Stability AI just launched SDXL 0.9, bringing a significant upgrade to its flagship text-to-image pipeline over the April beta. It uses a 6.6B parameter two-stage ensemble to generate high-res 1024x1024 visuals while still fitting on a consumer GPU with 8GB VRAM. Why it matters: High-fidelity open models are closing the gap with closed competitors, with a full open release slated for mid-July.
Hidden Door just opened limited playtests for its Wizard of Oz role-playing platform, which uses generative AI to generate tailored story adventures for each player. An AI narrator adapts plots, characters, and artwork in real time based on player inputs, with the full game arriving in Winter 2023. Why it matters: It shows how generative tech can transform public domain lore into collaborative, endless narrative sandboxes.
Meta just introduced Voicebox, a generative AI speech model that matches a voice from an audio clip as short as two seconds. It generates natural text-to-speech across six languages, enables cross-lingual style transfer, and lets creators cleanly erase background noise like dog barks and re-synthesize speech.
Google just launched a new virtual try-on feature that generates photorealistic images of clothing on diverse real models. Moving away from awkward image warping, the new diffusion-based model generates garments from scratch to accurately capture wrinkles, drape, and stretch. It is rolling out first for women's tops from brands like H&M and Everlane.
Paul McCartney just revealed that AI helped bring John Lennon's voice back for what he calls the final Beatles record. Using audio separation tech from Peter Jackson's documentary, engineers extracted Lennon's vocal cleanly from an old cassette demo. Why it matters: AI is turning damaged, unusable archives into release-ready masters.
Meta just unveiled MusicGen, a generative AI model that turns text prompts and melody inputs into original songs. Trained on 20,000 hours of music and instrument samples, it can theoretically expand a simple hum into a full track. It opens music creation to anyone, though copyright fights with the record industry are likely looming.
Adobe just rolled out a major revamp of Adobe Express, integrating its Firefly generative AI directly into the browser workflow for text-to-image and text effects. The update brings an all-in-one editor covering drag-and-drop video creation, PDF enhancements, and real-time syncing with Photoshop and Illustrator assets.
Runway just opened its Gen-2 video generator to everyone, ditching the waitlist and the cumbersome Discord workflow. Users also get 90 seconds of free video generation before needing to upgrade. Basically, creating videos from text and images is now accessible directly on the web for anyone.
Tafi just announced it is developing a text-to-3D character engine capable of exporting production-ready assets straight into Unreal, Unity, Blender, and NVIDIA Omniverse. Trained on its massive Genesis character dataset, the platform also includes a built-in attribution and monetization model to pay participating artists.
Google just introduced StyleDrop, a style transfer technique for its Muse text-to-image model that learns any visual style from a single reference image in under three minutes. It captures tricky shading, textures, and color schemes significantly better than LoRA or DreamBooth.
A fake, AI-generated image showing a massive blast near the Pentagon just went viral on Twitter, briefly knocking the US stock market down 0.26% before it recovered. Spread by high-profile accounts including Russian state media RT, the hoax was quickly debunked by the local Arlington Fire Department, while eagle-eyed users spotted warped fences and classic AI artifacts.
Stability AI just launched the Stable Animation SDK, giving artists and developers programmatic tools to generate AI animations using Stable Diffusion models. Users can create animations through text prompts alone, source images, or existing videos. The release makes it much easier to plug diffusion-based animation straight into developer pipelines.
Google just revealed that Android will get generative AI wallpapers this fall, letting users generate custom backgrounds via suggested prompts. The feature uses diffusion models to create original art and adapts your phone's color theme accordingly, with 3D cinematic wallpapers coming to Pixel next month.
Grimes just launched Elf.Tech, a new AI voice software that lets creators transform vocal recordings into her signature sound. Anyone can use the generated vocals to produce and distribute new tracks, provided they agree to a 50% split on master recording royalties. Why it matters: Rather than policing AI copies, she is turning voice duplication into an open-source revenue share.
