Top Stories

Nvidia’s AI Blueprint Develops Agents to Analyze Visual Data

Nvidia’s growing AI arsenal now includes video search and summarization tool AI Blueprint, which helps developers build visual AI agents that analyze video and image content. The agents can answer user questions, generate summaries and even enable alerts for specific scenarios. The new feature is part of Metropolis, Nvidia’s developer toolkit for building computer vision applications using generative AI. Globally, enterprises and public organizations increasingly rely on visual information. Cameras, IoT sensors and autonomous vehicles are ingesting visual data at high rates, and visual agents can help monitor and make sense of that workflow. Read more

Runway Adds 3D Video Cam Controls to Gen-3 Alpha Turbo

New York-based AI firm Runway has added 3D video camera controls to Gen-3 Alpha Turbo, giving users the ability to manipulate granular aspects of the scene they are generating using effects whether originating from text prompts, uploaded images or self-created video. Users can zoom in and out on a subject or scene, moving around an AI-generated character or form in 3D as if on a real set or actual location. The new feature, available now, lets creators “choose both the direction and intensity of how you move through your scenes for even more intention in every shot,” Runway explains. Read more

Startup Noma Aims to Secure the Entire Data and AI Lifecycle

As companies move forward with leveraging their proprietary data in generative AI applications, enterprises are contending with existing security solutions that may be inadequate for that task. Israeli startup Noma Security is addressing that concern. Just out of stealth mode, Noma has raised $32 million in a Series A round led by Ballistic Ventures with support from Glilot Capital Partners, Cyber Club London and a collection of angel investors. While enterprise firms that host their models at large cloud outfits have access to built-in MLOps security tools, those who are self-hosting, using smaller cloud operations, or want added protection might be interested in Noma. Read more

D-ID’s New Business-Use Avatars Can Converse in Real Time

D-ID has launched two new types of AI-powered avatars: Premium+ and Express. The company’s video-to-video avatar tools aim to provide personal look-alikes that can sub for their creators in uses ranging from instructional videos to business presentations, offloading on-camera duties in areas including sales, marketing and customer support. “Premium+ Avatars can generate hyper-realistic digital humans that are indistinguishable from real people and will serve as the foundation for fully interactive digital agents revolutionizing how brands communicate,” while Express Avatars can rapidly generate serviceable avatars “from just one minute of source footage.” Read more

MIT Intros LLM-Inspired Teacher for General Purpose Robots

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has come up what it thinks is a better way to teach robots general purpose skills. Derived from LLM techniques, the method provides robot intelligence access to an enormous amount of data at once, rather than exposing it to individual programs for specific tasks. Faster and more cost efficient, the approach has been referred to as a “brute force” approach to problem-solving, and machine learners have taken to it in lieu of individualized, task-specific “imitation learning.” Early tests show it outperforming traditional training by more than 20 percent under simulation and real-world conditions. Read more

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