AI News

Pinterest, the popular image inspiration and shopping platform, has just launched new generative AI features for its advertisers, joining the ranks of Google, Amazon, and others. During the recent Pinterest Presents advertiser event, the company introduced enhancements to its Pinterest Performance+ suite, which now integrates cutting-edge automation and AI tools. One standout feature allows advertisers to transform plain, white, or flat backgrounds into vibrant lifestyle imagery, enhancing the visual appeal of their Pinterest Product Pins.

Lending startup Figure has announced the launch of innovative AI tools designed to streamline the home lending process. The new feature, powered by GPT-4, aims to identify errors in lending documents, significantly enhancing efficiency.

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Snapchat has expanded its partnership with Google Cloud to enhance the generative AI capabilities of its My AI chatbot. This upgraded chatbot will utilize the advanced multimodal features of Google’s Gemini AI, enabling it to interpret various forms of content, including text, audio, images, and videos.

OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, has just accomplished a historic milestone by securing the largest venture capital round ever. Today, the startup announced that it has raised a staggering $6.6 billion, which elevates its post-money valuation to $157 billion. This funding round, spearheaded by previous investor Thrive Capital, boosts OpenAI's total capital to $17.9 billion, as reported by Crunchbase.

Amazon is transforming its subscription services for Ring video doorbells and cameras with the introduction of Ring Home Premium. This innovative service will feature 24/7 recording and AI-driven video search capabilities, launching on November 5 in the U.S. for an introductory price of $19.99 per month. Additional tiers, Ring Home Standard and Ring Home Basic, will offer a variety of functionalities but will not include the continuous recording or enhanced search features.

Meta is expanding its AI chatbot, Meta AI, to six new countries today: Brazil, the U.K., the Philippines, Bolivia, Guatemala, and Paraguay. This announcement was made by Mark Zuckerberg via his WhatsApp channel. The company plans to gradually introduce Meta AI to even more regions, including the Middle East, eventually making it accessible in 43 countries and supporting over a dozen languages.

Spotify has broadened the reach of its innovative AI Playlist tool to users in the U.S., Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand, following its initial rollout for Premium subscribers in the U.K. and Australia. This beta feature is currently accessible on both Android and iOS devices, empowering users to generate customized playlists based on their written prompts. For example, a user might input "a romantic playlist for date night at home" and receive a tailored selection of tracks to set the perfect ambiance.

An alternative approach to the neural network frameworks powering AI models like OpenAI’s is emerging with increasing prominence. This approach, known as symbolic AI, utilizes task-specific rules, such as rewriting text, to tackle broader challenges effectively.

A group of Democratic senators is calling on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate whether AI tools that summarize online content, such as news articles and recipes, may be engaging in anticompetitive practices. Led by Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), the senators expressed their concerns in a letter, highlighting how these new AI developments are impacting creators and publishers at a vulnerable time.

In late September, Brandon Tseng, co-founder of Shield AI, claimed that weapons in the U.S. would never become fully autonomous, meaning an AI algorithm would ultimately decide to take a life. “Congress doesn’t want that,” he stated, emphasizing a general consensus against such technology.

Likewise, the innovative company behind an app that suggests your next binge-worthy TV show, movie to watch, podcast to stream, or book to read, has launched an entertainment-focused AI companion called Pix. This cutting-edge tool is designed using a blend of Likewise’s customer insights and advanced technology from OpenAI. Pix offers personalized entertainment recommendations and answers queries via text message, email, or through the Pix mobile app. You can even interact with Pix using voice commands on its TV app.

Huawei has unveiled an innovative foundation model tailored specifically for telecommunications companies, dubbed the Telecom Foundation Model. This model is designed to enhance operational efficiency and empower employees through sector-specific copilots and scenario-based agents that facilitate natural language interactions. For instance, it can streamline complex procedures for call center staff and deliver multimodal assessments for various use cases, such as service provisioning.

TikTok has introduced a basic "AI greenscreen" effect, enabling users to create artwork from text descriptions on its app. While simpler than DALL-E, it avoids explicit content and broadens access to AI image generation for over 1 billion users, likely prompting similar features on other platforms.