A Snapshot and Summary of What’s Happening to Enable the Safe and Effective Use of AI
Welcome to the latest installment of the Wovenware Monthly AI Index, where we’ve curated the most important news stories and issues shaping the AI-driven world. In this month’s edition, learn about some of the newest players and partnerships formed to drive the next wave of innovation, as well as the controversy over an OpenAI voice assistant’s likeness to Scarlet Johansson’s voice – decide for yourself, a coincidence or the real deal?
Happy reading!
Listen to the summary now: This audio was generated with AI
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENTS
More GenAI Players Take to the Field
One more French AI startup has burst onto the generative AI scene. The company is simply named H (previously known as Holistic AI). H has raised $220 million in a seed round. Many of the company’s cofounders hail from Google’s DeepMind. The company is developing AI agents that can perform tasks that are traditionally performed by human workers.
More Partnerships Take Hold
Hitachi and Google Cloud formed a partnership to deliver greater AI innovation to enterprises. Hitachi will form a new business unit focused on helping businesses solve industry challenges with Gemini models, Vertex AI, and other cloud technologies and it will also adopt Google Cloud’s AI to enhance its own products and services.
OpenAI partnered with consulting firm, PwC so that it can resell ChatGPT to other businesses. With this deal, PwC becomes the first reseller and largest user of OpenAI’s solutions.
What’s Old is New Again with Vector Databases
A big challenge for those working with AI is using private data to train models, yet a technology that has been around for a while now is helping to solve the challenge – it’s called vector databases. Vector is helping companies link their private data with large-language models to perform data analysis, summarization and other tasks on their own data. Without them, AI models are limited to what they learn from public online data. We can expect the market for Vector databases to heat up as both start-ups and big tech vendors start incorporating them into their offerings.
Can AI Improve the iPhone?
Although AI already has been playing a role in the iPhone, with its Live Text, Siri and autocorrect, new GenAI models could bring it to a whole new level. As it works to keep pace with AI-driven smartphones from Samsung and others, Apple is expected to partner with OpenAI and launch new AI tools at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference later this month.
U.S. AND EU REGULATIONS
The U.S. Senate’s AI Working Group, recommended that the federal government eventually spend $32B annually to guide the safe development of AI, while also allowing the U.S. to stay ahead of China. The bipartisan group’s AI roadmap, suggests initiatives ranging from assisting design and manufacturing of high-end AI chips, to a series of “AI Grand Challenge” programs to encourage innovation.
Meanwhile in Europe, the EU gave the final go-ahead for its AI act. The law will direct how companies in Europe use AI for everything from healthcare decisions to policing. It imposes blanket bans on using the technology in ways deemed “unacceptable,” such as for social scoring. This final signing of the act has been concerning to many tech vendors, such as Amazon and Meta, who are being vocal about the fact that such strict laws may stifle innovation.
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Is it “Her” or is it AI?
Scarlett Johansson is demanding answers from OpenAI after hearing an AI personal assistant’s voice that sounds just like her own. The assistant is called “Sky” and sounds much like the character in the movie “Her,” which Johansson starred in as a female voice in a computer’s operating system. Sam Altman of OpenAI apparently did ask Johansson if they could use her voice for Sky a while ago, but she declined.
Instagram Takes the Heat From Artists
AI art is seen as anything but true art from real-live artists and now their anger is reaching a whole new level, since Meta confirmed that it trains its AI image generator on public Instagram images. Artists are saying that they were unaware of the use and that Meta did not secure consent. Many artists are publishing posts and stories on Instagram to declare ownership of the copyright of their work and to say that they do not consent to its use to train AI.
That’s it for this month’s Wovenware Monthly AI Index. We hope you gained new AI insights to mull over during the beautiful month of June.
Please share your questions, concerns and opinions about the AI-driven era. We’d love to hear from you. Please reach out to lsavage@wovenware.com.