Social image pinboarding and shopping inspiration platform Pinterest touted its recently announced Amazon partnership and AI efforts as part of its Q2 2023 earnings, which showed a 6 percent gain in year-over-year revenue of $708 million, beating analyst expectations. Pinterest announced the multiyear partnership with Amazon that marked a Pinterest first for third-party ads. On the investor call, Pinterest CEO Bill Ready told analysts the company has been testing Amazon ads traffic and is “very pleased” with the early results. When users click on Amazon ads on Pinterest they land on Amazon’s site to complete their purchase. Read more

More than 2 billion logged-in users around the world are watching YouTube Shorts each month. To help creators keep them engaged, YouTube is releasing six new tools to improve creativity. Assists for remixing, adding stickers and effects, going live and more are coming to the platform, which has also begun testing a mobile-first live experience designed to help live creators get noticed in the main Shorts feed. One unusual new feature, Collab, lets creators display a Short in a side-by-side frame with other YouTube or Shorts videos. Collab lets users select from a variety of split-screen layout options. It will debut on iOS with Android to follow.  Read more

Google is adding images and video to its Search Generative Experience (SGE), an AI-powered context tool the company began testing in May that some are already calling “the future of Google Search.” Those who have signed up for Search Labs and enabled SGE will begin seeing more multimedia at the top of their search results. The idea is to help searchers “get up to speed on a new topic, uncover quick tips for your specific questions or discover products and things to consider — with article links to dig deeper,” Google explains of its latest AI improvements. Read more

Mario and Luigi’s cinematic star turn and the new video game “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom” boosted Nintendo’s quarterly earnings with a 52 percent profit surge. “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” from Universal Pictures has collected more than $1 billion at the global box office since its April release, while the latest “Zelda” game installment became the fastest-seller in the series’ history when it debuted in May. As a result, Nintendo’s April through June fiscal quarter produced revenue of $3.2 billion, a 50 percent increase year-over-year. Read more

Led by Pixar Animation Studios, a consortium of tech companies has formed the Alliance for OpenUSD to promote an open 3D computer graphics standard for the metaverse and other 3D projects. Adobe, Apple, Autodesk and Nvidia are also founding members along with the Linux Foundation’s Joint Development Foundation. The group will promote the development and standardization of Pixar’s Universal Scene Description tech, a 3D platform that is interoperable across a variety of tools, data and workflows. The goal is to make it easier to describe, compose and simulate large-scale 3D imaging projects and services across industries and platforms worldwide. Read more