News/New Launches
Dell’s AI-Powered Latitude 7455 Redefines Business Computing in India
Dell has unveiled the Latitude 7455 Copilot+ AI PC in India, powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon X series processors and featuring advanced AI capabilities to enhance user experience and security. Key specifications and features: The Dell Latitude 7455 Copilot+ AI PC offers a range of high-end hardware and software features designed to deliver optimized performance and user experience: 14-inch IPS QHD+ touchscreen display with 2560×1600 resolution, 400 nits brightness, anti-glare, and ComfortView Plus Low Blue Light technology Choice of Snapdragon X Elite or Snapdragon X Plus processors, utilizing a three-tier processing architecture (CPU, GPU, and NPU) for efficient performance Up to...
read Aug 3, 2024Oxford Dynamics’ Life-Saving Robot Is Purpose-Built for Hazardous Environments
Pioneering technology for perilous situations: Oxford Dynamics has created Strider, a robot capable of venturing into areas dangerous to humans, such as those contaminated by chemical, biological, or nuclear incidents, or exposed to lethal radiation: Strider can retrieve contaminated objects, secure them in sealed containers, and perform semi-autonomous tasks that would be difficult for humans in protective gear. The robot is equipped with infra-red, radar, and lidar systems, enabling it to navigate challenging and unfamiliar terrain. Government backing and future applications: The UK Ministry of Defence has awarded Oxford Dynamics a £1 million contract to design, develop, and supply Strider:...
read Aug 3, 2024Google’s AI Comeback: Gemini 1.5 Pro and Gemma 2 Top AI Leaderboards
Google's remarkable AI comeback: Google has made a stunning comeback in the AI race, overcoming recent setbacks and showcasing remarkable advancements with the unveiling of Gemini 1.5 Pro and Gemma 2. From AI blunders to breakthrough: Google's AI journey over the past year has been marked by high-profile missteps, raising doubts about its ability to compete in the rapidly evolving AI landscape: The Bard chatbot provided incorrect information about the James Webb Space Telescope during its first live demo, wiping $100 billion off Alphabet's market value in a single day. The Gemini image generation feature faced criticism for historical inaccuracies...
read Aug 3, 2024Meta AI May Soon Include Voices from Awkwafina, Judi Dench, Other Celebs
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is engaged in talks with high-profile actors and influencers to potentially incorporate their voices into its digital assistant MetaAI. This development marks a significant step in Meta's ongoing efforts to integrate artificial intelligence across its platforms and products. Celebrity Negotiations: Meta is actively pursuing partnerships with well-known personalities to lend their voices to its AI assistant: The company is in discussions with actors such as Awkwafina, Judi Dench, and Keegan-Michael Key, as well as other celebrities and influencers. Hollywood's top talent agencies are involved in the negotiations, indicating the scale and...
read Aug 3, 2024Figure AI Just Released a Teaser for Its Figure 02 Humanoid Robot
Figure AI unveiled a teaser for advanced humanoid robot "Figure 02," set to debut on August 6, 2024, amidst growing competition in the AI-driven robotics sector. A glimpse into the future: Figure AI, a startup backed by tech giants like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Nvidia, has released a teaser video for its latest humanoid robot, Figure 02: The video showcases close-ups of robotic joints, limbs, and flexible mesh designs, hinting at advanced capabilities. Technical specifications mentioned include torque ratings up to 150Nm and a range of motion up to 195 degrees. Figure's founder, Brett Adcock, claims Figure 02 is "the most...
read Aug 2, 2024NSF Invests $2.8M to Expand Ethical AI Education at Two-Year Institutions
The National Science Foundation invests $2.8 million to establish a National Applied Artificial Intelligence Consortium (NAAIC) at Miami Dade College, aiming to expand ethical AI education at two-year institutions and prepare students for the growing demand for AI expertise across various industries. Strengthening AI education at two-year institutions: The NAAIC, funded through the NSF Advanced Technological Education program, seeks to bolster responsible AI education at two-year institutions nationwide: The investment aims to provide students with the necessary technical knowledge and skills to navigate an AI-driven world, preparing them for meaningful employment in the rapidly evolving AI sector. By establishing the...
read Aug 2, 2024New AI Platform TCS Simplifies LLM Adoption for Businesses
The growing adoption of AI and large language models (LLMs) by businesses presents both opportunities and challenges, but a new platform aims to simplify the process and drive innovation. Enhancing workflows with AI: TCS' new AI platform, WisdomNext, is designed to enhance business workflows and processes by aggregating multiple Generative AI services into a single interface: The platform enables rapid adoption of next-gen technologies at scale and lower costs within regulatory frameworks, allowing for real-time experimentation across vendor, internal, and open-source LLMs. It provides industry-specific business solution templates and productivity enhancers to assist with automating routine tasks, enhancing decision-making, streamlining...
read Aug 2, 2024DeepMind’s Gemma Scope Helps Demystify How LLMs Work
DeepMind introduces Gemma Scope, a new toolset for understanding the inner workings of large language models and addressing interpretability challenges, with the potential to enable more robust and transparent AI systems. Interpreting LLM activations is crucial but challenging: Understanding the decision-making process of large language models (LLMs) is essential for their safe and transparent deployment in critical applications. However, interpreting the billions of neuron activations generated during LLM inferences is a major challenge. LLMs process inputs through a complex network of artificial neurons, and the values emitted by these neurons, known as "activations," guide the model's response and represent its...
read Aug 2, 2024WhatsApp Rolls Out Voice Messaging with Meta AI for Android Beta Testers
WhatsApp has introduced voice messaging with Meta AI, expanding the AI chatbot's capabilities beyond text and images. The new feature, currently limited to select Android beta testers, signals Meta's push to integrate its AI assistant across its popular apps, potentially setting the stage for a new era of AI-powered communication. Key Takeaways: WhatsApp beta for Android (version 2.24.16.10) now includes a voice message button in the Meta AI chat interface, allowing users to send voice messages to the AI chatbot. This update expands Meta AI's capabilities within WhatsApp, which were previously limited to text and image-based interactions. The voice messaging...
read Aug 2, 2024GitHub Just Launched an AI Model Playground for Developers
GitHub Models is a new feature that tightly integrates generative AI models into existing developer tools and workflows, aiming to make AI more accessible and accelerate the development of AI applications. Seamless integration with developer tools; GitHub Models allows developers to explore, test, and compare various AI models directly within the GitHub web interface, GitHub Codespaces, or Visual Studio Code, streamlining the process of experimenting with AI and incorporating it into their projects: The feature provides a robust playground for developers to interact with leading models like Meta's Llama 3.1, OpenAI's GPT-4o and GPT-4o mini, Cohere's Command, and Mistral AI's...
read Aug 1, 2024Black Forest Labs’ ‘Flux’ Is the Lates Open-Source Text-to-Image Model
Flux by Black Forest Labs sets a new standard for open-source text-to-image models with its impressive 12B parameters and Midjourney-like aesthetics. Introducing Flux: Black Forest Labs, the team behind Stable Diffusion, has released Flux, the largest state-of-the-art open-source text-to-image model to date: Flux pushes the boundaries of creativity and performance, delivering high-quality visuals reminiscent of Midjourney. The model boasts an impressive 12B parameters, setting a new standard for open-source text-to-image models. Three Variations of Flux: BFL has released three versions of the model, each catering to different user needs and licensing requirements: FLUX.1 [dev]: The base model, open-sourced with a...
read Aug 1, 2024Perplexity Introduces Sponsored Questions in Shift to Ad-Driven Model
Perplexity has introduces sponsored follow-up questions in its AI search engine, marking a shift towards an advertising-driven model similar to Google's search ads. Key details of Perplexity's new sponsorship scheme: The AI conversational search engine is partnering with publishers to introduce paid "related follow-up questions" that users see when researching a topic: Sponsored questions will be clearly labeled, mirroring the approach of Google's sponsored search links. Initial partners include TIME, Der Spiegel, Fortune, Entrepreneur, The Texas Tribune, and WordPress.com, who will share revenue with Perplexity based on the number of people who see the branded questions. Implications for traditional publishing...
read Aug 1, 2024Anthropic’s New ‘APS’ Simplifies Complex Data Processing for AI Apps
Aryn Partitioning Service launch announcement: Anthropic has announced the Aryn Partitioning Service (APS), a serverless, GPU-powered API for segmenting and labeling PDF documents, performing OCR, extracting tables and images, and more, aiming to simplify the processing of complex, unstructured data for various applications. Key features and benefits: APS runs the Aryn Partitioner and its state-of-the-art, open-source deep learning DETR AI model, which has been trained on over 80,000 enterprise documents. The service can lead to 6x more accurate data chunking and 2x improved recall on hybrid search or RAG compared to off-the-shelf systems. Users can access APS through an API...
read Aug 1, 2024‘OnePlus Open Apex’ AI-Powered Foldable Phone Launches Next Week
The OnePlus Open Apex Edition, a cosmetic refresh of the OnePlus Open smartphone, is set to launch on August 7 with a new red colorway and potentially enhanced storage and AI features, but may come at a higher price point. New design and inspiration: The Apex Edition introduces the "Crimson Shadow" colorway, a striking red hue with a faux leather texture inspired by the iconic Hasselblad 503CW 60 Years Victor Red Edition camera. The phone's large black camera island combined with the new red color gives off a strong Deadpool vibe, making it visually distinct from the original OnePlus Open....
read Aug 1, 2024ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice Feature Generating Buzz and Concern Among Early Users
ChatGPT's Advanced Voice feature is generating buzz with its impressive capabilities, though some realistic outputs are causing unease. Key Takeaways: Select users have access to ChatGPT's new Advanced Voice feature, which allows the AI to speak in various accents, dialects, and even imitate specific scenarios like an airline pilot's announcement. The AI's adaptability to different voices and accents is remarkable, with examples showcasing its ability to speak dozens of languages and regional variations. While the feature is not perfect yet, with limitations like struggling to add appropriate sound effects, the overall performance is still impressive and has the potential to...
read Aug 1, 2024Hedra AI Raises $10M to Empower Video Creators with Speed and Control
AI video creation tool Hedra launches with $10M in seed funding to enable faster, more expressive video generation for content creators, marketers, and businesses. Key Takeaways: Hedra's flagship offering, Character-1, stands out in the crowded generative AI video market by balancing speed and control, allowing users to create longer-form, character-centric videos more efficiently: Hedra has raised a relatively small $10M seed round compared to well-funded competitors like Runway ($237M), Pika ($80M), and Luma ($70M), but has already seen strong traction with over 350,000 users generating 1.6 million videos. Character-1 focuses on integrated workflow tools for automating the production of YouTube videos,...
read Aug 1, 2024Stability AI’s ‘Stable Fast 3D’ Generates 3D Images in Half a Second
Stability AI introduces Stable Fast 3D, a rapid single-image 3D model generation technology, significantly reducing processing time and expanding practical applications across industries. Key Advancements: Stable Fast 3D represents a major leap forward in 3D image generation speed and efficiency: The new model can generate a 3D image from a single input image in just half a second, a dramatic improvement over previous models that required minutes to achieve similar results. Stable Fast 3D builds upon Stability AI's prior work with the TripoSR model, incorporating innovative methods for high-quality 3D mesh reconstruction from single images. Technological Innovations: The model combines...
read Aug 1, 2024You Can Chat with Google’s New AI-Powered Chrome Browser
Google unveils AI-powered Chrome features to enhance browsing and search experiences. Conversational history search: Chrome's new feature leverages Google's AI to help users find previously visited web pages using natural language queries: Users can ask questions like "What was that ice cream shop I looked at last week?" and Chrome will present relevant pages from their browsing history. The feature is easily accessible through the history tab and requires no additional setup, but can be turned off in settings if desired. Incognito mode browsing data will not be included in the search results, maintaining user privacy. Tab compare for easy...
read Aug 1, 2024Google Integrates Gemini into Looker and BigQuery
Google Cloud has unveiled significant updates to its database and data analytics offerings, aiming to facilitate generative AI deployments and adoption by integrating more flexibility into data usage and access. Key Takeaways: Google Cloud announces a series of updates to its Spanner, Bigtable, BigQuery, and Looker services at the Google Cloud Next event in Tokyo. The updates focus on expanding the capabilities of these offerings to better support generative AI applications and improve data analysis. Gerrit Kazmaier, GM & VP of Data Analytics at Google Cloud, emphasizes the importance of having "incredible data" to achieve "incredible AI." Enhancing Data Analytics...
read Aug 1, 2024Google Phone App to Introduce AI-powered Scam Call Detection
Key features and distinctions: The upcoming Google Phone update will differentiate between spam calls and scam calls, providing a more granular approach to identifying and handling potentially malicious callers: Users will be able to manually report calls as either spam or scam, allowing for a more targeted classification of unwanted calls. The AI-powered system, codenamed "Sharpie," will automatically detect scam calls, potentially reducing the burden on users to identify and report such calls themselves. The scam detection feature will be opt-in, giving users control over whether they want to utilize the AI-powered system or not. Evidence of upcoming release: APK...
read Aug 1, 2024Anthropic’s AI Assistant Claude Launches in Brazil
Anthropic's AI assistant Claude launches in Brazil: Anthropic, a leading AI company, has announced the availability of its trusted AI assistant Claude in Brazil, offering consumers and businesses access to cutting-edge AI technology through various platforms and pricing plans. Claude can be accessed via the web-based Claude.ai, free mobile apps for Android and iOS, and the Anthropic API for developers to integrate AI into their own applications and services. Claude.ai offers a free plan and two paid plans: Pro at R$ 110 per user per month with 5x more usage compared to the free tier and early access to new...
read Aug 1, 2024Amazon’s “Just Walk Out” Tech Is New Milestone for Frictionless Shopping
The development of Amazon's new AI-based Just Walk Out (JWO) technology represents a significant advancement in frictionless shopping experiences, leveraging multi-modal foundation models and transformer-based machine learning to accurately track customer interactions and purchases. Key Takeaways: Amazon's upgraded JWO system uses AI to analyze data from various sensors, improving accuracy in complex shopping scenarios and making the technology easier for retailers to deploy. The system's self-learning capabilities reduce the need for manual retraining, allowing it to adapt to store layout changes and accurately identify misplaced items. JWO's integration of RFID technology offers a more cost-effective and less complex solution for...
read Aug 1, 2024Google’s Gemma 2 2B is a Small Model with Big Impact
Google's Gemma 2 2B represents a significant breakthrough in AI efficiency, offering performance on par with industry leaders despite its compact size. This development could potentially reshape the AI landscape, making advanced capabilities more accessible and deployable. Gemma 2 2B challenges the notion that bigger is better in AI: With just 2.6 billion parameters, Google's new language model achieves results comparable to or surpassing models like GPT-3.5 and Mistral 8x7B, which have around ten times more parameters. Independent testing by LMSYS saw Gemma 2 2B score 1130 in their evaluation arena, slightly outperforming GPT-3.5-Turbo-0613 (1117) and Mixtral-8x7B (1114). The model...
read Aug 1, 2024Runway Announces Gen-3 Alpha Turbo for Faster, Cheaper AI Videos
The AI model Runway Gen-3 Alpha Turbo sets a new bar for fast and affordable video generation, though questions about the company's training data practices persist. Key Takeaways: Runway's latest AI video model, Gen-3 Alpha Turbo, promises significant speed and cost improvements over its predecessor: Gen-3 Alpha Turbo is reportedly 7 times faster than the original Gen-3 Alpha model, capable of generating a 10-second video in just 11 seconds. The new model will be rolled out with "significantly lower pricing" compared to Gen-3 Alpha, which currently costs 10 credits per second of generated video. Runway is also working on bringing...
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