Cloudflare has a new tool that can block AI from scraping a website’s content for model training. The no-code feature is available even to customers on the free tier. “Declare your ‘AIndependence’” by blocking AI bots, scrapers and crawlers with a single click, the San Francisco-based company urged last week, simultaneously releasing a chart of frequent crawlers by “request volume” on websites using Cloudflare. The ByteDance-owned Bytespider was number one, presumably gathering training data for its large language models “including those that support its ChatGPT rival, Doubao,” Cloudflare says. Amazonbot, ClaudeBot and GPTBot rounded out the top four. Read more

Meta’s popular instant messaging service WhatsApp is reportedly beta testing a feature that would allow the already integrated Meta AI chatbot to edit and reply to images. The capability was spotted in the WhatsApp beta for Android 2.24.14.20, with AI powered by Llama 3, the company’s newest large language model released in April. The beta version works via a camera button added to the text box for Meta AI chat in WhatsApp. When pressed, the button triggers a pop-up that indicates Meta AI can analyze and edit photos, though it’s currently unclear to what extent. Read more

San Francisco-based optics company Solos has debuted its latest smart glasses, the Solos AirGo Vision, which offer a camera that takes photos and provides computer vision, and integrates OpenAI’s GPT-4o. The AirGo Vision can provide real-time information using visual input, recognizing people, objects and places, and providing information such as directions or instructions. Both the camera and AI functionality are hands-free, making the AirGo Vision “especially convenient for visual progress and next steps on activities like cooking, home improvement projects, education and studies, and even shopping,” the company explains. Read more

New York-based AI startup Runway has made its latest frontier model — which creates realistic AI videos from text, image or video prompts — generally available to users willing to upgrade to a paid plan starting at $12 per month for each editor. Introduced several weeks go, Gen-3 Alpha reportedly offers significant improvements over Gen-1 and Gen-2 in areas such as speed, motion, fidelity and consistency. Runway explains it worked with a “team of research scientists, engineers and artists” to develop the upgrades but did not specify where it collected its training data. As the AI video field ramps up, current rivals include Stability AI, OpenAI, Pika and Luma Labs. Read more

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that the company will test a feature to create AI characters through the AI Studio on Instagram that can engage with fans and respond to messages. “Rolling out an early test in the U.S. of our AI Studio so you might start seeing AIs from your favorite creators and interest-based AIs in the coming weeks on Instagram,” he wrote. “These will primarily show up in messaging for now, and will be clearly labeled as AI.” Zuckerberg noted the beta test will help the company improve AI characters and will be made “available to more people soon.” Meta launched AI Studio last year to help businesses build custom chatbots. Read more