The list of ways Twitter could be better is long. Many users think the platform

TAIPEI, Taiwan--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 11, 2023--

ChatGPT has a new upgrade that lets the viral artificial intelligence tool “see, hear, and speak”, according to OpenAI. The update for OpenAI’s artificial intelligence chatbot will allow users to have voice conversations with the AI chatbot and interact with it using images as well, the firm said in a blog post on Monday. “ChatGPT can now see, hear, and speak,” the firm also said in a post on X/Twitter. The features will be rolled out “over the next two weeks” and enable users to “use voice to engage in a back-and-forth conversation” with the AI assistant. With the new features, ChatGPT can be used to “request a bedtime story for your family, or settle a dinner table debate,” according to the company, bringing it closer to the services offered by Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri AI assistants. Providing an example of how the feature works, OpenAI shared a demo in which a user asks ChatGPT to come up with a story about “the super-duper sunflower hedgehog named Larry”. The chatbot replies to the query with a human-like voice and also responds to questions such as “What was his house like?” and “Who is his best friend?” OpenAI said the voice capability is powered by a new text-to-speech model that generates human-like audio from just text and a few seconds of sample speech, the company said. “We collaborated with professional voice actors to create each of the voices. We also use Whisper, our open-source speech recognition system, to transcribe your spoken words into text,” the company said. The AI firm believes the new voice technology is capable of crafting realistic-sounding synthetic voices from just a few seconds of real speech, and could opens doors to many creative applications. However, the company also cautioned that the new capabilities may also present new risks “such as the potential for malicious actors to impersonate public figures or commit fraud”. Another major update to the AI chatbot allows users to upload an image and ask ChatGPT about it. “Troubleshoot why your grill won’t start, explore the contents of your fridge to plan a meal, or analyze a complex graph for work-related data,” OpenAI explained. This new feature, according to the company, also lets users focus on a specific part of the image using a drawing tool in the ChatGPT mobile app. This kind of multimodal recognition by the chatbot has been forecast for a while, and its new understanding of images is powered by multimodal GPT-3.5 and GPT-4. These models can apply their language reasoning skills to a range of images, including photographs, screenshots and documents. OpenAI said the new features will roll out within the next two weeks in the app for paying subscribers of ChatGPT’s Plus and Enterprise services. “We’re excited to roll out these capabilities to other groups of users, including developers, soon after,” the AI firm said. Read More Spotify makes AI voice clones of podcasters and uses them to speak other languages Meta plans to develop chatbot with ‘sassy robot’ persona for young users, report says ChatGPT can now generate images and create illustrated books Meta plans to develop ‘sassy robot’ chatbot for young users, report says Fossil fuels ‘becoming obsolete’ as solar panel prices plummet New discovery is ‘holy grail’ breakthrough in search for aliens, scientist say

One of the “godfathers” of artificial intelligence (AI) has said he feels “lost” as experts warned the technology could lead to the extinction of humanity. Professor Yoshua Bengio told the BBC that all companies building AI products should be registered and people working on the technology should have ethical training. It comes after dozens of experts put their name to a letter organised by the Centre for AI Safety, which warned that the technology could wipe out humanity and the risks should be treated with the same urgency as pandemics or nuclear war. Prof Bengio said: “It is challenging, emotionally speaking, for people who are inside (the AI sector). It's exactly like climate change. We've put a lot of carbon in the atmosphere. And it would be better if we hadn't, but let's see what we can do now Professor Yoshua Bengio “You could say I feel lost. But you have to keep going and you have to engage, discuss, encourage others to think with you.” Senior bosses at companies such as Google DeepMind and Anthropic signed the letter along with another pioneer of AI, Geoffrey Hinton, who resigned from his job at Google earlier this month, saying that in the wrong hands, AI could be used to to harm people and spell the end of humanity. Experts had already been warning that the technology could take jobs from humans, but the new statement warns of a deeper concern, saying AI could be used to develop new chemical weapons and enhance aerial combat. AI apps such as Midjourney and ChatGPT have gone viral on social media sites, with users posting fake images of celebrities and politicians, and students using ChatGPT and other “language learning models” to generate university-grade essays. But AI can also perform life-saving tasks, such as algorithms analysing medical images like X-rays, scans and ultrasounds, helping doctors to identify and diagnose diseases such as cancer and heart conditions more accurately and quickly. Last week Prime Minister Rishi Sunak spoke about the importance of ensuring the right “guard rails” are in place to protect against potential dangers, ranging from disinformation and national security to “existential threats”, while also driving innovation. He retweeted the Centre for AI Safety’s statement on Wednesday, adding: “The government is looking very carefully at this. Last week I stressed to AI companies the importance of putting guardrails in place so development is safe and secure. But we need to work together. That’s why I raised it at the @G7 and will do so again when I visit the US.” Prof Bengio told the BBC all companies building powerful AI products should be registered. “Governments need to track what they’re doing, they need to be able to audit them, and that’s just the minimum thing we do for any other sector like building aeroplanes or cars or pharmaceuticals,” he said. “We also need the people who are close to these systems to have a kind of certification… we need ethical training here. Computer scientists don’t usually get that, by the way.” Prof Bengio said of AI’s current state: “It’s never too late to improve. “It’s exactly like climate change. We’ve put a lot of carbon in the atmosphere. And it would be better if we hadn’t, but let’s see what we can do now.” We don't quite know how to understand the absolute consequences of this technology Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt Oxford University expert Sir Nigel Shadbolt, chairman of the London-based Open Data Institute, told the BBC: “We have a huge amount of AI around us right now, which has become almost ubiquitous and unremarked. There’s software on our phones that recognise our voices, the ability to recognise faces. “Actually, if we think about it, we recognise there are ethical dilemmas in just the use of those technologies. I think what’s different now though, with the so-called generative AI, things like ChatGPT, is that this is a system which can be specialised from the general to many, many particular tasks and the engineering is in some sense ahead of the science. “We don’t quite know how to understand the absolute consequences of this technology, we all have in common a recognition that we need to innovate responsibly, that we need to think about the ethnical dimension, the values that these systems embody. “We have to understand that AI is a huge force for good. We have to appreciate, not the very worst, (but) there are lots of existential challenges we face… our technologies are on a par with other things that might cut us short, whether it’s climate or other challenges we face. “But it seems to me that if we do the thinking now, in advance, if we do take the steps that people like Yoshua is arguing for, that’s a good first step, it’s very good that we’ve got the field coming together to understand that this is a powerful technology that has a dark and a light side, it has a yin and a yang, and we need lots of voices in that debate.” Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Cabinet approves Irish involvement in cyber-threat network Trust and ethics considerations ‘have come too late’ on AI technology Mitigating ‘extinction’ from AI should be ‘global priority’, experts say

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PITTSBURGH--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 27, 2023--

The tech industry’s drive to dot the Virginia landscape with data centers may have hit a snag this week in Prince William County

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Atari CEO Wade Rosen says the company is committed and focused on retro gaming and doesn't want to compete with Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo in the modern console market.

UPDATE: May. 13, 2023, 5:00 a.m. EDT This post has been updated with the latest