Scarlett Johansson is taking legal action against developer Convert Software after its app, Lisa AI, used an unauthorized clone of her voice in an ad. The promo spliced real footage with an AI voice pitching features behind a flimsy disclaimer. Stars are finally drawing a line against deepfake ads.
The Beatles just released "Now And Then," the legendary band's final original song featuring all four members. Using machine learning audio separation tech developed for Peter Jackson's Get Back documentary, the team cleanly isolated John Lennon's vocals from a murky 1970s cassette demo. It marks the first 21st-century Beatles track and shows how AI can revive lost musical history without generating synthetic voices.
Luma AI just launched Genie, a free research preview of its text-to-3D model accessible directly inside Discord. Users enter a prompt to get four simple 3D drafts in about 20 seconds, complete with glb export and a 20-minute refinement option. Why it matters: Generating usable 3D assets in seconds brings the Midjourney moment to game dev and virtual production.
Google just rolled out Product Studio to U.S. merchants and advertisers, letting businesses generate custom product imagery, swap backgrounds, and enhance low-res shots for free using text prompts. It is built to save sellers from costly reshoots ahead of seasonal campaigns. The tool is currently available via Merchant Center Next and Shopify.
The UK just announced a £225 million investment to build Isambard-AI, set to become one of the world's fastest AI supercomputers. Hosted at the University of Bristol, the system packs 5,448 NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchips to deliver 21 exaflops of AI performance. Why it matters: The UK is securing sovereign compute to anchor frontier AI safety research and scientific discovery.
Instagram is developing a customizable "AI friend" chatbot, according to newly leaked app screenshots. Users can tweak traits like age, gender, personality style, and specific hobbies before picking an avatar and jumping into open-ended chats. While Meta just launched celebrity AI personas last month, this shifts the focus to personalized everyday companionship.
Stability AI just introduced Stable 3D, an automated tool that turns text prompts and 2D images into textured .obj 3D models in minutes. Alongside it, the company rolled out an outdoor Sky Replacer tool and enterprise-ready model fine-tuning. For now, Stable 3D is available via private preview.
World leaders just backed the Bletchley Declaration at the AI Safety Summit in Bletchley Park, agreeing to collaborate on risks posed by frontier foundation models. US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo also announced a new AI safety institute under NIST to work with international partners on aligning safety policies.
Deemos just launched Rodin Gen-1, a generative AI model that turns plain text prompts into complex 3D models with PBR textures. While the generated visual results look sharp, the studio notes that artists will still need to retopologize the meshes before dropping them into production.
Collins Dictionary just named "AI" its word of the year for 2023, reporting that usage of the term quadrupled over the past 12 months. The publisher noted that artificial intelligence has evolved from a futuristic concept into an everyday presence alongside email and streaming, dominating global conversations on innovation and safety.
Phind just rolled out a new coding model based on CodeLlama-34B that scores 74.7% on HumanEval, outpacing GPT-4. Powered by Nvidia TensorRT-LLM on H100 GPUs, it delivers up to 100 tokens per second with a 16k context window. Why it matters: developers get GPT-4-level code generation at GPT-3.5 speed, completely open-sourced on Hugging Face.
Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs just previewed the next generation of AlphaFold, expanding beyond proteins to model DNA, RNA, and drug ligands with atomic accuracy. It outperforms standard docking methods without needing a reference structure, clearing a path for faster drug design.
ElevenLabs just launched a unified enterprise AI voice platform split into two engines: ElevenAgents for customer-facing bots and ElevenCreative for high-fidelity audio production. It integrates out of the box with tools like Salesforce and Zendesk, giving companies an easy path to deploy voice agents at scale.
Apple just hosted its late-night "Scary Fast" showcase to reveal its next-generation M3 family of silicon. The event brought major GPU upgrades to refreshed 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros powered by M3 Pro and Max, alongside an overdue refresh for the 24-inch iMac.
A federal judge just narrowed the landmark copyright lawsuit brought by visual artists against Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt. While dismissing claims that all AI outputs automatically constitute infringing derivative works, the court allowed direct infringement claims over model training against Stability AI to proceed. The artists will have a chance to amend their complaint.
DeepMind co-founder Shane Legg just reaffirmed his decade-old forecast, stating there is still a 50-50 chance researchers hit artificial general intelligence (AGI) by 2028. Legg noted that compute is already in place and the next milestone is training models on data scales far beyond a human lifetime, though defining and testing true general intelligence remains tricky.
Meta AI research head Joelle Pineau argues that traditional open-source licenses aren't built for models trained on vast amounts of web data and copyright risks. While critics slammed Meta's Llama 2 as not being truly open source due to usage caps, the Open Source Initiative agreed that legacy licenses fall short and confirmed it is drafting an AI-specific definition.
President Biden just signed a landmark executive order imposing strict oversight on frontier AI systems. Developers training high-risk foundation models must now alert the federal government and share their red-team safety results under the Defense Production Act, while officials develop mandatory watermarking standards to catch AI-generated fraud.
Researchers just trained an AI model that detects type 2 diabetes by listening to someone speak for just 6 to 10 seconds. Developed by Canadian scientists at Klick Labs, the tool picks up subtle vocal pitch and intensity variations invisible to the human ear, reaching up to 89% accuracy in women and 86% in men. Why it matters: If validated further, voice-based screening could replace painful, costly in-person blood tests with a quick smartphone recording.
OpenAI is rolling out a new beta update to ChatGPT Plus that lets users upload and analyze files directly in chat. Even better, it drops the clunky tool switcher—GPT-4 can now automatically figure out whether to browse the web, analyze data, or generate images based on context. The update is gradually rolling out to subscribers.
Yan LeCun just called out corporate leaders for lobbying to regulate open-source AI R&D under the guise of doomsday fears. He argued that AI platforms will hold human knowledge and must stay open like Wikipedia, warning that killing open source will leave global information in the hands of a few tech monopolies.
Google just agreed to invest up to $2 billion in Anthropic, the OpenAI rival behind Claude 2. The deal involves a $500 million upfront cash infusion, with another $1.5 billion to be invested over time. Why it matters: Big tech is pouring unprecedented capital into frontier AI labs, turning the generative AI race into an escalating multi-billion-dollar contest.
Humane’s secretive wearable, the Ai Pin, might cost up to $1,000 and require a monthly cellular data subscription, according to a report from The Information ahead of its November 9 launch. The screenless, cracker-sized gadget clips magnetically to clothes, packing a Snapdragon chip, a laser projector, and OpenAI-powered models to replace phone tasks. Why it matters: Humane wants to spark a post-smartphone paradigm shift, but high upfront hardware costs paired with recurring fees are a tough sell.
Google just added a "respond in real time" setting to Bard, streaming answers line-by-line instead of making you wait for the full response to finish generating. A new "Skip response" button lets you immediately halt unhelpful answers mid-generation. You can toggle between real-time streaming and complete responses in the settings menu.
Stability AI just announced that CEO Emad Mostaque will attend the UK Government's AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park. As a prominent open-source player, the company plans to push policymakers to support safety across the entire ecosystem—advocating that open models keep AI benefits from being monopolized by Big Tech.
OpenAI just leased two buildings at Uber’s Mission Bay headquarters, marking San Francisco’s biggest office deal since 2018. The setup will provide room for the ChatGPT maker to expand to more than 2,000 employees. Why it matters: After years of tech downscaling, the AI boom is actively reviving SF's struggling commercial real estate.
Microsoft just shared an update on its AI safety practices ahead of the UK AI Safety Summit, highlighting how it is operationalizing its commitments. The company expanded its independent AI Red Team, added automatic provenance disclosure for AI-generated images in Bing Image Creator, and funded 125 research projects across 13 countries. Why it matters: As global regulators push for enforceable safety standards, frontier labs are working to show that voluntary guardrails are already delivering results.
Forbes just launched Adelaide, a generative AI search tool powered by Google Cloud's Vertex AI. Built exclusively on the publisher's articles from the past 12 months, it generates conversational answers and personalized recommendations without hallucinating from the wider web. A beta is now live for select visitors.
The Beatles just announced that their final collaborative track, “Now and Then,” is dropping on November 2nd. Using the machine learning tech developed for Peter Jackson’s Get Back docuseries, producers successfully isolated John Lennon’s vocals from an unreleased 1970s demo cassette. It’s a remarkable showcase of AI unearthing lost music history without faking it.
Uber just rolled out Waymo driverless vehicles to passengers in Metro Phoenix. Riders booking UberX or Uber Comfort can now get matched with a fully autonomous Waymo vehicle without needing a separate app. The launch comes right as competitor Cruise suffers a permit suspension, giving Waymo a massive distribution boost.
Boston Dynamics just turned its Spot robot into an autonomous tour guide by wiring it up to ChatGPT, Whisper, and BLIP-2. The quadruped can now inspect its surroundings, navigate on the fly, and banter with visitors in whatever persona it is assigned—including a sarcastic guide. Why it matters: It shows how foundation models can give physical robots commonsense reasoning, even if a 6-second latency and hallucinations remain pain points.
Google just rolled out a major AI update to Google Maps, making it behave much more like its signature Search engine. The app now analyzes billions of user photos to answer vague queries like latte art designs, expands its 3D Immersive View to 15 cities, and tracks EV charger activity to weed out broken stations. Why it matters: Maps is shifting from a utilitarian navigation tool into an AI-powered visual discovery engine.
Google just expanded its Vulnerability Rewards Program (VRP) to cover generative AI attack scenarios, releasing new guidelines on what qualifies as an in-scope bug. The company is also rolling out prototypes for model signing via Sigstore and SLSA to secure AI supply chains against tampering. Why it matters: Google is putting cash behind crowdsourced safety to catch jailbreaks and hallucinations before attackers do.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak just announced plans to establish the world's first AI Safety Institute, aimed at evaluating frontier models for bias, misinformation, and extreme risks before they are released. The government is also proposing a global expert panel modeled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to track AI science, with Sunak defending the inclusion of China to ensure any serious safety strategy covers all major AI powers.
Shutterstock just launched a suite of OpenAI-powered creative editing tools, turning its massive photo library into fully customizable assets. Users can now expand scenes, brush to swap objects, and replace backgrounds directly on the platform. Contributors still get paid when their edited work is licensed, but AI-altered content cannot be resubmitted.
OpenAI just formed a dedicated Preparedness team led by Aleksander Madry to tackle catastrophic risks from frontier AI models. The group focuses on severe threats like cyberattacks, chemical and biological hazards, and autonomous replication, while rolling out a strict Risk-Informed Development Policy.
Quora's Poe platform just launched a monetization program that pays creators for building AI chatbots. Developers and prompt creators can earn up to $20 when their bot drives a new subscription, with per-message pricing arriving soon. The move turns Poe into an app store for conversational bots, though it is currently limited to U.S. creators.
Google just made its "About this image" feature available to all English-language users worldwide. The tool lets people check when an image first appeared in Search, how other sites describe it, and metadata showing if it was AI-generated. Approved fact-checkers and journalists are also getting access via dedicated APIs.
Microsoft just kicked off its 2023 release wave 2 for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, rolling out fresh Copilot capabilities across ERP, customer service, and low-code development. Teams can now generate Power Automate workflows with plain text and receive automated purchasing recommendations, with features rolling out through March 2024.
Grammarly just announced a new feature called "Personalized voice detection and application" rolling out to business subscribers by year's end. The AI analyzes your day-to-day writing to build a custom voice profile, letting you rewrite any draft in your own distinct tone. Why it matters: it makes AI output feel authentic, but opens up tricky questions about identity and style cloning at work.
Bill Gates thinks generative AI may have reached a ceiling, telling Handelsblatt that GPT-5 will not be noticeably better than GPT-4. While he called the jump from GPT-2 to GPT-4 incredible, he argues current models are hitting limits. Still, he expects AI accuracy to climb and costs to drop over the next five years, unlocking reliable applications in healthcare.
Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI just appointed Chris Meserole as the first Executive Director of the Frontier Model Forum and launched a new AI Safety Fund with over $10 million in initial backing. The initiative will grant funds to independent researchers developing red-teaming techniques and evaluation tools for frontier models. Why it matters: Big tech wants to establish collective safety and governance standards before regulation forces their hand.
Twelve Labs just launched Pegasus-1, a video-language foundation model designed to generate text directly from video. Instead of slicing clips into thousands of static images, it natively analyzes visual and audio cues together to handle summaries, chaptering, and custom reports. Why it matters: It treats video as a unified medium rather than a glorified slideshow.
YouTube Music just rolled out a generative AI tool to create custom playlist cover art, replacing the old four-album grid. Users can pick categories and prompts to get five tailored image options, though you still can't upload personal photos. It is currently rolling out to English users in the US.
Lenovo just unveiled its hybrid AI roadmap at TechWorld 2023, spanning public models, private enterprise systems, and personal on-device models. The hardware giant deepened its partnership with Nvidia on optimized servers while deploying compression techniques to shrink foundation models down to PCs. Why it matters: PC makers are betting heavily that enterprise AI will run locally, not just inside massive cloud clusters.
D-ID just launched its mobile app on iOS and Android, bringing its viral AI video tech straight to smartphones. Users can upload a photo, type a script in 119 languages with customizable emotional tones, and generate talking videos up to 10 minutes long. Subscriptions start at $5.99 a month with a 14-day free trial.
Data workers and advocacy groups just sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, demanding protections against predatory surveillance and sub-minimum wages in model training. The push arrived right before a high-profile Senate AI forum with tech executives and investors. Why it matters: The invisible workforce powering modern AI is demanding a seat at the table before regulations get set.
A deep dive into the top 50 AI tools reveals they generated over 24 billion visits between September 2022 and August 2023, with ChatGPT commanding a staggering 14 billion visits alone. Character AI and Google Bard took the next spots in net growth. Conversational chatbots drove the bulk of web attention, with more than 63% of users logging on from mobile devices.
University of Florida researchers just developed a deep learning system powered by NVIDIA DGX A100 systems that evaluates urban building safety from Google Street View images. The model slashes post-disaster inspection times from months to a few hours while hitting over 85% accuracy under FEMA standards. It's already being tested across several cities in Mexico.
Researchers at the University of Chicago just unveiled Nightshade, a tool that lets artists add invisible pixel tweaks to their work before posting online. If scraped into AI training sets, the poisoned samples corrupt the model into swapping concepts—like turning dogs into cats or handbags into toasters. It aims to force tech giants to respect copyright, with an open-source release planned.
Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 has leaked in full, showing a massive bet on on-device generative AI. Leaked internal documents detail an upgraded Hexagon NPU supporting INT4 precision alongside Unreal Engine 5.2 ray tracing. Why it matters: it establishes the silicon foundation for the first true wave of generative AI features on Android phones.
Researchers from ANU, Oxford, and BAAI just developed 3D-GPT, an AI system that translates text prompts into 3D environments. By deploying specialized agents to conceptualize scenes and write code directly for Blender, it automates procedural 3D modeling. It isn't photorealistic yet, but it signals a major shift toward text-driven asset creation.
NVIDIA Research just revealed Eureka, an AI agent powered by GPT-4 that autonomously writes reward algorithms to train robots via reinforcement learning. It taught robotic hands to spin pens, open drawers, and toss balls, beating human-written reward code on over 80% of tasks with an average 50% performance boost.
Meta's chief AI scientist Yann LeCun just dismissed fears of artificial intelligence wiping out humanity as "preposterous," pointing out that current models don't even have the learning capacity of a cat. He warned that rushing to regulate AI development is counterproductive, serving only to entrench Big Tech monopolies and crush open competition.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella just published his 2023 annual shareholder letter, outlining an aggressive roadmap to infuse AI across every single layer of the company's tech stack. He framed natural language and automated reasoning as the defining breakthroughs of our era, betting the farm on Copilot becoming the next universal interface. Microsoft is treating generative AI not as a feature, but as the next computing platform.
Universal Music Group just sued Anthropic in Tennessee, alleging its Claude 2 model generates verbatim copyrighted lyrics like Katy Perry's "Roar" without a license. Music publishers argue Anthropic scraped and distributes protected tracks without paying for rights like traditional lyric sites, calling the lack of copyright guardrails outright infringement.
Microsoft just opened its Security Copilot Early Access Program to qualified enterprise customers. The generative AI assistant is now directly embedded into Microsoft 365 Defender, generating incident summaries and converting natural-language prompts into KQL queries while bundling Defender Threat Intelligence at no extra charge. It is aimed at giving overworked security teams a much-needed speed advantage.
YouTube is developing an AI voice-cloning tool that lets creators mimic famous musicians while recording audio, according to Bloomberg. The streaming giant is currently in talks with major record labels to license their music catalogs for AI training. Why it matters: Following a wave of viral AI deepfakes, YouTube is trying to legitimize voice cloning into an officially licensed creator tool—if record labels agree to sign on.
OpenAI just launched DALL·E 3 for ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise users, letting people generate and refine images directly inside conversations. The model brings major upgrades to tricky rendering tasks like text, hands, and faces, and follows detailed prompts much more faithfully. OpenAI also added guardrails to block requests mimicking living artists and shared progress on a 99% accurate image provenance tool.
Universal Music Group just teamed up with music creation app BandLab in a first-of-its-kind strategic AI alliance. The partnership focuses on ethical AI practices and protecting artist copyrights while exploring commercial opportunities for creators across both platforms. Why it matters: Major record labels are moving from fighting AI to actively setting ground rules with mainstream creation tools.
OpenAI quietly killed an internal AI model code-named Arrakis earlier this year after it failed to meet efficiency targets, according to The Information. Built alongside GPT-4 to drastically lower the eye-watering compute costs of running apps like ChatGPT, the setback left some Microsoft executives disappointed. It shows that slashing inference expenses remains a brutal hurdle, even for AI's market leader.
Meta researchers just showed off an AI system that decodes human brain activity into real-time images using non-invasive magnetoencephalography (MEG). By aligning brain signals with its DINOv2 vision model, the setup reconstructs what a person sees on the fly. It accurately captures object types, though object placement and fine details still struggle.
Midjourney just launched its first official mobile app by teaming up with Sizigi Studios to release Niji Journey on iOS and Android. While primarily tailored for anime styles, users can toggle settings to generate standard Midjourney imagery as well. Existing subscribers can log in via Discord, finally getting an escape hatch from chat rooms.
Tech leaders just sounded the alarm on how drastically AI will upend the global workforce. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warned the shift will hit certain workers far harder than others, urging proactive planning. Meanwhile, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla predicted AI could handle 80% of 80% of today's jobs within a decade, heavily impacting doctors and accountants.
