AI Weekly Digest - March 11 2024
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Microsoft: New York Times claim is 'doomsday futurology'
Microsoft said claims by The New York Times that ChatGPT could ruin the news business were “doomsday futurology”, as it sought to have a lawsuit dismissed. The newspaper has filed a copyright infringement claim against Microsoft and OpenAI, seeking billions of dollars in damages. It claims the groups have sought “to free-ride on The Times’s massive investment in its journalism by using it to build substitutive products without permission or payment”. Microsoft argued in its court filing that copyright law was “no more an obstacle to the [large language model] than it was to the VCR (or the player piano, copy machine, personal computer, internet, or search engine)."
Brin: Google messed up on Gemini image generation
Google co-founder Sergey Brin admitted the group “definitely messed up on the image generation", after its Gemini chatbot was mocked for producing historically inaccurate images. Brin was speaking during a rare public appearance at an artificial intelligence conference in California, where he said he had come out of retirement “because the trajectory of AI is so exciting”. He added: "We haven't fully understood why (Gemini) leans left in many cases and that's not our intention. If you try it over this last week it should be 80% better of the test cases that we've covered."
Tide of doubt over Pichai's suitability to steer Google AI drive
'A tide of doubt' is reportedly rising over whether Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai is the right man to steer Google through 'a once-in-a-generation technological shift', to AI. The Sunday Times reported on the issues facing the group's AI bot Gemini, which it reported has gone 'terribly and very publicly wrong, turning a moment of glory into an embarrassment'. Pichai wrote to employees, stating: "Some of [Gemini's] responses have offended our users and shown bias. To be clear, that's completely unacceptable and we got it wrong." He also warned of "structural changes" to come.
Co-founder Musk files legal action against OpenAI and Altman
OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk has filed legal action against the artificial intelligence pioneer and its chief executive Sam Altman, alleging they have breached the group's founding agreement. The suit states: “OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft. Under its new board, it is not just developing but is actually refining an [artificial general intelligence] to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity.” Musk's claims include breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and unfair business practices.
ChatGPT-maker 'categorically disagrees' with Musk's claims
OpenAI chief strategy officer Jason Kwon later told staff the group "categorically disagrees" with Elon Musk's claims, insisting its mission “is to ensure AGI benefits all humanity”. He said in a memo: “We believe the claims in this suit may stem from Elon’s regrets about not being involved with the company today. It is deeply disappointing to see Elon take this action against a company he helped start, especially given his close collaboration with some of you who are still here working towards the mission.”
More digital publishers launch OpenAI copyright infringement claims
Digital publishers The Intercept, Raw Story and AlterNet have followed The New York Times in launching a copyright infringement claim against OpenAI. They said in a court filing: "When they populated their training sets with works of journalism, Defendants had a choice: they could train ChatGPT using works of journalism with the copyright management information protected by the DMCA intact, or they could strip it away. Defendants chose the latter, and in the process, trained ChatGPT not to acknowledge or respect copyright, not to notify ChatGPT users when the responses they received were protected by journalists' copyrights, and not to provide attribution when using the works of human journalists."
News Corp CEO: Generative AI could rebalance the scales
CEO Robert Thomson said that while News Corp has endured "an era where creators have been less rewarded than behemoth distributors", generative AI could rebalance the scales. He said: "We're well advanced in our discussions with Gen AI companies here, without being too specific. And I have to say that leaders like Sam Altman clearly understand the value of content integrity. They clearly see the social purpose of journalism. And when you start with a partner that has that orientation, the discussions are inevitably productive. So, he deserves a lot of credit, really, for his philosophical approach to what is, in the end, a commercial discussion. But I can’t really say any more than that at this moment, but there are four or five discussions going on. We’ll see how they evolve over time.”
Court sides with OpenAI in trademark case
A California federal court has sided with OpenAI to preliminarily block another company's use of its trademark name. US district judge Yvonne Gonzalez ruled that Open Artificial Intelligence Inc's branding was likely to confuse consumers and violated OpenAI's rights. She said: "The plaintiff's trademark is associated with perhaps the most renowned artificial intelligence tools currently in use and, quite quickly, became ubiquitous... [The] defendants' trademark, by contrast, is associated with a website that, until shortly before this litigation commenced, was inoperable at best." Open Artificial Intelligence founder Guy Ravine said it is evaluating its options, "given that we have operated as Open AI on open.ai since April 2015, eight months before OpenAI was even a figment of a company".
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Cook: Apple to break new ground on GenAI this year
Apple CEO Tim Cook told the group's annual shareholder meeting that it will “break new ground” on GenAI this year. He told investors: "(We see) incredible breakthrough potential for generative AI, which is why we're currently investing significantly in this area. We believe that will unlock transformative opportunities for users when it comes to productivity, problem solving and more."
Study: ChatGPT came out worst on how often AI models reproduce copyrighted content
OpenAI's ChatGPT came out worst in an analysis of how often AI models reproduce copyrighted content. Patronus AI, which conducted the tests, said: “We pretty much found copyrighted content across the board, across all models that we evaluated, whether it’s open source or closed source. Perhaps what was surprising is that we found that OpenAI’s GPT-4, which is arguably the most powerful model that’s being used by a lot of companies and also individual developers, produced copyrighted content on 44% of prompts that we constructed.”
Nvidia market value tops $2tn for first time
AI chip giant Nvidia’s market value has topped $2tn for the first time. An eighth straight week of gains for the chipmaker’s shares saw it join fellow US tech giants Apple and Microsoft in the $2tn-plus bracket. Nvidia shares closed the week up 4%, giving it a market value of $2.05tn.
Lore Machine funding round as visual-storytelling platform unveiled
US AI startup Lore Machine is in talks to raise funds after yesterday rolling out its visual-storytelling platform to the public. The platform is designed to allow writers to convert stories into images, audio and animation. Lore Machine said it plans to charge between $10 and $160 per month for its platform,with the highest-priced tier aimed at enterprises. Founder and CEO Thobey Campion said: "We are considering it (fundraising)... having conversations with the VC community... We are profitable and have significant revenues in Q4 and Q1 of this year from our partnerships."
AI groups pledge to 'maximise benefits and mitigate risks'
Artificial intelligence groups including OpenAI and Salesforce have signed an open letter saying they have a “collective responsibility” to “maximise AI’s benefits and mitigate the risks” to society. The letter likens AI to disruptive technologies such as the printing press, combustion engine, electricity and the internet, and states: “The balance of its good and bad impacts on humans will be shaped through the actions and thoughtfulness we as humans exercise."
Claim: AI-generated image creation tools generate misleading election images
AI-generated image creation tools from the likes of OpenAI and Microsoft generate "misleading election images", researchers have found, despite having policies against creating misleading content. Researchers at non-profit the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) used generative AI tools to create images of US President Joe Biden laying in a hospital bed and election workers smashing voting machines. This reportedly ramped up worries ahead of November’s presidential election. The CCDH report warned: "The potential for such AI-generated images to serve as 'photo evidence' could exacerbate the spread of false claims, posing a significant challenge to preserving the integrity of elections." The researchers tested OpenAI's ChatGPT Plus, Microsoft's Image Creator, Midjourney and Stability AI's DreamStudio, each of which can generate images from text prompts.
Apple unveils 'world’s best consumer laptop for AI'
Apple has shown off new versions of its MacBook Air laptops featuring its latest M3 chip. It dubbed the range the “world’s best consumer laptop for AI".
Dell shares leap 15% on strong demand for AI servers
Shares in Dell jumped 15% after the group highlighted strong demand for its artificial intelligence servers and increased its full-year dividend. The group posted Q4 revenue down 11% on a year ago at $25.04bn, with net profit 89% higher at $1.16bn. COO Jeff Clarke said: "Our strong AI-optimised server momentum continues, with orders increasing nearly 40% sequentially and backlog nearly doubling, exiting our fiscal year at $2.9bn."
Claude 3 - Anthropic's 'fastest and most powerful chatbot'
Amazon-backed artificial intelligence group Anthropic has launched Claude 3, its fastest and most powerful chatbot to date.