Creators Will Be “Supercharged” by Generative AI

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We're excited to bring you the latest updates from the AI sector. With companies like NVIDIA leading the charge, AI is poised to supercharge the future of content creation, bringing about a revolutionary shift in various industries. In addition, SoftBank's strategic shift towards AI indicates a growing confidence in the potential of this technology. While advancements bring about exciting opportunities, they also raise critical questions about the future, such as the implications of AI in warfare. We delve into these issues and more in our selection of this month's most impactful stories. As always, we're keen to highlight innovative AI applications, such as Otter's new meeting-oriented AI chatbot, and Blendification's strategic planning software powered by OpenAI's GPT-4. Lastly, we present venture capital updates, including the successful funding rounds of AI startups ElevenLabs and FLUX. As we navigate the ever-evolving AI landscape, we thank you for joining us on this journey of exploration and discovery.

Sliced into tiny little pieces for you:

• 🦸🏽Creators Will Be “Supercharged” by Generative AI

• ⚙️ What’s the H100, the Chip Driving Generative AI?

• 🦾 SoftBank to shift to 'offence mode' as AI booms

• 📦 AI is a Pandora’s box that will completely reshape the rules of war

🦸🏽 Creators Will Be “Supercharged” by Generative AI

Generative AI, as promoted by NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang at the Cannes Lions Festival, is set to revolutionize content creation across various industries and modalities, including text, images, 3D, and videos. This technology could amplify the creative process, enabling content generation at scale while maintaining alignment with the creator's values and brand tone. NVIDIA, in collaboration with WPP, is developing a content engine powered by generative AI and the NVIDIA Omniverse platform, which enables the creation of photorealistic visuals and simulations. The generative AI models allow for rapid production of text and visuals that can be used in advertising, marketing, and film, potentially generating billions of unique ads. Huang emphasized the importance of responsible AI development, which includes watermarking AI-generated assets and detecting modifications or counterfeits to ensure brand integrity. As part of this innovation, WPP's creative professionals will use Omniverse Cloud to build digital twins of products, which can be combined with AI-generated objects and digital environments to create virtual marketing sets.

⚙️ What’s the H100, the Chip Driving Generative AI?

Nvidia's H100, launched at GTC 2022, is a revolutionary data center product based on the Hopper architecture, providing up to 9x faster AI training and 30x faster AI inference than its predecessor, the A100. Equipped with more Tensor and CUDA cores, along with a substantial 50MB of Level 2 cache and 80GB of HBM3 memory, it also supports Confidential Computing, protecting data in use. The H100 is central to the DGX H100 servers, enabling supercomputer-class performance, and can be interconnected via NVLink, now the default for all future Nvidia chips. Despite its high power consumption and heat production, data centers capable of handling the H100 can be identified via the 'DGX-Ready' badge.

🦾 SoftBank to shift to 'offence mode' as AI booms

SoftBank Group's CEO Masayoshi Son announced on June 21, 2023, that the tech conglomerate is shifting from a defensive stance to "offence mode" in response to rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI). This announcement follows a period of reduced investment activity due to heavy losses in its Vision Fund arm, which led to a net loss of 970 billion yen ($6.85 billion) for the fiscal year ending March 31. To offset these losses, SoftBank sold its stake in Alibaba and increased its liquid assets to 5.1 trillion yen. Son has also been actively involved in the creation of new inventions through the company's chip designer Arm, with plans to list Arm on Nasdaq later this year. While there are debates about Son's ability to select successful investments, especially after high-profile failures like WeWork, Son remains optimistic, stating that even a few successful companies out of a hundred can yield significant returns. In a notable interaction, Son revealed he asked OpenAI's AI-powered chatbot, ChatGPT, to write new adventures for the classic manga series Astro Boy, and he expressed his satisfaction with the results.

📦 AI is a Pandora’s box that will completely reshape the rules of war

The article discusses the potential impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on warfare and society, arguing that the technology is advancing so rapidly it could reshape the rules of war and outpace the ability of governments to regulate it. AI has the capacity to remove the "fog of war" by providing instant data on enemy strengths, weaknesses, and intentions, allowing for more efficient decision-making and command and control. However, this could also lead to disinformation being propagated more efficiently across the internet, potentially causing widespread confusion and discord. Despite the increasing threats posed by AI and other factors, the article notes that defense budgets have not increased in response. The author calls for a new ministerial post for artificial intelligence and stresses the urgent need for regulation, comparing the situation to the one faced after the development of nuclear power during the Second World War. The author acknowledges that AI could be a force for good, but cautions that like social media, its potential for harm must be carefully managed.

⚒️ AI tools updates

Otter is introducing a meeting-oriented AI chatbot

Otter, the automatic transcription service, is introducing a new AI-powered chatbot designed to enhance meeting collaboration. The chatbot, known as Otter AI Chat, allows participants to ask questions both during and post-meeting and collaboratively address action points. Users who are late to meetings can catch up by asking, "What did I miss?" and the chatbot will provide contextual answers based on the meeting's discussion. Unlike other bots, such as ChatGPT, Otter's bot can respond to multiple users simultaneously. The company is currently transcribing over 1 million spoken words per minute, although it's unclear if this data is used to train the Otter AI Chat. The AI chat feature will be rolled out to all users soon, with the company ensuring that AI chat data will not be shared with third parties. This follows the company's February launch of the OtterPilot bot, which automatically emails meeting summaries to participants and adds images of key slides to meeting notes and transcriptions. The introduction of the Otter AI Chat is part of the company's ongoing efforts to add an intelligence layer to its AI-powered note-taking feature, allowing users to ask more complex questions. This development reflects a wider trend in meeting-related tools, which are increasingly leveraging Large Language Models to provide AI-generated meeting notes and summaries and using chatbots to offer insights from meeting data.

First AI-Powered Strategic Planning Software Unveiled by Blendification

Blendification, a leader in AI-powered strategic planning solutions, has launched the first AI strategic planning software platform which integrates artificial intelligence leveraging GPT-4, an advanced AI language model developed by OpenAI. The software is designed to streamline, automate, and enhance participation in the strategic planning process, resulting in efficient strategic planning that saves time and money, while boosting employee engagement and company outcomes. The software facilitates employee interviews, reinforces data capture, generates strategic focus, and supports strategy execution. CEO Dan Bruder highlights that this AI-powered planning can significantly reduce the time and money spent on strategy development while including more employees. Blendification's software, which allows for unparalleled information synthesis, analysis, and insights, represents a significant leap forward in strategic planning and business leadership technology.

💵 Venture Capital updates

ElevenLabs Launches New Generative Voice AI Products and Announces $19m Series A Round Led by a16z

ElevenLabs, a voice technology research company established in 2022, has raised $19 million in a Series A funding round led by Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, and Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from various strategic angel investors and partners. The company, which has over 1 million registered users, specializes in developing audio AI models that can convert any text into speech using synthetic or cloned voices, or entirely new artificial voices. The funds will be used to continue their cutting-edge voice AI research and launch additional products for specific market verticals such as publishing, gaming, entertainment, and conversational applications. Recent product developments include the "Projects" feature, which allows content creators to have unprecedented control over their AI-generated audio content, with the aim of providing a Google Docs-like simplicity to audio creation. Furthermore, the company unveiled its AI Speech Classifier, a tool that allows users to determine whether an audio clip contains AI-generated audio from ElevenLabs. Future developments include an AI dubbing tool set to be released later this year.

Japanese Startup FLUX Raises $32M Series B for No-code AI Platform

Japanese startup FLUX Inc., a leading AI platform developer, has successfully raised $32 million in a Series B funding round. This funding was led by DNX Ventures and included contributions from Archetype Ventures, Japan Co-Investment, Aozora Corporate Investments, Salesforce Ventures, Sony Innovation Fund, SMBC Nikko Securities, and NTT Docomo Ventures. This takes FLUX's total funds raised to approximately $40 million. The funds will be used to accelerate the development of FLUX AI, a no-code AI platform. FLUX AI enables businesses to utilize AI technologies such as predictive analytics, natural language processing, and large language models without the need for any prior coding skills or knowledge.

🫡 Meme of the day

⭐ Generative AI image of the day

Before you go, check out Dragon Flat by Tsuruta Architects, this flat features AI-generated engravings 🐉