Airtable, a 10-year-old firm focused on customized apps, is launching Cobuilder, which uses AI to turn a concept into a customizable application “in seconds,” without the need for human coding. The debut adds to a rapidly expanding field of no-code platforms that help non-technical types develop software suitable for enterprise use. “Within the next five years, teams will build the vast majority of applications in-house, customizing them to transform their most critical workflows,” predicts Airtable co-founder and CEO Howie Liu. “To get there, knowledge workers who are closest to the work need to be empowered to build.” Continue reading Airtable Enters No-Code Enterprise App Space with Cobuilder

Meta Platforms is bringing its Meta AI assistant to Quest 3 headsets in the U.S. and Canada. As part of the company’s ongoing collaboration with Microsoft, Quest 3’s Horizon OS will also get access to real-time information courtesy of Bing search. The update will also bring Meta AI with Vision — already integrated with the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses — to Horizon OS, initially just in passthrough mode. “These changes will begin rolling out in the U.S. and Canada in experimental mode next month — and we’ll continue to improve the experience over time,” Meta explains. Continue reading Meta Brings AI Assistant, AI Vision to Some Quest Headsets

The live event business is making further inroads with social apps, as Shazam pacts with Ticketmaster and TikTok integrates Eventbrite. Ticketmaster says artists can now link live events in Apple’s Shazam app, where they’ll appear when a user Shazams a track. The feature will work in the more than 30 countries where Ticketmaster operates. The Live Nation-owned company also has deals with Snap and TikTok, whose new alliance with Eventbrite allows event producers and TikTok users to embed Eventbrite links in-stream. Now the TikTok community can discover events and purchase tickets “without ever leaving the app.” Continue reading Ticketmaster and Eventbrite Harness the Power of Social Apps

The Entertainment Technology Center@USC has released the fourth and final installment of its case study, “Fathead: Virtual Production & Beyond.” Chapter 4 of the four-part white paper is titled “Key Contributors: Process Pipelines,” which summarizes key findings of the production and recommended best practices moving forward. “Fathead” — directed by c. Craig Patterson and produced by Erik Weaver, ETC’s director of adaptive production — was shot at Amazon Stage 15 in Culver City as an experiment in virtual production, in-camera VFX and collaborative, cloud-based workflows. Continue reading ETC Releases Final Section of Virtual Production White Paper

YouTube has released an eraser tool update that makes it easy to remove copyrighted music from videos without disturbing the remaining audio, like dialogue and sound effects. The Erase Song update uses an AI algorithm to detect and remove the offending material, making it more accurate than what had previously been available, as well as easier. Creators whose material has Content ID claims can now excise the objectionable material without having to manually edit and upload a new video, thereby avoiding potential restrictions on where the video is viewable or whether it can be monetized. Continue reading YouTube AI Song Eraser Easily Removes Copyright Material

Cloudflare has a new tool that can block AI from scraping a website’s content for model training. The no-code feature is available even to customers on the free tier. “Declare your ‘AIndependence’” by blocking AI bots, scrapers and crawlers with a single click, the San Francisco-based company urged last week, simultaneously releasing a chart of frequent crawlers by “request volume” on websites using Cloudflare. The ByteDance-owned Bytespider was number one, presumably gathering training data for its large language models “including those that support its ChatGPT rival, Doubao,” Cloudflare says. Amazonbot, ClaudeBot and GPTBot rounded out the top four. Continue reading Cloudflare Blocking Web Bots from Scraping AI Training Data

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that the company will test a feature to create AI characters through the AI Studio on Instagram that can engage with fans and respond to messages. “Rolling out an early test in the U.S. of our AI Studio so you might start seeing AIs from your favorite creators and interest-based AIs in the coming weeks on Instagram,” he wrote. “These will primarily show up in messaging for now, and will be clearly labeled as AI.” Zuckerberg noted the beta test will help the company improve AI characters and will be made “available to more people soon.” Meta launched AI Studio last year to help businesses build custom chatbots. Continue reading Meta Testing AI Chatbots for Instagram Created by Its Users

Apple has released a public demo of the 4M AI model it developed in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). The technology debuts seven months after the model was first open-sourced, allowing informed observers the opportunity to interact with it and assess its capabilities. Apple says 4M was built by applying masked modeling to a single unified Transformer encoder-decoder “across a wide range of input/output modalities — including text, images, geometric and semantic modalities, as well as neural network feature maps.” Continue reading Apple Launches Public Demo of Its Multimodal 4M AI Model

The world’s first AI-powered movie camera has surfaced. Still in development, it aims to enable filmmakers to turn footage into AI imagery in real time while shooting. Called the CMR-M1, for camera model 1, it is the product of creative tech agency SpecialGuestX and media firm 1stAveMachine, with the goal of providing creatives with a familiar interface for AI imagemaking. It was inspired by the Cine-Kodak device, the first portable 16mm camera. “We designed a camera that serves as a physical interface to AI models,” said Miguel Espada, co-founder and executive creative technologist at SpecialGuestX, a company that does not think directors will use AI sitting at a keyboard. Continue reading New Prototype Is the World’s First AI-Powered Movie Camera

China’s Sneaki Design has a new smartphone camera technology called SwitchLens that makes it possible to use professional-quality interchangeable lenses with existing Android and iOS phones. It does this via a phone-mounting external camera unit that has its own one-inch CMOS sensor and coupling device for lenses built to the Micro Four Thirds (M43) open standard. The pro-sized sensor captures still images as 21MP in either the RAW or JPEG formats, and 60p MOV video at up to 4K. Existing M43 compatible lenses from manufacturers including Panasonic and Olympus work with SwitchLens, according to Sneaki Design. Continue reading SwitchLens Adds 1-Inch Sensor, M43 Lenses to Smartphones

A group that includes the world’s three largest music labels — Sony, Universal and Warner — are backing federal lawsuits brought by the Recording Industry Association of America against AI companies Suno and Udio. Claiming “mass infringement,” the suits allege the startups scraped libraries of copyrighted songs to train models that power generative audio products allowing consumers to create music using text prompts. Suno is based in Massachusetts while Udio and its parent Uncharted are headquartered in New York, with the actions filed earlier this week in their respective states. Continue reading Recording Industry Sues AI Startups Citing Mass Infringement

Figma is rolling out its third redesigned user interface, UI3, aimed at making the company even more competitive with Adobe. New are native AI features that accelerate workflows, letting teams build high-quality software. Available in limited beta, Figma AI adds the ability to generate design drafts with a single prompt, enabling rapid experimentation and prototyping. The move advances Figma’s goal of moving beyond design tool to a full-blown product development platform, while making the service intuitive and friendly enough for novices while maintaining the full features demanded by Sigma’s professional users. Continue reading Figma Redesigns Its User Interface and Adds New AI Features

To address Gen Z’s ongoing interest in social video content, Pinterest announced it is updating its app so that users will have the ability to create video versions of the more than 10 billion curated boards on Pinterest. The videos can then be shared on popular social platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. Pinterest users have been using manual methods such as screenshots and green screen effects to share their boards on other apps. According to the company — which refers to this as the “mecore” trend — searches for boards labeled “mecore” jumped 255 percent since last year. The updated approach to board sharing is designed to leverage this growing trend. Continue reading Pinterest Introduces the Ability to Convert Boards into Videos

OpenAI has acquired Rockset, a database firm that provides real-time analytics, indexing and search capabilities. Rockset will help OpenAI enable its customers to better leverage their own data as they build and utilize intelligent applications. Rockset technology will be integrated into the retrieval infrastructure across OpenAI products, with members of Rockset’s San Mateo, California-based team joining the staff of OpenAI, which is headquartered in San Francisco. This is the second major purchase for OpenAI, following last year’s acquisition of New York-based AI design studio Global Illumination. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Continue reading OpenAI to Expand Data Indexing, Analysis with Rockset Tech

Snap Inc. teased a new on-device AI model capable of real-time filter creation in-app using Snapchat. At last week’s Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, California, Snap co-founder and CTO Bobby Murphy explained that the model, which runs on smartphones, can re-render frames on the fly guided by text prompts. Snap’s unnamed prototype model “can instantly bring your imagination to life in AR,” Snap says, explaining “this early prototype makes it possible to type in an idea for a transformation and generate vivid AR experiences in real time.” Continue reading Snapchat Previews Instant AR Filters, GenAI Developer Tools