OpenAI's Digital Assistant is Here

TECH IN THE NEWS

AI Safety Talks - U.S. and Chinese officials meet in Switzerland today to begin talks on AI risks and safety agreed to during APEC 2023.

Pixie? - Google’s annual I/O devcon today “will be all about AI,” and could include Android integration, the "Pixie," digital assistant, & genAI search.

Arming Up - SoftBank's UK-based Arm chipmaker plans to launch AI chip products by 2025, possibly via a TMSC manufacturing partnership.

Winning Semiconductor "War" - U.S. ally South Korea is preparing a support package worth over $7B for its domestic chip production industry.

Vive L’AI - Amazon and Microsoft both announced multibillion-dollar investments in France’s cloud and AI sectors at the Choose France summit.

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THE HOTTEST THING IN TECH
“O” is for “Omni” as AI Assistants Arrive

OpenAI announced GPT-4o, its latest AI model with text, vision, and audio capabilities in a shift towards a true digital assistant interface. While the “GPT-4-level” model improves multi-modal capabilities, the main innovation here is the first major step forward in the ease of use of OpenAI’s tools since its launch. GPT-4o will be accessible to all ChatGPT users in a staged roll-out, including those on the free version, so it’s also a move to “open up” OpenAI’s tools to more users and encourage lock-in. This reflects the heavy competition likely to emerge in this vertical from its big tech rivals.

A Conversational AI Digital Assistant

The model is available via a new web UI with a “more conversational” home screen and layout. It also includes a desktop version on macOS with keyboard shortcuts for questions or screenshots (windows version due later in year). It’s a supercharged upgrade to OpenAI voice mode with “real-time” responsiveness and low latency, resulting in a “conversational assistant” like Siri or Alexa but capable of much more complex tasks including:

• Persisted streamed media input so it watches, listens along;

• Vision capabilities to explain “What’s going on” from media input;

• Better ability to detect and mimic human emotional nuance;

• Ability to stop and recalibrate when interrupted;

• Ability to instruct in real time on tasks - so long tutoring business;

• Real-time language translation if prompted;

• API access for all users to build their own applications off this base.

Pixie, Siri, and Camerabuds

Google is expected to announce similar digital assistant functionality today in its “Pixie” multimodal Google Assistant replacement. Yesterday right as OpenAI showed off GPT-4o, it teased a camera-powered AI feature that lets users ask what’s in the camera frame in real-time.

Apple plans to upgrade Siri with on-device AI to make it “more conversational and versatile", likely a huge priority for them now.

Meta is developing its "Camerabuds" AI-powered earphones with cameras that can identify objects and translate languages + its AI Smart glasses.

Apple and Google still have a huge lock-in advantage in that they already own the native voice assistants on your phone. OpenAI has moved fast to beat them to the drop on this, hoping its first-mover status will be enough.

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1. Multilingual Messaging Portal - Sydney, AU - Global, AWS-backed SaaS platform for businesses to communicate with clients without language barriers. $300k secured, seeking $650k for U.S. expansion. (Series A)

2. Digital Twins - Miami, FL - Applying proprietary digital twinning tech to remote patient monitoring and therapy. Over $1 million revenue projected in 2024. Grants received for DoD applications. Raising $2 million in SAFEs with 25% discount for angels and 20% discount for VCs and family offices.

3. Homepage for Founders and Investors - Irvine, CA - A platform for investors to meet founders and for founders to grow their businesses with access to high-value community members, vendors, securitization tools, and capital. (Seed)

4. AI Agent Employees - New York - Sophisticated workflow automation for businesses, by a previously-exited founder. Building towards fully autonomous organizations. Backed by Tribe & Kenetic, rolling out to extensive waitlist.

5. Personalized Talent Marketplace - Delaware - Hiring platform with a focus on personalization and tailored guidance through an AI feature set. Founder experienced in recruiting and talent acquisition, seeking $300k. (Pre Seed)

TRENDING TOOLS AND BUZZY TECH
Tools

X - ‘AI Audience’ lets advertisers target, define user segments to focus ads.

Pixel 8A - Google's best budget phone yet overshadows Pixel 8.

Venice AI - Privacy-centric GenAI w/ blockchain payments & web 3 data.

IBM - Just open-sourced its Granite LLMs with full commercial rights.

Tech

Brain-Reading Device - Implants best yet at decoding ‘internal speech.’

World’s brightest X-rays - China builds next-gen synchrotron X-ray tech.

UAE’s AI Model - Open source Falcon 2 series could rival big tech models.

Meta - "Camerabuds" AI-powered earphones recognize objects & translate.

DEALS WE’RE WATCHING
Closed Deals:

House Cleaning Bots - San Francisco startup The Bot Company, by the   cofounder of autonomous vehicle startup Cruise, raised $150M at a $550M pmv from Spark Capital and Nat Friedman.

Edge Computing AI Chips - South Korean startup DeepX raised a $80M Series C led by SkyLake to create AI chips for low-power edge devices.