From mapping all 71 million possible genetic mutations to preparing for battle for one’s own face. With a little twist from the book market reality, where not-always-edible mushrooms grow, the “Game of Thrones” author fights the unauthorized usage of his characters.
There is also some news from the biggest players in the high-tech market, including Salesforce and OpenAI.
09.01.2023 Guardian: Mushroom pickers need to avoid AI-generated books
The Guardian, a renowned British newspaper, warns that there are multiple AI-generated books available on Amazon with a great deal to say about mushrooms – especially cooking and picking them.
Picking mushrooms requires both knowledge and experience – with some innocent-looking ones able to kill humans in a most painful way or send one on a trip to parallel universes. According to the Guardian, the books included advice to taste unknown mushrooms in order to recognize them – which is, of course, extremely dangerous.
The full story can be found on the Guardian webpage.
09.06.2023 Slack introduces unread message summaries
Salesforce, the company behind Slack, announced new, generative AI-powered features in their communication tool. According to the Salesforce Generative AI Snapshot Research report, nearly half (49% to be precise) of people surveyed say that they would use genAI more if it were integrated into the technology they already use.
Slack arises as the perfect environment for adopting this technology. The new set of tools can, for example, provide users with summaries of unread messages or answers that were built up using a whole thread or channel.
More information can be found in this SalesForce press release.
09.05.2023 Dictionary.com updated with AI-related words
In a recent update to the online dictionary (dictionary.com), there is now a separate label on a word clustered around Artificial Intelligence and similar terms. The online repository was enriched with words including “generative AI,” “GPT,” and “LLM.” Also, the term “hallucinate” was updated, and the new LLM-related term of making up a convincing piece of information was added to a previous, more human-related meaning.
The company’s update can be found on its website.
09.07.2023 Google will require information about using “synthetic content” in political ads
AI is no more than a tool and can be used both for the benefit or detriment of society. This also applies to generative AI, where the solution can be used to produce a video of an individual or group saying something they would never say or doing things they would never do.
To mitigate the risk of using these technologies in a manipulative and malevolent way, Google decided to force advertisers to include a disclaimer about the computer-generated nature of the content they deliver. This may include “this audio was computer generated” or “this image does not depict real events.”
“Given the growing prevalence of tools that produce synthetic content, we’re expanding our policies a step further to require advertisers to disclose when their election ads include material that’s been digitally altered or generated,” a Google spokesperson, Allie Bodack, says in a statement to The Verge.
More can be found in The Verge story.
09.21.2023 Indian actor Anil Kapoor wins court battle over AI creating images of him
Anil Kapoor, known for his performance in Slumdog Millionaire, as well as dozens of Bollywood-made films, has recently won a court battle against 16 defendants who used his image without permission using AI-powered tools.
According to the court ruling, they will be restrained from using Anil Kapoor’s name, image, likeness, voice, or any other aspect of his persona in any way, be that for monetary gains or otherwise.
More about the story can be found in the Guardian.
09.20.2023 Dall-e 3 now available
OpenAI has released a new version of its renowned text-to-image tool named Dall-e. The new version handles more nuanced and sophisticated requests better than its predecessor. For example, the tool can now handle tasks that require typography or text in image tasks, like designing flyers or banners.
More information about the service can be found on the OpenAI website.
09.20.2023 “Game of Thrones” creator sues OpenAI for copyright infringement
George R.R. Martin, John Grisham, and Jodi Picoult are among 17 writers who, together with the Authors Guild, sued OpenAI for “systematic theft on a massive scale.” The lawsuit cites ChatGPT’s response to the request to deliver a prequel to George R.R. Martin’s books, where the response was “infringing, unauthorized, and detailed.” The response was titled “Dawn of Direwolves” and included the same characters as seen in the “Song of Ice and Fire” book series.
More about the lawsuit can be found in the Guardian.
09.20.2023 Amazon’s Alexa will get generative AI capabilities
The new generation of Alexa will lose its iconic, robotic way of speaking and will get new and more conversational capabilities by fusing the device with Large Language Models. The new feature has been built from scratch by Alexa’s team and will enable the smart speaker to have a natural conversation with users. Comparable to ChatGPT, the smart speaker will be capable of writing poems and suggesting speeches. The LLM capabilities will also enable the device to handle nuances and spot requests in conversation.
Read more about the next-gen Alexa on Amazon’s page.
09.19.2023 Deepmind delivers a catalog of 71 million genetic mutations to support cancer diagnostics
An AI tool delivered by Google-backed Deepmind aims to spot the root sense of multiple diseases humanity currently struggles with – including genetic conditions, cancer, and allergies, among others.
The tool named AlphaMissense spots – as one can easily assume – missense mutations in genres. The tool examined all 71 million possible genetic mutations and labeled 89% of them as either likely pathogenic or likely benign – with the remaining 11% marked as uncertain. As a benchmark, the company shows work done by human annotators, who marked only 0.1% of possible genetic mutations.
With possible genetic mutations mapped, the research on treatments can be significantly boosted or at least supported by avoiding dead-ends.
More can be found on Deepmind’s website.
09.28.2023 ChatGPT now has access to the Internet
No more information about its knowledge ending in September 2021. ChatGPT has gained the ability to browse the web and provide users with the sources the response is based on. This ability works two ways. The tool can browse the internet, but the website owner can control how the tool interacts with it. According to the company statement published on Twitter, the feature is currently available for business and premium users.
Read more in the Reuters article.