Microsoft has a new AI venture in development – this time in
partnership with French AI startup Mistral. It’s a multiyear partnership worth
almost $2.1 billion, where Microsoft is reported to be owning a minor stake in
the company.
As a result of the collaborative efforts between both the companies, Mistral will be offering development and deployment of its open and commercial language models to users of Microsoft’s AI platform Azure.
HMD - Nokia’s parent company, is collaborating with Mattel
to launch a Barbie-branded flip phone coming July. There is no information
about the device’s pricing and features as of yet, but what is certain is that
it is going to be the iconic flip phone from the old days, and not a smartphone.
This collaboration is part of HMD’s new project that aims to move away from selling its products under the brand name Nokia, and selling them under its own name instead. As part of this new venture, HMD plans to create multiple partnerships with other companies, and Mattel happens to be the first one.
Google is expanding its existing partnership with Reddit to acquire
AI training data from the company that will help it adopt better ways to train AI
models.
More specifically, as a result of the partnership, Google will be able to access Reddit’s data API that will bring its users real-time content from Reddit’s platform. This will facilitate users of Google’s products in participating in Reddit communities and conversations. In turn, Reddit will have access to Google’s AI-powered service ‘Vertex AI,’ which will help the company enhance its search capabilities.
WhatsApp has been working on new text formatting options
that it has just launched to all its users on Android, iOS, Web, and Mac.
Until now, the formatting options that have been available to WhatsApp users are bold, italic, strikethrough, and monospace. In addition to these, the four newly added ones include bulleted and numbered lists, block quotes, and inline code. These are meant to facilitate improved communication among users by enabling them to organize and emphasize specific information.
Samsung has expanded support for its range of audio
technologies Auracast, 360 Audio, and Auto Switch. While these technologies have
been accessible on Samsung’s devices, the blog post explains the extent to which
they will be supported across the lineup. According to Samsung, the updates
will begin to be introduced starting with the Galaxy Buds 2 and Buds FE from
the end of February, and then to the Buds 2 Pro.
Auracast, an industry-wide and fairly new Bluetooth technology, allows a device to broadcast an audio stream to an unlimited number of endpoints like speakers and headphones. Auracast was first launched to Samsung’s Galaxy Buds 2 Pro earbuds and its latest high-end TVs last year, following the Galaxy S24 series in January.
A report from Bloomberg states that Apple has advanced the
internal testing of new generative AI integrations for its Xcode programming
software, and will be making them available to third-party developers this
year.
Additionally, Apple is reported to be exploring generative
AI in consumer-facing products; such as automatic playlists in Apple Music,
slideshows in Keynote, and AI chatbot / search features for Spotlight search.
Apple’s revamped AI-powered code completion tool is similar to Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot, according to Bloomberg’s report. It applies a large language model (LLM) to predict and complete code strings, as well as generate code to test apps.
OpenAI is launching a new text-to-video AI model called ‘Sora,’
that is designed to produce photorealistic videos from text-based descriptions.
Recently, AI video generating models have started to assert
their presence in the market. We’ve got companies like Runway and Pika that
have developed their own text-to-video models. There is also Google’s Lumiere
figures that are one of OpenAI’s leading competitors.
According to OpenAI, Sora’s capabilities allow it to judge how objects exist in the physical world, as well as some complex phenomena like emotions. As a result, it can create complex scenes with multiple characters, specific types of motion, and accurate details of the subject and background.
Ahead of the 2024 elections across Europe, TikTok has announced the addition of a local language Election Centre in its app that is dedicated to providing people with factual local voting information for all 27 individual EU Member States.
The social media company has taken into consideration the substantial number of people across Europe that visit its platform - more than 134m of them, many of whom are also going to be casting their votes in the upcoming European elections. Owning responsibility as a popular social media platform, TikTok will be working with local electoral commissions and civil society organizations to set up in-app Election Centers where its community can find “trusted and authoritative information.”
YouTube has a bunch of new announcements: an update to
YouTube Studio’s mobile app, expansion of Gift Memberships, and updated Product
Tagging.
First off, the new YouTube Studio update will allow creators
to make direct uploads from their camera roll to the app by tapping on the +
icon in the app. Additionally, creators will be able to set their video
monetization status during the upload process, hence making content management more feasible.
Next, YouTube is experimenting with a new Community Posts feed in its mobile app for both iOS and Android devices. Community Posts has become a popular engagement feature where creators share text-based updates with their subscribers. Back in May of last year, YouTube made Community Posts available to all channels.
Apple’s research department is pitching a prototype of a new generative AI animation tool ‘Keyframer,’ that enables adding motion to 2D
images with prompts.
Apple is keen on exploring large language models (LLMs) in
animation for their potential, just like in text and image generation. Earlier,
Apple introduced Human Gaussian Splats (HUGS) that creates animation-ready
human avatars from video clips, and MGIE that edits images using text prompts,
among its latest generative AI projects
In a research paper that the company published last week, it
explains that Keyframer is powered by OpenAI’s GPT4 model and collects data in
the form of Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) files. It then produces a CSS code that
animates the image based on a text-based prompt. These prompts can be anything
that describe how the animation must look like, e.g. “make the frog jump.”
Automated transcription service Otter is launching an AI
feature called ‘AI Chat in Channels,’ to its group chat functionality ‘Channels.’
Channels work pretty much like Slack chats, where people can connect with
frequent collaborators and share transcripts with each other.
With the help of the new AI integration, groups will be able
to ask a chatbot questions related to their older meetings. The chatbot will
then gather information from all the meetings that group members have participated
in, and generate answers to the prompts asked.
Video game company Panic has announced that it is reducing the
wait time for orders for its little Playdate handheld. After having shipped over
70,000 of the gaming gadgets, Panic reports that the Playdate stock is
currently in “limited number” for purchase on its website.
Even when Playdate runs out of stock, customers will be notified that their order wouldn’t ship until a new batch of the gadget is ready to ship. However, the wait time for preorders will still be significantly shorter as compared to before, as Panic delivers its latest preorder batch of Playdate within a few days or weeks.
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