Adobe drops game-changing VLM

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Welcome back, Superhuman. The gloves are off. Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s rivalry just reached new heights, with tens of billions potentially on the line. And: We dive into Adobe’s first publicly-available video model, which it claims is the safest on the market.

Today’s Insights

• Sam Altman fires back, Anthropic’s warning, and Firefly Video

• Frontier: Adobe’s new video model

• Tutorial: How to do data analysis with Mistral Le Chat

• 5 new AI tools to boost your productivity

• News, memes, what’s trending on socials, and more

TODAY IN AI

1. OpenAI CEO fires back at Elon Musk after takeover bid: What started out as friendly competition has turned into a full-blown feud. Sam Altman quickly shut down Elon Musk’s offer to buy OpenAI for $97B on Monday, dismissing the stunt as a desperate attempt “to slow us down.” And in a letter to staff, he claimed that Musk hadn’t even sent over an official proposal yet.

But this goes way beyond hurt feelings: 

• Altman was in the middle of negotiating a deal with OpenAI’s non-profit arm, which the ChatGPT-maker technically has to acquire before it can become a full-fledged company

• The non-profit was estimated to be worth around $40B, but now that the board is expected to turn down the $97B figure, it’s unlikely it’ll take anything less than that in the future

2. Anthropic warns that AGI will be here before we know it: Imagine that by 2026 or 2027, “an entirely new state populated by highly intelligent people [appears] on the global stage.” As world leaders gather for the Paris AI Action Summit this week, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is asking them to take that scenario seriously. He predicts AGI, or something like it, will be here “almost certainly no later than 2030.”

3. Adobe unveils industry’s first commercially-safe video model: A lot of companies have held off on using video models, since the laws and ethics around copyright can be murky and difficult to navigate. That’s why Adobe just launched the industry’s first major VLM trained entirely with commercially-safe materials. Keep reading to find out why companies like IBM, Gatorade, and Mattel are already on board.

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FROM THE FRONTIER

Adobe releases industry’s first ‘commercially safe’ VLM

Adobe might have just made video generation more powerful and more ethical all in one go. Its new model, Firefly Video, has entered public beta, and unlike most VLMs, Adobe’s was trained entirely with the company’s own stock images and other “safe” materials. It means you’re not going to accidentally rip off an artist while making your own creation.

The details:

• It takes about 90 seconds to generate a five-second clip at 1080p

• Each generation has a special code so you can come back to it later

• You can adjust the camera angle, add motion, or even upload starting and ending frames and ask the model to fill in the gaps

• There’s a central feed where you can share your creations and explore what other users have generated

• You can also generate images and clips directly in apps like Photoshop and Premiere

• There are currently two subscription tiers (Creative Cloud subscribers will get a limited number of generations too)

How creators are using it: Adobe thinks Firefly Video will unlock a lot of new creative possibilities, no matter which field you’re in. A graphic designer can quickly animate a static logo or image they’ve created. A marketing team can generate special effects for an ad in a matter of minutes. And a filmmaker can storyboard their movie with stand-in clips to better visualize the shots they need.

THE AI ACADEMY

How to do data analysis with Mistral Le Chat

• Go to Mistral Le Chat and sign up.

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AI & TECH NEWS

Everything else you need to know today

🗣️ Language Leap: YouTube is expanding access to its AI-powered auto-dubbing feature, which translates a speaker’s voice across multiple languages.

🧠 Balancing Act: A new Microsoft study shows that overreliance on AI could affect critical thinking skills. However, the researchers point out that, as with any new technology, we’ll likely find a healthier balance over time.

🤖 Command Center: HR company Workday launched a new hub that will help businesses keep track of each of their AI agents from one centralized location.

🌈 Happy Place: Buzzfeed is building its own social media-meets-AI platform, which will be marketed as an alternative to politically-charged apps like X and Facebook. The working title: BF Island. (Here’s the sign-up page, if you’re interested.)

💰 Funding: Australia’s Harrison AI, which builds AI-powered software for CT scans and X-rays, raised $112M in a Series C funding round. And AI cybersecurity firm Tines landed $125M in a Series C, with backing from Goldman Sachs and SoftBank. The startup reached unicorn status with a valuation of $1.13B.

PRODUCTIVITY

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PROMPT OF THE DAY

Break down and simplify complex information

Prompt: I need help breaking down [subject/topic] into smaller, simpler parts that are easier to understand. Identify the most important 20% of learnings that will help me understand 80% of the subject. Use analogies and real-life examples to explain each concept in a relatable way. The explanation should focus on making the topic clear and engaging while connecting it to everyday experiences or situations. Additionally, suggest tips or questions I can use to check my understanding of the material.

_{Source: Anfernee / Medium}

SOCIAL SIGNALS

What’s trending on socials today

💥 Returning Fire: When asked about Elon Musk’s recent attempt to buy OpenAI, Sam Altman didn’t hold back: “I wish he would just compete by building a better product,” Altman said, adding, “Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity, I feel for the guy.”

🧑‍🍳 Recipe for Success: AI investor Deedy Das discussed the art of meta-prompting: Users are funneling their prompts through o3-mini, o1-pro, and finally Deep Research to generate entire software architecture designs and other “incredible results.”

✨ Under the Hood: Coding instructor Elliot Arledge shared a two-minute video that breaks down how transformers use algorithms to remember important facts.

🧭 Model Morals: The Center for AI Safety’s Dan Hendrycks unveiled a new study that explores why models seem to develop their own value systems over time, and why they act on those values more and more as they get smarter.

AI-GENERATED IMAGES

Bath Time

Midjourney Prompt: photo, [insert animal here], top view, lying on back, covered in lots of shampoo foam, wet, white background, glare of sunbeam --style raw --ar 4:3

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Zain & the Superhuman AI team