AI Weekly Briefing - December 2 2024

Microsoft partner's CEO warns: 'Absolutely there's a bubble' in AI valuations

The CEO of C3.ai, which specialises in enterprise AI applications and recently announced a partnership with Microsoft, has warned that "absolutely there's a bubble " in AI valuations. Speaking to Fortune, Tom Siebel said the current state of AI reminded him of the dot-com bubble, adding: “So we have this similar thing going on with generative AI that we've seen with previous technologies. The market is way, way overvaluing.” Taking aim at OpenAI, Siebel said: “Nobody would be surprised if that company disappeared next Monday."

Amazon security chief: AI helps drive 750m daily cyber threats 

Amazon’s chief information security officer CJ Moses said AI is partially responsible for hundreds of millions more possible cyber threats across the web each day compared to earlier this year. He told the WSJ: "We’re seeing billions of attempts coming our way. On average, we’re seeing 750m attempts per day. Previously, we’d see about 100m hits per day, and that number has grown over six or seven months." Asked if this was a sign that hackers are using AI, Moses said: "Without a doubt. Generative AI has provided access to those who previously didn’t have software-development engineers to do these things. Now, it’s more ubiquitous, such that normal humans can do things they couldn’t do before because they just ask the computer to do that for them."

Amazon invests further $4bn in Anthropic, doubling its total outlay

Amazon has invested a further $4bn in artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic, doubling its total outlay days after the Competition and Markets Authority cleared Google's $2bn investment in the group. Anthropic co-founder and chief executive Dario Amodei said: “Our collaboration with Amazon has been instrumental in bringing Claude’s capabilities to millions of end users across tens of thousands of customers. We’re looking forward to working with Amazon to train and power our most advanced AI model."

Report: Apple plans major AI Siri overhaul

Apple is reported to be planning a major AI overhaul of digital assistant Siri that will make it able to better compete with chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini Live.

Google’s UK head: AI could help businesses offset Budget costs

Google’s UK boss believes artificial intelligence could help businesses in Britain offset the costs of recent Budget measures announced by the Chancellor, with a suggestion that AI could help the average small firm boost their productivity by 20%. Debbie Weinstein said: “What we’re seeing right now is that people are using AI to enhance the work of their existing teams and allowing their team members to do more activities.” She added: “It’s not about costs, but more productivity from existing staff. The people in those teams are able to drive more growth for those businesses.”

Publishers: 'Substantial drop in engagement from search' after UK launch of Google AI Overviews

Some publishers are reporting a 'substantial drop in engagement from search' after the UK launch of Google's AI Overviews. The Media Leader quoted an unnamed publishing industry trade body representative, suggesting 5-10% decreases in traffic from search since the rollout three months ago. They said: “That number will no doubt grow as we see AI Overviews becoming more prevalent for ‘keywords’ that publishers typically seek to rank for.” 

Microsoft signs AI models training deal with News Corp-owned publisher

Microsoft has reportedly signed a licensing deal with News Corp-owned publisher HarperCollins to train artificial intelligence models on its non-fiction books.

ITV job ad 'written by tech team rather than creative people'

ITV Insights Group director Neil Mortensen revealed the controversial job ad for a 'head of generative-AI innovation' had been “written by one of our tech teams” rather than “creative people”, stressing it was part of a push to protect intellectual property rather than replace human creatives. He told the Media Research Group Conference in London: “[The US writers’ strike] essentially ground our production business to a halt. There were a couple of things that they were negotiating over, but part of that was this issue of machines and AI, and all of this technology taking over and writing scripts for them. What they’ve successfully negotiated is a guardrail. We can use these technologies to work with our writers and our production teams, but you are not allowed to replace them. We still believe that creativity needs humans in the process.”

OpenAI's SoftBank tender offer will let staff sell $1.5bn worth of shares

OpenAI will reportedly allow employees to sell around $1.5bn worth of shares in a new tender offer to SoftBank Group. Two sources said the agreement was reached after the Japanese conglomerate invested $500m in the AI operator during its $6.6bn October funding round. OpenAI and SoftBank declined to comment after a CNBC report said the new financing was spurred by the latter's CEO Masayoshi Son, who is committed to seeking a larger stake in the startup. The tender offer will close on December 24, the report added, allowing current and former OpenAI staff to cash out their stakes.

Musk gives Twitter deal investors 25% of xAI shares

Investors nursing losses from Elon Musk's $44bn acquisition of Twitter are to receive a windfall after he awarded them 25% of shares in xAI. The artificial intelligence start-up is reportedly close to closing a fundraising round, which will value it at $50bn - doubled in the past six months.

OpenAI 'loses ground in enterprise AI market'

Menlo Ventures said OpenAI lost ground in the enterprise AI market last year, with its share falling from 50% to 34%, as business spending on generative AI surged 500% to $13.8bn.

Nvidia's Huang promotes concept of '24/7 AI factories'

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has promoted the concept of “24/7 AI factories”, announcing: "Just like we generate electricity, we're now going to be generating AI. And if the number of customers is large, just as the number of consumers of electricity is large, these generators are going to be running 24/7." He went on: "Today, many AI services are running 24/7, just like an AI factory. And so, we're going to see this new type of system come online, and I call it an AI factory because that's really as close to what it is. When we say generative AI, we're essentially saying that these data centres are really AI factories. They're generating something."

Trump set to appoint White House 'AI czar'?

US president-elect Donald Trump is reportedly considering appointing a White House 'AI czar' to oversee federal regulation and government use of the technology.

Call for testing regime to ensure products are safe before release

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei called for the creation of a mandatory testing regime to ensure AI products are safe before their release, criticising the current patchwork of voluntary agreements. He said: “There’s nothing to really verify or ensure the companies are really following those plans in letter of spirit. They just said they will."

Nvidia reveals AI model Fugatto for generating music and audio

AI chipmaker Nvidia has revealed a new artificial intelligence model for generating music and audio, which can modify voices and generate novel sounds. The technology - aimed at music, film and video game producers - is known as Fugatto, short for Foundational Generative Audio Transformer Opus 1. The world's biggest supplier of chips and software used to create AI systems said it has no immediate plans to publicly release the technology.

Anthropic unveils Model Context Protocol for connecting AI assistants to data sources

Anthropic has shown off Model Context Protocol, a new system for connecting AI assistants to data sources such as business tools and software repositories. The Amazon and Google-backed start-up has made MCP open source, and said: “As AI assistants gain mainstream adoption, the industry has invested heavily in model capabilities, achieving rapid advances in reasoning and quality. Yet even the most sophisticated models are constrained by their isolation from data - trapped behind information silos and legacy systems. Every new data source requires its own custom implementation, making truly connected systems difficult to scale.”

Spotify gains Google Gemini extension

Spotify has become the second non-Google app, after WhatsApp, to gain a Gemini extension. The search giant's chatbot will allow users to search for and play music on the streaming platform via speech commands.

Report: Amazon develops new Gen AI model Olympus to process images and videos

Amazon has reportedly developed a new generative artificial intelligence model to process images and videos in addition to text. The Information said the development makes the e-commerce giant less reliant on AI startup Anthropic's Claude chatbot, a popular offering on cloud arm Amazon Web Services, citing two sources. The new LLM, code-named Olympus, will reportedly be able to 'understand scenes in images and videos and help customers search for specific scenes', using simple text prompts.

Salesforce AI chief joins Meta to lead new business tools division

Meta appointed Salesforce’s CEO of AI, Clara Shih, to lead a new division building AI tools for enterprise customers. She said: “I’m thrilled to share that I’ve joined Meta to lead a new Business AI group. Our vision for this new product group is to make cutting-edge AI accessible to every business, empowering all to find success and own their future in the AI era.”