An AI-powered metaverse starts to take shape; European startups warn of AI compliance costs; Canva bets big on AI; Cloudflare gives content creators tools to fight scraping

How Puma used AI to reinvent itself; the chip industry looks beyond GPUs for AI; what will AI look like in 2030; Sam Altman is on a quest to build 5 gigawatt data centers;

Remember nine months ago when the world collectively was rolling its eyes every time Mark Zuckerberg mentioned the metaverse on an earnings call? Well, maybe after this week, it’s time to roll them back, put on a pair of Ray-Ban Meta glasses, and take a closer look at what Meta is doing because the metaverse could be finally revealing itself to us in its hype-less, tangible future glory.

While most people were impressed by Meta’s “iPhone moment” reveal of the Orion AR glasses prototype, my interest was peaked by some of the more low-key demos and new Ray-Ban smart glasses capabilities revealed during Meta Connect, including:

• On-device, real-time speech translation from English to Italian, Spanish or French

• The ability for Meta glasses to help you remember things, for example where you parked your car at the airport

• A personal assistant that can fuse the inputs from the camera and microphones to provide advice in real-time when exploring a new city or looking for meal ideas

You may be forgiven for not remembering but all of these features seemed like science fiction two years ago when Facebook Inc. rebranded itself to Meta and posted a cartoonish, largely-computer generated, 90-minute long video in which Mr Zuckerberg was floating on an imaginary spaceship with his co-workers.

Now, conversing with AI entities that understand context, emotions, and nuanced communication, or generating worlds that adapt in real-time to user interactions, or advanced, non-invasive human-computer interfaces are shipping in real-world products.

The gap between our physical selves and digital avatars is narrowing, thanks to big leaps in diffusion models and, as shown with Orion, lightweight, all-day wearables will be a reality in 3-5 years.

Sure, we're not living in Ready Player One just yet and difficult challenges (particularly on the hardware side) remain. But make no mistake: the foundation for a true metaverse is no longer a pipe dream. It's being built as we speak. The question isn't if the metaverse will become real, but how soon and in what form.

And now, here are the week’s news. Before you dive in, I’d like to give a special shoutout to the Wall Street Journal - their coverage of the AI industry for the past few months has been top notch:

❤️Computer loves

Our top news picks for the week - your essential reading from the world of AI

• Meta Connect 2024

  • VentureBeat: AI for all: Meta's 'Llama Stack' promises to simplify enterprise adoption

  • VentureBeat: Meta’s Llama 3.2 launches with vision to rival OpenAI, Anthropic

  • The Verge: Mark Zuckerberg: creators and publishers ‘overestimate the value’ of their work for training AI

  • The Verge: Meta is working on recreating influencers with AI

  • The Verge: Meta’s Ray-Bans will now ‘remember’ things for you

  • TechCrunch: Meta AI gets celebrity voices and lip-synced translations

  • The Verge: Meta’s going to put AI-generated images in your Facebook and Instagram feeds

  • TechCrunch: Mark Zuckerberg says Meta AI has nearly 500 million users

• DW: Europe's AI bosses sound warning on soaring compliance costs

• FT: AI start-ups generate money faster than past hyped tech companies

• New York Times: Behind OpenAI’s Audacious Plan to Make A.I. Flow Like Electricity

• Bloomberg: Canva Bets Big on AI to Fight Adobe and Supercharge Growth

• WSJ: Puma Wants to Improve Its Brand. AI Might Help.

• Fortune: Intel’s years of missteps leave it fighting for survival in the Nvidia-dominated AI era

• Bloomberg: The Russian Bot Army That Conquered Online Poker

• WSJ: As AI Matures, Chip Industry Will Look Beyond GPUs, AMD Chief Says 

• Fortune: Cloudflare is arming content creators with free weapons in the battle against AI bot crawlers

• Fortune: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the robot revolution to end hard work

• FT: Move over copilots: meet the next generation of AI-powered assistants

• Ars Technica: Welcome to the Era of ‘Deep Doubt’

• Fortune: Sam Altman’s quest for cheap AI power will be fueled by Middle East billions. But the true cost goes beyond money

• WSJ: The Man Tasked With Rebooting Amazon AI

• WSJ: It’s the Year 2030. What Will Artificial Intelligence Look Like?

• The Guardian: ‘It’s the robot we were all expecting – like C3PO’: why aren’t humanoids in our homes yet?

⚙️Computer does

AI in the wild: how artificial intelligence is used across industry, from the internet, social media, and retail to transportation, healthcare, banking, and more

• Euronews: Ukraine’s government will use AI avatars and videos to help inform citizens about social care

• TechCrunch: Audible experiments with new AI features for tailored audiobook recommendations

• Bloomberg: Rippling Introduces AI-Based Tool to Evaluate Employee Performance

• The Guardian: South Sudan medics trial AI app to identify snakes and improve bite treatment

• AP: Video game studios are powering up NPCs with AI to make interactions more like actual conversations

• Time: How AI Could Transform Fast Fashion for the Better—and Worse

• Washington Post: How AI could monitor brain health and find dementia sooner

• The Verge: Max is getting Google AI-generated closed captions

• The Verge: Google’s Gemini AI might soon appear in your corporate Workspace

• MIT Technology Review: An AI script editor could help decide what films get made in Hollywood

• MIT Technology Review: AI models let robots carry out tasks in unfamiliar environments

• Wired: When You Call a Restaurant, You Might Be Chatting With an AI Host

• The Verge: YouTube’s conversational AI chatbot is more widely available

🧑‍🎓Computer learns

Interesting trends and developments from various AI fields, companies and people

• Wired: China’s Plan to Make AI Watermarks Happen

• Bloomberg: The Energy Boss Overhauling the Grid for AI and Net Zero

• WSJ: Turning OpenAI Into a Real Business Is Tearing It Apart

• Fortune: OpenAI reportedly wants to build 5 gigawatt data centers, and nobody knows who could supply that much power

• Wired: Is AI More Sustainable if You Generate it Underwater?

• The Standard: Keir Starmer: We can make London the AI capital of the world. The opportunities to create wealth are endless

• The Verge: Google’s NotebookLM can help you dive deeper into YouTube videos

• The Information: Software Firms Race to Beat OpenAI in AI Agents

• VentureBeat: Why countries are in a race to build AI factories in the name of sovereign AI

• VentureBeat: Airtable just launched an AI platform that could change how you work

• Reuters: AstraZeneca in AI collaboration with Immunai to inform cancer drug trials

• Business Insider: This chart shows one potential advantage AWS's AI chips have over Microsoft and Google

• MIT Technology Review: Want AI that flags hateful content? Build it.

• The Information: Microsoft AI Chief Suleyman Shuffles Unit Leadership, Pointing to Shift in Strategy

• FT: OpenAI’s chief technology officer Mira Murati to leave

• MIT Technology Review: A tiny new open-source AI model performs as well as powerful big ones

• The Guardian: World’s first AI art museum to explore ‘creative potential of machines’ in LA

• Business Insider: Reddit's new AI translation could soon allow users anywhere to understand every comment in any language

• Axios: Sam Altman: AI project with Jony Ive isn't a phone

• The Verge: Figma’s AI-powered app generator is back after it was pulled for copying Apple

• WSJ: Big Tech Is Rushing to Find Clean Power to Fuel AI’s Insatiable Appetite

• Reuters: 'Titanic' director James Cameron joins Stability AI board

• Reuters: Meta's AI chatbot to start speaking in the voices of Judi Dench, John Cena, others, source says

• VentureBeat: OpenAI finally brings humanlike ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode to U.S. Plus, Team users

• VentureBeat: Generative AI adoption surpasses early PC and internet usage, study finds

• VentureBeat: Microsoft unveils ‘trustworthy AI’ features to fix hallucinations and boost privacy

• VentureBeat: OpenAI tackles global language divide with massive multilingual AI dataset release

• FT: Qatar’s Ooredoo wades into Gulf’s AI data centre rivalry

• Fortune: Silicon Valley billionaire Vinod Khosla says AI will handle 80% of work in 80% of jobs

• Fortune: Sam Altman says AI superintelligence could be just ‘a few thousand days’ away

• MIT Technology Review: What the US can learn from the role of AI in other elections

• FT: Perplexity in talks with top brands on ads model as it challenges Google

• The Economist: China’s AI firms are cleverly innovating around chip bans

• TechCrunch: Sam Altman catapults past founder mode into ‘god mode’ with latest AI post

• New York Times: Will A.I. Be a Bust? A Wall Street Skeptic Rings the Alarm.

• The Information: Bling It On: An AI Startup Turns Shoppers Into Jewelry Designers

• New York Times: Is Math the Path to Chatbots That Don’t Make Stuff Up?

• WSJ: The Joys of Talking to ChatGPT

• VentureBeat: Together AI promises faster inference and lower costs with enterprise AI platform for private cloud

• VentureBeat: OpenAI Academy launches with $1M in developer credits for devs in low- and middle-income countries

• Fortune: Goldman Sachs interns are sunny about the future—and don’t think A.I. will take their jobs

• Fortune: Marc Benioff blasts Microsoft’s Copilot AI tool as the next ‘Clippy’

• Fortune: Software, news, and environmental CEOs reveal how they’re using AI to transform their businesses

• Business Insider: Sam Altman is joining forces with design guru Jony Ive and Laurene Powell Jobs to build a new AI device company

• Business Insider: Three Mile Island nuclear plant to reopen — to power Microsoft's AI push

• The Verge: Meta has a major opportunity to win the AI hardware race