New Tech from MIT, Adobe Advances Generative AI Imaging

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Adobe have unveiled a new AI acceleration tool that makes generative apps like DALL-E 3 and Stable Diffusion up to 30x faster by reducing the process to a single step. The new approach, called distribution matching distillation, or DMD, maintains or enhances image quality while greatly streamlining the process. Theoretically, the technique “marries the principles of generative adversarial networks (GANs) with those of diffusion models,” consolidating “the hundred steps of iterative refinement required by current diffusion models” into one step, MIT PhD student and project lead Tianwei Yin says. Continue reading New Tech from MIT, Adobe Advances Generative AI Imaging

Stable Video 3D Generates Orbital Animation from One Image

Stability AI has released Stable Video 3D, a generative video model based on the company’s foundation model Stable Video Diffusion. SV3D, as it’s called,  comes in two versions. Both can generate and animate multi-view 3D meshes from a single image. The more advanced version also let users set “specified camera paths” for a “filmed” look to the video generation. “By adapting our Stable Video Diffusion image-to-video diffusion model with the addition of camera path conditioning, Stable Video 3D is able to generate multi-view videos of an object,” the company explains. Continue reading Stable Video 3D Generates Orbital Animation from One Image

Alibaba’s EMO Can Generate Performance Video from Images

Alibaba is touting a new artificial intelligence system that can animate portraits, making people sing and talk in realistic fashion. Researchers at the Alibaba Group’s Institute for Intelligent Computing developed the generative video framework, calling it EMO, short for Emote Portrait Alive. Input a single reference image along with “vocal audio,” as in talking or singing, and “our method can generate vocal avatar videos with expressive facial expressions and various head poses,” the researchers say, adding that EMO can generate videos of any duration, “depending on the length of video input.” Continue reading Alibaba’s EMO Can Generate Performance Video from Images

Stability AI Advances Image Generation with Stable Cascade

Stability AI, purveyor of the popular Stable Diffusion image generator, has introduced a completely new model called Stable Cascade. Now in preview, Stable Cascade uses a different architecture than Stable Diffusion’s SDXL that the UK company’s researchers say is more efficient. Cascade builds on a compression architecture called Würstchen (German for “sausage”) that Stability began sharing in research papers early last year. Würstchen is a three-stage process that includes two-step encoding. It uses fewer parameters, meaning less data to train on, greater speed and reduced costs. Continue reading Stability AI Advances Image Generation with Stable Cascade

Google Takes New Approach to Create Video with Lumiere AI

Google has come up with a new approach to high resolution AI video generation with Lumiere. While most GenAI video models output individual high resolution frames at various points in the sequence (called “distant keyframes”), fill in the missing frames with low-res images to create motion (known as “temporal super-resolution,” or TSR), then up-res that connective tissue (“spatial super-resolution,” or SSR) of non-overlapping frames, Lumiere takes what Google calls a “Space-Time U-Net architecture,” which processes all frames at once, “without a cascade of TSR models, allowing us to learn globally coherent motion.” Continue reading Google Takes New Approach to Create Video with Lumiere AI

CES: The Asus ROG Phone 8 Series Highlights Mobile Gaming

The Asus ROG Phone 8 series — demonstrated at CES 2024 in Las Vegas last week — is generating excellent reviews for its gaming capabilities and additional praise for its functionality as a smartphone. The devices start at $1,100 and tick up to an entry level of $1,500 for the ROG Phone 8 Pro. Asus calls the ROG Phone 8 series “the biggest redesign in its history,” and says it has evolved from just a gaming phone into a device suitable for streamers and content creators. At the heart of that is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Mobile Platform, supported by 8,533 Mbps LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.0 storage. Continue reading CES: The Asus ROG Phone 8 Series Highlights Mobile Gaming

CES: HP Spectre Laptops Get Intel Core Ultra, 9MP Webcam

HP has updated its popular flagship laptop, the HP Spectre x360, and the early reviews are quite impressive. HP has added Intel Core Ultra processors with neural processing for AI tasks and a 9MP webcam and Wi-Fi 7 capability. The Spectre x360 14 features a 14-inch screen and Intel Arc integrated graphics processing, while the Spectre x360 16 screen is two-inches larger, and includes the option to add an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 GPU. Both OLED screens display at 2,880 x 1,800, 120 Hz, with VESA True Black HDR 400. The 2-in-1 laptops use Intel’s latest H series chips, which are 14th generation, Meteor Lake, integrating both x86 and Arm cores on the same chip. Continue reading CES: HP Spectre Laptops Get Intel Core Ultra, 9MP Webcam

VideoPoet: Google Launches a Multimodal AI Video Generator

Google has unveiled a new large language model designed to advance video generation. VideoPoet is capable of text-to-video, image-to-video, video stylization, video inpainting and outpainting, and video-to-audio. “The leading video generation models are almost exclusively diffusion-based,” Google says, citing Imagen Video as an example. Google finds this counter intuitive, since “LLMs are widely recognized as the de facto standard due to their exceptional learning capabilities across various modalities.” VideoPoet eschews the diffusion approach of relying on separately trained tasks in favor of integrating many video generation capabilities in a single LLM. Continue reading VideoPoet: Google Launches a Multimodal AI Video Generator

Standalone Image Generator Is Among New AI Tools by Meta

Meta Platforms is moving Imagine with Meta from its test bed as a generative AI experience in chats to a standalone experience on the Web that allows users to create high-resolution images using natural language text prompts. That is one of more than 20 generative AI features Meta is deploying to create new business opportunities globally leveraging AI across search, ads, business messaging and more. While most will wind up on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, some say Meta’s popular Facebook and Instagram platforms have plateaued at 2 to 3 billion users per month, circumscribing ad growth. Continue reading Standalone Image Generator Is Among New AI Tools by Meta

Stability AI Intros Real-Time Text-to-Image Generation Model

Stability AI, developer of Stable Diffusion (one of the leading visual content generators, alongside Midjourney and DALL-E), has introduced SDXL Turbo — a new AI model that demonstrates more of the latent possibilities of the common diffusion generation approach: images that update in real time as the user’s prompt updates. This feature was always a possibility even with previous diffusion models given text and images are comprehended differently across linear time, but increased efficiency of generation algorithms and the steady accretion of GPUs and TPUs in a developer’s data center makes the experience more magical. Continue reading Stability AI Intros Real-Time Text-to-Image Generation Model

Stability Introduces GenAI Video Model: Stable Video Diffusion

Stability AI has opened research preview on its first foundation model for generative video, Stable Video Diffusion, offering text-to-video and image-to-video. Based on the company’s Stable Diffusion text-to-image model, the new open-source model generates video by animating existing still frames, including “multi-view synthesis.” While the company plans to enhance and extend the model’s capabilities, it currently comes in two versions: SVD, which transforms stills into 576×1024 videos of 14 frames, and SVD-XT that generates up to 24 frames — each at between three and 30 frames per second. Continue reading Stability Introduces GenAI Video Model: Stable Video Diffusion

Voice Cloning Startup CreateSafe Introduces GenAI Platform

Music tech studio CreateSafe has officially launched its generative AI-powered platform Triniti in open beta. Triniti lets artists create AI voice clones, generate text-to-audio samples, get assistance monetizing and managing music IP or interact with a chatbot on industry-specific music questions. The company has raised $4.6 million in a seed round led by cryptocurrency and blockchain investment firm Polychain Capital to further develop Triniti. Crush Ventures, hip hop music manager Anthony Saleh, and Paris Hilton’s 11:11 Media also participated in the funding round. Continue reading Voice Cloning Startup CreateSafe Introduces GenAI Platform

Social Startup Plai Labs Debuts Free Text-to-Video Generator

The entrepreneurs behind the Myspace social network and gaming company Jam City have shifted their focus to generative AI and web3 with a new venture, Plai Labs, a social platform that provides AI tools for collaboration and connectivity. Plai Labs has released a free text-to-video generator, PlaiDay, which will compete with other GenAI video tools from the likes of OpenAI (DALL-E 2), Google (Imagen), Meta Platforms (Make-A-Video) and Stable Diffusion. But PlaiDay hopes to set itself apart by offering the ability to personalize videos with selfie likenesses. Continue reading Social Startup Plai Labs Debuts Free Text-to-Video Generator

Stability AI Adds Apps to Draft 3D Models, Fine-Tune Objects

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

Shutterstock Offers AI Image Editor for Massive Stock Library

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