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AI Innovations in June 2024.

Welcome to our blog series “AI Innovations in June 2024”! This is an evolving article that will be updated daily throughout the month of June 2024 to bring you the latest news and developments in the world of artificial intelligence. As we move further into the 21st century, the pace of AI innovation continues to accelerate at a breathtaking rate. Each day, researchers, engineers, and visionaries are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, unlocking new capabilities and applications that are transforming industries, enhancing our lives, and shaping the future. In this blog, we’ll dive deep into the most exciting AI breakthroughs, advancements, and milestones happening in June 2024. From groundbreaking AI-powered technologies and cutting-edge research to the societal and ethical implications of these innovations, we’ll provide you with a comprehensive and insightful look at the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence. Whether you’re an AI enthusiast, a tech-savvy professional, or simply someone curious about the future, this blog will keep you informed, inspired, and engaged. So, join us on this journey of discovery as we explore the frontiers of AI and uncover the innovations that are shaping our world. Stay tuned for daily updates, and get ready to be amazed by the incredible advancements that are happening in the world of AI!

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Top AI Statistics 2024 Roundup.

1. The global AI market is valued at over $196 billion.
2. AI industry value is projected to increase by over 13x over the next 7 years.
3. The US AI market is forecast to reach $299.64 billion by 2026.
4. The AI market is expanding at a CAGR of 38.1% between 2022 to 2030.
5. By 2025, as many as 97 million people will work in the AI space.
6. AI market size is expected to grow by at least 120% year-over-year.
7. 83% of companies claim that AI is a top priority in their business plans.
8. Netflix makes $1 billion annually from automated personalized recommendations.
9. 48% of businesses use some form of AI to utilize big data effectively.
10. 38% of medical providers use computers as part of their diagnosis.

Credit: Josh Howarth

AI Weekly Summary June 22-30 2024

 Apple and Meta are discussing a generative AI partnership
 ByteDance and Broadcom collaborate on AI chip development
 Researchers developed a new method to detect hallucinations
 Synthesia 2.0: World’s 1st AI video communication platform
 OpenAI is on an acquiring spree, buying Rocket and Multi
 Record labels sue AI music startups over copyright infringement
 Anthropic rolls out Claude’s cutting-edge collaborative features
 Google experiments with celebrity-inspired AI Chatbots
 OpenAI postpones the launch of ChatGPT voice mode
 Amazon steps into the chatbot race with Metis
 Figma’s new AI features stir competition with Adobe
 Alibaba’s Qwen-72B tops Hugging Face’s Open LLM Leaderboard
 Google releases Gemma 2, lightweight but powerful open LLMs
 OpenAI’s CriticGPT finds GPT-4’s mistakes with GPT-4
 Google partners with Moody’s, Thomson Reuters & more for AI data

Apple and Meta are discussing gen AI partnership

Apple is reportedly in talks with its longtime rival Meta to integrate the latter’s Llama 3 AI model into Apple Intelligence. This move comes as Apple prepares to roll out its AI features across iPhones, iPads, and Macs later this year.

The potential partnership follows Apple’s existing deal with OpenAI, suggesting a collaboration strategy rather than solo development in the AI race. In Apple’s arrangement with OpenAI, there’s no direct payment. Instead, OpenAI can offer premium subscriptions through Apple Intelligence, with Apple taking a percentage. It’s unclear if Meta would agree to a similar business model, given that Llama 3 is open-source and free to access.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/apple-meta-have-discussed-an-ai-partnership-cc57437e

ByteDance and Broadcom collaborate on AI chip development

ByteDance is collaborating with U.S. chip designer Broadcom to develop an advanced AI processor. This partnership aims to secure a stable supply of high-end chips amid ongoing U.S.-China tensions. The project centers on creating a 5-nanometre, customized Application-Specific Integrated Chip (ASIC) that complies with U.S. export restrictions.

This chip’s manufacturing is set to be outsourced to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), though production is not expected to begin this year. While the design work is currently underway, the critical “tape out” phase has yet to commence.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/chinas-bytedance-working-with-broadcom-develop-advanced-ai-chip-sources-say-2024-06-24

Researchers developed a new method to detect hallucinations

ChatGPT and Gemini can produce impressive results but often “hallucinate” false or unsubstantiated information. This research focuses on a subset of hallucinations called “confabulations,” where LLMs generate answers that are both wrong and arbitrary. Researchers have developed new methods to detect confabulations using entropy-based uncertainty estimators. They introduce the concept of “semantic entropy” to measure the uncertainty of LLM generations at the meaning level.

High semantic entropy corresponds to high uncertainty and indicates a higher likelihood of confabulation. The method computes uncertainty at the level of meaning rather than specific word sequences, addressing the fact that one idea can be expressed in many ways. The method provides scalable oversight by detecting confabulations that people might otherwise find plausible.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07421-0

Synthesia 2.0: World’s 1st AI video communication platform

Synthesia is launching Synthesia 2.0 – the world’s first AI video communications platform for businesses. It reinvents the entire video production process, allowing companies to create and share AI-generated videos at scale easily.

The key new features and capabilities of Synthesia 2.0 include:

• 2 Personal AI Avatars: Expressive Avatars shot in a studio and Custom Avatars created using your webcam.
• AI Video Assistant: Converts text, documents, or websites into high-quality videos, with options to customize the branding, tone, and length.
• Intuitive Video Editing: Editing simplified with “Triggers” that let you control animations and edits from the script.
• Translation and Dynamic Video Player: Videos can now be translated into over 120 languages. Synthesia is also building a new video player with interactive features.
• AI Safety Focus: Synthesia is pursuing ISO/IEC 42001 certification, the first standard for responsible AI management, to ensure its AI technologies are ethical.

Source: https://www.synthesia.io/post/introducing-synthesia-video-communications-platform?

OpenAI is on an acquiring spree, buying Rockset and Multi

Last week, OpenAI acquired Rockset, a startup that develops tools for real-time data search and analytics. OpenAI said it would integrate Rockset’s technology to power its infrastructure and offerings across products.

This week, OpenAI acquired Multi, a startup focused on building remote collaboration tools and software. Technically, the deal is an acqui-hire as the entire Multi team, including its co-founders, will join OpenAI to work on the company’s ChatGPT desktop application.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/24/openai-buys-a-remote-collaboration-platform

Record labels sue AI music startups over copyright infringement

The world’s major record labels, including Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Music, have filed twin lawsuits against the AI music generation startups Suno and Udio. The lawsuits accuse the companies of unlawfully training their AI models on massive amounts of copyrighted music, which, according to the complaints, allows the startups to generate similar-sounding music without permission.

The record labels allege Suno and Udio have effectively copied artists’ styles and specific musical characteristics. The labels claim the AI-generated music is so close to the original that it is eerily similar when transcribed into sheet music. The lawsuits also accuse the startups of making it easy for people to distribute AI-created samples that mimic copyrighted recordings on platforms like Spotify.

Source: https://venturebeat.com/ai/record-labels-sue-ai-music-generator-startups-suno-udio-for-copyright-infringement/

Anthropic rolls out Claude’s cutting-edge collaborative features

Anthropic has introduced new collaboration features for Claude. These features include:

• Projects: Projects in Claude allow integration of internal resources like style guides or codebases, enhancing Claude’s ability to deliver tailored assistance across various tasks. Users can set custom instructions for each Project to modify Claude’s tone or perspective for a specific role or industry.

• Artifacts: It allows users to generate and edit various content types like code, documents, and graphics within a dedicated window. This benefits developers by offering larger code windows and live previews for easier front-end reviews.

• Sharing Features: Claude Team users can share snapshots of their best conversations with Claude in their team’s shared project activity feed.

Additionally, any data or chats shared within Projects will not be used to train Anthropic’s generative models without a user’s explicit consent.

Source: https://www.anthropic.com/news/projects

Google experiments with celebrity-inspired AI Chatbots

These chatbots will be powered by Google’s Gemini family of LLMs. The company aims to strike partnerships with influencers and celebrities and is also working on a feature that allows people to create their own chatbots by describing their personalities and appearances.

The project is led by Ryan Germick, a longtime executive at Google and a team of ten. These chatbots could be an experiment and may only appear on Google Labs rather than being widely available.

Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/google-wants-to-build-ai-chatbots-based-on-celebs-influencers-for-some-reason/ar-BB1oS1or

OpenAI postpones the launch of ChatGPT voice mode

Originally planned for late June, the Voice Mode aims to provide a more naturalistic and conversational experience with the AI chatbot, complete with emotional inflection and the ability to handle interruptions.

However, it will now be available only to a small group of users in late July or early August. OpenAI is working on improving content detection and user experience before wider rollout. GPT-4o’s real-time voice and vision capabilities are also expected to roll out to ChatGPT Plus users soon.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/25/openai-delays-chatgpts-new-voice-mode

Amazon steps into the chatbot race

Amazon is reportedly working on a new consumer-focused chatbot codenamed “Metis.” It is planned to be released somewhere around September. Here’s what we know about it:

• The chatbot is powered by a new model, Olympus, and can be accessed via a web browser.
• It uses a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) technique to provide up-to-date information and automate tasks.
• The model conversationally provides text and image-based outputs, suggesting follow-ups to queries. It also shares links to sources and supports image generation.
• It uses an infrastructure similar to Amazon’s upcoming voice assistant, Remarkable Alexa.

Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-chatgpt-rival-codenamed-metis-2024-6

Figma’s new AI features stir competition with Adobe

Figma announced a range of new features at the 2024 Config conference. Significant ones include a UI redesign, generative AI tools, new icons and toolbar, AI-enhanced asset search, and auto-generated texts in designs.

For instance, by typing a simple prompt into the textbox, users can create an entire app design mock-up for a restaurant. Figma will connect the design pages and even write suggested content!

Figma has also added a few designer-specific features to allow users to tweak designs in real-time. It features a developer mode with a “ready-for-dev” task list. The upgrade also boasts Figma slides, a Google slides-like tool for building and sharing presentations.

Source: https://www.figma.com/whats-new/

Alibaba’s Qwen-72B tops the Hugging Face leaderboard

Hugging Face’s latest open large language model leaderboard ranks and evaluates open LLMs based on benchmarks like MMLU-pro and tests them on high-school and college-level problems.

The platform used 300 NVIDIA H100 GPUs to re-evaluate major open LLMs to obtain updated rankings. Chinese company Alibaba’s Qwen-72B dominated the leaderboard, becoming a top performer overall.

Not just that, the leaderboard was mainly dominated by Chinese companies, highlighting their headway into the open LLM space.

Source: https://huggingface.co/spaces/open-llm-leaderboard/open_llm_leaderboard

Google’s Gemma 2, a set of lightweight, powerful open LLMs

Google has released Gemma 2 set of models that punch above their weight classes. Available in 9B and 27B parameter sizes, these models are

• Higher performing and more efficient at inference than the first-generation
• Have significant safety advancements built in
• Optimized to run at incredible speed across a range of hardware and easily integrate with other AI tools
• Trained on 13 trillion tokens for 27B, 8 trillion for 9B, and 2 trillion for 2.6B model (en route)

27B performs better than Llama3-70B and Nemotron-340B on Lmsys Arena, making it best in its size and stronger than some larger models. While 9B outperforms the likes of Mistral-large and Qwen1.5-110B.

The 27B Gemma 2 model is designed to run inference efficiently at full precision on a single Google Cloud TPU host, NVIDIA A100 80GB Tensor Core GPU, or NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPU. Moreover, this is an open weights model line, currently only available to researchers and developers.

Source: https://blog.google/technology/developers/google-gemma-2

OpenAI’s CriticGPT finds GPT-4’s mistakes with GPT-4

OpenAI trained a model based on GPT-4, called CriticGPT, to catch errors in ChatGPT’s code output. It found that when users get help from CriticGPT to review ChatGPT code, they outperform those without help 60% of the time.

OpenAI aligns GPT-4 models to be more helpful and interactive through Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF). A key part of RLHF is collecting comparisons in which people, called AI trainers, rate different ChatGPT responses against each other.

OpenAI is beginning to integrate CriticGPT-like models into its RLHF labeling pipeline, providing trainers with explicit AI assistance.

Source: https://openai.com/index/finding-gpt4s-mistakes-with-gpt-4

Google’s partnerships to help AI with real-world facts

Google is partnering with reputable third-party services, such as Moody’s, MSCI, Thomson Reuters, and Zoominfo, to ground its AI with real-world data. These four will be available within Vertex AI starting next quarter. They will offer developers qualified data to backstop their model outputs and ensure responses are factually accurate.

Google is also announcing high-fidelity grounding. Available through an experimental preview, it’s designed to help AI systems work better with a given set of specific information.

Source: https://venturebeat.com/ai/google-grounding-ai-with-moodys-msci-thomson-reuters-zoominfo

A  Daily chronicle of AI Innovations June 28th 2024:

 Google releases Gemma 2, a set of lightweight but powerful open LLMs
 OpenAI’s CriticGPT finds GPT-4’s mistakes with GPT-4
 Google partners with Moody’s, Thomson Reuters & more for AI data

 OpenAI’s critics train smarter AI systems

TIME and OpenAI announced a multi-year content deal

Google is using AI to add 110 new languages to Google Translate

YouTube is in talks with major record labels for an AI music deal

Meta to start testing user-created AI chatbots on Instagram

Character.AI now allows users to talk with AI avatars over calls

 OpenAI’s critics train smarter AI systems

OpenAI just published new research exploring how to improve model training using AI ‘critics’ that help human trainers spot errors in AI outputs more effectively.

• OpenAI developed a model called CriticGPT to assist human trainers in evaluating and catching errors in code written by AI systems like ChatGPT.
• In tests, CriticGPT caught 85% of inserted bugs in AI-generated code, compared to just 50% for human reviewers alone.
• Human trainers also preferred CriticGPT’s code critics over their own 63% of the time on naturally occurring bugs.
• OpenAI said that CriticGPT-type models are already being integrated into the company’s training workflow, helping prepare for advancing AI systems.

As OpenAI states in the research paper, both LLMs and AI critics will continue to scale — human intelligence will not. The limitations of our own puny mortal brains look to be no match for evaluating systems that are continuing to soar, meaning AI is quickly becoming its own trainer.

Source: https://openai.com/index/finding-gpt4s-mistakes-with-gpt-4

 Google releases Gemma 2, a set of lightweight but powerful open LLMs

Google has released Gemma 2 set of models that punch above their weight classes. Available in 9B and 27B parameter sizes, these models are

• Higher performing and more efficient at inference than the first-generation
• Have significant safety advancements built in
• Optimized to run at incredible speed across a range of hardware and easily integrate with other AI tools
• Trained on 13 trillion tokens for 27B, 8 trillion for 9B, and 2 trillion for 2.6B model (en route)

27B performs better than Llama3-70B and Nemotron-340B on Lmsys Arena, making it best in its size and stronger than some larger models. While 9B outperforms the likes of Mistral-large and Qwen1.5-110B.

The 27B Gemma 2 model is designed to run inference efficiently at full precision on a single Google Cloud TPU host, NVIDIA A100 80GB Tensor Core GPU, or NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPU. Moreover, this is an open weights model line, currently only available to researchers and developers.

Why does it matter?

The models sound like they are built for practical deployments. They come in practical sizes so that they can be easily deployed while being amazing in quality due to best-in-class performances.

Source: https://blog.google/technology/developers/google-gemma-2/

 OpenAI’s CriticGPT finds GPT-4’s mistakes with GPT-4

OpenAI trained a model based on GPT-4, called CriticGPT, to catch errors in ChatGPT’s code output. It found that when users get help from CriticGPT to review ChatGPT code, they outperform those without help 60% of the time.

OpenAI aligns GPT-4 models to be more helpful and interactive through Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF). A key part of RLHF is collecting comparisons in which people, called AI trainers, rate different ChatGPT responses against each other.

OpenAI is beginning to integrate CriticGPT-like models into its RLHF labeling pipeline, providing trainers with explicit AI assistance.

Why does it matter?

With more advances in reasoning and model behavior, AI models’ mistakes can become more subtle for AI trainers to spot. CriticGPT is a step towards addressing this fundamental limitation of RLHF.

Source: https://openai.com/index/finding-gpt4s-mistakes-with-gpt-4

 Google partners with Moody’s, Thomson Reuters & more for AI data

Google is partnering with reputable third-party services, such as Moody’s, MSCI, Thomson Reuters, and Zoominfo, to ground its AI with real-world data. These four will be available within Vertex AI starting next quarter. They will offer developers qualified data to backstop their model outputs and ensure responses are factually accurate.

Google is also announcing high-fidelity grounding. Available through an experimental preview, it’s designed to help AI systems work better with a given set of specific information.

Why does it matter?

Earlier, Google announced efforts to ground Vertex AI results using web data and a plan to allow companies to ground AI systems in their own internal data.

Now, it is grounding these systems in known factual data from third parties, which could significantly lessen hallucinations and make AI more trustworthy for enterprise customers.

Source: https://venturebeat.com/ai/google-grounding-ai-with-moodys-msci-thomson-reuters-zoominfo

What Else Is Happening in AI on June 27th 2024

TIME and OpenAI announced a multi-year content deal

OpenAI will gain access to current and historic content from TIME’s extensive archives from the last 101 years to enhance its products. It will also enable TIME to gain access to OpenAI’s technology to develop new products for its audiences.

Source: https://openai.com/index/strategic-content-partnership-with-time

Google is using AI to add 110 new languages to Google Translate

It is Google’s largest expansion ever, thanks to its PaLM 2 LLM. It includes languages like Cantonese, NKo, and Tamazight, representing more than 614 million speakers and opening up translations for around 8% of the world’s population.

Source: https://blog.google/products/translate/google-translate-new-languages-2024/

YouTube is in talks with major record labels for an AI music deal

It is offering to pay Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Records “lump sums of cash” in exchange for legally licensing their songs to train new AI music tools. These will likely be one-off payments, not royalty-based arrangements. Source: https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/27/24187151/youtube-ai-music-deals-licensing-record-labels-sony-umg-warner

Meta to start testing user-created AI chatbots on Instagram

CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced yesterday that Meta will begin to surface AI characters made by creators through Meta AI studio on Instagram, starting in the U.S. These will primarily show up in messaging for now and will be clearly labeled as AI.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/27/meta-starts-testing-user-created-ai-chatbots-on-instagram

Character.AI now allows users to talk with AI avatars over calls

Users can initiate calls with a user-generated AI character directly with a button tap. Users can also switch between calling and texting seamlessly and stop the AI from talking through a “Tap to interrupt” option. The feature currently supports only a few languages.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/ai-chatbot-startup-characterai-launches-new-calls-feature-2024-06-27

 Use ChatGPT to turn docs into spreadsheets

With a simple prompt, ChatGPT can analyze documents, answer questions, perform calculations, and create a downloadable spreadsheet — all in one conversation!

1. Log in to ChatGPT and upload your document to the chat (remember to remove any sensitive data before submitting).
2. Ask questions about it, e.g., “How much is the security deposit?”
3. Request calculations, like the total first month’s costs, including deposits and fees.
4. Simple prompt ChatGPT to “create a downloadable budget spreadsheet”, specifying the time frame and desired columns.

Note: Only share documents you’re comfortable with. Be cautious with sensitive information and consider redacting critical details before uploading.

Source: https://university.therundown.ai/c/daily-tutorials/from-lease-agreement-to-budget-spreadsheet-with-chatgpt-0ed8d7ba-7d5a-4e9f-903a-64822caf1579

A  Daily chronicle of AI Innovations June 27th 2024:

 YouTube wants to pay record labels to use their songs for AI training

 Figma unveils AI-powered design tools, challenges Adobe’s dominance

 Character.AI introduces AI avatar calls

 Amazon steps into the chatbot race 

 Alibaba’s Qwen-72B tops the Hugging Face leaderboard

 Hugging Face updates Open LLM Leaderboard

 NBC to use AI voice for Olympics recaps!

 Sonia’s ‘AI Therapist’ sparks debate

 Anthropic extends Claude’s access to government

 YouTube wants to pay record labels to use their songs for AI training

• YouTube is reportedly negotiating with major music labels like Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Warner Records to pay for licensing their songs for AI training.
• Despite these negotiations, the ultimate decision to allow the use of songs for AI training will likely fall to individual artists rather than the labels themselves.
• In April 2023, more than 200 artists voiced their opposition to AI using their work, emphasizing the potential threat to creators’ rights and the music ecosystem.

Source: https://www.engadget.com/youtube-reportedly-wants-to-pay-record-labels-to-use-their-songs-for-ai-training-125052503.html

Figma unveils AI-powered design tools, challenges Adobe’s dominance

• Figma has launched AI-powered design features to speed up workflows and aid teams in creating superior software, positioning it as a product development platform to compete with Adobe.
• The new Figma AI features include design creation with text prompts, visual search capabilities, layer renaming, and automating repetitive tasks, and are currently available in a limited beta.
• While beta access to Figma AI is free, later availability will require subscriptions to specific plans, and admins must enable AI features, differentiating Figma’s approach from Adobe’s controversial AI terms.

Source: https://venturebeat.com/ai/figma-unveils-ai-powered-design-tools-to-rival-adobe/

 Character.AI introduces AI avatar calls

• Character.AI announced that users can now make calls to AI characters, supporting multiple languages including English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese.
• The company reported that during testing, over 3 million users made 20 million calls, and noted that AI character calls can help with language practice, mock interviews, or role-playing games.
• With a button tap, users can start calls with AI characters, seamlessly switch between calling and texting, and use a “Tap to interrupt” feature to stop the AI from talking.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/27/character-ai-now-allows-users-to-talk-with-avatars-over-calls/

 Amazon steps into the chatbot race

Amazon is reportedly working on a new consumer-focused chatbot codenamed “Metis.” It is planned to be released somewhere around September. Here’s what we know about it:

• The chatbot is powered by a new model, Olympus, and can be accessed via a web browser.
• It uses a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) technique to provide up-to-date information and automate tasks.
• The model conversationally provides text and image-based outputs, suggesting follow-ups to queries. It also shares links to sources and supports image generation.
• It uses an infrastructure similar to Amazon’s upcoming voice assistant, Remarkable Alexa.

Why does it matter?

The AI assistant market is already too crowded, making Metis’ release seem a bit too late. Its rivals, OpenAI and Google, have already launched their models in 2023 and will give tough competition to Amazon. If Amazon wishes to win this AI race, Metis must showcase exceptional capabilities.

Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-chatgpt-rival-codenamed-metis-2024-6

 
 Figma’s new AI features stir competition with Adobe

Figma announced a range of new features at the 2024 Config conference. Significant ones include a UI redesign, generative AI tools, new icons and toolbar, AI-enhanced asset search, and auto-generated texts in designs.

https://x.com/figma/status/1806016455609286847

For instance, by typing a simple prompt into the textbox, users can create an entire app design mock-up for a restaurant. Figma will connect the design pages and even write suggested content!

Figma has also added a few designer-specific features to allow users to tweak designs in real-time. It features a developer mode with a “ready-for-dev” task list. The upgrade also boasts Figma slides, a Google slides-like tool for building and sharing presentations.

Why does it matter?

Figma’s AI tools will enable newer users on the platform to test out ideas easily. At the same time, tools like “ready-for-dev” will offer quick iterations to users who are more familiar with the platform.

With Adobe abandoning its plans to acquire Figma, the company’s recent upgrade might pose a challenge to the former.

Source: https://www.figma.com/whats-new/

 Alibaba’s Qwen-72B tops the Hugging Face leaderboard

Hugging Face’s latest open large language model leaderboard ranks and evaluates open LLMs based on benchmarks like MMLU-pro and tests them on high-school and college-level problems.

The platform used 300 NVIDIA H100 GPUs to re-evaluate major open LLMs to obtain updated rankings. Chinese company Alibaba’s Qwen-72B dominated the leaderboard, becoming a top performer overall.

Not just that, the leaderboard was mainly dominated by Chinese companies, highlighting their headway into the open LLM space.

Why does it matter?

The open LLM leaderboard is essential for transparent and comprehensive LLM evaluation. It also proves that a model’s size doesn’t guarantee its superior performance. As Chinese models deliver exceptional performance, will well-known models from the USA, like Meta’s Llama, be replaced in the coming years?

Source: https://huggingface.co/spaces/open-llm-leaderboard/open_llm_leaderboard

What Else Is Happening in AI on June 27th 2024

 Anthropic extends Claude’s access to government

Anthropic is making Claude 3 Haiku and Claude 3 Sonnet available for government use through the AWS marketplace. This will improve citizen services, streamline document reviews, support data-based policymaking, and generate realistic training scenarios.

Source: https://www.anthropic.com/news/expanding-access-to-claude-for-government?

 Opera announces new themes and features for One R2

Major features include AI-based image and voice generation, image understanding capabilities, floating windows, new themes, design elements, and split window tabs.

Source: https://press.opera.com/2024/06/26/opera-unveils-opera-one-r2-in-developer

 NBC to use AI voice for Olympics recaps!

The AI will offer daily, personalized coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics on the Peacock app in the voice of the famous sports commentator, AI Michael. According to NBC, the voice AI is trained on data from Michael’s appearances on the show.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbc-use-ai-generated-version-al-michaels-voice-summer-olympics-rcna159108

 Caption’s new feature can auto-edit videos!

The feature adds custom graphics, zooms, music, sound effects, transitions, and motion backgrounds to an unedited video. Users can also use Caption’s AI avatars to create videos and fully edit them with the AI edit feature.

Source: https://www.captions.ai/

 Sonia’s ‘AI Therapist’ sparks debate

The personalized AI therapist can deal with depression, stress, anxiety, poor sleep, and more by analyzing what users say during therapy sessions. The release has sparked a debate around user data privacy, its susceptibility to bias, and the accuracy of its diagnosis. Source: https://www.soniahealth.com/

 Hugging Face updates Open LLM Leaderboard

Hugging Face just introduced a new upgrade to its Open LLM Leaderboard, adding new benchmarks and evaluation methods to help address the recent plateau in LLM performance gains.

• The leaderboard now features six new benchmarks designed to be more challenging and less prone to contamination.
• Initial rankings show Qwen2-72B-Instruct leading the pack, followed by Meta’s Llama-3-70B-Instruct and Mixtral 8×22b.
• A new normalized scoring system adjusts for baseline performance, providing a more fair comparison across different evaluation types.
• The upgrade also introduces a ‘maintainer’s highlight’ category and community voting system to prioritize the most relevant models.

As LLMs approach human-level performance on most tasks, finding new ways to evaluate them is becoming more difficult — and more crucial. This revamp helps guide researchers and developers towards more targeted improvements, providing a more nuanced assessment of model capabilities.

Source: https://huggingface.co/spaces/open-llm-leaderboard/blog

 Rabbit R1 hit with major security flaw

A group of developers just discovered a major vulnerability in Rabbit’s R1 AI assistant device, potentially exposing user’s private data and chat responses.

• A community-led group called Rabbitude uncovered hardcoded API keys in Rabbit’s codebase, which allowed access to all R1 responses.
• The group gained access to the codebase in mid-May, saying the Rabbit team was aware of the issue but failed to take action.
• Rabbitude said the vulnerability could allow bad actors to disable all r1 devices, alter voices and responses, and access private messages.
• Rabbit acknowledged an ‘alleged data breach’ via a Discord post, but claims no customer data was leaked.

Despite massive hype in the first wave of consumer AI standalone devices, the Rabbit r1 has been nothing short of a disaster so far. Already facing major criticism over the companion’s limited capabilities, this security breach only furthers the skepticism surrounding the early AI hardware market entrants.

Source: https://rabbitu.de/articles/security-disclosure-1?

A  Daily chronicle of AI Innovations June 26th 2024:

 Anthropic rolls out Claude’s cutting-edge collaborative features
 Google experiments with celebrity-inspired AI Chatbots
 OpenAI postpones the launch of ChatGPT voice mode

 New AI simulates 500M years of evolution

 OpenAI delays ChatGPT voice upgrade

 Anthropic rolls out Claude’s cutting-edge collaborative features

Anthropic has introduced new collaboration features for Claude. These features include:

• Projects: Projects in Claude allow integration of internal resources like style guides or codebases, enhancing Claude’s ability to deliver tailored assistance across various tasks. Users can set custom instructions for each Project to modify Claude’s tone or perspective for a specific role or industry.

• Artifacts: It allows users to generate and edit various content types like code, documents, and graphics within a dedicated window. This benefits developers by offering larger code windows and live previews for easier front-end reviews.

• Sharing Features: Claude Team users can share snapshots of their best conversations with Claude in their team’s shared project activity feed.

Additionally, any data or chats shared within Projects will not be used to train Anthropic’s generative models without a user’s explicit consent.

Why does it matter?

By offering advanced AI collaboration tools, Anthropic meets critical enterprise needs for flexibility and team efficiency, where many of its competitors fall short. This approach could broaden its user base, increasing user retention and market penetration.

Source: https://www.anthropic.com/news/projects

 Google experiments with celebrity-inspired AI Chatbots

These chatbots will be powered by Google’s Gemini family of LLMs. The company aims to strike partnerships with influencers and celebrities and is also working on a feature that allows people to create their own chatbots by describing their personalities and appearances.

The project is led by Ryan Germick, a longtime executive at Google and a team of ten. These chatbots could be an experiment and may only appear on Google Labs rather than being widely available.

Why does it matter?

Google’s AI chatbots featuring celebrities and influencers enhance user engagement but raise ethical concerns about consent, boundaries, and legal and privacy issues as AI evolves.

Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/google-wants-to-build-ai-chatbots-based-on-celebs-influencers-for-some-reason/ar-BB1oS1or

 OpenAI postpones the launch of ChatGPT voice mode

Originally planned for late June, the Voice Mode aims to provide a more naturalistic and conversational experience with the AI chatbot, complete with emotional inflection and the ability to handle interruptions.

However, it will now be available only to a small group of users in late July or early August. OpenAI is working on improving content detection and user experience before wider rollout. GPT-4o’s real-time voice and vision capabilities are also expected to roll out to ChatGPT Plus users soon.

Why does it matter?

Delays can give competitors like Anthropic a chance to gain an edge. If rivals manage to launch similar or superior voice capabilities sooner, OpenAI risks losing potential users and market share.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/25/openai-delays-chatgpts-new-voice-mode

New AI simulates 500M years of evolution

Biotech startup EvolutionaryScale just introduced ESM3, a new AI model capable of designing and simulating new proteins in ways that mimic millions of years of natural evolution.

• ESM3 is a frontier language model that can reason over protein sequences, structures, and functions simultaneously.
• In tests, ESM3 generated a new fluorescent protein 58% different from other known structures — a leap that typically takes nature 500M years of evolution.
• The largest version of ESM3 has 98B parameters, and was trained on approximately 1.8T tokens of biological data.
• EvolutionaryScale was created by former META researchers, and has already secured $142M in seed funding from tech giants like Amazon and Nvidia.

ESM3 is bringing us closer to a future where we can ‘program’ biology as easily as we write computer code — potentially revolutionizing fields from healthcare to environmental science and unlocking completely new areas of knowledge across fields.

Source: https://www.evolutionaryscale.ai/blog/esm3-release

What Else Is Happening in AI on July 26th 2024

 Ex-Meta engineers launch protein-generating AI biology model

EvolutionaryScale, launched by ex-Meta engineers, introduced ESM3, a gen AI model for designing novel proteins. It uses AI to simulate evolutionary processes, aiming to revolutionize industries like medicine and biofuels. It is available via API to selected customers and non-commercial users.

Source: https://venturebeat.com/ai/meta-alum-launches-ai-biology-model-that-simulates-500-million-years-of-evolution

 Reddit sets new barriers for AI crawlers to protect its content

Reddit will rate-limit or block unknown bots and crawlers that violate its Public Content Policy or lack an agreement with the platform. These changes aim to deter AI companies from training LLMs on Reddit content (excluding the $60 million deal with Google).

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/25/reddits-upcoming-changes-attempt-to-safeguard-the-platform-against-ai-crawlers

 AI-generated ad film debuts at Cannes 2024 

Toys ‘R’ Us, the iconic toy store chain, collaborated with OpenAI’s Sora  to produce a brand film called “The Origin of Toys ‘R’ Us.” The film premiered at the 2024 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

Source: https://venturebeat.com/ai/toys-r-us-unveils-first-commercial-made-with-openais-sora

 Mozilla’s Firefox Nightly now lets users pick from leading AI chatbots

It allows users to choose from multiple AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, HuggingChat, and Le Chat Mistral. The feature lets users select their preferred AI to perform tasks such as summarizing web content, simplifying text, or conducting quizzes.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/25/firefox-now-lets-you-choose-your-preferred-ai-chatbot-in-its-nightly-builds

 Google extends Gemini AI to Gmail to streamline email tasks

Google has integrated its Gemini AI into Gmail for Workspace subscribers, enhancing email functionality. It assists users by automatically drafting emails, summarizing threads, crafting responses, and retrieving information from emails or Google Drive.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/25/google-brings-its-gemini-ai-to-gmail-via-a-sidebar-that-can-help-you-write-and-summarize-emails

A  Daily chronicle of AI Innovations June 25th 2024:

 Amazon is working on a ChatGPT competitor

 Google is building AI chatbots modeled after celebrities, YouTube influencers

 Nvidia’s market value plummets drastically

 Apple rejected Meta’s AI integration over privacy issues

 OpenAI buys a remote collaboration platform

 Synthesia 2.0: World’s 1st AI video communication platform
 OpenAI is on an acquiring spree, buying Rocket and Multi
 Record labels sue AI music startups over copyright infringement

 Amazon is working on a ChatGPT competitor

• Amazon is developing an AI chatbot, code-named “Metis,” to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and it could be launched later this year, based on a report from Business Insider.
• The upcoming chatbot will be accessed through a web browser and rely on a new foundational model, as mentioned by sources and documents cited by Business Insider.
• Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy is reportedly directly involved with “Metis,” reflecting Amazon’s broader strategy to intensify its AI efforts across various applications and services.
• Source: https://www.geekwire.com/2024/report-amazon-developing-ai-chatbot-that-would-compete-with-chatgpt-and-others/

 Google is building AI chatbots modeled after celebrities, YouTube influencers

• Google is reportedly developing new AI chatbots modeled after celebrities and YouTube influencers, aiming to create specialized interactive experiences.
• The initiative will use Google’s Gemini family of large language models and seeks partnerships with influencers and celebrities, allowing users to design their own chatbots by describing traits and appearance.
• The project, led by executive Ryan Germick and a team of ten, might initially be available only on Google Labs, keeping the bots experimental and not widely accessible at launch.
• Source: https://www.engadget.com/google-is-reportedly-building-ai-chatbots-based-on-celebrities-and-influencers-235731655.html

 Nvidia’s market value plummets drastically

• Nvidia’s shares dropped nearly 13% in a week, causing a loss of $430 billion from its market value and dropping its market capitalization to $2.91 trillion.
• This decline has moved Nvidia from the top position to third place among the world’s most valuable companies, now trailing behind Microsoft and Apple.
• Investor enthusiasm for Nvidia’s role in AI is waning after significant stock gains, leading to a 6.7% drop on Monday, the third consecutive day of declines for the company.
• Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/25/tech/nvidia-stock-fall-worlds-third-biggest-company/index.html

 Apple rejected Meta’s AI integration over privacy issues

• Apple declined a potential AI partnership with Meta concerning the integration of Meta’s large language model into iOS, primarily due to privacy concerns highlighted in a Bloomberg report.
• While initial discussions between Apple and Meta took place, they did not advance, with Apple choosing not to pursue formal talks or integration due to Meta’s insufficient privacy practices.
• Despite rejecting Meta, Apple has engaged in collaborations with other major AI entities, finalizing a deal with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into iOS 18 and discussing potential integrations with Google and Anthropic for diverse AI model options.
• Source: https://www.macrumors.com/2024/06/24/apple-meta-ai-privacy-concerns/

 OpenAI buys a remote collaboration platform

• OpenAI is advancing its AI technology by integrating it into desktop computing, moving beyond browser-based interactions with the acquisition of startup Multi.
• By purchasing Multi, OpenAI aims to develop potentially a new AI-based operating system or at least an interaction layer for current systems, as suggested by recent product releases including a ChatGPT desktop app.
• OpenAI’s future AI assistant could replace traditional browsers, altering the role of search engines and websites, and revolutionizing how we interact with online content.
• Source: https://the-decoder.com/openai-moves-toward-its-own-ai-operating-system-and-a-post-browser-world/

 Synthesia 2.0: World’s 1st AI video communication platform

Synthesia is launching Synthesia 2.0 – the world’s first AI video communications platform for businesses. It reinvents the entire video production process, allowing companies to create and share AI-generated videos at scale easily.

https://youtu.be/gZaBwdru_bk?si=fP7_nILeu66Oqj4B

The key new features and capabilities of Synthesia 2.0 include:

• 2 Personal AI Avatars: Expressive Avatars shot in a studio and Custom Avatars created using your webcam.
• AI Video Assistant: Converts text, documents, or websites into high-quality videos, with options to customize the branding, tone, and length.
• Intuitive Video Editing: Editing simplified with “Triggers” that let you control animations and edits from the script.
• Translation and Dynamic Video Player: Videos can now be translated into over 120 languages. Synthesia is also building a new video player with interactive features.
• AI Safety Focus: Synthesia is pursuing ISO/IEC 42001 certification, the first standard for responsible AI management, to ensure its AI technologies are ethical.

Why does it matter?

By making video creation and distribution more accessible and automated, Synthesia aims to help businesses transition to a “video-first” approach to communicate more effectively, improve employee training, customer service, and marketing efforts, and streamline various business operations.

Source: https://www.synthesia.io/post/introducing-synthesia-video-communications-platform

 OpenAI is on an acquiring spree, buying Rocket and Multi

Last week, OpenAI acquired Rockset, a startup that develops tools for real-time data search and analytics. OpenAI said it would integrate Rockset’s technology to power its infrastructure and offerings across products.

This week, OpenAI acquired Multi, a startup focused on building remote collaboration tools and software. Technically, the deal is an acqui-hire as the entire Multi team, including its co-founders, will join OpenAI to work on the company’s ChatGPT desktop application.

Why does it matter?

With over 600,000 paid business users, including most Fortune 500 companies, OpenAI’s back-to-back acquisitions strategically position it to expand its enterprise-focused AI products and make its powerful language models more useful for businesses.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/24/openai-buys-a-remote-collaboration-platform

 Record labels sue AI music startups over copyright infringement

The world’s major record labels, including Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Music, have filed twin lawsuits against the AI music generation startups Suno and Udio. The lawsuits accuse the companies of unlawfully training their AI models on massive amounts of copyrighted music, which, according to the complaints, allows the startups to generate similar-sounding music without permission.

The record labels allege Suno and Udio have effectively copied artists’ styles and specific musical characteristics. The labels claim the AI-generated music is so close to the original that it is eerily similar when transcribed into sheet music. The lawsuits also accuse the startups of making it easy for people to distribute AI-created samples that mimic copyrighted recordings on platforms like Spotify.

Why does it matter?

This legal battle is only the latest example, and one of many, of AI technology colliding with creative industries. However, any resolution of these battles will likely have far-reaching implications for the music industry and the development of AI-powered music tools.

Source: https://venturebeat.com/ai/record-labels-sue-ai-music-generator-startups-suno-udio-for-copyright-infringement

What Else Is Happening in AI on June 25th

 Apple withdraws AI collaboration deal with Meta over privacy concerns

Contrary to the rumors about a potential AI collaboration, Apple is not planning a partnership to integrate Meta’s AI models into its products due to privacy concerns. Instead, Apple is focusing on partnerships with OpenAI and Google that align with its commitment to user privacy.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/24/apple-shelved-the-idea-of-integrating-metas-ai-models-over-privacy-concerns-report-says

 Shopify expands its AI capabilities to attract more businesses

Shopify has expanded access to its AI-powered features, including the Sidekick assistant and image-generation tool. It is making these AI tools available to more users, as it aims to provide merchants with an integrated and seamless platform to scale their businesses.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/shopify-expands-access-its-ai-powered-features-attract-more-businesses-2024-06-24

 Google is bringing Gemini access to teens through school accounts

Google now makes its AI assistant Gemini available to teenage students through school accounts. This move is aimed at helping prepare students for a future where generative AI is more prevalent. Google says Gemini will provide real-time feedback and support to students while including safeguards to prevent inappropriate responses.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/24/google-is-bringing-gemini-access-to-teens-using-their-school-accounts

 NVIDIA deploys its AI tech in the Middle East among U.S AI export curb

NVIDIA has struck a deal with Qatari telecom provider Ooredoo to deploy its AI technology in the Middle East. This move comes amid U.S. export restrictions on advanced AI chips to some countries in the region. Ooredoo will be the first company in the Middle East to offer Nvidia’s AI and graphics technology to its clients across multiple countries.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/nvidia-launch-middle-east-amid-us-curbs-ai-exports-region-ooredoo-ceo-says-2024-06-23

 Meta marks real photos with ‘Made by AI’ label

Meta has been incorrectly labeling real photos as “Made by AI.” Multiple photographers have reported that Meta has added this label to their genuine photographs, even when they have only made minor edits using tools like Adobe’s Generative Fill. Meta says it relies on industry standards to detect AI-generated content, leading to false positives.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/24/24184795/meta-instagram-incorrect-made-by-ai-photo-labels

A  Daily chronicle of AI Innovations June 24th 2024:

 Apple and Meta are discussing gen AI partnership
 ByteDance and Broadcom collaborate on AI chip development
  Researchers developed a new method to detect hallucinations

 Apple in talks with Meta for potential AI integration

 Record labels sue AI music companies

 AI blood test for Parkinson’s detection

Researchers just developed an AI-powered blood test that can predict Parkinson’s disease up to 7 years before symptoms appear, potentially revolutionizing early diagnosis and treatment.

• The AI analyzes key markers in blood samples linked to inflammation and protein degradation, attempting to predict which patients would develop the disease.
• In a 10-year study, the test correctly identified 79% of patients who later developed Parkinson’s.
• The AI model predicted Parkinson’s up to 7 years before clinical symptoms emerged in some cases.
• Researchers hope to develop a simple finger-prick version for widespread screenings.

AI’s ability to find subtle patterns in previously undetectable biological data is unlocking new diagnostic capabilities. By catching a debilitating disease years before the onset of symptoms, patients can get earlier access to treatment aimed at prevention.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c722yly6l6ro

Apple in talks with Meta for potential AI integration

• Apple is reportedly negotiating with Meta to integrate Meta’s generative AI model into Apple’s new AI system, Apple Intelligence, according to The Wall Street Journal.
• Apple is seeking partnerships with multiple AI companies, including Meta, to enhance its AI capabilities and catch up in the competitive AI race.
• A potential collaboration between Apple and Meta would be significant due to their history of disagreements, and it could greatly impact the AI industry if successful.
• Source: https://www.benzinga.com/news/24/06/39447797/apple-eyes-meta-for-potentially-game-changing-ai-partnership-report

Record labels sue AI music companies

• Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Records are suing AI companies Suno and Udio for massive copyright infringement related to the creation of original songs using generative AI technology.
• The music labels claim that Suno and Udio used copyrighted works without permission, and are seeking damages of up to $150,000 per violated work in lawsuits filed in Boston and New York federal courts.
• This legal action is part of a broader conflict between the music industry and tech companies offering AI tools, highlighting concerns about AI-generated music impacting the control and revenue of human artists.
• Source: https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/24/24184710/riaa-ai-lawsuit-suno-udio-copyright-umg-sony-warner

 Apple and Meta are discussing gen AI partnership

Apple is reportedly in talks with its longtime rival Meta to integrate the latter’s Llama 3 AI model into Apple Intelligence. This move comes as Apple prepares to roll out its AI features across iPhones, iPads, and Macs later this year.

The potential partnership follows Apple’s existing deal with OpenAI, suggesting a collaboration strategy rather than solo development in the AI race. In Apple’s arrangement with OpenAI, there’s no direct payment. Instead, OpenAI can offer premium subscriptions through Apple Intelligence, with Apple taking a percentage. It’s unclear if Meta would agree to a similar business model, given that Llama 3 is open-source and free to access.

Why does it matter?

Despite their historical rivalry, especially after Apple’s 2021 privacy changes impacted Meta’s ad revenue, this potential partnership suggests a willingness to cooperate in the AI race. However, not everyone is thrilled about it. Users and investors are voicing concerns about privacy, with Meta’s track record being a major sticking point. Some see this as a desperate move by Apple.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/apple-meta-have-discussed-an-ai-partnership-cc57437e

 ByteDance and Broadcom collaborate on AI chip development

ByteDance is collaborating with U.S. chip designer Broadcom to develop an advanced AI processor. This partnership aims to secure a stable supply of high-end chips amid ongoing U.S.-China tensions. The project centers on creating a 5-nanometre, customized Application-Specific Integrated Chip (ASIC) that complies with U.S. export restrictions.

This chip’s manufacturing is set to be outsourced to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), though production is not expected to begin this year. While the design work is currently underway, the critical “tape out” phase has yet to commence.

Why does it matter?

This partnership shows how Chinese tech companies are getting creative to secure advanced AI chips. As ByteDance has launched a major push in generative AI, this new initiative brings dual benefits: reducing procurement costs and ensuring a stable supply of higher-end chips.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/chinas-bytedance-working-with-broadcom-develop-advanced-ai-chip-sources-say-2024-06-24

  Researchers developed a new method to detect hallucinations

ChatGPT and Gemini can produce impressive results but often “hallucinate” false or unsubstantiated information. This research focuses on a subset of hallucinations called “confabulations,” where LLMs generate answers that are both wrong and arbitrary. Researchers have developed new methods to detect confabulations using entropy-based uncertainty estimators. They introduce the concept of “semantic entropy” to measure the uncertainty of LLM generations at the meaning level.

High semantic entropy corresponds to high uncertainty and indicates a higher likelihood of confabulation. The method computes uncertainty at the level of meaning rather than specific word sequences, addressing the fact that one idea can be expressed in many ways. The method provides scalable oversight by detecting confabulations that people might otherwise find plausible.

Why does it matter?

Detecting confabulations can improve question-answering accuracy for state-of-the-art LLMs. The method helps users understand when to be cautious with LLM outputs and opens up new possibilities for using LLMs that were previously limited by unreliability.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07421-0

What Else Is Happening in AI on June 24th 2024

Stability AI has appointed a new CEO

Prem Akkaraju, former CEO of Weta Digital, will step up to this role. This change comes after founder Emad Mostaque resigned in March amid financial concerns. Akkaraju is part of a new investor group, including former Facebook President Sean Parker, that provides a cash infusion to Stability AI. Source: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/stability-ai-gets-new-ceo-and-a-bailout-from-investor-group-led-by-sean-parker

 Coders spotted Midjourney references in Grok’s standalone version

It hints at a possible collaboration between xAI and Midjourney for image generation. Grok might use Midjourney models via API to generate images. This could mean that the standalone Grok might let users upload images. All this could be part of the Grok 1.5 rollout. Source: https://www.bolnews.com/technology/2024/06/grok-1-5-potential-use-of-midjourney-for-image-generation-gains-evidence

YouTube fights AI fakes with new policy 

YouTube expanded its privacy policy to cover AI-generated content. Now, users can request the removal of synthetic media that imitates their face or voice. However, privacy complaints alone may not guarantee content removal. While reviewing requests, YouTube will consider the potential for confusion and intent (parody/satire). Source: https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/281049221

 OmniAI transforms unstructured enterprise data for AI and analytics use

Founded by Y Combinator alums, OmniAI syncs with your existing storage, prep the data, and lets you run your choice of AI models on the data. It offers integrations with popular models like Meta’s Llama 3 and Anthropic’s Claude. Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/22/omniai-transforms-business-data-for-ai

 The new Dot AI chatbot wants to be your companion 

Dot chatbot aims to personalize interactions based on users’ thoughts and feelings. It uses multiple AI models from OpenAI and Google. The app uses intensive Q&A to learn about users’ interests and experiences. Dot offers a subscription model at $11.99/month for unlimited conversations. Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/21/dots-ai-really-really-wants-to-get-to-know-you

A  Daily chronicle of AI Innovations June 20th 2024:

 Microsoft debuts a vision-foundational model for diverse tasks
 Ex-OpenAI co-founder launches own AI company
 Can AI read minds? New model can predict anxiety levels 

 Microsoft debuts a vision-foundational model for diverse tasks

Florence 2, Microsoft’s vision-AI model, can perform diverse tasks like object detection, captioning, visual grounding, and visual question answering via image and text prompts. It displays excellent captioning, object detection, visual grounding, and segmentation.

The model comes in 232M and 771M parameter sizes and uses a sequence-to-sequence architecture, enabling multiple vision tasks without needing a task-specific architecture modification.

On fine-tuning the model with publicly available human-annotated data, Florence 2 showcased impressive results, offering tough competition to existing large vision models like Flamingo despite its compact size.

Why does it matter?

The model will equip enterprises with a standard approach to handling various vision-handling applications. This will save resources spent on separate task-specific vision models that need fine-tuning. Moreover, it may also be useful to developers as it would eliminate the need for separate vision models for smaller tasks, significantly saving compute costs.

Source: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/florence-2-advancing-a-unified-representation-for-a-variety-of-vision-tasks

 Ex-OpenAI co-founder launches own AI company

Just a month after leaving OpenAI, ex-cofounder Ilya Sutskever has launched his own AI company, Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI), alongside former Y Combinator partner Daniel Gross and ex-OpenAI engineer Daniel Levy as co-founders.

According to the SSI’s launch statement on X, the company will prioritize safety, progress, and security. Sutskever also emphasizes that the company’s “singular focus” on a joint approach to safety and capabilities will prevent it from being distracted by management overhead or production cycles, unlike companies like OpenAI or Google.

Why does it matter?

SSI’s launch clearly marks the emergence of a new key player in the race to build safe, powerful AI. Its mission statement emphasizes safety and the potential for groundbreaking developments that may shape the future of AI research and development. It would be interesting to see whether the startup will uphold its mission statement in the coming days.

Source: https://ssi.inc/

 Can AI read minds? New model can predict anxiety levels 

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati have developed an AI model that can identify people with an urgent risk of anxiety. The AI model uses minimal computational resources, a short picture rating task, and a small set of variables to make the prediction. The approach named “Comp Cog AI” integrates computational cognition and AI.

Participants rated 48 pictures with mildly emotional subject matter based on the degree to which they liked or disliked those pictures. The response data was then used to quantify the mathematical features of their judgments. Finally, the data was combined with ML algorithms to identify their anxiety levels.

Since the technology doesn’t rely on a native language, it is accessible to a wider audience and diverse settings to assess anxiety.

Why does it matter?

The picture rating feature can provide unbiased data to medical professionals on a person’s mental health status without subjecting them to direct questions that may trigger negative emotions. Given its 81% accuracy rate, the tool can become a useful app for detecting individuals with high anxiety risks.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44184-024-00074-x.epdf

What Else Is Happening in AI on June 20th 2024

 Deloitte, HPE, and NVIDIA partner up! The alliance combines Deloitte’s deep industry expertise and AI capabilities with the newly released HPE NVIDIA AI Compute solutions suite. The collaboration further seeks to advance industry-specific gen AI applications and assist clients across sectors in modernizing their data strategies by accessing innovative insights.

Source: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/deloitte-announces-collaboration-with-hewlett-packard-enterprise-and-nvidia-on-co-developed-generative-ai-solutions-302175762.html

 NVIDIA’s AI can turbocharge deployment of self-driving cars: NVIDIA has unveiled a new AI software, Omniverse Cloud Sensor RTX, that will likely accelerate the development of self-driving cars and robots.

The software combines real-world data with synthetic data, making it easy to test sensor perception in realistic virtual environments before deployment into the actual world.

Source: https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/omniverse-microservices-physical-ai

 YouTube trials AI-powered “Ask for music” feature: The feature seeks to make searching music more conversational for users. Users can search for music using voice commands and verbal prompts. It is speculated that the feature may be an addition to the AI-generated playlist cover available on YouTube.

Source: https://www.business-standard.com/topic/youtube

 Luma adds an “extend video” feature to Dream Machine: In contrast to Luma’s previous five-second limit for videos, the “extend video” feature will allow videos to be extended based on prompts. The AI model will consider the new context while extending the video. Additionally, the upgrade will enable Standard, Pro, and Premier users to remove watermarks.

Source: https://x.com/LumaLabsAI/status/1803098863097835995

 Apple releases 20 core ML models on Hugging Face: The release includes 4 major datasets in addition to 20 core models as a part of Apple’s efforts to equip developers with advanced on-device AI capabilities.

These core ML models have been optimized to run exclusively on users’ devices and can be used for various applications like image classification, depth estimation, and semantic segmentation.

Source: https://huggingface.co/apple

A  Daily chronicle of AI Innovations June 19th 2024:

 Nvidia is now the world’s most valuable company

 Perplexity AI is lying about their user agent

 Meta releases new AI models for text, image and audio

 Ex-Snap engineer launches social network where AIs and humans coexist

 OpenAI and Color Health join forces to accelerate cancer treatment
 Meta unveils new AI models for audio, text, and watermarking
Notion introduces AI Connectors for Slack & Google Drive integration

🎺 TikTok brings AI to content creation

Nvidia is now the world’s most valuable company

• Nvidia surpassed Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable company, reaching a market cap of $3.34 trillion, driven by its focus on artificial intelligence and expanded robotics research.
• The company’s stock price increased by 3.7%, putting it ahead of Microsoft’s $3.33 trillion market cap, while Apple ranks third with a market cap of $3.28 trillion.
• Nvidia’s rise is fueled by partnerships and advancements in AI and robotics, including a new collaboration with Hewlett Packard to launch NVIDIA AI Computing and Private Cloud AI, along with significant projects with major AI developers like Google, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI.
• Source: https://decrypt.co/235988/nvidia-flips-microsoft-top-tech-company

Perplexity AI is lying about their user agent

• WIRED and developer Robb Knight found that Perplexity’s crawler ignores the Robots Exclusion Protocol, accessing content from sites that have blocked it, including Condé Nast properties.
• Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas describes the product as an “answer engine,” but the chatbot has been found to paraphrase articles without proper attribution and sometimes fabricate information entirely.
• An experiment by WIRED demonstrated that Perplexity sometimes generates content without accessing the actual webpage, raising concerns about the accuracy and ethics of its information-gathering methods.
• Source: https://www.wired.com/story/perplexity-is-a-bullshit-machine/

 Meta releases new AI models for text, image and audio 

• Meta’s Fundamental AI Research team introduced new models such as Chameleon, a multimodal model for text and images, and JASCO, a text-to-music model accepting various inputs like chords or beats.
• Meta’s Chameleon can handle and generate text and images, with its 7B and 34B variants available for research under a non-commercial license.
• The company launched AudioSeal, an audio watermarking technology, which can identify AI-generated speech, released under a commercial license for recognizing speech in lengthy audio segments.
• Source: https://the-decoder.com/meta-releases-new-ai-models-for-text-image-and-audio/

Ex-Snap engineer launches social network where AIs and humans coexist

• Butterflies, founded by former Snap engineer Vu Tran, is a social network allowing humans and AI personas (called Butterflies) to interact through posts, comments, and direct messages, launching publicly on iOS and Android after five months in beta.
• Users can easily create Butterfly personas with backstories, emotions, and opinions, which then autonomously generate content that other users and AIs can engage with, aiming to provide a more immersive AI experience compared to traditional chatbots.
• The app received $4.8 million in seed funding led by Coatue and has mostly been used for entertainment, with potential plans for subscription models and brand interactions in the future.
• Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/18/former-snap-engineer-launches-butterflies-a-social-network-where-ais-and-humans-coexist/

 OpenAI and Color Health join forces to accelerate cancer treatment

In collaboration with OpenAI, Color Health has developed a copilot application that leverages OpenAI’s GPT-4.o model to assist clinicians in accelerating cancer treatment. Here’s how it works:

• Integration of medical data: The copilot integrates patient medical data with clinical knowledge using OpenAI’s APIs. It processes and normalizes vast unstructured data such as family history, individual risk factors, and clinical guidelines.

• Tailored treatment plans: Based on this data, the copilot generates customized, comprehensive treatment plans. These plans answer critical questions like “What screenings should the patient be doing?” and identify missing diagnostics.

• Clinician-in-the-loop workflow: A clinician evaluates the copilot’s output at each step. They can modify it if necessary before presenting it to the patient.

• Assured privacy: Color Health ensures HIPAA compliance and maintains rigorous privacy standards while providing clinician oversight to ensure high-quality care.

Why does it matter? 

The tool identifies missing diagnostics and expedites the analysis of complex medical records – a process that can now be completed in just 5 minutes rather than hours or weeks. This not only improves access to critical expertise but also has the potential to catch cancer or pre-cancerous conditions earlier, enabling faster treatment and better patient outcomes.

Source: https://openai.com/index/color-health

 Meta unveils new AI models for audio, text, and watermarking

Meta’s Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) team has recently released several new AI models and tools for researchers to use. Here are the highlights:

• JASCO: This AI model, short for “Joint Audio and Symbolic Conditioning for Temporally Controlled Text-to-Music Generation,” allows users to adjust features of generated sound (such as chords, drums, and melodies) through text inputs. FAIR plans to release the JASCO inference code under an MIT license and the pre-trained model under a non-commercial Creative Commons license.

• AudioSeal: This tool adds watermarks to AI-generated speech. It’s designed specifically for localized detection of AI-generated segments within longer audio snippets and will be released with a commercial license.

Chameleon: FAIR will release two sizes of its multimodal text model, Chameleon (7B and 34B), under a research-only license. These models can handle tasks requiring visual and textual understanding, such as image captioning.

Why does it matter?

By making these tools publicly available, Meta encourages collaboration within the AI community, which could lead to groundbreaking applications in various fields, such as music creation, sound design, and content generation. Moreover, the introduction of AudioSeal addresses the growing need to identify and attribute AI-generated content, promoting transparency and accountability in an increasingly AI-driven world.

Source: https://venturebeat.com/ai/meta-releases-flurry-of-new-ai-models-for-audio-text-and-watermarking

Notion introduces AI Connectors for Slack & Google Drive integration

With AI Connectors, users can query Notion and receive responses from connected apps. The integration allows for selecting specific public channels or all public channels for information retrieval, excluding private channels and direct messages.

Notion AI can access up to a year of historical Slack content, which may take up to 36 hours. Additionally, users can set up various interactions between Notion and Slack, such as sending Slack messages to a Notion database, creating Notion tasks directly from Slack, and receiving notifications in Slack for specific events in Notion

Why does it matter?

This development demonstrates the growing trend of incorporating AI capabilities into mainstream productivity and collaboration platforms. The ability to intelligently pull in and surface relevant information from external platforms helps streamline workflows, enhance productivity, and improve the overall efficiency of the team.

Source: https://x.com/NotionHQ/status/1803096151526137934

What Else Is Happening in AI on June 19th 2024

 Google transitions DeepMind from research to AI product development

This transition involves merging Google Research’s Brain team with DeepMind, creating a unified group called Google DeepMind. The aim is to enhance the development of advanced AI technologies responsibly. However, this move has led to frustration among some researchers due to new guidelines and the pressure to commercialize AI technologies.

Source: https://www.pymnts.com/google/2024/google-reportedly-moving-deepmind-from-research-to-ai-products

 ElevenLabs’ new open-source AI tool adds sound effects to videos

The app extracts four frames from the video and sends them with a prompt to OpenAI’s GPT-4 to generate a text-to-sound effects prompt. This prompt is used by ElevenLabs’s Sound Effects API to create the sound effect, which is then combined with the video into a single file up to 22 seconds long, ready for download.

Source: https://venturebeat.com/ai/elevenlabs-unveils-open-source-creator-tool-for-adding-sound-effects-to-videos

 Snap unveils advanced gen AI for enhanced AR effects

Snap’s latest iteration of gen AI allows users to see more realistic special effects. It plans to create full-body AR experiences rather than just facial AR experiences, such as generating a new outfit. It also announced an upgraded version of its developer program, Lens Studio, which lets artists and developers create AR features for Snapchat or other websites and apps.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/snap-launches-ai-tools-advanced-augmented-reality-2024-06-18

 Hedra Labs launches Character-1, a multimodal creation studio preview

Hedra Labs has launched a preview of Character-1, a model for creating expressive characters that talk, sing, and rap. It offers infinite duration (30s in open preview) and generates 90s content per 60s of input, hardware permitting. This is part of Hedra’s mission to give creators control over dialogue, movement, and virtual worlds.

Source: https://x.com/hedra_labs/status/1803095713112580475

 Ex-Snap engineer launches AI-human social network, Butterflies

The platform allows users to create AI avatars, called “Butterflies,” that can engage in conversations, generate images, and participate in social activities like human users. The app offers a range of features, including creating and customizing AI characters and exploring a feed filled with AI-generated and human-generated content.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/18/former-snap-engineer-launches-butterflies-a-social-network-where-ais-and-humans-coexist

A  Daily chronicle of AI Innovations June 18th 2024:

 OpenAI expands into healthcare with AI tool for cancer screening

 NATO invests $1.1 billion in AI, space, and robotics defence tech

 Apple halts work on Vision Pro

 Google DeepMind’s new AI can generate soundtracks for videos
 Runway launches new model Gen-3 Alpha
China’s DeepSeek Coder V2 beats GPT-4 Turbo

 Apple halts work on Vision Pro

• Apple has paused development on the second-generation Vision Pro headset to concentrate on a more affordable version, according to The Information.
• The company reportedly began working on this cheaper Vision device, codenamed “N109,” in 2022, aiming to sell it for a price similar to a high-end iPhone.
• Even though Apple plans to use the high-end display components from the Vision Pro in the budget model, it still faces challenges in reducing costs without removing too many features.
• Source: https://www.macrumors.com/2024/06/18/apple-suspends-work-on-vision-pro-2/

OpenAI expands into healthcare with AI tool for cancer screening

• OpenAI has partnered with Color Health to integrate artificial intelligence into cancer screening and treatment procedures using their GPT-4o model.
• The AI assistant developed by Color Health processes patient data to create personalized cancer screening strategies and informs doctors of missing diagnostic tests.
• The AI tool also helps in assembling a cancer pretreatment work-up, expediting the process that can take weeks or months, and thus potentially reducing delays in treatment.
• Source: https://www.newsbytesapp.com/news/science/openai-partners-with-color-health-for-cancer-copilot/story

NATO invests $1.1 billion in AI, space, and robotics defence tech

• NATO has started its €1 billion investment in defence technology, focusing on AI, space, and robotics, by funding four European tech firms and four venture capital funds.
• The NATO Innovation Fund, established in 2022, aims to address contemporary defence and security challenges by matching government buyers with start-ups to develop new technologies.
• Initial recipients of the fund include Germany’s ARX Robotics, UK’s Fractile AI, iComat, and Space Forge, with the broader aim of promoting NATO’s technological sovereignty and innovation ecosystems.
• Source: https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/06/18/nato-begins-its-1-billion-investment-in-ai-space-and-robotics-defence-tech

 Google DeepMind’s new AI can generate soundtracks for videos

DeepMind is developing video-to-audio (V2A) technology to generate rich soundtracks for silent videos generated by AI models. V2A combines video pixels with natural language text prompts to create synchronized audiovisual content. The technology offers enhanced creative control, allowing users to guide the audio output using positive and negative prompts.

What sets DeepMind’s V2A apart is its ability to understand raw pixels and generate audio without manual alignment. However, V2A struggles with artifacts or distortions in videos and generates audio that is not super convincing. As DeepMind continues to gather feedback from creators and filmmakers, they remain committed to developing this technology responsibly.

Why does it matter?

The technology could help revive and enhance historical footage, silent films, and other archival material. However, generative AI tools like V2A also threaten to disrupt the film and TV industry, potentially eliminating jobs without strong labor protections.

Source: https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/generating-audio-for-video

 Runway launches new model Gen-3 Alpha

Runway launched Gen-3 Alpha, its latest AI model for generating video clips from text descriptions and still images. Gen-3 Alpha excels at generating expressive human characters with a wide range of actions, gestures, and emotions and can interpret various styles and cinematic terminology. However, it has limitations, including a maximum video length of 10 seconds, and struggles with complex character and object interactions and following the laws of physics precisely.

Runway partnered with entertainment and media organizations to create custom versions of Gen-3 for more stylistically controlled and consistent characters, targeting specific artistic and narrative requirements. They also have implemented safeguards, such as a moderation system to block attempts to generate videos from copyrighted images and a provenance system to identify videos coming from Gen-3.

Why does it matter?

As competition in AI video generation heats up, Runway’s Gen-3 Alpha empowers artists and filmmakers to create high-quality, controllable videos with ease, pushing the boundaries of storytelling and creative possibilities.

Source: https://runwayml.com/blog/introducing-gen-3-alpha

China’s DeepSeek Coder V2 beats GPT-4 Turbo

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has announced the release of DeepSeek Coder V2, an open-source code language model. It is built upon the DeepSeek-V2 MoE model and excels at coding and math tasks, supporting over 300 programming languages. It outperforms state-of-the-art closed-source models like GPT-4 Turbo, Claude 3 Opus, and Gemini 1.5 Pro, making it the first open-source model to achieve this feat. DeepSeek Coder V2 also maintains comparable performance in general reasoning and language capabilities.

The model is being offered under an MIT license, which allows for research and unrestricted commercial use. It can be downloaded or accessed via API on DeepSeek’s platform.

Why does it matter?

DeepSeek aims to “unravel the mystery of AGI with curiosity” and has quickly emerged as a notable Chinese player in the AI race. As it only costs $0.14/1M tokens(input) and $0.28/1M tokens(output), it will give notable models like GPT-4 Turbo intense competition.

Source: https://github.com/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-Coder-V2/blob/main/paper.pdf

What Else Is Happening in AI on June 18th 2024

 Perplexity now displays weather, currency conversion, and simple math directly through cards

This move aims to keep users from going to Google for such results. Perplexity’s CEO, Aravind Srinivas, acknowledged that Google handles basic queries like weather, time, and live sports scores well, and his company had work to do in that area.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/17/perplexity-now-displays-results-for-temperature-currency-conversion-and-simple-math-so-you-dont-have-to-use-google

 U.S. government and private sector ran the first AI attack simulation

Federal officials, AI model operators, and cybersecurity companies ran the first joint simulation of a cyberattack on a critical AI system. It also involved experts from private sector companies like Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI. It helped identify potential new threats and establish communication channels between the government and the private sector.

Source: https://www.axios.com/2024/06/17/cisa-tech-companies-ai-cyberattack-simulation

 Adobe Acrobat got a major upgrade, bringing AI to PDFs and more

Adobe Firefly generative AI enables image generation and editing directly within Acrobat for the first time. Acrobat AI Assistant’s new features, “insights across documents” and “enhanced meeting transcripts,” help users extract insights and share information from various document types. Adobe is offering free, unlimited access to Acrobat AI Assistant from June 18 to June 28.

Source: https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2024/06/17/adobe-acrobat-reimagines-documents-multi-format-ai-powered-work

 TikTok introduces gen AI avatars of creators and stock actors for ads

“Custom Avatars” allow creators to scale their likeness for multilingual avatars and brand collaborations, while brands can use pre-built “Stock Avatars” to add a human touch. Plus, the new “AI Dubbing” tool translates content into ten languages, helping creators and brands increase their global reach.

Source: https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/announcing-symphony-avatars

 Pixelbot 3000 builds Lego art using simple AI prompts

YouTuber Creative Mindstorms designed and built the Pixelbot 3000, a Lego printer that automates the assembly of brick-built mosaics. It uses OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 to generate images based on simple text prompts. First it generates a simplified cartoon-style image, then it is divided into a 32 x 32 grid, and the color of the center pixel in each square is sampled to create a high-contrast scaled image for the mosaic.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/17/24180250/lego-printer-pixel-art-artificial-intelligence

A  Daily chronicle of AI Innovations June 17th 2024:

 McDonald’s pauses AI drive-thru tests

 Chinese startup creates realistic robots

 Photographer wins AI-image contest with real picture, gets disqualified

 NVIDIA’s AI model for synthetic data generation rivals GPT-4
 Meta pauses AI model training in EU due to regulatory pushback
 Spotify launches ‘Creative Labs’ to test Gen AI voiceover ads

 Tiny LLM matches GPT-4 on math

McDonald’s pauses AI drive-thru tests

• McDonald’s is ending its artificial intelligence drive-thru order-taking program and will shut it off in all participating restaurants by July 26, 2024.
• The decision to end the AI program came after a thorough review, and McDonald’s Chief Restaurant Officer stated the company will seek broader voice ordering solutions.
• Although the AI drive-thru program showed successes, McDonald’s aims to simplify operations and speed up service, with plans to decide on a new voice ordering solution by the end of the year.
• Source: https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/mcdonalds-ending-ai-drive-thru-ordering

Photographer wins AI-image contest with real picture, gets disqualified

• A photographer named Miles Astray won an AI-image competition with a real photograph of a head-scratching flamingo, resulting in his disqualification.
• His entry, titled F L A M I N G O N E, was mistakenly awarded third place by judges from notable institutions like the New York Times and Christie’s.
• Astray aimed to demonstrate that human creativity and natural beauty surpass AI-generated content, sparking a discussion about the ethical implications of using AI in art.
• Source: https://www.techspot.com/news/103422-photographer-wins-ai-image-contest-real-picture-gets.html

NVIDIA’s AI model for synthetic data generation rivals GPT-4

NVDIAI has released Nemotron-4 340B, an open-source pipeline for generating high-quality synthetic data. It includes a base model trained on 9M tokens, an instruction, and a reward model.

• The instruction model can generate diverse synthetic data that mimics real-world data.
• The reward model then evaluates the generated data to filter out high-quality responses.
• This interaction between the two models produces better training data over time.

Note: 98% of the training data used to fine-tune the Instruct model is synthetic and was created using NVIDIA’s pipeline.

In benchmarks such as MT-Bench, MMLU, GSM8K, HumanEval, and IFEval, the Instruct model generally performs better than other open-source models such as Llama-3-70B-Instruct, Mixtral-8x22B-Instruct-v0.1, and Qwen-2-72B-Instruct, and in some tests, it even outperforms GPT-4o.

It also performs comparable to or better than OpenAI’s GPT-4-1106 in human evaluation for various text tasks, such as summaries and brainstorming. The technical report provides detailed benchmarks.

Why does it matter?

This development allows businesses to create powerful, domain-specific LLMs without the need for extensive, costly real-world datasets. It has significant potential impacts across various industries, such as healthcare (drug discovery, personalized medicine, medical imaging), finance (fraud detection, risk assessment, customer service), manufacturing (predictive maintenance, supply chain optimization), and retail (personalized customer experiences).

Source: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/nemotron-4-synthetic-data-generation-llm-training

 Meta pauses AI model training in EU due to regulatory pushback

In response to the regulatory pressure from the Irish Data Protection Commission and the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office, Meta has decided to pause its plans to train its large language model, Llama, using public content shared by Facebook and Instagram users in the European Union and the UK.

The regulators expressed concerns about Meta’s plan to use this user-generated content to train its AI systems without obtaining explicit user consent. Meta relied on a GDPR provision called “legitimate interests” to justify this data usage, but the regulators felt this was insufficient. Meta has decided to delay the launch of its AI chatbot in Europe until it can address the regulators’ concerns and establish a more transparent user consent process.

Why does it matter?

Meta’s inability to use EU user data for AI training is a setback for its regional AI ambitions. It could disadvantage Meta against competitors who can leverage such data. This situation highlights the ongoing tensions between tech companies’ desire to utilize consumer data for AI development and regulators’ efforts to protect user privacy. Striking the right balance between innovation and privacy will be a major challenge as the AI race intensifies.

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-14/meta-delays-ai-chatbot-launch-in-europe-after-regulator-pushback

 Spotify launches ‘Creative Labs’ to test Gen AI voiceover ads

Spotify has launched a new in-house creative agency called “Creative Lab.” This agency will help brands and advertisers create custom campaigns for Spotify’s platform. Creative Lab teams in different markets will provide local insights and collaborate with brands to develop campaigns through workshops, inspiration sessions, and collaborative ideation.

In addition, Spotify is also testing a new AI tool called “Quick Audio” that will allow brands to create scripts and voiceovers using generative AI technology. This new capability will be integrated into Spotify’s ad manager platform, giving advertisers more options to produce audio ads for Spotify’s audience of over 615 million listeners.

Why does it matter?

This move emphasizes Spotify’s ambition to become a full-service advertising platform. Marketers and advertisers will have new creative and production capabilities available through Spotify to better reach the platform’s large and engaged user base in unique ways, including potentially using AI-generated audio ads. This could disrupt traditional advertising models and open new possibilities for how brands connect with consumers on audio platforms.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/13/spotify-creative-labs-ad-agency-for-advertisers

 Chinese startup creates realistic robots

A Chinese startup called Ex-Robots is developing ultra-realistic humanoid robots that can closely mimic human facial expressions and emotions.

• Ex-Robots’ lifelike humanoid robots can smile, frown, and replicate subtle facial movements using small motors embedded in the silicone faces.
• The startup uses multimodal AI and algorithms to enable the robots to recognize and express emotions based on perceiving their environment.
• Creating one humanoid robot currently takes 2-4 weeks, with costs as high as $275k per unit.
• The company said near-term use cases include museum exhibits, with eventual roles in healthcare, therapy, and child services.

The advancement of ultra-realistic robots combined with the power of AI is about to create some bizarre new frontiers. Will humans be creeped out by an actual human-looking humanoid over mechanical options like Tesla’s Optimus? It’s unclear if the world is ready… but we’ll find out soon.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/chinas-ex-robots-develops-humanoids-with-enhanced-facial-movement-2024-06-11

Tiny LLM matches GPT-4 on math

Shanghai AI Laboratory researchers just developed a new algorithm called MCT Self-Refine, which allowed a relatively small 8B-parameter model to achieve GPT-4 level performance on complex math.

• MCT Self-Refine combines an 8B LLaMa model with Monte Carlo Tree Search, an AI technique famously used by Google DeepMind to master the game of Go.
• The algorithm constructs a search tree, refining answers through a series of processes and self-evaluation.
• On the GSM-Hard math word problem benchmark, infusing the Monte Carlo Tree Search took the 8B model from 25.5% accuracy to 45.5%.
• The model also achieved 96.7% on the GSM8K benchmark, outperforming significantly larger models like GPT-4, Claude, and Gemini.

 The research shows it’s possible to boost math capabilities without massive scale — and GPT-4 level performance with a model trained on 200x less parameters is an impressive feat. If the approach proves to be a more efficient path to advanced reasoning, we could be on the cusp of a new wave of model acceleration.

Source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2406.07394

New AI Jobs on June 17th 2024

•  Abridge – Senior Product Designer: https://jobs.therundown.ai/jobs/63255899-senior-product-designer
•  Palantir Technologies – Software Engineer, New Grad: https://jobs.therundown.ai/jobs/63248966-software-engineer-new-grad-us-government
•  Fiddler AI – Staff AI Scientist: https://jobs.therundown.ai/jobs/63187617-staff-ai-scientist
•  Meta – Software Engineer – ML Systems: https://jobs.therundown.ai/jobs/63275347-software-engineer-ml-systems-technical-leadership

What Else Is Happening in AI on June 17th 2024

 Apple enters the AI icon race to find a logo that makes sense

Apple has joined other tech giants like Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta in the race to find an iconic visual representation for AI. No company has yet created an unambiguous “AI logo” that conveys the concept to users. AI’s lack of a clear visual identity reflects the difficulty of representing such a broad and evolving technology in a simple icon.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/15/apple-joins-the-race-to-find-an-ai-icon-that-makes-sense

 Niloom.AI launches gen AI content creation platform for spatial computing

Without extensive technical expertise, the platform allows users to create, prototype, edit, and instantly publish sophisticated AR/VR content using text or speech prompts. It consolidates the entire creative process, from ideation to publishing, and integrates with various third-party tools to provide a one-stop solution for spatial computing content creation.

Source: https://venturebeat.com/ai/niloom-ai-launches-one-stop-generative-ai-content-creation-platfor-for-spatial-computing

 AI to delete abusive posts against athletes during the 2024 Paris Olympics

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) will deploy AI at the 2024 Paris Olympics to automatically detect and erase abusive social media posts directed at athletes and officials. The AI tool will monitor posts about 15,000 athletes and officials and immediately remove any content involving hate speech, bullying, or political attacks.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/sports/olympics/ai-erase-abusive-posts-athletes-paris-olympics-ioc-2024-06-14

 Picsart and Getty team up to counter Adobe’s “commercially-safe” AI

Picsart has partnered with Getty Images to develop a “responsible, commercially-safe” AI image generator tool. The AI model will be trained exclusively on Getty’s licensed stock content to address concerns about AI-generated content violating copyright laws. Picsart hopes to provide a viable alternative to Adobe’s Firefly by leveraging Getty’s library of licensed images. Source: https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/14/24178333/picsart-getty-commercially-safe-ai-image-tool-adobe

 Yahoo News gets an AI-powered revamp with Artifacts integration 

Yahoo has acquired the technology behind the Artifact news aggregation app and is launching a new AI-powered Yahoo News app. The app will feature a personalized news feed based on user interests and a “Key Takeaways” feature that provides bullet-point summaries of articles. Users can also flag problematic content, which the AI will then try to rewrite.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/13/24177980/yahoo-news-app-launch-artifact-ai-architecture

A  Daily chronicle of AI Innovations June 14th 2024:

 Google’s PH-LLM reads your wearables’ data for personalized insights
 Ex-OpenAI researcher on what to expect from AI in next decade
 DeepMind built ‘a virtual rodent’ with AI to understand brain activity

 AI chatbots run for office

LinkedIn is rolling out new AI-powered features for premium users

Synthflow’s AI voice assistants are now multilingual!

Picsart is partnering with Getty Images to develop a custom model for AI imagery

Former head of NSA joins OpenAI’s Safety and Security Committee

 Google’s PH-LLM reads your wearables’ data for personalized insights

Building on the next-gen capabilities of Gemini models, Google has presented research that highlights two complementary approaches to providing accurate personal health and wellness information with LLMs.

The first introduces PH-LLM, a version of Gemini fine-tuned to understand and reason on time-series personal health data from wearables such as smartwatches and heart rate monitors. The model answered questions and made predictions noticeably better than experts with years of experience in the health and fitness fields.

In the second paper, Google introduces an agent system that leverages state-of-the-art code generation and information retrieval tools to analyze and interpret behavioral health data from wearables. Combining these two ideas will be critical for developing truly personalized health assistants.

Why does it matter?

Wearables generate a wealth of personal health data that is rarely utilized in clinical settings. Integrating this data with advanced AI models could revolutionize personal health management and preventative care by putting an “expert health assistant” on everyone’s wrist.

Source: https://research.google/blog/advancing-personal-health-and-wellness-insights-with-ai

 Ex-OpenAI researcher on what to expect from AI in next decade

A researcher fired from OpenAI, Leopold Aschenbrenner,  published a 165-page essay on what to expect from AI in the next decade. And GPT-4 has summarized it! Here are some key takeaways from the essay:

• By 2027, AI models could reach the capabilities of human AI researchers and engineers, potentially leading to AI surpassing human intelligence
• Trillions of dollars are being invested into developing the infrastructure needed to support these AI systems
• Controlling AI systems smarter than humans(the ‘superalignment‘ problem) will be crucial to prevent catastrophic outcomes
• Only a few hundred people truly understand the scale of change AI is about to bring

Why does it matter?

The essay provides a rare insider’s perspective on the rapid progression of AI. Coming from someone deeply involved in cutting-edge AI development, the insights highlight the urgency to get ahead of managing risks before AI’s capabilities outpace our defenses.

Source: https://ca.news.yahoo.com/researcher-fired-openai-published-165-184227878.html

 DeepMind built ‘a virtual rodent’ with AI to understand brain activity

Researchers from Google DeepMind and Harvard built a ‘virtual rodent’ powered by AI to help them better understand how the brain controls movement. With deep reinforcement learning (RL), it learned to operate a biomechanically accurate rat model, allowing researchers to compare real and virtual neural activity.

Why does it matter?

Understanding how the brain controls movement and modeling neural activity could exponentially advance fields like neuroscience and brain-computer interfaces, with the help of AI.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07633-4

An AI-powered candidate named ‘AI Steve’ is running for U.K. Parliament in next month’s general election — creating polarizing questions around AI’s use in government affairs.

• AI Steve is represented by businessman Steve Endacott and will appear as an independent candidate in the upcoming election.
• Voters can interact with AI Steve online to ask policy questions and raise concerns or suggestions, which the AI will incorporate based on feedback.
• If elected, Endacott will serve as AI Steve’s human proxy in Parliament, attending meetings and casting votes based on the AI’s constituent-driven platform.

The idea of an AI running for office might sound like a joke, but the tech behind it could actually help make our politicians more independent and (ironically) autonomous. AI-assisted governance is likely coming someday, but it’s probably still a bit too early to be taken seriously.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/ai-candidate-running-parliament-uk-says-ai-can-humanize-politics-rcna156991

What Else Is Happening in AI on June 14th 2024

Former head of NSA joins OpenAI’s Safety and Security Committee

Paul M. Nakasone, a retired US Army general and a former head of the National Security Agency (NSA), will also join OpenAI’s board of directors. He will contribute to OpenAI’s efforts to better understand how AI can be used to strengthen cybersecurity by quickly detecting and responding to cybersecurity threats.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/13/24178079/openai-board-paul-nakasone-nsa-safety

Former Meta engineers launch Jace, your new autonomous AI employee

Jace uses Zeta Labs’ proprietary web-interaction model, Autonomous Web Agent-1, to use a browser to interact with websites like any human would. It allows it to handle real-world tasks like booking flights, handling hiring, or even setting up a company.

Source: https://venturebeat.com/ai/exclusive-former-meta-engineers-launch-jace-an-ai-agent-that-works-independently

LinkedIn is rolling out new AI-powered features for premium users

The features include searching for jobs by prompting in natural language, building a cover letter from scratch, reviewing your résumé with personalized suggestions for improving it for a specific job post, and making edits interactively with AI.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/13/24177986/linkedin-ai-job-hunting-features-premium-subscribers

Synthflow’s AI voice assistants are now multilingual!

They can fluently communicate in Spanish, German, Portuguese, French, and English. Sythflow also added corresponding voices for each language to ensure authentic and natural-sounding interactions so businesses can engage a global audience and offer personalized experiences.

Source: https://x.com/GoogleDeepMind/status/1801210428673892496

Picsart is partnering with Getty Images to develop a custom model for AI imagery

The model will be built from scratch and trained exclusively on Getty Images’ licensed creative content. It will bring responsible AI imagery to creators, marketers, and small businesses that use Picsart, enabling them to generate unique images with full commercial rights. Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/13/picsart-partners-with-getty-images-to-develop-a-custom-ai-model/

A  Daily chronicle of AI Innovations June 13th 2024:

 Apple to ‘pay’ OpenAI through distribution, not cash

 New free rival to OpenAI Sora unveiled

⌚️ Google AI gets personal with wearables

 Perplexity was planning revenue-sharing deals with publishers when it came under media fire

 Amazon ‘dropped the ball’ with Alexa, former employee says

 Tim Cook says it’s a ‘significant possibility’ people use their iPhones less because of AI

Luma AI’s dream machine debut sparks AI media wars
Stability AI’s Diffusion 3 Shakes Up Image Creation
No Cash Involved! Apple will pay OpenAI in distribution 

NVIDIA tops MLPerf benchmarks, dominates AI training

Databricks Boosts Mosaic AI for Enterprise LLMs

ChromeOS gets GenAI boost via Android tech

YouTube trials AI comment summaries for shorts

Luma AI’s dream machine debut sparks AI media wars

LumaAI has launched Dream Machine, an AI-powered video generation system capable of generating high-quality videos via simple text prompts. The open-for-all AI tool takes about two minutes to generate a realistic five-second video clip to render specified objects and environments without compromising coherency.

Why does it matter?

The open-for-all feature of this AI tool highlights Luma AI’s approach toward democratizing generative AI and puts rival systems into the spotlight, including OpenAI’s Sora and Kuaishou’s Kling, which are only accessible to select users.

Additionally, Luma’s open approach will enable creators and companies to produce original content at a rapid speed and scale, giving it a competitive edge.

Source: https://lumalabs.ai/dream-machine

⌚️ Google AI gets personal with wearables

Google just published two new research papers, introducing an AI model that can interpret personal health data from wearable devices and an AI agent that provides detailed insights, answer health questions, and more.

• Google’s PH-LLM is a version of Gemini fine-tuned to reason using data from wearables and generate coaching insights for sleep and fitness.
• PH-LLM performs comparably to human experts on health insights for fitness and sleep, also achieving expert performance on certification exams.
• Google also revealed PHIA, an AI agent that combines Gemini’s language skills with code and search capabilities to analyze wearable health data.
• PHIA scored 84% on health insight questions, demonstrating strong reasoning and data analysis capabilities on complex queries.

Google’s research showcases AI’s potential to take health wearable tracking to the next level — going beyond generic insights to enable personalized support. Once ingrained into popular devices, these types of AI tools will put an expert fitness and nutrition coach on the wrists of every user.

Source: https://research.google/blog/advancing-personal-health-and-wellness-insights-with-ai

Stability AI’s Diffusion 3 Shakes Up Image Creation

Stability AI has launched its most sophisticated text-to-image AI open model, optimized for consumer PCs and enterprise-tier GPUs. The model delivers several noteworthy features:

• Enables photorealistic and high-quality outputs in exceptional style by providing images with extraordinary color, lighting, and details.
• Can comprehend long, complex prompts that involve spatial reasoning, compositional elements, actions, and styles.
• Leverages Diffusion Transformer architecture to achieve exceptional text quality, reducing spelling, character spacing, and letter-forming errors.
• Displays the ability to absorb minute details from small datasets, making it an ideal model for customizing and fine-tuning.

Why does it matter?

Stability’s unique features make it the most advanced text-to-image AI model. As it continues to push the boundaries of generative AI, it will be interesting to note whether it will stand out against its competitors and remain at the forefront of image generation.

Source: https://stability.ai/news/stable-diffusion-3-medium

No Cash Involved! Apple will pay OpenAI in distribution 

A landmark arrangement between OpenAI and Apple to integrate ChatGPT into iPhone, iPad, and Mac was unclear in its financial terms. People briefed on the matter suggest that the agreement isn’t likely to generate revenue for either party and simply provides OpenAI brand exposure to Apple’s user base while offering Apple an advanced chatbot feature.

Why does it matter?

Apple integrating ChatGPT into its devices without offering any compensation to OpenAI creates concerns among users on whether Apple intends to share their data in return.

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-12/apple-to-pay-openai-for-chatgpt-through-distribution-not-cash

Apple to ‘pay’ OpenAI through distribution, not cash

• Apple and OpenAI announced a partnership at WWDC, but according to Bloomberg, neither side is paying the other for the integration of ChatGPT into Apple’s devices.
• The agreement between Apple and OpenAI is non-exclusive, and Apple is also negotiating with Anthropic and Google to integrate their chatbots, with a deal for Google’s Gemini expected later this year.
• Apple plans to generate revenue from these partnerships through revenue-sharing agreements, taking a cut from AI providers that monetize their chatbot services, such as ChatGPT Plus’ $20-per-month subscription plan.
• Source: https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/13/24177550/apple-openai-chatgpt-deal-payment-revenue-sharing-chatbot

New free rival to OpenAI Sora unveiled

• Dream Machine is a new text-to-video tool developed by Luma AI, offering a free tier you can use immediately with a Google account, though there might be waiting times due to high demand.
• The tool creates five-second video clips at 1360×752 resolution based on user prompts, and while it has some processing delays, the outputs are impressive and close to user expectations.
• Dream Machine offers various subscription plans, with the free option limited to 30 generations a month, and higher tiers providing more generations at different price points, up to 2,000 generations for $499.99 monthly.
• SOurce: https://www.techradar.com/computing/artificial-intelligence/a-new-openai-sora-rival-just-landed-for-ai-videos-and-you-can-use-it-right-now-for-free

Perplexity was planning revenue-sharing deals with publishers when it came under media fire

• Perplexity, an AI search engine startup, was working on revenue-sharing deals with high-quality publishers before facing accusations from Forbes of content misuse.
• The company aims to announce the details of these partnerships soon and has already updated its user interface to make citation of sources more prominent.
• Perplexity’s planned revenue-sharing framework will offer media companies a recurring income alternative, contrasting with the one-off data usage deals currently offered by entities like OpenAI.
• Source: https://www.semafor.com/article/06/12/2024/perplexity-was-planning-revenue-sharing-deals-with-publishers

 Amazon ‘dropped the ball’ with Alexa, former employee says

• A former Amazon employee, Mihail Eric, criticized the company’s handling of Alexa, citing technical and bureaucratic problems as major hindrances to its development.
• Eric stated that despite having ample resources and talent, Amazon mishandled its opportunity to make Alexa the leading product in conversational AI.
• Organizational issues, such as fragmented teams and inadequate computing resources, were mentioned by Eric as significant factors that prevented Alexa from achieving its full potential.
• Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-alexa-voice-assistant-dropped-ball-former-employee-says-2024-6

 Tim Cook says it’s a ‘significant possibility’ people use their iPhones less because of AI 

• Apple CEO Tim Cook said Apple Intelligence may reduce iPhone usage in an interview with Marques Brownlee.
• Cook highlighted that AI will simplify previously time-consuming tasks, allowing users to complete them more efficiently and quickly.
• Apple has added several features to the iPhone that raise awareness of how much time consumers spend on their devices and which help make their usage more intentional.
• Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/tim-cook-people-may-use-iphones-less-because-ai-2024-6

What Else Is Happening in AI on June 13th 2024

YouTube trials AI comment summaries for shorts: YouTube is trying out a new AI-powered comment summarizer feature on mobile apps. The feature breaks down comments into keyword-based topics, simplifying users’ engagement with Shorts with large comment sections. Source: https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/18138167

NVIDIA tops MLPerf benchmarks, dominates AI training: NVIDIA has set new performance records in MLPerf Training v4.0, showcasing its dominance in generative AI and LLM training. Key achievements include tripling GPT-3 175B training performance, fine-tuning Llama 2 70B model in just 1.5 minutes using 1,024 H100 GPUs, and accelerating Stable Diffusion v2 training performance by up to 80%. Source: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/mlperf-training-benchmarks

Databricks Boosts Mosaic AI for Enterprise LLMs: Databricks has announced enhancements to Mosaic AI to accelerate its efforts in enterprise gen AI development. The focus lies on the development of compound AI systems, their evaluation across metrics, and governance. Releases include Mosaic AI Model Training and Agent Framework, strengthening the company’s offering against Snowflake. Source: https://venturebeat.com/data-infrastructure/databricks-bolsters-mosaic-ai-with-tools-to-build-and-evaluate-compound-ai-systems

No more vagueness – Adobe to update its AI terms: Adobe has promised to update its terms of service amidst user backlash, assuring that it will not train generative AI models on customer content. The company clarified that it does not own customer content and will refrain from using it to train AI models. Source: https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2024/06/10/updating-adobes-terms-of-use

ChromeOS gets GenAI boost via Android tech: Google plans to release Android-based tech stack into ChromeOS to accelerate AI innovation. The release will simplify engineering efforts, helping phones and accessories work better with Chromebooks. Through this release, Google seeks to continue rolling out its AI features to users at a faster and larger scale. Source: https://blog.chromium.org/2024/06/building-faster-smarter-chromebook.html

A  Daily chronicle of AI Innovations June 12th 2024:

 Elon Musk drops OpenAI lawsuit with no explanation

 Microsoft kills off Copilot GPT Builder after just 3 months

 Stability AI launches its ‘most sophisticated’ image generator yet

 Microsoft to discontinue GPT Builder from Copilot Pro

 Musk drops lawsuit alleging OpenAI strayed from its mission

OpenAI leverages Oracle Cloud to extend the Microsoft Azure Al platform

 Google to launch anti-theft AI features for android phones in Brazil

 Google expands Gemini Nano AI capabilities to Pixel 8 & 8a

 Yahoo Mail integrates AI for a streamlined desktop experience

Samsung unites North American AI teams, appoints ex-Apple Siri executive

Elon Musk drops OpenAI lawsuit with no explanation

• Elon Musk has dropped his lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, which accused the company of breaching a contract and deviating from its mission to benefit humanity.
• The case was dismissed without prejudice, meaning Musk can refile it in the future; this decision came just a day before a scheduled hearing on OpenAI’s request to dismiss the case.
• Musk’s lawsuit alleged a breached “Founding Agreement” with OpenAI, but the company denied this, asserting there is no binding agreement and claiming Musk sought control by merging it with Tesla.
• Source: https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/11/24176462/elon-musk-openai-lawsuit-sam-altman-dropped

Microsoft kills off Copilot GPT Builder after just 3 months

• Microsoft has announced the discontinuation of GPT Builder and is giving users one month to save their data before deletion.
• GPT Builder, part of Microsoft’s Copilot Pro, allowed users to create and customize various GPTs for $20 per month but will no longer be available after July 10.
• Despite retiring GPT Builder, Microsoft remains focused on enterprise GPT applications and will not adjust Copilot Pro subscription fees or hand the project over to the community.
• Source: https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/11/microsoft_retires_gpt_builder/

 Stability AI launches its ‘most sophisticated’ image generator yet

• Stability AI launched Stable Diffusion 3 Medium, described as its “most advanced text-to-image open model yet,” featuring 2 billion parameters for photorealistic output on consumer systems.
• The new model overcomes common artefacts in hands and faces, accurately understands complex prompts, and enhances typography through Diffusion Transformer architecture.
• Users can access SD3 Medium via Stability’s API under an open non-commercial license, while commercial usage requires contacting the startup for licensing details.
• Source: https://thenextweb.com/news/stability-ai-launches-stable-diffusion-3-image-generator

 Autonomous driving by musculoskeletal humanoids: A study

The research paper discusses the development of a musculoskeletal humanoid robot, Musashi, designed to perform autonomous driving tasks. It mimics the human body in detail with redundant sensors and a flexible body structure that are suitable for motions with complex environmental contact.

The robot is expected to sit down on the car seat, step on the acceleration and brake pedals, and operate the steering wheel by both arms.

The paper extensively discusses the hardware and learning-based software necessary for this unique approach to autonomous driving.

Why does it matter?

The learning-based software discussed in the paper highlights the adaptability of musculoskeletal humanoids. AI models could learn from both structured data and unstructured sensory inputs, potentially improving generalization and handling novel scenarios.

Source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2406.05573

New AI Job Opportunities on June 12th 2024

•  UiPath – Strategic Sales Lead, EMEA: https://jobs.therundown.ai/jobs/62605651-strategic-sales-lead-emea
•  Captions – Frontend Engineer: https://jobs.therundown.ai/jobs/60404535-frontend-engineer-3+-years-of-experience
•  Abridge – Senior Data Analyst: https://jobs.therundown.ai/jobs/62605637-senior-data-analyst
•  Metropolis – Data Analyst: https://jobs.therundown.ai/jobs/62355254-data-analyst

Source: https://jobs.therundown.ai/

What Else Is Happening in AI on June 12th 2024

 OpenAI leverages Oracle Cloud to extend the Microsoft Azure Al platform

This collaboration will provide additional capacity for OpenAI, enabling it to continue to scale. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s (OCI) purpose-built AI capabilities enable startups and enterprises to build and train models faster and more reliably anywhere in Oracle’s distributed cloud.Source: https://www.oracle.com/news/announcement/openai-selects-oracle-cloud-infrastructure-to-extend-microsoft-azure-ai-platform-2024-06-11 

 Google to launch anti-theft AI features for android phones in Brazil

The features include three lock modes: AI Movement Detection (recognizes common theft-related movements), Remote Lock, and Internet Access Timeout (automatically locks the screen if the device lacks internet access for an extended period). Starting in July 2024, Brazilian users with Android phones running version 10 or higher will have access to these features. Source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/google-test-anti-theft-ai-feature-phones-brazil-2024-06-11

 Google expands Gemini Nano AI capabilities to Pixel 8 & 8a

This update includes features like “Summarize in Recorder” and “Smart Reply.” Users need to access developer options to enable these features. Additionally, the update enhances Find My Device functionality and allows Display Port output via USB-C. Older Pixel devices, such as the Pixel Fold and Pixel 6, also receive new features. https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/11/24176127/google-pixel-feature-drop-june-gemini-nano

 Yahoo Mail integrates AI for a streamlined desktop experience

The enhancements include AI-generated email summaries, a “Priority” inbox tab for urgent messages, quick action buttons, and the ability to link other email accounts within Yahoo Mail. Existing users can opt in, while new users have immediate access. Source: https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/11/24175280/yahoo-mail-generative-ai-gmail

Samsung unites North American AI teams, appoints ex-Apple Siri executive

Samsung merged its AI research centers in Toronto and California into a single unit, the North America AI Center. To lead this new North American AI Center, Samsung recruited Murat Akbacak, a former Siri executive at Apple. Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-11/samsung-taps-apple-siri-veteran-to-lead-north-american-ai-group

A  Daily chronicle of AI Innovations June 11th 2024:

 Apple brings ChatGPT to Siri

 Apple reveals macOS Sequoia with iPhone mirroring, new Passwords app, and more

 Elon Musk threatens Apple device ban after OpenAI partnership

 Apple introduces Apple Intelligence, its new Gen AI tech
 Musk threatens to ban Apple devices over ChatGPT integrations
 OpenAI hires Nextdoor and Instagram veterans as CFO and CPO

Apple brings ChatGPT to Siri

• Apple introduced AI updates for Siri at WWDC 2024, enabling it to perform actions across apps, manage notifications, automatically write and summarize text, and understand user context with “onscreen awareness.”
• Siri’s new capabilities include referencing one app to perform actions in another, such as playing a podcast your partner sent, changing the tone of written text with a prompt, and allowing users to interact by typing as well as speaking.
• Apple emphasizes privacy with on-device processing for many features, while more complex requests are handled by “Private Cloud Compute” on Apple Silicon-powered servers, with independent experts verifying the code running on its servers.
• Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jun/10/apple-ai-product-launch

 Apple reveals macOS Sequoia with iPhone mirroring, new Passwords app, and more

• Apple announced macOS Sequoia, featuring major updates such as iPhone mirroring that allows users to control their iPhone from their Mac.
• Sequoia introduces a stand-alone Passwords app, syncable with other Apple devices and Windows PCs via iCloud, along with new Safari improvements like Highlights for extracting useful information.
• Apple also revealed Game Porting Toolkit 2 for better Windows game compatibility, and the macOS Sequoia beta will be available this month with a full release expected in the fall.
• Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/10/apple-unveils-macos-sequoia

Elon Musk threatens Apple device ban after OpenAI partnership

• Elon Musk has threatened to ban Apple devices at his companies because Apple plans to integrate OpenAI’s ChatGPT into its products.
• Musk argues that allowing OpenAI access through Apple devices poses a security risk and criticizes Apple for not developing its own AI technology.
• Musk’s discontent also stems from his ongoing disputes with OpenAI, including past legal actions and competitive tensions with his own AI ventures like xAI and its Grok chatbot.
• Source: https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/11/musk_wants_to_ban_apple/

Apple introduces Apple Intelligence, its new Gen AI tech

Apple unveiled Apple Intelligence at WWDC 2024, a personal intelligence system deeply integrated into iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia. Leveraging Apple silicon’s power, it understands and creates language/images, takes actions across apps, and simplifies tasks using personal context. With Private Cloud Compute, Apple sets a new privacy standard in AI by flexibly processing between on-device and dedicated Apple silicon servers.

Apple Intelligence will power new features like AI-generated Bitmojis, natural language images, and video search, as well as enhanced integration with apps and Siri.

Apple also partnered with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT with its apps, including Siri. This will allow users to directly access GPT-4 through Apple’s platforms. Additionally, Apple confirmed plans to work with other models in the future, including Google’s Gemini. The iPhone 15 Pro and devices with M1 or newer chips will be the first to receive the full suite of Apple Intelligence features.

Why does it matter?

This is generative AI as only Apple can deliver it– put at the core of its products, accessing users’ personal data for truly helpful AI assistance but keeping it secure through on-device processing and Private Cloud Compute. Apple’s long-known focus on user privacy + exceptional UX could inspire a new era of AI development.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/11/everything-apple-announced-wwdc-2024/

Musk threatens to ban Apple devices over ChatGPT integrations 

Elon Musk threatens to ban iPhones and other Apple devices from his companies, such as Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI, over Apple’s announcement of ChatGPT integration into its OS. Musk thinks this integration will allow ChatGPT to access too much private user data through Apple devices. He claims Apple doesn’t understand OpenAI’s tech and is putting user privacy at risk.

However, Apple and OpenAI stated that users will be asked permission before any data is sent to ChatGPT.

Why does it matter?

This highlights Musk’s skepticism about the privacy implications of Apple’s AI strategy. But it could significantly impact Apple users in the future, as they may no longer be able to use iPhones and other Apple devices at Musk’s companies

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/10/elon-musk-threatens-to-ban-apple-devices-from-his-companies-over-apples-chatgpt-integrations

OpenAI hires Nextdoor and Instagram veterans as CFO and CPO

OpenAI has hired two experienced executives to fill important leadership roles. Sarah Friar, previously the CEO of the neighborhood app Nextdoor, was appointed OpenAI’s new chief financial officer (CFO). Kevin Weil, a former Instagram and Twitter executive who oversees product teams, has been named OpenAI’s chief product officer (CPO).

As CFO, Friar will manage OpenAI’s financial operations and investments as the company expands globally. As CPO, Weil will lead product development utilizing OpenAI’s AI research to create new products for consumers and enterprise customers.

Why does it matter?

This indicates OpenAI’s ambition to scale as it commercializes its AI technology. It also suggests that OpenAI is solidifying its position as a major force in the AI industry while navigating the recently surfaced challenges around AI safety.

Source: https://openai.com/index/openai-welcomes-cfo-cpo

 Researchers teach AI to speak dog

A new study from the University of Michigan leveraged AI models trained on human speech to decode the meaning behind dog noises — identifying details like breed, age, gender, and emotional state with 70% accuracy.

• Researchers gathered vocalizations from 74 dogs of varying breeds, ages, and situational contexts.
• The noises were inputted into an AI model originally designed to analyze human voices, trained on 960 hours of speech, and fine-tuned for dogs.
• The AI was able to predict individual dogs from barks, distinguish dog breed and gender, and match barks to emotional context like play and aggression with 70% accuracy.

AI is not only bridging the language gap for humans across the globe — but also potentially across species as well. Communicating with other intelligent animals (or at least better understanding them) seems like a skill issue that’s going to be solved sooner rather than later.

Source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.18739?

New AI Job Opportunities on June 11th 2024

•  Fiddler AI – Technical Project Manager, Customer Success: https://jobs.therundown.ai/jobs/62351203-technical-project-manager-customer-success-remote-east-coast
•  Cohere – Research Intern (PhD): https://jobs.therundown.ai/jobs/62351142-research-intern-phd
•  Meta – Research Engineer, Conversational AI (Reality Labs): https://jobs.therundown.ai/jobs/62419977-research-engineer-conversational-ai-reality-labs
•  Palantir Technologies – Product Designer, US Government: https://jobs.therundown.ai/jobs/62398950-product-designer-us-government

What Else Is Happening in AI on June 11th 2024

 AI could save financial advisors 10-15 hours per week

Morgan Stanley is using an AI tool to transcribe and categorize client conversations, saving financial advisors 10-15 hours per week. It allows advisors to better prepare for client meetings by reminding clients of past discussions and anticipating their needs. The AI tool can automatically summarize meetings and generate follow-up emails.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/morgan-stanley-ceo-says-ai-could-save-financial-advisers-10-15-hours-week-2024-06-10

 Anthropic reveals Claude 3’s character training process

Anthropic has developed a “character training” process for their AI assistant, Claude, to imbibe traits like curiosity, open-mindedness, and thoughtfulness. It aims to make Claude more discerning in their interactions and able to express their own views while also displaying openness to other perspectives.

Source: https://www.anthropic.com/research/claude-character

 FanVue introduces the world’s first AI beauty pageant contest 

Influencer marketing platform FanVue hosted the world’s first AI-powered beauty pageant, “Miss AI,”. Over 1,500 AI-generated digital models worldwide compete for the title and a $20,000 prize pool. The contest aims to showcase the capabilities of AI in creating photorealistic digital avatars that can function as influencers and brand ambassadors.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2024/06/09/nx-s1-4993998/the-miss-ai-beauty-pageant-ushers-in-a-new-type-of-influencer

 Perplexica provides an open-source AI search alternative for Perplexity

Perplexica uses LLMs, machine learning algorithms, and embedding models to provide refined search results and clear answers from cited sources. Perplexica offers multiple modes, like various “Focus Modes” tailored for specific question types.

Source: https://github.com/ItzCrazyKns/Perplexica

 AI tools secretly use real images of children for training 

Over 170 images and personal details of Brazilian children have been repurposed by an open-source AI training dataset called LAION-5B without the children’s consent. The images were originally posted on mommy blogs and personal social media. Researchers are concerned these images could be used to generate deepfakes or reveal sensitive information.

Source: https://www.wired.com/story/ai-tools-are-secretly-training-on-real-childrens-faces

How does Apple send your data to its cloud AI servers? Very carefully, it claims. https://www.engadget.com/how-does-apple-send-your-data-to-its-cloud-ai-servers-very-carefully-it-claims-233312425.html

Apple confirms plans to work with Google’s Gemini ‘in the future’. https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/10/apple-confirms-plans-to-work-with-googles-gemini-in-the-future/

Paris-based AI startup Mistral AI raises $640 million. https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/11/paris-based-ai-startup-mistral-ai-raises-640-million/

Tim Cook is ‘not 100 percent’ sure Apple can stop AI hallucinations: https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/11/24176035/tim-cook-apple-stop-ai-hallucinations

Nvidia shipped 3.76M data center GPUs in 2023 — dominates business with 98% revenue share. https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/nvidia-shipped-376m-data-center-gpus-in-2023-dominates-business-with-98-revenue-share

A  Daily chronicle of AI Innovations June 10th 2024:

 Meta faces legal complaints over AI data plans

 Alibaba’s Qwen2 AI models outperform GPT-4 & Llama-3
 SAP & Nvidia are developing applications with AI & digital twins
 Chinese tech giants exploit Nvidia AI chip loophole

 Apple launches “Apple Intelligence” at WWDC 2024 for iPhone, iPad, and Mac

 TCS launches TCS AI WisdomNext™, an industry-first GenAI aggregation platform

 Human Native AI is building a marketplace for AI training licensing deals

 Hugging Face and Pollen Robotics launched an open-source robot for household chores

Alibaba’s Qwen2 AI models outperform GPT-4 & Llama-3

Alibaba launched Qwen2 with five sizes ranging from 0.5B to 72B parameters. These models are trained in 27 additional languages besides English and Chinese, showcasing state-of-the-art performance in benchmarks. The models deliver significantly improved performance in coding and mathematics and extended context length support up to 128K tokens. Despite having fewer parameters, qwen2-72 B outperforms leading models like Llama-3-70B and its predecessor Qwen1.5-110B.

Qwen2-72B-Instruct performs comparably to GPT-4 in terms of safety and significantly outperforms Mistral-8x22B. The models are released under Apache 2.0 and Qianwen License on Hugging Face and ModelScope.

Why does it matter?

Qwen2 beats Meta’s model despite being trained on relatively fewer tokens. The researchers attribute it to more efforts put into data cleaning and training, implying innovative approaches on their end.

However, it also signals the slow shift in how LLMs are developed– from solely relying on quantity of data to prioritizing the quality of data and training techniques.

Source: https://qwenlm.github.io/blog/qwen2

SAP & Nvidia are developing applications with AI & digital twins

At SAP’s Sapphire event in Orlando, Florida, SAP and NVIDIA announced their collaboration to enhance SAP’s generative AI copilot, Joule, with two new capabilities: SAP Consulting and ABAP Developer. These new features are powered by NVIDIA AI Enterprise software.

Additionally, SAP is integrating NVIDIA Omniverse Cloud APIs into its Intelligent Product Recommendation solution to simplify the buying and selling process for complex products. This integration will allow salespeople to visualize 3D product digital twins directly within the SAP Intelligent Product Recommendation interface, making it easier to understand the products.

Why does it matter?

Using NVIDIA Omniverse Cloud APIs in SAP’s Intelligent Product Recommendation solution accelerates the quote generation process and increases sales and customer satisfaction by enabling sales representatives to provide more accurate, tailored recommendations.

Source: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/sap-sapphire-ai-omniverse

Chinese tech giants exploit Nvidia AI chip loophole

The U.S. government prohibits Nvidia from selling A.I. chips directly to Chinese companies due to national security concerns. Still, ByteDance is accessing Nvidia’s A.I. chips for its U.S. operations by leasing them from Oracle, as the current U.S. rules do not explicitly prohibit Chinese companies from accessing the chips if used within the U.S.

Other Chinese tech giants like Alibaba, Tencent, and China Telecom seek similar arrangements with U.S. cloud providers. The U.S. Commerce Department proposed a rule to tighten controls, but it faced opposition from cloud providers and remains in limbo.

Why does it matter?

Even if the loophole is closed, Alibaba and Tencent have discussed obtaining Nvidia chips for their U.S.-based data centers. It could further escalate the AI “arms race” and rivalry between the USA and China as both nations seek to outpace each other in developing advanced AI systems for economic and military advantages.

Source: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/chinas-nvidia-loophole-how-bytedance-got-the-best-ai-chips-despite-u-s-restrictions

What Else Is Happening in AI on June 10th 2024

 Apple will launch “Apple Intelligence” at WWDC 2024 for iPhone, iPad, and Mac

Leaks suggest Apple will reveal “Apple Intelligence”, aka AI, at the WWDC event this week. These AI features will focus on broad appeal and privacy, with opt-in not mandatory. Apple will use its own tech and OpenAI tools to power the new AI features.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/7/24173528/apple-intelligence-ai-features-openai-chatbot

 TCS launches TCS AI WisdomNext™, an industry-first GenAI aggregation platform

The platform allows organizations to compare and experiment with GenAI models across cloud services in a single interface. It offers ready-to-deploy business solution blueprints with built-in guardrails for quick adoption.

Source: https://www.tcs.com/who-we-are/newsroom/press-release/tcs-launches-wisdomnext-an-industry-first-genai-aggregation-platform

 A study by Harvard, MIT, and Wharton reveals junior staff is not reliable for AI training

Junior consultants who participated in a GPT-4 experiment struggled with AI risk mitigation, with their tactics lacking a deep understanding of the technology and focusing on changing human behavior rather than AI system design. The findings highlight the need for top-down AI governance, expert input, and upskilling across all levels of the organization.

Source: https://venturebeat.com/ai/harvard-mit-and-wharton-research-reveals-pitfalls-of-relying-on-junior-staff-for-ai-training

 Human Native AI is building a marketplace for AI training licensing deals

The platform helps AI companies find data to train their models while ensuring rights holders are compensated. Rights holders upload content for free and connect with AI companies for revenue share or subscription deals. Human Native AI helps prepare and price content, monitors for copyright infringements, and takes a cut of each deal.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/08/deal-dive-human-native-ai-is-building-the-marketplace-for-ai-training-licensing-deals

 Hugging Face and Pollen Robotics launched an open-source robot for household chores

The humanoid Reachy2 was initially controlled by a human wearing a VR headset. Then, a machine learning algorithm studied the teleoperation sessions to learn how to perform the tasks independently. The dataset and trained model used for the demo are open-sourced on Hugging Face, allowing anyone to replicate the process on smaller robots at home.

Source: https://venturebeat.com/ai/hugging-face-and-pollen-robotics-show-off-first-project-an-open-source-robot-that-does-chores

👑 The world’s first AI beauty pageant

The World AI Creator Awards and creator platform FanVue are currently running the inaugural ‘Miss AI’ contest, with over 1,500 AI-generated models competing for the world’s first AI beauty pageant.

• 10 finalists were selected from a pool of 1,500 AI-generated contestants, with the winner set to be announced at the end of June.
• The AI models ‘hail’ from countries across the globe, showcasing various causes and personalities in addition to their photorealistic images.
• Judges will also evaluate the AI tech behind the avatars, including prompts/image outputs and the creator’s ability to engage audiences on social media.
• The prize pool includes $20,000 in awards and access to PR and mentorship programs.

With how good AI image generation capabilities have become, we’re likely already being exposed to an influx of generated brand ambassadors and models without even realizing it. While the idea of an AI beauty pageant may sound strange… it’s probably only going to get weirder from here.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2024/06/09/nx-s1-4993998/the-miss-ai-beauty-pageant-ushers-in-a-new-type-of-influencer

🧠 Microsoft Recall gets safety changes

Microsoft is making changes to its new Recall on-device AI feature following security concerns — with the tool now starting off by default and gaining new encryption protections ahead of the release on June 18.

• The Copilot + Recall feature was unveiled at the Microsoft Build event in May, which will run locally and take constant screenshots to remember user actions.
• The company faced backlash after experts warned of the tool’s ‘privacy nightmare’ with the potential to expose screenshots and activity to hackers.
• The feature will now be off by default, with users having to opt in manually — with new encryption and authentication being added for extra safety measures.
• The tool will roll out in ‘preview’ on the new Copilot + PCs set to launch on June 18.

While the Recall feature was one of the flashiest features revealed at Build — it also is one of the most controversial. While the screenshots enable memory and get us a step closer to the AI agent dream, its also a tough hurdle to get past for increasingly privacy-focused consumers.

Source: https://www.therundown.ai/p/microsofts-total-recall

🔊 AI TRAINING: Using ‘Background Conversations’ in ChatGPT

ChatGPT’s latest update introduced the “Background Conversations” feature, allowing you to continue your chat even when using other apps or when your screen is off.

1. Install the latest ChatGPT app update on your phone.
2. Open the app and go to Settings.
3. Scroll to “Voice Mode” and toggle “Background Conversations” on.
4. Use ChatGPT hands-free while multitasking or with your screen off.

Note: If you still don’t see the option, the feature may not have rolled out to your account yet.

🧠 AI RESEARCH: Concise prompting cuts AI costs by 20%

Researchers just found that adding a simple ‘be concise’ instruction to chain-of-thought prompts can reduce the length of AI responses by 50% with minimal impact on accuracy — leading to over 20% cost savings on API calls.

• Chain-of-thought (CoT) prompting has the AI explain its reasoning step-by-step before giving a final answer, improving accuracy on complex problems.
• Researchers tested adding ‘be concise’ to CoT prompts on GPT 3.5 and 4, using 1,000 multiple-choice questions across 10 topics.
• The instruction made responses about 50% shorter on average vs. normal CoT prompting, with no significant accuracy impact.
• The approach also reduced per-query API costs by over 20% for both models, with the more concise prompts generating fewer tokens.

Next time your AI chatbot is getting a little too wordy, this one simple prompt trick is all you need! Despite the massive complexities and uncertainties surrounding how LLMs work, sometimes these strange, seemingly basic quirks make all the difference in getting the optimal outputs.

Source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2401.05618

New AI Job Opportunities on June 10th 2024:

• 🔬 Meta – Research Engineer, Conversational AI (Reality Labs): https://jobs.therundown.ai/jobs/62419977-research-engineer-conversational-ai-reality-labs
• 🎨 Palantir Technologies – Product Designer, US Government: https://jobs.therundown.ai/jobs/62398950-product-designer-us-government
• 📊 Databricks – Strategic Sourcing Manager, Technology: https://jobs.therundown.ai/jobs/62399340-strategic-sourcing-manager-technology?
• 📈 Anyscale – Marketing Operations Manager: https://jobs.therundown.ai/jobs/62367786-marketing-operations-manager

A  Daily chronicle of AI Innovations June 07th 2024:

 OpenAI reverse engineers the workings of AI models
 New Chinese video generation model beats OpenAI’s Sora
 Nvidia is now the second-most valuable company, overtaking Apple

Adobe’s launches AEP AI Assistant to help brands master customer data and outreach

The most comprehensive benchmarking & leaderboard for image models is here!

AI used to predict potential new antibiotics in groundbreaking study

Meta gets EU complaints from 11 countries over use of personal data to train AI

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating Microsoft-Inflection AI deal

OpenAI reverse engineers the workings of AI models

In new research, OpenAI has shared improved methods for finding a large number of “features”—patterns of activity in AI models that are human interpretable. They developed new state-of-the-art methodologies that allow scaling sparse autoencoders to tens of millions of features on frontier AI models.

It demonstrated smooth and predictable scaling, with better returns to scale than prior techniques. And they could find 16 million features in GPT-4. The research also introduces several new metrics for evaluating feature quality.

OpenAI has shared the paper, code, and feature visualizations to foster further exploration.

Why does it matter?

It could bring us closer to understanding the inner workings of neural networks. This interpretability will eventually increase model trustworthiness and steerability.

While OpenAI is being criticized for taking unnecessary risks with AI technology, this shows it is also keen on tackling the risk by making models more explainable.

Source: https://openai.com/index/extracting-concepts-from-gpt-4

New Chinese video generation model beats OpenAI’s Sora

Kuaishou, a Chinese tech company, has introduced Kling, an AI model for video generation. It can make videos up to two minutes long at 1080p resolution and 30 frames per second, vs. Sora’s one-minute videos.

Kuaishou claims Kling correctly simulates the physical properties of the real world, including complex motion sequences. Using a diffusion transformer, it can also combine concepts and create fictional scenes, such as a cat driving a car through a busy city.

The model is currently available as a public demo in China.

Why does it matter?

Move over, Sora. This Chinese alternative is blowing everyone’s minds. It is becoming increasingly clear that China is catching up fast with the USA in AI.

Source: https://kling.kuaishou.com/

Nvidia is now the second-most valuable company, overtaking Apple

Nvidia rallied to record highs on Wednesday, with it’s stock market valuation hitting $3 trillion and overtaking Apple to become the world’s second most valuable company. This comes after Nvidia made a series of major announcements in the past week.

However, Nvidia’s stock has surged 147% so far in 2024, with demand for its top-of-the-line processors far outstripping supply as Big Tech races to build out their AI computing capabilities and dominate the emerging technology.

Microsoft remains the world’s most valuable company, with a market value of approximately $3.15 trillion.

Why does it matter?

Nvidia is now seen as a key company to watch to see how fast AI-powered tech is spreading across the business world, a shift that Nvidia’s founder, Jensen Huang, has declared as the dawn of the “next industrial revolution”.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6ppqd3j621o

What Else Is Happening in AI on June 07th 2024

Adobe’s launches AEP AI Assistant to help brands master customer data and outreach

Adobe’s Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) is a real-time customer experience management (CXM) solution designed for enterprises. AEP AI Assistant is a gen AI chatbot hooked up to the AEP and an enterprise’s storehouse of advertising and customer data, brand assets, and content collateral (at their direction). 

Source: https://venturebeat.com/ai/adobes-new-aep-ai-assistant-is-here-to-help-brands-master-customer-data-and-outreach/

The most comprehensive benchmarking & leaderboard for image models is here!

AI image models have achieved near-photographic quality. But how do they compare? Are the open-source alternatives on par with their proprietary counterparts? The Artificial Analysis Text to Image Leaderboard aims to answer these questions with human preference-based rankings.

Source: https://huggingface.co/blog/leaderboard-artificial-analysis2

AI used to predict potential new antibiotics in groundbreaking study

Scientists used an algorithm to mine the entirety of the microbial diversity that we have on earth – or a huge representation of that – and find almost 1million new molecules encoded or hidden within all that microbial dark matter.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/05/ai-antibiotic-resistance

Meta gets EU complaints from 11 countries over use of personal data to train AI

Meta rejected the criticism and referred to a May 22 blog in which it said it uses publicly available online and licensed information to train AI as well as information that people have shared publicly on its products and services.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/meta-gets-11-eu-complaints-over-use-personal-data-train-ai-models-2024-06-06

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating Microsoft-Inflection AI deal

The FTC has sent subpoenas to tech giant and startup, asking whether their partnership evaded the required government antitrust review of the transaction. Microsoft picked off Inflection’s specialized workforce of AI researchers but didn’t purchase the company outright. 

Source: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ftc-opens-antitrust-probe-of-microsoft-ai-deal-29b5169a

A  Daily chronicle of AI Innovations June 06th 2024:

 Stability AI’s sound generator creates drum beats and instrument riffs
 xAI to build the gigafactory of compute
 New study reveals key findings on young peoples’ use of Gen AI

Asana introduces AI teammates

Writer launches a suite of No-Code development tools 

 Stability AI’s sound generator creates drum beats and instrument riffs

Stability AI’s Stable Audio Open can generate up to 47-second audio samples based on text descriptions. The open AI model is trained on data from 486,000 samples of royalty-free music samples. The tool enables users to generate drum beats, instrument riffs, and ambient sounds.

However, the AI model has its limitations.

• It is unable to produce full songs, melodies, or vocals.
• Its terms of service prohibit users from using Stable Audio Open commercially.
• Its training data is biased toward the English language and specific music styles.

Why does it matter?

The tool will enable creative users like sound designers, musicians, and developers to fine-tune the model to their own custom audio data, which is a major leap in the realm of generative AI’s audio generation capabilities.

Source: https://stability.ai/news/introducing-stable-audio-open

 xAI to build the gigafactory of compute

The AI startup seeks to build the world’s largest supercomputer in a multi-billion dollar project. The company plans to use this supercomputer to develop AI products, including its chatbot, Grok. The facility will be powered by Nvidia’s H100 GPUs. The project aims to be operational by fall 2025.

The project will reportedly use Nvidia AI chips originally intended for Tesla, raising concerns about conflicts of interest. Moreover, Musk hasn’t yet delivered Grok 2, an advanced AI model that he had promised in May.

Why does it matter?

The supercomputer’s support for the development of Grok could become a groundbreaking advancement in the field of AI technology. Moreover, the  project represents a multi-billion dollar investment that could create numerous job opportunities and boost the economy.

Source: https://memphischamber.com/velocity-meets-potency-xai-announces-memphis-as-new-home

 New study reveals key findings on young peoples’ use of Gen AI

The study directly involved young readers and examined the use of generative AI by use, ethnicity, age, gender, and LGBTQ+ identity. Key findings include:

• 50% of the survey respondents (aged 14-22) have used generative AI. However, only 4% use it daily.
• For 53% of respondents, the use case for generative AI was obtaining information, while for 51%, it was brainstorming.
• Black young people are more likely to use generative AI compared to their white peers. Reasons include getting information, brainstorming ideas, and assistance with schoolwork.
• Young people of Latin origin are more likely than white people to use generative AI for multiple purposes, including image generation and getting help with their jobs.
• Out of respondents who have never used generative AI, 34% believed it would not be helpful.
• Among people never having used generative AI, LGBTQ+ young people are more likely to use it in comparison to cisgender and straight respondents.
• 41% of respondents believe that generative AI will have a positive as well as negative impact on their lives in the next 10 years.

Why does it matter?

Understanding the diverse ways in which the younger users engages with generative AI enables businesses to uncover trends and data-oriented insights to improve their AI models and deliver, user experiences that are responsive and inclusive.

Source: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/report/teen-and-young-adult-perspectives-on-generative-ai.pdf?

What Else Is Happening in AI on June 06th 2024

Mistral’s new SDK simplifies customization for users 

Mistral’s SDK, Mistral-Finetune, will allow users to modify its models on workstations, servers, and small data center nodes. While optimized for multi-GPU setups, the SDK can also scale down to a single Nvidia A100 or H100 GPU. It enables developers to fine-tune data sets such as UltraChat within half an hour, says Mistral. (https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/05/mistral-launches-new-services-sdk-to-let-customers-fine-tune-its-models)

Salesforce inaugurates its first AI Centre in London

The goal of the centre is to foster collaboration, AI training, upskilling, and create AI-related jobs among developers, industry experts, and customers. This step is a part of its £4bn five-year investment in the UK, solidifying London’s position as a global AI hub. (https://www.reuters.com/technology/salesforce-open-first-ai-centre-london-2024-06-06)

eBay unveils new AI-tool to enhance product image backdrops

The tool, currently available for iOS users in the UK, USA, and Germany, automatically removes image backgrounds and allows users to replace them with AI-generated backdrops. The AI feature powered by Stable Diffusion will enable sellers to upload high-quality photos easily. (https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/05/ebay-ai-powered-background-enhancement-tool)

Asana introduces AI teammates

The platform leverages historical data based on parameters like skill sets and missing information, allowing teams to define tasks and get an overview of who is assigned which responsibility. The tool allows users to interact with it using an AI chat interface. (https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/5/24170480/asana-ai-teammate-workflow-assistant-chatbot)

Writer launches a suite of No-Code development tools 

The Gen AI platform announced major expansions that included Writer Framework – a drag-and-drop tool that enables developers to connect pre-built UI components with generative AI to create custom AI applications. The tool additionally provides full flexibility to the underlying code. (https://venturebeat.com/ai/writer-launches-no-code-platform-and-framework-for-custom-enterprise-ai-applications)

A  Daily chronicle of AI Innovations June 05th 2024:

 Apple could crown OpenAI as King of the Valley

 New ‘AI teammate’ can tell people what to do at work

 Elon Musk explains reasoning for Nvidia chip re-route from Tesla to X

 OpenAI seeks ‘vast quantities’ of nuclear fusion energy to power superhuman AI

 Cisco has unveiled HyperFabric AI Clusters in collaboration with NVIDIA
 Tesla’s AI ambitions on hold? Musk diverts chips to X & xAI
OpenAI insiders raise concerns over oversight and safety

 ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity experienced outages at the same time

 Raspberry Pi 5 gets AI boost with Hailo extension module

 TECNO CAMON 30 series launches Ella-GPT AI assistant

Snowflake empowers enterprise AI with new No-Code studio

 Zoom’s CEO envisions AI clones in meetings

 Apple could crown OpenAI as King of the Valley 

• Apple and OpenAI are reportedly partnering to integrate ChatGPT into the iPhone’s operating system, potentially making it a core feature on every device.
• The partnership could mark the end of Google’s competition with OpenAI for being the main AI chatbot on iPhones, putting OpenAI in front of Apple’s massive user base and enhancing its long-term influence in Silicon Valley.
• While it’s unclear exactly how Apple will use ChatGPT, possibilities include powering Siri or offering it as a standalone app, with new AI features likely to be introduced as opt-in services during the Worldwide Developers Conference next week.
• Source: https://gizmodo.com/apple-chatgpt-deal-crown-openai-sam-altman-king-valley-1851520594

New ‘AI teammate’ can tell people what to do at work

• Asana has introduced an “AI teammate” that not only assigns tasks but also fills in missing information, aiming to enhance team collaboration and overall efficiency within the platform.
• The AI model leverages historical data and team relationships to match tasks with employees’ specific skill sets, ensuring that the right people are assigned to the right projects for optimal performance, and proactively gathering any missing information needed for tasks.
• Asana’s AI teammate includes a chat interface that allows users to ask questions about their projects, similar to other AI tools from companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, which are also focused on automating workflow tasks.
• Source: https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/5/24170480/asana-ai-teammate-workflow-assistant-chatbot

Elon Musk explains reasoning for Nvidia chip re-route from Tesla to X

• Elon Musk has acknowledged diverting Nvidia AI chips intended for Tesla to his other companies, xAI and social media firm X, claiming the chips would have been unused otherwise.
• This move comes as Musk repositions Tesla from solely a car manufacturer to an AI and robotics company, with plans to significantly increase its chip procurement for AI training by the year’s end.
• The timing of Musk’s confession could affect the upcoming vote on his substantial pay package, raising concerns among Tesla shareholders about potential resource misallocation to his other ventures.
• Source: https://fortune.com/2024/06/05/elon-musk-tesla-xai-nvidia-ai-training-chips-cnbc/

OpenAI seeks ‘vast quantities’ of nuclear fusion energy to power superhuman AI

• OpenAI is looking to secure a deal with Helion Energy to obtain “vast quantities” of nuclear fusion energy to create superhuman artificial intelligence, despite the technology not yet being commercially available.
• Helion Energy, supported by significant investments including $375 million from OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman, aims to produce commercial-scale nuclear fusion energy by 2028.
• Nuclear fusion is considered the “holy grail of clean energy” and is crucial for meeting the energy needs of future AI, but achieving it at scale remains highly challenging.
• Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/openai-nuclear-fusion-energy-ai-b2557064.html

Cisco has unveiled HyperFabric AI Clusters in collaboration with NVIDIA

Cisco and NVIDIA announced Cisco Nexus HyperFabric AI Clusters, an end-to-end infrastructure solution for scaling generative AI workloads in the data center. It combines Cisco’s AI-native networking with NVIDIA’s accelerated computing AI software and VAST’s data storage platform.

It is designed to simplify the deployment and management of generative AI applications for enterprise customers, providing centralized control across the entire AI infrastructure stack.

The Nexus HyperFabric AI cluster will be available for early customer trials in Q4 2024, with general availability expected shortly after.

Why does this matter?

This breakthrough solution aims to provide IT visibility and analytics across the entire AI infrastructure stack, allowing enterprises to focus on AI-driven revenue opportunities rather than spending excessive time on IT management.

Source: https://newsroom.cisco.com/c/r/newsroom/en/us/a/y2024/m06/cisco-reveals-nexus-hyperfabric-the-new-generative-ai-infrastructure-solution-with-nvidia-to-help-simplify-data-center-operations.html 

Tesla’s AI ambitions on hold? Musk diverts chips to X & xAI

Elon Musk instructed Nvidia to prioritize shipments of AI chips to X and xAI over Tesla, diverting over $500 million worth of Nvidia’s flagship H100 AI chips that were initially reserved for Tesla.

This decision could delay Tesla’s plans to significantly increase its acquisition of H100 chips from 35,000 to 85,000 by the end of 2024, a crucial part of Musk’s vision for transforming Tesla into “a leader in AI and robotics.”

Consequently, this move could frustrate Tesla investors who are counting on Musk to deliver on his promises regarding autonomous driving and Tesla’s AI capabilities.

Why does this matter?

Musk’s decision to prioritize chip shipments to xAI could give it a technological edge in the race to develop advanced generative AI models, potentially outpacing competitors like OpenAI, Google, and others.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/04/elon-musk-told-nvidia-to-ship-ai-chips-reserved-for-tesla-to-x-xai.html

OpenAI insiders raise concerns over oversight and safety

Open AI researchers are concerned about the lack of proper oversight, the influence of profit motives, and the suppression of whistleblowers working on advanced AI technologies. They warn of risks ranging “from the further entrenchment of existing inequalities to manipulation and misinformation, to the loss of control of autonomous AI systems potentially resulting in human extinction.”

They want AI companies to agree to four principles: refraining from enforcing non-disparagement agreements, establishing anonymous channels to raise concerns, allowing employees to share risk-related information publicly while protecting trade secrets, and not retaliating against whistleblowers.

Why does this matter?

Amid ongoing OpenAI controversies, the letter, coupled with the high-profile names endorsing it, will place even greater scrutiny on its practices and decision-making. This could pressure the company to be more transparent and accountable.

Source: https://venturebeat.com/ai/more-openai-researchers-slam-company-on-safety-call-for-right-to-warn-to-avert-human-extinction

What Else Is Happening in AI on June 05th 2024

 ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity experienced outages at the same time

This unusual occurrence could indicate a systemic problem rather than individual issues, possibly signaling a broader infrastructure or internet-scale issue affecting these providers. (https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/04/ai-apocalypse-chatgpt-claude-and-perplexity-are-all-down-at-the-same-time)

 Raspberry Pi 5 gets AI boost with Hailo extension module

Raspberry Pi launched a $70 AI Kit, an extension for the Raspberry Pi 5. It includes a neural network inference accelerator, the Hailo-8L, powered by Hailo’s AI chip. With it, the Raspberry Pi 5 can perform inferencing at 13 tera-ops per sec, facilitating tasks like object detection, semantic segmentation, and facial landmarking for camera applications. (https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/04/raspberry-pi-partners-with-hailo-for-its-ai-extension-kit)

 TECNO CAMON 30 series launches Ella-GPT AI assistant

It supports over 70 languages, helps with daily tasks and content creation, and improves user interaction with features like real-time translations, voice commands, and personalized assistance. Additional capabilities include Ask AI for text editing and grammar checks and AI Generate for turning sketches into images.  (https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/news/story/tecno-camon-30-series-introduces-new-ai-assistant-ella-gpt-432156-2024-06-05)

Snowflake empowers enterprise AI with new No-Code studio

It announced several updates to its Cortex AI service and Snowflake ML. The introduction of No-Code AI & ML Studio stands out among these enhancements, enabling every enterprise user to construct AI applications tailored to their specific use cases without requiring coding expertise.  (https://venturebeat.com/ai/snowflake-doubles-down-on-enterprise-ai-with-no-code-studio-and-more)

 Zoom’s CEO envisions AI clones in meetings

Zoom’s CEO, Eric Yuan, envisions AI-driven digital avatars, or “digital twins,” representing humans in meetings, potentially reducing the workweek to three or four days. He argues  AI can efficiently manage tasks like Zoom calls, chats, and emails, allowing people to reclaim time spent in meetings. This initiative forms part of Zoom’s 2.0 journey, aiming to evolve beyond a mere videoconferencing tool.  (https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/3/24168733/zoom-ceo-ai-clones-digital-twins-videoconferencing-decoder-interview)

Google’s AI Overviews appear on 70% fewer Search results pages now: https://www.zdnet.com/article/googles-ai-overviews-appear-on-70-fewer-search-results-pages-now

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s chip plans were ‘too aggressive’ for TSMC: https://the-decoder.com/openai-ceo-sam-altmans-chip-plans-were-too-aggressive-for-tsmc/

AI startup Cohere gets $450 million from Nvidia, Salesforce, and others: https://the-decoder.com/ai-startup-cohere-gets-450-million-from-nvidia-salesforce-and-others/

Cisco announces $1bn AI investment fund: https://techmonitor.ai/technology/ai-and-automation/cisco-ai-invest-fund

MIT’s new AI chatbot can simulate users’ future selves: https://www.newsbytesapp.com/news/science/mit-ai-researchers-create-chatbot-to-simulate-future/story

A  Daily chronicle of AI Innovations June 04th 2024:

 Intel’s new data center chips handle demanding AI workloads
 Amazon’s Project PI detects defective products before shipping
 Microsoft’s Aurora AI could transform weather forecasting

 High-quality education data key to AI performance: Research

 LeCun criticizes Musk for mistreating scientists and spreading misinformation 

 Microsoft to invest $3.2 billion in Sweden to expand AI and cloud infrastructure

 Microsoft identifies few AI deep fakes in the EU election

 Intel’s new data center chips handle demanding AI workloads

Intel has announced next-generation Xeon 6 server processors to regain the data center market share it had been losing to AMD. They come in two varieties. The larger, more powerful version is designed to run the computations necessary to generate responses from complex AI models and other tasks requiring increased horsepower. Intel plans to help companies modernize their aging data center systems with Xeon 6 chips so they can generate new digital capabilities.

Intel also revealed that its Gaudi 3 AI accelerator chips would be priced much lower than its rivals’ products.

Why does it matter?

As more companies have started to deploy AI apps and models, the AI hardware space is getting heated with competition. Intel seems to be one of the only companies innovating across the full spectrum of the AI market opportunity– from semiconductor manufacturing to PCs and data center systems.

Source: https://venturebeat.com/ai/intel-reveals-xeon-6-processor-enterprise-ai-gaudi-3-accelerator-price 

 Amazon’s Project PI detects defective products before shipping

Amazon has launched Project PI, which uses AI to scan products for defects before shipping them to customers. This AI system combines computer vision to visually inspect items with generative AI models that can understand things like text on packages.

As products go through a scanning tunnel, the AI checks for damage, incorrect colors/sizes, or expired dates. If it finds a problem, that item is isolated to evaluate the defect.  Project PI already operates in several of Amazon’s warehouses across North America. The system catches millions of defective products daily before they reach customers.

Why does it matter?

Using innovative AI systems, retailers can avoid dealing with returns and reshipments, reducing costs and inefficiencies. By cutting down unnecessary shipping, retailers minimize environmental impact and carbon emissions, contributing to sustainability goals.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/3/24170567/amazons-project-pi-product-defect-return-ai-computer-vision

 Microsoft’s Aurora AI could transform weather forecasting

Microsoft has developed a powerful new AI foundation model called Aurora that can make highly accurate weather predictions. It is trained on over a million diverse weather and climate data hours. This allows it to develop a comprehensive understanding of atmospheric dynamics and excel at forecasting various weather variables like temperature, wind speed, air pollution levels, and greenhouse gas concentrations.

What sets Aurora apart is its ability to capture intricate details at high spatial resolution (around 11km) while being much faster and more computationally efficient than traditional numerical weather prediction systems. Aurora’s flexible architecture and training on heterogeneous datasets enable it to adapt to different forecasting tasks and resolutions.

Why does it matter?

This major advancement in AI-based weather forecasting could help communities prepare for extreme weather events like storms. AI will also play a bigger role in predicting the impacts of climate change. We may be nearing days when weatherman’s predictions will be 100% accurate.

Source: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/introducing-aurora-the-first-large-scale-foundation-model-of-the-atmosphere

☕️ Robots serve up coffee at Starbucks

South Korean search giant Naver shared a video of the company’s in-office autonomous Starbucks location — with 100 robots delivering coffee and other items throughout the building.

• Naver’s autonomous wheeled “Rookie” robots navigate the building’s 36 floors to bring packages, coffee, and lunch to employees.
• Rookie bots are assisted by dual-armed “Ambidex” robots, which are lightweight and dexterous for safer human interactions.
• Both robots connect to the company’s ARC system, which enables control of navigation, planning, and processing for the entire fleet through cloud computing.
• Naver also developed RoboPort, a dedicated elevator system that allows robots to move quickly and efficiently between floors.

Naver’s putting its robots to work in the ‘real world’ — and while the location is just a testing ground for now, it’s also a glimpse into how service robotics will be integrated into the mainstream sooner than many expect.

📦 Amazon’s AI ‘private investigator’

Amazon just unveiled Project P.I., an AI system that scans products in the company’s fulfillment centers to detect damaged or incorrect items before they ship to reduce returns and waste.

• Project P.I. uses AI and computer vision to spot defects like damaged products as well as wrong colors/sizes as items pass through imaging tunnels.
• The system is already in place across the company’s North American fulfillment centers, with plans to expand globally throughout the year.
• Amazon also utilizes a multimodal LLM to investigate issues further, combining customer feedback with Project P.I. images to identify the source problem.

Amazon’s no stranger to adopting AI across its operations, and Project P.I. is yet another innovative approach to supercharge efficiency. Soon, the company will likely combine these talents with advanced warehouse robots — taking humans out of the fulfillment process altogether.

Source: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/innovation-at-amazon/amazon-ai-sustainability-carbon-footprint-product-defects

What Else Is Happening in AI on June 04th 2024

 Hugging Face detects ‘unauthorized access’ to its AI model hosting platform

Last week, Hugging Face detected unauthorized access to Spaces, its platform for creating, sharing, and hosting AI models. It suspects some Spaces secrets (private pieces of info that act as keys to unlock protected resources like accounts, tools, and dev environments) have leaked. It has taken steps to remediate this. (https://huggingface.co/blog/space-secrets-disclosure)

 High-quality education data key to AI performance: Research

Researchers created a high-quality dataset called FineWeb-Edu by filtering an existing web dataset for educational content. Language models trained on FineWeb-Edu significantly outperformed models trained on unfiltered datasets. The research shows that data quality and diversity are more important than dataset size for training effective AI models. (https://x.com/gui_penedo/status/1797173053123916036)

 LeCun criticizes Musk for mistreating scientists and spreading misinformation 

LeCun has again rebuked Musk on X after they had a heated feud on X last week. This time, LeCun accused Musk of forcing researchers to work in secrecy instead of allowing them to publish their work, which slows scientific progress. He also accused Musk of falsely predicting AI and autonomous vehicles. (https://venturebeat.com/ai/yann-lecun-ai-pioneer-sharply-criticizes-elon-musk-over-treatment-of-scientists-and-spreading-of-misinformation)

 Microsoft to invest $3.2 billion in Sweden to expand AI and cloud infrastructure

Microsoft will invest $3.2 billion over two years to expand its cloud and AI infrastructure in Sweden. Microsoft’s biggest investment to date in Sweden includes a pledge to help train some 250,000 people with AI skills, corresponding to 2.4% of the population, which will help boost the Nordic country’s competitiveness in generative AI. (https://www.reuters.com/technology/microsoft-invest-32-bln-swedish-cloud-ai-2024-06-03)

 Microsoft identifies few AI deep fakes in the EU election

As the European Union prepares for its elections in June 2024, the threat of AI-generated deepfakes has become a significant concern. Microsoft President Brad Smith highlighted this burning issue, emphasizing its potential impact on the democratic process and the steps Microsoft is taking to mitigate these risks. (https://www.reuters.com/technology/few-ai-deepfakes-identified-eu-elections-microsoft-president-says-2024-06-03 )

A  Daily chronicle of AI Innovations June 01-03 2024:

 Windows AI feature is a security ‘disaster’

 Zoom CEO wants AI clones in meetings

 Nvidia and AMD unveil next generation AI chips as competition heats up

 Nvidia announces an AI gaming assistant

 Nvidia CEO drops a series of AI announcements
 AMD outlined new chip architecture strategy for AI data centers
 ElevenLabs’ Text to Sound AI wows creators

Windows AI feature is a security ‘disaster’

• Microsoft’s new AI-powered Recall feature, which captures and stores screenshots of all user activity on a PC, has been criticized as a cybersecurity “disaster” due to significant security vulnerabilities discovered during testing.
• Cybersecurity expert Kevin Beaumont found that Recall stores screenshots in an unencrypted plain text database, making it easy for malware and attackers to access sensitive data, despite Microsoft’s claims of a secure, encrypted experience.
• Privacy advocates and the UK’s ICC have raised concerns about Recall’s potential to expose personal information, with criticisms focusing on its default enabled status and the lack of comprehensive content moderation to protect sensitive data like passwords and financial information.
• Source: https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/3/24170305/microsoft-windows-recall-ai-screenshots-security-privacy-issues

Zoom CEO wants AI clones in meetings

• Zoom CEO Eric Yuan envisions using AI-powered digital twins to attend meetings on behalf of users, allowing people to manage their time more effectively.
• Yuan aims to expand Zoom beyond videoconferencing into the broader enterprise software market, competing with giants like Microsoft and Google by integrating productivity tools such as email and chat.
• Zoom is heavily investing in AI technology to facilitate this transition, although Yuan acknowledges challenges like AI hallucination that need to be addressed before fully realizing his vision.
• Source: https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/3/24168733/zoom-ceo-ai-clones-digital-twins-videoconferencing-decoder-interview

Nvidia and AMD unveil next generation AI chips as competition heats up

• Nvidia and AMD showcased their latest AI chips at a major computing conference, heightening their rivalry in the AI chip market.
• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang emphasized his company’s dominance and highlighted a new chip, Rubin, set for release in 2026, while AMD CEO Lisa Su focused on teamwork and collaborative presentations with industry partners.
• The competition between the two companies is significant for AI development, with Nvidia promoting a proprietary ecosystem and AMD advocating for open standards and interoperability.
• Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nvidia-amd-chiefs-square-off-101007730.html

Nvidia announces an AI gaming assistant

• Nvidia recently demonstrated its AI assistant, G-Assist, showcasing its evolution from an April Fools’ prank to a powerful tool for game developers and RTX GPU owners.
• G-Assist can respond to voice queries, understand in-game activities, provide guidance based on player’s skill points, and offer performance-enhancing recommendations for a smooth gaming experience.
• The AI assistant optimizes PC settings, monitors latency and frame rates, detects refresh rate discrepancies, and suggests ways to boost performance, including overclocking the GPU if necessary.
• Source: https://www.newsbytesapp.com/news/science/nvidia-g-assist-ai-assistant-breaks-cover-features-specifications/story

Nvidia CEO drops a series of AI announcements

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang revealed the company’s ambitious plans for annual AI accelerator upgrades, targeting a broader range of industries to expand its customer base.

• It will release the Blackwell Ultra chip in 2025 and the next-generation Rubin platform in 2026.
• It is also releasing a new server design, MGX, to help companies like HPE and Dell bring products to market faster.
• They are promoting the use of digital twins in its Omniverse virtual world, showcasing a digital twin of Earth for sophisticated modeling tasks.
• Introduces Project G-Assist, an RTX-powered AI assistant technology that provides context-aware help for PC games and apps.
• G-Assist uses voice or text inputs and game window snapshots to provide personalized responses based on in-game context.
• Developers can customize the AI models for specific games or apps, and they can run on the cloud or locally on GeForce RTX AI PCs and laptops.
• Nvidia partnered with Studio Wildcard for a tech demo using ARK: Survival Ascended, showcasing how G-Assist can help with quests, items, lore, and challenging bosses. Check out full keynote speech:
• https://www.youtube.com/live/pKXDVsWZmUU?si=mOPV2g0EP_gcUfMa

Why does it matter?

These announcements show how eager Nvidia is to retain its position as a leader in the AI hardware market. In addition to pushing the acceleration of AI chips, Nvidia is developing new tools to shape AI’s implementation in multiple sectors.

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-02/jensen-huang-computex-keynote-nvidia-reveals-new-ai-software-and-services

AMD outlined new chip architecture strategy for AI data centers 

AMD CEO Lisa Su introduced new AI processors at Computex, including the MI325X accelerator, set to be available in Q4 2024.

• The CEO announced the MI325X accelerator, which will be released in Q4 2024, and outlined the company’s plan to develop AI chips over the next two years.
• Introduced the MI350 series, expected in 2025, which promises a 35x improvement in inference performance compared to the current MI300 series.
• The company also teased the MI400 series, slated for 2026, based on the mysterious “Next” architecture.

With AMD and Nvidia moving to annual release cycles, the competition is heating up to meet the soaring demand for AI semiconductors.

Why does it matter?

AMD’s aggressive push to challenge Nvidia’s market leadership could lead to increased innovation, lower prices, and more widespread adoption of AI across various sectors.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/amd-launches-new-ai-chips-take-leader-nvidia-2024-06-03

ElevenLabs’ Text to Sound AI wows creators

ElevenLabs introduces Text to Sound, an AI model that generates sound effects, instrumental tracks, soundscapes, and character voices from text prompts. The tool aims to help film, TV, video games, and social media creators produce high-quality audio content quickly and affordably.

They have partnered with Shutterstock to fine-tune the model using their diverse audio library of licensed tracks. Users can generate sound effects by logging in, describing the desired sound, and downloading the best results.

Note: This tool doesn’t have a content filter and can generate any raw content through conditional prompting.

Why does it matter?

It could significantly reduce production costs and timelines by simplifying the development of high-quality sound effects, music, and voices, encouraging smaller studios and individual creators to compete with larger players.

Source: https://elevenlabs.io/blog/sound-effects-are-here

What Else Is Happening in AI on June 03rd 2024

 xAI is developing two new modes for the Grok AI chatbot

These two new modes are ‘Socrates’ and ‘DEI’ (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion). Grok currently offers normal mode, fun mode, and the recently announced ‘Unhinged’ mode. In DEI mode, Grok will act as a ‘Senior VP of Diversity and Inclusion’ and provide correct answers even to incorrect questions. The function of the ‘Socrates’ mode is not yet clear. The release date for these new modes has not been confirmed. (https://www.latestly.com/socially/technology/grok-new-modes-elon-musks-xai-working-on-two-new-modes-called-socrates-and-dei-likely-to-be-announced-soon-6006912.html)

 Sony Pictures CEOannounces AI plans for better movie and TV production

The move comes amid negotiations between Hollywood’s major crew union and top studios. While union agreements will define the extent of AI use in the industry, the tech is already eliminating jobs in Hollywood, particularly in voice acting, concept art, VFX, and postproduction. (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/sony-pictures-adopt-ai-streamline-production-says-ceo-tony-vinciquerra-1235912109)

 Arm predicts 100 Billion devices AI-ready by 2025

According to CEO Rene Haas at the Computex forum in Taipei, Arm Holdings expects a staggering 100 billion Arm devices worldwide to be primed for artificial intelligence by the end of 2025. (https://www.reuters.com/technology/arm-expects-100-billion-arm-devices-will-be-ready-ai-by-end-2025-2024-06-03)

 Meta’s AI generates bizarre summaries of Facebook comments on various posts

The AI picks up on both serious and lighthearted comments, often highlighting the more outlandish ones. It’s unclear how Meta chooses which posts to display these summaries on. However, the summaries have raised privacy concerns, as Meta feeds user comments into its AI system. (https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/31/24168802/meta-ai-facebook-comments-summaries)

 Finnish startup Binit is developing an AI household waste tracker

The gadget, designed to be mounted in the kitchen, has cameras and sensors to scan items before throwing them away. Binit uses OpenAI’s GPT for image recognition, achieving nearly 98% accuracy in trash recognition. The app provides analytics, feedback, and gamification to encourage users to reduce waste, with tests showing a 40% reduction in mixed bin waste. (https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/03/binit-is-bringing-ai-to-trash)

Latest AI Tools on June 03rd  2024:

•  Consistent Character Model – Create consistent character images in different poses: https://supertools.therundown.ai/content/consistent-character-mode
•  Perplexity Pages – Turn your research into shareable articles with AI: https://supertools.therundown.ai/content/paper-clipserplexity-ai
•  PixVerse Magic Brush – Brush areas, mark directions, and watch images come to life: https://supertools.therundown.ai/content/pixverse
•  Glaze – Protect artists from generative AI: https://supertools.therundown.ai/content/glaze
•  Fontjoy – Helps designers find perfect font pairings in one click: https://supertools.therundown.ai/content/fontjoy
•  Eva Coach – An AI assistant to help manage work-related stress: https://supertools.therundown.ai/content/eve-coach

Latest AI Jobs on June 03rd 2024:

•  Figure AI – Solutions Lead: https://jobs.therundown.ai/jobs/59875235-solutions-lead
•  Kumo – Software Engineer Internship: https://jobs.therundown.ai/jobs/61517389-software-engineer-internship
•  Palantir Technologies – Backend Software Engineer, Application Development: https://jobs.therundown.ai/jobs/61517369-backend-software-engineer-application-development
•  Meta – Technical Program Manager, AI Research: https://jobs.therundown.ai/jobs/60072576-technical-program-manager-ai-research

A Daily Chronicle of AI Innovations in May 2024