AI highlights Microsoft Build 2024

Today’s Highlights:

📰 News: AI highlights Microsoft Build 2024 + EU finalizes and approves AI act

💰 Funding: Humane is looking to sell the company for $1Bn

⚡️ Top News Stories:

1. Microsoft Build 2024 introduces AI Copilot for Windows, Teams, and Edge along w/ tons of other AI-centered updates. 

• Microsoft plans to use AI agents as virtual employees for tasks like monitoring emails, automating tasks, employee onboarding, and data entry, which will be previewed in Copilot Studio later this year.

• A new multimodal AI model, Phi-3-vision, can read text and analyze images, designed to work on mobile devices, and available in preview.

• Microsoft Edge will soon feature AI-powered real-time translation for YouTube and other platforms, supporting multiple languages.

• Qualcomm's $899 Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows, featuring a Snapdragon X Elite chip, 32GB RAM, and 512GB SSD, is introduced.

• Git gets integrated into File Explorer, allowing developers to track file status and commit messages within the browser.

• The Advanced Paste feature in PowerToys for Windows 11 allows converting clipboard content to various formats, requiring an OpenAI API key for AI functionalities.

2. The EU member states have finalized the approval of the AI Act, the first major law that sets comprehensive rules and regulates

• The Act emphasizes trust, transparency, and accountability in AI technology while promoting innovation.

• AI applications are regulated based on their risk levels, with stricter rules for higher-risk applications.

• The law bans AI applications with "unacceptable" risks, such as social scoring, predictive policing, and emotional recognition.

• The legislation aims to balance fostering innovation with protecting individual rights and societal interests.

3. OpenAI outlines ten safety practices it uses to ensure AI model reliability and benefit to society, including red-teaming, alignment research, and abuse monitoring.

4. OpenAI and News Corp have announced a multi-year global partnership, potentially worth over $250M, to integrate current and archived content from major News Corp publications like The Wall Street Journal and The Times into OpenAI's products.

5. Inflection AI introduces a new leadership team while pivoting to focus on embedding emotional intelligence (EQ) into business chatbots.

6. Mark Zuckerberg establishes the Meta Advisory Group to guide AI and tech advancements, featuring executives from Stripe, GitHub, and Shopify.

7. Anthropic has revealed detailed internal workings of its AI model, Claude Sonnet, identifying how millions of concepts are represented.

8. Hugging Face and Microsoft expand AI development collaboration bringing new open models and new developer tools to Azure.

9. Amazon is planning to introduce a more conversational Alexa powered by gen-AI that will be separate from Amazon Prime, w/ subscription pricing yet to be determined.

10. TikTok is integrating gen-AI to enhance its advertising business with the launch of the "TikTok Symphony" AI suite, aimed at enabling advertisers to create more engaging and personalized ads.

11. OpenAI faced backlash for requiring employees to sign restrictive exit agreements to retain vested equity, prompting CEO Sam Altman to apologize and announce the removal of nondisparagement clauses and the cessation of threats to cancel vested equity, despite leaked documents and internal memos revealed contradictions in leadership’s claims of ignorance about these provisions.

12. Scarlett Johansson's lawyers demand OpenAI disclose how it developed the AI voice "Sky," claiming it sounds similar to her voice from the film "Her” despite OpenAI denying using Johansson's voice, stating "Sky" was developed from another actress's voice and pausing its use out of respect.

13. Nvidia's competitors, including Meta, Microsoft, and Google, support OpenAI's open-sourced Triton software, designed to work on multiple AI chips and provide an alternative to Nvidia's powerful processors and proprietary Cuda software, which are making it the market leader in AI hardware.

14. Google's new AI Overviews feature, has made several errors such as suggesting glue for pizza or presenting false historical facts sourced from decade-old Reddit posts, and is acknowledged by Google as being due to uncommon queries while emphasizing ongoing refinements.

15. The FCC proposes a mandatory disclosure of AI-generated content in both candidate and issue political ads, requiring on-air and filed disclosures to ensure transparency.

16. Google and Meta are in talks with Hollywood studios to license content for AI video generation, aiming to create realistic scenes from text prompts.

💰 Top Funding News:

1. Just weeks after the problematic public launch of its wearable AI device, Humane Inc. is seeking a buyer, aiming for a sale price between $750M and $1Bn.

2. Scale AI, which serves as a leading data foundry, providing crucial data for advancements in AI, including autonomous vehicles, defense applications, and generative AI models, raised a $1Bn Series F, led by Accel, w/ Y Combinator, Nat Friedman, Index Ventures, Founders Fund, Coatue, Thrive Capital, Spark Capital, NVIDIA, Tiger Global Management, Greenoaks, Wellington Management, Cisco Investments, DFJ Growth, Intel Capital, ServiceNow Ventures, AMD Ventures, WCM, Amazon, Elad Gil, and Meta.

3. H (formerly Holistic AI), which is aiming to develop "full-AGI", raised a $220M Seed round from Accel Partners, Amazon, Samsung, UiPath, Bpifrance, Elaia Partners, Motier Ventures, and notable individuals including Bernard Arnault (via Aglaé Ventures), Eric Schmidt, Xavier Niel, Yuri Milner.

4 Suno, which uses AI to enable anyone to create music, raised $125M led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Nat Friedman, and Daniel Gross, w/ Matrix and Founder Collective.

5. DeepL, which utilizes its Language AI Platform to provide advanced translation and writing solutions for businesses, raised $300M in funding led by Index Ventures w/ ICONIQ Growth, Teachers’ Venture Growth, IVP, Atomico, and WiL.

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