Sam Altman and Elon Musk's rivalry continues...

Hello, AI-preneurs!

The AI industry never sleeps.

We've witnessed a whirlwind of AI advancements lately, from Meta's latest AI trial to the ongoing rivalry between Sam Altman and Elon Musk... and much more.

So, without further ado, let's dive in and explore the tech developments making waves this week.

Meta trials AI chatbot across WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram

Meta has confirmed that it is testing its chatbot called Meta AI, with users on WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger in India and parts of Africa.

Why India and Africa?

This is a pretty interesting strategic move by Meta. You see, India is an absolutely massive market for them - we're talking over 500 million Facebook and WhatsApp users, which is by far their largest user base worldwide. 

Meta initially thought that AI chatbots were not well-received by the public, but the success of ChatGPT has changed that perception, pushing Meta to become "more open and comfortable with releasing AI models."

Three key reasons are driving Meta's accelerated AI strategy: 

1. User retention: Users these days pretty much expect to have AI-powered tools and features in all their favorite apps. If Meta doesn't keep up, there's a real risk of people starting to drift away.

2. Investor retention: Showing commitment to the future of computing, and 

3. Pride: The last thing they want is to be seen as missing out on the AI revolution.

It’s yet to be seen whether this strategy pays off for Meta in the long run.

Final words: Integrating Meta AI into WhatsApp and Instagram, with their billions of users, presents a unique opportunity for Meta to scale its language model and image generation capabilities to a massive audience, potentially outpacing its competitors.

Mac’s to get AI-focused M4 chips starting in late 2024

Apple is planning to update its Mac lineup with new M4 chips starting in late 2024. 

The big focus for the M4 chips will be on improving the artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities across Apple's computers.

The company is planning to sneak-peak a preview of new features at its June developer conference. 

Here’s what you need to know:

• The M4 chips will be released in a phased rollout across late 2024 and 2025, with the iMac, 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros, Mac mini, and Mac Studio getting the new chips first. The 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air models will follow in spring 2025, and the Mac Pro will get the M4 later in 2025.

• Lots of performance upgrades are expected, like support for up to 512GB of unified memory, which is a huge leap.

• One interesting tidbit is that Apple is planning multiple variations of the M4 chip - a low-end "Donan" version, a mid-range "Brava" chip, and a high-performance "Hidra" chip that will likely go in the Mac Pro.

TSMC is likely to be manufacturing them using an improved 3nm process, so we should see nice gains in both performance and efficiency. Exciting times ahead for the Mac lineup!

Elon Musk’s xAI seeks up to $4 billion to compete with OpenAI

Musk is looking to raise a ton of capital to really grow X.AI. It’s gearing up to raise a huge funding round. Here’s the scoop:

• X.AI Corp. is looking to raise $3-4 billion in funding, which would value the company at around $18 billion.

• The funding details are being circulated among Silicon Valley investors through a pitch deck and personal connections of Musk's associates.

• The pitch deck highlights X.AI's potential, pointing to Musk's successful track record at Tesla and SpaceX, as well as the ability to leverage data from Musk's social network X to train the AI models.

Access to high-quality data is crucial for building advanced language models, which is a key area of focus for X.AI as they look to compete with the likes of OpenAI.

So Musk is really trying to position X.AI as having a unique advantage there.

It'll be interesting to see if X.AI is able to pull off this massive $3-4 billion

funding round and whether investors buy into Musk's vision for the company.

Meanwhile, a representative for X.AI has not responded to requests for comment on the potential funding round.

💣 Latest AI hits: Quick recap

• Elon Musk’s AI company announces ‘Grok-1.5′, a multimodal AI capable of understanding images, with performance comparable to ‘GPT-4V’ and ‘Gemini Pro 1.5’. [Link]

• Humane AI Pin review: The device isn’t going to kill Apple’s iPhone. [Link]

• After months of leaks, OpenAI has apparently fired two researchers who are said to be linked to company secrets going public. [Link]

• Vana plans to let users rent out their Reddit data to train AI. (Link)

• How Neural Concept’s aerodynamic AI is shaping Formula 1. (Link)

• Bloomberg reports that Adobe’s ‘Ethical’ Firefly AI was trained on Midjourney images. (Link)

• GPT-4 Turbo comes to paid ChatGPT. (Link)

• TikTok’s new AI feature will let advertisers and TikTok Shop sellers generate scripts for a virtual influencer to read. (Link)

• The Weather Channel’s parent company has a new AI tool to make hyperlocal weather videos. (Link)

• Microsoft Build 2024 to unveil new AI features for Windows. (Link)

• Google’s experimental Notes feature gains AI image generation capability. (Link)

AI art to sip your coffee with…

Prompt: Create an image that captures the tranquil beauty of the Welsh Brecon Beacons. As the late afternoon sun begins to dip towards the horizon, the atmosphere conditions are just right to reveal the phenomenon, with two bright halos of light appearing on either side of the sun, cradling it in a celestial embrace.

Tools to explore:

• Voxio: Organizes voice recordings into structured text formats. Useful features like cleanup to remove useless repetitions, correct grammar, and language, and clarify the meaning of the message. 

• Supermoon: An innovative AI tool designed to enhance customer support processes. A unified platform that simplifies customer support, team chat, email management, and team communication.

• DomoAI: Transform images into dynamic videos

Tweet of the day:

Researchers at Google DeepMind and the University of Cambridge just taught miniature humanoid robots to play soccer against each other.

That’s a wrap! See you on Monday for a fresh dose of AI Odyssey. 😎