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Daily Digest #330

Hello folks, here’s what we have today;

PICKS

1. Sam Altman is back on his plan to raise billions for a new chip venture⁵⁵⁹. More deets from Bloomberg find that he's betting big on setting up a global network of semiconductor factories, not just design chips.🍿Our Summary²² (also below)

2. ElevenLabs is the new AI unicorn⁹⁶⁶ - You've probably heard about ElevenLabs, that cool AI voice tech company. They just bagged $80 million in Series B funding and have some interesting products in the pipeline.🍿Our Summary³³ (also below)

3. The controversy over AI art continues. A tool by UChicago, Nightshade, is now free to use⁸⁹⁶. Nightshade (and its earlier version: Glaze) allows artists to modify their work to "poison" AI models trained on it without consent. a16z’s Justine Moore⁴⁷⁵ pointed to some Reddit comments about no major negative impacts and in some cases, it’s even resulting in better images. UNO reverse?

TOP TOOLS

• NerfStudio⁴³⁴ - Simple API for creating, training and testing NeRFs.

• Photify AI^1,095 - Generate vivid AI portraits in seconds.

• Voxos⁵⁶² - An open-source desktop voice assistant.

• Yuna⁸¹⁷ - AI that helps you feel better, today.

• Plock⁴⁴⁹ - Use an LLM from anywhere you can type.

• Moondream1³¹⁷ - A tiny 1.6B parameter vision language model.

• Stable LM 2²³⁹ - A 1.6B parameter language model by Stability AI.

View more →³⁰¹

NEWS

• Generative AI framework for UK government⁴⁹⁴ - A thorough report with resources and guidelines.

• How to train your own large multimodal models³²²—Latent Space with HuggingFace.

• Some DeepMind scientists are talking with investors about forming an AI startup.²⁷²

Thinking ahead:

• What do you mean by sell work, not software^862†?

• The knowledge economy is over⁸⁴³—every maker becomes a manager.

• Why you should invest in AI⁵⁵⁶—Sarah Guo at TED AI. (not just for investors)

• Generative AI predictions⁹⁶¹ for 2024 by CB Insights.

Architecture mashup:

• AI is coming for architecture.⁵⁰⁶ Architects are using DALL-E and other AI tools more in their complex processes.

• Barcelona is designing a virtual city with AI⁷⁰⁴ to help with problems like traffic congestion.

• A Japanese author admits she used ChatGPT³⁴⁹ to write award-winning novel. Guess what the topic of this novel is? Yup, Architecture.

View more →¹¹⁹

QUICK BITES

Sam Altman, the big boss at OpenAI, is on a mission to raise billions for a new chip venture.⁵⁵⁹ More deets from Bloomberg that he's betting big on setting up a global network of semiconductor factories.

What is going on here?

Sam Altman is back on his plan to create network of factories for semiconductor manufacturing.

What does this mean?

Altman's looking ahead, seeing a future where AI's everywhere but chips are scarce. His plan goes one step beyond than the usual tech giant strategy of designing chips and leaving the (hard) work of making them to others.

Altman's wants OpenAI to build its own network of chip factories (fabs). He’s playing a different game and a long one—with the goal to have sufficient chip supply by the end of the decade.

He's talking with G42 and SoftBank to raise money. Bloomberg reports that Microsoft, OpenAI's largest investor, knows about this plan and is interested in it.

Why should I care?

Building a network of state-of-the-art fabs is expensive and time-consuming. Previous reports mention talks of raising up to $10 billion with G42. It's a bold move, especially since companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft prefer to outsource manufacturing. If Altman's right, and there's a chip crunch as AI booms, we know which company is gonna be ahead of the game.

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QUICK BITES

You've probably heard about ElevenLabs, that cool AI voice tech company. They just bagged $80 million in Series B funding⁹⁶⁶, pushing their total funds to a neat $101 million. And guess what? They're now valued at over a billion dollars!

What is going on here?

ElevenLabs is on a roll with funding and new products in the pipeline.

What does this mean?

The cash influx is led by big names like Andreessen Horowitz and others. Started in 2022 by a couple of tech-savvy guys, Piotr Dabkowski and Mati Staniszewski, Elevan Labs is one of the leading AI voice companies now. From a modest team of 5, they've scaled up to 40 and are eyeing about 100 by year's end.

They will be rolling out some fancy new tools like a Dubbing Studio for movie buffs, a Voice Library Marketplace for voice creators to earn some dough, and a Mobile Reader App that turns text and URLs into audio in the upcoming weeks.

Why should I care?

Voice Cloning is a big market and ElevenLabs is a name to watch. Movies, audiobooks, or just browsing the web, their tech could change how you experience media. Plus, if you're in the tech biz or a voice artist, this could open up some exciting opportunities.

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