Revolutionising AI Video Creation
Story: Plai Labs launched its free text-to-video generator PlaiDay that incorporates user’s likeliness by using photos of the users (e.g., selfies). Thus, users can create short videos of themselves in various scenarios (e.g., dancing like a pro, lifting heavy weights, or running as fast as Usain Bolt) by simply uploading a selfie and entering a text prompt.
Key Findings:
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While there are many generative AI video tools such as Google’s Imagen or Meta’s Make-A-Video, PlaiDay is the first tool which allows for personalised content
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The videos are only three seconds long, suffer from quality and realism, and have difficulties in reflecting the likeliness of the users
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Plai Labs plans to extend the video duration and add audio capabilities
Pixit‘s Two Cents: This is a first step towards personalised video generation and we‘d love to see more of it in the future. At Pixit our vision is to create similar videos using our experiences from personalised text-to-image generation.
Aleph Alpha: Redefine AI Sovereignty in Europe
Story: Aleph Alpha, Germany’s premier AI startup, received a $500 million funding from the Schwarz Group (Lidl, Kaufland), Bosch, SAP, and the Innovative Park Artificial Intelligence (ipai) in Heilbronn. Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck emphasized the importance of this announcement, highlighting Aleph Alpha's potential to secure Europe’s digital sovereignty with respect to developing and operationalising large-scale AI models.
Key Findings:
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Aleph Alpha wants to cooperate with scientists and disclose all research results. They want to be transparent and knowledge is shared and does not remain locked behind powerful corporate doors.
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The investors agreed to not only to invest in Aleph Alpha but also to have businesses with the startup.
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Aleph Alpha supplies B2B and B2G solutions with explainable and trustworthy AI in fully sovereign applications
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The funding will be invested in category-defining research on foundation models, advanced product capabilities especially for business-critical environments plus commercialization with selected key partners
Pixit‘s Two Cents: We love to see such big investments in AI and we’re looking forward to Aleph Alphas first foundational model. Backed by science and Germany’s high standards in data protection and security, Aleph Alpha will be a game changer for companies where sovereignty is at risk.
Deepmind challenges the Status-Quo in weather forecasting
Story: Google’s subsidiary Deepmind just published their new AI global weather forecasting model GraphCast. Their state-of-the-art model is able to predict the weather 10-days in advance with an extremely good accuracy thereby beating the current gold-standard weather simulation systems - carrying out the whole process in under a minute!
Key Findings:
- With this advancement Deepmind lays the path for better, faster and cheaper predictions of weather conditions impacting billions of people, since no super computer is necessary to run the predictions.
- GraphCast is able to predict extreme weather events earlier and with greater accuracy than current methods, thus giving people more time to respond and potentially safe many lifes.
- Deepmind did open source GraphCast’s model code, so scientists around the world can use it and do their own research. This lays the groundwork for even more breakthroughs in the future.
Pixit‘s two cents: At Pixit we are thrilled to read news like these, where advancements in AI research really do challenge the status quo. Improving something fundamental and important like weather forecasting, impacting billions of people, is something we really much appreciate to see and would like other researchers to dedicate their time to.
Small Bites, Big Stories:
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Runway allows to add controlled movements to images: Runway announced a new feature coming to Gen-2 called “Motion Brush” that allows you to animate still images.
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CBS launches Initiative to Tackle AI Generated Deepfakes and Misinformation: CBS launches CBS News Confirmed to fact-check questionable videos and reports.
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Adobe is selling fake AI images without marking it: Adobe is selling AI generated images of the Israel-Hamas war which have been used across the internet without any indication they are fake.
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Researchs Shows that LLMs Understand and Can be Enhanced by Emotional Stimuli: Findings suggest that incorporating emotional cues enhances LLMs' performance, opening new avenues for exploring human-LLM interactions.
