Google's Next-level AI Features for Pixel 8 Series
Plus: DeepMind's Promptbreeder automates prompt engineering, Canva partners with Runway.
Hello Engineering Leaders and AI Enthusiasts!
Welcome to the 119th edition of The AI Edge newsletter. This edition brings you Google's next-level AI features for its latest Pixel 8 series.
And a huge shoutout to our incredible readers. We appreciate you😊
In today’s edition:
📱 Google announces next-level AI features for its Pixel 8 series
✨DeepMind's Promptbreeder automates prompt engineering
🚀 Canva bolsters its AI toolkit by partnering with Runway
📚 Knowledge Nugget: What ChatGPT applications can learn from self-driving? by
Let’s go!
Google announces next-level AI features for its Pixel 8 series
At its Made by Google event, the tech giant announced its latest Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro phones built with AI at the center for a more helpful and personal experience. Here are some impressive AI features included:
Best Take uses the photos you take to get the photo you thought you took. An on-device algorithm creates a blended image from a series of photos to get everyone’s best look.
Magic Editor in Google Photos uses generative AI to let you reposition and resize subjects or use presets to make the background pop– all with just a few taps.
Audio Magic Eraser lets you easily reduce distracting sounds in your video, like howling winds or noisy crowds. This first-of-its-kind computational audio capability uses advanced ML models to sort sounds into distinct layers.
Zoom Enhance uses generative AI to take corrective steps to improve photo quality and gaps between pixels when you crop an image.
Call Screen will be updated with clever new features that will allow users to better determine the calls they want to skip and those they want to take and more using AI.
Upgraded Gboard will generate higher-quality reply suggestions with better overall conversational awareness powered by an LLM running on the Pixel 8 Pro.
In addition, Pixel 8 Pro will be the first hardware to run Google’s generative AI models on-device. Its custom-built Tensor G3 chip can run “distilled” versions of Google’s text- and image-generating models to power a range of applications, like image editing.
Why does this matter?
Google is clearly focused on integrating its AI tech more deeply into its consumer gadgets. It may offer Google a way to catch up to rivals like Apple, who also recently introduced some exciting features backed by AI on its iPhone 15 models.
DeepMind's Promptbreeder automates prompt engineering
Google DeepMind researchers have introduced Promptbreeder, a self-referential self-improvement method that employs LLMs like GPT-3 to iteratively improve text prompts. But, it also improves the way it is improving prompts.
Here’s how it works (a simple overview): Promptbreeder initializes a population of prompt variations for a task and tests them to see which performs best. The winners are "mutated" (modified in some way) and inserted back into the population. Rinse and repeat. But it makes mutations smarter over time. It uses AI to generate "mutation prompts" (instructions for how to mutate and improve a prompt).
The results: Prompts that are specialized and highly optimized for specific applications. On math, logic, and language tasks, Promptbreeder outperforms other SoTA prompting techniques.
Why does this matter?
Talk about AI bettering AI! With natural language as the substrate, no messy neural network fine-tuning required.
How prompts are phrased has a dramatic effect on the utility of AI models. And Promptbreeder may easily enable language models in the future to be more powerful, capable, and creative collaborators rather than just passive tools.
Canva bolsters its AI toolkit by partnering with Runway
Canva is celebrating its 10th anniversary with the Magic Studio update, one of its biggest product launches ever but this time with AI.
It includes a new generative video feature called Magic Media through a partnership with Runway ML. It will generate up to 18 seconds of video based on the user's input in text or still image. In the case of a still image input, the image will be used as the basis of the video and motion and camera movement applied.
Why does this matter?
This brings the power of AI video generation to the 100+ million users of Canva. We can also expect more exciting future workflows from the partnership with Runway. But more than just fun tools, these AI features solve real problems, such as making eye-catching content, fast-tracking drafts, automating tasks, and enabling folks with no design training or access to professional design tools.
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Knowledge Nugget: What ChatGPT applications can learn from self-driving?
ChatGPT is appealing due to its generality and seemingly unlimited potential to automate work. But how to build AI and not go bankrupt?
In this intriguing article,
attempts to answer this by looking at another recent AI story: self-driving. In the past decade, many companies pursued and died on the way to build self-driving. Are ChatGPT applications going to follow a similar trend?He suggests when building an AI product, it's good to think about two aspects: generality and robustness. He looks into lessons and learnings from history to build successful ChatGPT applications.
Why does this matter?
Every entrepreneur and VC is asking how to actually build useful AI products and defensible businesses from it. Perhaps, only lessons learned the hard way will prove robust in the face of challenges. It can help us create practical and sustainable AI products in today’s highly competitive scenario.
What Else Is Happening❗
📈Meta is rolling out its first generative AI features for advertisers
It will allow the use of AI to create multiple backgrounds for product images, expand/adjust images, repurpose creative assets, and generate multiple versions of ad text based on their original copy. (Link)
📱Google announces ‘Assistant with Bard’ for Android and iOS
An upgrade to Google’s existing voice assistant, it will help users plan trips, find emails, send messages, order groceries, write social posts, etc. Users can interact with it through text, voice, or images, and it includes Bard Extensions. (Link)
💰Anthropic in early talks with investors to raise $2B, targets $20-$30B valuation
Google, which bought a roughly 10% stake in Anthropic in 2022, is expected to invest in the round. This follows Amazon's commitment to invest $1.25 billion in the company just last week. (Link)
🌟Luma AI releases Interactive Scenes built with Gaussian Splatting
Now 3Dwiht AI is both pretty and fast, browser and phone-friendly, with hyperefficient and fast rendering everywhere. It is available today in Luma iOS App, Luma Web, and the Luma API and is fully commercially usable. (Link)
🚀Asana adds a slew of AI smarts to simplify project management
Asana is adding three productivity-centered generative AI features right away: smart fields, smart editor, and smart summaries. These will help organizations improve how they work and deliver better business outcomes. (Link)
That's all for now!
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