More U.S. youth are relying on TikTok for news, according to a study by the Pew Research Center, which says young adults increasingly believe the short-form social video platform exposes them to information they don’t see elsewhere, even though they don’t primarily associate it with news. Among those who use TikTok, only 15 percent cite “news” as a major incentive for using the app. The study, which examines American news consumption on social media platforms, found X to be the most popular news source across all demographics, beating Meta’s Facebook and Instagram as well as ByteDance’s TikTok. Continue reading Pew Says Youth Turn to TikTok for News, but X Tops Overall

California tech companies are bristling at a state bill that would force them to enact strict safety protocols, including installing “kill switches” to turn-off AI models that present a public risk. Silicon Valley has emerged as a global AI leader, and the proposed law would impact not only OpenAI, but Anthropic, Cohere, Google and Meta Platforms. The bill, SB 1047, focuses on what its lead sponsor, State Senator Scott Wiener, calls “common sense safety standards” for frontier models. Should the bill become law, it could affect even firms like Amazon that provide AI cloud services to California customers even though they are not based in the state. Continue reading Tech Firms Push Back Against California AI Safety Regulation

The New York legislature passed a bill prohibiting social media companies from providing children with so-called “addictive feeds” without parental consent. The Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act specifies addictive feeds as those that prioritize exposure to content (using a recommendation engine, or other means) based on information collected about the user or device. “Non-addictive feeds,” in which the algorithm serves content in chronological order, are still permitted under the bill, which New York Governor Kathy Hochul has vowed to sign into law. Continue reading New York Lawmakers Aim to Make Social Feeds Safe for Kids

Instagram is testing unskippable ads that will appear in users’ feeds. Screenshots of the new ad unit, which users can’t scroll through, began circulating on sites like Reddit and X, prompting general outrage, followed by confirmation that the test is underway. The ads include a countdown timer like those used in some streaming shows that prevent the ability to fast forward and also lock users onto the message without the ability to browse elsewhere on the site until the ad plays through. The approach is similar to the YouTube model for ads that appear before and midway through videos. Continue reading Instagram Users Angered by Test of ‘Unskippable’ Video Ads

Intel launched new Xeon 6 processors built for high-density AI work in data centers. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger emphasized performance and power efficiency as he introduced the next-gen Xeon, and said that the Gaudi 3 chips for AI model training and deployment that were released two months ago are less expensive than comparable silicon from Intel rivals. “Intel is one of the only companies in the world innovating across the full spectrum of the AI market opportunity — from semiconductor manufacturing to PC, network, edge and data center systems,” Gelsinger said, embracing open standards during his keynote at Computex. Continue reading Intel’s Xeon 6 Coming to Data Centers and Lunar Lake to PCs

Magic Leap and Google have entered into a strategic partnership to develop augmented reality solutions, combining Magic Leap’s optics expertise with Google’s technology platforms. “By combining efforts, we can foster the future of the XR ecosystem with unique and innovative product offerings.” Google VP and General Manager of AR/XR Shahram Izadi said of the union, seen by some as effort by Google to jumpstart an XR business that could someday be competitive with offerings from Meta, Microsoft and now Apple. The company was an early mover in the space, with Google Cardboard and Google Glass, but dropped out. Continue reading Google Teams with Magic Leap in Another Run at AR Glasses

Big Tech players have joined forces to develop a new industry standard to advance high-speed and low latency communication among data centers by coordinating component development. AMD, Broadcom, Cisco, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Intel, Meta Platforms and Microsoft are backing the Ultra Accelerator Link (UALink) promoter group. The group plans to define and establish an open industry standard that will enable AI accelerators to communicate more effectively. The UALink aims to create a pathway for system OEMs, IT professionals and system integrators to connect and scale their AI-connected data centers. Continue reading Big Tech Forms a Group to Develop AI Connectivity Standard

French startup Mistral AI has released its first large language model for coding. Codestral gives developers looking for a code-native AI tool an option to Meta’s Code Llama, Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot and Amazon Q. Fluent in 80 programming languages — including Python, C++ and JavaScript — Codestral can complete code, write tests, and augment partial code “using a fill-in-the-middle mechanism,” while reducing “the risk of errors and bugs,” according to the company. The new LLM is described as open, but its license prohibits commercial use of both Codestral and its outputs. Continue reading Mistral Development Tool Knows 80 Programming Languages

Web-based editing application Canva unveiled a significant makeover this week in Los Angeles at the Canva Create event. Touting “a whole new Canva,” the company shared changes that impact the entire platform, from pricing to tools, templates and user interface. The new editor, designed to make it easier to jump between projects, is “available to the first one million users who discover the secret portal hidden in their Canva homepage, before becoming available to the entire Canva community from August.” The 11-year-old company, which claims 183 million free and paid monthly users, also unveiled an enterprise solution. Continue reading Graphics Productivity Tool Canva Unveils Enterprise Redesign

OpenAI has begun training a new flagship artificial intelligence model to succeed GPT-4, the technology currently associated with ChatGPT. The new model — which some are already calling GPT-5, although OpenAI hasn’t yet shared its name — is expected to take the company’s compute to the next level as it works toward artificial general intelligence (AGI), intelligence equal to or surpassing human cognitive abilities. The company also announced it has formed a new Safety and Security Committee two weeks after dissolving the old one upon the departure of OpenAI co-founder and Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever. Continue reading OpenAI Is Working on New Frontier Model to Succeed GPT-4

Elon Musk’s xAI has secured $6 billion in Series B funding. While the company says the funds will be “used to take xAI’s first products to market, build advanced infrastructure, and accelerate the research and development,” some outlets are reporting a significant portion is earmarked to build an AI supercomputer to power the next generation of its foundation model Grok. The company publicly released the open-source Grok-1 as a chatbot on X social in November, and recently debuted Grok-1.5 and 1.5V iterations with long-context capability and image understanding. Continue reading Musk Said to Envision Supercomputer as xAI Raises $6 Billion

Meta Platforms has unveiled its first natively multimodal model, Chameleon, which observers say can make it competitive with frontier model firms. Although Chameleon is not yet released, Meta says internal research indicates it outperforms the company’s own Llama 2 in text-only tasks and “matches or exceeds the performance of much larger models” including Google’s Gemini Pro and OpenAI’s GPT-4V in a mixed-modal generation evaluation “where either the prompt or outputs contain mixed sequences of both images and text.” In addition, Meta calls Chameleon’s image generation “non-trivial,” noting that’s “all in a single model.” Continue reading Meta Advances Multimodal Model Architecture with Chameleon

Barely a month after Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses received a major upgrade, adding Meta AI with Vision in beta in the U.S. and Canada and adding the ability to share what you’re looking at on WhatsApp and Messenger video calls, the company is back with another update. Voice command access to Amazon Music and the wellness app Calm, as well as hands-free posting to Instagram are new features, rolling out “gradually.” Simply say, “Hey Meta, play Amazon Music,” or “Share my last photo to Instagram’” to get results without touching your phone. Continue reading Ray-Ban Meta Now Hands-Free with Amazon, Calm, Instagram

Leading AI firms spanning Europe, Asia, North America and the Middle East have signed a new voluntary commitment to AI safety. The 16 signatory companies — including Amazon, Google DeepMind, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, OpenAI, xAI and China’s Zhipu AI — will publish outlines indicating how they will measure the risks posed by their frontier models. “In the extreme, leading AI tech companies including from China and the UAE have committed to not develop or deploy AI models if the risks cannot be sufficiently mitigated,” according to UK Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan. Continue reading Global Technology Companies Sign Pledge to Foster AI Safety

Meta Platforms is testing its own TweetDeck-like app for Threads, the text-and-image focused social network it launched in early July 2023 to rival what was then Twitter (becoming X later that month). The new feature allows test users to pin up to 100 feeds on a homepage and display them on a single screen, making it simple to peruse posts from different follows, recommendation feeds or content propagated through specific topics or keywords. The experimental layout is currently being tested only for Threads on the web. Threads currently has more than 150 million users. Continue reading Threads Tests New Feature That Draws Comparisons to X Pro