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AI Archives - Best News https://aitesonics.com/category/ai/ Tue, 07 May 2024 05:55:07 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.4 Apple’s OLED iPad Pro may come packing an M4 chip and an emphasis on AI https://aitesonics.com/apples-oled-ipad-pro-may-come-packing-an-m4-chip-and-an-emphasis-on-ai-154509441/ https://aitesonics.com/apples-oled-ipad-pro-may-come-packing-an-m4-chip-and-an-emphasis-on-ai-154509441/#respond Tue, 07 May 2024 05:55:07 +0000 https://aitesonics.com/apples-oled-ipad-pro-may-come-packing-an-m4-chip-and-an-emphasis-on-ai-154509441/ Apple’s “Let Loose” iPad event is just over a week away, and the rumors in the leadup are starting to get interesting. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the much-anticipated OLED iPad Pro may arrive not with the new M3 chip as we’ve all been expecting, but the next-gen M4 instead. In the Power On newsletter […]

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Apple’s “Let Loose” iPad event is just over a week away, and the rumors in the leadup are starting to get interesting. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the much-anticipated OLED iPad Pro may arrive not with the new M3 chip as we’ve all been expecting, but the next-gen M4 instead. In the Power On newsletter on Sunday, Gurman wrote that he’s “hearing there is a strong possibility” that this will be the case. And, he says it’ll herald Apple’s official entry into AI.

“I believe Apple will position the tablet as its first truly AI-powered device — and that it will tout each new product from then on as an AI device,” Gurman wrote. Doing it this way for the May 7 event would set the stage for Apple to go all-in on AI at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June. This all builds on Gurman’s previous reports that Apple has been in talks with OpenAI and Google to potentially tap their AI tech for new features with iOS 18.

The “Let Loose” product showcase is also expected to bring updates to the iPad Air and iPad accessories like the Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil. According to Gurman, the upcoming Apple Pencil may introduce haptic feedback.

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Rabbit denies claims that its R1 virtual assistant is a glorified Android app https://aitesonics.com/rabbit-denies-claims-that-its-r1-virtual-assistant-is-a-glorified-android-app-123049869/ https://aitesonics.com/rabbit-denies-claims-that-its-r1-virtual-assistant-is-a-glorified-android-app-123049869/#respond Tue, 07 May 2024 05:52:31 +0000 https://aitesonics.com/rabbit-denies-claims-that-its-r1-virtual-assistant-is-a-glorified-android-app-123049869/ The Rabbit R1, a pocket-sized AI virtual assistant device, runs Android under the hood and is powered by a single app, according to Android Authority. Apparently, the publication was able to install the R1 APK on a Pixel 6a and made it run as if it were the $199 gadget, bobbing bunny head on the […]

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The Rabbit R1, a pocket-sized AI virtual assistant device, runs Android under the hood and is powered by a single app, according to Android Authority. Apparently, the publication was able to install the R1 APK on a Pixel 6a and made it run as if it were the $199 gadget, bobbing bunny head on the screen and all. If you already have a phone and aren't quite intrigued by specialized devices or keen on being an early adopter, you probably didn't see merit in getting the R1 (or its competitor, the Humane AI Pin) in the first place. But this information could make you question the device's purpose even more. Rabbit CEO Jesse Lyu, however, denied that the company's product could've just been released an Android app.

In a statement sent to Android Authority, Lyu said: "rabbit r1 is not an Android app." He added that the company is aware that there are "unofficial rabbit OS app/website emulators out there" and is discouraging their use. "We understand the passion that people have to get a taste of our AI and LAM instead of waiting for their r1 to arrive," he continued. "That being said, to clear any misunderstanding and set the record straight, rabbit OS and LAM run on the cloud with very bespoke AOSP and lower level firmware modifications, therefore a local bootleg APK without the proper OS and Cloud endpoints won’t be able to access our service. rabbit OS is customized for r1 and we do not support third-party clients. Using a bootlegged APK or webclient carries significant risks; malicious actors are known to publish bootlegged apps that steal your data. For this reason, we recommend that users avoid these bootlegged rabbit OS apps."

Android Authority admitted that Spotify integration and other features probably wouldn't work when the R1 is installed on a phone, because it was created to run on the company's specialized firmware. However, it promised a follow-up story delving deeper into the subject.

The R1 has the capability to book you an Uber, find you titles to songs stuck in your brain or look for recipes that can incorporate ingredients you have in your fridge, among other things a virtual assistant or an AI chatbot can do. When Rabbit CEO Jesse Lyu introduced the R1 at CES 2024, he demonstrated how it can be trained to do a variety of other tasks when he taught it to generate an image using Midjourney. Engadget Deputy Editor Cherlynn Low found it more fun and accessible than the $700 Humane AI Pin, but she remains skeptical about the usefulness of AI devices overall. It may still be too early to tell whether they have the potential to become a must-have product for your daily life or the high-tech equivalent of single-use kitchen tools. We're already in the midst of testing the R1 and will publish a review soon to help you decide if it's worth giving the product category a chance.

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Microsoft’s OpenAI partnership was born from Google envy https://aitesonics.com/microsofts-openai-partnership-was-born-from-google-envy-202143989/ https://aitesonics.com/microsofts-openai-partnership-was-born-from-google-envy-202143989/#respond Tue, 07 May 2024 05:51:52 +0000 https://aitesonics.com/microsofts-openai-partnership-was-born-from-google-envy-202143989/ It turns out the lay of today’s AI landscape can be traced back to — what do you know —fear, jealousy and intense capitalist ambition. Emails revealed in the Department of Justice’s antitrust case against Google, first reported by Business Insider, show Microsoft executives expressing alarm and envy over Google’s AI lead. That spurred an […]

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It turns out the lay of today’s AI landscape can be traced back to — what do you know —fear, jealousy and intense capitalist ambition. Emails revealed in the Department of Justice’s antitrust case against Google, first reported by Business Insider, show Microsoft executives expressing alarm and envy over Google’s AI lead. That spurred an urgency that led to the Windows maker’s initial billion-dollar investment in its now-indispensable partner, OpenAI.

In a heavily redacted 2019 email thread titled “Thoughts on OpenAI,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella forwards a lengthy message from CTO Kevin Scott to CFO Amy Hood. “Very good email that explains, why I want us to do this … and also why we will then ensure our infra folks execute,” Nadella wrote.

Scott wrote that he was “very, very worried” about Google’s rapidly growing AI capabilities. He says he initially dismissed the company’s “game-playing stunts,” likely referring to Google’s AlphaGo models. One of them beat Go world champion Ke Jie in 2017, a remarkable feat at the time. (Google’s later models surpassed that one, dropping the need for human training altogether.)

But Scott says brushing off Google’s game-playing progress “was a mistake.” “When they took all of the infrastructure that they had built to build [natural language] models that we couldn’t easily replicate, I started to take things more seriously,” Scott wrote. “And as I dug in to try to understand where all of the capability gaps were between Google and us for model training, I got very, very worried.”

Scott recounts how Microsoft struggled to copy Google’s BERT-large, an AI model that deciphers the meaning and context of words in a sentence. Scott pinned the blame on infrastructure leaps its rival had made — and that Microsoft hadn’t.

“Turns out, just replicating BERT-large wasn’t easy to do for us. Even though we had the template for the model, it took us ~6 months to get the model trained because our infrastructure wasn’t up to the task,” the Microsoft CTO wrote. “Google had BERT for at least six months prior to that, so in the time that it took us to hack together the capability to train a 340M parameter model, they had a year to figure out how to get it into production and to move on to larger scale, more interesting models.”

He also admired and envied Google’s Gmail auto-complete capabilities, saying it was “getting scarily good.” He commented that Microsoft was “multiple years behind the competition in terms of [machine learning] scale.” He commented on the “interesting” growth of OpenAI, DeepMind and Google Brain.

Scott touted Microsoft’s “very smart” people on its machine-learning teams but said their ambitions were curbed. “But the core deep learning teams within each of these bigger teams are very small, and their ambitions have also been constrained, which means that even as we start to feed them resources, they still have to go through a learning process to scale up,” Scott wrote. “And we are multiple years behind the competition in terms of ML scale.”

After prompting Hood that Scott’s concerns were “why I want us to do this,” meaning invest in OpenAI, the company made good on its CEO’s wishes. Microsoft invested a billion dollars in the Sam Altman-led startup in 2019, and the rest is a rapidly changing history. (It’s now invested $13 billion.) It’s a technology that does some incredible things but threatens to gut the labor market and give propagandists their most powerful tools to date in what was already an age of rampant disinformation.

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Anthropic now has a Claude chatbot app for iOS https://aitesonics.com/anthropic-now-has-a-claude-chatbot-app-for-ios-075930308/ https://aitesonics.com/anthropic-now-has-a-claude-chatbot-app-for-ios-075930308/#respond Tue, 07 May 2024 05:51:34 +0000 https://aitesonics.com/anthropic-now-has-a-claude-chatbot-app-for-ios-075930308/ Anthropic is making its Claude AI easier to access on mobile. The company has released a Claude mobile app for iOS that any user can download for free. Similar to the mobile web version of the chatbot, the app syncs users' conversations with Claude across devices, allowing them to jump from a computer to the […]

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Anthropic is making its Claude AI easier to access on mobile. The company has released a Claude mobile app for iOS that any user can download for free. Similar to the mobile web version of the chatbot, the app syncs users' conversations with Claude across devices, allowing them to jump from a computer to the app (or vice versa) without losing their chat history. Users will also be able to upload files and images straight from their iPhone's gallery — or take a photo on the spot — if they need Claude to process or analyze them in real time. They'll be able to download and access the Claude app whatever plan they're using, even if they're not paying for the service.

If they do decide to pay for Claude, they now have a new option other than Pro. The new Team plan provides greater usage than the Pro tier so that members can have more conversations with the chatbot. It also enables users to process longer documents, such as research papers and contracts, thanks to its 200,000 context window. The Team plan gives users access to the Claude 3 model family, as well, which includes Opus, Sonnet and Haiku. It will cost subscribers $30 per user per month, with a minimum head count of five users per team.

Back in March, Anthropic claimed in a blog post that its Claude 3 language model had outperformed ChatGPT and Google's Gemini in several key industry benchmarks. It was better at graduate-level reasoning, multilingual math and coding (among many other metrics), the company said, showing Claude 3's benchmark results against its staunchest rivals. The most powerful Claude 3 model, the Opus, even apparently showed "near-human" abilities with rapid response rates that make it ideal for more complex and time-sensitive tasks.

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Adobe Photoshop's latest beta makes AI-generated images from simple text prompts https://aitesonics.com/adobe-photoshops-latest-beta-makes-ai-generated-images-from-simple-text-prompts-090056096/ https://aitesonics.com/adobe-photoshops-latest-beta-makes-ai-generated-images-from-simple-text-prompts-090056096/#respond Sun, 28 Apr 2024 04:13:20 +0000 https://aitesonics.com/adobe-photoshops-latest-beta-makes-ai-generated-images-from-simple-text-prompts-090056096/ Nearly a year after adding generative AI-powered editing capabilities to Photoshop, Adobe is souping up its flagship product with even more AI. On Tuesday, the company announced that Photoshop is getting the ability to generate images with simple text prompts directly within the app. There are also new features to let the AI draw inspiration […]

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Nearly a year after adding generative AI-powered editing capabilities to Photoshop, Adobe is souping up its flagship product with even more AI. On Tuesday, the company announced that Photoshop is getting the ability to generate images with simple text prompts directly within the app. There are also new features to let the AI draw inspiration from reference images to create new ones and generate backgrounds more easily. The tools will make using Photoshop easier for both professionals as well as casual enthusiasts who may have found the app’s learning curve to be steep, Adobe thinks.

“A big, blank canvas can sometimes be the biggest barrier,” Erin Boyce, Photoshop’s senior marketing director, told Engadget in an interview. “This really speeds up time to creation. The idea of getting something from your mind to the canvas has never been easier.” The new feature is simply called “Generate Image” and will be available as an option in Photoshop right alongside the traditional option that lets you import images into the app.

An existing AI-powered feature called Generative Fill that previously let you add, extend or remove specific parts of an image has been upgraded too. It now allows users to add AI-generated images to an existing image that blend in seamlessly with the original. In a demo shown to Engadget, an Adobe executive was able to circle a picture of an empty salad dish, for instance, and ask Photoshop to fill it with a picture of AI-generated tomatoes. She was also able to generate variations of the tomatoes and choose one of them to be part of the final image. In another example, the executive replaced an acoustic guitar held by an AI-generated bear with multiple versions of electric guitars just by using text prompts, and without resorting to Photoshop’s complex tools or brushes.

These updates are powered by Firefly Image 3, the latest version of Adobe’s family of generative AI models that the company also unveiled today. Adobe said Firefly 3 produces images of a higher quality than previous models, provides more variations, and understands your prompts better. The company claims that more than 7 billion images have been generated so far using Firefly.

Adobe is far from the only company stuffing generative AI features into its products. Over the last year, companies, big and small, have revamped up their products and services with AI. Both Google and Microsoft, for instance, have upgraded their cash cows, Search and Office respectively, with AI features. More recently, Meta has started putting its own AI chatbot into Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. But while it’s still unclear how these bets will pan out, Adobe’s updates to Photoshop seem more materially useful for creators. The company said Photoshop’s new AI features had driven a 30 percent increase in Photoshop subscriptions.

Meanwhile, generative AI has been in the crosshairs of artists, authors, and other creative professionals, who say that the foundational models that power the tech were trained on copyrighted media without consent or compensation. Generative AI companies are currently battling lawsuits from dozens of artists and authors. Adobe says that Firefly was trained on licensed media from Adobe Stock, since it was designed to create content for commercial use, unlike competitors like Midjourney whose models are trained in part by illegally scraping images off the internet. But a recent report from Bloomberg showed that Firefly, too, was trained, in part, on AI-generated images from the same rivals including Midjourney (an Adobe spokesperson told Bloomberg that less than 5 percent of images in its training data came from other AI rivals).

To address concerns about the use of generative AI to create disinformation, Adobe said that all images created in Photoshop using generative AI tools will automatically include tamper-proof “Content Credentials”, which act like digital “nutrition labels” indicating that an image was generated with AI, in the file’s metadata. However, it’s still not a perfect defense against image misuse, with several ways to sidestep metadata and watermarks.

The new features will be available in beta in Photoshop starting today and will roll out to everyone later this year. Meanwhile, you can play with Firefly 3 on Adobe’s website for free.

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The world's leading AI companies pledge to protect the safety of children online https://aitesonics.com/the-worlds-leading-ai-companies-pledge-to-protect-the-safety-of-children-online-213558797/ https://aitesonics.com/the-worlds-leading-ai-companies-pledge-to-protect-the-safety-of-children-online-213558797/#respond Sun, 28 Apr 2024 04:11:59 +0000 https://aitesonics.com/the-worlds-leading-ai-companies-pledge-to-protect-the-safety-of-children-online-213558797/ Leading artificial intelligence companies including OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Meta and others have jointly pledged to prevent their AI tools from being used to exploit children and generate child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The initiative was led by child-safety group Thorn and All Tech Is Human, a non-profit focused on responsible tech. The pledges from AI […]

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Leading artificial intelligence companies including OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Meta and others have jointly pledged to prevent their AI tools from being used to exploit children and generate child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The initiative was led by child-safety group Thorn and All Tech Is Human, a non-profit focused on responsible tech.

The pledges from AI companies, Thorn said, “set a groundbreaking precedent for the industry and represent a significant leap in efforts to defend children from sexual abuse as a feature with generative AI unfolds.” The goal of the initiative is to prevent the creation of sexually explicit material involving children and take it off social media platforms and search engines. More than 104 million files of suspected child sexual abuse material were reported in the US in 2023 alone, Thorn says. In the absence of collective action, generative AI is poised to make this problem worse and overwhelm law enforcement agencies that are already struggling to identify genuine victims.

On Tuesday, Thorn and All Tech Is Human released a new paper titled “Safety by Design for Generative AI: Preventing Child Sexual Abuse” that outlines strategies and lays out recommendations for companies that build AI tools, search engines, social media platforms, hosting companies and developers to take steps to prevent generative AI from being used to harm children.

One of the recommendations, for instance, asks companies to choose data sets used to train AI models carefully and avoid ones only only containing instances of CSAM but also adult sexual content altogether because of generative AI’s propensity to combine the two concepts. Thorn is also asking social media platforms and search engines to remove links to websites and apps that let people “nudity” images of children, thus creating new AI-generated child sexual abuse material online. A flood of AI-generated CSAM, according to the paper, will make identifying genuine victims of child sexual abuse more difficult by increasing the “haystack problem” — an reference to the amount of content that law enforcement agencies must current sift through.

“This project was intended to make abundantly clear that you don’t need to throw up your hands,” Thorn’s vice president of data science Rebecca Portnoff told the Wall Street Journal. “We want to be able to change the course of this technology to where the existing harms of this technology get cut off at the knees.”

Some companies, Portnoff said, had already agreed to separate images, video and audio that involved children from data sets containing adult content to prevent their models from combining the two. Others also add watermarks to identify AI-generated content, but the method isn’t foolproof — watermarks and metadata can be easily removed.

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Rabbit R1 hands-on: Already more fun and accessible than the Humane AI Pin https://aitesonics.com/rabbit-r1-hands-on-already-more-fun-and-accessible-than-the-humane-ai-pin-163622560/ https://aitesonics.com/rabbit-r1-hands-on-already-more-fun-and-accessible-than-the-humane-ai-pin-163622560/#respond Sun, 28 Apr 2024 04:11:06 +0000 https://aitesonics.com/rabbit-r1-hands-on-already-more-fun-and-accessible-than-the-humane-ai-pin-163622560/ At CES this January, startup Rabbit unveiled its first device, just in time for the end of the year of the rabbit according to the lunar calendar. It’s a cute little orange square that was positioned as a “pocket companion that moves AI from words to action.” In other words, it’s basically a dedicated AI […]

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At CES this January, startup Rabbit unveiled its first device, just in time for the end of the year of the rabbit according to the lunar calendar. It’s a cute little orange square that was positioned as a “pocket companion that moves AI from words to action.” In other words, it’s basically a dedicated AI machine that acts kind of like a walkie talkie to a virtual assistant.

Sound familiar? You’re probably thinking of the Humane AI Pin, which was announced last year and started shipping this month. I awarded it a score of 50 (out of 100) earlier this month, while outlets like Wired and The Verge gave it similarly low marks of 4 out of 10.

The people at Rabbit have been paying close attention to the aftermath of the Humane AI Pin launch and reviews. It was evident in founder and CEO Jesse Lyu's address at an unboxing event at the TWA hotel in New York last night, where the company showed off the Rabbit R1 and eager early adopters listened rapturously before picking up their pre-orders. Engadget's sample unit is on its way to Devindra Hardawar, who will be tackling this review. But I was in attendance last night to check out units at the event that industry peers were unboxing (thanks to Max Weinbach for the assistance!).

As a refresher, the Rabbit R1 is a bright orange square, co-engineered by Teenage Engineering and Rabbit. It has a 2.88-inch color display built in, an 8-megapixel camera that can face both ways and a scroll wheel reminiscent of the crank on the Playdate. The latter, by the way, is a compact gaming handheld that was also designed by Teenage Engineering, and the Rabbit R1 shares its adorable retro aesthetic. Again, like the Humane AI Pin, the Rabbit R1 is supposed to be your portal to an AI-powered assistant and operating system. However, there are a few key differences, which Lyu covered extensively at the launch event last night.

Let's get this out of the way: The Rabbit R1 already looks a lot more appealing than the Humane AI Pin. First of all, it costs $199 — less than a third of the AI Pin's $700. Humane also requires a monthly $24 subscription fee or its device will be rendered basically useless. Rabbit, as Lyu repeatedly reiterated all night, does not require such a fee. You'll just be responsible for your own cellular service (4G LTE only, no 5G), and can bring your own SIM card or just default to good old Wi-Fi. There, you'll also find the USB-C charging port.

The R1's advantages over the Pin don't end there. By virtue of its integrated screen (instead of a wonky, albeit intriguing projector), the orange square is more versatile and a lot easier to interact with. You can use the wheel to scroll through elements and press the button on the right side to confirm a choice. You could also tap the screen or push down a button to start talking to the software.

Now, I haven’t taken a photo with the device myself, but I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of images I saw on its screen. Maybe my expectations were pretty low, but when reviewers in a media room were setting up their devices by using the onboard cameras to scan QR codes, I found the images on the screens clear and impressively vibrant. Users won’t just be capturing photos, videos and QR codes with the Rabbit R1, by the way. It also has a Vision feature like the Humane AI Pin that will analyze an image you take and tell you what’s in it. In Lyu’s demo, the R1 told him that it saw a crowd of people at “an event or concert venue.”

We’ll have to wait till Devindra actually takes some pictures with our R1 unit and downloads them from the web-based portal that Rabbit cleverly calls the Rabbit Hole. Its name for camera-based features is Rabbit Eye, which is just kind of delightful. In fact, another thing that distinguishes Rabbit from Humane is the former’s personality. The R1 just oozes character. From the witty feature names to the retro aesthetic to the onscreen animation and the fact that the AI will actually make (cheesy) jokes, Rabbit and Teenage Engineering have developed something that’s got a lot more flavor than Humane’s almost clinical appearance and approach.

Of all the things Lyu took shots at Humane about last night, though, talk of the R1’s thermal performance or the AI Pin’s heat issues was conspicuously absent. To be clear, the R1 is slightly bigger than the Humane device, and it uses an octa-core MediaTek MT6765 processor, compared to the AI Pin’s Snapdragon chip. There’s no indication at the moment that the Rabbit device will run as hot as Humane’s Pin, but I’ve been burned (metaphorically) before and remain cautious.

I am also slightly concerned about the R1’s glossy plastic build. It looks nice and feels lighter than expected, weighing just 115 grams or about a quarter of a pound. The scroll wheel moved smoothly when I pushed it up and down, and there were no physical grooves or notches, unlike the rotating hinge on Samsung’s Galaxy watches. The camera housing lay flush with the rest of the R1’s case, and in general the unit felt refined and finished.

Most of my other impressions of the Rabbit R1 come from Lyu’s onstage demos, where I was surprised by how quickly his device responded to his queries. He was able to type on the R1’s screen and tilted it so that the controls sat below the display instead of to its right. That way, there was enough room for an onscreen keyboard that Lyu said was the same width as the one on the original iPhone.

Rabbit also drew attention for its so-called Large Action Model (LAM), which acts as an interpreter to convert popular apps like Spotify or Doordash into interfaces that work on the R1’s simple-looking operating system. Lyu also showed off some of these at the event last night, but I’d much rather wait for us to test these out for ourselves.

Lyu made many promises to the audience, seeming to acknowledge that the R1 might not be fully featured when it arrives in their hands. Even on the company’s website, there’s a list of features that are planned, in the works or being explored. For one thing, an alarm is coming this summer, along with a calendar, contacts app, GPS support, memory recall and more. Throughout his speech, Lyu repeated the phrase “we’re gonna work on” amid veiled references to Humane (for instance, emphasizing that Rabbit doesn’t require an additional subscription fee). Ultimately, Lyu said “we just keep adding value to this thing,” in reference to a roadmap of upcoming features.

Hopefully, Lyu and his team are able to deliver on the promises they’ve made. I’m already very intrigued by a “teach mode” he teased, which is basically a way to generate macros by recording an action on the R1, and letting it learn what you want to do when you tell it something. Rabbit’s approach certainly seems more tailored to tinkerers and enthusiasts, whereas Humane’s is ambitious and yet closed off. This feels like Google and Apple all over again, except whether the AI device race will ever reach the same scale remains to be seen.

Last night’s event also made it clear what Rabbit wants us to think. It was hosted at the TWA hotel, which itself used to be the head house of the TWA Flight Center. The entire place is an homage to retro vibes, and the entry to Rabbit’s event was lined with display cases containing gadgets like a Pokedex, a Sony Watchman, a Motorola pager, Game Boy Color and more. Every glass box I walked by made me squeal, bringing up a pleasant sense memory that also resurfaced when I played with the R1. It didn't feel good in that it's premium or durable; it felt good because it reminded me of my childhood.

Whether Rabbit is successful with the R1 depends on how you define success. The company has already sold more than 100,000 units this quarter and looks poised to sell at least one more (I’m already whipping out my credit card). I remain skeptical about the usefulness of AI devices, but, in large part due to its price and ability to work with third-party apps at launch, Rabbit has already succeeded in making me feel like Alice entering Wonderland.

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Tupac’s estate threatens to sue Drake for his AI-infused Kendrick Lamar diss https://aitesonics.com/tupacs-estate-threatens-to-sue-drake-for-his-ai-infused-kendrick-lamar-diss-182518997/ https://aitesonics.com/tupacs-estate-threatens-to-sue-drake-for-his-ai-infused-kendrick-lamar-diss-182518997/#respond Sun, 28 Apr 2024 04:09:55 +0000 https://aitesonics.com/tupacs-estate-threatens-to-sue-drake-for-his-ai-infused-kendrick-lamar-diss-182518997/ Tupac Shakur’s estate is none too happy about Drake cloning the late hip-hop legend’s voice in a Kendrick Lamar diss track. Billboard reported Wednesday that attorney Howard King, representing Mr. Shakur’s estate, sent a cease-and-desist letter calling Drake’s use of Shakur’s voice “a flagrant violation of Tupac’s publicity and the estate’s legal rights.” Drake (Aubrey […]

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Tupac Shakur’s estate is none too happy about Drake cloning the late hip-hop legend’s voice in a Kendrick Lamar diss track. Billboard reported Wednesday that attorney Howard King, representing Mr. Shakur’s estate, sent a cease-and-desist letter calling Drake’s use of Shakur’s voice “a flagrant violation of Tupac’s publicity and the estate’s legal rights.”

Drake (Aubrey Drake Graham) dropped the diss track “Taylor Made Freestyle” last Friday, the latest chapter of the artist’s simmering decade-long feud with Pulitzer and 17-time Grammy award winner Kendrick Lamar.

“Kendrick, we need ya, the West Coast savior / Engraving your name in some hip-hop history,” an AI-generated 2Pac recreation raps in Drake’s track. “If you deal with this viciously / You seem a little nervous about all the publicity.”

Representing Shakur’s estate, King wrote in the cease-and-desist letter that Drake has less than 24 hours to pull down “Taylor Made Freestyle,” or the estate would “pursue all of its legal remedies” to force the Canadian rapper’s hand. “The unauthorized, equally dismaying use of Tupac’s voice against Kendrick Lamar, a good friend to the Estate who has given nothing but respect to Tupac and his legacy publicly and privately, compounds the insult,” King wrote, according to Billboard.

“The Estate is deeply dismayed and disappointed by your unauthorized use of Tupac’s voice and personality,” King wrote. “Not only is the record a flagrant violation of Tupac’s publicity and the estate’s legal rights, it is also a blatant abuse of the legacy of one of the greatest hip-hop artists of all time. The Estate would never have given its approval for this use.”

“Taylor Made Freestyle” also used AI to clone Snoop Dogg’s voice, with Drake using digital clones of two of Lamar’s west-coast hip-hop influences to try to hit him where it hurts. In a video posted to social media the following day, Snoop didn’t appear to know about the track. “They did what? When? How? Are you sure?”, the 16-time Grammy nominee and herb connoisseur said. “Why everybody calling my phone, blowing me up? What the fuck? What happened? What’s going on? I’m going back to bed. Good night,” he continued.

Engadget emailed Snoop Dogg’s management to ask about his thoughts on Drake cloning his voice. At the time of publication, we hadn’t heard back.

The saga contains more than a bit of irony — if not outright hypocrisy — from Universal Music Group (UMG), the label representing Drake. You may remember the track “Heart on My Sleeve” by “Ghostwriter977,” which briefly went viral last year. It was pulled after UMG complained to streaming services because it used an AI-generated version of Drake’s voice (along with The Weeknd).

Engadget asked UMG if it approved of Drake’s use of AI-generated voices in “Taylor Made Freestyle” and where it stands on the broader issue of using artists’ digital clones. We haven’t received a comment at press time. Without a clear explanation, it’s hard not to see the label as being on the side of whatever seems most financially advantageous to it at any particular moment (surprise!).

Laws addressing AI-cloned voices of public figures are still in flux. Billboard notes that federal copyrights don’t clearly cover the issue since AI-generated vocals typically don’t use specific words or music from the original artist. Mr. King, speaking for Shakur’s estate, believes they violate California’s existing publicity rights laws. He described Drake’s use of Shakur’s voice as forming the “false impression that the estate and Tupac promote or endorse the lyrics for the sound-alike.”

Last month, Tennessee passed the ELVIS (“Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security”) Act to protect artists from unauthorized AI voice clones. The “first-of-its-kind legislation” makes copying a musician’s voice without consent a criminal Class A misdemeanor.

But none of the parties involved in this feud are in Tennessee. On the federal level, things are moving much more slowly, leaving room for legal uncertainty. In January, bipartisan US House legislators introduced the No Artificial Intelligence Fake Replicas And Unauthorized Duplications Act (“No AI FRAUD”), putting cloned voices like those Drake used in the government’s crosshairs. Congress hasn’t taken any public action on the bill in the more than three months since.

“It is hard to believe that [Tupac’s record label]’s intellectual property was not scraped to create the fake Tupac AI on the Record,” King wrote in the cease-and-desist letter. He demanded Drake offer “a detailed explanation for how the sound-alike was created and the persons or company that created it, including all recordings and other data ‘scraped’ or used.”

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Drake deletes AI-generated Tupac track after Shakur’s estate threatened to sue https://aitesonics.com/drake-deletes-ai-generated-tupac-track-after-shakurs-estate-threatened-to-sue-191810881/ https://aitesonics.com/drake-deletes-ai-generated-tupac-track-after-shakurs-estate-threatened-to-sue-191810881/#respond Sun, 28 Apr 2024 04:08:26 +0000 https://aitesonics.com/drake-deletes-ai-generated-tupac-track-after-shakurs-estate-threatened-to-sue-191810881/ Drake apparently learned it isn’t wise to mess with Tupac Shakur — even decades after his untimely death. Billboard first spotted that the Canadian hip-hop artist deleted the X (Twitter) post with his track “Taylor Made Freestyle,” which used an AI-generated recreation of Shakur’s voice to try to get under Kendrick Lamar’s skin. The takedown […]

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Drake apparently learned it isn’t wise to mess with Tupac Shakur — even decades after his untimely death. Billboard first spotted that the Canadian hip-hop artist deleted the X (Twitter) post with his track “Taylor Made Freestyle,” which used an AI-generated recreation of Shakur’s voice to try to get under Kendrick Lamar’s skin.

The takedown came after an attorney representing the late hip-hop legend threatened to sue the Canadian rapper for his “unauthorized” use of Tupac’s voice if he didn’t remove it from social channels within 24 hours. However, the track was online for a week and — unsurprisingly — has been copiously reposted.

“The Estate is deeply dismayed and disappointed by your unauthorized use of Tupac’s voice and personality,” Howard King, the attorney representing Shakur’s estate, wrote earlier this week in a cease-and-desist letter acquired by Billboard. “Not only is the record a flagrant violation of Tupac’s publicity and the estate’s legal rights, it is also a blatant abuse of the legacy of one of the greatest hip-hop artists of all time. The Estate would never have given its approval for this use.”

King implied that using Shakur’s voice to diss Lamar was an especially egregious show of disrespect. Lamar, a 17-time Grammy winner and Pulitzer recipient, has spoken frequently about his deep admiration for Tupac, and the Oakland rapper’s estate says the feelings are mutual. “The unauthorized, equally dismaying use of Tupac’s voice against Kendrick Lamar, a good friend to the Estate who has given nothing but respect to Tupac and his legacy publicly and privately, compounds the insult,” King wrote in a cease-and-desist letter.

Drake’s track also included an AI-generated clone of Snoop Dogg’s voice. The Doggystyle rapper and cannabis aficionado appeared surprised in a social post last week: “They did what? When? How? Are you sure?” He continued, “Why everybody calling my phone, blowing me up? What the fuck? What happened? What’s going on? I’m going back to bed. Good night.”

However, the one-time Doggy Fizzle Televizzle host has a history of poker-faced coyness. Last year, he took to Instagram to solemnly announce he was “giving up smoke,” leading to rampant speculation about why the stoner icon would quit his favorite pastime. Soon after, his announcement was revealed as a PR stunt for Solo Stove — which, marketing gimmicks aside, makes some terrific bonfire pits.

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Meta’s Oversight Board will rule on AI-generated sexual images https://aitesonics.com/metas-oversight-board-will-rule-on-ai-generated-sexual-images-100047138/ https://aitesonics.com/metas-oversight-board-will-rule-on-ai-generated-sexual-images-100047138/#respond Fri, 19 Apr 2024 08:57:09 +0000 https://aitesonics.com/metas-oversight-board-will-rule-on-ai-generated-sexual-images-100047138/ Meta’s Oversight Board is once again taking on the social network’s rules for AI-generated content. The board has accepted two cases that deal with AI-made explicit images of public figures. While Meta’s rules already prohibit nudity on Facebook and Instagram, the board said in a statement that it wants to address whether “Meta’s policies and […]

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Meta’s Oversight Board is once again taking on the social network’s rules for AI-generated content. The board has accepted two cases that deal with AI-made explicit images of public figures.

While Meta’s rules already prohibit nudity on Facebook and Instagram, the board said in a statement that it wants to address whether “Meta’s policies and its enforcement practices are effective at addressing explicit AI-generated imagery.” Sometimes referred to as “deepfake porn,” AI-generated images of female celebrities, politicians and other public figures has become an increasingly prominent form of online harassment and has drawn a wave of proposed regulation. With the two cases, the Oversight Board could push Meta to adopt new rules to address such harassment on its platform.

The Oversight Board said it’s not naming the two public figures at the center of each case in an effort to avoid further harassment, though it described the circumstances around each post.

One case involves an Instagram post showing an AI-generated image of a nude Indian woman that was posted by an account that “only shares AI- generated images of Indian women.” The post was reported to Meta but the report was closed after 48 hours because it wasn’t reviewed. The same user appealed that decision but the appeal was also closed and never reviewed. Meta eventually removed the post after the user appealed to the Oversight Board and the board agreed to take the case.

The second case involved a Facebook post in a group dedicated to AI art. The post in question showed “an AI-generated image of a nude woman with a man groping her breast.” The woman was meant to resemble “an American public figure” whose name was also in the caption of the post. The post was taken down automatically because it had been previously reported and Meta’s internal systems were able to match it to the prior post. The user appealed the decision to take it down but the appeal was “automatically closed.” The user then appealed to the Oversight Board, which agreed to consider the case.

In a statement, Oversight Board co-chair Helle Thorning-Schmidt said that the board took up the two cases from different countries in order to assess potential disparities in how Meta’s policies are enforced. “We know that Meta is quicker and more effective at moderating content in some markets and languages than others,” Thorning-Schmidt said. “By taking one case from the US and one from India, we want to look at whether Meta is protecting all women globally in a fair way.”

The Oversight Board is asking for public comment for the next two weeks and will publish its decision sometime in the next few weeks, along with policy recommendations for Meta. A similar process involving a misleadingly-edited video of Joe Biden recently resulted in Meta agreeing to label more AI-generated content on its platform.

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