Deepgram’s new Aura software turns text into generative audio with a “human-like voice.” The 9-year-old voice recognition company has raised nearly $86 million to date on the strength of its Voice AI platform. Aura is an extremely low-latency text-to-speech voice AI that can be used for voice AI agents, the company says. Paired with Deepgram’s Nova-2 speech-to-text API, developers can use it to “easily (and quickly) exchange real-time information between humans and LLMs to build responsive, high-throughput AI agents and conversational AI applications,” according to Deepgram. Continue reading Deepgram’s Speech Portfolio Now Includes Human-Like Aura

Authentic Brands Group, which owns the rights to Sports Illustrated, has selected the London-based Minute Media to continue publishing the storied magazine in print and digital editions in a deal that runs for 10 years, with an option to extend for up to 20 more years. The Minute partnership will “usher in the future of the SI brand,” announced Authentic, whose portfolio includes fashion and sports, as well as IP rights to celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, who it is leveraging into a chatbot. Minute owns sports and culture resources including athlete-driven The Players’ Tribune, the FanSided network of websites and newsletters, and sports highlights platform STN Video. Continue reading Minute Media Secures a 10-Year Future for Sports Illustrated

Apple researchers have gone public with new multimodal methods for training large language models using both text and images. The results are said to enable AI systems that are more powerful and flexible, which could have significant ramifications for future Apple products. These new models, which Apple calls MM1, support up to 30 billion parameters. The researchers identify multimodal large language models (MLLMs) as “the next frontier in foundation models,” which exceed the performance of LLMs and “excel at tasks like image captioning, visual question answering and natural language inference.” Continue reading Apple Unveils Progress in Multimodal Large Language Models

Elon Musk’s xAI has released its Grok chatbot and open-sourced part of the underlying Grok-1 model architecture for any developer or entrepreneur to use for purposes including commercial applications. Musk unveiled Grok in November and announced that it would be publicly released this month. The chatbot itself is available to X social premium members, who can ask the cheeky AI questions and get answers with a snarky attitude inspired by “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” sci-fi novel. The training for Grok’s foundation LLM is said to include X social posts. Continue reading Grok-1 Architecture Open-Sourced for General Release by xAI

The Federal Communications Commission has updated its definition of what constitutes high-speed broadband, increasing it fourfold to download speeds of 100 megabits per second and upload speeds of 20 megabits per second from the 2015 benchmarks of 25/3 Mbps. The change is based on speeds available from Internet service providers, consumer usage patterns and federal and state programs, the FCC says. In a report assessing whether advanced telecommunications capability is being deployed “in a reasonable and timely fashion” across the U.S., the FCC concludes it is not, and that gaps in deployment are not closing rapidly enough. Continue reading FCC Announces Updated Benchmark for Broadband Speeds

Ethereum, the second most popular cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, has completed a software upgrade that aims to make its network cheaper. Called Dencun, the update lowers the cost of so-called layer-2 networks — which include chains like Base, Polygon and Arbitrum — to about a cent for transactions that previously cost $1, while exchanges that used to cost a few cents are reduced to fractions of a cent. Accomplished through a new system of storing data, the upgrade is being welcomed as a harbinger of a development renaissance brimming with new applications and free services. Continue reading Ethereum Software Upgrade Could Reduce Transaction Fees

Artificial intelligence imaging service Midjourney has been embraced by storytellers who have also been clamoring for a feature that enables characters to regenerate consistently across new requests. Now Midjourney is delivering that functionality with the addition of the new “–cref” tag (short for Character Reference), available for those who are using Midjourney v6 on the Discord server. Users can achieve the effect by adding the tag to the end of text prompts, followed by a URL that contains the master image subsequent generations should match. Midjourney will then attempt to repeat the particulars of a character’s face, body and clothing characteristics. Continue reading Midjourney Creates a Feature to Advance Image Consistency

Soul Machines debuted a synthetic Marilyn Monroe last week at SXSW. The New Zealand-based company teamed on the Digital Marilyn project with Authentic Brands Group, a New York management firm that represents a host of fashion labels as well as personalities such as Elvis Presley, David Beckham and Muhammad Ali. The result is a sophisticated chatbot that Soul Machines describes as an “interactive experience.” Drawing on biological AI, Soul Machines is packaging a “personalized engagement opportunity” for fans and brands, which could lead to new approaches in advertising and promotions. Continue reading Soul Machines Aims for Photorealistic Marilyn Monroe Chatbot

Google has rolled out an open-source marketing mix model (MMM) called Meridian that aims to help in formulating cross-channel media strategies in the current environment of fragmented media consumption and privacy changes. As marketers contend with Google’s plan to sunset the use of third-party cookies by the end of this year, MMMs — classic tools of yesteryear — “are experiencing a renaissance,” says the search giant. MMMs are statistical analyses companies use to help measure the impact of cross-channel marketing sales. Google says it has “observed more customers turning to MMMs, especially performance and full-funnel marketers.” Continue reading Google Introduces Open-Source Marketing Measurement Tool

London-based AI video startup Haiper has emerged from stealth mode with $13.8 million in seed funding and a platform that generates up to two seconds of HD video from text prompts or images. Founded by alumni from Google DeepMind, TikTok and various academic research labs, Haiper is built around a bespoke foundation model that aims to serve the needs of the creative community while the company pursues a path to artificial general intelligence (AGI). Haiper is offering a free trial of what is currently a web-based user interface similar to offerings from Runway and Pika. Continue reading AI Video Startup Haiper Announces Funding and Plans for AGI

ZTE has launched what it calls the world’s first AI-powered, eyewear-free 5G 3D tablet, the Nubia Pad 3D II. The 12.1-inch LCD display supports 2,560 x 1,600 resolution and 144Hz refresh rate. Powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, the Nubia Pad 3D II is equipped with an AI eye-tracking engine that utilizes “high-speed visual sensors and eye-detection algorithms” to enhance response speed and enable accurate synchronization with the users’ eyes in real-time “for a more natural and realistic 3D display experience,” ZTE says. The device also converts 2D to 3D with Neovision 3D Anytime technology. Continue reading ZTE Unveils Glasses-Free Android Tablet, the Nubia Pad 3D II

Lightricks, the company behind apps including Facetune, Photoleap and Videoleap, has come up with a text-to-video tool called LTX Studio that it is being positioned as a turnkey AI tool for filmmakers and other creators. “From concept to creation,” the new app aims to enable “the transformation of a single idea into a cohesive, AI-generated video.” Currently waitlisted, Lightricks says it will make the web-based tool available to the public for free, at least initially, beginning in April, allowing users to “direct each scene down to specific camera angles with specialized AI.” Continue reading Lightricks LTX Studio Is a Text-to-Video Filmmaking Platform

Qualcomm raised the curtain on a variety of artificial intelligence, 5G, and Wi-Fi technologies at Mobile World Congress Barcelona, which runs through Thursday. The San Diego-based chip designer unveiled an AI Hub it says will help developers create voice-, text- and image-based applications using pre-optimized AI models. Qualcomm’s flagship AI chips — the mobile Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor and the PC-centric Snapdragon X Elite — were announced last year. With the first splash of products now heading to market the company is promising to push the boundaries of 5G and 6G. Continue reading MWC: Qualcomm Unveils AI Hub and Promotes 5G, 6G Tech

Walmart is acquiring Vizio in a deal valued at $2.3 billion. The retail giant is following a template established by Amazon by expanding into entertainment media and connected TV advertising. The majority of Vizio’s growth from the last five years has come from ads on its WatchFree+ platform, which offers more than 260 channels, Walmart said touting a deal point. Vizio’s primary business is manufacturing value-priced TV sets. It also makes soundbars. The deal will instantly vault Walmart into a mix of players including Amazon, Roku, Samsung Ads and Google’s YouTube. Continue reading Walmart Bolsters Advertising Business with Vizio Acquisition

Google has unveiled a new policy, the AI Cyber Defense Initiative, designed to harness the power of artificial intelligence to improve global cybersecurity defenses. The proposed policy aims to counteract rapidly evolving threats by using AI to improve threat detection, automate vulnerability management and enhance incident response effectiveness. The Alphabet company introduced its new plan at the Munich Security Conference, where it also announced it has a pool of $2 million to award businesses and academic institutions for research initiatives involving large language models, code verification and other AI uses for cyber offense and defense. Continue reading Google Targets Global Security with AI Cyber Defense Initiative