Google tests AI life coach

Welcome back to another Daily Update — Here’s what’s on deck today:

🗞️ The Latest in AI: Google tests an AI life coach

🤖 AI Tool of the Day: Tweetify It — Turn long-form content into engaging social media posts

📸 Business Spotlight: OpenAI acquires AI design studio Global Illumination

🚨 AI Roundup: Four quick hits

Read time: 2 minutes

🗞️ The Latest in AI: Google tests an AI life coach

Earlier this year Google merged its DeepMind research lab with Brain, an artificial intelligence team it started in Silicon Valley. Now, the combined groups are testing ambitious tools that could turn generative AI into a personal life coach.

What you need to know:

• Google DeepMind has been working with generative AI to perform at least 21 different types of personal and professional tasks.

• Scale AI, a contractor working with Google DeepMind, is testing an AI assistant’s ability to answer intimate questions about challenges in people’s lives.

• The project demonstrates Google’s willingness to trust AI systems with sensitive tasks.

• In December, the company’s AI safety experts warned of the dangers of people becoming too emotionally attached to chatbots.

• The AI life coach can reportedly give users life advice, teach new skills, create financial budgets and outline meal and workout plans.

Why it matters: This is yet another application of AI that no one saw coming. Replacing human mentors with AI is a scary prospect. Millions of people have already turned to AI for companionship and romance. How will these developments affect our interpersonal relationships with real people? More importantly, can we really trust AI with sensitive information about our lives?

Click here to learn more.

🤖 AI Tool of the Day: Tweetify It — Turn long-form content into engaging social media posts

tweetify (verb): to transform long-form content, such as text, blog posts or websites, into personalized and engaging short social media posts for Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. 

Tweetify It manages to give users advanced personalization options while maintaining a user-friendly interface. You can customize the tone, length and language of your posts and even decide if the platform’s AI should use emojis.

Advanced settings include using mentions, hashtags, and including or excluding certain topics. Once your preferences are set, simply paste your long-form text or URL and you’re ready to go.

The examples below are posts about the news story you read above.

Click here to try Tweetify It. All new users are given 100 free credits.

📸 Business Spotlight: OpenAI acquires AI design studio Global Illumination

OpenAI has acquired Global Illumination for an undisclosed price. This is the company’s first public acquisition in its seven-year history.

Key Points:

• Global Illumination is a New York-based startup leveraging AI to build creative tools, infrastructure and digital experiences.

• The company’s most recent creation is Biomes, an open source sandbox MMORPG built for the web (Imagine a Minecraft clone hosted on the web).

• OpenAI: “The entire team has joined OpenAI to work on our core products including ChatGPT.”

Why it matters: OpenAI needs a commercial win. ChatGPT achieved global fame but reportedly costs the company ~$700k per day. Despite being backed by billions in venture capital, experts think that OpenAI could go bankrupt by the end of 2024. CEO Sam Altman told investors that the company intends to boost revenue to $1 billion next year and this acquisition could be a step in the right direction.

Click here to learn more.

🚨 AI Roundup: Four quick hits

• New rules: The Associated Press sets AI guidelines for journalists.

• The good side of AI: A stroke survivor is learning how to walk independently again thanks to high-tech trousers powered by AI.

• Ambitions overseas: Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates buy thousands of Nvidia GPUs for $40,000 each to power AI ambitions.

• Built-in AI: Opera’s web browser for iOS is getting an AI assistant, free for all users.

Have questions or thoughts on today’s newsletter? Reply to this email and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks for reading The Daily Update!

Jack

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