The artificial intelligence expert Element AI just raised $102 million, part of which it plans to spend on staffing and business development. As TechCrunch explains, Element is a “Montreal-based platform and incubator that wants to be the go-to place for any and all companies (big or small) that are building or want to include AI solutions in their businesses.”

The New York Times has adopted Alphabet’s Jigsaw service to curb hateful comments. "Using machine learning technology from Jigsaw … the Gray Lady is beginning a huge ramp-up of the number of comments that it allows on every story,” Poynter reports. “In doing so, it's pointing toward a future where algorithms, not humans, do the majority of toxic swamp-wading.”

Over-the-top (OTT) TV devices like Roku players, Apple TV boxes, and other OTT devices are leading the way in online ad view share, according to a new report from FreeWheel. The Comcast-owned multiscreen advertising firm said that for Q1, OTT has grown from 2% to 32% over a four-year period, Multichannel News reported. "In Q1, nearly all the device growth came way of OTT devices and set-top VOD. ...Ad view composition and growth on OTT devices surged 45% year-on-year, and 33% for set-top VOD, and while dropping 5% on desktops/PCs," Multichannel reported. 

Amazon quietly launched a self-service tool to enable advertisers to engage their customers via cross-channel campaigns and extend campaign reach on and off Amazon. The tool, called Advertiser Audiences, will allow advertisers to anonymously match a list of their customers with Amazon shoppers and create new targeting segments for use in their Amazon advertising campaigns. Amazon, which announced the tool in a blog post, said studies showed that advertisers that created new audience segments using the tool experienced increased return on ad spend between 2x and 8x campaign averages. The tool is available for all advertisers, including those …

Facebook announced new tools to help marketers make their ads perform better and target consumers most likely to buy their products. Facebook said the tools will enable advertisers to use purchase data to optimize their campaigns to target consumers who spend the most. Advertisers are already sharing purchase data from their websites with Facebook to determine whether ads on Facebook are generating sales, but the new tools will go a step farther. The goal is for the tools is "to reduce the amount of money advertisers spend targeting the wrong people—known in the ad industry as wastage," according to a …

After a short beta period, Microsoft just announced the general availability of its Power BI Premium data exploration and interactive reporting tool. As TechCrunch reports: “The idea behind this Premium edition of the service is to give enterprises a reserved set of resources (instead of the shared cloud capacity that other Power BI versions run on).” As such, “The Premium version doesn’t have some of the size limits for data models.”

The Verge argues that Apple’s decision to block third-party ad trackers in Safari will only serve to strengthen the already dominant positions of Google and Facebook.“The crucial distinction is between the first-party sites you’re purposefully visiting and the third-party trackers that come along for the ride,” it writes. “As long as a cookie is associated with a website you’ve visited in the last 24 hours, Safari won’t change much -- which gives popular sites like Facebook and the various Google services an easy way around the new restrictions.”

The New York Times details how Instagram is cracking down on marketers who try to cozy up to users by following their accounts, as well as liking and commenting on their posts. The recent effort has “led to the shuttering of anonymously run sites with names like Instagress, PeerBoost, InstaPlus, Mass Planner and Fan Harvest, though others remain,” the Times writes. In part, that’s because many users don’t mind the attention. “Racking up followers and likes on photos gives a sheen of legitimacy to small businesses or aspiring social-media influencers."

Facebook is reportedly developing a feature for users to subscribe to news publishers directly from its flagship app. “The feature, long-requested by publishers, is expected to roll out by the end of 2017,” The Wall Street Journal reports, citing sources. “Many details remain up in the air, but discussions have centered around making the feature available only on stories published natively to Facebook through its Instant Articles product.”

Sprint has signed on as the sole carrier of Andy Rubin’s Essential phone. For some reason, Essential president Niccolo de Masi tells USA Today that Sprint is “the network of the future.” De Masi also acknowledges ties between Rubin and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, and the fact that SoftBank owns a majority stake in Sprint.