🗞️ AI News Recap

Hey TEDchats Fam!

Happy Monday! Ever joined a movie halfway through and felt lost? AI can be like that complex blockbuster. Recapping AI is your guide through the digital cinema – let's explore what happened in the past week!

🐇 QUICK BITES — THE PAST WEEK

An AI Phone Without a Screen?

Jony Ive, former Apple chief design officer, partners with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Together, they aim to create the "iPhone of AI" with support from Softbank's CEO Masayoshi Son who has plans to invest over $1 billion. This project might diverge from screens, building on Altman's investments in Humane, a screenless AI wearable startup, aligning with Ive's anti-tech addiction stance. The project is in its early stages and the actual design or features are yet to be finalized.

Companies Don’t Want Their Data Used!

Medium, along with CNN, The New York Times, and other media outlets, will block OpenAI's GPTBot, which scrapes web content for AI training. This move suggests a potential alliance among platforms to combat content exploitation. They announced plans to add "User-Agent: GPTBot" to a block list in their robots.txt files, which informs web crawlers whether or not they have permission to scan and scrape the website.

Concerns About GPT-4V Finally Revealed

OpenAI's concerns about GPT-4's image analysis capabilities were recently clarified in a technical paper (click here for the paper). It highlighted both the strengths and potential issues with GPT-4V(ision), an extension of GPT-4. OpenAI addressed various important concerns such as evaluating harmful content, representation harms, privacy, cybersecurity, and multimodal jailbreaks. For instance, they're examining how to prevent malicious use, like breaking CAPTCHAs or generating dangerous drugs from images.

ChatGPT Web is Revived!

OpenAI reintroduces ChatGPT's ability to search the web in real-time, allowing up-to-date answers from “current and authoritative" sources. For now, it is available for Plus and Enterprise subscribers, but plans are in place to make it accessible for all users soon.

Meta Announces AI Studio

Meta recently introduced AI Studio, a platform for businesses to develop chatbots across their messaging services. Primarily targeting e-commerce and customer support, the chatbots, powered by models like Llama 2, are planned to be less rigid and more dynamic than current alternatives.

Amazon's Billion-Dollar AI Play

Amazon takes a strategic leap into the AI frontier, agreeing to invest an initial $1.25 billion for a minority stake in Anthropic, with options to invest up to $4 billion. This strategic move aligns them with top AI innovators, aiming to enhance customer experiences and advance AI technology.

Google Gives an Opt-Out for Data Used in AI Training

Google has introduced Google-Extended, allowing web publishers to manage their sites' involvement in improving Bard and Vertex AI generative APIs, including future model iterations. This feature allows site administrators to control content access and decide whether to aid AI model refinement.

Zapier Launches Canvas To Enhance Work Automation

Zapier, an online automation tool that links apps and services for workflow automation, has launched Canvas, a new tool for users to plan and visualize essential business processes. While Canvas is currently in early access, Tables, Zapier's automation-centered database service, is now accessible to all users.

AI Voices on Spotify!

Soon, podcasters could instantly translate and reproduce their episodes in another language, all while retaining their unique voice. Spotify's AI-driven feature, powered by OpenAI, will be first tested on a select group of podcasters, but is set to transform the podcasting landscape.

New AI Team: Snapchat & Microsoft

Snapchat's 'My AI' chatbot will soon include Sponsored Links in partnership with Microsoft, albeit still in an experimental phase. If you're discussing dinner in the chat, for instance, you might see a link to a nearby restaurant. It's a novel approach, embedding ads directly within AI-driven conversations.

AI Pin Hits the Stage at Paris Fashion Week

Supermodel Naomi Campbell wore Humane’s AI pin on her lapel during Coperni's 2024 Spring Summer show at Paris Fashion Week, marking her as the first person outside the company to publicly sport the device. It has now been confirmed that the device will be officially unveiled at an event on November 9.

Amazon Bedrock Leaps Forward

AWS unveils the general availability of Amazon Bedrock, its generative AI service. Targeted at AWS customers, Amazon Bedrock enables the development of apps on top of generative AI models. Their services even include the ability to create AI agents for tasks like booking trips and managing stock.

Google Expands its AI Searching Tools to Teenagers

Google is expanding its generative AI search for teenagers with the Search Generative Experience (SGE), featuring a conversational mode that allows users to ask questions to Google ‘naturally’. Starting last week, U.S. teens aged 13-17 with Google Accounts can join Search Labs to use the AI search through the Google app or Chrome desktop.

🧰 AI TOOLBOX — RECAP 

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As we wrap up, consider AI news as the ever-unfolding pages of a fascinating book, and recaps are your bookmarks to remember where we left off. What intriguing chapters await in the AI story? Stay tuned for our next newsletter, where we'll keep turning the pages together.