AI News Update (Week of July 4th)

General Overview

• Fewer major announcements due to the 4th of July holiday in the United States.
• Still, several interesting updates and releases in AI.

Runway Gen 3

• Gen 3 is now publicly available, but only for pro users.
• Allows for text-to-video generation.
• Example prompt used: “a bald eagle flying in front of an American flag with fireworks in the background.”
• Comparison: Gen 3 is the best text-to-video generator currently, whereas Luma AI excels in image-to-video.

11 Labs Updates

• New voices added to their reader app, including Judy Garland, James Dean, Bert Reynolds, and Sir Lawrence Olivier.
• Voices added with permission and deals with respective estates.
• Voice isolator feature introduced for improved audio quality.

Sunno App

• Sunno app now available on iOS for easier music creation on mobile.
• Works similarly to the web app.
• Be cautious of fake apps claiming to be the official Sunno app.

Meta's 3D Text-to-Image Research

• Research released on 3D Genin for generating 3D images from text prompts.
• Potential applications in game development and 3D video asset creation.

Kotai's New Voice Model

• Kotai released an open-source voice model aimed at competing with GPT-4’s voice capabilities.
• Available for public testing at Moshi do chat.
• Real-time responses but currently lacks expressiveness.

Open Source LLM: Intern LM 2.5

• Released on Hugging Face with a 1 million context window.
• Potential applications in custom model chat systems.

Brave Browser Update

• Brave now allows bringing custom models into their AI, Leo AI.
• Supported models include Mixr, Claude, and Llama.

Perplexity Pro Search Update

• Multi-step reasoning and better math/programming due to Wolfram Alpha integration.
• Usage limits: 5 times every 4 hours for free users and nearly unlimited for pro members.

Apple Joins OpenAI Board

• Apple gains observer role without voting rights.
• OpenAI facing another lawsuit from the Center for Investigative Reporting over copyright infringement.

Mustafa Solman’s Controversial Statement

• Argument on fair use of content on the open web.
• Cloudflare’s new feature to block AI scrapers.

Figma’s AI Features and Controversy

• Figma to use user content to train AI models.
• Controversy over similarity to Apple’s weather app.
• Pause on the feature to avoid design replication issues.

YouTube and Instagram Updates

• YouTube now allows takedown requests for AI-generated content simulating real people.
• Instagram changes AI labeling to “AI info” to avoid confusion.

Grok 2

• New version of Grok releasing in August with significant improvements.

Rumors of Apple and Google Gemini Partnership

• Potential partnership to be announced in the fall.

WhatsApp New Feature Leak

• Feature for generating cartoon or alternate versions of user images.
• Likely to roll out to other Meta platforms.

Meta Ray-Ban Competitor

• New company developing similar glasses with ChatGPT-4 integration.

Open Telekinesis Demo at MIT

• Remote operation of robots demonstrated using Apple Vision Pro.
• Example: operating a robot in UCSD from MIT.

Closing Remarks

• Encouragement to follow Future Tools for latest AI news and tools.
• Future newsletter to cover broader emerging technologies.
• Gratitude for the audience and call to subscribe for more updates.