AI Weekly Digest - July 22 2024

All the key stories and insight from another busy week in the world of artificial intelligence. LinkedIn newsletter readers can also sign up to an enhanced email edition of the AI Weekly Digest - published every Friday. You can subscribe for free.

CMA opens Phase One investigation into Microsoft’s Inflection AI partnership

The Competition and Markets Authority has opened a Phase One investigation into Microsoft’s?partnership with?Inflection AI. The tech giant paid $650m to resell the start-up's technology, and took on almost all of its staff, earlier this year. Microsoft said: “We are confident that the hiring of talent promotes?competition and should? not be treated as a merger.?We will provide the UK Competition and Markets Authority with the information it needs to complete its enquiries expeditiously.” The CMA will announce its initial findings by September 11.

Rupert Murdoch sees artificial intelligence as 'force for good'

Rupert Murdoch said he regards artificial intelligence as “a force for good”.?News Corp?recently signed a US$250m licensing deal with?OpenAI, and Murdoch said: “AI distributes brilliantly . But if they want access to it, they’re going to have to pay, or they’ll put us out of business. It takes these vast quantum computers, which give answers in split seconds. Now it can be made to do bad things, but equally you can make things which counter that."

Warning: Tech giants could face huge losses from AI data centres

Goldman Sachs head of global equity research Jim Covello said tech giants' rush to invest in new data centres for AI services could leave them nursing massive losses unless clear commercial applications for the technology emerge. He said: "To justify those costs, the technology must be able to solve complex problems, which it isn't designed to do. Replacing low-wage jobs with tremendously costly technology is basically the polar opposite of the prior technology transitions I've witnessed in my 30 years of closely following the tech industry."

Report: OpenAI talks with chip designers could reduce reliance on Nvidia

OpenAI has reportedly held talks with chip designers including Broadcom about developing a new processor, as the AI giant?attempts to reduce its reliance on Nvidia. The ChatGPT developer said: "OpenAI is having ongoing conversations with industry and government stakeholders about increasing access to the infrastructure needed to ensure AI’s benefits are widely accessible. This includes working in partnership with the premier chip designers, fabricators and the brick and mortar developers of data centres."

Study suggests xAI's Grok unable to detect jokes

The WSJ scrutinised shortcomings in Grok's news summaries, after Elon Musk urged X users to obtain information from the xAI chatbot, pointing out its inability to detect jokes meant it incorrectly stated that Vice President Kamala Harris and an "actor from Home Alone 2" had been shot at last Saturday's Donald Trump rally.

Survey: Human oversight imperative for use of AI technology in news

Most people believe human oversight is “imperative” for the use of AI technology in news, a new survey has found. The Oxford-based?Reuters Institute investigated public attitudes to AI and found while there is “generalised suspicion and concern ” about automation of journalistic content, attitudes were more nuanced over the degree of human oversight and type of content. The report found: “Comfort levels with the use of AI in news varied considerably across applications. Initial negative reactions to the use of AI by journalists typically defaulted to the assumption that AI would be used for content creation. As participants interacted with more use cases, their attitudes became more nuanced and, on balance, more positive.”

New York Times?tested AI for headline writing, style-guide enforcement

The New York Times?confirmed it has tested AI for headline writing and style-guide enforcement. It said the project was "a very early experiment by our engineering team designed to understand generative AI and its potential use cases ", and added it "was not used by the newsroom". The group is currently suing OpenAI over unauthorised use of its content for LLM training.

CEO: Atlantic's OpenAI deal to drive traffic rather than revenue

The?Atlantic?CEO Nicholas Thompson said the primary motivation for the US monthly's licensing deal with?OpenAI?was to drive traffic rather than direct revenue, and added it "provides an avenue for a product partnership that could be very beneficial". He said: "AI is coming, it is coming quickly. We want to be part of whatever transition happens. Transition might be bad, the transition might be good, but we believe the odds of it being good for journalism and the kind of work we do with The Atlantic are higher if we participate in it. So we took that approach."

NewsGuard?launches News Misinformation Monitor

Media watchdog?NewsGuard?has launched the AI News Misinformation Monitor, a new tool which tracks how often chatbots repeat inaccurate information.?Co-CEO Steven Brill said: “The upside and the downside of succeeding or failing in these efforts are enormous. This monthly AI News Misinformation Monitor will apply our tools and expertise to provide a critical, standardised benchmark for measuring that progress.”

Statistics suggest Google has pared back AI Overviews

A SearchEngineLand study found AI Overviews now show up for just 7% of total search queries on?Google, indicating the group has pared back the service since it was launched at the Google I/O 2024 event. The AI-assisted search feature is only available in the US.

Smart Global's $200m investment from SK Telecom

AI enterprise solutions developer Smart Global has received a $200m preferred equity investment from South Korea's largest mobile operator, SK Telecom. The investment is seen as a commitment to?SK's aim to boost its AI capabilities. Smart Global said it would use the funding to improve its financial flexibility and help expand the scope and scale of its Penguin Solutions' AI factories.

'Top pick' Apple shares hit new high amid iPhones AI push

Apple shares hit an all-time high this week after Morgan Stanley designated it a "top pick", saying its AI push will drive a record iPhone upgrade cycle over the next two years.

Perplexity revenue-share programme with web publishers

AI-powered search engine Perplexity?announced it is to instigate a revenue-share programme with web publishers next month. Chief business officer Dmitry Shevelenko said: “It’s the first of its kind revenue share program where if they are contributing a source input for an answer, and we’re monetising that answer with advertising, we’re going share that revenue with those publishers that contributed to that."

EU publishes landmark AI Act final text

The European Union has published the final text of its AI Act in its Official Journal. The landmark legislation, which is expected to act as a template internationally, comes into force on August 1 .

Children’s Commissioner wants crackdown on AI that creates deepfake images

Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de?Souza has urged Ofcom to crack down on social media companies, saying the current Children’s Code allows them to protect profits rather than youngsters online. Writing in The Sun, she said: “We can’t allow platforms to adopt a ‘wait and see’ approach to emerging technology like chatbots, or AI that creates ‘deepfake’ images. How many times are we going to let children be the victims of tech companies’ inability to put protection before profits ?... I want to see this code include a requirement for them to consult with children before rolling out any new feature or product and prove they are safe by design - not wait for children to come across disturbing content before removing it.”

US legislation to protect rightsholders

A bipartisan group of senators in the US has introduced the Content Origin Protection and Integrity from Edited and Deepfaked Media Act, new legislation which seeks to protect news groups, songwriters and artists of having their content used to train AI models without permission.

White House designates AI as a 'today problem'

White House Office of Science and Technology Policy director Arati Prabhakar said she regards AI as a "today problem" requiring immediate regulatory intervention . She said: "Part of what that means is that it is definitely a disrupter for every other major national ambition that we have. If we get it right, I think it can be a huge accelerator for better health outcomes, for meeting the climate crisis, for everything that we really have to get done."

Report: OpenAI's Strawberry set to bring 'advanced reasoning capabilities'

OpenAI is reportedly working on delivering 'advanced reasoning capabilities' in a new project code-named Strawberry, a source said. Reuters reported that a recent internal document from the ChatGPT-maker details a plan for how it intends to use Strawberry to perform research. There was no detail on how far the project had progressed or when it could become available to the public. Strawberry is reportedly designed to enable the group’s AI to not just generate answers to queries but 'to plan ahead enough to navigate the internet autonomously and reliably' to perform what “deep research,” the source added.

YouTube working on 'conversational radio'

Google's YouTube said it is developing new features including an AI-generated conversational radio and a?Shazam-like song-discovery too l.

Samsung announces first major order for advanced chip process

Samsung Electronics?announced a major AI chip order from Japanese artificial intelligence company?Preferred Networks, for its2-nanometre foundry process and advanced chip packaging service.?This marks the first order the South Korean tech giant has revealed for its cutting-edge manufacturing process . It gave no further details about the order.