Artificial intelligence is more a part of our lives than ever before. While some might call it hype and compare it to NFTs or 3D TVs, generative AI is causing a sea change in nearly every part of the technology industry. OpenAI’s ChatGPT is still the best-known AI chatbot around, but with Google pushing Gemini, Microsoft building Copilot, and Apple adding its Intelligence to Siri, AI is probably going to be in the spotlight for a very long time. At The Verge, we’re exploring what might be possible with AI — and a lot of the bad stuff AI does, too.
‘They deserve everything they’re getting.’ (Boos.)
Madry had been one of the company’s top safety executives (“head of preparedness”) before he was reassigned to a role focused on AI reasoning last summer. On Thursday, he announced he’s leaving OpenAI to work on something new, centered on AI’s impact on the economy.
[X (formerly Twitter)]
The new Atlas tool lets users “build a fully interactive world,” and to encourage people to use it, Hidden Door will pay the creators of worlds that meet its guidelines — 30 percent of the platform’s subscription revenue will go to creators.
I tried Hidden Door last year, if you want to read more about it.
[Hidden Door]
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I don’t hate Polyend’s Endless, but I’m not putting it on my pedalboard.
Amazon launched AI-generated audiobooks last year, and now Spotify is launching its own AI audiobook narration feature, Audiobook Creation Tools. Starting in June, self-published authors will be able to use the beta feature to create audio versions of their books using AI voices from ElevenLabs.
We sent Liz Lopatto to Musk v. Altman and all we got was this episode of Decoder
CapCut announced on X that users will “soon” be able to edit images and videos directly within the Gemini app using CapCut’s editing capabilities.
“As creative workflows become more connected and seamless, we believe the future of creation will be more conversational, intuitive, and intelligently integrated across tools and experiences.”
Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary is one of the investors backing the Stratos Project, a colossal data center in Utah. It sounds like he has a few fans in the comments section.
Electric Mayhem:
Kevin O’Leary is the Donald Trump of Mark Cubans.
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The rocket company says it’s ‘highly dependent’ on Musk’s leadership. And that his other companies are possible competitors.
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis made a bold claim at this year’s I/O keynote. Not so fast!
The company reported record overall revenue of $81.6 billion and record data center revenue of $75.2 billion, driven by continued demand for its chips in AI data centers.
Nvidia says its next-generation Vera Rubin AI chip is “on track for the second half of this year, starting in Q3,” but noted that PC sales are down due to the RAM shortage and price hikes.
[NVIDIA Newsroom]
A Brooklyn courthouse unsealed criminal complaints against two men who allegedly posted “thousands” of nonconsensual intimate AI deepfakes, according to the US Attorney’s Office. The Take It Down Act’s criminal prohibitions have been in place for a year, but platforms’ obligation to remove such deepfakes just came into force yesterday.
[U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of New York]
According to a memo seen by Reuters, Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi said that the cuts will help the company focus on bets like adding AI into its services. The cuts represent about 17 percent of Intuit’s staff.
I’m ashamed to say I did poorly — only three out of 10 correct — but I’m glad I took it, it’s an interesting quiz. Heads up that it might be behind a paywall, though.
Update: Noted the potential paywall.
[The Wall Street Journal]
AI data center projects are continuing to pop up across the US, with frequent opposition from locals concerned about their impact. Here are a few recent articles about the projects:
Update: Added NYT article about NextEra’s proposed deal to acquire Dominion Energy.
Joe Rogan accidentally asked a hard question! He noted that Andreessen has said that the people who are running AI haven’t done a good job explaining AI’s benefits. He asks Andreessen to do it. Andreessen’s pitch appears to be “thinking is too hard.” Well, increasingly, I do believe thinking is too hard… for Andreessen. The rest of us — you know, normal people — are thinking just fine.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak was a commencement speaker for Grand Valley State University a few weeks ago, and managed to mention AI without being booed or completely ruining the event.
From Recreate Games, which was working on the contest for its multiplayer party game Party Animals:
Even though our original intention was to encourage more diverse forms of creative expression and lower the barrier to entry, allowing more players who love Party Animals to participate, we mistakenly tied “lowering the barrier” together with “using AI.” In doing so, we overlooked the potential offense and harm that the ongoing debate surrounding AI-generated content could cause to our players and the creator community.
The new agent is initially available in Figma Design, and can be used to help with generated or editing design projects, and “automate busywork,” according to Figma’s announcement. This is the latest creative company to launch an AI assistant, following Canva and several examples from Adobe.
The platform began limiting the visibility of content deemed “generic or repetitive” earlier this year, and now it’s expanding this system to “low-effort” comments that may be AI-generated. That includes comments posted across LinkedIn using automation tools with “little or no human involvement,” as well as ones that “restate the original post without sharing anything new.”
[LinkedIn]
It’s already available on iOS, and coming to Android soon. Google is also adding granular editing tools for changing portions of an AI-generated song, tweaking beat drops, or rewriting lyrics. It’s also adding the ability to generate “covers” and music videos, so you can countrify that punk song you prompted.
Google has been working on agentic AI for years. Building on the viral success of OpenClaw could finally tip the scales.
Kevin O’Leary wants to cover 40,000 acres. Residents say, ‘Not in my backyard.’
Yesterday Emma Roth wrote that Google’s pitch for AI at I/O demands both your trust and your personal data. Going by the comment section, that’s a trade many of you are no longer willing to make.
monterxz:
Google lost the first long ago and will never get any more of the second out of me.
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The app, which you can pre-register for on Google Play, will let you use AI and prompts to starting building other apps.
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Despite its claim of explaining how AI tech threatens to impose “potentially catastrophic robotic certainty” on the concept of the truth, the NYT points out that this book contains multiple quotes made up by AI.
Author Steven Rosenbaum (“The Truth Whisperer”) says he takes “full responsibility” after using Claude and ChatGPT for research, writing, and editing, but claims: “These AI errors do not, in fact, diminish the larger questions that the book raises.”
[New York Times]
