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

Management consulting firm PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) has ordered 100,000 ChatGPT Enterprise licenses from OpenAI, becoming the startup’s biggest third-party customer for the product, which is rolling out to all employees in the U.S. and UK. In addition, OpenAI has named PwC its first resale partner, making it the middleman for selling the AI company’s enterprise products to other businesses. PwC says embedding ChatGPT in its practice will make the Big Four accounting and consulting giant “uniquely positioned to help clients leverage ChatGPT Enterprise for better and faster ways of working.” Continue reading Endorsing GenAI, PwC Is Largest User of ChatGPT Enterprise

Not to be outdone by Windows Copilot+ PCs, Google is also bringing AI to the Chromebook, which will be infused with Gemini’s generative smarts via companies including Acer, HP and Asus. “New Google AI and gaming features are available on Chromebook Plus,” says the Alphabet company, noting “you can now write like a pro with Help Me Write, supercharge your ideas with Gemini, edit photos in a snap with Magic Editor, and more — all on Chromebook Plus laptops starting at $350.” Google, which partially integrated Gemini with the Chrome browser, teased AI for ChromeOS last fall. Continue reading Acer, Asus, HP First to Offer Chromebook Plus with Google AI

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

Nvidia just wrapped a record quarter, with no sign of interest cooling for the GPUs that have become essential to powering the AI boom. Revenue for the company’s most recent quarter was a record $26 billion, up 262 percent year-over-year. Profit also hit a new high, up nearly sevenfold to $14.88 billion compared to the same period a year earlier. The performance drove the already buoyant stock price above $1,000 a share. Company founder and CEO Jensen Huang proclaimed, “the next industrial revolution has begun,” with Nvidia playing a pivotal role in transforming data centers into “AI factories.” Continue reading Nvidia Reports Record Revenue, Profits as AI Demand Surges

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

Microsoft is enlarging its family of generative Copilots, introducing new AI assistants in its collaborative Teams and SharePoint platforms. Team Copilot expands Copilot beyond the sphere of personal assistant, empowering it to work on behalf of a team with the goal of improving collaboration and project management. Team Copilot will have agents that provide the ability to orchestrate and automate business processes, as well as extensions and connectors designed to make it easy to tailor and extend Copilot to meet specific business needs. Copilot is also launching in preview for all Azure customers. Continue reading Microsoft Adds Copilot AI Assistants to Teams and SharePoint

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

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

Microsoft is implementing a series of upgrades to its AI stack, including Azure AI Studio and Copilot Studio, developer platforms for building apps that leverage generative AI. At its Build 2024 conference, the company also announced it is going into preview with its Azure virtual machines (VMs), the first platform to use the powerful Arm-based Cobalt 100 cloud processors developed by Microsoft, which shared that plan at its November Ignite conference. Other Build highlights include the general availability of OpenAI’s new GPT-4o flagship model across the Azure OpenAI Service and the new multimodal Phi-3-vision SLM. Continue reading Microsoft Upgrades Azure AI Stack, Previews Cobalt 100 VMs

Microsoft is debuting a new category of Windows PCs optimized for artificial intelligence. Called Copilot+ PCs, the tech giant is initially introducing it on Surface devices and through OEMs Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Samsung. Availability begins June 18, with pre-orders starting now at prices of $999 and up. Microsoft says the new architeccture powers “the fastest, most intelligent Windows PCs ever built,” with silicon capable of 40+ TOPS (trillion operations per second) as well as “all–day battery life and access to the most advanced AI models.” The company describes this new wave of PCs as “just the beginning.” Continue reading Microsoft Pivots Windows to AI OS, Launching Copilot+ PCs

Netflix is launching its own ad server, bringing control of the advertising experience of its 270 million subscribers in-house. The company will use its new ad tech to create personalized ads that can be highly targetable, Netflix President of Advertising Amy Reinhard said onstage at the upfronts, providing brands with new ways to buy and to slice and dice consumer data. The deployment puts Netflix in the mix with other industry heavyweights like Google, Amazon and Comcast, which also operate their own ad servers. The move comes 18 months after Netflix entered the advertising business in partnership with Microsoft. Continue reading Netflix Takes Advertising In-House with Launch of Ad Server

France has been pursuing Big Tech and Microsoft and Amazon are among the first to express interest. Microsoft has committed $4.3 billion to expand cloud and AI infrastructure there, sharing plans to bring as many as 25,000 advanced GPUs to France by the close of 2025. The software giant will also train one million people for AI and data jobs while supporting 2,500 AI startups over the next three years. Meanwhile, Amazon announced that it would invest up to $1.3 billion to expand its existing footprint of 35 logistics facilities in the country. The deals were announced Monday during the Choose France summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron. Continue reading Microsoft, Amazon Commit to Expanding Operations in France