News from Meta Connect 2024; the AI Pact has over 100 signatures; Molmo brings open-source SOTA multimodality; OpenAI's Advanced Voice Mode has arrived; Agentic AI may be the next big thing in generative AI; Cloudflare launched more tools to help users fight scrapers; and more.
The European Commission released a list of over 100 early adopters of the AI Pact's voluntary commitments, including major tech companies and representatives from various sectors. Still, notable absences like Apple and Meta highlight ongoing challenges in AI regulation compliance across the EU.
The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) closed its investigation into Amazon's $4 billion investment in Anthropic, concluding that despite potential material influence, the partnership does not qualify as a 'relevant merger situation' due to Anthropic's insufficient UK market presence.
Convergence launched Proxy, a customizable AI assistant powered by Large Meta Learning Models, and raised $12 million in pre-seed funding to develop AI agents capable of learning and remembering tasks through continual interaction with users.
Runway launched a $5M fund to support up to 100 filmographic projects using AI-generated content. Grants range from $5K to $1M+ and up to $2M in Runway credits. Creators retain full IP rights over their projects but must grant Runway permission to showcase and distribute the finished product.
Google expanded NotebookLM's capabilities by adding support for various input sources, including YouTube videos and audio files, and making it easier to share the recently introduced Audio Overviews.
Meta announced significant upgrades to Meta AI, including voice chat optionally powered by celebrity voice clones, multimodal capabilities enabling image processing and editing, live translation for Reels, expanded 'Imagine me' features, and AI-generated content for social media feeds.
At Meta Connect 2024, Meta unveiled various AR/VR devices, including the Orion AR glasses concept, an affordable Quest 3S headset, and AI-enhanced Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, showcasing the company's commitment to advancing consumer AR technology.
Meta announced Llama 3.2, introducing multimodal capabilities to its 11B and 90B models for image analysis tasks. Meta also launched 1B and 3B models for edge devices. The 90B and 11B models will not be available in Europe, following EU regulators' concerns about Meta's data collection practices.
Researchers using AI and drone technology have discovered 303 new geoglyphs near Peru's Nazca Lines in just six months, revolutionizing archaeological research and providing new insights into ancient Peruvian cultures.
The Allen Institute for AI has introduced Molmo, a family of open-source multimodal AI models that rival or surpass proprietary systems in performance, featuring novel data collection methods and unique pointing capabilities, with plans for full release of weights, datasets, and code.
OpenAI is expanding its Advanced Voice Mode for ChatGPT to more paying customers, introducing new voices, improved functionality, and customization features, while addressing previous concerns and limitations.