This week has been packed with stories about innovative tools and creative outputs being developed with AI models. Intertwined with copyright controversies and fears of privacy and job loss, we are witnessing real advancements in how AI customizes content for users and enhances ad creativity for good causes.
Dive in to discover how AI is reshaping industries and what it means for the future. There’s lots to cover. Let’s get started!
AUDIO AI
Virtual Al Michaels Will Voice Custom Olympics Recaps For Paris
The Hall of Fame sportscaster will lend his voice to “Your Daily Olympic Recap on Peacock.” Except it won’t be Al’s voice – it will be generated by AI. And because of AI’s capabilities, each recap will be customized to include Michaels greeting the user by name and replaying highlights from the events specified by the user. Details
More Details Leak on the ‘Remarkable Alexa’ Upgrade
Information continues to leak regarding the AI-upgrade of Alexa. A new report revealed that Amazon’s team has an August deadline on pricing and features for the upgrade, which is being referred to as “Remarkable Alexa.” Details
Record Industry Sues AI-Song Services For Infringement
The RIAA unleashed their lawyers on AI-song generation sites Suno and Udio services for unauthorized use of music to train their AI models. The examples they cite sound quite egregious, with songs that sound like Abba, Queen, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Details
Eleven Labs Releases New iOS App That Narrates Anything
The AI-voice company just launched an app that narrations anything on your screen. Early reviews say it “Turns any website into a podcast.” More content that fights for share of ear but also continues to stretch our imaginations on what AI is capable of. Details
PocketFM Supersizes Audio Series With AI
The self-proclaimed “Netflix for audio” has partnered with ElevenLabs to create 30,000 hours of AI-created audio content for aural binging with plans to tripled its 100,000-hour library. Details
AI IDENTIFICATION
Meta Starts Misidentifying Real Photos as AI
As we approach election season, Meta is struggling to accurately tag AI photos, with some IRL pictures getting tagged as AI. One photographer suggested that photos edited in Photoshop may get the errant tag. Details
New York Times: Can You ID the AI Photos?
Test your AI detective skills. Can you tell which of these ten photos are AI and which are real? Take the quiz
AI IN ADVERTISING
Mixed Bag For AI-Created Ads at Cannes Lions Festival
Entries that utilized AI overall did not outperform ads that did not use AI at the venerable ad festival this month. Although Pedigree took top prize in the outdoor category for a campaign that uses AI to optimize dog shelter photos to help encourage adoptions, many ads using AI did not pick up any accolades. “The takeaway is that AI is not here to do what we were doing differently, but to empower us to do something that we simply couldn’t do before,” Marco Venturelli, Publicis CCO, said. Details
Toys ‘R’ Us Releases New Ad Created With OpenAI Video Tool
The resurrected toy store, now a department inside Macy’s, announced itself with an origin-story video that was created with the not-yet-public Sora video generation tool from OpenAI. The ad got lots of flack in the Twittersphere (XSphere?) for not using human actors. Judge for yourself here.
AI PLATFORM NEWS
Bad Blood Continues Between Apple and Meta
The rumored courtship between Apple and the Facebook behemoth lasted as long as a bad first date at Starbucks. Earlier this week, the WSJ reported that Apple had met with Meta about integrating Meta.AI into its new Apple Intelligence tool. That report was quickly followed up with a Bloomberg story that Apple spurned the idea, not surprising, over privacy issues with Meta’s AI platform. Apple and Meta previously fought over user privacy, with Marc Zuckerberg claiming iOS privacy features introduced in 2021 would cost Meta $10 billion in advertising revenue.
Anthropic Launches Claude 3.5 Model
The Amazon-backed AI company released Claude 3.5 Sonnet last Thursday, boasting it is “our most intelligent model yet” and capable of outperforming competitors like Meta’s Llama and Google’s Gemini on “key evaluations.” It’s getting raves from beyond their PR team too. Test it out for yourself here.
Originally published by Jacobs Media
