Threads, the Twitter competitor launched in July by Meta Platforms to record-breaking numbers, has added features that make it easier for users to separate their Threads feeds from Instagram and Facebook. Users can now delete their Threads accounts separate from Instagram, something that previously confounded users. Because those signing up for Threads were required to do so either from their existing or a new Instagram account, the two were entwined. Instagram/Threads CEO Adam Mosseri also announced that propagation of Threads posts to Instagram and Facebook can now be turned off, to keep discussions separate. Continue reading Threads Lets Users Delete Accounts Separate from Instagram

Since Snap released its Lens Studio tool in 2017, creators have become “the fuel of Snap AR,” the company says by way of announcing Lens Studio 5.0 Beta, representing a major overhaul of the editor. The development tool now includes a ChatGPT API, improved version control, and more support for teams. The company also launched a Lens Performance Toolkit to help optimize reach and engagement. Performance optimization has resulted in load times that are 18x faster, Snap says, noting “a project that used to take 25 seconds to open now only takes seconds — resetting the bar for productivity.” Continue reading Snap Adds ChatGPT and Other New Tools to AR Lens Editor

Now anyone can make their own GPT chatbot, for fun or productivity — no coding skills necessary — and soon will be able to list it on a marketplace called the GPT Store. This was among the news announcements to come out of OpenAI’s first developer conference — OpenAI DevDay in San Francisco — where a new, lower-priced model called GPT-4 Turbo with 128K context, was unveiled, along with a new Assistants API, GPT-4 Turbo with Vision and the DALL-E 3 API. Now in preview, GPT-4 Turbo “is more capable and has knowledge of world events up to April 2023,” according to OpenAI. Continue reading OpenAI Intros GPT-4 Turbo, Creator Chatbots at Dev Confab

Microsoft’s Xbox wants to help game developers harness the power of generative AI. The company has entered into a multi-year partnership with Inworld AI to build automation tools for creating game dialogue and narrative tools at scale. Inworld has expertise in working with generative AI models for character development while Microsoft will contribute cloud solutions including Azure OpenAI Service and the technical insights of Microsoft Research on the future of play. The Xbox division will oversee the initiative as part of its ongoing effort to bring responsible creator tools to its developers. Continue reading Microsoft’s Xbox Partners with Inworld AI on Game Dev Tools

Stability AI is rolling out next-generation enterprise tools for its Stable Diffusion text-to-image generator. Leading the pack is Stable 3D, geared toward game developers and  graphic designers, with results that integrate with popular 3D platforms including Blender, Maya, Unreal Engine and Unity, according to Stability. Now in private preview, Stable 3D enables non-experts to generate “thousands of 3D objects per day” by selecting an image or illustration or writing a text prompt. Another preview app, Stable FineTuning, provides the ability to quickly fine-tune pictures, objects and styles. A third tool, Sky Replacer, is available now. Continue reading Stability AI Adds Apps to Draft 3D Models, Fine-Tune Objects

Social question and answer platform Quora has inserted itself on the leading edge of companies helping creators monetize AI chatbots. Quora’s AI chatbot platform Poe will pay those who create prompt bots on Poe as well as developers of server bots that integrate with the Poe API. “Since this is the beginning of a new market, there are lots of opportunities to provide a valuable service for the world and make money at the same time,” said Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, envisioning a thriving bot economy across categories from tutoring and therapy to storytelling and roleplay. Continue reading Quora Plans to Foster Chatbot Creator Economy with Poe AI

Creative image platform Shutterstock has added AI-powered editing features that provide “the potential for infinite options to refine and perfect images” in the company’s library of more than 700 million stock selections. A go-to source for brand marketers and digital media companies, Shutterstock is offering six signature AI capabilities as well as secondary features such as a virtual AI design assistant and advanced filters under the umbrella Creative AI. What’s more, Shutterstock says it will compensate its licensed artists when their images are edited with AI. Continue reading Shutterstock Offers AI Image Editor for Massive Stock Library

The University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) and Tencent YouTu Lab have released a research paper on a new framework called Woodpecker, designed to correct hallucinations in multimodal large language AI models. “Hallucination is a big shadow hanging over the rapidly evolving MLLMs,” writes the group, describing the phenomenon as when MLLMs “output descriptions that are inconsistent with the input image.” Solutions to date focus mainly on “instruction-tuning,” a form of retraining that is data and computation intensive. Woodpecker takes a training-free approach that purports to correct hallucinations from the basis of the generated text. Continue reading Woodpecker: Chinese Researchers Combat AI Hallucinations

OpenAI began previewing vision capabilities for GPT-4 in March, and the company is now starting to roll out the image input and output to users of its popular ChatGPT. The multimodal expansion also includes audio functionality, with OpenAI proclaiming late last month that “ChatGPT can now see, hear and speak.” The upgrade vaults GPT-4 into the multimodal category with what OpenAI is apparently calling GPT-4V (for “Vision,” though equally applicable to “Voice”). “We’re rolling out voice and images in ChatGPT to Plus and Enterprise users,” OpenAI announced. Continue reading ChatGPT Goes Multimodal: OpenAI Adds Vision, Voice Ability

Startup Reka AI is releasing in preview its first artificial intelligence assistant, Yasa-1. The multimodal AI is described as “a language assistant with visual and auditory sensors.” The year-old company says it “trained Yasa-1 from scratch,” including pretraining foundation models “from ground zero,” then aligning them and optimizing to its training and server infrastructures. “Yasa-1 is not just a text assistant, it also understands images, short videos and audio (yes, sounds too),” said Reka AI co-founder and Chief Scientist Yi Tay. Yasa-1 is available via Reka’s APIs and as docker containers for on-site or virtual private cloud deployment. Continue reading Yasa-1: Startup Reka Launches New AI Multimodal Assistant

Yahoo is spinning out its Vespa platform, which leverages AI and data online at scale. The move is being positioned as an effort to make Vespa more widely available to third parties. After supporting Yahoo’s needs for 16 years, the unit in 2021 began serving external customers including Spotify, Wix and OkCupid for needs such as “searching millions of documents within a global organization, serving better data-driven online ads, or allowing AI-based language apps the ability to scale.” Yahoo says it will continue to invest in Vespa and remain its largest customer even after the split. Continue reading Yahoo Spins Out Big Data Unit Vespa AI as Independent Firm

Fox Corporation’s Tubi TV video streaming service is rolling out a proprietary movie recommendation app called “Rabbit AI” in a beta test for iOS customers in the U.S., with other platforms to follow. Powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4, currently available only to enterprise and other paying customers, Rabbit AI provides “a new way to navigate” Tubi’s library of more than 200,000 movies and TV episodes, “providing hyper-personalized recommendations based on the contextual meaning of the terms,” the company says. A Rabbit AI plugin for ChatGPT is also now available to OpenAI subscribers, Tubi says. Continue reading Tubi Chooses ChatGPT to Power Content Recommendations

OpenAI is experimenting with new voice and image capabilities in ChatGPT. According to the company, users can now “speak with ChatGPT and have it talk back,” thanks to an intuitive new interface that, in addition to facilitating voice conversations, will allow users to show ChatGPT an image to discuss. “Snap a picture of a landmark while traveling and have a live conversation about what’s interesting about it,” OpenAI explains, alternatively suggesting you “snap pictures of your fridge and pantry to figure out what’s for dinner” or have it help with homework based on pictures of a math problem. Continue reading OpenAI’s ChatGPT Upgraded with ‘Talk’ Tech, Image Search

Spotify is using AI to drive podcast language translation in what sounds like the podcaster’s own voice, which has obvious implications for film and television dubbing. Working with podcast notables including Dax Shepard, Monica Padman and Bill Simmons, Spotify used AI to mimic their voices in Spanish, French and German for several episodes. The proprietary Spotify technology uses OpenAI’s new text-to-speech voice-generation technology as well as its open-source Whisper speech recognition system, which transcribes spoken words into text. The result, Spotify says, is “more authentic” and “more personal and natural” than traditional dubbing. Continue reading Spotify Uses AI to Copy Host Voices for Podcast Translations

Amazon has entered into a strategic investment in San Francisco-based Anthropic, founded by former members of OpenAI. The AI startup will train and deploy future models using AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips to train and deploy future foundation models with AWS as its primary cloud provider. In turn, Amazon says it will invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic, as it strives to compete with other technology firms in the race to develop generative AI, seeding growth for what is shaping up to be an entirely new economic and social landscape. Continue reading Amazon Plans to Invest Up to $4 Billion in AI Startup Anthropic