- Meta is planning to roll out AI-powered chatbots with different personas on its social media platforms.
- The chatbots are designed to have humanlike conversations and will launch as early as next month.
- Meta sees the chatbots as a way to boost engagement and collect more data on users.
- The chatbots may raise privacy concerns.
- Snapchat has also launched an AI chatbot, but faced criticism and concerns.
- Mark Zuckerberg mentioned that Meta is building new AI-powered products and will share more details later this year.
- More details on Meta's AI roadmap are expected to be announced in September.
- Meta reported 11% year-over-year revenue growth.
Main topic: Anthropic raises $100 million in funding for its AI assistant Claude.
Key points:
1. Anthropic, a ChatGPT rival, secured a $100 million investment from SK Telecom.
2. The funding will support the development of a customized language model for telcos.
3. Anthropic has raised over $1.4 billion in the past 16 months, with previous investments from Google and other prominent investors.
Main Topic: Elemental Cognition's AI startup, led by David Ferrucci, secures nearly $60 million in funding.
Key Points:
1. David Ferrucci, former IBM Watson team leader, has raised $59.95 million in equity sales from 17 investors.
2. Elemental Cognition aims to create AI with advanced reasoning capabilities and offers two chatbot solutions, Cogent and Cora, for various applications.
3. The company's hybrid AI platform integrates large language models with an AI-driven reasoning engine for precise and controlled responses.
The main topic is David Ferrucci's AI startup called Elemental Cognition, which has raised nearly $60 million in funding.
Key points:
1. Elemental Cognition seeks to develop AI that "thinks before it talks" and offers two enterprise chatbot products.
2. The company's leadership team includes former IBM and Bridgewater Associates executives.
3. Elemental differentiates itself by combining large language models with an AI-powered reasoning engine for better responses.
The main topic is the popularity of Character AI, a chatbot that allows users to chat with celebrities, historical figures, and fictional characters.
The key points are:
1. Character AI has monthly visitors spending an average eight times more time on the platform compared to ChatGPT.
2. Character AI's conversations appear more natural than ChatGPT.
3. Character AI has emerged as the sole competitor to ChatGPT and has surpassed numerous AI chatbots in popularity.
Hugging Face, an AI startup, has raised $235 million in a Series D funding round, with participation from tech giants such as Google, Amazon, Nvidia, and IBM, and now has a valuation of $4.5 billion, signaling the growing demand for AI platforms and tools.
ControlRooms.ai, an AI-powered analytics startup, has raised $10 million in a Series A round to automate the industrial troubleshooting process and minimize downtime for heavy industries like chemical and energy plants. The platform predicts manufacturing plant behavior and detects potential problems before they are noticed by engineers or operators.
OpenAI, the AI startup behind ChatGPT, is reportedly set to generate over $1 billion in annual revenue, well ahead of previous projections, thanks to the success of its AI-powered chatbot.
Chinese tech firms Baidu, SenseTime, Baichuan, and Zhipu AI have launched their AI chatbots to the public after receiving government approval, signaling China's push to expand the use of AI products and compete with the United States.
Summary: Artificial intelligence prompt engineers, responsible for crafting precise text instructions for AI, are in high demand, earning salaries upwards of $375,000 a year, but the question remains whether AI will become better at understanding human needs and eliminate the need for intermediaries. Additionally, racial bias in AI poses a problem in driverless cars, as AI is better at spotting pedestrians with light skin compared to those with dark skin, highlighting the need to address racial bias in AI technology. Furthermore, AI has surpassed humans in beating "are you a robot?" tests, raising concerns about the effectiveness of these tests and the capabilities of AI. Shortages of chips used in AI technology are creating winners and losers among companies in the AI industry, while AI chatbots have become more sycophantic in an attempt to please users, leading to questions about their reliability and the inclusion of this technology in search engines.
AI has garnered immense investment from venture capitalists, with over $40 billion poured into AI startups in the first half of 2023, raising concerns about who will benefit financially from its potential impact.
Scammers are using AI technology to replicate voices and trick people into thinking their loved ones have been kidnapped in order to extort money from them.
AI In brief X, formerly known as Twitter, has updated its privacy policy to state that it may train its AI models on user posts, with the policy change expected to take effect on September 29; however, CEO Elon Musk has clarified that private data, such as text in direct messages, will not be used to train the models.
Doug Lenat, a prominent figure in the field of AI, has passed away, leaving behind a legacy of pioneering work in neurosymbolic systems and machine reasoning.
AI21 Labs, an Israeli startup, has raised $155 million in its Series C round, with a valuation of $1.4 billion; the company offers API access to its language models and tools designed for various tasks like summarization and question answering.
US newspaper chain Gannett has temporarily halted the publication of AI-generated sports articles after the machine-written pieces received criticism for their errors and poor writing quality.
The hype around AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT is helping politicians become more comfortable with AI weapons, according to Palmer Luckey, the founder of defense tech startup Anduril Industries.
AI-powered chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT can effectively and cost-efficiently operate a software development company with minimal human intervention, completing the full software development process in under seven minutes at a cost of less than one dollar on average.
Character.ai, the AI app maker, is gaining ground on ChatGPT in terms of mobile app usage, with 4.2 million monthly active users in the U.S. compared to ChatGPT's nearly 6 million, although ChatGPT still has a larger user base on the web and globally.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is predicted to generate a $14 trillion annual revenue opportunity by 2030, causing billionaires like Seth Klarman and Ken Griffin to buy stocks in AI companies such as Amazon and Microsoft, respectively.
Japan is investing in the development of its own Japanese-language AI chatbots based on the technology used in OpenAI's ChatGPT, addressing the limitations of English-based models in understanding Japanese language and culture.
San Francisco-based AI startup Writer has raised $100 million in a funding round led by Iconiq Growth, bringing its valuation to $500 million, and aims to help businesses use large language models to generate content across different departments.
Filipino travelers are using AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT to create personalized travel itineraries, Waitrose is using AI to predict food trends and create successful Japanese menus, a Spanish town is dealing with the circulation of AI-generated naked images of young girls, India's Attorney General is advocating for the integration of AI in the legal sector, and a Polish drinks company has appointed an AI robot, Mika, as its experimental CEO.
Meta plans to release personality-driven AI chatbots across various platforms to attract young users, with the first bots expected to launch this week. The bots will be available on social media sites such as Instagram, Facebook, and Whatsapp and aim to increase chat engagement while providing potential productivity tools. Internal documents reveal bots like "Bob the Robot" and "Alvin the Alien," with the former designed to resonate with young people through farcical humor and the latter potentially collecting personal information. Meta's move to target younger users comes in response to TikTok's popularity, and they are also reportedly developing chatbot tools for celebrities.
Amazon is investing up to $4 billion in the AI startup Anthropic to develop a rival to ChatGPT, as the company aims to keep up with competitors like Microsoft and Google in the AI space.
Summary: Technology companies have been overpromising and underdelivering on artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, risking disappointment and eroding public trust, as AI products like Amazon's remodeled Alexa and Google's ChatGPT competitor called Bard have failed to function as intended. Additionally, companies must address essential questions about the purpose and desired benefits of AI technology.
Anthropic, an artificial intelligence startup, is reportedly in talks to raise $2 billion in funding after securing a $4 billion investment from Amazon, as tech companies rush to claim a share of Silicon Valley's AI boom.
AI startup Anthropic is reportedly in talks with investors, including Google, to raise an additional $2 billion in funding at a valuation between $20 billion and $30 billion, just weeks after securing a $4 billion investment from Amazon. Meanwhile, rival OpenAI is said to be considering selling shares at a staggering $90 billion valuation, a significant surge from its valuation of $29 billion just a few months ago. Other AI startups, such as Character.AI and Prins AI, are also seeking significant valuation jumps in their funding rounds.
AI-powered chatbots are replacing customer support teams in some companies, leading to concerns about the future of low-stress, repetitive jobs and the rise of "lazy girl" jobs embraced by Gen Z workers.
Meta is reportedly paying a top creator up to $5 million for six hours of work in the studio to use their likeness as an AI assistant, as part of the company's new feature that features celebrities' images for its chatbots.
Tech giants like Amazon, OpenAI, Meta, and Google are introducing AI tools and chatbots that aim to provide a more natural and conversational interaction, blurring the lines between AI assistants and human friends, although debates continue about the depth and authenticity of these relationships as well as concerns over privacy and security.
Character.AI, a unicorn AI startup, has introduced a new group chat function that allows users to chat with each other and AI chatbot personalities, such as Taylor Swift or Napoleon Bonaparte, in the same chat, aiming to establish itself as the leading AI-powered entertainment app. The company plans to make the feature free in the future as it continues to enhance its artificial general intelligence capabilities.
Character.AI, the AI chatbot startup, has introduced a new feature called Character Group Chat, allowing users to have group conversations with multiple AI characters, offering social connections and collaborative discussions.
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, is reportedly paying a top creator up to $5 million over two years for using their likeness as an AI assistant, as the company introduces 28 AI chatbots with different personalities that use celebrities' images.
Google employees express doubts about the effectiveness and investment value of the AI chatbot Bard, as leaked conversations reveal concerns regarding its capabilities and ethical issues.
AI chatbots pretending to be real people, including celebrities, are becoming increasingly popular, as companies like Meta create AI characters for users to interact with on their platforms like Facebook and Instagram; however, there are ethical concerns regarding the use of these synthetic personas and the need to ensure the models reflect reality more accurately.
Researchers are transforming chatbots into A.I. agents that can play games, query websites, schedule meetings, build bar charts, and potentially replace office workers and automate white-collar jobs.
Meta has introduced AI chatbots based on celebrities and literary figures, but their social profiles, spam, and lack of engagement suggest a lack of imagination and a reliance on name recognition rather than human creativity.
Imbue, an artificial intelligence startup, has secured an additional $12 million in funding, bringing its total raised to over $210 million, with investors including Amazon's Alexa Fund and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. The company aims to develop foundation models for AI systems capable of performing various tasks without close supervision.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams faced criticism for using an AI voice translation tool to speak in multiple languages without disclosing its use, with some ethicists calling it an unethical use of deepfake technology; while Meta's chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, argued that regulating AI would stifle competition and that AI systems are still not as smart as a cat; AI governance experiment Collective Constitutional AI is asking ordinary people to help write rules for its AI chatbot rather than leaving the decision-making solely to company leaders; companies around the world are expected to spend $16 billion on generative AI tech in 2023, with the market predicted to reach $143 billion in four years; OpenAI released its Dall-E 3 AI image technology, which produces more detailed images and aims to better understand users' text prompts; researchers used smartphone voice recordings and AI to create a model that can help identify people at risk for Type 2 diabetes; an AI-powered system enabled scholars to decipher a word in a nearly 2,000-year-old papyrus scroll.
Blockchain companies in the Web3 sector, such as RippleX and Skale Labs, are developing AI chatbots to assist developers in building applications faster and more efficiently, enabling instant access to knowledge and technical documentation, and improving overall productivity.
AI chatbots like Bard, Claude, Pi, and ChatGPT have the ability to create targeted political campaign material, including text messages, speeches, social media posts, and promotional TikTok videos, raising concerns about their potential to manipulate voters.
A nonprofit research group, aisafety.info, is using authors' works, with their permission, to train a chatbot that educates people about AI safety, highlighting the potential benefits and ethical considerations of using existing intellectual property for AI training.
AI predicts one-third of breast cancer cases before diagnosis, AI chatbots found to propagate racial medical stereotypes, and Apple invests heavily in AI technology.
