Amazon is planning to add generative artificial intelligence to its decade-old voice assistant, Alexa, which will require a monthly fee to offset the cost of the technology, according to reports. Although the new Alexa price plan has not been disclosed, it is not expected to be included in the $139 yearly Amazon Prime plan. The possible move comes as Apple is also undergoing an AI overhaul of its voice assistant, Siri. Once considered precocious by many consumers, Siri and Alexa are now playing catch-up to AI assistants from leaders in the space including Google, Microsoft and OpenAI. Continue reading Amazon to Upgrade Alexa with AI, May Add Subscription Fee

Google is showing off a developmental chatbot it says represents the future of AI assistants. Called Project Astra, it has the ability to “see” and “hear,” remembering the information ingested, which it can then answer questions about — from simple queries such as “Where did I leave my glasses?” to unpacking and explaining computer code. Demonstrated at the Google I/O conference this week, Astra understands the world “just like people do” and is able to converse naturally, in real time. The company says some Project Astra features may come to Gemini late this year. Continue reading Google Teases Astra AI Assistant and Debuts Gemini 1.5 Pro

OpenAI CTO Mira Murati announced during a live-streamed event today that the company is launching an updated version of its GPT-4 model that powers OpenAI’s popular chatbot. The new flagship AI model, GPT-4o is reportedly “much faster” and offers improved text, voice and vision capabilities. Murati said GPT-4o will be free to all users, while Plus users will enjoy “up to five times the capacity limits” available to free users. According to OpenAI, the new AI model “can respond to audio inputs in as little as 232 milliseconds, with an average of 320 milliseconds, which is similar to human response time in a conversation.” Continue reading OpenAI Unveils Faster AI Model, Desktop Version of ChatGPT

Social platform X, formerly Twitter, has added news summaries generated by Grok, the chatbot of Elon Musk’s xAI, exclusively for Premium subscribers. The personalized trending “Stories” appear in the For You tab of the app’s Explore section. The feature is available on the web and for iOS users for now. For You consists of trending items shared across the platform and within individual networks, along with recommended posts. Grok essentially becomes the voice of X’s news aggregator, teasing articles with short blurbs that link to what X users are saying on the subject. Critics are concerned about Grok’s tone, interpretation of information, and potential for creating fake news. Continue reading X Premium Intros News Blurbs Generated by Musk’s Grok AI

As part of its spring product release, Yelp has added Yelp Assistant, an AI feature designed to connect consumers with relevant business professionals. The chatbot leverages OpenAI language models along with Yelp data to find the right fit and can interactively quiz users to learn more about their project and needs. Available on iOS (with plans for Android later this year), Yelp’s move is part of a trend using artificial intelligence to provide operational help managing households and life tasks. For example, the California-based energy intelligence firm Bidgely is now using AI to generate individualized consumer profiles on energy usage. Continue reading Yelp Assistant Joins Movement to Add AI Consumer Services

Anthropic has launched a paid tier catering to business customers as well as a free mobile app for iOS users featuring its chatbot Claude. The generative AI startup — which has backing from Amazon, Google and Salesforce — is positioning itself to compete with companies like OpenAI, Google and Microsoft that focus on enterprise plans for revenue while also offering individual plans. Anthropic’s Team plan starts at $30 per user per month, on par with competing enterprise products, and requires a minimum of five seats. Anthropic has been beta testing Team over the past few quarters in industries including legal, tech and healthcare. Continue reading Anthropic Debuts Enterprise Plan, Free Claude App for iPhone

Alphabet reported revenue of $80.5 billion for Q1, a 15 percent increase fueled largely by online advertising from Google Search and YouTube. The figure topped analyst estimates of $78.8 billion. Profit soared, rising 57 percent to more than $23.6 billion, wildly overperforming the forecast of $18.9 billion. The strong performance resulted in Alphabet announcing its first ever shareholder dividend, at 20 cents per share, which pays out on June 17. Alphabet’s board approved a $70 billion stock repurchase program, and the news-filled earnings event drove Alphabet shares up 13 percent in after-hours trading. Continue reading Alphabet Profit Up 57 Percent, Prompting First-Ever Dividend

Pursuant to his goal of “building the world’s leading AI,” Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Friday that Meta AI is upgrading to Llama 3 concurrent with a rollout of its open-source chatbot across the company’s social platforms, integrating it into the search boxes atop WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger. There is also a website, meta.ai, for those who prefer browser access. Reports of Meta upgrading its social AI capabilities began leaking out early last week, albeit on a more limited test scale than what Zuckerberg announced, which, excepting Threads, is cross-platform. Continue reading Meta AI Assistant Is Launching Across Platforms with Llama 3

Meta is testing a new large language chatbot, Meta AI, on social platforms in parts of India and Africa. The chatbot was introduced in late 2023, and began testing on U.S. WhatApp users in March. The test is expanding to include more territories and the addition of Instagram and Facebook Messenger. India is reported to be Meta’s largest social market, with more than 500 million Facebook and WhatsApp users, and has big implications as the company scales up its AI plans to compete against OpenAI and others. The Meta AI chatbot answers questions and generates photorealistic images. Continue reading Meta Tests Image-Generating Social Chatbot on Its Platforms

Opera has become the first browser to add support for large language models (LLMs). At this point the feature is experimental, and available only on the Opera One Developer browser as part of the AI Feature Drops program. The update offers about 150 LLMs from more than 50 different families, including Meta’s LLaMA, Google’s Gemma, Mixtral and Vicuna. Opera had previously only offered local support for its own Aria AI, a competitor to Microsoft Copilot and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The local LLMs are being offered for testing as a complimentary addition to Opera’s online Aria service. Continue reading Opera Browser Is Experimenting with Local Support for LLMs

There are now more than 600,000 users signed up for OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise, up from 150,000 in January of this year. A surge, by any standards, it has sent OpenAI doubling down on the B2B approach as a way to turn artificial intelligence into a profitable business — something it is under some pressure to do in order to satisfy its obligations to investors. The company is also amping up its Custom Model training program, aimed at helping enterprise clients develop individually tailored generative AI technology for specific use cases and applications. Continue reading OpenAI Hopes ChatGPT Enterprise Will Help Drive B2B Profit

OpenAI has updated the editor for DALL-E, the artificial intelligence image generator that is part of the ChatGPT premium tiers. The update, based on the DALL-E 3 model, makes it easier for users to adjust their generated images. Shortly after DALL-E 3’s September debut, OpenAI integrated it into ChatGPT, enabling paid subscribers to generate images from text or image prompts. The new DALL-E editor interface lets users edit images “by selecting an area of the image to edit and describing your changes in chat” without using the selection tool. Desired changes can also be prompted “in the conversation panel,” according to OpenAI. Continue reading OpenAI Integrates New Image Editor for DALL-E into ChatGPT

Apple researchers have gone public with new multimodal methods for training large language models using both text and images. The results are said to enable AI systems that are more powerful and flexible, which could have significant ramifications for future Apple products. These new models, which Apple calls MM1, support up to 30 billion parameters. The researchers identify multimodal large language models (MLLMs) as “the next frontier in foundation models,” which exceed the performance of LLMs and “excel at tasks like image captioning, visual question answering and natural language inference.” Continue reading Apple Unveils Progress in Multimodal Large Language Models

Elon Musk’s xAI has released its Grok chatbot and open-sourced part of the underlying Grok-1 model architecture for any developer or entrepreneur to use for purposes including commercial applications. Musk unveiled Grok in November and announced that it would be publicly released this month. The chatbot itself is available to X social premium members, who can ask the cheeky AI questions and get answers with a snarky attitude inspired by “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” sci-fi novel. The training for Grok’s foundation LLM is said to include X social posts. Continue reading Grok-1 Architecture Open-Sourced for General Release by xAI

Soul Machines debuted a synthetic Marilyn Monroe last week at SXSW. The New Zealand-based company teamed on the Digital Marilyn project with Authentic Brands Group, a New York management firm that represents a host of fashion labels as well as personalities such as Elvis Presley, David Beckham and Muhammad Ali. The result is a sophisticated chatbot that Soul Machines describes as an “interactive experience.” Drawing on biological AI, Soul Machines is packaging a “personalized engagement opportunity” for fans and brands, which could lead to new approaches in advertising and promotions. Continue reading Soul Machines Aims for Photorealistic Marilyn Monroe Chatbot