Your weekly briefing on all things AI

AI continues to play a pivotal role in tech advancement, shaking things up across different industries. As AI gets more powerful, new use cases unlock that can both benefit productivity, or unfortunately the opposite.

📈 Workplace dynamics shift as companies leverage more AI for workflows and governance.

🔍 From Google rebranding its AI assistant to Musk’s ancient scroll project, AI continues to unlock new realms of possibilities and exploration.

🚁 Innovation soars with MIT’s autonomous helicopters and major strides in AI for recycling, while the EU tightens election security against deepfakes.

📰 AI in the News

Walmart, Starbucks, & More Are Using AI to Become “Aware” of Toxic Work Interactions

Major corporations like Walmart, Delta, T-Mobile, Chevron and Starbucks are using Aware, a startup's AI technology, to monitor employee messages on platforms such as Slack and Microsoft Teams. This tool focuses on analyzing real-time employee sentiment and identifying issues like harassment.

Aware's AI technology anonymizes data for general sentiment analysis but also includes an eDiscovery tool that can identify individuals in specific high-risk scenarios. This dual approach helps companies manage internal communications and compliance more effectively.

The use of Aware's technology signifies a growing trend of integrating AI into workplace monitoring, highlighting the evolving role of AI in corporate communication and employee oversight. (Full Story)

$25 Million Lost to Scammers Using Deepfakes

A finance worker in Hong Kong was tricked into transferring $25 million to scammers using deepfake technology. The fraudsters created a convincing video conference with images and voices of his colleagues, including the CFO, to authenticate their request.

The scam was uncovered only after the employee checked with his company's head office, exposing the risks posed by advanced deepfake technology in financial scams. (Full Story)

Sam Altman Loves the Apple Vision Pro & ChatGPT is On It

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has acclaimed Apple's Vision Pro, a mixed-reality headset, as the second most impressive technology since the iPhone. Priced at $3,500, it allows users to interact with their environment using eye and finger movements. OpenAI has launched a ChatGPT app for the Vision Pro. Elon Musk commented on the device's potential, comparing its evolutionary trajectory to that of the iPhone. Vision Pro, having sold over 200,000 units, signals growing interest in mixed-reality technologies. Altman's comments reflect a significant anticipation for future tech, especially in AI. (Full Story)

More Stories

• Nvidia Targets Untapped $30 Billion Market with Dedicated Custom Chip Unit (link)

• OpenAI Reportedly Creating Dual AI Agents for Task Automation (link)

• Google's AI Assistant Transforms: From Bard to Gemini (link)

• Elon Musk Funds AI Initiative to Unravel Mysteries of Ancient Roman Scrolls (link)

• MIT PhDs Lead the Way in Autonomous Helicopter Technology with Rotor Technologies (link)

• Microsoft's Copilot Evolves with Cutting-Edge AI Image Tech and Deucalion Model (link)

• World’s Largest Recycling Plant Builder to Implement AI in Waste Sorting (link)

• EU Drafts Guidelines Targeting Deepfakes in Election Security for Tech Companies (link)

• Brilliant Labs Unveils ‘The Frame’: Open-Source AI Eyewear for Visual Analysis, Translation, and Web Search (link)

• Apple Releases Open-Source AI Model for Image Editing (link)

📈 Venture Deals

• Xensam Secures $40M Funding After 8 Years of Self-Financing for Its AI-Driven Software Asset Management Platform (link)

• Ambience Healthcare raised $70M to create an “operating system” for helping clinicians complete administrative work (link)

• Colossyan raised $22M for AI video for workplace learning (link)

• Jua raised $16M to build a “physics” model for the natural world (link)

• Synthetaic raised $15M to unlock insights from image data (link)

• Quindar raised $6M for AI-driven satellite management (link)

• Arkeus raised $4.45M to expand its AI-enhanced search & surveillance technology (link)

• Octup raised $4M for operational AI-driven e-commerce platform (link)

• Camb AI raised $4M for its AI dubbing platform (link)

💡 Industry Impacts

⚖️ Legal

FCC Bans AI-Powered Robocalls: The FCC has officially made AI-voiced robocalls illegal, reinforcing its crackdown on automated calling scams. This move, in line with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, specifically addresses the use of AI-generated voices in scams, a response to incidents like fake President Biden robocalls. The decision clarifies the illegality of AI-voice cloning in automated calls, aiming to protect consumers from deceptive practices and ensure the need for consent in automated communications. (link)

🏛️ Politics

EU Targets Deepfakes Risks in Election Security Push: Under its Digital Services Act, the EU is formulating security guidelines to mitigate the threats posed by generative AI and deepfakes during elections. These guidelines, targeted at major online platforms such as Facebook, Google, TikTok, and X (Twitter), cover all forms of synthetic media that could influence elections and recommend the adoption of sophisticated detection tools and modifications to ad systems. This effort, especially relevant to the forthcoming European Parliament elections, aims to protect democratic processes from potential distortions while preserving freedom of expression. (link)

🛫 Travel 

Layla, a travel startup, has acquired the AI itinerary bot Roam Around, enhancing its travel planning services with AI-driven personalization. Travel companies are focused on streamlining and customizing travel experiences. Those that don’t will be left behind. (link)

🛠️ Tool of the Week

This week, I heard a few success stories from a tool called Paradox.AI that streamlines and automates much of the recruiting process. Their chatbot, Olivia, can help screen applications, chat with potential hires, schedule interviews, and more. It can connect to your own documentation as well to make more use of your career pages. Plus, it even connects to WhatsApp!

More Tools

• Promptcast.app summarizes podcasts with AI

• MapleCMS.ai is an AI integrated headless CMS for better web content management

• SuperMoon is a single inbox for teams to use and manage with GenAI assistance in response writing.

• Threadscribe.ai helps you glean insights from slack channels.