Week 22 — Filled with Exciting AI Stories
What seemed like a quiet week suddenly became very exciting due to wild news from Canva, X.ai, Eleven Labs, and perhaps Apple. Read on here:
Elon Musk Raises $41 Billion for the World’s Largest Computer!
It sounds completely crazy, but Elon Musk has managed to fund X.ai with $6 billion with a vision to build a computer that will run on 100,000 of Nvidia’s H100 chips. By comparison, there will be a mere 1,500 H100 chips in the Danish supercomputer launching later this year.
Big names are involved in the round, and one might wonder if it makes sense, but rumors say it’s all about being at the front of the queue when Space X goes public, as everyone wants to be part of it!
In any case, it underscores the fierce race to build AI Compute factories and that you need very deep pockets if you want to play along.
This article is good but behind a paywall: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/musk-plans-xai-supercomputer-dubbed-gigafactory-of-compute
You can also read more here: https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/27/24165619/elon-musk-xai-startup-6-billion-funding
Create Your Own Sound Effects Directly from Text
Eleven Labs were the first (and largest) to introduce AI versions of your own voice. Their technology has worked perfectly and has been used for everything from audiobooks, podcasts, voiceovers, translations, and other text-to-speech tasks.
But this week, they launched an exciting new tool that is brilliant for the gaming and film industry but also fun just to play with.
Try it yourself here: https://elevenlabs.io/app/sound-effects
Impressive New Features with Canva Create
Canva has long been the preferred platform for many creatives. The company from Sydney is so popular that they recently sold shares for $2.5 billion at a market value of $26 billion — quite an achievement for an 11-year-old software company.
But Canva is also moving wildly in the AI field. This week, they held their big annual event called Canva Create, where they launched a host of new AI features and tools:
- New video editor that automatically “captures” highlights for you and does the editing work.
- New photo editor with Magic Grab™ where you can select, move, and resize any photo element effortlessly.
- Magic Media — Transform your words into beautiful graphics with text-to-graphics.
- Styles & Layouts — Apply the style from any design to another with a single click.
- And many more new features.
Canva is a tough competitor to Adobe, and the two are fighting to be leaders in AI tools for creatives.
Read about all the news here: https://www.canva.com/newsroom/news/what-happened-at-canva-create-2024/
Watch the impressive opening keynote from the event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUkCiqHgvm0
Or just a 1-minute recap of Canva Create: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg84ZSE3ok8
PWC Goes All In on Open AI and Buys 100,000 ChatGPT Licenses
In August last year, Open AI opened for Enterprise sales of their platform, and recently they announced that they have now reached 600,000 licenses. That number could get a significant boost with the deal they announced last week. PWC has 330,000 employees, and about 1/3 now have access.
At the same time, PWC becomes the first official reseller of OpenAI Enterprise licenses, so they can go out and sell to all their customers — a really smart move regarding their own digital transformation.
Has Apple Gone to Bed with Open AI?
We only have to sleep 8 times before the next big — and long-awaited event takes place: Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference.
Apple currently seems hopelessly behind Google and Microsoft, and all Apple fans hope that situation changes on June 10th. I am personally more skeptical, unfortunately.
But this week, there have been persistent rumors that Apple has entered into a big deal to integrate OpenAI’s technology into their ecosystem, just as they do with Google Maps. If that happens, it can be a game-changer, and reportedly, Satya Nadella from Microsoft is not exactly happy about the alliance.
We will have to wait a little longer before we know if Siri+GPT 4o will end up being a solution that can actually be used for something.
Until then, you can read more here: https://www.businessinsider.com/satya-nadella-sam-altman-openai-apple-microsoft-worried-about-deal-2024-5
https://nypost.com/2024/05/30/business/openais-sam-altman-tightens-grip-as-he-strikes-apple-deal/
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-ceo-cements-control-as-he-secures-apple-deal
