This week in AI news, the sector saw advancements in popular technology products, such as iPhones, and a major focus on resource consumption. Google’s Search Engine Experience (SGE) is an incredibly valuable tool, however, its use of resources such as electricity and water is significantly greater than traditional search queries. For Apple, they recently announced a variety of AI features that would be added to their products, including upgrades to Siri.
Apple’s AI development has been enhanced through a partnership with OpenAI that allows access to ChatGPT within its apps, including Siri. Access to email, calls, and messages would be amongst the data OpenAI would have access to. Despite this progress, there were controversies, including that of OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk raising concerns over data access and the company’s profit-driven approach.
A different sector drumming up excitement in AI is the production of text-to-video generators which could phase out certain occupations. A Chinese company recently launched a new text-to-video generator, called Kling, that produces high-quality video clips using text input. Luma AI also introduced Dream Machine, a tool generating realistic shots via AI from text instructions and images.
Social media company Meta is planning to roll out its AI functionality in Europe. This raises issues of data privacy, as Meta desires to train its AI using social media posts from European users. The company already uses content from users outside the EU without explicit permission.
Meanwhile, French AI start-up, Mistral AI, successfully secured $640M in its series B funding. Mistral AI’s models are posing challenges to other major tech firms, such as Google and OpenAI. As AI continues to evolve, tools such as NATURAL PLAN, developed by Google DeepMind, are emerging to measure large language model (LLM)s’ effectiveness with natural language planning.
Lastly, AI events for the week included The AI Summit London 2024, the Generative AI Summit New York 2024, and the upcoming CDAO Canada Public Sector event in Canada. Other notable AI news included Ashton Kutcher predicting the use of tools like Sora to generate full movies, and the EU launching an AI-powered digital alternative to Earth for improved climate prediction accuracy.
In conclusion, AI advancements are fast outpacing predictions and it remains a challenge to manage privacy concerns and fulfill potential benefits. Perhaps the only way forward lies in on-device AI solutions and striking a balance between tech innovation and maintaining privacy.
