AI News & Launches

The FTC warns AI companies against surreptitiously changing their terms of service, which could be considered unfair or deceptive. The change could lead to using user data in ways that breach earlier privacy commitments. Unlawful conduct has historical precedence, and such practices could lead to enforcement actions.

The Pythagora Blog's recent post shares experiences from 6 months of GPT Pilot development, an AI tool for automating coding. The team's revised their approach on AI capabilities, refining the AI developer's framework. They discussed the importance of clear initial app descriptions, the non-linear nature of coding, and efficient prompt managing. Several apps have been demonstrated, showcasing GPT Pilot's capabilities.

Rachel Thomas addresses misconceptions about AI's impact on medicine, highlighting issues with the current healthcare system and the potential of AI to exacerbate inequalities. Urging caution against overoptimism, Thomas points out how AI often benefits the privileged and lacks patient perspectives in healthcare decisions.

The rapid growth of AI technology, specifically generative AI, is in a race against the impacts of climate change. Microsoft, in trying to keep up with the demand for AI like ChatGPT, has been building data centers in areas like Goodyear, Arizona, at an astonishing rate, investing more than $10 billion each quarter on cloud-computing capacity. Despite ambitious plans to be carbon-negative and water-positive, the company's expansion plans and the environmental toll of data centers are in tension, as they may consume up to 56 million gallons of water yearly, equal to the usage of hundreds of families.

CNET has been placed on Wikipedia's blacklist for unreliable sources due to its use of AI-generated content and a perceived decline in editorial standards after acquisition by Red Ventures. This situation started in late 2022 with the revelation of AI-generated articles on CNET, which are considered inaccurate and poorly written.

AI startups face unique challenges that deviate from past technology revolutions, such as mobile and the Internet. Traditional startup strategies may not apply as incumbents are actively investing in AI, frequently innovating, and possess significant data advantages. The article emphasizes that startups must adopt new strategies to succeed in the AI landscape.

AI chatbots showed improved performance in solving math problems when given prompts suggesting a 'Star Trek' association, as reported by a VMware research study. This counterintuitive finding highlights AI's mysterious mechanisms and the influence of human-like encouragement.

Rui Carmo shares updates on testing AI and LLM on Rockchip RK3588 through the Mixtile Blade 3 SBC equipped with 32GB RAM. There's progress with Mali GPU acceleration for LLMs, highlighting interest in small, edge AI models suitable for ARM chips. Challenges with NPU limitations and firmware on Armbian are mentioned, along with plans to try both CPU and GPU inference on a similar 32GB RAM board.

Laurie Anderson discusses becoming increasingly engrossed with an AI text generator based on her partner Lou Reed, experimenting with his style of conversation and lyrics. She unveils her experience with AI in art at Adelaide festival, exploring the line between technology and personal legacy through innovative AI dialogue models and her own artistic works.

Calorieasy is an innovative calorie tracking app powered by AI to simplify staying fit. By simply taking a picture of your food, the app provides a detailed calorie count, supports swift and precise food logging, and generates a nutritional breakdown. It promotes a healthy lifestyle with minimal effort and offers a one-time payment lifetime access option.

Job Buddy Tech is an innovative platform designed to match job seekers with their ideal careers using advanced technology and personalized recommendations. The platform streamlines the job search process and provides valuable resources for both employers and candidates.

Creator Contacts offers a comprehensive TikTok influencer database, with over 604,307 AI-vetted influencers for startups and businesses. It allows users to connect with micro influencers at a cost of only $0.0004 per contact, providing a DIY UGC agency solution for high ROI influencer marketing. Lifetime access to the database is available for a one-time fee.

Researchers have demonstrated a new cyberattack vector using generative AI worms—named Morris II—that can autonomously spread from one system to another, potentially stealing data or deploying malware, challenging security measures of systems like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini.

An Ask HN thread raises a discussion about whether it's normal for GPT-based service Mistral to self-identify as a 'he' and to mention it is a GPT-3.5 model. The conversation touches on the potential training data for Mistral, as well as gendering AI and language model pronouns, including the implications for non-native English speakers and language differences.

Transistor offers an AI Transcription feature for podcasts, providing accurate text from audio, editing tools, and export options. They streamline podcasting workflow with features like automated speaker detection, linked timestamps, and various export formats. They serve a wide podcasting community, including recognized brands and teams.

Wordvice AI Detector is a tool that identifies AI-written content to help maintain the integrity of web content and academic papers. It can detect text produced by AI such as ChatGPT, and it supports multiple languages. Key features include high speed, accuracy, and multi-model coverage.

REOK is a professional services provider specializing in software development and technology consulting. They offer a range of services including custom software development, IT consulting, and business solutions tailored to clients' needs.

Thinkstack.ai offers a custom AI chatbot platform that maximizes organizational efficiency without requiring coding or AI expertise. Its core features are free forever, with capabilities like GPT4, lead collection, and chatbot analytics.

The FOSDEM 2024 event spotlighted the evolution of open-source AI with discussions around ethical licensing, the need for a definitive open-source AI definition, and the importance of open datasets, especially for non-English languages. OSI is working on a comprehensive definition while organizations strive to create inclusive LLMs for European languages.

AI developer platform Hugging Face hosted code that installed backdoors and malware on user devices. Security firm JFrog identified around 100 submissions that performed hidden actions, including 10 that were truly malicious. One model opened a reverse shell, granting full control of the user's device to a remote party.

The Hacker News community discusses AI assistants for Linux, focusing on the availability of bundled AI aids in popular distros like Debian and Arch. There's no major integration of such tools in desktop environments, with current options like ollama and llamafiles being third-party and not bundled with distros. Microsoft's Copilot is mentioned as a non-Linux comparative example. Users suggest potential integration methods while acknowledging the current limitations and resource intensiveness of LLMs (Large Language Models).

Stack Overflow launched an API requiring AI models trained on its content to attribute sources back to its posts. The Overflow API will help developers build more efficient code-generation models, offering Google's Gemini the ability to reference content during code generation. Google has partnered with Stack Overflow to integrate data into its cloud storage console, enhancing the capabilities of Gemini AI. Developers may now directly engage with Stack Overflow data within Google Cloud Console.

Romo AI offers a comprehensive suite of AI-powered tools for text, image, and code generation, designed to enhance productivity for writers, developers, and creatives. It features multilingual support, secure payment options, and versatile dashboards for tracking user insights.

Carvis AI Editor is an advanced online tool designed for image enhancement, specifically targeting photos of vehicles. It features cutting-edge AI technology that can automatically detect the vehicle in an image and apply various filters and corrections.

LTX Studio is a cutting-edge platform presented by Lightricks, revolutionizing video production through AI-driven storytelling. It enables transformation of ideas into AI-generated videos, providing tools from ideation to final edits, maintaining character consistency, and offering automatic video edits with SFX and voiceovers.

Writesonic is an AI-powered article writer that uses GPT-4-32K to generate factual, SEO-optimized content tailored to brand voices in minutes. It's trusted by marketing teams worldwide and produces plagiarism-free articles, with capabilities in multiple languages and functionalities like blog idea generation.

PersonaChat is designed to revolutionize product research by harnessing the power of AI. It offers unique features such as AI-generated personas, surveys, interviews, journey maps, and more to streamline the UX/UI design process. With options for both experienced and novice designers, it provides comprehensive support to optimize workflows, enhance business decisions, and foster creativity.

Guardian investigation uncovers individuals linked to ClothOff, a deepfake app used to create nonconsensual pornography, affecting underage girls globally. The app's operatives, using AI-generated identities, have concealed their real personas, with ties tracing back to Eastern Europe.

Introducing Struct: a revolutionary chat platform utilizing threads, feeds, and AI to enhance productivity. Struct Chat overhauls traditional chat experiences, aiming to streamline communication and eliminate distractions prevalent in other chat platforms, promising a 2x boost in productivity.

Wikipedia has reduced CNET's reliability rating due to the tech website's use of AI-generated articles, which has sparked widespread debate regarding the trustworthiness and editorial standards of AI-generated content. This comes after CNET, known for tech news, debuted AI-authored articles in 2022, leading to concerns over accuracy and plagiarism.

Anguilla, a small Caribbean island, is poised to generate up to $30 million from its '.ai' domain sales amid the AI boom, constituting around 10% of its GDP. The '.ai' domain, once specific to Anguilla, has become highly sought after for AI-focused tech companies, catapulting the tiny British territory to an unexpected financial windfall.

Researchers from JFrog discovered 100 instances of malicious AI/ML models on Hugging Face, a platform for sharing machine learning models. Some models contained code that could open backdoors on users' machines. Hugging Face's security measures failed to detect these models.

Google's Genie is a new AI developed by Google DeepMind capable of creating playable 2D platformer video game worlds from images and text prompts. Trained on over 200,000 hours of 2D platformers, Genie demonstrates an understanding of game physics and could potentially aid robotics. Currently not public, Genie's potential impacts on game development and marketplaces remain a topic for future consideration.

Chatbot Studio by YourGPT AI enables users to design dynamic conversation flows for chatbots. It offers pre-built templates, intent-based flows, real-time testing, and a wide range of tools and features to enhance chatbot capabilities.

LMNR is an all-in-one platform offering production-grade AI applications, featuring an extremely fast Rust infrastructure for building, deploying, and monitoring AI workflows.

Arcads.ai offers an innovative AI-powered tool to create emotionally engaging video ads instantly from text. With an array of AI actors and the ability to produce bulk variations, it's designed for digital marketers looking to streamline video production, save costs, and increase efficiency.

Hetzner is revising its billing structure starting March 2024 with changes to invoices, introducing hourly and consumption-based billing similar to Cloud products. This update aims for user-friendly product billing. Transitions include pro-rata March billing, retro-active April invoicing for March use, with a full transition by May. Invoices will reflect actual hours used for products, and customers can expect a shift in the invoicing day monthly to improve customer support.

AgentX provides a user-friendly platform to build custom AI chatbots for businesses, integrating with popular services like Slack, WhatsApp, and Shopify. It offers a no-code solution with early access available, aiming to deploy ChatGPT in under 5 minutes without the need for credit card information during sign-up.

Monic.ai is an all-in-one AI-powered study space designed to enhance learning by offering tools to create quizzes, flashcards, and summaries. With a user base of over 100,000 students globally, it provides features like chat with files, AI-tutor, and smart practice modes, all engineered to make study sessions more effective.

Blobr is an AI business assistant designed to help users make informed decisions by consolidating and reconciling data from various SaaS tools. It offers actionable insights, with an emphasis on ease of integration and understanding the data origin.