Singular Intel #15

Skillprint has raised $3.5 million in pre-seed funding.

Oakland-based Skillprint has raised $3.5m in pre-seed funding from investors including Shanda Ventures and LearnStart. Founded in 2019, the AI-powered platform offers over 40 games and quizzes that use cognitive science research to glean insights into an individual’s personality traits, skills and mindset. The platform also provides unique game ratings by analyzing 135 separate game characteristics to rate games for skills assessment and mood. Skillprint plans to scale its consumer offering and work with game developers to find the right players for their games.

Meta has recently unveiled their latest AI tool SAM.

Meta has released a new tool called SAM (Segment Anything Model) which is capable of one-click segmentation of any object in a photo or video. This is crucial for computer vision and is used in a variety of apps, including editing photos. It has already garnered over 2,000 retweets and there is a demo website available for people to try it out with their own photos. The tool has been praised for its potential impact on the community by experts such as Wenhu Chen of Google Brain.

AWS has launched a global accelerator for startups focused on generative AI.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched a 10-week programme called the AWS Generative AI Accelerator, designed to help promising startups in the generative AI space. The programme is aimed at firms that have developed minimal viable products and have some customer traction. AWS will offer selected startups up to $300,000 worth of credits on its tech stack, as well as customised go-to-market strategies, networking opportunities with potential investors and customers and access to AI models and tools. Generative AI can be applied across industries such as healthcare, finance and manufacturing, as well as the creative industries.

SenseTime's stock is skyrocketing due to rumors that they may develop a competitor to ChatGPT using AI technology.

Shares in SenseTime Group, China's most valuable specialist AI company, rose 13% after speculation spread that it was preparing to launch a challenger to OpenAI's ChatGPT. The SoftBank-backed firm is expected to unveil a large-scale AI model in the coming days, joining other software companies competing with OpenAI. SenseTime has trained text-to-image large generative models and has a pretrained large-language model in the works for mid-2023. However, the company may have trouble accessing the technology it needs due to US Treasury and Commerce Department sanctions and restrictions on the sale of AI accelerator chips to Chinese customers.

Expedia has added ChatGPT to their app to assist travelers with their trip arrangements.

Expedia is testing ChatGPT, a generative AI chatbot, in its app to see how users interact with it when planning trips. The chatbot can provide advice on where to go, where to stay, what to see, and what to do. Expedia views this as an interesting capability to make the shopping experience easier for certain people who want to use natural language. Expedia has been working with AI for some time and built up a large amount of data in the travel industry. The company has already put together a data council and architecture guild to examine each system it has in place for how it produces or consumes data.

Perplexity AI, a search engine powered by artificial intelligence, has secured $26 million in funding and has also launched its iOS app.

Perplexity AI, a start-up search engine that uses AI to provide users with accurate and relevant information through citations, has raised $26m in a Series A funding round led by New Enterprise Associates. The company's founders claim their chatbot-like interface performs better than competitors when it comes to accuracy. The funds from the round will be used for growth and expansion plans, including optimizing the application's knowledge database.

Snapchat has implemented additional measures to protect its AI chatbot.

Snapchat has launched new tools, including an age filter and insights for parents, to improve the safety of its AI chatbot. The move comes after reports that the bot was responding in an unsafe and inappropriate manner. The age filter will tell the chatbot users' birth dates to ensure it responds appropriately, while the insights feature will enable parents to monitor children's interactions with the bot. Snapchat said it learned that people were trying to "trick the chatbot into providing responses that do not conform to our guidelines". The company is also adding OpenAI's moderation technology to restrict access for users who misuse the service.

The DALL-E AI Image Generator is now integrated into Microsoft Edge.

Microsoft's Edge browser now has an integrated AI image generator called DALL-E, making it the first and only browser to have this feature. Users can create images using DALL-E directly from the Edge sidebar to find specific visuals for social posts or presentations. Microsoft has been pushing to integrate OpenAI's technology into its products due to its recent massive investment in DALL-E's developer. The update to Edge is one of several announced by Microsoft, with plans to continue integrating OpenAI's models across its product line.

Bybit has launched an AI tool that can customise cryptocurrency investments.

Bybit, the third most visited crypto exchange, has launched a new AI program called Tools Discovery. This AI-powered engine provides personalized product and strategy recommendations based on users' individual trading habits and preferences. By using backtested data to suggest strategies that respond to current market conditions, the algorithm takes emotion out of trading and allows users to make data-driven decisions.

Adludio has secured $2.5M in funding for its mobile ad platform that utilizes artificial intelligence.

Adludio has raised $2.5 million in funding from Mercia to expand its mobile advertising platform, which combines AI with attention-led and data-driven techniques. The investment will enable Adludio to expand in the US and launch a fully-automated version of its platform that offers marketers a one-stop-shop for the automated design and delivery of ad campaigns that guarantee engagement. Adludio has produced mobile ads for brands such as Ford, Land Rover Jaguar, Estée Lauder, Nike, Adidas and Microsoft. The company hopes to help more marketers win the battle for brand attention by redefining attention as a metric for success. The new version of Adludio’s platform will fully automate many of its processes and offer customers a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product to manage their own campaigns.

Meta is considering utilizing Generative AI in order to generate advertisements.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is developing generative AI tools similar to ChatGPT to enhance its advertising business on its apps. The company has created a new team dedicated to generative AI and is focused on building creative and expressive tools to boost the effectiveness of its ads. Additionally, Meta plans to create virtual worlds using generative AI. Despite the benefits of this technology, concerns have emerged since it gained popularity.