pandemics, climate change and zoonotic diseases? It’s a very fragile system,” he says. 



At the same time, many big food companies have ESG targets to cut carbon emissions and keep their supply chains steady. This usually means more consistent sourcing, avoiding rushed shipping and relying less on resource-heavy practices (like industrial egg farming which produces high levels of waste and emissions). “This is why we exist and how we can make impact at scale. We can support the entire industry and not be seen as adversarial. We’re building a better food system,” he says. For Elizondo, this is the future of food. In addition to working with major food producers on the ingredients side, The EVERY Company will be entering the mass market in 2025 with the EVERY Egg, the world’s first liquid egg made without hens. It’s not an elitist product that only expensive grocery stores will carry but rather an item everyone can find, afford and most importantly, eat.



Functionality first



As an industry, plant-based protein companies face a lot of challenges. In France, the words ‘steak’, ‘bacon’, and ‘sausage’ have been outlawed for meat alternatives. In South Africa, the High Court overturned an attempt by the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development (DALRRD) to impose similar restrictions. The issue took two years to resolve, and certain products were removed in the interim from retail shelves.



“This is why it’s so important to partner with the incumbents and work with them, not against them. There’s this huge gap in ingredients that no one talks about and that’s where our focus lies. It’s not about taste, it’s about functionality,” says Elizondo. “If you look at ingredient labels, it’s almost impossible to avoid eggs, they’re everywhere because they’re functional. They foam, bind and gel in ways that nothing else can.”



Eggs may seem like an impossible ingredient to replace but that’s where the biggest opportunity for The EVERY Company lies. In some ways, Elizondo compares the path he’s following to insulin. In 1922, insulin came from the pancreatic tissue of cows (and later pigs). It was produced at scale by Eli Lily to treat diabetes but still came from animals. But then, in 1978, the first genetically engineered, synthetic ‘human’ insulin was produced using E. coli bacteria. “This company found a way to make insulin through protein fermentation technology and within 15 years, it dominated the market. And now, 99% of insulin in the world is made using the same technology,” says Elizondo. Protein fermentation technology moved to the cheese industry and replaced animal rennet with bio-identical chymosin, an enzyme essential for curdling milk. It’s a technique also used to create vitamins and to extend the freshness of baked goods by synthesizing enzymes that improve texture and shelf life. Protein is more than a megatrend, “it’s the best-kept secret in the food industry,” exclaims Elizondo. “And if we can make these ingredients a little bit better, a little bit safer, a little bit more sustainable, that’s worth fighting for.”

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