Anthropic has released Claude 3, claiming new industry benchmarks that see the family of three new large language models approaching “near-human” cognitive capability in some instances. Accessible via Anthropic’s website, the three new models — Claude 3 Haiku, Claude 3 Sonnet and Claude 3 Opus — represent successively increased complexity and parameter count. Sonnet is powering the current Claude.ai chatbot and is free, for now, requiring only an email sign-in. Opus comes with the the $20 monthly subscription for Claude Pro. Both are generally available from the Anthropic website and via API in 159 countries, with Haiku coming soon. Continue reading Anthropic’s Claude 3 AI Is Said to Have ‘Near-Human’ Abilities

Paris-based startup Mistral AI has made an immediate splash in the world of artificial intelligence, securing partnerships with IBM, Microsoft and others nine months after its launch. The company is offering natural language processing models, including its flagship Mistral Large, which becomes only the second LLM (after OpenAI) to land a commercial berth on Microsoft’s Azure cloud, where Meta Platforms’ Llama 2 is available in preview. Boasting “top-tier reasoning capacities” and sophisticated conversational capabilities, Mistral Large specializes in “reasoning, analysis and generation (RAG), is multilingual and supports up to 32,000 tokens.” Continue reading France’s Mistral AI Makes Its Global Debut on Microsoft Azure

In its continuing effort to expand in-app shopping activity, TikTok is testing an option to allow users to automatically identify products in their uploads — a march toward making all objects shoppable. The test lets select users toggle to “Identify Similar Objects” within a video. When activated, the AI-powered ISO highlights matching products that can be purchased in-app. TikTok has been exploring the feature for deployment in the United States this past year. TikTok parent ByteDance has for some time been using the in-stream shopping feature in the platform’s Chinese sister platform, Douyin. Continue reading TikTok Tests Feature Designed to Streamline In-App Shopping

ZTE has launched what it calls the world’s first AI-powered, eyewear-free 5G 3D tablet, the Nubia Pad 3D II. The 12.1-inch LCD display supports 2,560 x 1,600 resolution and 144Hz refresh rate. Powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, the Nubia Pad 3D II is equipped with an AI eye-tracking engine that utilizes “high-speed visual sensors and eye-detection algorithms” to enhance response speed and enable accurate synchronization with the users’ eyes in real-time “for a more natural and realistic 3D display experience,” ZTE says. The device also converts 2D to 3D with Neovision 3D Anytime technology. Continue reading ZTE Unveils Glasses-Free Android Tablet, the Nubia Pad 3D II

Lightricks, the company behind apps including Facetune, Photoleap and Videoleap, has come up with a text-to-video tool called LTX Studio that it is being positioned as a turnkey AI tool for filmmakers and other creators. “From concept to creation,” the new app aims to enable “the transformation of a single idea into a cohesive, AI-generated video.” Currently waitlisted, Lightricks says it will make the web-based tool available to the public for free, at least initially, beginning in April, allowing users to “direct each scene down to specific camera angles with specialized AI.” Continue reading Lightricks LTX Studio Is a Text-to-Video Filmmaking Platform

On the heels of ElevenLabs’ demo of a text-to-sound app unveiled using clips generated by OpenAI’s text-to-video artificial intelligence platform Sora, Pika Labs is releasing a feature called Lip Sync that lets its paid subscribers use the ElevenLabs app to add AI-generated voices and dialogue to Pika-generated videos and have the characters’ lips moving in sync with the speech. Pika Lip Sync supports both uploaded audio files and text-to-audio AI, allowing users to type or record dialogue, or use pre-existing sound files, then apply AI to change the voicing style. Continue reading Pika Taps ElevenLabs Audio App to Add Lip Sync to AI Video

Project Music GenAI Control, an experimental work from Adobe Research, is setting out to change how people create and edit custom audio and music. The prototype tool lets creators generate music from text prompts, “and then have fine-grained control to edit that audio for their precise needs,” according to Adobe. Designed to help create music for broadcasts, podcasts or other “audio that’s just the right mood, tone, and length,” it can generate music from text prompts like “powerful rock,” “happy dance” or “sad jazz,” says Adobe Research Senior Research Scientist Nicholas Bryan, a creator of the technology. Continue reading Adobe’s Prototype AI Tool Is a ‘Photoshop for Music-Making’

GitHub Copilot Enterprise is being released for general availability for $39 per month. Calling the tool GitHub’s “most advanced AI offering to date,” the company says it can be customized to an organization’s knowledge and codebase, placing “the institutional knowledge of your organization at your developers’ fingertips.” Infusing GitHub Copilot Enterprise throughout a company’s software development lifecycle lets team members “ask questions about public and private code, get up to speed quickly with new codebases and build greater consistencies across engineering teams” while ensuring everyone access to the same standard codebase. Continue reading GitHub Copilot Enterprise in General Release at $39 Monthly

The Walt Disney Company has selected five companies to be in its annual Accelerator program, three of them AI startups, one in robotics and one developing VR. The program, now in its tenth year, identifies promising new tech companies to benefit from Disney funding and mentorship in exchange for an inside track on talent and acquisitions. The class of 2024 includes AudioShake, which leverages AI to aid in mixing and dubbing audio tracks for mixing or dubbing; ElevenLabs, which has a text-to-speech app for GenAI voicing; and Promethean AI, a digital archives search platform that informs prototype design. Continue reading Latest Disney Accelerator Backs AI, VR, Autonomous Vehicles

Lenovo made waves at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, debuting a transparent laptop that is evoking science fiction metaphors and, some say, pointing to a new direction in computing. Lenovo hailed the concept ThinkBook product as an “industry first,” complete with a borderless 17.3-inch MicroLED transparent display, providing a “see-through” experience. Lenovo also touted its AI-powered portables, including a new ThinkPad T14 Gen 5 and ThinkBook 14 2-in-1 Gen 4, both featuring Intel Core Ultra processors “for the next wave of personalized business computing.” Continue reading Lenovo Unveils Transparent Laptop and AI Portables at MWC

Qualcomm raised the curtain on a variety of artificial intelligence, 5G, and Wi-Fi technologies at Mobile World Congress Barcelona, which runs through Thursday. The San Diego-based chip designer unveiled an AI Hub it says will help developers create voice-, text- and image-based applications using pre-optimized AI models. Qualcomm’s flagship AI chips — the mobile Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor and the PC-centric Snapdragon X Elite — were announced last year. With the first splash of products now heading to market the company is promising to push the boundaries of 5G and 6G. Continue reading MWC: Qualcomm Unveils AI Hub and Promotes 5G, 6G Tech

Jonathan Mayer has been named the Justice Department’s first chief science and technology advisor and will also hold the title chief artificial intelligence officer, another first. The announcement was made by Attorney General Merrick Garland, who said “the Justice Department must keep pace with rapidly evolving scientific and technological developments in order to fulfill our mission to uphold the rule of law, keep our country safe, and protect civil rights.” Mayer will advise Garland and department leaders and collaborate with other departments “on complex issues requiring technical expertise,” including cybersecurity, AI and other areas of emerging technology. Continue reading Justice Department Appoints Jonathan Mayer Chief AI Officer

Community message board and social news aggregator Reddit, founded in 2005, has filed to go public on the New York Stock Exchange in an IPO observers say may be complete in a matter of weeks. It is the first social media company to go public in many years, with Snap Inc.’s 2017 offering cited as the most recent stock market splash. Reddit’s bankers are reportedly seeking a $5 billion valuation, about half the $10 billion it was valued at for a 2021 private funding round. Reddit filed with the SEC the same day it announced an “expanded partnership” with Google to use Vertex AI. Continue reading Reddit Announces IPO on Heels of Expanded Deal with Google

New York-based Qloo has raised $25 million to fund an artificial intelligence-powered analytics engine. Drawing on consumer behavioral data from around the globe, Qloo uses proprietary algorithms to filter through more than half a billion attributes, including brands, music, film, TV, podcasts, dining, travel and more. Qloo’s AI models “are capable of identifying trillions of connections between these entities,” the company says, listing Netflix, Michelin and Samsung among those already using the service to find connections between customers who frequent Starbucks and the kind of movies they like. Continue reading Qloo Raises $25M for Ad-Targeting Using AI Taste Predictions

Demand for artificial intelligence computer chips drove Nvidia income up 769 percent to nearly $12.3 billion for Q4, year-over-year, and 286 percent — to just over $29.7 billion — for the full-year fiscal 2024 frame that ended January 28. Revenue was $22.1 billion (+265 percent) and $60.9 billion (+126 percent) for the respective periods. Data center sales hit record highs of $18.4 billion for the quarter, up 409 percent from the previous year, $47.5 billion for the fiscal year, an increase of 217 percent. Gaming revenue was flat for Q4, at $2.9 billion, and up 115 percent for the year. Continue reading Nvidia Revenue and Profits Soar on Strength of AI Chip Sales