Issue #53

Paris fashion week over, KMPG partners rejoice over pay, bank chatbot disrespects customers, and more.

News from January 23 - January 30, 2025

Paris Fashion Week Over 

Paris Fashion Week Men's A/W 2025 concluded the menswear season with shows from fashion's biggest names. Pharrell Williams opened at Louis Vuitton, collaborating with streetwear legend Nigo in a collection that celebrated their long friendship, displayed amid their personal archives.

Rick Owens paid tribute to Concordia, the Italian industrial town where he's produced collections for twenty years, while Issey Miyake's IM Men made its runway debut. The week also welcomed new arrivals, including Willy Chavarria's shift from New York and Jacquemus's dedicated menswear show.

Peter Copping's anticipated debut at Lanvin closed the week, presenting both men's and womenswear collections. His vision drew inspiration from Jeanne Lanvin herself, featuring 1920s-influenced designs and Art Deco elements, marking a promising start for the historic house.

Source

Chinese DeepSeek Sinks Wallstreet 

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek sent shockwaves through markets after revealing its $5 million model achieved similar results to US competitors, causing Nvidia to lose $600 billion in market value - or roughly 120,000 times what DeepSeek spent on its development. The Nasdaq fell 3.1% as investors rushed to understand what this meant for the industry.

The shock spread beyond tech stocks, with companies that make AI equipment also seeing big losses. DeepSeek's achievement, which Marc Andreessen called "AI's Sputnik moment," caused investors worldwide to rethink how much money would be needed for future AI development.

While some Wall Street analysts doubted DeepSeek's claims, suggesting the company may have used existing OpenAI technology, the news showed China's ongoing AI progress despite US trade limits. Some experts say cheaper AI development could help the industry by making the technology more available to everyone.

Source 

KPMG Partners Rejoice Over Pay

KPMG UK's revenue growth dropped to just 1% in the year ending September, reaching £2.99 billion, much lower than its 9% and 16% growth in previous years. This marks a significant slowdown for the major accounting firm.

Despite slower revenue growth, the company's pre-tax profits increased by 11% to £404 million, recovering from last year's 20% profit decline. KPMG achieved this by reducing costs across its business.

Partners at the firm saw their average pay rise to £816,000 from £786,000 the previous year. KPMG UK's chief Jon Holt described these results as good, considering the difficult market conditions they faced.

Source 

Bulletin Board

• Bank Chatbot Disrespects Customers. A Virgin Money customer asked about merging two ISAs, using the bank's name in their question. The chatbot responded "Please don't use words like that. I won't be able to continue our chat if you use this language," deeming the word "virgin" too inappropriate for banking. The bank apologized and promised upgrades to the system, which was running on older technology with basic language processing. This type of AI confusion, known as hallucination, has caused problems across industries - notably when Air Canada's chatbot invented a bereavement discount policy, forcing the airline to honor the non-existent deal. Source 
• Elon Launches New Fintech. X announced a partnership with Visa to launch X Money, a digital payment service that will let users instantly send money and make payments using Visa's global network. The service will launch later this year as part of Musk's vision for an "everything app." Since buying Twitter in 2022, Musk has secured 40 state money transfer licenses and plans to give verified users $10 to start using the service. The PayPal co-founder aims to build a payments business worth $1.3 billion within six years. The move puts X in direct competition with digital wallet giants like PayPal, Apple, and Google, while giving Visa a new channel for its payment services at a time when it faces increasing government scrutiny over its fees and market dominance. Source 
• UK Building Silicon Valley Rival. The UK government has revived plans to create a high-tech corridor between Oxford and Cambridge universities, modeled after successful US innovation hubs like Boston and San Francisco. The project aims to link Britain's two premier academic centers and double the region's economic output. Industry leaders, including executives from AstraZeneca and Arm, backed the initiative, which could add £78 billion to the UK economy by 2035. The plan includes restoring the historic Varsity railway line and building one million new homes to support the growing tech hub. However, the project faces significant infrastructure hurdles, with water and electricity shortages already blocking some development plans. The government's commitment comes without new funding announcements, though earlier budgets allocated money for the rail connection between the two university cities. Source 
• Media Outlets Publishing AI Slop. A major media company, G/O Media, has expanded its AI-written content beyond simple financial updates to full news articles on its business site Quartz. While each article carries a warning about potential errors, the AI is already making significant mistakes. The most concerning issue is that the AI is citing other AI-generated content as sources. In one article, it referenced "Devdiscourse," another suspected AI news site that published a story with a computer-generated company logo reading "NORDIISK STIAPLAME" instead of "Novo Nordisk." This represents a growing problem of AI content feeding into other AI content, creating a cycle of potential misinformation. G/O Media has already faced criticism for similar AI failures, including error-filled articles on Gizmodo and poor Spanish translations, yet continues to push automated content despite protests from its human journalists. Source 
• ChatGPT’s Mobile Users 85% Male. ChatGPT dominates the mobile AI market with $1.42 billion in consumer spending for 2024, a 274% increase from 2023. However, the app's user base shows a striking gender imbalance: 84.5% of users are male across all age groups. While the app has been downloaded 353 million times, its demographics reveal more patterns. Over half of users are under 25, with the 50-64 age group forming the second-largest segment at 20.2%. The youth skew might be linked to homework help, as a quarter of U.S. teens now use ChatGPT for schoolwork. Women's lower adoption rates may reflect broader concerns about AI. Studies show women are generally more skeptical of AI technology, with 53% opposing their children's AI use compared to 26% of men. They also face higher risks from AI misuse, such as deepfakes, and are more likely to lose jobs to automation according to McKinsey. Source

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