Alphabet's new model is all about speed 🏃

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Welcome back, Superhuman

The AI industry's song of the summer? 'Leaner, Meaner, Faster, Greener.' Alphabet just joined the ranks of tech companies releasing slimmed-down remixes of their most popular models.

Today’s Insights

• How to access Alphabet’s new lightweight model

• Tutorial: Animating images with AI

• The internet reacts to SearchGPT

• Everything else you should know today

• 5 new AI tools to boost your productivity

• AI-Generated Images: Surreal portraits

NEXT IN AI

Alphabet opens up access to a speedy, lightweight model

Each day, OpenAI has to spend the equivalent of a new house just to keep the lights on. No wonder AI companies — from Mistral to Meta to Anthropic — are working on quicker and more efficient models. They deliver faster results for users, but they also ease the burden of powering an energy hog day after day. 

Alphabet just joined in on the trend: It’s now using the leaner and meaner version of its LLM, Gemini 1.5 Flash, to power the no-cost version of its chatbot. First announced in May, the “lightweight” model was previously only available to certain subscribers.

What can users expect?

• First off, there’ll be “noticeable improvements in reasoning and image understanding,” thanks to a 32,000 token context window, which is four times longer than the previous version

• It’s available across 230 countries and in 40 languages, making it more accessible than most of its rivals

• It’ll now cite its sources and include links — a feature apparently inspired by AI-first search platforms like Perplexity

• You’ll soon be able to ask Gemini to analyze uploads, including files from your Drive

• It’ll also be able to interact with your inbox — although you’ll first have to give it permission

What it means: The jump between older and newer AI models might seem a little more subtle these days. But these efficiency-focused updates are arguably no less significant. Tech companies don’t want their expenses to balloon out of control, as that would likely force them to charge for things that used to be available to everyone. The less-is-more approach ensures that users will be able to access LLMs long into the future — while also reducing AI’s environmental footprint.

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THE AI ACADEMY

How to animate your images using AI

• Go to Haiper AI and sign up using your email to get credits.

• Select Text-to-Video and Upload your image.

• Describe the video animation in the prompt box and click on the Generate button.

• Wait a few minutes and you’ll get your high-quality animated video.

• Download it and share it with your friends.

For the example above, I uploaded an image and used the following prompt for video animation:

“A video of a robot walking in the street with neon lights in the background, cyberpunk style.”

Want to master AI and future-proof your skills? Access 100+ courses and tutorials at our AI Academy

AI & THE WEB

The internet reacts to OpenAI’s new SearchGPT feature

OpenAI’s long-awaited Google rival is here — at least for 10,000 early users. It could be the first real challenger to Alphabet’s search supremacy in decades. OpenAI plans to work out SearchGPT’s kinks before integrating the feature into ChatGPT at some point in the future. 

The big question is: Can OpenAI avoid some of the pitfalls its rivals have encountered over the past few months? Perplexity and Alphabet both faced accusations that their search platforms occasionally generate answers that are entirely false, and early impressions suggest SearchGPT isn’t immune to those struggles either. 

For instance, one demonstration showed a user searching for music festivals in Boone, NC this August. But a CNBC reporter pointed out that four out of five of its answers were either inaccurate or irrelevant. Still, some errors are inevitable, and OpenAI seems aware of the problem, telling the Atlantic “this is an initial prototype, and we’ll keep improving it.”

While accuracy is still a challenge, OpenAI might have an edge when it comes to copyright. It went on a licensing spree earlier this year, forming partnerships with some of the world’s largest news organizations, including the Associated Press, News Corp, and Axel Springer. It says it’ll be able to draw on some of those sources in real-time, giving users more up-to-date information than is possible with traditional chatbots.

No matter how many glitches still need to be worked out, AI seems poised to completely change the way we find information online. The consulting firm Gartner thinks traditional searches will shrink 25% by 2026, as AI platforms become more prevalent. It might be just the thing that draws users back to ChatGPT after months of declining site visits.

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AI & TECH NEWS

Everything else you need to know today

• Boss Battle: Video game actors and performers from Hollywood’s SAG-AFTRA union announced they would go on strike over concerns that generative AI could put their jobs at risk.

• Profit Prophet: JPMorgan has begun using a special version of ChatGPT that can act as a research analyst, “offering information, solutions, and advice” on a variety of financial topics.

• Garden State Gambit: New Jersey is using leftover pandemic money to give $500 million in tax incentives to AI startups that vow to launch new projects inside the state.

• Spill the Beans: A former Runway AI employee admitted that the startup had trained its text-to-video model with unlicensed clips from Netflix, YouTube, and other streaming platforms.

• Robot Watcher: Las Vegas will be the first city in the US to implement an AI system that can automatically detect weapons inside its transit system.

🧠 Brain Food: Researchers at MIT are developing a way for robots to navigate new spaces with the help of an iPhone. The engineers can scan a room with their camera, then upload the image into a simulation. The robot can virtually explore the space until it’s an expert at moving through the area on its own.

PRODUCTIVITY

5 AI Tools to Supercharge Your Productivity

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✅ OpenLIT: Analyze LLM and GPU performance and costs to achieve maximum efficiency and scalability.

✅ Speech to Note: A personal writing assistant that transforms your spoken words into summaries with GPT-4o.

✅ Klee: Local and secure AI on your desktop, ensuring comprehensive insights with complete data privacy.

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PROMPT OF THE DAY

Monday reset

Prompt: Pretend you are an expert executive assistant, with the ability to prioritize and plan things months ahead of time. Help me come up with a daily routine that maximizes my productivity. [Provide unstructured task list and plans]

_{Source: Inspired by PPM Express}

AI-GENERATED IMAGES

Surrealist Portraits

Midjourney Prompt: Kazumasa Nagai's minimalist color pencil sketch depicting a surrealistic portrait made of rangoli, psychedelic nature, in the style of Chris Dyer, brothers hildebrandt, split toning, cristina mcallister
--chaos 13 --ar 3:4 --stylize 200 --weird 8

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🧞Your wish is my command

Thanks for reading.

Until next time!

Zain & the Superhuman AI team

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