Tag: AI

Timbaland’s next pop starlet is an AI avatar

This AI picture is presently all we have on TaTa.
For now, it’s just an AI picture of TaTa, tomorrow it could be «real» music, if the internet doesn’t blow back too hard. (Picture: Stage Zero)
The legendary producer, having discovered and shaped artists like Aaliyah, Missy Elliott, and Justin Timberlake, is now launching a truly AI-based artist for the mass market.

He is entering an already crowded field of virtual influencers, Japanese Vocaloid artists, and a booming industry for AI celebrities in China.

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Google rolls out scheduled tasks for Gemini subscribers

Scheduling with access to your mail and calendar can start your day.
You can schedule your prompts and get mail and calendar overviews to start your day with Gemini. (Picture: Google)
Pro and Ultra subscribers in the Gemini app can now preset prompts or tasks at any given time, a feature that may be quite helpful for some.

They say this can be useful for frequently occurring tasks, like getting a morning news summary or providing ideas «for your blog.»

Works with Google apps
Gemini does of course also work with your Google Calendar and Gmail, and can provide you with a list of unread emails and your daily schedule.

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AIFF, the AI Film Festival, showcases innovative video, as industry set to pounce

Jacob Adler’s «Total Pixel Space,» is an innovative, mind bending AI movie.
A frame from Jacob Adler’s «Total Pixel Space,» winner of the Grand Prize at the AIFF awards. (Picture: screenshot.)
In just three short years, AI has gone from being vilified in Hollywood to having its own AI film festival. It’s not quite Cannes yet, but look at the jury, and you’ll find an important list of industry insiders and VFX veterans.

6,000 submissions
Run by Runway, an ai art company focusing on film shorts, and offering a $15,000 grand prize, it showcases independent creators using AI in their projects, a far cry from the accusations of AI stealing creative jobs.

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OpenAI sees rise in China-based ChatGPT abuse

OpenAI reports on Cyber Threats using ChatGPT.
We should probably be more worried about what ChatGPT doesn’t catch. (Picture: howtostartablogonline.net, CC BY 2.0)
China and Iran are using ChatGPT for influence operations, while North Korea and Russia looks for jobs backdoors and malicious code.

Out of the ten campaigns identified in OpenAIs new report «Disrupting Malicious Uses of AI», four were from China.

Supercharging influence ops
Chinese groups have used ChatGPT for mostly adversarial influence operations, writes Reuters, generating social media posts on political tops including on a Taiwanese video game, accusations against a Pakistani activist and content related to the closure of USAID.

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A short news roundup for Friday

Google launches nother gemini preview, marginally better than the last one.
(Picture: Google)
Google has launched a slightly improved Gemini 2.5 Pro model, the 06-05, scoring moderately better on some benchmarks, and answering Ars Technica’s question on the color Magenta.

It should be available in the Gemini app, and also for free users, who get between three to ten questions per session. This is the model Google plans to take out of Preview as a stable, full model at a later time.

Google has started testing «talk to search» on Android and iOS. The feature lets you discuss and refine search results by clicking under the search bar in the Google app, by text or voice — and you can keep talking after leaving the app.

Anthropic blocks Windsurf access to Claude. Windsurf is an AI coding application that lets you choose which models to use, and the block comes «just weeks after Bloomberg reported that OpenAI was acquiring Windsurf.» «It would be odd for us to be selling Claude to OpenAI,» says Anthropic.

Anthropic opposes 10-year moratorium on state AI laws. In a New York Times op-ed, CEO Dario Amodei argues that AI is developing so fast that new laws might be needed well ahead of the ten-year mark currently being considered in the US Senate. «I believe that these systems could change the world, fundamentally, within two years; in 10 years, all bets are off,» he writes.

Reddit sues Anthropic for unauthorized data harvesting

Reddit inc. is suing Anthropic for illegally scraping its data.
Reddit has clear terms in its user agreement against AI scraping, and has made lucrative deals for it’s data.
The company, home to a valuable archive of 20 years of human exchanges, says Anthropic illegally copied from its archives at least 100 000 times.

The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday at the San Francisco superior court, claims Reddit reached out to Anthropic several times to discuss licensing issues with the scraping but found they «refused to engage.»

Not a white knight
The suit calls Anthropic a «late-blooming artificial intelligence company that bills itself as the white knight of the AI industry,» adding that «it is anything but.»

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OpenAI’s Codex now available to ChatGPT Plus users

ChatGPT Plus-tier gets access to Codex!
Wider availability for Codex likely means even more pressure on the coding market. (Picture: Chatgpt.com)
Caught this morning, there seems to be a new option in the sidebar at Chatgpt.com for the new Codex coding model — meaning it has expanded access.

Codex is the latest coding agent from OpenAI that runs on a modified o3-model.

Super-coding agent
It can generate several instances of code from your prompts, and even run them in a sandbox to select the best/most efficient version.

OpenAI says it can complete tasks autonomously that would otherwise take hours or days to finish, and they are using it themselves to offload repetitive tasks.

The Plus membership for ChatGPT is $20 a month, and Codex launched as a «research preview» in May for Pro users, who fork out $200 a month.

Update: It appears Codex now also has Internet acccess, which is off by default and comes with a stern warning.

See also: teknotum on the Codex launch, and the announcement thread on X.

NotebookLM now lets you easily share projects

You can share your research with others on NotebookLM
Sharing NotebookLM links could become the next internet fad, if Google gets its way. (Picture: Google)
Google has a smash hit on its hands with the AI app, and is now expanding access to notebooks with a simple link.

The shared service lets other users interact with your stored notebooks, to ask questions and make podcasts of your research. You can restrict access to only chats, if you like.

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Altman warns of “scary times ahead,” but is positive about broad future

Altman warns of "scary times ahead"
Big societal changes are coming our way, warns Sam Altman, but he thinks the benefits will outweigh the risks. (Picture: Screenshot)
The OpenAI CEO sat down with mindfulness expert and Buddhist monk Jack Kornfield and Soren Gordhamer for a wide-ranging conversation about AI consciousness, benefits, regulation and ethics yesterday, on a conference called Wisdom 2.0.

They discussed several interesting topics, but Altman said »There will be scary times ahead» as AI gets sharper, without mentioning the recent jobs panic specifically.

Brace for a lot of change
The notion, he said, is for OpenAI to release research previews — or incomplete models — early so that the world can think and prepare for the consequences.

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Anthropic reaches $3 billion in revenue so far this year

Claude coding is delivering stellar results for Anthropic.
Sources say Anthropic’s revenue is growing exponentially. (Picture: Anthropic)
The company hit $1B in revenue in December last year, $2B in March and just jumped another billion in May, according to sources speaking to Reuters.

These numbers are so impressive, one analyst says they lack comparison:

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Final day of Google’s antitrust trial hinges on AI

The final day of Google antitrust remedies trial turned to AI.
Google could lose Chrome and golden default deals in its antitrust trial. (Picture: Pietro & Silvia, CC BY 2.0)
The question for the courts last day of closing arguments was this: Are AI competitors also operating in the search market?

Both sides argued they weren’t, as it could interfere with long standing DOJ arguments that Google is a search monopoly, and for Google looking to avoid scrutiny of its recent behavior.

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Anthropic CEO says it’s time to wake up on AI job losses

Dario Amodei from Anthropic.com
Anthropic’s Dario Amodei worries about entire job segments getting wiped out. (Picture: Anthropic)
As the job market already shows signs of tightening due do AI, Anthopic’s Dario Amodei brings a stern warning to the labs and the government.

— AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white collar jobs, he tells Axios — and spike unemployment to 10-20% in the next five years.

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Big Tech stops hiring new graduates, as entry level jobs dry up

Some managers prefer AI to grads, and it is compounding.
Gradute hirings in Big Tech is plummeting, as some say they prefer AI for easier tasks. (Picture: Jordanhill School D&T Dept, CC BY 2.0)
37% of managers now say they’d rather use an AI than hire a Gen Z employee, according SignalFire’s latest job market report.

The report tracks 650 million professionals and 80 million organizations, and its headline numbers are stark, showing a 35 % drop in graduate hiring in 2024 compared to 2023, and a 50 % drop compared to pre-pandemic levels.

Even top computer science grads are struggling to break in, the report finds, with hiring down 50 % since 2022.

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Pitting humans against AI at FrontierMath yields mixed results

FrontierMath is notoriously difficult for machines to solve, but they are evolving quickly.
FrontierMath is notoriously difficult for machines to solve, but they are evolving quickly. (Picture: Epoch AI)
Epoch AI, the team behind the ridiculously difficult FrontierMath benchmark, decided to check how well humans do on it — and now predicts superhuman AI performance by a years time.

FrontierMath is a synthetic benchmark that contains 300 questions spanning from upper-graduate level to Field Medalist challenges, and the best machines on it score about 2%.

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Court rejects free speech rights for AI chatbots — for now

Can an AI be sued for the wrongful death of a young teen to suicide? Or do they have free speech rights? A trial will now decide.
A young teen was allegedly encouraged into suicide. Now the question is whether an AI chatbot can be held accountable. (Picture: Character.ai)
In a Florida court case that could one day define First Amendment rights for AI, a judge has declined to consider the defendant’s arguments for dismissal — setting the stage for a trial showdown over whether AI chatbots are faulty products or entities entitled to rights previously reserved for humans.

The case revolves around a teen whom Character.ai allegedly encouraged into suicide over a long interaction, and whether the developers should be held accountable for his tragic death, in a wrongful death lawsuit.

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