Graphic design company Canva announced it is acquiring fellow Australian startup Leonardo AI with plans to have Leonardo’s 120 employees, including executives, join the Canva AI team. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Sydney-based Leonardo has been gaining attention for its advanced generative AI platform that helps users create images and art based on the open-source Stable Diffusion model developed by Stability AI. The Leonardo team claims its offering is different than other AI art platforms since it provides users with more control. Users can experiment with text prompts and quick sketches as Leonardo.ai creates photorealistic images in real time. Continue reading Canva Aims to Boost Its GenAI Efforts with Leonardo Purchase

After 50 years of SIGGRAPH, the conference has come full circle, from high-tech for PhDs to AI for everyone. That was Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang’s message in back-to-back keynote sessions, including a Q&A with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Huang touted Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD), discussing developments aiming to speed adoption of the universal 3D data interchange framework for use in everything from robotics to the creation of “highly accurate virtual worlds for the next evolution of AI.” As Zuckerberg’s interlocutor, he prompted the Facebook founder to share a vision of AI’s personalization of social media. Continue reading Nvidia Debuts New Products to Accelerate Adoption of GenAI

Apple’s iOS 18 public beta 2 has arrived, with new wallpapers for CarPlay, a newly designed Hidden Apps folder in the Apps Library and the ability to use dark mode widgets in broad daylight, among other updates. Public beta 2 includes iPadOS 18, but does not include Apple Intelligence, which is expected this fall. However, a separate Apple Intelligence preview was introduced this week. In addition, a new Apple research paper leads some to believe its Apple Intelligence AI models were pre-trained in the cloud using Google Tensor Processing Units, leading to speculation that Big Tech be considering alternatives to Nvidia. But Apple has always been an AI outlier. Continue reading Apple Intelligence Preview and Updated iOS 18 Beta Released

Microsoft has begun the release of Bing generative search, making it available for “a small percentage of user queries.” The company says it will solicit user feedback and undertake further testing prior to a broader rollout. Google began dabbling in what it called the Search Generative Experience last summer, then upped the ante by adding a search-optimized version of its Gemini model this spring. The journey was not without controversy, something Microsoft will surely try to avoid. Microsoft says its new AI-driven search functionality “combines the foundation of Bing’s search results with the power of large and small language models (LLMs and SLMs).” Continue reading Microsoft Testing Bing Generative Search for User Feedback

The U.S. Commerce Department has issued a large package of material designed to help AI developers and those using the systems with an approach to identifying and mitigating risks stemming from generative AI and foundation models. Prepared by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the AI Safety Institute, the guidance includes the initial public draft of its guidelines on “Managing Misuse Risk for Dual-Use Foundation Models.” Dual-use refers to models that can be used for good or ill. The release also includes an open-source software test called Dioptra. Apple is the latest to join the government’s voluntary commitments to responsible AI innovation. Continue reading Apple Joins the Safe AI Initiative as NIST Amps Up Outreach

Stability AI has unveiled an experimental new model, Stable Video 4D, which generates photorealistic 3D video. Building on what it created with Stable Video Diffusion, released in November, this latest model can take moving image data of an object and iterate it from multiple angles — generating up to eight different perspectives. Stable Video 4D can generate five frames across eight views in about 40 seconds using a single inference, according to the company, which says the model has “future applications in game development, video editing, and virtual reality.” Users begin by uploading a single video and specifying desired 3D camera poses. Continue reading Stable Video 4D Adds Time Dimension to Generative Imagery

Adobe is bringing more Firefly AI features to its popular Photoshop and Illustrator design platforms. The upgrade is a significant step forward for Adobe since the 2023 debut of Firefly, and sees Photoshop finally getting in-app ability to generate AI images, and also a new Generative Shape Fill that is still in beta, allowing designers to quickly add detailed vectors to shapes by entering text prompts directly in the Contextual Taskbar. Improvements to Illustrator include the Dimension Tool, Retype, Style Reference, its own Contextual Taskbar, Retype and two new beta tools, Text to Pattern and Mockup. Continue reading Adobe Adds New Firefly AI Features to Illustrator, Photoshop

Alphabet announced that its revenue was up 14 percent to $84.7 billion in Q2, slightly outperforming expectations. Profits rose 29 percent to $23.6 billion, beating analyst targets by $900 million. Search continued to be a top performer, generating $48.5 billion in the three-month period ending June 30, while Google advertising was up 10.5 percent to $64.6 billion. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company’s cloud and generative AI solutions “are being used by more than 2 million developers.” The Google Cloud services unit surpassed the $10 billion quarterly revenue mark for the first time. “We are innovating at every layer of the AI stack,” Pichai added. Continue reading Alphabet Reports Q2 Profits Jump 29 Percent to $23.6 Billion

In April, Meta Platforms revealed that it was working on an open-source AI model that performed as well as proprietary models from top AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Now, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says that model has arrived in the form of Llama 3.1 405B, “the first frontier-level open-source AI model.” The company is also releasing “new and improved” Llama 3.1 70B and 8B models. In addition to general cost and performance benefits, the fact that the Llama 3.1 405B model is open source “will make it the best choice for fine-tuning and distilling smaller models,” according to Meta. Continue reading Meta Calls New Llama the First Open-Source Frontier Model

Nvidia and French startup Mistral AI are jointly releasing a new language model called Mistral NeMo 12B that brings enterprise AI capabilities to the desktop without the need for major cloud resources. Developers can easily customize and deploy the new LLM for applications supporting chatbots, multilingual tasks, coding and summarization, according to Nvidia. “NeMo 12B offers a large context window of up to 128k tokens,” explains Mistral, adding that “its reasoning, world knowledge, and coding accuracy are state-of-the-art in its size category.” Available under the Apache 2.0 license, it is easy to implement as a drop-in replacement for Mistral 7B. Continue reading Mistral, Nvidia Bring Enterprise AI to Desktop with NeMo 12B

Microsoft has officially moved its AI-powered Designer app out of preview, making the Canva competitor available to iOS and Android users. The app uses text prompts to generate images and designs for items such as logos, greeting cards, stickers and invitations. Powered by OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 image model, Designer is available as an app in Windows and as a free mobile app. New capabilities include the ability to edit existing designs and the addition of “prompt templates” to help users who are starting the design process with a blank canvas. “Just describe what you want to see, and Designer can create it for you,” explains Microsoft. Continue reading Microsoft Designer Adds AI Editing, Launches Mobile Release

Google has launched the beta version of its Gemini-powered Google Vids productivity app, which lets users create work-related video presentations that embed documents, slides, audio recordings and even additional videos into a timeline. Incorporated into Workspace Labs, Google’s AI preview space, Google says invited participants can use Vids to “build a narrative with high quality templates” or “get to a first draft faster.” Access to Google’s royalty-free stock content library and Vids recording studio means a project can be completed “without ever leaving Workspace,” according to the company. Continue reading Gemini Powering Google Vids Multimedia Presentation Builder

YouTube Music is working to improve its discovery capabilities. The Google unit is testing an AI-powered personalized radio feature for Premium subscribers in the U.S., and is also gradually rolling out something called Sound Search, which lets users describe a type of sound, including by humming it, then having it searched from a catalog that features “over 100 million official songs,” according to YouTube Music. The feature was introduced on a limited basis on Android in May, and is now expanding to iOS users, albeit on what is still a limited basis. Continue reading YouTube Music Expands Its Sound Search and Tests AI Radio

The Senate has introduced a bill that takes on tamping down deepfakes while also protecting creative content from use for AI model training. The Content Origin Protection and Integrity from Edited and Deepfaked Media Act, to be known as the COPIED Act, seeks to enact safeguards to protect journalists, actors, songwriters and other artists “against AI-driven theft,” while establishing new federal transparency guidelines for marking, authenticating and detecting AI-generated content. Emphasizing accountability, the bill stipulates that those found in violation will be subject to legal action. Continue reading COPIED Act Seeks to Protect from Deepfakes, Training Abuse

After five months of testing, e-commerce giant Amazon is releasing its AI-powered shopping assistant, Rufus, on mobile throughout the U.S. via the Amazon Shopping app. By tapping the icon, shoppers can access a chat interface and query Rufus on topics such as the best portable speakers or summer dresses under $50. In time for this week’s Prime Day event, the new assistant can also provide status updates on orders. Rufus was trained on the Amazon catalog and other Internet content, so it can provide information on a wide variety of topics and reportedly also answer questions about politics and write short stories. Continue reading Amazon’s AI Shopping Assistant Rufus Is Ready for Prime Day