SAN FRANCISCO — The maker of ChatGPT on Thursday unveiled its next leap into generative artificial intelligence with a tool that instantly makes short videos in response to written commands.
San Francisco-based OpenAI’s new text-to-video generator, called Sora, isn’t the first of its kind. Google, Meta and the startup Runway ML are among the other companies to have demonstrated similar technology.
But the high quality of videos displayed by OpenAI — some after CEO Sam Altman asked social media users to send in ideas for written prompts — astounded observers while also raising fears about the ethical and societal implications.
“A instructional cooking session for homemade gnocchi hosted by a grandmother social media influencer set in a rustic Tuscan country kitchen with cinematic lighting,” was a prompt suggested on X by a freelance photographer from New Hampshire. Altman responded a short time later with a realistic video that depicted what the prompt described.
The tool isn’t yet publicly available and OpenAI has revealed limited information about how it was built. The company, which has been sued by some authors and The New York Times over its use of copyrighted works of writing to train ChatGPT, also hasn’t disclosed what imagery and video sources were used to train Sora. (OpenAI pays an undisclosed fee to The Associated Press to license its text news archive).
OpenAI said in a blog post that it’s engaging with artists, policymakers and others before releasing the new tool to the public.
“We are working with red teamers — domain experts in areas like misinformation, hateful content, and bias — who will be adversarially testing the model,” the company said. “We’re also building tools to help detect misleading content such as a detection classifier that can tell when a video was generated by Sora.”
SAN FRANCISCO — The maker of ChatGPT on Thursday unveiled its next leap into generative artificial intelligence with a tool that instantly makes short videos in response to written commands.
San Francisco-based OpenAI’s new text-to-video generator, called Sora, isn’t the first of its kind. Google, Meta and the startup Runway ML are among the other companies to have demonstrated similar technology.
But the high quality of videos displayed by OpenAI — some after CEO Sam Altman asked social media users to send in ideas for written prompts — astounded observers while also raising fears about the ethical and societal implications.
“A instructional cooking session for homemade gnocchi hosted by a grandmother social media influencer set in a rustic Tuscan country kitchen with cinematic lighting,” was a prompt suggested on X by a freelance photographer from New Hampshire. Altman responded a short time later with a realistic video that depicted what the prompt described.
The tool isn’t yet publicly available and OpenAI has revealed limited information about how it was built. The company, which has been sued by some authors and The New York Times over its use of copyrighted works of writing to train ChatGPT, also hasn’t disclosed what imagery and video sources were used to train Sora. (OpenAI pays an undisclosed fee to The Associated Press to license its text news archive).
OpenAI said in a blog post that it’s engaging with artists, policymakers and others before releasing the new tool to the public.
“We are working with red teamers — domain experts in areas like misinformation, hateful content, and bias — who will be adversarially testing the model,” the company said. “We’re also building tools to help detect misleading content such as a detection classifier that can tell when a video was generated by Sora.”
Nvidia, ever keen to incentivize purchases of its latest GPUs, is releasing a tool that lets owners of GeForce RTX 30 Series and 40 Series cards run an AI-powered chatbot offline on a Windows PC.
Called Chat with RTX, the tool allows users to customize a GenAI model along the lines of OpenAI’s ChatGPT by connecting it to documents, files and notes that it can then query.
“Rather than searching through notes or saved content, users can simply type queries,” Nvidia writes in a blog post. “For example, one could ask, ‘What was the restaurant my partner recommended while in Las Vegas?’ and Chat with RTX will scan local files the user points it to and provide the answer with context.”
Chat with RTX defaults to AI startup Mistral’s open source model but supports other text-based models including Meta’s Llama 2. Nvidia warns that downloading all the necessary files will eat up a fair amount of storage — 50GB to 100GB, depending on the model(s) selected.
Currently, Chat with RTX works with text, PDF, .doc and .docx and .xml formats. Pointing the app at a folder containing any supported files will load the files into the model’s fine-tuning data set. In addition, Chat with RTX can take the URL of a YouTube playlist to load transcriptions of the videos in the playlist, enabling whichever model’s selected to query their contents.
Now, there’s certain limitations to keep in mind, which Nvidia to its credit outlines in a how-to guide.
Image Credits: Nvidia
Chat with RTX can’t remember context, meaning that the app won’t take into account any previous questions when answering follow-up questions. For example, if you ask “What’s a common bird in North America?” and follow that up with “What are its colors?,” Chat with RTX won’t know that you’re talking about birds.
Nvidia also acknowledges that the relevance of the app’s responses can be affected by a range of factors, some easier to control for than others — including the question phrasing, the performance of the selected model and the size of the fine-tuning data set. Asking for facts covered in a couple of documents is likely to yield better results than asking for a summary of a document or set of documents. And response quality will generally improve with larger data sets — as will pointing Chat with RTX at more content about a specific subject, Nvidia says.
So Chat with RTX is more a toy than anything to be used in production. Still, there’s something to be said for apps that make it easier to run AI models locally — which is something of a growing trend.
In a recent report, the World Economic Forum predicted a “dramatic” growth in affordable devices that can run GenAI models offline, including PCs, smartphones, internet of things devices and networking equipment. The reasons, the WEF said, are the clear benefits: not only are offline models inherently more private — the data they process never leaves the device they run on — but they’re lower latency and more cost effective than cloud-hosted models.
Of course, democratizing tools to run and train models opens the door to malicious actors — a cursory Google Search yields many listings for models fine-tuned on toxic content from unscrupulous corners of the web. But proponents of apps like Chat with RTX argue that the benefits outweigh the harms. We’ll have to wait and see.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The CEO of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI said Tuesday that the dangers that keep him awake at night regarding artificial intelligence are the “very subtle societal misalignments” that could make the systems wreak havoc.
Sam Altman, speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai via a video call, reiterated his call for a body like the International Atomic Energy Agency to be created to oversee AI that’s likely advancing faster than the world expects.
“There’s some things in there that are easy to imagine where things really go wrong. And I’m not that interested in the killer robots walking on the street direction of things going wrong,” Altman said. “I’m much more interested in the very subtle societal misalignments where we just have these systems out in society and through no particular ill intention, things just go horribly wrong.”
However, Altman stressed that the AI industry, like OpenAI, shouldn’t be in the driver’s seat when it comes to making regulations governing the industry.
“We’re still in the stage of a lot of discussion. So there’s you know, everybody in the world is having a conference. Everyone’s got an idea, a policy paper, and that’s OK,” Altman said. “I think we’re still at a time where debate is needed and healthy, but at some point in the next few years, I think we have to move towards an action plan with real buy-in around the world.”
OpenAI, a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup, is one of the leaders in the field. Microsoft has invested some $1 billion in OpenAI. The Associated Press has signed a deal with OpenAI for it to access its news archive. Meanwhile, The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft over the use of its stories without permission to train OpenAI’s chatbots.
OpenAI’s success has made Altman the public face for generative AI’s rapid commercialization — and the fears over what may come from the new technology.
The UAE, an autocratic federation of seven hereditarily ruled sheikhdoms, has signs of that risk. Speech remains tightly controlled. Those restrictions affect the flow of accurate information — the same details AI programs like ChatGPT rely on as machine-learning systems to provide their answers for users.
The Emirates also has the Abu Dhabi firm G42, overseen by the country’s powerful national security adviser. G42 has what experts suggest is the world’s leading Arabic-language artificial intelligence model. The company has faced spying allegations for its ties to a mobile phone app identified as spyware. It has also faced claims it could have gathered genetic material secretly from Americans for the Chinese government.
G42 has said it would cut ties to Chinese suppliers over American concerns. However, the discussion with Altman, moderated by the UAE’s Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence Omar al-Olama, touched on none of the local concerns.
For his part, Altman said he was heartened to see that schools, where teachers feared students would use AI to write papers, now embrace the technology as crucial for the future. But he added that AI remains in its infancy.
“I think the reason is the current technology that we have is like … that very first cellphone with a black-and-white screen,” Altman said. “So give us some time. But I will say I think in a few more years it’ll be much better than it is now. And in a decade it should be pretty remarkable.”
Under scrutiny from activists — and parents — OpenAI has formed a new team to study ways to prevent its AI tools from being misused or abused by kids.
In a new job listing on its career page, OpenAI reveals the existence of a Child Safety team, which the company says is working with platform policy, legal and investigations groups within OpenAI as well as outside partners to manage “processes, incidents, and reviews” relating to underage users.
The team is currently looking to hire a child safety enforcement specialist, who’ll be responsible for applying OpenAI’s policies in the context of AI-generated content and working on review processes related to “sensitive” (presumably kid-related) content.
Tech vendors of a certain size dedicate a fair amount of resources to complying with laws like the U.S. Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule, which mandate controls over what kids can — and can’t — access on the web as well as what sorts of data companies can collect on them. So the fact that OpenAI’s hiring child safety experts doesn’t come as a complete surprise, particularly if the company expects a significant underage user base one day. (OpenAI’s current terms of use require parental consent for children ages 13 to 18 and prohibit use for kids under 13.)
But the formation of the new team, which comes several weeks after OpenAI announced a partnership with Common Sense Media to collaborate on kid-friendly AI guidelines and landed its first education customer, also suggests a wariness on OpenAI’s part of running afoul of policies pertaining to minors’ use of AI — and negative press.
Kids and teens are increasingly turning to GenAI tools for help not only with schoolwork but personal issues. According to a poll from the Center for Democracy and Technology, 29% of kids report having used ChatGPT to deal with anxiety or mental health issues, 22% for issues with friends and 16% for family conflicts.
Some see this as a growing risk.
Last summer, schools and colleges rushed to ban ChatGPT over plagiarism and misinformation fears. Since then, some have reversed their bans. But not all are convinced of GenAI’s potential for good, pointing to surveys like the U.K. Safer Internet Centre’s, which found that over half of kids (53%) report having seen people their age use GenAI in a negative way — for example creating believable false information or images used to upset someone.
In September, OpenAI published documentation for ChatGPT in classrooms with prompts and an FAQ to offer educator guidance on using GenAI as a teaching tool. In one of the support articles, OpenAI acknowledged that its tools, specifically ChatGPT, “may produce output that isn’t appropriate for all audiences or all ages” and advised “caution” with exposure to kids — even those who meet the age requirements.
Calls for guidelines on kid usage of GenAI are growing.
The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) late last year pushed for governments to regulate the use of GenAI in education, including implementing age limits for users and guardrails on data protection and user privacy. “Generative AI can be a tremendous opportunity for human development, but it can also cause harm and prejudice,” Audrey Azoulay, UNESCO’s director-general, said in a press release. “It cannot be integrated into education without public engagement and the necessary safeguards and regulations from governments.”
A group of renters in the U.S. say their landlords are using software to deliver inflated rent hikes.
“We’ve been told as tenants by employees of Equity that the software takes empathy out of the equation. So they can charge whatever the software tells them to charge,” said Kevin Weller, a tenant at Portside Towers since 2021.
Tenants say the management started to increase prices substantially after giving renters concessions during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The 527-unit building is located roughly 20 minutes away from the World Trade Center, on the shoreline of Jersey City, New Jersey. A group of tenants at the tower is involved in a sprawling class-action lawsuit against RealPage and 34 co-defendant landlords. The U.S. Department of Justice filed a statement of interest in the case in December 2023, arguing that the complaints adequately allege violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
In November 2023, the attorney general of Washington, D.C., filed a similar but more narrow complaint against RealPage and 14 landlords that collectively manage more than 50,000 apartment units in the District.
“Effectively, RealPage is facilitating a housing cartel,” said Attorney General of the District of Columbia Brian Schwalb in an interview with CNBC. His office filed the complaint on antitrust grounds. They allege that landlords share competitively sensitive data through RealPage, which then sets artificially high rents on a key slice of the local rental market.
Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, November 2023
“Rather than making independent decisions on what the market here in D.C. calls for in terms of filling vacant units, landlords are compelled, under the terms of their agreement with RealPage, to charge what RealPage tells them,” said Schwalb.
RealPage says its revenue management products use anonymized, aggregated data to deliver pricing recommendations on roughly 4.5 million housing units in the U.S. The company says its tools can increase landlord revenues between 2% and 7%.
“Just turning the system on will outperform your manual analyst. There’s almost no way it can’t,” said Jeffrey Roper, a former RealPage employee and inventor of YieldStar.
YieldStar is one of three key revenue management tools offered by RealPage. The software balances prices, occupancy and lease lengths to help property managers optimize their portfolio’s yield. The company feeds data from its models into a newer tool dubbed “AIRM” that considers the effect of credit, marketing and leasing effectiveness.
RealPage told CNBC that its landlord customers are under no obligation to take their price suggestions. The company also said it charges a fixed fee on each apartment unit managed with its software.
RealPage was acquired by Miami-based private equity firm Thoma Bravo for $10.2 billion in 2021. In court filings, Thoma Bravo has claimed that it is not liable for the alleged acts of its subsidiary outlined by plaintiffs in the class-action complaints.
Renters told CNBC they discovered how revenue management software is used in real estate after reading a 2022 ProPublica investigation. Equity Residential investor materials show that the company started to experiment with Lease Rent Options between 2005 and 2008. RealPage acquired the product in 2017.
“How could we possibly know?” said Harry Gural, a tenant in an Equity Residential property located in the Van Ness neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Gural says he has been involved in legal matters against his landlord’s pricing practices for more than seven years.
Affiliates of Equity Residential are contesting a separate decision made by a local housing authority in Jersey City regarding prices set on the Portside Towers property. The company has filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the decision, stating that the decision could result in millions of dollars in refunds for tenants.
Equity Residential and other defendant landlords declined to comment on ongoing RealPage litigation.
Redfin reports that asking rents in the U.S. ticked down to $1,964 a month in December 2023, a decline from recent highs. Prices are coming down in markets such as Atlanta and Austin, Texas, where home construction is high. But analysts believe low rates of homebuilding on the U.S. East Coast could give well-located landlords more pricing power.
“Guys like us that own 80,000 well-located apartments, we’re still in a pretty good spot,” said Equity Residential CEO Mark Parrell in a June 2023 interview with CNBC. Watch the video above to learn about the rising tide of lawsuits against U.S. corporate landlords.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article misstated when Equity Residential purchased Portside Towers.
RealPage software is used to set rental prices on 4.5 million housing units in the U.S. A series of lawsuits allege that a group of landlords are sharing sensitive data with RealPage, which then artificially inflates rents. The complaints surface as housing supply in the U.S. lags demand. Some of the defendant landlords report high occupancy within their buildings, alongside strong jobs growth in their operating regions and slow home construction.
Satya Nadella marks his tenth year as Microsoft CEO on Sunday, capping a decade of stunning growth as he pivoted the slow-moving software giant into a laser focus on cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
Microsoft’s stock has soared by more than 1,000% since Nadella took the helm in 2014, compared to the more gradual 185% growth of the broader S&P 500. Microsoft now has a market value of $3 trillion — more than any U.S. publicly traded company, including its longtime rival Apple.
“Nadella’s had the biggest transformation of a tech company potentially ever,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives. “The only one that would rival it was (Steve) Jobs coming back to Apple and turning it around with the iPhone.”
Microsoft has created $2.8 trillion in shareholder wealth in the past decade, meaning an investor who bought a $10,000 stake in Microsoft at the time Nadella took over and did nothing with those shares, would have a stake worth about $113,000 now.
“Our industry does not respect tradition — it only respects innovation,” Nadella told employees in an inaugural memo 10 years ago, an opening salvo that hinted at bigger shifts to come. Microsoft declined requests for an interview.
Now a hero to Wall Street, some were at first skeptical that such transformation could come from an insider who’d already spent 22 years at the Redmond, Washington company. He’s only the third Microsoft CEO, following Steve Ballmer, who lasted for 14 years, and Bill Gates, who co-founded the company in 1975 and took it public in 1986.
Big changes came quickly under Nadella. He marshaled resources to build up the Azure cloud computing platform, a shift in priorities from the company’s longtime reliance on its flagship Windows operating system and the royalties it gets for each PC sold with it. And he largely put the brakes on Microsoft’s ill-fated attempts to play catch-up in the smartphone market, marked by his predecessor Ballmer’s $7.3 billion acquisition of Nokia’s phone business.
But some of the biggest changes were in the company’s culture, a shift away from Microsoft’s brash external reputation and internal bickering to a more collaborative approach that Nadella has modeled in his own collegial personality and engineer’s mindset.
“Microsoft is known for rallying the troops with competitive fire,” Nadella said in his 2017 autobiography. “The press loves that, but it’s not me.”
Much of Nadella’s strength is how he stands out from the typical “very strong ego CEO,” said Raimo Lenschow, a stock analyst at Barclays who covers 36 tech companies. Instead of making bold pronouncements, Lenschow said Nadella takes a more measured approach to explaining “where he thinks the future is going.”
And “whether it’s the person making food in the cafeteria, an engineer, finance executive, a customer, he treats everyone in the same way, with respect,” said Ives. It’s not just Wall Street analysts who think so.
A tiny startup from Zeeland, Michigan, running a booth at January’s CES gadget show in Las Vegas caught a glimpse of Nadella’s curiosity when he showed up, shook founder Tim Murphy’s hand and asked for a demo. The product, Audio Radar, visualizes the sounds in video games for deaf and hard of hearing players.
“He’s very down to earth,” said Murphy, who was there with a small crew including his teen son. “I gave him the pitch, played some games, and he was like, ‘It’s wonderful what you’re doing.’ Honestly, I can’t really remember too much of what he said because I was just kind of shocked.”
Nadella has long made the accessibility of technology a priority, informed in part by his experience raising a son who was visually impaired, quadriplegic and had cerebral palsy. Zain Nadella died in 2022.
What’s brought Microsoft to its latest heights is its emergence as an artificial intelligence leader, setting the agenda on how AI tools could get used in work and society. While Nadella has been emphasizing AI for most of his tenure, its role was not guaranteed and happened after years of careful planning that led to a close partnership with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. (OpenAI pays The Associated Press an undisclosed fee to license its archive of news stories).
“Historically, if you’re a cool startup that was doing something amazing, Microsoft wasn’t really your first choice,” Lenschow said. “So the fact that he got OpenAI to commit to Azure was an amazing masterstroke … it gives him a massive, competitive advantage over Google and Amazon.”
That position was put in jeopardy late last year when OpenAI’s board of directors suddenly fired CEO Sam Altman. A weekend of behind-the-scenes maneuvers and a threatened mass exodus of employees championed by Nadella helped bring back Altman and stabilize the startup, assuaging clients and shareholders. “He handled that like he was in the World Series of Poker playing against little kids,” Ives said.
Nadella’s tenure hasn’t been without hiccups, especially given how much of the world relies so heavily on Microsoft products — sometimes to the frustration of people using them.
Cybersecurity experts say its tendency is to sacrifice security for convenience, including in its gung-ho rollout of AI large language models. The company’s trademark suite of work tools, Microsoft Office 365, has also been penetrated successfully in recent years in embarrassing high-profile compromises that have seen elite Russian and Chinese cyber operators access the email accounts of senior U.S. officials and members of Microsoft’s senior leadership team.
It stepped in to provide cloud hosting to Ukraine just ahead of Russia’s 2022 invasion, but the networks serving NATO allies are constantly peppered by intrusion attempts. That, and the worsening ransomware scourge, have led Nadella to call for a cyber Geneva Convention with Russia and China.
And despite Nadella’s stated aversion to “competitive fire,” Microsoft is once again drawing the kind of antitrust scrutiny that dogged Gates and Ballmer in earlier years. Nadella’s confident testimony at a federal court hearing last summer helped persuade a judge not to block Microsoft’s purchase of video game giant Activision Blizzard, but the company is now facing another round of questions on its partnership with OpenAI.
None of those challenges are likely to push Nadella, 56, who made $48.5 million in total compensation last year and has also chaired Microsoft’s board since 2021, out of his leadership roles anytime soon.
“From everything I can gather, he’s really enjoying himself,” Lenschow said. “We’re in very, very, very interesting times. I would expect him to stay for a while.”
—-
AP technology reporters Michael Liedtke and Frank Bajak contributed to this report.
The first-of-its-kind AI tool offers an edge for students deferred from their dream schools with personalized assistance akin to that of a human admissions coach.
NEW YORK, January 29, 2024 (Newswire.com)
– ESAI (pronounced [ES] + [AY] + [EYE]), the leading provider of affordable and ethical AI tools for college applicants, has launched its latest AI-powered tool designed to assist students in crafting compelling Letters of Continued Interest (LOCI) for their dream colleges. This new tool, part of ESAI’s suite of educational resources, offers a level of personalized assistance akin to that of a human admissions coach at a fraction of the cost.
As college admissions become increasingly competitive and deferrals become more common, ESAI’s Letter of Continued Interest Tool empowers students to effectively communicate their ongoing interest and recent accomplishments to admissions committees. This tool guides students in highlighting updates since their initial application, aligning their qualities with the target school’s programs, and passionately expressing their commitment to the school.
“Every student deserves a fair chance at their dream college. Our new LOCI tool is designed to give students that best shot, providing them with a cost-effective, yet highly personalized, way to enhance their application,” said Julia Dixon, Founder of ESAI. “We’re bridging the gap in higher education with AI, ensuring our platform aids students ethically, enhancing their storytelling skills in a manner similar to a human coach, without doing the work for them.”
ESAI stands at the forefront of the educational technology revolution, making higher education more accessible to students from all backgrounds. The platform’s suite of tools uses generative AI, trained by data from admissions officers, to help students create unique and effective personal narratives for college applications and beyond. The TikTok viral ESAI College Admissions Tool has already helped over 100,000 students tell their story.
The new LOCI tool not only helps students to reaffirm their interest in their dream schools, but also encourages them to reflect upon and articulate their recent achievements and aspirations. This approach ensures that students are active participants in crafting their stories, adhering to the ethical use of AI in education.
“AI in education is not about replacing human effort; it’s about enhancing it. Our tools are designed to complement the hard work students put into their applications, giving them an edge in the highly competitive college admissions landscape,” added Dixon.
For more information about ESAI and its new Letter of Continued Interest tool, please visit www.esai.ai.
U.S. antitrust enforcers are opening an inquiry into the relationships between leading artificial intelligence startups such as ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and the tech giants that have invested billions of dollars into them.
The action targets Amazon, Google and Microsoft and their sway over the generative AI boom that’s fueled demand for chatbots such as ChatGPT, and other AI tools that can produce novel imagery and sound.
“We’re scrutinizing whether these ties enable dominant firms to exert undue influence or gain privileged access in ways that could undermine fair competition,” said Lina Khan, chair of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, in opening remarks at a Thursday AI forum.
Khan said the market inquiry would review “the investments and partnerships being formed between AI developers and major cloud service providers.”
The FTC said Thursday it issued “compulsory orders” to five companies — cloud providers Amazon, Google and Microsoft, and AI startups Anthropic and OpenAI — requiring them to provide information about their agreements and the decision-making around them.
Microsoft’s years-long relationship with OpenAI is the best known. Google and Amazon have more recently made multibillion-dollar deals with Anthropic, another San Francisco-based AI startup formed by former leaders at OpenAI.
Google welcomed the FTC inquiry in a statement Thursday that also took a not-so-veiled dig at Microsoft’s OpenAI relationship and its history of inviting antitrust scrutiny over its business practices.
“We hope the FTC’s study will shine a bright light on companies that don’t offer the openness of Google Cloud or have a long history of locking-in customers – and who are bringing that same approach to AI services,” Google’s statement said.
Microsoft’s Rimy Alaily, a corporate vice president for competition and market regulation, also said the company looks forward to cooperating with the FTC and defended such partnerships as “promoting competition and accelerating innovation.”
Amazon, Anthropic and OpenAI declined comment.
The European Union and the United Kingdom have already signaled that they’re scrutinizing Microsoft’s OpenAI investments. The EU’s executive branch said this month the partnership might trigger an investigation under regulations covering mergers and acquisitions that would harm competition in the 27-nation bloc. Britain’s antitrust watchdog opened a similar review in December.
Antitrust advocates welcomed the actions from both the FTC and Europe on deals that some have derided as quasi-mergers.
“Big Tech firms know they can’t buy the top A.I. companies, so instead they are finding ways of exerting influence without formally calling it an acquisition,” said a written statement from Matt Stoller, director of research at the American Economic Liberties Project.
Microsoft has never publicly disclosed the total dollar amount of its investment in OpenAI, which Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has described as a “complicated thing.”
“We have a significant investment,” he said on a November podcast hosted by tech journalist Kara Swisher. “It sort of comes in the form of not just dollars, but it comes in the form of compute and what have you.”
OpenAI’s governance and its relationship with Microsoft came into question last year after the startup’s board of directors suddenly fired CEO Sam Altman, who was then swiftly reinstated, in turmoil that made world headlines. A weekend of behind-the-scenes maneuvers and a threatened mass exodus of employees championed by Nadella and other Microsoft leaders helped stabilize the startup and led to the resignation of most of its previous board.
The new arrangement gave Microsoft a nonvoting board seat, though “we definitely don’t have control,” Nadella said at Davos. Part of the complications that led to Altman’s temporary ouster centered around the startup’s unusual governance structure. OpenAI started out as a nonprofit research institute dedicated to the safe development of futuristic forms of AI. It’s still governed as a nonprofit, though most of its staff works for the for-profit arm it formed several years later.
Microsoft made its first $1 billion investment in San Francisco-based OpenAI in 2019, more than two years before the startup introduced ChatGPT and sparked worldwide fascination with AI advancements.
As part of the deal, the Redmond, Washington software giant would supply computing power needed to train AI large language models on huge troves of human-written texts and other media. In turn, Microsoft would get exclusive rights to much of what OpenAI built, enabling the technology to be infused into a variety of Microsoft products.
Nadella in January compared it to a number of longstanding Microsoft commercial partnerships, such as with chipmaker Intel. Microsoft and OpenAI “are two different companies, answerable to two sets of different stakeholders with different interests,” he told a Bloomberg reporter at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“So we build the compute. They then use the compute to do the training. We then take that, put it into products. And so in some sense it’s a partnership that is based on each of us really reinforcing what … each other does and then ultimately being competitive in the marketplace.”
The FTC has signaled for nearly a year that it is working to track and stop illegal behavior in the use and development of AI tools. Khan said in April that the U.S. government would “not hesitate to crack down” on harmful business practices involving AI. One target of popular concern is the use of AI-generated voices and imagery to turbocharge fraud and phone scams.
But increasingly, Khan made clear that what deserved scrutiny was not just harmful applications but the broader consolidation of market power into a handful of AI leaders who could use this “market tipping moment” to lock in their dominance.
The FTC’s three commissioners, all Democrats because two seats are vacant, voted unanimously to start the inquiry. Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya said it should “shed some light on the competitive dynamics in play with some of these most advanced models.”
The companies have 45 days to provide information to the FTC that includes their partnership agreements and the strategic rationale behind them. They’re also being asked for information about decision-making around product releases and the key resources and services needed to build AI systems.
——
AP business writer Kelvin Chan in London contributed to this report.
Small business owners are using A.I. tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard and others to check grammar in emails, punch up marketing copy and research business plans.
What’s more, bigger companies are developing tools specifically to help small businesses integrate A.I. into their operations in more advanced ways.
Microsoft’s Copilot lets users ask software to perform tasks like summarize an email or a Teams meeting, come up with key themes in a document, or draft emails in a conversational tone in Outlook.
The service, which costs $30-a-month per employee, was recently expanded from companies with at least 300 employees to all companies, so smaller businesses — even “solopreneurs” with no employees — can use Copilot for Microsoft 365.
Meanwhile, MasterCard is piloting a product called MasterCard Small Business A.I., aimed at helping small business owners analyze data and offer other resources to help grow their business.
It uses information from MasterCard’s content library as well as information licensed from media companies focused on inclusivity, including digital media company Blavity Media Group and Spanish-language media company TelevisaUnivision, to answer small business owners’ queries.
Mastercard plans to pilot the tool in the U.S. later this year, with international markets to follow.
The macroeconomic challenges of the past couple of years are beginning to fade, and investors are looking to the future. After the Nasdaq Composite plunged in 2022, suffering its worst performance since 2008, the index enjoyed a robust recovery in 2023 and gained 43%.
There could be more to come. Since the Nasdaq Composite began trading in 1972, in every year following a market recovery, the tech-heavy index rose again — and those second-year gains averaged 19%. The economy is the wildcard here, though, and it could yet stumble in 2024. But historical patterns suggest that this could be a good year for investors.
Recent developments in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) helped fuel the market’s rise last year and will likely drive further gains in 2024. While estimates vary wildly, generative AI is expected to add between $2.6 trillion and $4.4 trillion to the global economy annually over the next few years, according to a study by McKinsey Global Institute. This will result in windfalls for many companies in the field.
Here are my top seven AI stocks to buy for 2024 before the Nasdaq reaches new heights.
Image source: Getty Images.
1. Nvidia
Nvidia(NASDAQ: NVDA) is the poster child for AI innovation. Its graphics processing units (GPUs) are already the industry standard chips in a growing number of AI use cases — including data centers, cloud computing, and machine learning — and it quickly adapted its processors for the needs of generative AI. Though it has been ramping up production, the AI chip shortage is expected to last until 2025 as demand keeps growing. The specter of competition looms, but thus far, Nvidia has stayed ahead of the competition by spending heavily on research and development.
The company’s triple-digit percentage year-over-year growth is expected to continue into 2024. Despite its prospects, Nvidia remains remarkably cheap, with a price/earnings-to-growth ratio (PEG ratio) of less than 1 — the standard for an undervalued stock.
2. Microsoft
Microsoft(NASDAQ: MSFT) helped jump-start the AI boom when it invested $13 billion in ChatGPT creator OpenAI, shining a spotlight on generative AI. The company’s tech peers jumped on the bandwagon, and the AI gold rush began. Microsoft seized the advantage, integrating OpenAI’s technology into its Bing search and a broad cross-section of its cloud-based offerings.
Its productivity-enhancing AI assistant, Copilot, could generate as much as $100 billion in incremental revenue by 2027, according to some analysts, though estimates vary. This and other AI tools already caused Azure Cloud’s growth to outpace rivals in Q3, and Microsoft attributed 3 percentage points of that growth to AI.
The stock is selling for 35 times forward earnings, a slight premium to the price-to-earnings ratio of 26 for the S&P 500. Even so, that looks attractive given Microsoft’s growth potential.
3. Alphabet
Alphabet(NASDAQ: GOOGL)(NASDAQ: GOOG) has long used AI to improve its search results and the relevance of its digital advertising. The company was quick to recognize the potential of generative AI, imbuing many of its Google and Android products with increased functionality and announcing plans to add new AI tools to its search product. Furthermore, as the world’s third-largest cloud infrastructure provider, Google Cloud is suited to offer AI systems to its customers.
A collaboration between Google and Alphabet’s AI research lab, DeepMind, gave birth to Gemini, which the company bills as its “largest and most capable AI model.” Google Cloud’s Vertex AI offers 130 foundational models that help users build and deploy generative AI apps quickly.
Add to that the ongoing rebound in its digital advertising business, and Alphabet’s valuation of 27 times earnings seems like a steal.
4. Amazon
There’s a popular narrative that Amazon(NASDAQ: AMZN) was late to recognize the opportunities in AI, but the company’s history tells a different story. Amazon continues to deploy AI to surface relevant products to shoppers, recommend viewing choices on Prime Video, schedule e-commerce deliveries, and predict inventory levels, among other uses. Most recently, Amazon began testing an AI tool designed to answer shoppers’ questions about products.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) stocks all the most popular generative AI models for its cloud customers on Bedrock AI, and is also deploying its Inferentia and Trainium purpose-built AI chips for accelerating AI on its infrastructure.
Now that inflation has slowed markedly, more consumers and businesses are patronizing Amazon, and AI will help boost its fortunes.
Image source: Getty Images.
5. Meta Platforms
Meta Platforms(NASDAQ: META) also has a long and distinguished history of using AI to its advantage. From identifying and tagging people in photos to surfacing relevant content on its social media platforms, Meta has never been shy about deploying AI systems.
Unlike some of its big tech rivals, Meta doesn’t have a cloud infrastructure service to peddle its AI wares, but it quickly developed a workaround. After developing its open-source Llama AI model, Meta made it available on all the major cloud services — for a price. Furthermore, Meta offers a suite of free AI-powered tools to help advertisers succeed.
Improving economic conditions will no doubt boost its digital advertising business. And with the stock trading at just 22 times forward earnings, Meta is inexpensive relative to its opportunity.
6. Palantir Technologies
Palantir Technologies(NYSE: PLTR) has two decades of experience building AI-powered data analytics, and was ready to meet the challenge when AI went mainstream. In just months, the company added generative AI models to its portfolio, layering these atop its data analytics tools. The launch of the Palantir Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) has generated a lot of excitement. “Demand for AIP is unlike anything we have seen in the past 20 years,” said management.
When fears of a downturn were higher, businesses scaled back on most nonessential spending, including data analytics and AI services, but now, demand for those services is rebounding, particularly in relation to generative AI.
Looking ahead one year, Palantir sports a PEG ratio of less than 1, which helps illustrate how cheap the stock really is.
7. Tesla
Tesla(NASDAQ: TSLA) made a splash by bringing electric vehicles (EVs) into the mainstream. In 2023, its Model Y topped the list of the world’s best-selling cars by a comfortable margin, the first EV to do so. However, the magnitude of its future prosperity will likely be linked to AI. The company’s “full self-drive” system has yet to live up to its name, but success on that front would be a boon to shareholders.
In Ark Investment Management’s Big Ideas 2023 report, the firm estimates that robotaxis could generate $4 trillion in revenue in 2027. With an estimated 2.7 million vehicles on the road collecting data, Tesla could hold an insurmountable technological edge, if it cracks the code on autonomous driving. Some analysts estimate the software is already worth tens of billions of dollars.
Finally, 6 times forward sales is a pretty reasonable valuation for an industry leader with a treasure trove of data.
Should you invest $1,000 in Nvidia right now?
Before you buy stock in Nvidia, consider this:
The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Nvidia wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.
Stock Advisor provides investors with an easy-to-follow blueprint for success, including guidance on building a portfolio, regular updates from analysts, and two new stock picks each month. The Stock Advisor service has more than tripled the return of S&P 500 since 2002*.
Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Danny Vena has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, Palantir Technologies, and Tesla. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, Palantir Technologies, and Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
DAVOS, Switzerland — Artificial intelligence is easily the biggest buzzword for world leaders and corporate bosses diving into big ideas at the World Economic Forum’s glitzy annual meeting in Davos. Breathtaking advances in generative AI stunned the world last year, and the elite crowd is angling to take advantage of its promise and minimize its risks.
In a sign of ChatGPT maker OpenAI’s skyrocketing profile, CEO Sam Altman is making his Davos debut to rock star crowds, with his benefactor, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, hot on his heels.
Illustrating AI’s geopolitical importance like few other technologies before it, the word was on the lips of world leaders from China to France. It was visible across the Swiss Alpine town and percolated through afterparties.
Here’s a look at the buzz:
The leadership drama at the AI world’s much-ballyhooed chatbot maker followed Altman and Nadella to the swanky Swiss snows.
Altman, who was suddenly fired last year by OpenAI’s board and then swiftly reinstated, said at a Bloomberg event that he was focused on getting a “great full board in place” and would consider changes down the road to the company’s unusual structure, which is governed by a nonprofit.
He deflected further questions, interrupting a question directed at an OpenAI executive accompanying him by saying, “Is really what you want to spend our time on the soap opera rather than what AGI is going to do?”
AGI is artificial general intelligence, a term for the better-than-human AI technology OpenAI is seeking to build. With that on the horizon, Altman talked technology and humanity on a panel Thursday.
Nadella, meanwhile, said, “I’m comfortable, I have no issues with any structure” of the operating model at OpenAI, the startup Microsoft has poured billions into. At another Bloomberg event, he noted that “what I would like is good governance and real stability.”
Forum founder Klaus Schwab quizzed the Microsoft CEO on whether world leaders were up to the task of creating AI regulations but steered well clear of questions about OpenAI’s governance.
From China to Europe, top officials staked their positions on AI as the world grapples with regulating the rapidly developing technology that has big implications for workplaces, elections and privacy.
The European Union has devised the world’s first comprehensive AI rules ahead of a busy election year, with AI-powered misinformation and disinformation the biggest risk to the global economy as it threatens to erode democracy and polarize society, according to a World Economic Forum report released last week.
Chinese Premier Li Qiang called AI “a double-edged sword.”
“Human beings must control the machines instead of having the machines control us,” he said in a speech Tuesday. “AI must be guided in a direction that is conducive to the progress of humanity, so there should be a redline in AI development — a red line that must not be crossed,” without elaborating.
China, one of the world’s centers of AI development, wants to “step up communication and cooperation with all parties” on improving global AI governance, Li said.
China has released interim regulations for managing generative AI, but the EU broke ground with its AI Act, which won a hard-fought political deal last month and awaits final sign-off.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said AI is “a very significant opportunity, if used in a responsible way.”
She said “the global race is already on” to develop and adopt AI, and touted the 27-nation EU’s efforts, including the AI Act and a program pairing supercomputers with small and midsized businesses to train large AI models.
French President Emmanuel Macron said he’s a “strong believer” in AI and that his country is “an attractive and competitive country” for the industry. He played up France’s role in helping coordinate regulation on deepfake images and videos created with AI as well as plans to host a follow-up summit on AI safety after an inaugural gathering in Britain in October.
The letters “AI” were omnipresent along the Davos Promenade, where consulting firms and tech giants are among the groups that swoop onto the main drag each year, renting out shops and revamping them into showcase pavilions.
Inside the main conference center, a giant digital wall emanated rolling images of AI art and computer-generated conceptions of wildlife and nature like exotic birds or tropical streams.
Davos-goers who wanted to delve more deeply into the technical ins and outs of artificial intelligence could drop in to sessions at the AI House.
Generative AI systems like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard captivated the world by rapidly spewing out new poems, images and computer code and are expected to have a sweeping impact on life and work.
The technology could help give a boost to the stagnating global economy, said Nadella, whose company is rolling out the technology in its products.
The Microsoft chief said he’s “very optimistic about AI being that general purpose technology that drives economic growth.”
Business leaders predicted AI will help automate mundane work tasks or make it easier for people to do advanced jobs, but they also warned that it would threaten workers who can’t keep up.
A survey of 4,700 CEOs in more than 100 countries by PwC, released at the start of the Davos meetings, said 14% think they’ll have to lay off staff because of the rise of generative AI.
“There isn’t an area, there isn’t an industry that’s not going to be impacted” by AI, said Julie Sweet, CEO of consulting firm Accenture.
For those who can move with the change, AI promises to transform tasks like computer coding, customer relations and streamline business functions like invoicing, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said.
“If you embrace AI, you’re going to make yourself a lot more productive,” he said. “If you do not … you’re going to find that you do not have a job.”
During a session featuring Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, talk about risks and regulation led to the moderator’s hypothetical example of “infinitely conversant sexbots” that could be built by anyone using open source technology.
Taking the high road, LeCun replied that AI can’t be dominated by a handful of Silicon Valley tech giants AI if it’s going to serve people around the world with different languages, cultures and values.
“You do not want this to be under the control of a small number of private companies,” he said.
____
Chan reported from London. AP Technology Writer Matt O’Brien contributed from Providence, Rhode Island.
Microsoft evidently envisions Copilot, the umbrella brand for its portfolio of AI-powered, content-generating technologies, becoming a significant future revenue line-item. And that’s perhaps not far off base; according to the company, more than 40% of the Fortune 100 participated in its Copilot early access program.
But given the enormous cost of running GenAI models in the cloud, getting Copilot from expenditure to reliable revenue generator will require sustained — and large-scale, ideally — growth.
Surely aware of this, Microsoft is today launching a consumer-focused paid Copilot plan and loosening the eligibility requirements for enterprise-level Copilot offerings. The goal, it appears, is to broaden the base of potential paying Copilot customers while making Microsoft’s existing services — namely Word, Excel and the other apps within the tech giant’s Microsoft 365 family — more attractive through AI features.
Copilot Pro — the new consumer plan, priced at $20 per user per month — gives customers access to Copilot GenAI features across Word, Excel (in preview, only in English for now), PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote on PC, Mac and iPad — if they have a Microsoft 365 Personal or Family plan, that is. Copilot Pro doesn’t come bundled with a Microsoft 365 subscription. As with the Copilot enterprise offering (Copilot for Microsoft 365), it’s a premium add-on — bringing the total cost of the lowest-tier Microsoft 365 subscription to $27 per month ($6.99 per month for Microsoft 365 Personal plus $20 for Copilot Pro).
The Microsoft 365 capabilities in tow with Copilot Pro are the same that enterprise customers have had for a while.
In Word and OneNote, Copilot writes, edits, summarizes and generates text. Copilot in Excel and PowerPoint turns natural language commands into designed presentations and data visualizations. And in Outlook, Copilot helps drafts email responses with toggles to adapt the length or tone.
Beyond the Microsoft 365 upgrades, Copilot Pro subscribers get 100 “boosts” per day in Designer (formerly Bing Image Creator), Microsoft’s AI-powered image creation tool, to speed up the image generation process — plus improved generation quality and landscape formatting options. And they have priority access to the newest GenAI models underpinning Copilot, including OpenAI’s GPT-4 Turbo, for what Microsoft claims is better performance during peak times.
In the future, Copilot Pro subscribers will be able to switch between models depending on their preferences and, if they require even greater customization, tap Microsoft’s forthcoming Copilot GPT Builder to create “Copilots” tailored for specific topics from sets of prompts.
Copilot GPT Builder sounds suspiciously like OpenAI’s recently released GPT Builder for creating custom chatbots powered by OpenAI GenAI models. But one presumes that Copilot GPT Builder will come with Microsoft service- and app-specific integrations.
Copilot for business
As Microsoft rolls out a premium Copilot for consumers, it’s broadening the service’s business availability, as well.
Starting today, Copilot is generally available for organizations subscribed to Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Microsoft 365 Business Standard, Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 or Office 365 E3 and Office E5. Previously, Copilot for Microsoft 365 had a 300-user minimum purchase and required a Microsoft 365 license, but both of those requirements have been done away with.
There’s a few differences to note between Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Copilot Pro, the main one being Copilot in Teams. Enterprise Copilot customers — not consumers — get a “Copilot” in Teams that provides real-time summaries and action items, handling tasks such as identifying people for follow-ups and creating meeting agendas.
The different Copilot plans, compared.
In addition, Copilot for Microsoft 365 comes with what Microsoft describes as “enterprise-grade data protection” and the Semantic Index, a back-end system that creates a map of the data and content in an organization to allow Copilot to deliver ostensibly more personal and relevant responses.
Copilot for Microsoft 365 customers can also access expanded customization options via Copilot Studio, a souped-up version of Copilot GPT Builder. Unveiled in November, Copilot Studio lets users build their own chatbots and plugins and conduct fine-tuning with first-party company data.
New free features
Microsoft’s attention might be turning toward paid Copilot plans, but the company’s not completely neglecting free users.
Today marks the launch of Copilot GPTs, which like OpenAI’s GPTs are tailored to topics of particular interest. A handful of Copilot GPTs rolled out this morning on the web client for Copilot, fine-tuned to answer questions about things like fitness, travel and cooking.
A free mobile app for Copilot — with access to GPT-4, DALL-E 3 for image creation and the ability to use images on a phone while chatting with Copilot, as well as chat history syncing between mobile, PC and the web — is now live for Android and iOS. And Microsoft says that it’s adding Copilot to the Microsoft 365 mobile app for Android and iOS for users with a Microsoft account. Set to roll out over the coming month, the Microsoft 365 mobile app Copilot integration will let users export content created with Copilot to a Word or PDF document.
Lastly, Microsoft says it’s expanding the number of languages Copilot supports. In the first half of 2024, Copilot will expand to Arabic, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish and Ukrainian.
OpenAI is launching a new subscription plan for ChatGPT, its viral AI-powered chatbot, aimed at smaller, self-service-oriented teams.
Aptly called ChatGPT Team, the plan provides a dedicated workspace for teams up to 149 people using ChatGPT as well as admin tools for team management. All users in a ChatGPT Team gain access to OpenAI’s latest models — GPT-4 (which generates text), GPT-4 with Vision (which understands images in addition to text) and DALL-E 3 (which creates images) — plus tools to allow ChatGPT to analyze, edit and extract info from uploaded files.
ChatGPT Team also lets people within a team build and share GPTs, custom apps based on OpenAI’s text-generating AI models. GPTs don’t require coding experience and can be as simple or complex as desired. For example, a GPT could ingest a company’s proprietary codebases so that developers can check their style or generate code in line with best practices.
As an added benefit, OpenAI says that ChatGPT Team customers will get unspecified new features and improvements down the line, and that it won’t train models on team data or conversations.
ChatGPT Team is priced at $30 per user per month or $25 per user per month billed annually — higher than ChatGPT Plus, OpenAI’s individual premium ChatGPT plan, which costs $20 per month. But ChatGPT Team is a good deal cheaper than ChatGPT Enterprise, which costs as much as $60 per user per month with a minimum of 150 users and a 12-month contract.
ChatGPT Team seems tailor-made for small- and medium-sized business customers who want team-oriented ChatGPT features without having to pay top dollar for them. That’s likely to be a lucrative space; according to a recent survey from ResumeBuilder, 49% of companies use ChatGPT for use cases like coding, creating content like job descriptions and interview questions and summarizing documents and meetings, while 30% say that they intend to use ChatGPT in the future.=
In a keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Walmart president and CEO Doug McMillon is offering a glimpse as to how the retail giant was putting new technologies, including augmented reality (AR), drones, generative AI, and other artificial intelligence tech to work in order improve the shopping experience for customers.
At the trade show, the company revealed a handful of new products, including two AI-powered tools for managing product search and replenishment, as well as a new beta AR social commerce platform called “Shop with Friends.” It also highlighted how it was using AI in other areas of its business, including within Sam’s Club and in apps used by store associates.
Most notably, Walmart is launching a new generative AI search feature on iOS that will allow customers to search for products by use cases, instead of by product or brand names. For example, you could ask Walmart to return search results for things needed for a “football watch party,” instead of specifically typing in searches for chips, wings, drinks, or a 90-inch TV. These enhanced search results will span categories, rivaling Google’s SGE (Search Generative Experience), which can recommend products and show various factors to consider, along with reviews, prices, images, and more.
Image Credits: Walmart
Ahead of CES, the company had demonstrated an AI shopping assistant that would let customers interact with a chatbot as they shopped, to ask questions and receive personalized product suggestions, as well. At the time, Walmart teased that a generative AI-powered search feature was also in the works. It suggested customers could ask for things like a “unicorn-themed birthday party” and get results like unicorn-themed napkins, balloons, streamers, and more. Now the feature is rolling out on mobile devices, iOS first.
Another potentially promising use of AI involves the replenishment of frequently ordered items.
Walmart will initially test this use case with Walmart InHome Replenishment, which will use AI and its existing replenishment expertise combined to create online shopping carts for customers with items they regularly order. Because it’s only available through the InHome program, these items are then delivered to a customer’s fridge in their kitchen or garage using the smart lock-powered InHome delivery service.
Image Credits: Walmart
However, if the feature works well, it’s not hard to imagine how it could be put to use to offer replenishment of other household items as well, similar to Amazon’s Subscribe-and-Save.
Another new Walmart product making a debut at CES is “Shop with Friends,” an AR shopping tool that lets customers share virtual outfits they create with their friends and then get feedback on their finds.
Image Credits: Walmart
CEO Doug McMillon referred to the suite of new products as something he called “adaptive retail” — that is, retail experiences that are personalized and flexible.
“While omnichannel retail has been around for decades, this new type of retail – adaptive retail – takes it a step further, said Suresh Kumar, global chief technology officer, and chief development officer, Walmart Inc., in a statement shared ahead of the CES keynote. “It’s retail that is not only e-commerce or in-store, but a single, unified retail experience that seamlessly blends the best aspects of all channels. And for Walmart, adaptive retail is rooted in a clear focus on people,” he said.
The company touched on other ways it’s employing AI, as well. Walmart’s Sam’s Club will introduce an AI and computer vision-powered technology that helps solve the problem of waiting in line for receipt verification when exiting the store. The pilot, currently running in 10 locations, will confirm members have paid for their items without requiring a store associate to check their charts. Instead, computer vision tech will capture images of customers’ carts and AI will speed the process of matching cart items to sales. Walmart expects to bring the tech to its nearly 600 clubs by year-end.
In another area, Walmart’s generative AI tool for store associates, My Assistant, will be expanded to 11 countries outside the U.S. in 2024, where it will work in employees’ native languages. Already, the tool has become available in Canada, Mexico, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua and is on track for launches in India and South Africa. My Assistant helps employees with writing, summarizing large documents, and offering “thought starters” to spark creativity, Walmart says.
Image Credits: Walmart
On the matter of AI, McMillon stressed that the company wouldn’t prioritize the technology without considering the potential implications. Instead, Walmart’s “underlying principle is that we should use technology to serve people and not the other way around,” he said.
Still, he admitted that AI will mean some jobs will be eliminated.
” No doubt some tasks will go away and some roles will change. And some of them should, like the ones that involve lifting heavy weights or doing repetitive tasks,” the exec explained. “As that’s happening, we’re designing new roles that our associates tell us are more enjoyable and satisfying, and also often result in higher pay. So we’re investing to help our associates transition to this shared future,” McMillon added.
Outside of AI, Walmart is looking to other new technology for faster deliveries. The company announced it’s expanding its drone delivery service in the Dallas-Ft. Worth metro to 1.8 million households, or 75% of the metroplex area. The deliveries, which take place in 30 minutes or less, are powered by Wing and Zipline. Walmart also notes that 75% of the 120,000 items in a Walmart Supercenter meet the size and weight requirements for drone delivery. To date, Walmart has done over 20,000 drone deliveries in its two-year trial.
LONDON — Microsoft’s multibillion-dollar investment in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI could trigger a European Union merger investigation, the bloc’s executive branch said Tuesday.
The European Commission said it’s “checking whether Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI might be reviewable” under regulations covering mergers and acquisitions that would harm competition in the 27-nation EU.
The review could lead to a formal investigation into whether the deal should be unconditionally cleared, allowed with concessions from the companies or blocked. Britain’s antitrust watchdog opened a similar review last month.
Antitrust enforcers in the U.S. also have signaled concerns about competition in the AI industry. The Federal Trade Commission in November approved new measures enabling it to more easily investigate AI products and services, noting that “AI can raise competition issues in a variety of ways, including if one or just a few companies control the essential inputs or technologies that underpin AI.”
OpenAI has received several rounds of funding from Microsoft, including an initial $1 billion in 2019 and a multibillion-dollar investment last year.
OpenAI’s generative AI chatbot ChatGPT has captured world attention with its advanced capabilities, catapulting the San Francisco-based startup to the top ranks of AI companies. Generative AI systems like ChatGPT can spit out new text, images, videos or audio recordings based on prompts from users.
The European Commission, the bloc’s top antitrust enforcer, is asking businesses and experts for input on any competition issues that they see in generative AI and has asked “several large digital players” — which it didn’t identify — for information.
The commission is “also closely monitoring AI partnerships to ensure they do not unduly distort market dynamics,” the EU’s antitrust enforcer, Margrethe Vestager, said in a press release.
Vestager is due to meet with OpenAI executives on a trip this week to the U.S., as well as Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
Computer keyboards are making room for an artificial intelligence chatbot button as Microsoft unveils its first major keyboard redesign in three decades.
Starting this month, some new personal computers that run Microsoft’s Windows 11 operating system will have a special “Copilot key” that launches the software giant’s AI chatbot.
Getting third-party computer manufacturers like Dell to add an AI button to laptops is the latest move by Microsoft to capitalize on its close partnership with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and make itself a gateway for applications of generative AI technology.
Although most people now connect to the internet — and many AI applications — by phone rather than computer, it’s a symbolic kickoff to what’s expected to be a competitive year as tech companies race to outdo each other in AI applications even as they haven’t yet resolved all the ethical and legal ramifications. The New York Times last month sued both OpenAI and Microsoft alleging that tools like ChatGPT and Copilot — formerly known as Bing Chat — are infringing on copyrighted news articles.
The keyboard redesign will be Microsoft’s biggest change to PC keyboards since it introduced a special Windows key in the 1990s. Microsoft’s four-squared logo design has evolved, but the key has been a fixture on Windows-oriented keyboards for about three decades.
The newest AI button will be marked by the ribbon-like Copilot logo and be located near the space bar. On some computers it will replace the right “CTRL” key, while on others it will replace a menu key.
Microsoft is not the only company with customized keys. Apple pioneered the concept in the 1980s with its “Command” key marked by a looped square design (it also sported an Apple logo for a time). Google has a search button on its Chromebooks and was first to experiment with an AI-specific key to launch its voice assistant on its now-discontinued Pixelbook.
But Microsoft has a much stronger hold on the broader PC market through its licensing agreements with third-party manufacturers like Lenovo, Dell and HP. About 82% of all desktop computers, laptops and workstations run Windows, compared to 9% for Apple’s in-house operating system and just over 6% for Google’s, according to market research firm IDC.
Dell Technologies on Thursday was the first to unveil a Copilot key on its newest XPS laptops.
Microsoft hasn’t yet said which other computer-makers are installing the Copilot button beyond Microsoft’s own in-house line of premium Surface devices. It said some of the companies are expected to unveil their new models at next week’s CES gadget show in Las Vegas.
Pressing a button will be one way to summon an artificial intelligence agent as Microsoft wields its computer industry influence to reshape the next generation of keyboards.
Starting this month, some new personal computers that run Microsoft’s Windows operating system will have a special “Copilot key” that launches the software giant’s AI chatbot.
Getting third-party computer manufacturers to add an AI button to laptops is the latest move by Microsoft to capitalize on its close partnership with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and make itself a gateway for applications of generative AI technology.
Although most people now connect to the internet — and AI applications — by phone rather than computer, it’s a symbolic kickoff to what’s expected to be an intensively competitive year as tech companies race to outdo each other in AI applications even as they haven’t yet resolved all the ethical and legal ramifications. The New York Times last month sued both OpenAI and Microsoft alleging that tools like ChatGPT and Copilot — formerly known as Bing Chat — were built by infringing on copyrighted news articles.
The keyboard redesign will be Microsoft’s biggest change to PC keyboards since it introduced a special Windows key in the 1990s. Microsoft’s four-squared logo design has evolved, but the key has been a fixture on Windows-oriented keyboards for nearly three decades.
The newest AI button will be marked by the ribbon-like Copilot logo and be located near the space bar. On some computers it will replace the right “CTRL” key, while on others it will replace a menu key.
Microsoft is not the only company with customized keys. Apple pioneered the concept in the 1980s with its “Command” key marked by a looped square design (it also sported an Apple logo for a time). Google has a search button on its Chromebooks and was first to experiment with an AI-specific key to launch its voice assistant on its now-discontinued Pixelbook.
But Microsoft has a much stronger hold on the PC market through its licensing agreements with third-party manufacturers like Lenovo, Dell and HP. About 82% of all desktop computers, laptops and workstations run Windows, compared to 9% for Apple’s in-house operating system and just over 6% for Google’s, according to market research firm IDC.
Microsoft hasn’t yet said which computer-makers are installing the Copilot button beyond Microsoft’s own in-house line of premium Surface devices. It said some of the companies are expected to unveil their new models at next week’s CES gadget show in Las Vegas.
Pressing a button will be one way to summon an artificial intelligence agent as Microsoft wields its computer industry influence to reshape the next generation of keyboards.
Starting this month, some new personal computers that run Microsoft’s Windows operating system will have a special “Copilot key” that launches the software giant’s AI chatbot.
Getting third-party computer manufacturers to add an AI button to laptops is the latest move by Microsoft to capitalize on its close partnership with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and make itself a gateway for applications of generative AI technology.
Although most people now connect to the internet — and AI applications — by phone rather than computer, it’s a symbolic kickoff to what’s expected to be an intensively competitive year as tech companies race to outdo each other in AI applications even as they haven’t yet resolved all the ethical and legal ramifications. The New York Times last month sued both OpenAI and Microsoft alleging that tools like ChatGPT and Copilot — formerly known as Bing Chat — were built by infringing on copyrighted news articles.
The keyboard redesign will be Microsoft’s biggest change to PC keyboards since it introduced a special Windows key in the 1990s. Microsoft’s four-squared logo design has evolved, but the key has been a fixture on Windows-oriented keyboards for nearly three decades.
The newest AI button will be marked by the ribbon-like Copilot logo and be located near the space bar. On some computers it will replace the right “CTRL” key, while on others it will replace a menu key.
Microsoft is not the only company with customized keys. Apple pioneered the concept in the 1980s with its “Command” key marked by a looped square design (it also sported an Apple logo for a time). Google has a search button on its Chromebooks and was first to experiment with an AI-specific key to launch its voice assistant on its now-discontinued Pixelbook.
But Microsoft has a much stronger hold on the PC market through its licensing agreements with third-party manufacturers like Lenovo, Dell and HP. About 82% of all desktop computers, laptops and workstations run Windows, compared to 9% for Apple’s in-house operating system and just over 6% for Google’s, according to market research firm IDC.
Microsoft hasn’t yet said which computer-makers are installing the Copilot button beyond Microsoft’s own in-house line of premium Surface devices. It said some of the companies are expected to unveil their new models at next week’s CES gadget show in Las Vegas.
