Ahead of next month’s CES, Lenovo has unveiled new ThinkPad and IdeaPad laptops powered by Intel’s latest Core Ultra chipsets. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon, ThinkPad X1 2-in-1, and IdeaPad Pro 5i are Intel Evo model laptops, each leveraging the Core Ultra’s three compute engines — a CPU, a GPU and, for good measure, a neural processing unit. Lenovo says that while the three generally work together for optimal efficiency, some tasks wind up offloaded to the GPU or NPU to achieve greater performance and power management. Since both form factors use the Windows 11 OS, the new models support Microsoft’s AI Copilot features. Continue reading Lenovo Unveils Laptops for AI-Enabled Business Computing

Snapchat+ is rolling out new artificial intelligence features that let subscribers use text prompts to create generative AI images to share with friends. In addition, the Dreams feature, which creates generative AI selfies, is now able to add your friends to those photos. Snapchat+ subscribers get one pack of 8 Dreams per month as part of their $3.99 monthly fee. An onscreen button labeled “AI” lets subscribers access the AI image generator to choose from a menu of prompts (including “sunny day at the beach” and “planet made of cheese”) or they can enter their own descriptions. Continue reading GenAI Lets Snapchat+ Subscribers Create and Share Images

Google is rolling out Gemini to developers, enticing them with tools including AI Studio, an easy-to-navigate Web-based platform that will serve as a portal to the multi-tiered Gemini ecosystem, beginning with Gemini Pro, with Gemini Ultra to come next year. The service aims to allow developers to quickly create prompts and Gemini-powered chatbots, providing access to API keys to integrate them into apps. They’ll also be able to access code, should projects require a full featured IDE. The site is essentially a revamped version of what was formerly Google’s MakerSuite. Continue reading Google Debuts Turnkey Gemini AI Studio for Developing Apps

Microsoft is releasing Phi-2, a text-to-text small language model (SLM) that outperforms some LLMs, yet is light enough to run on a mobile device or laptop, according to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. The 2.7 billion-parameter SLM beat Meta Platforms’ Llama 2 and Mistral 7B from France (each with 7 billion parameters) says Microsoft, emphasizing its complex reasoning and language comprehension are exceptional for a model with less than 13 billion parameters. For now, Microsoft is making it available “for research purposes only” under a custom license. Continue reading Microsoft Says Phi-2 Can Outperform Large Language Models

The EU has reached a provisional agreement on the Artificial Intelligence Act, making it the first Western democracy to establish comprehensive AI regulations. The sweeping new law predominantly focuses on so-called “high-risk AI,” establishing parameters — largely in the form of reporting and third-party monitoring — “based on its potential risks and level of impact.” Parliament and the 27-country European Council must still hold final votes before the AI Act is finalized and goes into effect, but the agreement, reached Friday in Brussels after three days of negotiations, means the main points are set. Continue reading EU Makes Provisional Agreement on Artificial Intelligence Act

Google personalized AI assistant NotebookLM is an experimental product that has been in early access since July. Now the company is integrating its new Gemini Pro LLM with NotebookLM and making it available to U.S. residents 18 and older. NotebookLM is engineered “to help you do your best thinking,” Google says, with documents uploaded to the service making it “an instant expert in the information you need,” allowing it to answer questions about your data. Unlike generic chatbots, NotebookLM draws responses from the documents you feed it, meaning it will be hyper-focused — a lite version of a custom trained model. Continue reading Google’s NotebookLM is a Personalized Lite Language Model

Google is closing the year by heralding 2024 as the “Gemini era,” with the introduction of its “most capable and general AI model yet,” Gemini 1.0. This new foundation model is optimized for three different use-case sizes: Ultra, Pro and Nano. As a result, Google is releasing a new, Gemini-powered version of its Bard chatbot, available to English speakers in the U.S. and 170 global regions. Google touts Gemini as built from the ground up for multimodality, reasoning across text, images, video, audio and code. However, Bard will not as yet incorporate Gemini’s ability to analyze sound and images. Continue reading Google Announces the Launch of Gemini, Its Largest AI Model

Meta Platforms is moving Imagine with Meta from its test bed as a generative AI experience in chats to a standalone experience on the Web that allows users to create high-resolution images using natural language text prompts. That is one of more than 20 generative AI features Meta is deploying to create new business opportunities globally leveraging AI across search, ads, business messaging and more. While most will wind up on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, some say Meta’s popular Facebook and Instagram platforms have plateaued at 2 to 3 billion users per month, circumscribing ad growth. Continue reading Standalone Image Generator Is Among New AI Tools by Meta

AMD is coming to market with a new slate of chips optimized for artificial intelligence, including the AMD Instinct MI300 Series data center AI accelerators, ROCm 6 open software stack with new features for large language models, and Ryzen 8040 Series processors with Ryzen AI. The new offerings have received a welcome reception from customers including Microsoft, Oracle, Meta Platforms and Dell, among others that can benefit from building a strong network of suppliers of AI chips. The market is currently dominated by Nvidia, which is challenged to meet existing demand. Continue reading AMD’s New AI Chips Get Welcome Reception from Enterprise

IBM and Meta Platforms have launched the AI Alliance, a coalition of companies and educational institutions committed to responsible, transparent development of artificial intelligence. The group launched this week with more than 50 global founding participants from industry, startup, academia, research and government. Among the members and collaborators: AMD, CERN, Cerebras, Cornell University, Dell Technologies, Hugging Face, Intel, Linux Foundation, NASA, Oracle, Red Hat, Sony Group, Stability AI, the University of Tokyo and Yale Engineering. The group’s stated purpose is “to support open innovation and open science in AI.” Continue reading IBM and Meta Debut AI Alliance for Safe Artificial Intelligence

The Google and Nvidia-backed AI video startup Runway is partnering with Getty Images to develop Runway Getty Images Model (RGM), which it is positioning as a new type of generative AI model capable of “providing a new way to bring ideas and stories to life through video” for enterprise customers using copyright compliant means. Targeting Hollywood studios, advertising, media and broadcast clients, RGM will “provide a baseline model upon which companies can build their own custom models for the generation of video content,” Runway explains. Continue reading Runway Teams with Getty on AI Video for Hollywood and Ads

The research division of Meta AI has developed Seamless Communication, a suite of artificial intelligence models that generate what the company says is natural and authentic communication across languages, facilitating what amounts to real-time universal speech translation. The models were released with accompanying research papers and data. The flagship model, Seamless, merges capabilities from a trio of models — SeamlessExpressive, SeamlessStreaming and SeamlessM4T v2 — into a single system that can translate between almost 100 spoken and written languages, preserving idioms, emotion and the speaker’s vocal style, Meta says. Continue reading Meta AI Seamless Translator Converts Nearly 100 Languages

Stability AI, developer of Stable Diffusion (one of the leading visual content generators, alongside Midjourney and DALL-E), has introduced SDXL Turbo — a new AI model that demonstrates more of the latent possibilities of the common diffusion generation approach: images that update in real time as the user’s prompt updates. This feature was always a possibility even with previous diffusion models given text and images are comprehended differently across linear time, but increased efficiency of generation algorithms and the steady accretion of GPUs and TPUs in a developer’s data center makes the experience more magical. Continue reading Stability AI Intros Real-Time Text-to-Image Generation Model

Sam Altman has wasted no time since being rehired as CEO of OpenAI on November 22, four days after being fired. This week, the 38-year-old leader of one of the most influential artificial intelligence firms outlined his “immediate priorities” and announced a newly constituted “initial board” that includes a non-voting seat for investor Microsoft. The three voting members thus far include former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor as chairman and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers — both newcomers — and sophomore Adam D’Angelo, CEO of Quora. Mira Murati, interim CEO during Altman’s brief absence, returns to her role as CTO. Continue reading Altman Reinstated as CEO of OpenAI, Microsoft Joins Board

Amazon is debuting its Titan Image Generator in preview for AWS Bedrock customers. The new Titan generative AI model can create new images from a text prompt or existing image, and automatically adds watermarking to protect intellectual property. The move into generative imaging puts Amazon in competition with a growing field that includes large firms like Adobe and Google. Unlike those companies and others, the e-retail giant is at present focusing exclusively on enterprise customers. Amazon Bedrock is a managed service giving developers access to a range of foundation models from companies including Meta Platforms, Anthropic, and Amazon itself. Continue reading Amazon Previews Titan Image Generator for Bedrock Clients