Gen AI and cloud optimization help Asian SuperApp Grab turn a profit

Singapore-based superapp Grab logged its first ever positive net profit late last week, and revealed it was helped by cutting cloud costs and adopting generative AI. "2023 was a pivotal year for Grab," enthused co-founder and CEO Anthony Tan in an earnings call. The superapp's net profit hit $11 million in its Q4 2023 – a …

[CaroleS]

Sparkling autocomplete isn't good enough to do your job. But it's good enough to trick your boss into thinking it can do your job.

[Rosie Davies]

Normally I'd agree with you but the article has the quote "...driving click-through rates upward compared to manually generated content...". I feel that's the metric that counts here. Even if it were quicker and cheaper to generate the content, if it's not causing a positive effect then it's just money down the drain.

Whilst there's the usual caveats of it being the CEO saying it and the article is a bit thin on detail so it's difficult to make a proper assessment it would seem there's at least the possibility Grab have worked out how to use GenAI effectively for their use case. Which is at least interesting enough to want more information on whether it's true, if it is why is it true and whether there's anything that's been done which could be made more generally applicable.

Rosie

[druck]

They've introduced an AI powered clickbait generator, which may get more views for a short period, but even app users will eventually tire of hallucinating gibberish.