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For a while, at the height of summer, it seemed as if AI was slowing down. ChatGPT’s user numbers appeared to peak, leading to a spate of articles about “the end of AI hype.” If the last fortnight is anything to go by these were premature, because it seems AI hype was merely on vacation; last week it was Google stealing the headlines, but this week it’s Meta and OpenAI who are taking center stage.
Meta is launching dozens of personality-driven chatbots voiced by celebrities (see AI Roundup below,) but OpenAI seems to be setting its sights on loftier goals. Signs of the firm’s ambition can be seen in their big announcement this week, with the launch of voice chat for ChatGPT on mobile. The service is rolling out to ChatGPT Plus subscribers over the next two weeks, and will be available to all users “soon after.” It’s not the first chatbot app to offer voice - Bing’s been doing it for months - but it’s packing both OpenAI’s excellent voice recognition tech, Whisper, and a selection of five remarkably realistic AI voices to narrate the chatbot’s replies.
This is cool in itself, but it seems to be just the first step in Sam Altman’s plan to make AI not just hands-free, but phone-free. The Financial Times reports that the OpenAI CEO is working with Sir Jony Ive - designer of the iPhone - to develop “the iPhone of artificial intelligence.” Details of what this means in practice are thin on the ground, but observers speculate this will involve some form of screenless, wearable device. Before leaving Apple in 2019, Ive spoke of Apple’s “moral responsibility” to mitigate the “unintended consequences” of screen addiction, and Altman also has form in this area. He’s invested in another wearable AI project founded by ex-Apple staffers, Humane, whose “AI Pin” demo offers a tantalizing glimpse of how AI could end up killing the smartphone for good. And who better to deliver the final blow to the smartphone than its inventor?
Elsewhere, the hype train is delivering sacks of money around Silicon Valley. Amazon has just dropped $4bn of investment at the door of Anthropic, developers of the Claude chatbot. This means you’re likely to be hearing a lot more about Claude in the near future, so don’t miss our comprehensive guide to this excellent - if unusual - dark horse of AI!
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Meta has unveiled their big AI idea - 28 chatbot personalities voiced by celebrities, including Mr Beast as Zach, 'the big brother who will roast you' and Tom Brady as 'wisecracking sports debater' Bru.
A viral TikTok account uses publicly available facial recognition databases to doxx strangers and also seems to love the music of Taylor Swift. 404 Media asks: Is this the end of online privacy?
The CIA is developing its own in-house large language model to accelerate its searches through the ever-growing mountains of public data, a task it says is like “searching for a needle in a needle field.”
Spotify has launched an AI translation service for its most popular podcasts, with shows by stars including Trevor Noah and Bill Simmons being translated while retaining the presenter’s voice.
Family games night may never be the same again following the launch of Mattel’s Pictionary Vs. AI, which the firm describes as “a new, modern way that fans can engage with the brand.”
ChatGPT’s 'Browse with Bing' feature has finally been reinstated for subscribers after OpenAI took it offline to fix its tendency to ignore paywalls. In even better news, it will shortly be available to all users!
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