Stability AI is launching Stable Audio, a music generation AI tool that uses latent diffusion to deliver what the company says is high-quality 44.1 kHz music for commercial use. Stable Audio uses a web-based interface to generate music from text prompts and duration. Because its latent diffusion model architecture has been conditioned on text metadata as well as audio file duration and start time, it defeats a problem common to diffusion for generative audio — producing cohesive musical segments as opposed to arbitrary sections of a song that start or end in the middle of a phrase. Continue reading Stability AI Develops ‘Stable Audio’ Generative Text-to-Music

ETC@USC is hosting its 9th vETC virtual conference at this year’s IBC in Amsterdam, September 15-18. The event — which highlights significant presentations of emerging technologies and their impact on the M&E industry — will explore how generative AI, machine learning, and other compelling new tools help simplify building 3D worlds and tackle today’s computer vision challenges. The sessions will be recorded and posted on ETC’s YouTube channel. For those attending IBC who may be interested in attending the sessions (located in Hall 7 at Booth C28), visit the program guide, which includes a full schedule and speaker bios. Continue reading vETC Coming to IBC 2023: The Path of Sustainable Innovation

U.S. consumers are consolidating their devices, eliminating outdated ones to make room for new ones that better serve their needs, according to the fourth annual Deloitte Connected Consumer survey. The study found that while 48 percent of consumers purchased a minimum of one new connected device this year, the average number of devices per household fell to 21 in 2023 from 25 in 2021, “when many loaded up on technology during the COVID-19 pandemic.” Although many consumers may be attempting to streamline their digital lives, they remain very interested in virtual experiences and tech innovation. Continue reading Deloitte: Consumer Views of Connected Devices Are Changing

Microsoft says it will assume legal responsibility for commercial customers who get sued for copyright infringement as a result of the company’s AI Copilot product services. A new initiative called the Copilot Copyright Commitment is designed to provide peace of mind to Microsoft business users as more copyright holders challenge the handling of protected works by the companies building AI models. “If a third party sues a commercial customer for copyright infringement for using Microsoft’s Copilots or the output they generate, we will defend the customer” and pay any resulting fees, including settlements, Microsoft says. Continue reading Microsoft Copilot AI Customers Shielded from Legal Exposure

Financial software giant Intuit is adding a customer-facing AI assistant to work with individuals and small businesses. Intuit Assist is being integrated across Intuit products starting with TurboTax and expanding to QuickBooks, Credit Karma and Mailchimp. Assist will be embedded across Intuit’s products via a common user interface, allowing customers to get personalized recommendations via contextual datasets. The generative AI assistant was built using Intuit’s Generative AI Operating System, a proprietary corporate model dubbed GenOS, launched in June. Intuit is working with OpenAI to accelerate GenAI app development on GenOS. Continue reading Intuit’s GenOS Spawns Its First Customer AI Product: ‘Assist’

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order for state agencies to study artificial intelligence and its impact on society and the economy. “We’re only scratching the surface of understanding what GenAI is capable of,” Newsom suggested. Recognizing “both the potential benefits and risks these tools enable,” he said his administration is “neither frozen by the fears nor hypnotized by the upside.” The move was couched as a “measured approach” that will help California “focus on shaping the future of ethical, transparent, and trustworthy AI, while remaining the world’s AI leader.” Continue reading Governor Newsom Orders Study of GenAI Benefits and Risks

Walmart is putting generative AI in the hands of roughly 50,000 non-store U.S. employees who will have access to My Assistant, an LLM trained on information. From speeding the drafting process to serving as a creative partner and summarizing documents, “My Assistant has the potential to change how our associates work and solve problems,” Walmart said, emphasizing the launch goes beyond productivity gains. “We believe the key to unlocking transformation lies in the creativity and innovation of our associates. Ideally, this technology will free them from monotonous, repetitive tasks, allowing more time and focus for improving the customer/member experience.”  Continue reading Walmart Is ‘Empowering’ 50,000 U.S. Associates with GenAI

AI21 Labs, a pioneer in large language model artificial intelligence, has closed a $155 million Series-C funding that brings the Tel Aviv-based firm’s total raise to $283 million for a valuation of $1.4 billion. Investors include Google, Nvidia, Samsung Next, Walden Catalyst, Pitango, SCB 10X, b2venture, and AI21 co-founder Amnon Shashua. The company is best known for its flagship AI21 Studio product, a developer platform that lets customers pay as they go to build custom text-based business apps using AI21’s proprietary models, notably Jurassic-2. The firm’s portfolio also includes the multilingual reading and writing assistant Wordtune. Continue reading Major Tech Firms Help Boost Valuation of AI21 to $1.4 Billion

Seattle-area startup Irreverent Labs has shifted its focus from blockchain-based video games and NFTs to artificial intelligence. Specifically, it wants to build foundation models for text-to-video generation and related content creation tools. Text-to-video is being explored by several companies but is still in development. Samsung Next was intrigued enough with the proposition to invest an undisclosed sum in Irreverent. While there are several apps that output cartoonish results, ambitious efforts are limited. Animations that aim for photorealism, such as Meta’s Make-a-Video and Runway’s Gen-2, can output only four or five seconds of video at a time. Continue reading Samsung Next Invests in Irreverent Labs’ Text-to-Video Tech

Google DeepMind and Google Cloud have teamed to launch what they claim is an indelible AI watermark tool, which if it works would mark an industry first. Called SynthID, the technique for identifying AI-generated images is being launched in beta. The technology embeds its digital watermark “directly into the pixels of an image, making it imperceptible to the human eye, but detectable for identification,” according to DeepMind. SynthID is being released to a limited number of Google’s Vertex AI customers using Imagen, a Google AI language model that generates photorealistic images. Continue reading Google Introduces an AI Watermark That Cannot Be Removed

Hugging Face has collected $235 million in an investment round that includes contributions from Amazon, IBM, Google, Nvidia, Salesforce, AMD, Intel and Qualcomm. The New York-based startup creates and distributes open-source tools for artificial intelligence development, carving an AI-centric niche similar to the more general programming approach taken by the Microsoft-owned GitHub. The incoming cash infusion — earmarked for talent recruitment — gives Hugging Face a lofty $4.5 billion valuation that experts say indicates momentum for open source in what has to date been a highly competitive AI sector. Continue reading Big Tech Firms Propel Hugging Face to $4.5 Billion Valuation

Amazon is using artificial intelligence to change the way viewers experience “Thursday Night Football” on Amazon Prime Video this season. Now in the second year of its 10-year NFL deal, Amazon joins Disney’s ESPN in using AI to change how people experience televised sports by parsing a variety of analytics and using machine learning to interpret 2D video into 3D for a variety of viewpoints on any play. Amazon is auto-generating highlights feeds for each game, so late arrivals can catch up. September 14 marks the debut of the new AI Prime features and the games in 1080p HDR. Continue reading Amazon Integrating AI to Modernize NFL Viewing Experience

Nvidia announced Q2 revenue of $13.51 billion, a 101 percent year-over-year increase that sets a new company record. The data center division — which accounts for the majority of AI chip sales — also established a new benchmark: $10.32 billion in Q2, a 171 percent leap over the prior fiscal Q2. Nvidia projects that revenue for the current quarter will hit $16 billion — about $3.5 billion above analysts’ expectations. Nvidia chips power OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT and other generative AI and cloud computing apps from companies including Amazon, Google, Meta Platforms, Microsoft and VMWare. Continue reading Demand for AI Chips Drives Nvidia to Revenue Record in Q2

VMware and Nvidia have joined forces on “VMware Private AI Foundation with Nvidia,” a fully-integrated solution designed to bring generative AI training and deployment to enterprise clients running on VMware’s hybrid cloud infrastructure. The full-stack product will provide software, compute power and everything needed to fine-tune large language models using proprietary data. “Together with Nvidia, we’ll empower enterprises to run their generative AI workloads adjacent to their data with confidence while addressing their corporate data privacy, security and control concerns,” said VMware CEO Raghu Raghuram. Continue reading VMware and Nvidia Are Bringing Generative AI to Enterprises

Salesforce suggests “the retail industry is again on the precipice of major disruption” based on consumer adoption of artificial intelligence, which is being used to change shopping habits and inform purchases through things like personalization, browsing suggestions and recommendations based on past habits and visualizations. Other popular use cases include AI-generated marketing assets and customer service agents. Based on a study conducted in May and June of this year involving 2,400 shoppers and 1,125 retail decision makers, Salesforce notes that one in six shoppers, or 17 percent, have already used generative AI for “purchase inspiration.” Continue reading Salesforce: 17 Percent of Shoppers Have Used Generative AI