After several months of testing, Anthropic is making its AI chatbot Claude available for general release in two configurations: the high-performace Claude and a lighter, cheaper, faster option called Claude Instant. Anthropic was launched in 2021 by a pair of former OpenAI employees, and its Claude chatbots are competitors to that firm’s ChatGPT. Accessible through a chat interface and API in Anthropic’s developer console, Claude is being marketed as the product of training designed to produce a more “helpful, honest, and harmless AI systems.” To that end, Anthropic says “Claude is much less likely to produce harmful outputs.” Continue reading Anthropic Takes Claude Chatbot Public After Months of Tests

Microsoft researchers have unveiled Kosmos-1, a new AI model the company says analyzes images for content, performs visual text recognition, solves visual puzzles and passes visual IQ tests. It also understands natural language instructions. The new model is what’s known as multimodal AI, which means it uses different instruction sets, from text to audio and video. Mixing media is a key step in building artificial general intelligence (AGI) that can perform tasks in a manner approximating human performance. Examples from a Kosmos-1 research paper show it can effectively analyze images, answering questions about them. Continue reading Microsoft Unveils AI Model That Comprehends Image Content

OpenAI is now allowing third-party developers integrate ChatGPT into their apps, a solution the company says will be a more cost-effective alternative. The language model can be used for more than chat, says OpenAI, which also has a new speech-to-text model called Whisper. The company is also touting gpt-3.5-turbo, calling it the “best model for many non-chat use cases.” With a major investment from Microsoft, and the eyes of the industry on it, OpenAI seems to be feeling some pressure to add earnings to the success it has as a thought leader. Continue reading OpenAI Targets Affordable AI with ChatGPT and Whisper APIs

Observers are weighing the potential effect of chatbots on the publishing industry, as works written by or with an assist from artificial intelligence come to market. Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing arm currently lists more than 200 e-books that credit OpenAI’s ChatGPT as author or co-author on topics ranging from stories for children to self-help, science fiction and poetry. Tutorials on how to use AI to create publishable work in a few hours have sprung up on YouTube, TikTok and Reddit. As with all things AI, this trend has prompted equal amounts of curiosity and concern. Continue reading From Self-Help to Kid Lit, Generative AI Triggers Book Boom

With language models like ChatGPT dominating recent tech news, Meta Platforms has unveiled a new artificial intelligence platform of its own called Toolformer that breaks new ground in that it can teach itself to use external apps and APIs. The result, Meta says, is that Toolformer combines the conversational aptitude and other things large language models are good at while shoring up those areas in which it typically does not excel — like math and fact-checking — by figuring out how to use external tools like  search engines, calculators and calendars. Continue reading Meta Toolformer Sidesteps AI Language Limits with API Calls

Alphabet’s AI offshoot DeepMind has created an AI tool called Dramatron that can help co-write scripts, generating things like plot points, character and location descriptions and dialogue. While a human will still need to manage the process by editing and rewriting Dramatron’s suggestions, the app is designed to make the screenwriting process faster and easier. To deploy Dramatron, users will need an OpenAI API key and, ideally, a Perspective API key to minimize the risk of “offensive text.” In addition to AI researchers, DeepMind tested the tool with 15 playwrights and screenwriters who used it to co-write scripts. Continue reading DeepMind Tool Provides AI-Powered Screenplay Assistance

OpenAI’s new AI chatbot, ChatGPT, is taking the world by storm. “Quite simply, the best artificial intelligence chatbot ever released to the general public,” is how The New York Times describes ChatGPT, which more than a million people signed up for when it opened for testing last week. Screenshots of ChatGPT conversations blew up Twitter. “Something big is happening,” tweeted one fan. “I just had a 20-minute conversation with ChatGPT about the history of physics … OMG,” offered another. The acronym stands for “generative pre-trained transformer,” a language model that leverages deep learning to respond to text-based input with human-like responses. Continue reading ChatGPT: OpenAI’s New Chatbot Draws Praise and Criticism

OpenAI has released a new open source AI speech recognition model called Whisper that can recognize and translate audio at levels it says compare in accuracy and robustness to human abilities. Case uses include transcription of speeches, interviews, podcasts and conversations. “Moreover, it enables transcription in multiple languages, as well as translation from those languages into English,” says OpenAI, which is open-sourcing models and inference code on GitHub “to serve as a foundation for building useful applications and for further research on robust speech processing.” Continue reading OpenAI Rolls Out Open-Source Speech Recognition System

Google revealed its work on a new AI-enabled Internet search tool dubbed MUM (Multitask Unified Model), which can “read” the nuances globally of human language. The company says that users will be able to find information more readily and be able to ask abstract questions. MUM is not yet publicly available but Google independently used it for a COVID-19 related project. Vice president of search Pandu Nayak and a colleague designed an “experience” that gave in-depth information on vaccines when users searched for them. Continue reading Google AI-Enabled MUM Aims to Reinvent, Empower Search

To fully examine the inner workings and potential impact of deep learning language model GPT-3 on media, ETC’s project on AI & Neuroscience in Media is hosting a virtual event on November 10 from 11:00 am to 12:15 pm. RSVP here to join moderator Yves Bergquist of ETC@USC and presenter Dr. Mark Riedl of Georgia Tech as they present, “Machines That Can Write: A Deep Look at GPT-3 and its Implications for the Industry.” The launch last June of OpenAI’s GPT-3, a language model that uses deep learning to generate human-like text, has raised many questions in the creative community and the world at large.  Continue reading Virtual Event: GPT-3 and Its Implications for the M&E Industry

Microsoft struck a deal with AI startup OpenAI to be the exclusive licensee of language comprehension model GPT-3. According to Microsoft EVP Kevin Scott, the deal is an “incredible opportunity to expand our Azure-powered AI platform in a way that democratizes AI technology.” Among potential uses are “aiding human creativity and ingenuity in areas like writing and composition, describing and summarizing large blocks of long-form data (including code), converting natural language to another language.” Continue reading Microsoft Inks Deal with OpenAI for Exclusive GPT-3 License

Google’s artificial intelligence researchers made an unexpected discovery with its new SpecAugment data augmentation model for automatic speech recognition. Rather than augmenting input audio waveforms, SpecAugment applies augmentation directly to the audio spectrogram. Researchers discovered, to their surprise, that models trained with SpecAugment out-performed all other speech recognition methods, even without a language model. Amazon also revealed research on improving Alexa’s speech recognition by 15 percent. Continue reading Google and Amazon Use AI to Improve Speech Recognition