This Week in AI: August 26–September 1

Law-making efforts have been ramping up in California, where two different pieces of legislation are being discussed. The AB 3211 bill outlines a series of requirements for AI-generated content, including synthetic watermarking and clear labelings when the content is posted to social media platforms like Instagram or X. Despite initial opposition by a group that included Adobe and Microsoft, AB 3211 is now well-accepted, likely due to it undergoing several amendments.

In contrast, California's SB 1047 bill's reception has been vastly more controversial, because of how much responsibility it places on the developers of large AI systems if they become dangerous. OpenAI publicly opposed the bill, while former OpenAI William Saunders and Daniel Kokotajlo published an open letter strongly criticizing OpenAI's posture, characterizing it as an attempt to "fearmonger and offer excuses". The open letter also contrasts OpenAI's position on the matter to Anthropic, who expressed specific concerns and asked for changes, some of which were incorporated into the bill's final version.

On a smaller scale, the United States is preparing for its upcoming presidential elections. As with the many other elections happening this year, there is a concern that AI has become a useful tool for the better and the worse. To address this, Google has shared how it will continue its work to support global elections and tailor it to the needs of the US election. This is especially relevant, considering the company recently announced it would launch Gems, the customizable personal AI-powered assistants, and bring Imagen 3 to power Gemini's image-generation capabilities.

Elsewhere, the evergrowing interest in coding assistants shows no signs of subsiding: Magic announced a new funding round and a strategic partnership with Google, and Codeium achieved unicorn status and raised a $150 million Series C.

Other relevant headlines this week include:

Inflection AI announces data portability capabilities and usage limits on its free assistant: Inflection AI, the creator of the personal AI assistant Pi, is introducing data portability for all users and message limits for its free tier as the company shifts its focus toward bringing its emotionally intelligent AI-powered assistant to the workplace.

Viggle AI, the startup of viral memes fame, just closed a successful Series A round: Viggle AI, a Canadian startup revolutionizing character animation through AI, has secured $19 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz to scale its text-to-video and image-to-video animation platform, which has already gained viral fame and attracted millions of users.

Aleph Alpha's Pharia-1-LLM model family focuses on transparency and compliance: Aleph Alpha has released Pharia-1-LLM-7B, a new open-source foundation model family designed for concise, length-controlled responses, optimized for German, French, and Spanish, and trained on carefully curated data in compliance with EU regulations.

Clockwise announced Prism, an AI-powered calendar that helps manage complex scheduling: Clockwise has launched Prism, an LLM-powered intelligent scheduling assistant that uses natural language processing to simplify complex scheduling tasks, offering features like smart scheduling, optimal time selection, quick rescheduling, Slack integration, and task management.

Speculation arises as OpenAI looks to raise more funds at a $100+ valuation: OpenAI is reportedly seeking a funding round at a $100 billion valuation, led by Thrive Capital, with potential participation from NVIDIA and Apple, to address its significant cash needs amid high operational costs and strong investor interest in the generative AI sector.

Wayve and Uber announce partnership to advance the development of driverless vehicles: Wayve, a developer of hardware-agnostic autonomous vehicle technology offering various levels of autonomy, is partnering with Uber to deploy its self-driving solutions globally, backed by a strategic investment from Uber that extends Wayve's recent Series C funding round.

IBM and Intel will partner to bring Gaudi 3 accelerators to IBM Cloud as soon as 2025: IBM and Intel are collaborating to offer Intel's Gaudi 3 AI accelerators as a service on IBM Cloud starting in early 2025, aiming to make enterprise AI more accessible, cost-effective, and secure while enhancing performance and scalability across hybrid cloud environments.

Atlassian acquired Rewatch to power an AI meeting assistant tailored to its ecosystem: Atlassian has acquired Rewatch, an AI-powered asynchronous video solution company, to integrate its features into Loom, enhancing video messaging capabilities with automated recording, transcription, and meeting assistance across various platforms.

LAION introduced Re-LAION 5B, a relaunch of the popular dataset, free of CSAM and other sensitive content: LAION has released Re-LAION 5B, a revised version of their large-scale image-text dataset, thoroughly cleaned of known links to suspected illegal content through collaboration with child protection organizations, delivering on its commitment to remove illegal content from its datasets.

Robotics startup Covariant's founders and some employees were hired by Amazon: Amazon has entered into a significant agreement with AI robotics company Covariant, licensing their robotic foundation models and acquiring key talent to enhance its warehouse automation capabilities and advance the state of AI-powered robotics.