OpenAI recently announced it is developing formal AI risk guidelines and assembling a team dedicated to monitor and study threat assessment involving imminent “superintelligence” AI, also called frontier models. Topics under review include the required parameters for a robust monitoring and prediction framework and how malicious actors might want to leverage stolen AI model weights. The announcement was made shortly prior to the Biden administration issuing an executive order requiring the major players in artificial intelligence to submit reports to the federal government assessing potential risks associated with their models. Continue reading OpenAI Creates a Team to Examine Catastrophic Risks of AI

LinkedIn expects to pass the 1 billion user mark this month, and timed to that feat is unleashing a new suite of AI productivity tools, including job coaching, personalized digests and help writing original content for the platform. The new machine learning assists will initially be available only to Premium subscribers, centered on the aforementioned three main areas. The move follows months in which LinkedIn has been upgrading its AI capabilities in areas like automated recruiter messaging, job descriptions and profile writing suggestions. The improvements draw on OpenAI technology, in which LinkedIn parent Microsoft has an ownership stake. Continue reading Nearing 1 Billion Users, LinkedIn Debuts Job Coach Chatbot

Social question and answer platform Quora has inserted itself on the leading edge of companies helping creators monetize AI chatbots. Quora’s AI chatbot platform Poe will pay those who create prompt bots on Poe as well as developers of server bots that integrate with the Poe API. “Since this is the beginning of a new market, there are lots of opportunities to provide a valuable service for the world and make money at the same time,” said Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, envisioning a thriving bot economy across categories from tutoring and therapy to storytelling and roleplay. Continue reading Quora Plans to Foster Chatbot Creator Economy with Poe AI

President Biden has signed a far-ranging executive order establishing guardrails for artificial intelligence. Companies are now required to report to the federal government on risks related to their AI systems should they fall into the hands of terrorists or be used for weapons of mass destruction. The order also attempts to mitigate the dangers of deepfakes that could be used to manipulate elections or defraud consumers. “Deepfakes use AI-generated audio and video to smear reputations, spread fake news and commit fraud,” Biden said as he signed the order at the White House. Continue reading President Biden Signs Executive Order to Contain Risks of AI

Creative image platform Shutterstock has added AI-powered editing features that provide “the potential for infinite options to refine and perfect images” in the company’s library of more than 700 million stock selections. A go-to source for brand marketers and digital media companies, Shutterstock is offering six signature AI capabilities as well as secondary features such as a virtual AI design assistant and advanced filters under the umbrella Creative AI. What’s more, Shutterstock says it will compensate its licensed artists when their images are edited with AI. Continue reading Shutterstock Offers AI Image Editor for Massive Stock Library

YouTube Music is rolling out an experimental feature that lets English-language users tap artificial intelligence to generate cover art for their playlists. Without leaving the app, creators can now “effortlessly explore from a range of visual themes and options to create one-of-a-kind cover art,” YouTube explains, adding the feature would be rolling out in different languages. That was one of a series of new personalization and discovery tools the streamer recently announced. The company is also adding “speed dial” so music fans can effortlessly revert to their favorite recent listening experiences. Continue reading YouTube Music Experiments with AI for Generating Cover Art

During yesterday’s “Scary Fast” new product event, Apple unveiled its next generation of bespoke processors — the M3, M3 Pro and M3 Pro Max — and some new computers to go with them. Built to the 3-nanometer spec that supports artificial intelligence and advanced graphics, the M3 line has 2.5x the speed of 2020’s M1 series, per Apple, which says the core processing performance is as much as 50 percent faster. New MacBook Pro laptops in 14-inch and 16-inch versions will feature M3 Pro and M3 Pro Max chips. An M3 powered 24-inch iMac series is also debuting. Continue reading Apple’s New M3 Chips Make the MacBook, iMac ‘Scary Fast’

The United Nations has formed an advisory board on artificial intelligence comprised of 39-members from government, academia and industry who will “undertake analysis and advance recommendations for the international governance of AI.” The move comes as U.S. legislators and tech industry players are also prioritizing model governance. “Globally coordinated AI governance is the only way to harness AI for humanity while addressing its risks and uncertainties,” the UN announced in unveiling the initiative, co-chaired by Carme Artigas, Spain’s secretary of state for digitalization and AI, and James Manyika, SVP of research, technology and society at Google. Continue reading Google, Microsoft, Sony Tapped for UN AI Governance Board

Elon Musk’s X social media service will soon launch two new monthly subscription tiers, a $16 X Premium+ plan with no ads, and a budget-priced $3 option with “most” of the same features “but no reduction in ads.” Musk had for some months been discussing new paid subscription options as part of an effort to fight spam and bots on the platform. In November, the company began offering an $8 monthly X Premium subscription (formerly Twitter Blue) that includes blue check verification and the promise of some boosted post exposure. Musk is also envisioning a digital wallet with financial services, business applications to compete with LinkedIn, and a news wire service. Continue reading X to Launch Paid Tiers in Next Move Toward ‘Everything App’

Google is rolling out three new tools to verify images and search results. “About this image,” Fact Check Explorer and Search Generative Experience (SGE) all add context to Google Search results. “About this image” is rolling out globally to English-language users as part of the Google Search UI. Available in beta since summer, Fact Check Explorer will let journalists and professional fact checkers delve into an image or topic more deeply via API. Search Generative Experience lets GenAI investigate and share results about websites by populating source descriptions for some targets that will appear in “more about this page.” Continue reading Google Taps AI for Tools to Help Authenticate Search Results

Spotify will reportedly change its royalty payout formula beginning next year in an effort to cut out scammers and more equitably distribute funds among “legitimate artists” and rightsholders. As a result, it is estimated that about $1 billion in royalty payments will be redistributed over the next five years. The streamer is considering setting a minimum number of annual streams to qualify for royalty payments — which is generating controversy — as well as sanctions on distributors and labels determined to be fraudulently manipulating streams, and adding a playtime threshold that targets so called “noise tracks” designed to emulate music. Continue reading Spotify to Introduce New Version of Its Royalty Payout Model

After launching a subscription-only music streaming service in territories around the world this past summer, TikTok is now moving into concerts and e-ticketing. The ByteDance company’s first live global music event will be “TikTok In The Mix,” featuring Cardi B, Niall Horan, Anitta and Charlie Puth, along with surprise guests and new artists from the TikTok Elevate program. Taking place December 10 at Sloan Park in Mesa, Arizona, the show will integrate elements of the For You feed, with “a range of activities inspired by the TikTok community’s favorite trends.” Continue reading TikTok Dives into Live Music with Its First Concert Experience

Qualcomm has debuted a new flagship platform, the Snapdragon X Elite series. Built for artificial intelligence and capable of running generative models with over 13 billion parameters, Qualcomm claims it offers “4.5 times faster AI processing power than competitors.” Described as “the most powerful computing processor it has ever created for the PC,” Qualcomm says the chipset is also one of the most efficient, “with up to multiple days of battery life.” Leading OEMs are expected to begin shipping models with the new processors in mid-2024. Continue reading Qualcomm Unveils Snapdragon X Elite Series, Created for AI

The University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) and Tencent YouTu Lab have released a research paper on a new framework called Woodpecker, designed to correct hallucinations in multimodal large language AI models. “Hallucination is a big shadow hanging over the rapidly evolving MLLMs,” writes the group, describing the phenomenon as when MLLMs “output descriptions that are inconsistent with the input image.” Solutions to date focus mainly on “instruction-tuning,” a form of retraining that is data and computation intensive. Woodpecker takes a training-free approach that purports to correct hallucinations from the basis of the generated text. Continue reading Woodpecker: Chinese Researchers Combat AI Hallucinations

Xreal (formerly Nreal) is releasing its Xreal Air 2 and Xreal Air 2 Pro augmented reality glasses. The latest iteration of AR glasses from the company is designed for everything from movies to TV to games. The Air 2 AR glasses “can turn whatever the wearer is viewing into a big screen experience” of up to 330-inches, the company claims, citing the integration of Sony Semiconductor Solutions’ Micro OLED displays that pack a whopping 4,032 pixels-per-inch to deliver “a crisp and visually stunning virtual screen” in Full HD resolution of 1920 x 1080 per eye. An ultra-high contrast ratio of 100,000:1, and 500 nits brightness ensure sharp detail. Continue reading Xreal $400 Air 2 AR Glasses are for Games, Movies and More