IBL News | New York

Australian web-based design platform Canva unveiled this week a suite of AI tools named Magic Studio to take on competitors including Adobe Inc.

With 16 million paying subscribers and 150 million users worldwide, Canva
rolled out the new AI and marketer tools this March.

These new tools use a mix of Canva’s in-house AI as well as that of partners such as Google and OpenAI.

“A decade ago, Canva set out to empower the world to design by simplifying a complex and fragmented design ecosystem. As we go into the next decade of our journey, we’re incredibly excited to be taking a massive leap forward with the launch of Magic Studio – the first all-in-one suite of design AI tools created to supercharge the way teams create and scale visual content,” said Melanie Perkins, co-founder, and CEO of Canva.

“Magic Studio can generate compelling content, fast-track first drafts, automate mundane tasks, design like an expert, massively accelerate the creation process, and much more,” she added.

Canva explained that Magic Studio includes these features:

• Magic Switch: An industry-first offering that instantly converts designs into a range of formats with one click. Turn a presentation into an executive summary or create a blog post from a whiteboard of ideas, plus, translate it into various languages in the process.
• Magic Media (text-to-image and text-to-video functionality): Turn text into engaging photos and, with its latest update, explore a wide range of new style options for any result. Or, create compelling videos from an image or text using Gen-2, a video generation AI model by Runway.
• Magic Design: Turn a prompt or your own media into captivating and fully designed videos, presentations, and more. Speed up the creation process by simply entering your idea, selecting color schemes, and watching complete designs come to life ready to be shared or further customized to your liking.
• Brand Voice: Canva’s Magic Write copywriting assistant has been supercharged with brand voice. It’s easier than ever to write in your brand’s tone of voice in any design or document. Simply add guidelines to your Brand Kit to generate on-brand content every time.
• Magic Morph: Turn your design from ordinary to extraordinary by instantly transforming words and shapes into new colors, textures, patterns, and styles with a simple prompt.
• Magic Grab: A whole new way to reimagine your images. Magic Grab can select and separate any subject in your photo so that you can edit, reposition, or resize it.
• Magic Expand: Perfect photos after they’ve been taken. Magic Expand can save zoomed-in images or turn a vertical shot horizontal by recovering whatever’s outside the frame.
• AI Apps on Canva: The Canva Apps Marketplace puts the best AI-powered design and productivity tools on the market all in one place, with world-leading AI apps recently added including Dall-E, Imagen by Google Cloud, MurfAI, Soundraw and more.

Canva also announced a $200 million commitment in content and AI royalties to be paid to its creator community over the next three years when they consent to have their content used to train the company’s proprietary AI models.

IBL News | New York

The London – based startup AutogenAI built an AI assistant that helps businesses to write compelling proposals and tenders in minutes, replacing the traditional way of putting bids together and saving time and headcount.

Launched less than a year ago, it has raised $22.3 million from Blossom Capital and claims to serve 28 clients, although no names are disclosed.

Its founder and CEO, Sean Williams, explained at Techcrunch that he worked for years for large private firms bidding to provide services to the U.K. government.

AutogenAI uses LLMs from OpenAI and others combined with clients’ structured and unstructured proprietary data.

It features a unique interface to help users query information and create pitches based on a company’s most successful past work.

IBL News | New York

Amazon.com has started requiring writers who want to sell books on its platform to disclose in advance if their work includes AI material (whether text, images, or translations.)

The e-commerce giant is differentiating on its content guidelines between AI-assisted content, which authors do not need to disclose, and AI-generated work.

• “We define AI-generated content as text, images, or translations created by an AI-based tool,” said the company. “Even if you applied substantial edits afterward.”

• “AI-assisted is if you created the content yourself, and used AI-based tools to edit, refine, error-check, or otherwise improve that content (whether text or images), then it is considered “AI-assisted” and not “AI-generated.”

• “Similarly, if you used an AI-based tool to brainstorm and generate ideas, but ultimately created the text or images yourself, this is also considered AI-assisted.”

The Authors Guild, which represents thousands of published authors, expressed gratitude toward “the Amazon team for taking our concerns into account and enacting this important step toward ensuring transparency and accountability for AI-generated content.”

In July, more than 10,000 authors signed a letter calling on AI industry leaders to protect writers. James Patterson, Margaret Atwood, and Suzanne Collins were among the writers who endorsed the letter.

IBL News | New York

Microsoft’s owned LinkedIn networking platform presented this month at its Talent Connect 2023 in New York City a set of AI-powered tools to enhance its services and help employers hire qualified candidates as well as develop workers’ skills faster and more effectively.

Currently, conducting a search requires learning a unique search language, but with generative AI, LinkedIn Recruiter will be able to search across all of LinkedIn’s data and find candidates with the relevant skills for the job.

The platform might recommend searching in new locations or suggest that a role should be hybrid to provide better access to candidates who are right for the job.

“We can no longer hire and develop our people using the strategies and tools of the past,” said Jennifer Shappley, LinkedIn’s Vice President of Talent said [In the picture, above].

This AI-assisted recruiting tool is being launched now to a select set of customers and will be rolled out completely in 2024.

On the other hand, starting this week, LinkedIn Learning’s users will be able to engage with a new AI-powered chatbot.

According to the company, this virtual coach offers real-time career advice as well as content recommendations aimed at helping employees develop their skills. Initially, the tool will focus on leadership and management.

IBL News | New York

Amazon, this week at its HQ@ headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, announced upcoming improvements to Alexa around generative AI based on a new, custom-built LLM model optimized for voice interactions.

The new model will power more conversational experiences. It will also take into account body language as well as a person’s eye contact and gestures, said the company.

It will have a more natural-sounding voice and interact with APIs to enable new smart home capabilities.

Amazon decided to give Alexa a more opinionated personality, equipping the new model with expressive responses, including laughter, excitement, empathy, natural pauses, and hesitation to deliver an ostensibly more free-flowing conversation.

Customers in the U.S. will soon get access to these new capabilities through a free preview on Echo devices they already own, Amazon said.

“We’re combining large language models (LLM) with real-world context to make Alexa more intuitive, intelligent, and useful. Using generative AI, speaking to Alexa will feel more natural and conversational than ever before, and Alexa’s ability to reason, infer customer intent, and understand complex requests will remarkably improve. With the latest LLM, Alexa will also be able to process multiple smart home requests at the same time, make inferences, and customers will be able to set up complex Routines, entirely by voice.”
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IBL News | New York

Meta launched this month a host of 28 AI-powered chatbots — all with unique backstories — across its messaging apps WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram.

One is an AI assistant called Meta AI, similar to chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude 2. It’s powered by Llama 2, Meta’s latest LLM.

For others, Meta partnered with cultural icons and influencers to play and embody some of these AIs. They’ll each have profiles on Instagram and Facebook:

• Charli D’Amelio as Coco, Dance enthusiast
• Chris Paul as Perry, Pro golfer helping you perfect your stroke
• Dwyane Wade as Victor, Ironman triathlete motivating you to be your best self
• Izzy Adesanya as Luiz, Showy MMA prospect who can back up his trash talk
• Kendall Jenner as Billie, No-BS, ride-or-die companion
• LaurDIY as Dylan, Quirky DIY and Craft expert and companion for Gen Z
• MrBeast as Zach, The big brother who will roast you — because he cares
• Naomi Osaka as Tamika, Anime-obsessed Sailor Senshi in training
• Paris Hilton as Amber, Detective partner for solving whodunnits
• Raven Ross as Angie, Workout class queen who balances fitness with meditation
• Roy Choi as Max, Seasoned sous chef for culinary tips and tricks
• Sam Kerr as Sally, Free-spirited friend who’ll tell you when to take a deep breath
• Snoop Dogg as Dungeon Master, Choose your own adventure with the Dungeon Master
• Tom Brady as Bru, Wisecracking sports debater who pulls no punches

The company plans to add characters in the coming weeks played by Bear Grylls, Chloe Kim, and Josh Richards, among others.

Their knowledge base – with the exception of Meta AI, Bru, and Perry – is limited to information that largely existed prior to 2023, which means some responses may be dated.

These chatbots will include the possibility of adding AI stickers, which uses Llama 2’s an image generation feature called Emu.

In addition, Meta introduced AI Studio, the platform that supports the creation of their AIs, which plans to make it available for people outside of Meta to build AIs. Developers will be able to build third-party AIs for Meta’s messaging services with their APIs in the coming weeks, starting on Messenger then expanding to WhatsApp.

Businesses will also be able to create AIs that reflect their brand’s values and improve customer service experiences.

AI Studio will be available in alpha to start, and Meta says that it’ll scale the toolkit further beginning next year.

To accompany the release of AI Studio, Meta says it’s building a sandbox tool to be launched in the coming year that’ll “enable anyone to experiment with creating their own AI.” The plan is to bring this sandbox to Meta’s metaverse platforms, including Horizon Worlds.

The bots are Meta’s latest bid to boost engagement across its family of platforms, particularly among a younger demographic.

AI-powered personalities are also a reflection of a broader trend. Character.AI, Replika, and Inworld are already notorious brands in this space, too.

IBL News | New York

Spotify announced this week that it started to pilot Voice Translation for Podcasts, an AI feature that automatically translates podcasts into additional languages.

This technology keeps the podcaster’s voice, which sounds more personal and natural than traditional dubbing.

As a result, a podcast episode originally recorded in English can now be available in Spanish and other languages while keeping the speaker’s distinctive speech characteristics.

IBL News | New York

Google announced yesterday Assistant with Bard, a generative AI-powered, new version of its mobile personal assistant integrated with Gmail and Docs.

Essentially, it will be a combination of Google Assistant’s personalized help with Bard’s generative and reasoning capabilities.

For now, it’s an early experiment. It will be accessible on Android and iOS mobile devices in the coming months. [See the simulations below]

This Assistant with Bard handles text, voice, or image questions and tasks, such as “What’s the weather?”, “Set an alarm”, or “Text Jenny”, now with more intelligent responses.

For example, it will be able to use the image as a visual cue, understand the context, and help with what you need.