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This week’s headlines highlight SAG-AFTRA’s new AI agreement with game studios, Elon Musk’s denial of a Tesla-xAI licensing deal, and Adobe’s AI video tools coming to Premiere Pro.
Here’s what you need to know.
Video Game Actors Secure AI Agreement With 80 Major Game Studios
SAG-AFTRA secured AI protections and wage improvements for performers following a strike, reaching agreements with 80 video game studios. However, strikes against major publishers like Disney and Warner Bros. continue as the union pushes for broader safeguards against AI misuse.
SAG-AFTRA is going on strike against the video game industry.
“We’re not going to consent to a contract that allows companies to abuse A.I. to the detriment of our members”
Companies facing the strike include Activision, Disney, Insomniac, EA, Take-Two, Epic Games and WB Games. pic.twitter.com/FK1juMI0V9
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) July 25, 2024
Nvidia’s AI Chips Cheaper to Rent in China Than US, Despite Ban
Despite export restrictions, Nvidia’s AI chips are cheaper to rent in China, at $6 per hour compared to $10 in the U.S.. The chips are smuggled into China, and Nvidia faces a U.S. antitrust investigation over its AI chip market dominance.
Tesla Will Not Licence xAI Models, Says Elon Musk
Elon Musk denied reports that Tesla would license xAI’s technology for future revenue, stating there is “no need to license anything.” However, he recently mentioned plans to discuss a potential $5 billion investment in xAI with Tesla’s board.
Haven’t read the article, but the above is not accurate.
Tesla has learned a lot from discussions with engineers at xAI that have helped accelerate achieving unsupervised FSD, but there is no need to license anything from xAI.
The xAI models are gigantic, containing, in…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 8, 2024
Audible Invites Human Narrators to Create AI Voice Models for Audiobooks
Amazon’s Audible invites select narrators to create AI voice models for audiobooks, allowing them to earn royalties and control which titles use their voices. The beta trial, limited to the U.S., involves refining AI-generated audiobooks and compensating narrators per title.
"Virtual Voices" have made book discovery on Audible.com nearly impossible
byu/MPPreads inaudible
Amazon to Invest £8B in UK, Continues Cloud and AI Expansion
Amazon Web Services (AWS) will invest £8 billion in UK data centers over four years, creating 14,000 jobs annually. The investment is expected to add £14 billion to the UK economy by 2028, amid growing AI demand and competition from Microsoft and Google Cloud.
Taylor Swift Endorses Kamala Harris Following AI Misinformation Incident
Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris for the 2024 U.S. presidential election after AI-generated images falsely linked her to Donald Trump’s campaign. Swift emphasized the need for transparency to combat AI-driven misinformation ahead of the election.
Taylor Swift’s post endorsing Kamala Harris garnered over a million likes in 13 minutes. pic.twitter.com/SWHr1kGlpR
— Pop Base (@PopBase) September 11, 2024
A recent study found that large language models like ChatGPT and T5 exhibit racial bias against speakers of African American English (AAE), associating them with negative traits and less prestigious jobs compared to Standard American English (SAE) speakers. This bias raises concerns about AI’s use in hiring and law enforcement.
💥 New paper 💥
We discover a form of covert racism in LLMs that is triggered by dialect features alone, with massive harms for affected groups.
For example, GPT-4 is more likely to suggest that defendants be sentenced to death when they speak African American English.
— Valentin Hofmann (@vjhofmann) March 4, 2024
AI-Powered M&A: UBS Tool Analyzes 300K Companies in Seconds
UBS’s new AI tool analyzes over 300,000 companies in seconds to improve M&A deals, generate buy-side ideas, and identify potential buyers and activist targets. Despite its effectiveness, UBS faces compliance and data security challenges.
UBS has developed an artificial intelligence tool to help it offer clients potential M&A deals, able to analyze a database of over 300,000 companies in less than 30 seconds https://t.co/yxByuWQhBh
— Bloomberg Technology (@technology) September 10, 2024
Mistral Unveils Its First Multimodal AI Model
Mistral’s Pixtral 12B is its first multimodal AI model for text and image processing. Based on the Nemo 12B model, it includes a vision adapter for tasks like image captioning and classification. It’s free for research and is available on GitHub and Hugging Face, but requires a commercial license.
We dropped a new model – Pixtral 12B, our first-ever multimodal model. Enjoy! 🥰🎉 https://t.co/uvXnpJf6mQ
— Sophia Yang, Ph.D. (@sophiamyang) September 11, 2024
Adobe Will Bring AI-Generated Video to Premiere Pro This Year
Adobe will add AI video features to Premiere Pro and the web by the end of 2024, including tools for extending and generating clips with prompts and images. The company is also enhancing protections for stock content creators and expanding moderation efforts.
Google’s AI Notebook Now Creates Podcasts to Explain Your Sources
Google’s NotebookLM now features an experiment called Audio Overview, where AI hosts create realistic podcast summaries of the source material. While providing a natural-sounding overview, the tool has limitations in accuracy and availability and currently only supports English.
Very impressed with this new NotebookLM feature by Google Labs that turns notes/docs into podcasts
I uploaded this morning's newsletter, and it turned into a two-way podcast between two AI agent hosts
Give it a listen, pretty darn good (sound on 🔈) https://t.co/ovci9DXxOM pic.twitter.com/7CGHHwDxeg
— Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) September 12, 2024
Amazon Set to Integrate Ads Into Its AI Chatbot Rufus
Amazon will add sponsored ads for U.S. users to its AI shopping assistant, Rufus. While ads will be contextually relevant, advertisers won’t receive performance metrics, potentially affecting their ability to gauge effectiveness.
Did you really think that Amazon would never monetize their AI model Rufus?
It's coming sooner than you think.
Honestly, I'm not as bullish on this and expect severe customer pushback.
Imagine asking Rufus for the best creatine gummy brand on Amazon and it commends an unknown… pic.twitter.com/k90Pet5gvp
— Jon Elder | Amazon Growth | Private Label (@BlackLabelAdvsr) September 9, 2024
Chinese AI Models Trail US by Six Months
Chinese AI models trail U.S. counterparts by six to nine months but are quickly catching up. Major Chinese firms like Alibaba and Tencent are investing heavily in AI, with expectations to surpass the U.S. in AI adoption soon.
I won't be surprised if China actually achieves AGI before anyone else.
The massive deployment of LLMs in China has saturated the market, with at least 130 models comprising 40% of the global total. pic.twitter.com/YRGJ0uU6mJ— AshutoshShrivastava (@ai_for_success) July 6, 2024
OpenAI’s New O1 AI Model Can Tackle Difficult Math Problems
OpenAI’s new o1 model, launched yesterday, is designed to tackle complex math, coding, and science problems with performance comparable to PhD students. While it excels in these areas, it is still a preview model and lacks some features of GPT-4o, such as file uploads and web browsing.
