Your weekly briefing on all things AI

A study conducted by Thomson Reuters revealed new layers of insights into AI adoption in the workplace. The more usage AI gets, the more unique use-cases (some of which are very sci-fi sounding) come to life. This week read more on use cases ranging from personalized Olympic highlight reels to controversial prison rehabilitation programs. 

Let’s dive in:

📰 NBC Offers Personalized Olympics Highlight Reels with AI

📈 CData Raises $350 Million to Enhance Data Integration Tools

💡 Hashem Al-Ghaili Proposes A Matrix-Style Future of Prison Rehabilitation

 🛠️ GenAI Workflow Builder That Reduces Errors by 32%

📰 AI in the News

Adoption & Impact of Generative AI in Professional Services

Thomson Reuters recently set out to get a pulse on how Generative AI (GenAI) is poised to change the legal, tax & accounting, risk & fraud, and government sectors. The data was collected via an online survey with 1,128 respondents that were screened for familiarity with GenAI technology. While not surprising, many of the key findings tell a similar story of adoption (or lack thereof) across industries. You can download the full research here.

Rapid-Fire Findings

• Positive Sentiments: 44% of respondents were hopeful or excited about GenAI's introduction to their industry. 

• Concerns: 35% were hesitant with top factors including accuracy concerns (20%), skepticism about delivering promised results (18%), and over-reliance (16%). 

• Applicability: 81% believed GenAI could be applied to their work, but only 54% thought it should be applied. 

• Current Usage: 12% were already using GenAI, and 11% had active plans to implement it. 

• Business Model Impact: Among legal professionals, 58% did not believe GenAI would affect their rates, though 39% anticipated an increase in alternative fee arrangements. Tax professionals were split on whether GenAI would increase their rates. 

• Integration Pace: 32% of respondents were considering whether to use GenAI, and 45% had no plans to use it at this time. However, 22% of those actively using or planning to use GenAI were doing so daily or multiple times a day, and 31% weekly.

The bottom line? Service Industry sentiments seem cautiously optimistic, with lower adoption than broader studies have indicated. The need for accuracy continues to be a major hurdle in more rapid usage. (Full Report)

AI Takes the Mic: NBC's Personalized Olympics with AI Commentary

In a move that could signal wider adoption of AI in sports broadcasting, NBC is offering viewers a new way to experience the Olympics through AI-generated highlight reels. Available on Peacock, these personalized recaps will feature commentary voiced by an AI model mimicking announcer Al Michaels. Viewers can customize their 10-minute highlight packages by selecting preferred sports, athletes, and the type of content they want to see.

In 2014 NBC paid $7.65B to renew its contract with the International Olympic Committee for media rights to the games through 2032. Personalized highlight reels are likely to be just the first of many innovations aimed at squeezing more value out of that hefty purchase. (Link)

More Stories

• Meta begins testing user-generated AI chatbots on Instagram. (Link)

• Character.AI introduces AI avatars for phone conversations. (Link)

• Google Vids (AI video editor being added to Google Suite) is now available for free testing before official release. (Link)

• Toys R Us debuts the first ad ever created with OpenAI’s Sora. (Link)

• Alter3 is the latest GPT-4-powered humanoid robot. (Link)

• Time Magazine partners with OpenAI and ElevenLabs. (Link)

• Microsoft’s AI boss justifies using open web content without permission. (Link)

• Sam Altman predicts AI will soon solve all of physics. (Link)

• Zuckerberg accuses rivals of trying to create an AI-powered god. (Link)

• Nvidia's Blackwell poised to be 'most successful product ever,' says CEO Jensen Huang. (Link)

• AI pioneer Ilya Sutskever leaves OpenAI to build safe superintelligence in Israel. (Link)

📈 Venture Deals 

CData Valued at Over $800M After Successful $350M Growth Capital Raise

CData, a data connectivity solutions provider, has raised $350 million in growth capital, valuing the company at over $800 million. The company builds connectors that help enterprises stitch together data from different applications and locations. CData's tools are in high demand as companies are increasingly investing in AI and need to access their proprietary data for building AI models. The funding will be used for both business and product development. CData has around 270 connectors and partners with major players like Google and Salesforce. (Link)

More Venture Deals

• Formation Bio raises $372M to boost drug development with AI. (Link)

• EvolutionaryScale, backed by Amazon and Nvidia, raises $142M for protein-generating AI. (Link)

• Etched raises $120M in challenge to Nvidia in AI with transformer chips. (Link)

• Hebbia raises nearly $100M Series B for AI-powered document search led by Andreessen Horowitz. (Link)

• Axelera raises $68M to rival Nvidia with edge AI chips. (Link)

• Orby AI raises $30M to use generative AI to automate your most tedious work tasks. (Link)

• Rocketlane snags $24M from investors (including Tiferes) to bring AI-led project management to professional services teams. (Link)

• Ario raises $16M to democratize digital helpers with its AI personal assistant. (Link)

• Dust grabs another $16M for its enterprise AI assistants connected to internal data. (Link)

• MagicSchool raises $15M to explore AI's impact on edtech. (Link)

• Synthflow picks up $7.4M for no-code voice assistance for SMEs. (Link)

💡 Industry Impacts

🏩 Healthcare

From Silicone to Skin Cells: The Future of Robotic "Skin"

I know it looks gross, but scientists at the University of Tokyo are revamping the way robots wear their "skin." Instead of stiff silicone, they're developing a revolutionary living skin grown from human cells. This "living skin" can stretch and move, allowing robots to form realistic expressions, like smiles. While the future of androids with human-like features seems closer than ever, this research could also have major applications in medicine, like improving skin grafts and cosmetics. (Link)

🤖 Tech

Hashem Al-Ghaili’s Cognify: A Controversial Prison Vision

Imagine a prison unlike any other: Cognify. Here, criminals aren't locked away, they're plugged in. This controversial system uses AI to craft personalized virtual memories, forcing offenders to see their crimes from the victim's eyes or addicts to experience the cold sweats of withdrawal. Think of Cognify as VR on overdrive, with brain scans used to tailor these experiences and implant memories that hit hard with remorse. Supporters say Cognify is a game-changer, turning years of rehabilitation into a matter of minutes. But is this ethical? Is this reality TV for punishment, or a true path to reform? (Link) 

🛠️ Tool of the Week

Automate GenAI Workflows with V7 Go

V7 Go is a platform designed to automate multi-step workflows of GenAI tasks. Users can leverage reasoning engines alongside their favorite LLMs to essentially build no-code assembly lines of AI prompts. With computer vision and text-to-image capabilities layered into already powerful text analysis/generation, the potential use-cases are endless… The power behind V7 Go’s workflows is the ability to break down complex tasks into reasoning steps. Column by column, AI can reflect on parts of a problem rather than the whole, leading to a 32% reduction in errors over one-shot reasoning across document benchmarks, thanks to Chain of Thought Reasoning and Index Knowledge. (Link)

Watch a 2-Minute Demo Here.

More Trending AI Tools To Try:

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• TextMine: Efficiently review, handle, and find thousands of documents to make well-informed decisions.

• Pygma: Your AI assistant for managing social media.

• QuestionBase: Automatically answers the most repetitive questions, so you don't have to.