Microsoft wants to make Windows an AI operating system

Microsoft is making significant strides in integrating generative AI into its Windows operating system with the launch of Copilot+ PCs. These new Windows machines are equipped with dedicated chips called NPUs and come with a minimum of 16GB of RAM and SSD storage. The first Copilot+ PCs will feature Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and Plus chips, boasting impressive battery life, and will also include processors from Intel and AMD in collaboration with various manufacturers. Starting at $999, these PCs aim to provide an AI-first experience with features like Recall, which helps users find previously accessed apps and content.

In addition to Copilot+ PCs, Microsoft has unveiled new Surface devices, including the Surface Laptop and Surface Pro. The latest Surface Laptop offers a redesigned look with thinner bezels and up to 22 hours of battery life, while the new Surface Pro promises up to 90% faster performance than its predecessor, featuring an OLED HDR display and an upgraded front-facing camera. Both devices support Wi-Fi 7, with the Surface Pro also offering optional 5G connectivity and a haptic feedback touchpad.

Windows 11's forthcoming Recall feature enhances user productivity by remembering apps and content accessed weeks or months ago, allowing for natural language searches. Additionally, new AI capabilities in Windows include Super Resolution for upscaling old photos and Cocreator for generating and editing images. Live Captions with live translation will support around 40 languages, translating any audio passing through the PC. These features are powered by the Windows Copilot Runtime, a collection of generative AI models enabling these advanced functionalities to run locally on the PC, enhancing both performance and privacy.

Related: Copilot helps avoid Zombies in Minecraft.

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Chameleon: Meta's New Multi-Modal LLM

Chameleon, developed by Meta’s FAIR team, is a pioneering AI model that integrates text and image processing from the outset, setting it apart from traditional models that handle these elements separately. This innovative approach allows Chameleon to excel in tasks that require understanding and generating mixed-modal content, such as answering questions about images, describing pictures, writing coherent text, and creating images from text prompts. Chameleon's performance surpasses many specialized models in tasks like image captioning and text generation, thanks to its unified processing method.

The FAIR team employed specialized training techniques for Chameleon, ensuring it can handle mixed content seamlessly. By representing both text and images as tokens and utilizing a single transformer architecture, Chameleon maintains stable training even with large parameter sizes. This model excels in various tasks, including visual question answering, image captioning, text generation, and image creation, often outperforming other leading models like Flamingo, Llava-1.5, and GPT-4V. Chameleon's ability to process complex documents with integrated text and images showcases its versatility and high performance.

Chameleon's development involved a rigorous training process using extensive datasets and innovative optimization strategies. Its alignment and fine-tuning on high-quality datasets ensure safe and high-quality outputs. Human evaluations and safety tests have confirmed Chameleon’s advanced capabilities and reliability, making it a competitive AI system in the realm of mixed-modal content processing. With its groundbreaking features and exceptional performance across diverse tasks, Chameleon has the potential to revolutionize applications involving text and image processing, setting new standards in AI technology.

Scarlett Johansson says she is 'shocked, angered' over new ChatGPT voice

Scarlett Johansson has expressed outrage after OpenAI's new ChatGPT voice, dubbed "Sky," was compared to her voice from the 2013 film "Her." Johansson's legal team has demanded that OpenAI disclose how it developed this voice, which the actress says sounds strikingly similar to her own. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, a fan of "Her," had approached Johansson months ago to license her voice for the AI, but she declined. Johansson was shocked when the new voice was introduced, feeling it was a personal affront and highlighting concerns about the misuse of celebrity likenesses in AI technology.

OpenAI denied intentionally imitating Johansson's voice, stating that the "Sky" voice was developed using a different actress's natural speaking voice. Despite the company's denial, Johansson's team continues to seek transparency and legal protections for individual rights in the age of advanced AI tools. OpenAI has since paused the use of "Sky" and promised to improve communication and provide more voice options in future ChatGPT updates.

This incident underscores broader societal questions about AI and voice technology, particularly the ethical implications of creating AI systems with human-like voices and personalities. Experts like Arizona State University professor Visar Berisha suggest that advanced AI voice assistants could foster deep emotional connections with users, potentially leading to addiction and other unforeseen societal impacts. The controversy around OpenAI's "Sky" voice highlights the need for clear legal and ethical guidelines as AI technology continues to evolve.

Related:
- How the voices for ChatGPT were chosen
- The official statement released by Scarlett Johansson, read by the Sky AI voice

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• Satya Nadella has made Microsoft 10 times more valuable in his decade as CEO. Can he stay ahead in the AI age?

• Inflection AI reveals new team and plan to embed emotional AI in business bots

• Snapchat’s Spiegel Shifts Focus to AI After Reviving Ad Business

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