Runway, best known for its video-generating AI models, raises $308M

Runway, a startup developing a range of generative AI models for media production, including video-generating models, has raised $308 million in a Series D funding round. General Atlantic led the round, which had participation from Fidelity Management & Research Company, Baillie Gifford, Nvidia, SoftBank, and others. The fresh capital will be put toward AI research … Read more

This Tool Probes Frontier AI Models for Lapses in Intelligence

Executives at artificial intelligence companies may like to tell us that AGI is almost here, but the latest models still need some additional tutoring to help them be as clever as they can. Scale AI, a company that’s played a key role in helping frontier AI firms build advanced models, has developed a platform that … Read more

Anthropic launches an AI chatbot plan for colleges and universities

Anthropic announced on Wednesday that it’s launching a new Claude for Education tier, an answer to OpenAI’s ChatGPT Edu plan. The new tier is aimed at higher education, and gives students, faculty, and other staff access to Anthropic’s AI chatbot, Claude, with a few additional capabilities. One piece of Claude for Education is “Learning Mode,” … Read more

AI crawlers cause Wikimedia Commons bandwidth demands to surge 50%

The Wikimedia Foundation, the umbrella organization of Wikipedia and a dozen or so other crowdsourced knowledge projects, said on Wednesday that bandwidth consumption for multimedia downloads from Wikimedia Commons has surged by 50% since January 2024. The reason, the outfit wrote in a blog post Tuesday, isn’t due to growing demand from knowledge-thirsty humans, but … Read more

Researchers suggest OpenAI trained AI models on paywalled O’Reilly books

OpenAI has been accused by many parties of training its AI on copyrighted content sans permission. Now a new paper by an AI watchdog organization makes the serious accusation that the company increasingly relied on non-public books it didn’t license to train more sophisticated AI models. AI models are essentially complex prediction engines. Trained on … Read more

Meta’s head of AI research plans to leave the company

Meta’s VP of AI research, Joelle Pineau, is planning to leave the company, she announced in a post on Facebook Tuesday. Pineau said she’s leaving in May after more than two years overseeing FAIR, Meta’s internal AI research lab led by Yann LeCun. Pineau’s exit comes as Meta ramps up its AI efforts, with the … Read more

Tinder’s new AI-powered game assesses your flirting skills

You know the online dating scene is bad when dating giants like Tinder are now introducing AI personas for users to flirt with. On Tuesday, the company announced a new game powered by OpenAI, allowing users to interact with an AI bot to practice flirting, reenact meet-cute scenarios, and receive scores with suggestions for improving … Read more

Qualcomm acquires generative AI division of Vietnamese startup VinAI

Qualcomm has acquired the generative AI division of VinAI, an AI research company headquartered in Hanoi, for an undisclosed amount, the companies announced on Monday. The move marks Qualcomm’s continued expansion into the AI tooling sector. VinAI, which was founded by former DeepMind research scientist Hung Bui, develops a range of generative AI technologies, including … Read more

OpenAI shifts strategy, plans to launch ”open’ AI model

OpenAI logo is seen in this illustration taken, February 3, 2023. — Reuters OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, announced on Monday that it is developing a more open generative AI model, marking a significant departure from its long-standing stance on proprietary technology, AFP reported.  The decision comes as OpenAI faces mounting competition from Meta’s Llama … Read more