The impact of AI to promote and spread disinformation – or fake news – is going to be a “major technology policy focus area”, says Chris Hankin, fellow of the Institute for Security Science and Technology at Imperial College London. “Ahead of all of these elections, the detection and prevention of misinformation and disinformation and the cybersecurity of the ballot process are likely to be major technological challenges in 2024,” he says. So it’s worth bearing in mind that in a post-generative AI world, where it’s easy to create deepfaked audio, video and imagery, that seeing is no longer necessarily believing.
Your data will become even more valuable
Unlike many of the other entries on this list, this one is deeply boring and unsexy. But it’s important.
As many of us start to stock up for the festive period, it has become even more obvious how important loyalty cards – and the data they collect – are to stores. Almost every supermarket in the UK seems to offer discounts to customers willing to consent to their purchases being tracked. And they’re increasingly steep: we’ve seen 83 per cent discounts on some shopping baskets.
Currently, they’re the preserve of supermarkets, but it’s possible that we’ll see membership discounts in other areas, including in fashion, in 2024. Regulators may feel they need to do something to stop the predatory behaviour of retailers who only offer up steep price cuts to those willing to hand over data.
Juan Moyano
Your streaming service bills will get a lot more complicated
Bad news if you’re already struggling to keep track of where to watch what, and how much comes out of your bank account from Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+ already. 2024 is going to get more complicated.
That’s what Deloitte predicts in its annual tech, gaming and entertainment forecast for 2024. The average streaming video platform currently offers users four different tiers of options, depending on whether they want to watch simultaneously on multiple screens, to download movies and shows for offline watching, and a number of other factors. But add in the new goldrush of ad-supported tiers that platforms have realised can bring in new customers at a lower price point, and that’ll double in the next 12 months, Deloitte believes.
You might finally (finally) enter the metaverse
Look: people have long spoken about the metaverse, the digital representation of real life, where we’ll supposedly wander through virtual reality versions of cities and interact with digital avatars of our mates as if we’re in an immersive, uncannily odd version of The Sims. It’s been tomorrow’s tech for years. But 2024 will be the metaverse’s best shot at relevance yet.