AI’s Golden Age: Events, Industry Shifts & Game-Changing Innovations: This Week in AI Beat

Inside: From AI-powered retail to the future of work—see what’s next in AI, meet industry leaders, and catch up on the latest news and events.

Author

Applied AI Association
June 21, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 19 minutes

👋 Editor's Note

Welcome to this week’s edition of the AI Beat Newsletter. As the pace of AI innovation accelerates, we’re seeing transformative changes across every sector—from healthcare breakthroughs and retail reinvention to the creative frontiers of gaming and media. In this issue, you’ll find a packed lineup of upcoming AAIA events, fresh insights from industry leaders like Ric Neil, and a roundup of the most talked-about AI news: the rise of agentic AI, new regulatory frameworks, and the evolving impact of generative models on business and society.

Whether you’re looking to connect with peers at in-person meetups, explore the latest research and reports, or get inspired by how AI is reshaping creative industries, there’s something here for everyone. Don’t miss our Member Spotlight on Ric Neil of Noctua Interactive, whose work exemplifies how AI can amplify human creativity in game development. Be sure to check out the recordings of recent online events, and mark your calendar for the exciting sessions and networking opportunities ahead.

As always, we welcome your feedback and contributions—let’s keep the conversation going as we navigate this dynamic landscape together.

Have something to share with the global AAIA community? Send your news, tools, or events to [email protected].

📅 Upcoming events:

🗓️ San Francisco AAIA Chapter

🗓️ San Diego AAIA Chapter

🗓️ India AAIA Chapter

🗓️ AAIA Global Online Event Series

🗓️ Seattle AAIA Chapter

🗓️ Charlotte, NC AAIA Chapter

  • Public Relations in the World of Artificial Intelligence

  • 🗓️ Thursday, July 17, 2025, 12:00PM - 1:00PM USA Eastern Time | Online

  • 🔗 Register

🗓️ Seattle AAIA Chapter

🗓️ STACKxDays, the premier event for senior developers, presented by the VR/AR Association and the Applied AI Association

💻🧑‍🏫 Recent event recordings:

AAIA’s BrightTALK page to watch on-demand recordings of previous online events

AAIA’s YouTube page

View the complete AAIA Events calendar

📢 AAIA chapter and member news and updates:

✍️ Member Spotlight:

This week, we introduce AAIA Portland/SW Washington Chapter member Ric Neil, Studio Director / Founder of Noctua Interactive:

Changing the future of interactive media creation with AI

Ric Neil, Managing Director and Co-founder of Noctua Interactive, is reimagining story-driven game creation in the age of generative AI. With over three decades of experience in the video game industry, including leadership roles at companies like Microsoft, EA, and Amazon, Ric brings a wealth of knowledge to his latest venture.

At Noctua Interactive, he leads a team of AAA veterans, artists, and engineers, reinventing the game development pipeline with AI-augmented workflows. Their debut title, Dream Walkers: Rise of Nightmare, is in early production, but the studio's larger ambition is to prove that AI can empower small teams to build AAA-quality experiences on mid-tier budgets.

Noctua's approach combines traditional game craft with AI tools to amplify human creativity, streamlining iteration and unlocking new possibilities. This allows artists, designers, and writers to focus on gameplay, emotion, and originality.

Ric has cultivated a production model at Noctua Interactive that prioritizes both creative vision and technological innovation, operating with a lean team of core veterans augmented by contractors, interns, and AI-driven systems. His commitment to empowering human talent with AI is evident throughout Noctua’s process.

As Ric says, "Great games need great teams to make them fun, discovering fun with AI will be a new tool in our belt of creativity and production processes."

Join the AAIA and enjoy the benefits and join in the discussion and learning of AI in video game creation. Reach out to me at www.shortstaxmedia.com or on LinkedIn; we have an active community of creators utilizing AI right now. Use code AAIA25 for an extra month of a free trial.

Bio: Video game industry luminary Ric Neil has over three decades of experience leading teams and developing hit titles at companies like Microsoft, EA, Amazon, and Unity, including franchises like Madden NFL and games like The Grand Tour Game. His expertise spans game development, business development, design, strategic partnerships, and team leadership at all levels.

Additional information:

✍️ AAAI Founder’s Corner:  Recent “Future Work Blueprint” posts from AAIA Founder and President Nathan Pettyjohn

  • 📝 Can AI Help Us Achieve the 2-Day Workweek?

    • I recently joined Cheryl Goodman, author of How to Win Friends and Influence Robots, on her podcast Mind the Machine, where we tackled one of the boldest questions shaping the future of work: Could AI help us move to a two-day workweek? (show me more)

  • 📝 My Journey to The 2-Day Workweek:

    • From the moment I was five years old, I became obsessed with the relationship between effort and value. It started when I showed my dad a drawing I made. He liked it so much, he told me he’d pay me for it. That spark turned into a hustle: within two hours, I was going door to door in my neighborhood, selling drawings to anyone who’d buy them. To my amazement, they did. (show me more)

  • 5 AI Prompts and 10 Tools That Will Instantly Boost Your Productivity:

    • What if you could compress your entire workweek into just two days… without losing results? That’s the premise of my upcoming book, The 2-Day Workweek, where I unpack the mindset, AI tools, and systems that are transforming how modern professionals get things done. One of the most powerful tactics? Writing better AI prompts. (show me more)

📰 In the News:

Amid major industry upheaval, AI has become healthcare’s standout area of innovation, with new data showing entrepreneurs and investors are increasingly relying on AI to accelerate drug development, advance rare disease treatments, and lower clinical and financial barriers, as illustrated by companies using AI both to design new drugs and to repurpose existing ones, while experts note AI’s potential to reduce risk, improve efficiency, and unlock new therapy options even as practical applications continue to develop. (show me more)

Longtime tech analyst Dan Ives describes software as the key artificial intelligence subcategory currently experiencing a "golden age," with massive growth opportunities not just among big names like Microsoft and Nvidia but also in lesser-known companies driving AI innovation and adoption across industries, as highlighted by the launch of his new AI-focused ETF. (show me more)

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced that generative AI will fundamentally transform how work is done at Amazon, resulting in a smaller corporate workforce as automation and AI adoption accelerate across the company. (show me more)

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says his children will never be smarter than artificial intelligence but will grow up vastly more capable by naturally integrating AI tools like ChatGPT into their lives, while he acknowledges both the tremendous benefits and new societal challenges this technology brings to parenting and childhood development. (show me more)

The article argues that the explosion of ChatGPT and similar generative AI models has so thoroughly polluted the internet with low-quality, AI-generated content that it is already undermining the development of future AI by contaminating the data these systems rely on, potentially leading to a self-reinforcing decline in AI quality known as "model collapse." (show me more)

📰 The Meta AI app is a privacy disaster (TechCrunch, June 12, 2025)

Meta’s new standalone AI app has triggered widespread outrage after users unknowingly made their private and sensitive conversations public through a confusing “share” feature, exposing personal data—including medical, legal, and financial details—linked to real social media profiles, in what critics are calling a major privacy disaster and design failure. (show me more)

Pope Leo XIV, addressing tech executives and Vatican officials at a major AI ethics conference, called for technology companies to adopt an ethical framework for artificial intelligence that upholds human dignity and safeguards the intellectual and spiritual well-being of individuals—especially children—amid both the promise and risks posed by rapid AI advancements. (show me more)

A new MIT study found that students who used ChatGPT to write essays showed the lowest brain engagement and critical thinking compared to those using Google or no tools, suggesting that reliance on AI chatbots could harm learning and brain development, especially in younger users. (show me more)

Major Chinese tech companies temporarily disabled AI chatbot features such as image recognition and real-time question answering during the national "gaokao" college entrance exams to prevent students from using these tools to cheat and to uphold the integrity of this high-stakes assessment. (show me more)

A new Stanford study finds that chatbots like ChatGPT are dangerously inadequate as therapists, often expressing stigma, encouraging delusions, and responding inappropriately to users in crisis, leading researchers to warn against using AI as a substitute for human mental health professionals. (show me more)

📰 This Week’s Wacky Reads:

📰 Forget virtual pets – the next AI video craze is cats doing Olympic diving, and it’s all thanks to this new Google Veo 3 rival (TechRadar, June 20, 2025)

A new AI video model called Hailuo 02 from MiniMax has gone viral by enabling users to create short, physics-based videos of cats performing Olympic diving routines, making it a popular and accessible alternative to high-end tools like Google Veo 3 despite offering slightly lower video quality.  (show me more)

🛠️ 📘 Tools and Reports Spotlight

📘 Seizing the agentic AI advantage (McKinsey, June 13, 2025)

Most companies have adopted generative AI, but few see significant business impact because they rely on broad, horizontal tools rather than deeply integrated, process-transforming AI agents; to unlock real value, organizations must redesign workflows and operating models around agentic AI, requiring strategic leadership, new governance, and a shift from scattered experimentation to enterprise-wide transformation. (show me more)

Download the report

📘 California AI Policy Report Outlines Proposed Comprehensive Regulatory Framework (National Law Review, June 18, 2025)

California’s new AI policy report proposes a comprehensive, evidence-based regulatory framework for frontier AI that emphasizes transparency, mandatory incident reporting, third-party risk assessments, and adaptive, risk-based thresholds, aiming to set a precedent for state-level AI governance despite ongoing challenges around system opacity and verification. (show me more)

Download the report

If you have an event, newsworthy story, industry insight/report, or AI tool to share with AAIA members, please email the details to [email protected].

Our list of AAIA Chapters is continually expanding—if you live in a Chapter city or region and want to get involved, please email that city/region’s Chapter President.

Become an AAIA member and join the leading global industry association dedicated to integrating AI technologies into business. Accelerate knowledge exchange, collaboration, and innovation through our worldwide network of chapters, specialized industry committees, and in-depth reports. Connect with thought leaders and innovators to help shape the future of AI in business. Visit our website to learn more about membership opportunities.

Questions?  Email us at [email protected].

Until next time!