Over 100k artists protest against AI ✊

🎬 Featured Story:

Hollywood is witnessing an unprecedented halt with major unions like the Writers Guild of America (11.5k members) and SAG-AFTRA (160k members) on strike.

Writers are demanding better compensation, regulation on the use of AI-created content, and an end to distinctions between theatrical and streaming releases.

Meanwhile, actors, especially extras, fear that digitisation of their likeness for AI use could result in their replacement. [link]

🧠 Key Insights: 

• Imagine paying actors for one day to get their scans and using these forever in movies, without further pay. This is exactly what SAG-AFTRA, the actors' club, says that Hollywood studios are already doing.

• Voice actors have already suffered this heavily because of AI, when they signed away their voices to be used by AI forever, without even knowing.

📈 News to keep you ahead of the curve:

Big Tech AI updates

1. 💻 Every ChatGPT Plus user can now use OpenAI's Code Interpreter. It's like having your own helper for analysing data. [link]

2. 👩‍🏫 ChatGPT releases ‘Custom Instructions’ This allows users to provide instructions that stay for the whole conversation. Now, users don't need to repeat the same instructions each time. [link]

3. 🤯 Meta launched its commercially-licensed version of its AI model, LLaMA2, for developers for free!OpenAI and Google charge for their closed-source AI models, and they can't be customised. Meta’s move completely changes the LLM landscape and introduces an open-source vs. closed-source fight! Many new AI models are already using LLaMA as their base, and now they can be used commercially. [link]

4. 🏥 Google is investing heavily in medical AIIt is testing Med-PaLM 2, a chatbot that can answer medical queries and assist with tasks like summarising documents or managing health data. Partners like Mayo Clinic have been testing this system since April. [link]

5. 📰 Google is trying out an AI tool designed to write news articles It is already showcasing it to major publishers like The New York Times, The Washington Post etc. [link]

6. 🗣️ Apple is making its own chatbot, called "Apple GPT," to compete with AI giants like OpenAI and Google, says a Bloomberg report. [link]

Other AI updates

1. 🆕 Anthropic launched Claude 2 in US & UK, a rival to ChatGPT allowing file attachments, better code response experience, and longer context window.

2. 🐦 Elon Musk reveals his AI venture, xAI, formed by AI experts to create unique strategies in AI using Twitter's massive data.

3. 🎓 Harvard plans to use an AI instructor for their popular CS50 coding course, promising individual attention to every student.

4. 💸 OpenAI and Microsoft are facing a $3B lawsuit accusing them of secretly harvesting 300 billion words from the internet without proper registration or consent.

🎥 AI Toolbox: Videos

Synthesia: AI video generation platform

You can easily make videos where AI characters, created from real actors, read out your text. There are over 140 AI characters to choose from that can speak over 120 languages. I did however find it quite expensive for any normal usage at $22.5/month personal plan that just gives 10 minutes of video.

VREW: Captions from speech

VREW is a software that uses AI to convert speech in videos into captions quickly, replacing the need for manual transcription. You can easily edit and style the automatic captions with various fonts, borders, and shadows. You will need a software that you need to download.

Nova AI: Video categorisation and organisation

Nova A.I. is a tool that uses AI to identify and label various elements in your videos, like faces, expressions, objects, activities, and celebrities, making it easier for you to sort and find videos. It's especially helpful for managing large video collections. You can use it for free or opt for the most popular plan at $18/month.