The AI Breakdown First Five - Tuesday September 26, 2023

5. AI Chip Firm Kneron Raises $49M

The AI chip space continues to be white-hot, as Kneron announces a French $49m extension to its Series B, bringing its total raised to $190M. The company makes reconfigurable AI chips designed to work within existing systems, such as in self-driving cars.

4. Signal Exec Calls AI ‘Surveillance Technology’

Signal president Meredith Whittaker had some extremely choice words for the AI industry at a recent event, comparing it to big tech and saying “It requires the surveillance business model; it’s an exacerbation of what we’ve seen since the late ’90s and the development of surveillance advertising. AI is a way, I think, to entrench and expand the surveillance business model.”

3. Writers Strike A Blow Against AI?

After 146 days, the Writers Guild of America has reached a tentative agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. From reports, one of the thorniest details was the specifics around generative AI. While we don’t have the exact language yet, the WGA had sought to prevent AI-written scripts entirely while studios wanted to be able to experiment.

2. Getty Announces Copyright Safe Image Generation Model

With copyright rules around AI training in limbo, some companies are taking advantage of their proprietary datasets to get out ahead of potential issues. Getty Images has partnered with Nvidia to create Generative AI by Getty Images. Because Getty trained it on its own images, users can use it without concern of future copyright claims.

1. Spotify Releases AI Podcast Translation

Language appears to be one of the barriers that will be quickest to fall to AI. Last week YouTube announced features to automatically dub YT videos into other languages, and now Spotify has released a similar tool for translating podcasts.

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