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Microsoft reveals Macbook rival
Spotlight: Musk's xAI wants to make Grok multimodal
Jack Shields
May 22, 2024
Welcome back!
Microsoft is hoping that a new family of Windows PCs will overshadow news of the Apple-OpenAI partnership. Elon Musk’s AI startup is also making some noise for the first time in a while. Let’s get straight to it.
In today’s Daily Update:
🗞️ Microsoft takes aim at Apple with new AI-focused PCs
🤖 Adobe adds new AI-powered features to Lightroom
📸 Musk’s xAI wants to make Grok multimodal
🚨 AI Roundup: Four quick hits
Read time: 2 minutes
WATCH: A deeper dive into the Apple-OpenAI partnership
TOP STORY
🗞️ Microsoft takes aim at Apple with new AI-focused PCs
Source: Microsoft
Microsoft just revealed its Copilot+ family of PCs designed for AI applications, which it claims are the most intelligent Windows PCs ever built.
The rundown:
This series of Surface Laptops features powerful Qualcomm chips that can run advanced AI models without an internet connection.
The PCs are 58% faster than industry-leading Macbook Airs, and offer “all-day battery life” with a single charge.
A new “Recall” feature enables the devices to remember everything that a user sees on their screen. This allows users to search through a log of previous actions on their laptop.
Copilot+ PCs also tout real-time audio translation in over 40 languages, AI image generation and suggested replies to incoming messages.
Why it matters: Microsoft is pivoting to AI-first devices in an effort to bring personal AI assistants to all Surface users. At a broader level, Apple’s proprietary M-series chips have dominated the market in terms of power and efficiency, so this is also a play to regain market share in the PC sector.
AI TOOL OF THE DAY
🤖 Adobe adds new AI-powered features to Lightroom
Adobe is adding new “Generative Remove” and “Lens Blur” features to its Lightroom photo editing software.
What’s new:
Generative Remove lets users remove unwanted objects in a single click.
The tool “intelligently matches” removed areas with “pixel-perfect generations” for high-quality results.
Lens Blur similarly allows users to add aesthetic blur effects to photos in a single click.
Both tools are generally available to all Lightroom users.
Why it matters: Adobe’s AI updates often fly under the radar, but its suite of tools is building an impressive variety of AI-powered features. Definitely recommend checking out Adobe Firefly if you haven’t had the chance yet.
BUSINESS SPOTLIGHT
📸 Musk’s xAI wants to make Grok multimodal
“Grok” by DALL-E 3
xAI is reportedly making progress toward adding multimodal capabilities to its Grok chatbot.
The details:
Public developer documents suggest that Grok will soon be able to accept images as inputs and respond in text.
The documents do not say anything about video or audio inputs.
Musk’s startup’s most recent update was Grok 1.5 in March.
xAI claims that Grok 1.5 is catching up to GPT-4 across benchmark tests.
The big picture: xAI’s flagship model is still far behind industry-leading models by OpenAI and Google. This update could be helpful to paid X users who have access to the chatbot, but likely won’t have much significance at a broader level.
MORE TRENDING NEWS
🚨 AI Roundup: Four quick hits
DALL-E 3
Scarlett Johansson criticizes OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman over ChatGPT’s “Sky” voice that resembled her’s.
Wisconsin man arrested for creating AI-generated child sexual abuse material.
Microsoft introduces Copilot for teams and announces partnership with Khan Academy.
China plans to open “AI academies” to attract global talent.
THAT’S ALL FOR TODAY