Airbnb turns to AI 👀

Hello. Ahead of Rishi Sunak's speech on the potential and dangers of AI, Sky News asked OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT to predict what he was likely to say - here's how it did.

— Lavena Xu-Johnson, Rosa Cecilia, Hubert Trinkunas

⏰ Top 5 Headlines

🔗Link: Airbnb turns to AI to help prevent house parties.

🔗Link: Bye bye browsers…AI will run straight from your phone real soon.

🔗Link: Following its search generative experience, Google will fill AI searches wwith ads.

🔗Link: Extinction risk from AI on same scale as nuclear war, Sunak warns.

🔗Link: Microsoft reorgs its Xbox and marketing teams to prepare for an AI and gaming future.

💬 Deeper Dives

What Microsoft’s earnings can tell us about AI and cloud trends

As CEOs and CFOs decide on cloud and AI use cases and budgets in an uncertain economy, Microsoft’s latest quarterly earnings provide some insight.

Microsoft’s total revenue of $56.52 billion for Q3, a 13% increase year over year (up 12% in constant currency) came in above Wall Street’s expectations of $54.52 billion.

Operating income was $26.9 billion, up 25% (up 24% in constant currency), while EPS of $2.99 came in above a $2.65 estimate.

Looking at Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, revenue grew 29% year over year, compared to Wall Street’s expected 26%. Large language models like GPT-3 and GPT-4 are on Azure OpenAI Service. Microsoft has a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar investment with OpenAI, the startup behind ChatGPT.

A report by the International Data Corporation (IDC) released this month forecasts that enterprises will invest nearly $16 billion worldwide on generative solutions in 2023.

(Read more: Fortune)

Game developer CD Projekt uses AI to recreate voice actor who passed away

Polish video game developer CD Projekt used artificial intelligence technology in its latest release to recreate the voice of an actor who passed away.

The voice of the late Miłogost Reczek, a popular Polish voice actor who died in 2021, was reproduced by an AI algorithm for the Polish-language release of Phantom Liberty, the new expansion to CD Projekt’s Cyberpunk 2077.

The rapid rise of generative AI, which can produce text, images and voice from prompts, has raised ethical and practical questions about its use in creative work across the entertainment industry. Film franchises like Star Wars have used technology to replace dead actors such as Carrie Fisher and Peter Cushing, while the use of artificial intelligence has become a sticking point during strikes by writers and actors this year.

(Read more: Bloomberg)

AI is being used to find hard-to-find lung cancer patients

Roche Holding AG’s lung cancer drug scored a big win against standard therapy in a study this week. Now, the Swiss drugmaker is turning to artificial intelligence to find patients who can benefit.

When given after surgery to remove lung tumors, Roche’s Alecensa cut the risk of either cancer recurrence or death by 76% compared with standard chemotherapy, according to results from a primary analysis of the trial released Wednesday. The drug could “potentially alter the course of this disease,” Roche Chief Medical Officer Levi Garraway said in a statement.

The study examined the effects on people with an error in a gene called ALK that’s found in only about 4% to 5% of lung cancer patients. Most of them are younger and less likely to have smoked than typical lung tumor patients, and often go undiagnosed early on.

To solve the problem, Roche will use an AI collaboration with Israeli tech company Medial EarlySign Ltd. to help doctors determine when to use CT scans.

Analysts anticipate that Alecensa will generate 1.56 billion Swiss francs ($1.75 billion) in sales this year.

(Read more: Fortune)

Art used to shape tech, now thanks to AI the roles are reversed

Earlier this week, the Bloomberg Tech Summit in London dealt with big questions around AI. Creative industries were a particular focus having faced some of the most imminent disruptions posed by AI.

Jared Kaplan, the chief science officer of Anthropic, led the charge. The AI company, which has raised money from both Amazon.com Inc. and Google, is positioning itself very much as the responsible AI pioneer. “We think there should be a race to the top for safer AI and more ethical AI,” he said. Anthropic’s pitch sounds similar to the one Apple uses for its smartphones: that it cares deeply about ethics and responsibility.

The summit’s most instructive discussion might well have been between Hilary Krane, the chief legal officer of Creative Artists Agency, and Synthesia CEO Victor Riparbelli. CAA, the Hollywood super-agency, represents many of the actors, screenwriters and other creatives whose work could be alternately plagiarized, replaced or augmented by AI. Synthesia, meanwhile, makes AI avatars for corporate settings — a technology that can negate the need for actors.

(Read more: Bloomberg)

🤳 Extra reads

• 🔗The Economist: AI has rescued Mark Zuckerberg from a metaverse-size hole.

• 🔗Financial Times: Will generative AI transform business?

• 🔗Financial Times: Bloomsbury chief warns of AI threat to publishing.