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☆ AI-generated DJs are coming to radio stations in the US and Canada next month
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-22 | by ( Grace Mayer | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

An AI-generated radio DJ could be coming soon to your local radio station. Radio GPT will launch at stations in the US and Canada in April, as reported by Axios Cleveland. RadioGPT, a GPT-4-powered radio content generator from media company Futuri, is set to debut next month in radio stations in the US and Canada, Axios Cleveland reported. Radio GPT uses AI to generate scripts and voices designed for radio stations. The news that the AI technology is coming to real radio stations might make existing radio DJs squirm and wonder if their jobs are now at-risk of being replaced.

☆ Google begins opening access to its ChatGPT competitor Bard
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-21 | by ( Jeffrey Dastin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Starting in the U.S. and UK, consumers can join a waiting list for English-language access to Bard, a program previously open to approved testers only. Google describes Bard as an experiment allowing collaboration with generative AI, technology that relies on past data to create rather than identify content. Asked whether competitive dynamics were behind Bard's rollout, Jack Krawczyk, a senior product director, said Google was focused on users. Unlike ChatGPT, Bard is not proficient in generating computer code, Google said on its website. "Bard will not always get it right," a Google pop-up notice warned during the demo.

☆ Adobe launches Firefly generative A.I., which lets users type to edit images
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-21 | by ( Rohan Goswami | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

By highlighting an element in a multilayer work of art — a lighthouse, in the demo video — Adobe Firefly uses AI to generate different versions of the lighthouse. Adobe on Tuesday launched an artificial intelligence tool called Firefly that will let users type commands to quickly modify images. Adobe's new product comes at a key inflection point both for Adobe and AI more broadly. OpenAI and Stable Diffusion, another AI organization, both offer generative AI image products. Adobe said Firefly will place an emphasis on giving creators "opportunities to benefit from your skills and creativity and protect your work."

☆ Google begins rolling out its ChatGPT rival
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-21 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

CNN —Google is opening up access to Bard, its new AI chatbot tool that directly competes with ChatGPT. A company representative told CNN it will be a separate, complementary experience to Google Search, and users can also visit Search to check its responses or sources. Google said in a blog post it plans to “thoughtfully” add large language models to search “in a deeper way” at a later time. Like ChatGPT, which was released publicly in late November by AI research company OpenAI, Bard is built on a large language model. Google's ChatGPT rival Bard GoogleBut Bard’s blunder highlighted the challenge Google and other companies face with integrating the technology into their core products.

☆ AI and the future of work: Everything is about to change
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-19 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

Suddenly, AI tools, which have long operated in the background of many services, are now more powerful and more visible across a wide and growing range of workplace tools. Google’s new features, for example, promise to help “brainstorm” and “proofread” written work in Docs. A long list of startups are also developing AI writing assistants and image generators. The pitch from tech companies is clear: AI can make you more productive and eliminate the grunt work. Curran said just how much these AI-powered tools will change work depends on the application.

☆ SVB collapse is double-whammy for tech startups already navigating brutal market
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-19 | by ( Ashley Capoot | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +11 min

He'd started the process six months earlier during a brutal period for tech stocks and a plunge in venture funding. Investors were just pulling in their horns, the SPAC market had fallen apart, valuations for tech companies were collapsing." In the absence of venture funding, money-losing startups have had to cut their burn rates in order to extend their cash runway. Since the beginning of 2022, roughly 1,500 tech companies have laid off a total of close to 300,000 people, according to the website Layoffs.fyi. Kruze Consulting provides accounting and other back-end services to hundreds of tech startups.

☆ Baidu stock rebounds after falling sharply in wake of demo of ERNIE chatbot, its ChatGPT-style service
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-17 | by ( Michelle Toh | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

Hong Kong CNN —Shares in Chinese search giant Baidu rebounded sharply a day after it unveiled ERNIE Bot, its answer to the ChatGPT craze. Its Hong Kong shares fell 6.4% after a public demonstration of its bot failed to impress investors. The reversal came after the company said more than 30,000 businesses had signed up to test out its chatbot service within two hours of its demonstration. Baidu Chairman and CEO Robin Li presenting the company's AI chatbot, ERNIE Bot, in Beijing on March 16. But its stock slumped on Thursday because the demo was “pre-recorded, and not live, which makes investors skeptical about the robustness of the ERNIE Bot,” according to Pau.

☆ The tech boss at a global PR firm says using AI tools like ChatGPT can inspire creativity and transform businesses — if you do it right
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-17 | by ( Nicholas Fearn | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Kevin Dulaney leads tech innovation at Hotwire Global, a marketing and communications consultancy. "The pandemic highlighted the importance of this technology," Dulaney said. Recently, Hotwire Global's IT team developed a language library powered by AI chatbot ChatGPT. The AI-based language library — which is ChatGPT's colloquial rendering of Hotwire Global's original language library — is underpinned by Hotwire Global's existing processes, documents, information, and internal communications. To ensure employees use tools like ChatGPT ethically, Hotwire Global's IT team has created AI guidelines and best practices.

☆ Google nixes paying out remainder of maternity and medical leave for laid-off employees
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-17 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +10 min

The group includes people who were approved for or are currently on maternity leave, baby bonding leave, caregiver's leave, medical leave and personal leave. Early last year, Google announced it would be increasing parental leave for full-time employees to 18 weeks for all parents and 24 weeks for birth parents. Pichai said U.S.-based employees would receive 16 weeks of severance pay plus two weeks for each additional year they worked at Google. The Laid off on Leave group sent its first email to executives in January, and shared specific examples of Google employees impacted by the job cuts while on their previously approved leave. The company didn't address whether it would cover full medical leave on top of the severance payout.

☆ Stocks making the biggest moves premarket: Nvidia, First Republic, FedEx and more
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-17 | by ( Hakyung Kim | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

FedEx — Shares were up 11.6% after the company's fiscal third-quarter earnings topped analysts expectations. FedEx reported adjusted earnings of $3.41 per share, topping a Refinitiv consensus forecast of $2.73 per share. Credit Suisse — The Swiss bank's U.S.-traded shares were down 4.1% during premarket trading. Credit Suisse shares have had a volatile week after its largest investor announced it would not provide additional funding to the bank. First Republic Bank — Shares of the bank declined 13.3% during premarket trading.

☆ 5 jaw-dropping things GPT-4 can do that ChatGPT couldn’t
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-16 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

On Tuesday, OpenAI announced the next-generation version of the artificial intelligence technology that underpins its viral chatbot tool, ChatGPT. The company said GPT-4 recently passed a simulated law school bar exam with a score around the top 10% of test takers. Providing more precise responsesCompared to the prior version, GPT-4 is able to produce longer, more detailed and more reliable written responses, according to the company. One early user said it provided in-depth suggestions for pickup lines based on a question listed on a dating profile. “They can produce inaccurate information from time to time and can be black-box in nature.”For now, OpenAI said GPT-4 users should exercise caution and use “great care” particularly “in high-stakes contexts.”

☆ Microsoft is bringing ChatGPT technology to Word, Excel and Outlook
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-16 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

CNN —Microsoft on Thursday outlined its plans to bring artificial intelligence to its most recognizable productivity tools, including Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel and Word, with the promise of changing how millions do their work every day. The new features, which are built on the same technology that underpins ChatGPT, are far more powerful (and less anthropomorphized) than its wide-eyed, paperclip-shaped predecessor. Microsoft is also introducing a concept called Business Chat, an agent that essentially rides along with the user as they work and tries to understand and make sense of their Microsoft 365 data. During a presentation to its customers on Thursday, Microsoft outlined its road map for how it plans to bring artificial intelligence to its Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook, Teams, PowerPoint, Excel and Word. A Microsoft spokesperson said 365 users accessing the new AI tools should be reminded the technology is a work in progress and information will need to be double checked.

☆ Microsoft tries to justify AI's tendency to give wrong answers by saying they're 'usefully wrong'
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-16 | by ( Jonathan Vanian | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

On Tuesday, Google announced it was bringing AI-powered chat technology to Gmail and Google Docs, letting it help composing emails or documents. On Thursday, Microsoft said that its popular business apps like Word and Excel would soon come bundled with ChatGPT-like technology dubbed Copilot. But this time, Microsoft is pitching the technology as being "usefully wrong." Microsoft chief scientist and technical fellow Jaime Teevan said that when Copilot "gets things wrong or has biases or is misused," Microsoft has "mitigations in place." "I studied AI for decades and I feel this huge sense of responsibility with this powerful new tool," Teevan said.

☆ Explainer: What is Microsoft-backed OpenAI's GPT-4 model?
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-15 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

March 15 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp-backed (MSFT.O) startup OpenAI began the rollout of GPT-4, a powerful artificial intelligence model that succeeds the technology behind the wildly popular ChatGPT. GPT-3.5 is limited to about 3,000-word responses, while GPT-4 can generate responses of more than 25,000 words. Soon ChatGPT users will have the option to change the chatbot's tone and style of responses, OpenAI said. According to OpenAI, GPT-4 has similar limitations as its prior versions and is "less capable than humans in many real-world scenarios". OpenAI said GPT-4 can rival human propagandists in many domains, especially when teamed up with a human editor.

☆ Google unveils 'magic wand' to draft documents as AI race tightens
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-14 | by ( Jeffrey Dastin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

"This next phase is where we're bringing human beings to be supported with an AI collaborator, who is working in real time," Thomas Kurian, Chief Executive of Google Cloud, said in a press briefing. Google said customers can fine-tune its AI model with their own data while keeping the information and benefits proprietary. Google aims for its AI to "transform" the work of marketers, lawyers, scientists and educators, according to the video. The Mountain View, California-based company announced a partnership with high-profile AI research lab Midjourney, with Google to provide cloud infrastructure including its custom "TPU" chips. Kurian said Google remains "deeply committed to responsible AI," giving controls to customers and reviewing proper use of its products.

☆ Google's working on an updated version of its medical A.I. that can answer health questions
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-14 | by ( Ashley Capoot | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

The Google Health team shared updates about features coming to search, tools for building health apps and the latest in artificial intelligence-powered health research. It's designed to provide high-quality responses to medical questions. The company said the second iteration of the technology, Med-PaLM 2, consistently performed at an "expert" level on medical exam questions. Dr. Alan Karthikesalingam, a research lead at Google Health, said the company is also testing Med-PaLM's answers against responses from real doctors and clinicians. In some cases, Med-PaLM 2's answers were on a par, and even more detailed, than the answers that clinicians had provided.

☆ Twitter rival Koo integrates ChatGPT to help users create content
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-13 | by ( Sheila Dang | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

[1/2] A ChatGPT integration is shown in the Koo social media app, in this undated handout photo provided by Koo, and obtained by Reuters on March 12, 2023. Koo/Handout via REUTERSMarch 13 (Reuters) - Koo, an India-based social media app that aims to rival Twitter, has integrated OpenAI's ChatGPT to help users more easily create posts, the company's co-founder told Reuters. Koo users will be able to use ChatGPT directly within the app to help them draft posts about current events, politics or pop culture, said Mayank Bidawatka, co-founder of Koo, in an interview. Users can either type their prompts into the ChatGPT tool or use Koo's voice command feature. About 20% of Koo users actively create content on the app and the ChatGPT integration could help increase that figure, he added.

☆ Y Combinator pulls back from late-stage startup investing to focus on its core accelerator program, and parts ways with 17 employees
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-13 | by ( Madeline Renbarger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Y Combinator president Garry Tan announced the accelerator is moving away from late-stage investing. The startup accelerator will also eliminate 17 roles on the late-stage investing team. Known for its early-stage investing focus through its core accelerator program, YC also does late-stage investing. "But late stage investing turned out to be so different from early stage that we found it to be a distraction from our core mission. As part of the restructuring, 17 employees on the late-stage investing teams had their roles eliminated, Tan wrote in the post.

☆ From deepfakes to Bing's chatbot, AI-generated content is everywhere. Here's how to spot it.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-09 | by ( Lloyd Lee | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

Researchers have already developed some tools to spot AI-generated content and are claiming they have accuracy rates of up to 96%. Here's what you can do to detect AI-generated content. If you were to feed this tool Spanish-language text or a technical text like something from a medical journal, the tool would then struggle to detect AI-generated content. The second class of tools relies on the large language model's own prediction of a text being AI-generated or human. Other ways to spot AI-generated contentThe effectiveness of detection tools still relies on an individual's better judgment.

☆ Two Google engineers built a ChatGPT-like AI chatbot years ago, but execs reportedly shut it down due to safety concerns
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-08 | by ( Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Ex-Google engineers developed a conversational AI chatbot years ago, per The Wall Street Journal. Google is now racing to catch up with Microsoft's AI and plans to release its AI chatbot this year. "It caused a bit of a stir inside of Google," Shazeer said in an interview with investors Aarthi Ramamurthy and Sriram Krishnan last month. But Google's AI plans may now finally see the light of day, even as discussions around whether its chatbot can be responsibly launched continue. Alphabet chairman John Hennessy agreed that Google's chatbot wasn't "really ready for a product yet."

☆ ChatGPT is being used to automatically write emails: Microsoft, Salesforce, and TikTok creators are hopping on the trend
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-08 | by ( Kif Leswing | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

The analysts estimated Microsoft's recently announced generated AI sales features could help it take market share and potentially add over $768 million in annual revenue. Microsoft announced on Monday that it would integrate generative AI based on ChatGPT into a set of tools for business called CoPilot. One of its primary features is using AI to generate emails. Microsoft says that its AI email writer can take important context from the email thread, like the price that was previously discussed, and stick it in the response drafted by AI. Microsoft's feature is currently in beta testing, but will be released to customers of Microsoft's Viva Sales feature on March 15, the company said on Monday.

☆ Facebook's top exec Tom Alison breaks down his top priorities for 2023 and his pitch to creators
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-08 | by ( Sydney Bradley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Tom Alison, head of Facebook, wants the platform to be a more welcoming home to creators. Insider spoke with Alison about Facebook's priorities as uncertainty around Meta layoffs mounts. "We want Meta to be a great home for creators," Alison said. "You layer in some monetization tools on top of that and they can use Facebook to extend their income," Alison said. "We're going to be integrating and embracing more messaging functionality within Facebook," Alison said.

☆ Google execs tell employees in testy all-hands meeting that Bard A.I. isn't just about search
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +10 min

In the lead up to the Bard announcement, Google executives repeatedly said the technology it was developing internally would integrate with search. “We’re working to bring these latest AI advancements into our products, starting with Search,” the company said in a blog post. That same week, at an event in Paris, Google search boss Prabhakar Raghavan unveiled some fresh examples of using Bard within search. "You see the stories of ChatGPT coincides with an event that we’re having that was actually focused on search," Krawczyk said. Specifically, the question asked why Google lost so many key people who were listed on a paper about much of the AI technology behind Bard.

☆ Elon Musk's bid to implant brain chip into humans was reportedly rejected by feds over safety risks
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Grace Kay | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The FDA rejected Neuralink's request for approval to begin testing its brain chips in humans, Reuters reported. The agency cited dozens of issues with the device, including concerns it could overheat or move in the brain. Elon Musk has been promising the company will soon begin testing on humans since 2019. Reuters said the FDA identified "dozens of issues" Neuralink must remedy before it could begin human testing in the US. The firm plans to implant chips into human brains, which would allow people to perform tasks using only their mind.

☆ Even at its weirdest, most unhinged moments, Bing's chatbot is making Microsoft relevant again
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-01 | by ( Alex Kantrowitz | Big Technology | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Screenshots of a maniacal, unhinged Bing chatbot have flooded the internet this week, showing the bot condescending, gaslighting, and trying to steal husbands. Even in its weirdest moments, Bing's chatbot has brought new relevance to Microsoft and its search division. "The fact that people are even writing about Microsoft Bing at all is a win," one Microsoft employee told me this week. Now, interest in Bing is soaringThe Bing app set its daily download record over the weekend, according to Apptopia. (Upon joining the waitlist for Bing's chatbot, Microsoft encourages downloading the app to get earlier access.)

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