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Welcome back!
We’re back to our regularly scheduled programming after Monday’s deep dive into AI’s impact on higher education. If you haven’t had a chance to read “AI on campus,” you can find it here.
Now for today’s news.
In today’s Daily Update:
🗞️ DeepMind creates AI that can learn directly from humans
🤖 Alibaba announces Animate Anyone
📸 Musk’s xAI files to raise up to $1 billion
🚨 AI Roundup: Four quick hits
Read time: 2 minutes
TOP STORY
🗞️ DeepMind creates AI that can learn directly from humans
Generated by Adobe Firefly
Google DeepMind just developed an AI agent system that can learn tasks from a human instructor in real time.
The rundown:
DeepMind researchers used a process called cultural transmission to train the AI without using any pre-collected human data.
The AI agent demonstrated the ability to imitate the actions of a human instructor in a simulated environment called GoalCycle3D.
Results show that the agent also recalled observed behaviors well after its initial instruction.
The researchers say this new form of imitative learning enables a more efficient transmission of skills to AI.
The relevance: DeepMind’s research could greatly improve the training of robotics systems. AI robots could learn tasks like lifting and placing boxes by simply watching a human do them first. This would cut costs for AI firms and speed up progress toward automation.
AI TOOL OF THE DAY
🤖 Alibaba announces Animate Anyone
Source: Alibaba Group
Chinese tech giant Alibaba just announced Animate Anyone, a new AI tool that turns still images into videos.
What you should know:
Image-to-video models extract details like facial features, patterns and poses from reference images. They then map those details onto a series of new images to create videos.
Animate Anyone appears to have surpassed previous image-to-video systems like DisCo and DreamPose.
Although the model’s outputs are far from perfect, they are convincing enough that many people won’t bother looking closely because they assume these videos are real.
Who should care: While Animate Anyone is much improved, it’s outputs aren’t convincing enough to threaten a typical social media user with photos of themself online. The model does spell bad news for fashion models and social media influencers, who may soon be competing with AI models for work.
BUSINESS SPOTLIGHT
📸 Musk’s xAI files to raise up to $1 billion
Source: Bret Hartman / TED
Elon Musk’s xAI just filed with the U.S. securities regulator to raise up to $1 billion in an equity offering.
Key points:
The company has already raised $134.7 million in equity financing from a total offering of $1 billion.
xAI wants to “create AI tools that assist humanity in its quest for understanding and knowledge” according to its website.
The company recently launched its Grok chatbot to rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Musk has openly criticized Big Tech’s AI efforts as censorship ridden. The billionaire says xAI will seek to create a “maximum truth-seeking AI.”
My thoughts: xAI has quickly established itself as a legitimate player in the AI market since launching in June. With close ties to X (Twitter) and Tesla, I expect to see xAI make a splash with some highly advanced AI models next year.
MORE TRENDING NEWS
🚨 AI Roundup: Four quick hits
Generated by Adobe Firefly
AI Alliance: IBM, Meta and 50 others create an industrywide AI alliance to share technology.
Smart Shopper: Mastercard launches Shopping Muse, an AI-powered shopping assistant.
Legal Trouble: A lawsuit from Getty Images against Stability AI will go to trial in the U.K.
Avoiding Trouble: Runway and Getty Images announce partnership for a commercially safe AI video engine.
THAT’S ALL FOR TODAY