News
AI News for Monday, April 29, 2024
- GitHub Previewing Copilot Workspace
- OpenAI and Financial Times Ink Licensing Agreement
- Elon Musk Raising $6B for xAI
- Coca‑Cola Committing $1.1B to Cloud and GenAI
- Nuvalence Joins EY
- Estée Lauder and Microsoft Creating AI Innovation Lab
- Oracle Extends AI for Customer Experience
- Tech Leaders Join US DHS AI Board
- Connecticut Senate Passes AI Regulation
- Noyb Asks Austrian Agency to Investigate OpenAI
1. GitHub Previewing Copilot Workspace
San Francisco-based GitHub, part of Microsoft, is introducing GitHub Copilot Workspace, a Copilot-native developer environment. GitHub Copilot Workspace is designed to allow developers to brainstorm, plan, build, test and run code in natural language. The “task-centric experience” employs various Copilot-powered agents. The workspace is being previewed by GitHub, and a waitlist is available.
2. OpenAI and Financial Times Ink Licensing Agreement
San Francisco-based OpenAI and London-based Financial Times entered a strategic partnership and licensing agreement. Under the agreement, the partners will work to enhance ChatGPT with attributed content, help improve its models by incorporating Financial Times journalism and collaborate on developing AI products and features for Financial Times readers. In response to relevant queries, ChatGPT users will be able to see select attributed summaries, quotes and links to Financial Times journalism.
3. Elon Musk Raising $6B for xAI
Elon Musk’s xAI is closing in on raising $6 billion in financing that would value the company at $18 billion, according to Bloomberg. The Menlo Park, California-based venture capital firm Sequoia Capital will reportedly participate in the financing as well as other investors. XAI says it is building AI to “accelerate human scientific discovery.” The startup recently introduced Grok-1.5V, its first multimodal model with text and visual processing capabilities.
4. Coca‑Cola Committing $1.1B to Cloud and GenAI
The Coca‑Cola Company and Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft entered a five-year strategic partnership. The deal is intended to help Atlanta-based Coca-Cola in several ways: to align its core technology strategy system-wide; enable the adoption of leading technology; and foster global innovation and productivity. Under the partnership, Coca‑Cola made a $1.1-billion commitment to Microsoft's cloud and its generative AI capabilities. The partners will jointly experiment with technology, such as Azure OpenAI Service, to develop GenAI use cases for business functions, including testing how Copilot for Microsoft 365 could improve workplace productivity.
5. Nuvalence Joins EY
Troy, New York-based Nuvalence, a technology consulting firm focused on AI platform and product development, joined the consulting firm EY US. The move is intended to help accelerate the delivery of platform engineering, product development and GenAI platform-enabled services to organizations. Nuvalence, founded in 2018, brings to EY a team of over 140 engineers, product managers and architects from across the U.S., Canada and Colombia.
See more: 10 Top AI Companies Defining the Market
6. Estée Lauder and Microsoft Creating AI Innovation Lab
The Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) and Microsoft expanded their global strategic relationship by starting an AI Innovation Lab. Using GenAI capabilities in Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service, the companies will develop solutions for ELC’s more than 20 beauty brands. The AI Innovation Lab is intended to enable closer connections with consumers, drive greater speed to market and enhance local relevancy.
7. Oracle Extends AI for Customer Experience
Austin, Texas-based Oracle added AI capabilities within Oracle Fusion Cloud Customer Experience (CX) to help marketers, sellers and service agents accelerate deal cycles. The AI capabilities are designed to help companies generate “more sales faster” by automating time-consuming tasks and allowing front-office employees to better target, engage and serve customers. “We are only beginning to see what this technology can do for customer service, sales and marketing,” said Katrina Gosek, VP of product strategy, Oracle Cloud CX.
8. Tech Leaders Join US DHS AI Board
Several CEOs at leading AI companies — including Sam Altman of OpenAI, Satya Nadella of Microsoft and Sundar Pichai of Alphabet — are members of the Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security Board established by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The board will advise the DHS secretary, critical infrastructure community, private sector and public on the safe and secure development and deployment of AI in the nation’s critical infrastructure. The board will also develop recommendations to prevent and prepare for AI-related disruptions to critical services that impact national or economic security, public health or safety.
9. Connecticut Senate Passes AI Regulation
The Connecticut Senate voted 24-12 to pass a bill to regulate bias in AI decision making and protect residents from harm, such as deepfakes, according to the Associated Press. The bill requires digital watermarks on AI-generated images. It is now before the Connecticut House of Representatives.
10. Noyb Asks Austrian Agency to Investigate OpenAI
Vienna-based noyb, a nonprofit focused on enforcing digital privacy rights, filed a complaint against OpenAI with the Austrian data protection authority. In the complaint, noyb makes several requests of the agency: to investigate OpenAI’s data processing and the “measures taken” to ensure the accuracy of personal data processed by the company’s large language models; order the company to comply with the access request and bring its processing “in line” with the GDPR; and impose a fine to “ensure future compliance.”
See more: 10 Top AI Products for Business
