Week In Review – OpenAI Challenges Google With SearchGPT, A Mysterious Image Generator Appears And UMG Inks “Ethical” AI Deal With Startup

OpenAI launches search engine

In this week’s Week in Review: OpenAI finally drops its highly anticipated search engine, SearchGPT, in a direct assault on Google as the tech giant expands the reach of its AI Overviews to more than 100 countries. Meta inks a content licensing deal with news media titan Reuters, music heavyweight Universal Music Group announced a partnership with startup Klay to build “ethical” AI generated music and Runway’s CEO insists the company is not an AI company.  

Tech

Google Expands AI Overviews To More Than 100 Countries

Search engine giant Google said it will make its AI Overviews feature available to users in more than 100 countries. It marks the largest expansion of the service since it first launched in the United States in May, said Google VP of search quality Srinivasan Venkatachary in a blog post. 

“With this latest expansion, AI Overviews will reach more than 1 billion global users every month,” Venkatachary said. 

The search tool providers users brief, AI-generated summaries of key information and links at the top of search results. Within days of launching, the summaries were widely criticised for their opacity, inaccuracies and factual errors, as well as the potential impact on web traffic to publishers. In October, Google said it will begin showing ads in AI Overviews. 

Mysterious ‘Red Panda’ AI Image Generator Tops Benchmarks

A mysterious new AI image generator called “red_panda” topped the Artificial Analysis text-to-image model leaderboard this week. The unknown model sparked a flurry of speculation after beating well-known products from industry leaders like Midjourney, Stability AI, OpenAI and Black Forest Labs in the crowdsourced rankings, which pit the outputs of anonymous AI models against each other in a public vote.  

The model, now named “Recraft V3,” was later claimed by London-based company Recraft. The firm, founded in the US in 2022, says its mission is to “enable designers to create and perfect their visuals” and give them “enhanced control over the entire design process.” It says it has helped generate more than 200 million images and is trusted by over 1.5 million users across 200 countries. 

OpenAI Adds Search To ChatGPT In Direct Challenge To Google 

OpenAI has integrated an anticipated AI search feature into its popular AI chatbot ChatGPT, a direct challenge to competitors like Google, Microsoft and Perplexity. The update, called Search, is designed to deliver “fast, timely answers with links to relevant web sources.” It will be available at chatgpt.com and on the company’s desktop and mobile apps to paid ChatGPT Plus and Team users immediately and Enterprise and Edu users to gain access “in the next few weeks.” Search will be rolled out to Free users “over the coming months,” OpenAI said. 

OpenAI says it has “collaborated extensively with the news industry and carefully listened to feedback from our global publisher partners, including Associated Press, Axel Springer, Condé Nast, Dotdash Meredith, Financial Times, GEDI, Hearst, Le Monde, News Corp, Prisa (El País), Reuters, The Atlantic, Time, and Vox Media,” adding that “any website or publisher can choose to appear⁠ in ChatGPT search” if they want. 

Media and Publishers

Meta Inks AI Content Deal With Reuters

Meta has inked a deal with Reuters for its AI chatbot to use the company’s reporting when responding to news-related queries. It is the first deal of its kind for the Facebook and Instagram parent within a growing landscape of similar partnerships between AI firms and news publishers.

Axios, which first reported the news, said Reuters will be compensated for its answers appearing in the Meta AI chatbot as part of a multi-year deal. Neither party has disclosed the terms of the deal and it is not clear whether Reuters’ content will be used to train Meta’s large language models.   

Disney Creates New AI Unit

Disney has created a new division to coordinate the company’s use of emerging technologies like AI and mixed reality, Reuters reported Friday, citing an internal memo. Jamie Voris, the 14-year chief technology officer for Walt Disney Studios, has been tapped to head the new ​​Office of Technology Enablement, the report says. 

“The pace and scope of the advances in AI and XR (extended reality) are profound and will continue to impact consumer experiences, creative endeavors and our businesses for years to come – making it critical that Disney explore the exciting opportunities and navigate the potential risks,” said Disney Entertainment Co-Chairman Alan Bergman in the memo announcing the unit’s creation. 

UMG Inks “Ethical” AI Deal With Stealth Startup Klay

Music industry titan Universal Music Group (UMG) announced a deal with Los Angeles-based AI company Klay Vision to develop an “ethical foundational model for AI generated music.” Klay, which is currently in stealth mode, says it plans to launch in the in the next few months and claims its product “will revolutionise the way people think about music.”

The pair gave few details on the collaboration but said the AI model will work “in collaboration with the music industry and its creators” and be “fully respectful of copyright, as well as name and likeness rights.” 

UMG, alongside other industry heavyweight Sony Music and Warner Records, is suing AI startups Suno and Udio over alleged mass copyright infringement for using recordings to train generative AI systems. UMG is also engaged in litigation against AI company Anthropic over claims its chatbot Claude distributes copyrighted song lyrics. 

Law and Regulatory

Perplexity CEO Ducks Defining Plagiarism As Stealing Allegations Grow

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas would not say how the company defines plagiarism, according to TechCrunch, amid allegations the AI search engine startup has engaged in widespread theft of copyrighted works. 

Speaking at ‘TechCrunch’s Disrupt’ 2024 conference, Srinivas emphasised Perplexity “always cites its sources” and does not claim to own any content. The executive, who acknowledged flaws in the citation process, said Perplexity’s information gathering and content summary abilities were similar to how journalists, academics and students do their jobs.   

Perplexity, which recently struck content licensing deals with media brands including Time, Fortune and Der Spiegel, is reportedly in talks to raise up to $1 billion in a deal that would value the company at $8 billion. Discussions over funding, the company’s fourth set this year, come amid an onslaught of copyright infringement and plagiarism complaints from the likes of Forbes, the New York Times and Condé Nast. Dow Jones and the New York Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, sued the AI company last week alleging it illegally copies copyrighted works.  

AI Chatbot Company Sued Over Teen’s Suicide

A US mother filed a lawsuit against AI company Character.ai, its founders and Google last week claiming a chatbot named after a “Game of Thrones” character was responsible for the death of her 14-year-old son. Megan Garcia said her son, Sewell Setzer III, became obsessed with an AI chatbot styled after Daenerys Targaryen in the months before his death by suicide in February. 

The civil suit, filed in Florida federal court Tuesday, alleges negligence, wrongful death and deceptive trade practices and claims the company targeted minors with “deceptive” and “hypersexualized” content. 

“We are heartbroken by the tragic loss of one of our users and want to express our deepest condolences to the family,” Character.ai said in a statement. “As a company, we take the safety of our users very seriously and we are continuing to add new safety features,” it said, linking to a blog post outlining “new guardrails for users under the age of 18.” 

Robert Downey Jr Will “Sue All Future Executives” Who Recreate Him With AI

Actor Robert Downey Jr vowed to sue Hollywood executives who create digital replicas of his likeness using AI, even from beyond the grave. 

“I would like to here state that I intend to sue all future executives just on spec,” Downey Jr said. Speaking about his role as Marvel superhero Iron Man on an episode of the “On With Kara Swisher” podcast, Downey Jr said he was not worried about executives recreating his likeness using AI to portray the character.

“I am not worried about them hijacking my character’s soul because there’s like three or four guys and gals who make all the decisions there anyway and they would never do that to me, with or without me,” said Downey Jr. 

The actor, who is set to return to the Marvel universe as supervillain Doctor Doom, said he was confident he could prevent his likeness from being digitally recreated even after he had died and all executives had been replaced. “My law firm will still be very active,” he quipped 

Quote of the Week

“I actually think the era of AI companies is over,” said Cristóbal Valenzuela, CEO and cofounder of AI video generator company Runway. “Runway is not an AI company. Runway is a media and entertainment company,” Valenzuela insisted, likening the company’s AI technology to the transformative invention of photography.  

“It’s not because AI failed – quite the opposite. It’s because AI is becoming infrastructure, as fundamental as electricity or the internet. Calling yourself an AI company today is like calling yourself an internet company. It’s meaningless because it’s universal. Every company uses the internet; every company will use AI.”

“The end of AI companies marks the beginning of something far more interesting: the birth of truly new media. Not just new platforms or formats, but entirely new ways of creating and experiencing content. We’re not building an AI company. And that’s a far more exciting mission. Like it has always been; back to our roots.”

Number of the Week

$200 billion. That’s how much four of the world’s largest tech companies – Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft – are set to spend this year in the race to lead in generative AI. The capital expenditures have fuelled scepticism on Wall Street amid growing fears record investments in the technology will pay off.    

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