Artificial Intelligence

There won’t be any Apple Intelligence image-generating features in iOS 18.1 when it releases in October, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in today’s Power On newsletter.

But Apple plans to include its Image Playground and Genmoji features in iOS 18.2, he writes. Historically, those updates have come around mid-December, so perhaps we’ll be slinging holiday-themed “emoji” at each other soon enough.

That’s 1 million paid users for corporate services including ChatGPT Team, Enterprise, and ChatGPT Edu for universities, Bloomberg reports. Enterprise pricing varies, but one person claimed it could cost around $60 per user per month with a minimum of 150 users and a 12-month contract.

I always thought the only way AI might make some cash is through enterprise software bundling, especially with all the free users.

The fraud was less about all the fake bands releasing fake songs created in partnership with an unnamed exec at an AI music company, and more about the many, many accounts he made to stream all of his AI tunes on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music in order to get paid.

Impressively, he was ahead of the AI hype. His scheme started in 2017.

OpenAI’s ex-chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, who left not long after attempting to oust fellow co-founder Sam Altman, has now raised $1 billion for his competing lab, Safe Superintelligence (SSI). Backers include a16z, which has opposed California’s AI safety bill, and OpenAI investor Sequoia.

SSI’s CEO tells Reuters there’s no product yet, and there likely won’t be one for a few years.

Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) executive director Joel Bamford said that while Microsoft’s hiring of Inflection AI staff “does qualify as a merger under UK law,” the transaction was unlikely to significantly reduce competition in the consumer chatbot market.

Additional details about the shuttered investigation are available here.

The AI fund disaster should be a cautionary tale for buyers of thematic ETFs, which now cover virtually anything you can think of, including Californian carbon permits (down 15% this year), Chinese cloud computing (down 21%) and pet care (up 10%). Put simply: You probably won’t get what you want, you’ll likely buy at the wrong time and it will be hard to hold for the long term.

404 Media reached out to purported clients of Jacob Wohl’s AI lobbying firm. Six of them — including Microsoft, Palantir, and Pfizer — said they’d never heard of it. The other six didn’t respond.

Wohl, who pleaded guilty to fraud in 2022, is perhaps best known for a series of “spectacularly failed smear attempts” directed at figures like Robert Mueller, Pete Buttigieg, and Elizabeth Warren.

Our latest video runs through the issues involved in resolving that conundrum, and the problems we may encounter if we can’t. Stick around till the end for a bonus “find the AI image” challenge!

If you struggle to understand why so many artists, writers, and other creatives find generative AI objectionable, just read this essay from Ted Chiang. Creativity itself is complex and subjective, but Chiang makes a good argument for why its absence is a notable flaw in AI-generated content.

Here’s one of many thought-provoking excerpts:

The task that generative A.I. has been most successful at is lowering our expectations, both of the things we read and of ourselves when we write anything for others to read. It is a fundamentally dehumanizing technology because it treats us as less than what we are: creators and apprehenders of meaning.

AB 1836, which requires studios to get express consent from dead performers’ estates before producing digital replicas of them, passed the state Senate yesterday, reports Variety.

The bill’s passage yesterday came days after California’s legislature passed AB 2602 with similar consent requirements for living actors. SAG-AFTRA released a statement calling the bill a “legislative priority” and encouraging Governor Gavin Newsom to sign it.