Emilia David

The rise of generative AI has been powered by Nvidia and its advanced GPUs. As demand far outstrips supply, the H100 has become highly sought after and extremely expensive, making Nvidia a trillion-dollar company for the first time. It’s also prompting customers, like Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, Amazon, and Google to start working on their own AI processors. Meanwhile, Nvidia and other chip makers like AMD and Intel are now locked in an arms race to release newer, more efficient, and more powerfu…

When I moved to a new studio apartment last year, it was my chance to live out my DIY YouTube girly dreams and design it to my heart’s content. But it turned out to be harder than I thought. Since I couldn’t afford an actual designer, I decided to try out some of the generative AI-powered design apps I’d seen floating around the internet. AI-based design tools began cropping up about the time ChatGPT burst onto the scene. They come in different flavors, from platforms where you upload a photo a…

Since the passage of the CHIPS and Science Act last August, eight companies have already received more than half of the planned government direct funding. These companies have collectively received $29.34 billion in funding through the CHIPS Act for semiconductor factories across the country. The law, a $280 billion package to support innovation in the US, includes $52 billion in subsidies for semiconductor manufacturing and was passed last year. These investments only concern the constructio…

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) reportedly agreed to split duties in investigating potential antitrust violations of Microsoft, OpenAI, and Nvidia, The New York Times reported. The DOJ will lead inquiries into Nvidia, while the FTC will look into the deal between OpenAI and its largest investor, Microsoft. The FTC began looking into potential antitrust issues related to the investments made by technology companies into smaller AI companies in January this…

Google launched its note-taking app NotebookLM last year for researchers, students, and anyone who needs to organize the information they’ve gathered. Now, users can now upload Google Slides and web URLs as sources, not just the Google Docs, PDFs, and text files it accepted previously. The new Notebook Guide also reads sources in NotebookLM and creates study guides, FAQs, or briefing documents, and inline citations can point to your own sources to fact-check AI responses — up to 50 sources per…

Asana’s platform already helps teams lay out tasks and see who is assigned which responsibilities, and now it says “AI teammates” will step in with advice and plans for who should work together to get things done. In a press release, Asana says its AI model can use stored information about the historical relationships and past projects of teams to assign work to the people with the best-matched skill sets, like tagging designers who know brand styles to work on creative projects. It can also lo…

As the AI craze continues, even the microcomputer company Raspberry Pi plans to sell an AI chip. It’s integrated with Raspberry Pi’s camera software and can run AI-based applications like chatbots natively on the tiny computer. Raspberry Pi partnered with chipmaker Hailo for its AI Kit, which is an add-on for its Raspberry Pi 5 microcomputer that will run Hailo’s Hailo-8L M.2 accelerator. The kits will be available “soon from the worldwide network of Raspberry Pi-approved resellers” for $70.…

Several former OpenAI employees warned in an open letter that advanced AI companies like OpenAI stifle criticism and oversight, especially as concerns over AI safety have increased in the past few months. The open letter, signed by 13 former OpenAI employees (six of whom chose to remain anonymous) and endorsed by “Godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton, formerly of Google, says that in the absence of any effective government oversight, AI companies should commit to open criticism principles. These p…

Amazon’s Project PI, or “Private Investigator,” setup combines generative AI and computer vision to “see” damage on products or determine if they are the wrong color or size before the item gets sent to customers. The way it works is that products on their way to customers go through a tunnel that scans the items. The computer vision program — a type of AI that looks at images and understands what’s in them — checks to see if there is damage. If it finds something, that item is isolated, while…

ElevenLabs already offers AI-generated versions of human voices and music. Now, it will let people create sound effects for podcasts, movies, or games, too. The new Sound Effects tool can generate up to 22 seconds of sounds based on user prompts that can be combined with the company’s voice and music platform, and it gives users at least four downloadable audio clip options. The company says it worked with the stock media platform Shutterstock to build a library and train its model on its audio…

It does most of the work for you.

Free ChatGPT users can now access custom GPTs, analyze charts, ask questions about photos, and other features added with GPT-4o in early May. Features like model and web responses, data analytics, chart creation, vision, file upload, memory, and custom GPTs were available to paid users — ChatGPT Plus, Teams, and Enterprise — but are now open to anyone using ChatGPT. While free ChatGPT users can discover and use custom GPTs — previously only available to paid subscribers — they won’t be able…

Two more media companies have signed licensing agreements with OpenAI, allowing their content to be used to train its AI models and be shared inside of ChatGPT. The Atlantic and Vox Media — The Verge’s parent company — both announced deals with OpenAI on Wednesday. OpenAI has been quickly signing partnerships across the media world as it seeks to license training data and avoid copyright lawsuits. It’s recently reached deals with News Corp (The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and The Da…

Microsoft has added an official Copilot bot within the messaging app Telegram, which lets users search, ask questions, and converse with the AI chatbot. Copilot for Telegram is currently in beta but is free for Telegram users on mobile or desktop. People can chat with Copilot for Telegram like a regular conversation on the messaging app. Copilot for Telegram is an official Microsoft bot (make sure it’s the one with the checkmark and the username @CopilotOfficialBot). Several AI companies now l…

Opera browser users can get more up-to-date information and more conversational responses as it integrates Google’s Gemini AI models into its existing Aria AI extension. Aria, released last year, acts like an AI assistant to answer user queries, write code, and perform other tasks. According to Opera, Aria does not rely on one AI model to respond to users but chooses the AI model it feels will work best for the specific task. With this new integration, Aria can tap into Gemini, which the compa…

Bloomberg reports Meta and Google met with major Hollywood studios to license content for their AI video generation platforms. These meetings come after OpenAI reportedly spoke to several Hollywood studios about using its AI video generation model, Sora. Meta has been working on its AI video generation model Emu since last year. Meanwhile, Google unveiled Veo during Google I/O this month. [Attachment: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-23/alphabet-meta-offer-millions-to-partner-w…

OpenAI could face legal consequences for making a ChatGPT voice that sounds a lot like Scarlett Johansson — whether the company did so intentionally or not. And the fact that OpenAI’s CEO referenced those similarities? That only makes matters worse, intellectual property lawyers tell The Verge. “There are a few courses of actions she can take, but case law supports her position,” says Purvi Patel Albers, partner at the law firm Haynes Boone with a focus on trademarks and copyright. After demoi…

Caller ID company Truecaller will let users create an AI version of their voice to answer calls. Truecaller is an app that identifies and blocks spam calls that some people prefer over their phone’s default system. Now the service will let users with access to its AI Assistant to record their voice. The company partnered with Microsoft’s Azure AI Speech, which will learn from the recorded clip to generate an AI version of the user’s voice. “This groundbreaking capability not only adds a touc…

Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses can now post Instagram stories directly to your Instagram account without the need for you to bring out a phone. The feature is one of several updates the company is now starting to roll out to the glasses, including support for Amazon Music and the meditation app Calm. The Instagram support will allow users to prompt the glasses to post to the app before or after taking a picture. They can say, “Hey Meta, share my last photo to Instagram” after taking a photo or te…

Microsoft announced a new version of its small language model, Phi-3, which can look at images and tell you what’s in them. Phi-3-vision is a multimodal model — aka it can read both text and images — and is best used on mobile devices. Microsoft says Phi-3-vision, now available on preview, is a 4.2 billion parameter model (parameters refer to how complex a model is and how much of its training it understands) that can do general visual reasoning tasks like asking questions about charts or image…