AI IN THE HEADLINES

• The OpenAI COO thinks AI for business is overhyped.

• Google is quietly postponing the launch of Gemini AI.

• OpenAI has secretly agreed to buy $51 million worth of brain-like AI chips.

SORRY, WHAT?

An AI-powered Garage Sale

How would you like to be the proud owner of a three-month subscription to Portable Restroom Operator magazine? No? Okay, how about the bragging rights that come with owning 200 Pogs? Still no? Does a PS5 tickle your fancy?

That’s essentially how it feels to haggle with an AI salesperson. AI Garage Sale was launched this week by Brain, a small Los Angeles-based art studio, and it's exactly what it sounds like.

It’s a fully operable digital garage sale managed by an AI with a ton of personality whose sole motive is to get you to purchase actual items. The items can range from anything from a collection of Pogs to a personalized video from a Pawn Stars celeb to even a pair of AirPods. 

Once you boot up the web app, you’ll be presented with a chat interface where the AI salesperson will pitch some (usually obscure) object for sale. You can choose to take it at the initial price or hit the haggle button, allowing you to pitch your own price. 

Don’t be fooled, though. The AI in play is an expert at getting what it wants. Haggling with it is no easy feat, and you won’t get far if you go in with a low-ball straight away. 

OOPS

This AI is having a rough go 

Meet Q. Yes, I know, yet another AI project with a one-letter name.

Q is Amazon’s new generative, AI-powered assistant tailored for work. It’s marketed as your business expert that connects with your company data, code, and systems to create an adaptive AI that can solve business problems and generate content. 

It looks and behaves like ChatGPT, with a similar interface and user experience but with a more defined use case and tailoring.

Where the story gets a bit wild is in the launch day woes Q has seemingly had.

According to Business Insider, three days after its launch, several employees started sounding the alarm over accuracy and privacy issues, with some claiming Q is “experiencing severe hallucinations and leaking confidential data.”

It got so bad it was marked “sev2” which is code for “paging developers...” 

WOAH!

Animate all the things:

What if Da Vinci had a camcorder? What would the Mona Lisa be? Well, now you can find out, thanks to MagicAnimate, a new AI model by ByteDance (owners of TikTok) that can animate static images. Alibaba is building a similar tool called Animate Anyone and some people on X are speculating that these kinds of motion deepfakes will be “the end of the TikTok influencer.”

Meet your new assistant:

This iPhone Shortcut uses GPT-4 to summarize basically anything that you’re currently looking at. Double-tap the back of your phone, and voila!