Google AI helped win two Nobel Prizes this week

It’s been another crazy week in the world of AI. While Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled his long-awaited Cybercab this week (along with a windowless robovan no one asked for), Google’s AI helped researchers win Nobel Prizes, Zoom unveiled its latest digital assistant, and Meta sent its Facebook and Instagram chatbots to the UK

Check out these stories and more from this week’s top AI headlines.

Google’s AI helped researchers win two Nobel Prizes

The 2024 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Physics were awarded on Wednesday to researchers closely linked to Google. Former Google researcher Geoffrey Hinton won the physics prize for his work on fundamental machine learning techniques that led to the current AI revolution, while DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis won for his efforts to decipher protein structures.

However, not all of her fellow students were happy with the awards, and one associate professor of mathematics argued of Hinton’s prize: “What he did was phenomenal, but was it physics?” I don’t think so. Even if there is inspiration from physics, they do not develop a new theory in physics or solve a long-standing problem in physics.”

Adobe offers creatives the opportunity to prove that their art isn’t AI junk

The thing is, these days you can’t believe everything you read and see on the internet, with 57% of it probably being AI-generated. To protect artists (i.e., its customer base), Adobe is launching a beta version of its Content Authenticity web app in the first quarter of next year, which will allow content creators to certify that their art is human-made.

However, this is not simple metadata – Adobe’s certification system uses a combination of digital fingerprinting, watermarking and cryptographic metadata to prove the provenance of images, video and audio files and cannot be easily removed or bypassed.

Meta’s AI chatbot goes to London

After launching in the US and Australia, Meta announced this week that it is also making its AI chatbot available to Facebook and Instagram users in the UK and Brazil, as well as on the company’s smart glasses. The AI ​​assistant can generate text and still images and, as the company recently announced, is trained using data generated by its wearers.

Google releases Imagen 3 (but only paying subscribers can generate people)

Google’s latest and greatest image generation engine, Imagen 3, is available to all users this week. The new model offers improved photorealism and fewer artifacts (just look at that cat!). I tried it briefly and it does what it says on the tin, allowing me to quickly generate an image from a text prompt and then modify and refine that output through subsequent iterations.

However, there are limits to what you can produce. Currently, free tier users can only create images of non-human beings. If you want it to draw you a picture of a person, you’ll need to sign up for the $20 Gemini Advanced tier.

Zoom introduces its new customizable AI Companion

Zoom has dramatically expanded its product range in recent years, from a simple video conferencing app to an entire ecosystem of marketing and collaboration tools. This week, the company introduced its next-generation AI Companion, a digital assistant that works seamlessly across Zoom’s various apps and helps streamline common business tasks like transcribing meeting notes, setting agendas, and summarizing reports to automate.

Users will even be able to customize the AI ​​and refine it on the company’s specific knowledge base, although this feature will cost $12 per user per month. The updated AI Companion 2.0 itself will be available to Zoom Workplace subscribers at no additional cost.

Amazon launches AI “Shopping Guides” for more than 100 product types

You know that AI summary that Google has placed at the top of the search results page that everyone seems to despise? Great news, Amazon basically does the same thing for more than 100 types of products it carries.

Now you can find out the key points and important information about the dog food or camping tent you want to buy, as well as product listings filtered for your specific search.