The Voicebot Podcast

The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for March 30, 2023, had controversy, competition, Coca-Cola, and more. Is there a more dynamic market right now than generative AI? I don’t think so. This week’s show is hosted by Bret Kinsella with guests Silke Hahn, technology editor at Heise Online, and Eric Schwartz, head writer at Voicebot.ai. The top stories in generative AI land this week include: Musk Wants to Slow Down AI The Letter: A letter from the Future of Life Institue signed by Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Stability AI founder Emad Mostaque, and 17k others called for a six-month moratorium on “the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.” But maybe this isn’t an entirely altruistic activity. Google Rumors and More Issues Haunted by ChatGPT: Google rumors pointed to the company using ChatGPT data in Bard training and efforts to combine DeepMind brains and Google AI team brains to catch up with OpenAI’s chatbot. The headlines don’t tell the real story. OpenAI Declares War and Defends the Citadel ChatGPT Plugins: OpenAI is adding plugins to ChatGPT. This puts everyone on notice that OpenAI is now an end-user application product provider and an AI model provider. ChatGPT Security: A serious ChatGPT security vulnerability was discovered by a security researcher and promptly patched by OpenAI. There is a bigger story here. Perplexity AI Lands Funding Conversational search wars: It’s not cheap to compete in the search business. Perplexity AI just raised $25.6 million to challenge Bing Chat and Google Bard for conversational search market share. Stanford Finds Its LLiMit Alpaca sent packing: Stanford University launched a web demo of its Alpaca generative AI model based on Meta’s LLaMA model and trained using ChatGPT-generated data. It was shut down in just a couple of days due to safety and cost concerns. Zoom Goes Generative From video to smart companion: Zoom IQ is adding new generative AI features to extend the value of video conferencing beyond the meeting. Coke Tapping into DALL-E Magic New (Coke) custom OpenAI model: Coca-Cola has a new marketing campaign that asks artists to create Coke-themed imagery using a custom implementation of DALL-E. The show was originally broadcast live on YouTube and LinkedIn, and we also added it to the Voicebot Podcast for your convenience.

Reghu Thanumalayan is a senior vice president at Deutsche Telekom and oversees the Magenta voice assistant. He was my featured guest in Voicebot Podcast Ep 148 three years ago. Reghu joined me to share an update on how things have evolved since launching the product in late 2019. Magenta has won awards, expanded integrations with TV and smart home devices, and introduced a new call center application. However, the company has also discontinued the smart speaker and learned some tough lessons.  Reghu breaks down the journey and the learnings. We also talk about a new solution that sounds likely to be a breakout consumer hit and where voice assistants truly excel.  This interview was conducted onsite at Mobile World Congress 2023 at the Deutsche Telekom booth. 

The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for March 23, 2023, was packed with significant announcements. Bret Kinsella hosts this week along with Eric Schwartz. The top stories in generative AI land this week include: Nvidia Moves up the Stack Picasso and NeMo: Nvidia isn’t going just to cash checks for GPU sales related to the generative AI tsunami. They now offer text-to-image and text-to-text models that compete directly with OpenAI, Google, and Stable Diffusion. Omniverse Upgrade: Omniverse is an open platform for 3D design collaboration and real-time physically accurate simulations. It announced new services for creating virtual factories mirroring real-world facilities, the option to stream simulated experiences and train to AI-powered robots, and a simulator for testing autonomous vehicles. Google Teases Gen AI Features and Models Show your PaLMs: Google is now letting testers use its giant large language model (LLM) PaLM. This is different from LaMDA and might eventually be a replacement for the brains behind Bard. Right now, it is Google’s answer to GPT-3/GPT-4. A tool to help developers using PaLM called MakerSuite was also announced. Gmail and Docs to Get AI writing assistant: Docs and Gmail are getting PaLM-enabled text generation features. Bard announced again: Google says it is now offering access to Bard to the general public. But there is a waitlist. AI-Generated Beauty Midjourney 5 is here: There are several minor upgrades, but the key benefits are enhanced quality, more coherence, better photorealism, and more detail. Bing adds DALL-E: You can now create images in Bing through a new DALL-E integration. The quality seems better to me than DALL-E 2, which you can access today on OpenAI. Might this be the long-awaited DALL-E 3? Synthetic Media Policy TikTok to tighten deepfake rules: TikTok announced new policies around synthetic media and deepfake use on the platform before its CEO’s Congressional testimony. The policy description grew from 30 words to nearly 400. Will others social platforms take this as a cue to make their own updates? Games Go Generative Roblox wants to make development easier: Roblox added generative AI tools that enable developers to use natural language to create objects and generate code. Unity wants generative AI NPCs: Unity didn’t make any concrete announcements. However, its CEO told Reuters that generative AI would help game makers write dialogue and enable non-player characters to interact more naturally with human players. Other News LinkedIn goes generative: The Microsoft-owned company added new generative AI features to create user profiles and job descriptions. SoundHound shows Chat AI assistant: The new mobile app offers an assistant that blends SoundHound’s NLU-based assistant with new LLM features. More About GAIN The show is recorded live and streamed via YouTube and LinkedIn at 12 noon EST on Thursdays. You can re-watch each week’s discussion on Voicebot’s YouTube channel. Please join us live next week on YouTube or LinkedIn. Also, participate in the live show by commenting.

The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for March 16, 2023, required some tough decisions. So much happened this week that we zeroed in on the biggest stories and how they will shape the market. We might get to some of the others, like Midjourney 5, next week. In this episode, Bret Kinsella hosts along with Eric Schwartz. The top stories in generative AI land this week include: Generative AI for Knowledge Workers Microsoft 365 Copilot: A natural language assistant that is a system and not just a bunch of bolt-on LLM features. Can it live up to the ambition? It’s definitely impressive. Google Workspace: Some generative AI features are coming to Google Docs and Gmail. Still closed access and little detail, but an official signal about new features. Also, the approach today is less ambitious than Microsoft's. The Long Wait is Over GPT-4 is Here: The much-hyped and long-awaited GPT-4 launch finally arrived. It is multimodal with a vision input element, but that is not widely available. However, the output quality is clearly better, OpenAI claims that factuality is higher and hallucinations rarer, and the context window quadrupled. ChatGPT Contenders Take a Step Forward Anthropic Claude: The ChatGPT competitor was formally announced. However, there is still a waitlist! Quora to Monetize Poe: Quora might face an existential crisis as answers become easier to find with ChatGPT, Perplexity, and the New Bing. However, Poe doesn’t rely on one LLM. It allows the user to access many. And Quora is charging for access. LLMs and Popular Culture ChatGPT on South Park: The latest South Park episode featured ChatGPT. When new enterprise technology starts showing up in iconic popular culture venues, something important is happening. Plus, this is just funny. More About GAIN The GAIN Rundown was originally broadcast live on YouTube and LinkedIn, and we also added it to the Voicebot Podcast for your convenience. If you would like to watch the show live join us on YouTube or LinkedIn at 12 noon EST on Thursdays. You can re-watch each week’s discussion on Voicebot’s YouTube channel and view the visuals that go along with the show.

The top generative AI news (GAIN) of the week is back for March 9, 2023. This week, Bret Kinsella hosts along with Eric Schwartz from Voicebot.ai and our guest, Brandon Kaplan, chief innovation officer at Journey, and the founder of Skilled Creative. Stories in generative AI land this week include: Enterprise apps all in on LLMs SlackGPT: A new ChatGPT feature for Slack developed by OpenAI Salesforce GPT: Einstein GPT features that Salesforce rolled out this week Grammarly GPT: Grammarly also adds generative AI features for its 30 million users, putting it on a collision course with Jasper AI, AI21's Wordtune, and Microsoft. The Evolution of Search Answer Box Mania: Both Brave and DuckDuckGo have new search summarization features that appear to replicate the Google answer box. The companies are applying LLMs, but the features are not nearly as ambitious as Bing or Bard. What they do show is how quickly the search experience is changing. Larger Language Models Large, Larger, and Largest: AI21 Labs, a competitor to OpenAI, announced some new, larger, and more polished large language models. The announcement was accompanied by a number of new APIs for a variety of LLM features that developers can access by the drink. Talk with ChatGPT ChatGPT Gets a Face: We also have D-ID's new virtual human-led chat that enables you to have a conversation with ChatGPT-enabled avatar. This discussion included a conversation about the role of virtual humans in interactive bot experiences. Elon Musk Rumors A Singular Generative AI: We finish with a discussion about Elon Musk's plans to challenge OpenAI, a company where he was a co-founder. The show was originally broadcast live on YouTube and LinkedIn, and you can watch it on Voicebot's YouTube channel.

If you want to get caught up on the top generative AI news of the week, Eric Schwartz and Andrew Herndon from Voicebot.ai and Synthedia break down the top headlines for the first week in March 2023. On tap this week in the video (with links if you want to read more): ChatGPT API Snap My AI Spotify AI DJ New Bing in Windows 11 Meta joins the LLM wars…sort of More About GAIN   The Generative AI News (GAIN) Rundown is recorded live and streamed via YouTube and LinkedIn at 12 noon EST on Thursdays. Join us live if you can make it. You can re-watch the discussion on Voicebot’s YouTube channel.

Eric Schwartz, head writer at Voicebot.ai, joins me today to talk about some of his key learnings from a recent set of tests he conducted with ten different large language model based writing assistants. In particular, he will break down what the market looks like today in terms of the LLM suppliers and how the AI writing assistants compare across several use cases. In this interview, he compares AI21 Labs, ChatGPT, and GPT-3 models.    This interview was originally recorded at the Synthedia 2 event at the end of 2022. It is also available in Voicebot's YouTube channel at youtube.com/@voicebotai. You might enjoy checking that out now or after listening today because we share on screen several of the writing sample outputs discussed in the interview.   Also, when you are there, please give a Like and Subscribe to the channel.

DeFiance Media is a video news platform that provides coverage of decentralized culture, technology, and finance. It was founded by CEO, Marc Scarpa in 2021.   Scarpa is well known as an innovator in participatory broadcasts. He was the founder of JumpCut in the 1990s which was known for producing Woodstock 99, three of the Tibetan Freedom Concerts, and Artisan Entertainment's Blair Witch WebFestival. Earlier in his career, he was the New York Bureau Chief for CNET TV. He also worked for YouTube, Olgilvy and Global Environment Media.   In today's discussion, Scarpa talks about the idea behind launching a new live news media broadcaster, native to the web but also leveraging over-the-top broadcast distribution channels directly to consumer televisions. He also goes into detail about what it takes to launch the world's first  virtual human newscaster, Roxanna. He also goes into detail about what he has learned after 1,500 broadcasts led by a digital persona, and how that complements the dozens of human broadcasters on the network.

In today's interview, Bakz T. Future walks through the history of OpenAI, where recent developments behind ChatGPT originated, the rise of DALL-E, image generators, and other generative AI technologies. Bakz because is both an everyday user of these technologies as well as a developer that works directly with the OpenAI APIs, so you are going to learn a lot today.    Get ready for a discussion about InstructGPT and how that upgrade in February 2022 was instrumental to all of the recent mania around generative AI. He also discusses the importance of using adversarial thinking when using generative AI models, particularly large language models, and he finishes up with some predictions for 2023.    There is also a video of this episode in Voicebot's YouTube channel if you would prefer to watch. Just go to youtube.com/@voicebotai. While you are there look around at the more than 100 videos we have posted since June of last year on AI technologies. And, of course, give us a click to subscribe.

Welcome to our third edition of GAIN, the generative AI news rundown. On tap today, we lead off with the Bing Boomerang. After some negative press about Bing Chat Mode going off the rails, Bing put some tight restrictions on usage to reduce the risk of generating inappropriate content. Then it reversed itself a few days later.    OpenAI Foundry is a new set of tools for enterprise users, GitHub Copilot got an update with new code completion and info security features. In addition, we saw Huggingface partner with Amazon Web Services to host generative AI models and Roblox outlined a generative AI future for game developers.    Eric Schwartz of Voicebot.ai is the lead host this week, while Michal Stanislawek for #voicelunch, Utter.one, and Hearme.ai, joins him as co-host. Links to the main stories include: Bing puts on the breaks and reverses course: https://voicebot.ai/2023/02/22/microsoft-restricts-then-relaxes-eases-bings-generative-ai-chat-over-4-days/ OpenAI to offer more customization: https://synthedia.substack.com/p/openai-to-offer-chatgpt-customization OpenAI Foundry: https://voicebot.ai/2023/02/23/openais-new-foundry-program-offers-llm-clients-dedicated-processing-fine-tune-controls/ Hugging Face partners with AWS: https://voicebot.ai/2023/02/21/generative-ai-startup-hugging-face-picks-aws-to-host-future-large-language-models/ GitHub Copilot: https://synthedia.substack.com/p/github-copilot-just-made-itself-even Roblox to add generative AI features for game development: https://synthedia.substack.com/p/roblox-to-add-generative-ai-tools You can also watch the show's live recording on Voicebot's YouTube Channel. Follow Bret Kinsella on LinkedIn to get notified of future live recordings.