YouTube launches AI-powered content creation tools
Plus California passes 8 new AI laws
Today’s Highlights:
📰 News: YouTube releases a suite of AI-powered tools for content creation + The UN releases a report on ‘Governing AI for Humanity’ + California passes 8 new AI laws
💰 Funding: Microsoft and Blackrock creates $100Bn+ partnership for AI infrastructure
⚡️ Top News Stories:
1. YouTube unveils a suite of AI-powered tools to transform content creation and community engagement.
Google’s Veo model adds dynamic backgrounds and B-roll clips to YouTube Shorts.
A revamped YouTube Studio Inspiration Tab will offer AI-powered suggestions for video ideas and thumbnails.
Auto-dubbing tools will soon expand, allowing creators to easily add natural-sounding translations.
New community features like “Hype” and an enhanced Comments Tab will use AI to assist in replying to comments with tone-matching responses.
2. The UN’s high-level advisory body on AI released a report on ‘Governing AI for Humanity’, highlighting the fragmented, inconsistent global approach to AI regulation, and providing 7 key recommendations, as Big Tech pushes for deregulation. Here are the 7 recommendations:
Independent Scientific Panel: Establish a global panel to provide reliable AI knowledge and address information imbalances.
Intergovernmental AI Dialogues: Hold regular meetings to share best practices and push for governance cooperation.
AI Standards Exchange: Create a registry to harmonize global AI standards.
AI Capacity Development Network: Build a network to support AI governance for governments and public interests.
Global AI Fund: Address gaps in AI capacity and collaboration.
Global AI Data Framework: Set principles for transparent data use and accountability.
UN AI Office: Form a coordinating body to support AI governance efforts globally.
3. California passed 8 new AI laws, targeting deepfakes including blackmail and election interference, protecting actors from AI-replicas, and requiring watermarks for AI-generated content. 30 additional AI-related bills are pending.
4. Together AI's LlamaCoder, which generates full apps from simple prompts using Meta’s Llama 3.1 model, has helped create over 200,000 apps and gained significant popularity within the developer community.
5. Snap introduced a text-to-video AI tool for select creators, which will soon support video generation from image prompts.
6. 1X showcases its World Model, a virtual simulation framework for general-purpose robots, that predicts interactions with objects, people, and environments using real-world sensor data.
7. OpenAI has made its o1-mini AI reasoning model available for free on ChatGPT, allowing users to access advanced problem-solving capabilities without an account.
8. Alibaba released over 100 new open-source models from its Qwen 2.5 family, including a text-to-video model, and models w/ target applications in sectors like automotive, gaming, and scientific research.
9. T-Mobile is partnering with OpenAI to revamp its customer service using a platform called IntentCX, which will leverage OpenAI’s o1 model and APIs to enhance customer care.
10. Runway partners with Lionsgate to develop custom AI models for film production, particularly helping filmmakers w/ pre-production, post-production, and video generation.
11. AI startup Groq has partnered with Aramco to build the world’s largest AI inferencing center in Saudi Arabia, aiming to serve the Middle East, Africa, and India, and assist with integrating AI into energy operations and helping other firms adopt AI tech.
12. Google.org announces $25M in AI funding to equip over 500,000 U.S. educators and students with AI skills.
13. Google’s new AI model can recognize vocalizations of eight whale species, helping ecological research efforts to monitor whale populations.
14. LinkedIn trained AI models on user data without prior consent, only allowing opt-out for future data use, leading to significant privacy concerns.
15. Government scientists from nine countries and the EU will meet in San Francisco after U.S. elections to coordinate AI safety efforts, w/ topics focused on preventing malicious AI use, like synthetic content, bioterrorism, and nuclear threats.
💰 Top Funding News:
1. Microsoft, BlackRock, GIP, and MGX form the Global AI Infrastructure Investment Partnership (GAIIP), which aims to raise $30Bn in private equity, potentially growing to $100Bn with debt financing, all in an effort to develop data centers (powered by Nvidia GPUs) and power infrastructure needed for AI development.
2. Mercor, which uses AI-driven interviews and a LLM to vet and match job candidates with roles across its platform, raised a $32M Series A, led by Benchmark, w/ notable angels Peter Thiel, Jack Dorsey, Adam D’Angelo, Larry Summers, and others.
3. Intezer, which uses AI-driven automation to triage and investigate cybersecurity alerts, significantly reducing the time required to assess potential threats, raised a $33M Series C, led by Norwest Venture Partners.
4. Fal.ai, which provides cloud infrastructure for running generative AI models that create audio, video, and images, raised a $14M Series A, led by Kindred Ventures w/ Andreessen Horowitz and First Round Capital and notable angel investors including Aravind Srinivas, Guillermo Rauch, Balaji Srinivasan, and Julien Chaumond.
5. Fathom, which provides AI-driven meeting transcription and notetaking services, raised a $17M Series A, led by Telescope Partners.