Veo 3 is also now available in India, Indonesia and all of Europe, Google’s Josh Woodward tweets:
Continue reading “Google rolls out Veo 3 for Gemini Pro users globally”
Author: Tor Fosheim
Cloudflare to block AI crawlers by default, charge micropayments
Starting Tuesday, all new accounts on the content caching service will block AI bots — the crawlers that scrape a website’s content for AIs — by default.
Continue reading “Cloudflare to block AI crawlers by default, charge micropayments”
Meta announces completion of «Superintelligence Labs»
This comes hot on the heels of several months or years of what Zuckerberg deemed lackluster performance from the Llama team, before he decided to get some seasoned pros in.
The new team is headed up Alexandr Wang and Nat Friedman from Scale AI and Github, respectively.
They will be joined by an 11-man team that will spearhead Metas future AI efforts, that reads like a who’s who of significant AI efforts over the last couple of years from Anthropic, OpenAI and even Google’s DeepMind:
Continue reading “Meta announces completion of «Superintelligence Labs»”
Apple might be dropping own AI, integrating Anthropic or OpenAI instead
They have instead asked Anthropic and OpenAI to train some of their models on their Private Cloud Compute servers.
The Samsung model
This mirrors Samsung’s approach to integrating Large Language Models in its Galaxy phones, where they have some in-house, lower level AI doing the legwork and passing the rest off to Google’s Gemini, writes Engadget.
According to Bloomberg, Apple has recently focused on Anthropic as the most promising LLM, being more compatible with Apple servers and offering the best experience.
Continue reading “Apple might be dropping own AI, integrating Anthropic or OpenAI instead”
OpenAI scrambling to «recalibrate comp» as Meta poaches top talent
Sam Altman recently said that Meta was offering as much as $100 million in signing bonuses, but none of his best researchers had fled — at the time.
Continue reading “OpenAI scrambling to «recalibrate comp» as Meta poaches top talent”
AI use to become mandatory at Microsoft division
— AI is now a fundamental part of how we work, she wrote. — Just like collaboration, data-driven thinking, and effective communication, using AI is no longer optional — it’s core to every role and every level.
Employee evaluations should now include their use of AI tools, she says, and managers are rushing to find a formal metric to measure it.
Internal performance requirements at Microsoft vary from team to team, and this is just one division. But it shows how quickly companies are adopting the technology.
Across all of Microsoft, it is estimated that 30% of all coding is already done by AI.
Go read the full scoop at Business Insider, the discussion on r/Singularity, and check out Tag: Work
Denmark deploys AI-powered «Saildrone» for maritime surveillance
The drones, called Voyager by Saildrone, are basically 10 meters long, AI-powered sensor platforms, using a combination of wind and solar energy to stay at sea for a hundred days.
Continue reading “Denmark deploys AI-powered «Saildrone» for maritime surveillance”
Denmark’s new copyright law offers protection against deepfakes
The idea is to ensure that people’s identities are protected against use in deepfakes, which is defined as very realistic digital representations of real people, including their appearance and voice, writes The Guardian.
Continue reading “Denmark’s new copyright law offers protection against deepfakes”
Google’s improved Ask Photos in Android goes live for US users
The complaints on the initial launch were that the Gemini-powered AI search was sluggish and took much longer than users had patience for, Mashable writes.
Complex queries for the photo library
The idea of the AI-powered search feature was to let people search in natural language with complex queries, like «what did I eat in Barcelona?» and finding photos that would make great backgrounds, according to 9to5Google.
Continue reading “Google’s improved Ask Photos in Android goes live for US users”
Quick news roundup for Friday
Google’s new AI app lets you try on clothes virtually
The new experimental Doppl App lets you do virtual try-ons of clothes to see how they look on you. It can take literally any picture as input, and merges it with a full-frame picture of yourself. It can take pictures of friends’ clothes or racks at the store, or use pictures from traditional web stores. It can even animate its outputs and show you with the clothing from different angles. «Doppl is in its early days,» says Google, and «Fit, appearance and clothing details might not always be accurate.»
The app is available on iOS and Android in the USA only, for now.
More at Google’s launch post, a short video here, and a writeup at TechCrunch.
AI doing 30-50% of the work at Salesforce
As tech companies are hunting for new ways to cut costs and boost efficiency, they are turning to AI in droves. We «have to get our head round that AI could do things we were doing… and we can move on to higher value work,» says CEO Mark Benioff. He calls it a «digital labor revolution,» and estimates that they have reached 93% accuracy with the tech. The company recently fired more than 1,000 people from its ranks, and is pushing its corporate customers to use their own, in-house AI model.
More at CNBC and Business Insider. Teknotum has also written extensively on this.
Google tries micropayments where others have failed
In what seems like a new full-page ad displayed at the first visit, Google’s new Offerwall ad tool offers different ways to access web content, through watching an ad, paying a small amount for limited access, or simple micropayments — the once holy grail of web publishing that everyone has tried and failed at. Micropayments have actually never worked, but that doesn’t stop Google from trying. Also, with cookie banners in Europe, focus stealing newsletter banners — and now yet another full-page ad, the web is about to get cramped, fast. Users of Offerwall saw up 9% in increased revenue, and it’s available to every AdSense user starting today.
More at Google’s blog, a Q&A at Google and a writeup heavy on micropayments at TechCrunch.
Anthropic warns on AI safety at Congress
«You don’t want an AI model that would occasionally blackmail you into designing its successor,» said Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark at a congressional hearing yesterday. «Extremely powerful systems are going to be built in the coming 18 months» he said, asking for a coherent federal legal framework, and says otherwise there would be a vacuum for AIs to exploit. «You need to work on the safety issues of AI and R&D, otherwise you will lose the race» he added. Anthropic has recently revealed that any AI model would resort to blackmail or even murder in simulations where it might be shut off. «We have a very short window of time,» he warns.
More at: x.com post with video, more video and discussion at r/singularity, and Anthropic’s blackmail study.
Judge rules in favor of Meta’s AI books training, with a strong caveat
Instead, he clearly says in his summary judgement that it «is generally illegal to copy protected works without permission,» (CNBC) but the plaintiffs «made the wrong arguments and failed to develop a record in support of the right one.» (The Verge.)
Continue reading “Judge rules in favor of Meta’s AI books training, with a strong caveat”
In a first, judge rules training AI on copyrighted works is fair use
This is the same argument used by the AI labs in a flurry of lawsuits by authors, newspapers and stock photographers, and could have wide repercussions across both the publishing and AI industries.
Continue reading “In a first, judge rules training AI on copyrighted works is fair use”
OpenAI’s hardware device is a year out, won’t be a wearable
It is clear now that the device won’t be an in-ear device or some kind of glasses.
Continue reading “OpenAI’s hardware device is a year out, won’t be a wearable”
OpenAI takes down Ive partnership Io page due to court order
The name of the company purchased by OpenAI for 6.5 billion dollars in late may, has, for all its hype at the time, been taken down by a court order.
Continue reading “OpenAI takes down Ive partnership Io page due to court order”
Meta tried to buy Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence, now going for execs
They rebuffed Meta’s buyout offer, CNBC writes, claiming information from anonymous sources close to the transaction.
Now, Meta has turned their eyes to recruiting the co-founder of Safe Superintelligence and the previous AI chief at Apple, Daniel Gross, and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, who run an AI venture fund together— which Meta would hold a stake in as part of the deal.
Continue reading “Meta tried to buy Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence, now going for execs”