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More from From ChatGPT to Gemini: how AI is rewriting the internet

Wes Davis
Wes Davis
AI gets notes from a songwriter.

Responding to the RIAA’s copyright lawsuit, AI songmaker sites defended their models as being like kids learning rock and roll or tools enabling creativity. Country artist Tift Merritt had a different take after being shown a song AI music generator Udio spat out when prompted to mimic her style:

... the “imitation” Udio created “doesn’t make the cut for any album of mine.”

“This is a great demonstration of the extent to which this technology is not transformative at all ... It’s stealing.”

I had similar thoughts back in March.

The AI race’s biggest shift yetThe AI race’s biggest shift yet
Alex Heath
Alex Heath
Alex Heath
OpenAI’s SearchGPT demo results aren’t actually that helpful.

The trend of hallucinations showing up in public AI demos continues. As noted by a couple of reporters already, OpenAI’s demo of its new SearchGPT engine shows results that are mostly either wrong or not helpful.

In a prerecorded demonstration video accompanying the announcement, a mock user types music festivals in boone north carolina in august into the SearchGPT interface. The tool then pulls up a list of festivals that it states are taking place in Boone this August, the first being An Appalachian Summer Festival, which according to the tool is hosting a series of arts events from July 29 to August 16 of this year. Someone in Boone hoping to buy tickets to one of those concerts, however, would run into trouble. In fact, the festival started on June 29 and will have its final concert on July 27. Instead, July 29–August 16 are the dates for which the festival’s box office will be officially closed. (I confirmed these dates with the festival’s box office.)

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
AI is catching the attention of antitrust watchdogs around the globe.

Alongside the FTC and the DOJ, the UK and EU’s antitrust authorities have issued a joint statement saying they will work to ensure fair competition in the AI industry.

One potential issue highlighted by the enforcers is the possibility that AI chipmakers could “exploit existing or emerging bottlenecks,” giving them “outsized influence over the future development” of AI tools.

Wes Davis
Wes Davis
A look at Meta AI running on a Quest 3 headset.

Demos on this Meta blog show how the company will implement its promise to bring AI to its VR headsets. Like the company’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, you can ask it questions about things you see (in passthrough), and it will answer.

The experimental feature rolls out in English next month, in the US and Canadia (excluding the Quest 2).

AI is confusing — here’s your cheat sheet

If you can’t tell the difference between AGI and RAG, don’t worry! We’re here for you.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Anthropic launched an Android app for its Claude AI chatbot.

You can grab the app from Google Play right now. It’s free and “accessible with all plans, including Pro and Team,” the company says in a blog post.

Anthropic released an iOS app in May.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
The pizza part sounds pretty cool.

I wasn’t expecting to read a dystopian fic about not-so-distant future office culture in our comments, but what other response could you have to a story about an HR company that wanted to treat AI bots like humans?

Kylie Robison
Kylie Robison
OpenAI partners with Los Alamos National Laboratory

OpenAI announced that it is teaming up with Los Alamos National Laboratory to explore how advanced AI models, such as GPT-4o, can safely aid in bioscientific research. I’m a bit disappointed because this was the plot of the science fiction horror book I always wanted to write.

The goal is to test how GPT-4o can help scientists perform tasks in a lab using vision and voice modalities.