Apple reportedly sacrifices car plans to focus on AI

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Welcome back, Superhuman

You can’t have it all — even if you’re Apple. News emerged yesterday that the iPhone maker is giving up hopes of building an electric car to focus on (you guessed it) generative AI.

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TODAY’S MENU

• Apple kills electric car plans to focus on AI efforts

• How to turn your logo into a video with RunwayML

• Chart: AI companionship apps market map

• Princeton researchers claim AI breakthrough to generate boundless energy

• 5 new AI tools to boost your productivity

• AI Generated Images: Music artists as athletes

NEWS

Today in AI & Tech

GeminiGate: Google is working to fix Gemini, as CEO Sundar Pichai reportedly admits some of the text and image responses generated by the model were "biased" and "completely unacceptable."

Courtroom Drama: OpenAI accuses New York Times of hacking its chatbot to generate misleading evidence in copyright infringement case.

Bad Look: Tumblr and WordPress are reportedly in talks to sell their users’ data to OpenAI and Midjourney, allegedly including private data in first batch.

Automation Inc: Fintech company Klarna claims its AI assistant does the work of 700 people, says the chatbot handles two-thirds of all customer service chats.

Personalized News: Former Twitter engineers are building an AI-powered news reader called Particle that is designed to make it easier for users to keep up with news.

NEXT IN AI

Apple kills electric car plans to focus on AI efforts

Apple is switching lanes and giving up on its decade-long dream of building an electric car to focus on generative AI. Bloomberg reported yesterday that the company shut down one of the most ambitious projects in its history with an internal disclosure, surprising close to 2,000 employees working on the project.

The move was welcomed by investors and analysts, as Apple’s stock went up after the news broke. “Apple’s decision to abandon electric cars and shift resources toward generative AI is a good strategic move, we believe, given the long-term profitability potential of AI revenue streams versus cars,” observed Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Anurag Rana and Andrew Girard .

While other tech giants like Microsoft and Meta have made several major AI product announcements over the past year, Apple has been relatively quiet. The decision to shift resources and focus to AI may change that.

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AI AI WORK

How to turn your logo into a video with RunwayML

• First, create your logo or use an existing one.

• Then, go to the RunwayML website and click on sign up for free.

• Select the Image to Image Generation option under the generate image tab on left side and upload your logo image with composition and logo.

• Give your desired prompt to change the logo accordingly.

For the example I used the following prompt:

prompt: apple logo standing in [location]
preset: Cinematic
weight: 8.0

• Once you get your desired image, go to Text/Image to Video, then upload your image.

• Click on Generate 4s and wait for it to process.

• Your video will be ready to download in a few seconds.

CHART

AI companionship apps market map

Companionship apps have been one of the biggest hits of the generative AI boom. From coaching and mental health apps to romantic companionship and friendship apps, products in this segment are experiencing rapid growth in user adoption.

For example, chatbot service Character AI was one of the top 200 websites in the world last month in terms of website traffic, generating over 180 million visits as per data from Similarweb.

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RESEARCH

Princeton researchers claim AI breakthrough to generate boundless energy

What happened

Scientists at Princeton University claim that a new AI model has solved one of the major roadblocks to generating fusion energy.

The details 

Donut-shaped tokamak reactors are one of the front-runners in designs for a practical fusion reactor. But a single small disruption in the magnetic field can throw the entire process out of balance and cause significant damage.

The researchers claim that their AI model can make predictions and figure out ways to avoid plasma becoming unstable and escaping the strong magnetic fields that hold it inside certain donut-shaped reactors.

Why it matters 

Tears from instabilities are one of the biggest challenges on the path to boundless clean fusion energy. Previous studies have only been able to limit the damage after an instability has occurred. This new research prevents any instabilities from occurring in the first place.

While other technical challenges remain on the path to achieving boundless clean fusion energy, this recent breakthrough represents a significant milestone on that journey.

PRODUCTIVITY

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AI GENERATED IMAGES

Music artists as athletes

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Thanks for reading.

Until next time!

Zain

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