Google unveils new AI tools for Chrome
+ a revolutionary new AI video model
Today’s Highlights:
📰 News: Google introduces new AI-tools for Chrome and their Ads platform, while also showcasing their revolutionary new AI video model.
💰 Funding: 3 Google Deepmind researchers leave to start their own AI startup - Uncharted Labs
⚡️ Top News Stories:
1. Google introduces AI-driven tools in Chrome for tab organization, custom themes, and writing assistance.
Tab Organizer automatically suggests and creates tab groups based on open tabs, simplifying tab management.
Users can generate custom themes using a text-to-image diffusion model, choosing subject, mood, visual style, and color.
The "Help me write" feature assists users in drafting content on the web, starting in the next Chrome release.
These experimental features are available on Chrome for Macs and Windows PCs in the U.S., with more regions to follow.
Google plans to integrate its new AI model, Gemini, into Chrome for even easier and faster browsing.
2. Google also enhances its Ads platform with Gemini-powered conversational AI, streamlining campaign creation for advertisers
The conversational experience helps advertisers build better Search campaigns with more performance and less effort.
Gemini is now integrated into Google Ads, enhancing ad solutions and marking the first of many planned Gemini integrations.
Beta access to the conversational experience in Google Ads is fully available to English language advertisers in the U.S. and U.K., with a global rollout planned.
3. Google researchers unveil Lumiere, a new AI video model, offering advanced realistic video generation, outperforming competitors in quality and motion.
Lumiere is designed to synthesize videos that portray realistic, diverse, and coherent motion, addressing a key challenge in video synthesis.
The model allows users to generate realistic and stylized videos from text inputs or transform still images into dynamic videos.
The model differs from existing AI video models by generating the entire temporal duration of a video in a single pass, ensuring more realistic motion.
Lumiere was trained on a dataset of 30 million videos with text captions and can generate 80 frames at 16 fps.
The model outperforms competitors like Pika, Runway, and Stability AI in motion magnitude, temporal consistency, and overall quality.
4. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is collaborating with major tech companies, including Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and others, to launch the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) pilot program
NAIRR is designed to provide researchers and educators with access to high-powered AI technologies, ensuring the US continues to lead in AI research and innovation.
The two-year pilot program includes contributions from tech giants and nonprofits, aiming to create a national resource for AI advancement.
Companies are making in-kind contributions, such as Amazon supporting 20 research projects, Anthropic providing access to its Claude model, and Nvidia offering $30 million in support, including computing for its DGX platform.
The program addresses the concentration and inaccessibility of AI resources, enabling diverse communities, including smaller colleges and rural institutions, to advance in the AI ecosystem.
5. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is launching an extensive study on the AI field's major players, including Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Anthropic, and OpenAI; aiming to investigate investments and partnerships formed between AI developers and major cloud service providers.
6. Nearly 90% of top news outlets, including 'The New York Times,' have implemented measures to block AI data collection bots from companies like OpenAI; while leading right-wing media outlets such as NewsMax and Breitbart are mostly allowing these AI bots to access their content.
7. Nvidia's RTX GPUs can now enhance SDR videos to HDR quality using AI.
8. Microsoft forms a new GenAI team to develop small, affordable AI models, expanding its AI market presence with cost-effective solutions.
9. Google has terminated a multimillion-dollar contract with Australian company Appen, which employs 1M contractors globally, referred to as "ghost workers," which label data to improve AI systems for tech companies, including Google.
10. Google Cloud has partnered with Hugging Face to provide developers with access to Google's advanced computing resources.
💰 Top Funding News:
1. Three former Google DeepMind researchers have left the company to form their own AI startup, Uncharted Labs, already raising $8.5M.
2. TravelPerk, an AI-powered business travel management platform, raises a $104M investment led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2.
3. AiDash, an enterprise SaaS company making critical infrastructure industries climate-resilient and sustainable with satellites and AI, raised a $50M Series C led by global impact investment firm Lightrock.
4. Bluewhite, a startup developing autonomous robots that can be retrofitted to any tractor, transforming them into self-operating machines, raised a $39M Series C, led by Insight Partners, with new backers Alumni Ventures and LIP Ventures.
5. Kittl, a graphic design platform that created the first text-to-graphic generative AI model in graphic design, raised a $36M Series B, led by IVP.
6. Torq, a cybersecurity automation platform leveraging generative-AI, raised a $42M Series B extension from Bessemer Venture Partners, GGV Capital, Insight Partners, Greenfield Partners, and Evolution Equity Partners.
7. Anomalo, an enterprise data quality platform that uses AI to help teams resolve data issues before they impact critical decisions, operations, or models, raised a $33M Series B led by SignalFire and joined by strategic investor Databricks Ventures.
8. Doppel, an AI-native digital risk protection and threat intelligence platform aiming to disrupt cybercrime, raised a $14 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz.