Microsoft and OpenAI's $13B Tug-of-War

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It’s tough right now between OpenAI and Microsoft, HeyGen is taking off, and maybe Washington will begin to take AGI seriously…

OpenAI and Microsoft, A Celebrated Bromance to Straight Beef?

What started as the most prestigious tag team in AI is starting to look more like a heavyweight title match.

OpenAI’s partnership with Microsoft has hit rocky waters as tensions grow over funding, computing power, and exclusivity.

Okay, what’s actually going on?…

• Once celebrated as a powerful alliance, Microsoft and OpenAI are now at odds over unmet computing needs and financial disagreements. Microsoft recently hired staff from OpenAI rival Inflection (to the tune of $650M), raising eyebrows within OpenAI.

• After investing $13 billion in OpenAI, Microsoft pulled back from additional funding requests. This prompted OpenAI to secure a $10 billion computing deal with Oracle and pursue new investors, including NVIDIA and MGX.

• OpenAI believes a breakthrough in artificial general intelligence (AGI) could unlock better terms in its Microsoft contract, as the current agreement limits Microsoft’s access if AGI is achieved.

So What?

For the tech industry watching this soap opera unfold, it's a reminder that even the most picture-perfect AI partnerships need more than just deep pockets and shared compute to make it work.

AI startups are dependent on the world’s tech giants for money and computing power because those big companies control the massive cloud computing systems the small outfits need to develop systems.

Also let’s not forget that OpenAI shipped the Mac ChatGPT desktop app before the Windows one (ouch).

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HeyGen Videos Are Getting a Little TOO Real

HeyGen’s Avatar 3.0 is gaining massive traction.

For those who don’t know, HeyGen is a platform that uses AI to create videos out of avatars.

The platform takes avatars from basic lip-sync to full-body motion, with expressions and voice tones that dynamically match your script.

You probably guessed it too… the image above is a screenshot from a HeyGen video.

Whether you’re cooking up something spooky for Halloween or creating your digital twin, here’s how you can get started (warning, use with caution):

1. Create an account at HeyGen.

2. Head to the “Avatar” section and click “Create” to start building your avatar.

3. Follow the on-screen instructions and video tutorial to guide you through the process—this may involve recording/uploading footage or a consent video.

4. Once your avatar is set, click “Create Video” on the HeyGen website.

5. Select your avatar from the options (you can add more scenes or switch looks later).

6. Input your script or use HeyGen’s AI-powered script writer to generate ideas or complete it for you.

7. Hit “Submit” and let HeyGen do the magic! 🎥

I took a whirl at it, and came up with this as my first generation 👇️ 

Silicon Valley Takes AGI Seriously, So Should Washington

As companies push toward artificial general intelligence (AGI), the once-theoretical concept of machines matching human cognitive abilities is starting to look more and more real.

However, this rapid pursuit is fueling debates about how to mitigate the potential dangers, with experts warning that AGI could reshape societies in unpredictable and possibly harmful ways.

Experts argue for proactive governance to mitigate risks, with some suggesting that AGI development should be subject to international oversight, similar to nuclear technology. However, as tech giants race toward AGI, Washington feels the window for creating responsible frameworks is closing.

So AGI...?

The pursuit of AGI isn’t just a technological milestone; it’s a societal inflection point. While AGI promises revolutionary breakthroughs, its risks demand urgent conversations about ethics, governance, and global cooperation.

AGI is no longer a 'what if' but a 'when', and possibly a 'holy moly, it's here already?!'

Is it time we all got our heads out of the cloud (pun intended) and started preparing for a future where the smartest being in the room might not be wearing pants – or have legs at all?

Meet CodeGPT, a Better Cursor?

CodeGPT is an AI-powered extension for Visual Studio Code that enhances your coding experience by providing various AI-assisted features.

The thing is though, this isn’t just an LLM wrapper like Cursor. CodeGPT has Agents natively built in, meaning the responses will be well reasoned before they are delivered to an end user. In this case, that means less AI spaghetti code 😉 .

Also, the team has announced support for OpenAI’s new Swarm framework. Since CodeGPT comes as an extension in VSCode, here’s how you can start using it quickly:

1. Create an account.

2. Install the extension in VSCode.

3. Open up the CodeGPT tab and start prompting away!

For a more comprehensive setup guide, check this out:

Stay updated with our favorite highlights, dive in for a full flavor of the coverage!

Google’s viral tool, NotebookLM, now let’s you guide the conversation for Audio Overviews and comes with an business counterpart.

NVIDIA's new model, Llama-3.1-Nemotron-70B-Instruct, appeared on the AI platform Hugging Face without fanfare, quickly drawing attention for its exceptional performance across multiple benchmark tests.

Bain & Company announces expanded partnership with OpenAI to accelerate delivery of AI solutions and meet fast-growing client needs.

Meta AI recently released Meta Spirit LM, an innovative open-source multimodal language model capable of freely mixing text and speech.

More than 160,000 viruses previously unknown to scientists have been identified using a specialized artificial intelligence (AI) program.

Google quietly released Imagen 3 in Gemini, so I thought I’d share the absolute first thing I made with it.

If you generate anything REMOTELY cooler, please send them to us so we can showcase it to the community!

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