By Alimat Aliyeva

On Wednesday, LG AI Research unveiled Exaone Path 2.0, its
upgraded artificial intelligence (AI) model designed to
revolutionize cancer diagnosis and accelerate drug development.
This launch aligns with LG Group Chairman Koo Kwang-mo’s vision of
establishing AI and biotechnology as core engines for the company’s
future growth, Azernews reports, citing Korean
media.

According to LG AI Research, Exaone Path 2.0 is trained on
significantly higher-quality data compared to its predecessor,
launched in August last year. The enhanced model can precisely
analyze and predict not only genetic mutations and expression
patterns but also detect subtle changes in human cells and tissues.
This advancement could enable earlier cancer detection, more
accurate disease progression forecasts, and support the development
of new drugs and personalized treatments.

A key breakthrough lies in the new technology that trains the AI
not just on small pathology image patches but also on whole-slide
imaging, pushing genetic mutation prediction accuracy to a
world-leading 78.4 percent.

LG AI Research expects this technology to secure the critical
“golden hour” for cancer patients by slashing gene test turnaround
times from over two weeks to under a minute. The institute also
introduced disease-specific AI models focused on lung and
colorectal cancers.

To strengthen this initiative, LG has partnered with Dr. Hwang
Tae-hyun of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, a renowned
biomedicine expert. Dr. Hwang, a prominent Korean scientist, leads
the U.S. government-supported “Cancer Moonshot” project aimed at
combating gastric cancer.

Together, LG AI Research and Dr. Hwang’s team plan to develop a
multimodal medical AI platform that integrates real clinical tissue
samples, pathology images, and treatment data from cancer patients
enrolled in clinical trials. They believe this collaboration will
usher in a new era of personalized, precision medicine.

This partnership also reflects Chairman Koo’s strategic push to
position AI and biotechnology as transformative technologies that
fundamentally improve people’s lives. LG AI Research and Dr.
Hwang’s team regard their platform as the world’s first attempt to
implement clinical AI at such a comprehensive level.

While oncology is the initial focus, the team plans to expand
the platform’s capabilities into other critical areas such as
transplant rejection, immunology, and diabetes research.

“Our goal isn’t just to develop another AI model,” Dr. Hwang
said. “We want to create a platform that genuinely assists doctors
in real clinical settings. This won’t be merely a diagnostic tool —
it has the potential to become a game changer that transforms the
entire process of drug development.”

In May, PepsiCo announced a collaboration with Amazon Web Services to enhance its in-house generative AI platform, PepGenX. The partnership gives PepGenX access to various multimodal and agentic AI models on AWS.

“This strategic collaboration will strengthen our mature cloud strategy and unlock new levels of agility, intelligence and scalability across the company,” Athina Kanioura, chief strategy and transformation officer at PepsiCo, said in a statement.

The partnership spans PepsiCo’s lines of business globally. The changes include the following:

• Moving applications and workloads to the cloud.
• Giving in-house developers access to different multimodal AI models and agentic AI capabilities to enhance PepGenX, via AWS.
• Enabling insights into real-time advertising performance, audience segmentation, hyper-personalized content and targeted marketing capabilities across Amazon’s customers.
• Collaborating to transform digital supply chain capabilities, including predictive maintenance for manufacturing and logistics.

On the heels of this alliance, PepsiCo announced last month that it would deploy Salesforce’s Agentforce AI agents to manage “key functions,” enhance customer support and operational efficiency, and empower the sales team to focus on growth and deeper client engagement.

“Embracing an AI-first world means reimagining an enterprise where humans and intelligent agents don’t just coexist, they collaborate,” Kanioura said in a statement.

Humans and AI agents will be able to work together to respond faster to customer service inquiries, enable more targeted and automated marketing campaigns and promotions, and more.

In April, at Nvidia’s GTC conference, Pepsico showcased a digital twin of a warehouse using AI to simulate and optimize operations. The model incorporates generative AI and computer vision to test scenarios before deploying changes to physical facilities.

The June PYMNTS Intelligence report “AI at the Crossroads: Agentic Ambitions Meet Operational Realities” found that virtually every large organization is embracing generative AI to enhance productivity, streamline decision making and drive innovation. They are also using generative AI to improve the services and goods they offer to customers.

However, the next iteration — AI agents that autonomously perform tasks — is giving chief operating officers pause, according to the report. More than half of COOs are concerned about the accuracy of AI-generated outputs. Even narrow tasks like coding still require at least some human oversight.

See also: CPG Marketing Embraces New Business Models for Digital Transformation

Unilever, Nestlé and Coca-Cola Jump In

Unilever, the maker of Dove, Knorr, Ben & Jerry’s and more, has several AI initiatives. One of the more recent developments is the creation of digital twins of its products to add depth to their images, slated for ads.

Using Real-Time 3D, Nvidia Omniverse and OpenUSD, these 3D replicas add a “level of realism” the company has never achieved before, helping the products stand out in a sea of ads, Unilver said.

Unilever’s creative staff can also use a single product shot to change wording, languages, backgrounds, formats and other variants quickly for different channels such as TV, digital commerce and the like.

“Our product twins can be deployed everywhere and anywhere, accurately and consistently, so content is generated faster and on brand,” Unilever Chief Growth and Marketing Officer Esi Eggleston Bracey said in a statement. “We call it creativity at the speed of life.”

The use of digital twins not only cuts costs but enables Unilever to bring products to market faster, the company said.

For example, its beauty and wellbeing brands were the first to use digital twins, and the company is now expanding the tech to include TRESemmé, Dove, Vaseline and Clear.

Unilever said it is seeing 55% in savings and a 65% faster turnaround in content creation. These images also elicit higher engagement with customers, holding their attention three times longer than traditional images, and doubling their click-through rates.

In another use of AI, Unilever can gather insights across its global operations to do forecasting and inform channel strategy.

For example, advanced modeling powered by AI can help sales representatives predict what a retailer is likely to buy. As such, sales teams can now personalize their engagement strategies, customize their loyalty programs and plan more targeted promotions.

Using AI and image processing, photos of in-store displays become a key data source for sales teams. They can get insights into stock levels to better advise retailers on product placement and merchandising.

Other CPG firms are following suit. In June, Nestlé also launched digital twins of its products for marketing purposes. These 3D virtual replicas let creative teams revise product packaging, change backgrounds and make other changes to adapt to local markets.

“This means that new creative content can be generated using AI, without having to constantly reshoot from scratch,” according to a company blog post.

As such, Nestlé can respond quicker in a fast-moving digital environment where ad campaigns on social media often require six or more different ad formats to be successful and product packaging changes constantly.

The company worked with Accenture, Nvidia and Microsoft on the initiative.

This month, Nestlé said its R&D team is working with IBM to invent a new generative AI tool that can find new types of packaging materials. Nestlé said it is moving away from the use of virgin plastic toward alternative materials such as recyclable and paper-based packaging.

Nestlé wants to find packaging materials that not only protect its content but also are cost-effective and recyclable.

The Coca-Cola Company is also actively using AI. In May, the company announced a partnership with Adobe to embed AI in design at scale. Project Fizzion, a design intelligence system, learns from designers and encodes their creative intent to automatically apply brand rules across formats, platforms and markets.

This encoded intent, StyleID, acts as a real-time guide to Coca-Cola teams and creative partners to generate hundreds of localized ad campaign versions for faster execution.

However, Coca-Cola has had an early misstep in using AI. Last year, consumers criticized its AI-generated Christmas promotion video as “soulless” and “devoid of any actual creativity,” according to NBC News.

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SACRAMENTO – Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) announced amendments to expand Senate Bill (SB) 53 into a first-in-the-nation transparency requirement for the largest AI companies. The new provisions draw on the recommendations of a working group led by some of the world’s leading AI experts and convened by Governor Newsom. Building on the report’s “trust, but verify” approach, the amended bill requires the largest AI companies to publicly disclose their safety and security protocols and report the most critical safety incidents to the California Attorney General. The requirements codify voluntary agreements made by leading AI developers to boost trust and accountability and establish a level playing field for AI development.

SB 53 retains provisions — called “CalCompute” — that advance a bold industrial strategy to boost AI development and democratize access to the most advanced AI models and tools. CalCompute will be a public cloud compute cluster housed at the University of California that provides free and low-cost access to compute for startups and academic researchers. CalCompute builds on Senator Wiener’s recent legislation to boost semiconductor and other advanced manufacturing in California by streamlining permit approvals for advanced manufacturing plants, and his work to protect democratic access to the internet by authoring the nation’s strongest net neutrality law.

SB 53 also retains its protections of whistleblowers at AI labs who disclose significant risks.

Weeks ago, the U.S. Senate voted 99-1 to remove provisions of President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” that would have prevented states from enacting AI regulations. By boosting transparency, SB 53 builds on this vote for accountability.

“As AI continues its remarkable advancement, it’s critical that lawmakers work with our top AI minds to craft policies that support AI’s huge potential benefits while guarding against material risks,” said Senator Wiener. “Building on the Working Group Report’s recommendations, SB 53 strikes the right balance between boosting innovation and establishing guardrails to support trust, fairness, and accountability in the most remarkable new technology in years. The bill continues to be a work in progress, and I look forward to working with all stakeholders in the coming weeks to refine this proposal into the most scientific and fair law it can be.”

As AI advances, risks and benefits grow

Recent advances in AI have delivered breakthrough benefits across several industries, from accelerating drug discovery and medical diagnostics to improving climate modeling and wildfire prediction. AI systems are revolutionizing education, increasing agricultural productivity, and helping solve complex scientific challenges.

However, the world’s most advanced AI companies and researchers acknowledge that as their models become more powerful, they also pose increasing risks of catastrophic damage. The Working Group report states:

Evidence that foundation models contribute to both chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) weapons risks for novices and loss of control concerns has grown, even since the release of the draft of this report in March 2025. Frontier AI companies’ [including OpenAI and Anthropic] own reporting reveals concerning capability jumps across threat categories.

To address these risks, AI developers like Meta, Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic have entered voluntary commitments to conduct safety testing and establish robust safety and security protocols. Several California-based frontier AI developers have designed industry-leading safety practices including safety evaluations and cybersecurity protections. SB 53 codifies these voluntary commitments to establish a level playing field and ensure greater accountability across the industry.

Background on the report

Governor Newsom convened the Joint California Policy Working Group on AI Frontier Models in September 2024, following his veto of Senator Wiener’s SB 1047, tasking the group to “help California develop workable guardrails for deploying GenAI, focusing on developing an empirical, science-based trajectory analysis of frontier models and their capabilities and attendant risks.”

The Working Group is led by experts including the “godmother of AI” Dr. Fei-Fei Li, Co-Director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence; Dr. Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; and Dr. Jennifer Tour Chayes, Dean of the UC Berkeley College of Computing, Data Science, and Society.

On June 17, the Working Group released their Final Report. While the report does not endorse specific legislation, it promotes a “trust, but verify” framework to establish guardrails that reduce material risks while supporting continued innovation.

SB 53 balances AI risk with benefits

Drawing on recommendations of the Working Group Report, SB 53:

• Establishes transparency into large companies’ safety and security protocols and risk evaluations. Companies will be required to publish their safety and security protocols and risk evaluations in redacted form to protect intellectual property.
• Mandates reporting of critical safety incidents (e.g., model-enabled CBRN threats, major cyber-attacks, or loss of model control) within 15 days to the Attorney General.
• Protects employees and contractors who reveal evidence of critical risk or violations of the act by AI developers.

The bill’s provisions apply only to a small number of well-resourced companies, and only to the most advanced models. The Attorney General has the power to update the thresholds governing which companies are covered under the bill to ensure the requirements keep up with rapid advancements in the field, but must cover only well-resourced companies at the frontier of AI development.

Under SB 53, the Attorney General imposes civil penalties for violations of the act. SB 53 does not impose any new liability for harms caused by AI systems.

In addition, SB 53 creates CalCompute, a research cluster to support startups and researchers developing large-scale AI. The bill helps California secure its global leadership as states like New York establish their own AI research clusters. 

SB 53 is sponsored by the Encode AI, Economic Security Action California, and the Secure AI Project.

SB 53 is supported by a broad coalition of researchers, industry leaders, and civil society advocates:

“California has long been the birthplace of major tech innovations. SB 53 will help keep it that way by ensuring AI developers responsibly build frontier AI models,” said Sneha Revanur, president and founder of Encode AI, a co-sponsor of the bill. “This bill reflects a common-sense consensus on AI development, promoting transparency around companies’ safety and security practices.” 

“At Elicit, we build AI systems that help researchers make evidence-based decisions by analyzing thousands of academic papers,” said Andreas Stuhlmüller, CEO of Elicit. “This work has taught me that transparency is essential for AI systems that people rely on for critical decisions. SB53’s requirements for safety protocols and transparency reports are exactly what we need as AI becomes more powerful and widespread. As someone who’s spent years thinking about how AI can augment human reasoning, I believe this legislation will accelerate responsible innovation by creating clear standards that make future technology more trustworthy.”

“I have devoted my life to advancing the field of AI, but in recent years it has become clear that the risks it poses could threaten us all,” said Geoffrey Hinton, University of Toronto Professor Emeritus, Turing Award winner, Nobel laureate, and a “godfather of AI.” “Greater transparency requirements into how companies are addressing safety concerns from the most powerful technology of our time is an important step towards addressing those risks.”

“SB 53 is a smart, targeted step forward on AI safety, security, and transparency,” said Bruce Reed, Head of AI at Common Sense Media. “We thank Senator Wiener for reinforcing California’s strong commitment to innovation and accountability.”

“AI can bring tremendous benefits, but only if we steer it wisely. Recent evidence shows that frontier AI systems can resort to deceptive behavior like blackmail and cheating to avoid being shut down or fulfill other objectives,” said Yoshua Bengio, Full Professor at Université de Montréal, Co-President and Scientific Director of LawZero, Turing Award winner and a “godfather of AI.” “These risks must be taken with the utmost seriousness alongside other existing and emerging threats. By advancing SB 53, California is uniquely positioned to continue supporting cutting-edge AI while proactively taking a step towards addressing these severe and potentially irreversible harms.” 

“Including safety and transparency protections recommended by Gov. Newsom’s AI commission in SB 53 is an opportunity for California to be on the right side of history and advance commonsense AI regulations while our national leaders dither,” said Teri Olle, Director of Economic Security California Action, a co-sponsor of the bill. “In addition to making sure AI is safe, the bill would create a public option for cloud computing – the critical infrastructure necessary to fuel innovation and research. CalCompute would democratize access to this powerful resource that is currently enjoyed by a tiny handful of wealthy tech companies, and ensure that AI benefits the public. With inaction from the federal government – and on the heels of the defeat of the proposed 10-year moratorium on AI regulations – California should act now and get this done.”

“The California Report on Frontier AI Policy underscored the growing consensus for the importance of transparency into the safety practices of the largest AI developers,” said Thomas Woodside, Co-Founder and Senior Policy Advisor, Secure AI Project, a co-sponsor of the bill. “SB 53 ensures exactly that: visibility into how AI developers are keeping their AI systems secure and Californians safe.”

“Reasonable people can disagree about many aspects of AI policy, but one thing is clear: reporting requirements and whistleblower protections like those in SB 53 are sensible steps to provide transparency, inform the public, and deter egregious practices without interfering with innovation,” said Steve Newman, Technical co-founder of eight technology startups, including Writely – which became Google Docs, and co-creator of Spectre, one of the most influential video games of the 1990s.

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