BEND, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 19, 2023--

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 27, 2023--

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 19, 2023--

In an effort to help prevent the spread of misinformation, Google on Tuesday unveiled an invisible, permanent watermark on images that will identify them as computer-generated.

OpenAI, the company behind the viral AI chatbot ChatGPT, is reportedly in talks with renowned Apple designer Jony Ive to create an artificial intelligence device. The venture, which also involves SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son, aims to build the “iPhone of artificial intelligence”, according to the Financial Times. Several brainstorming sessions between Mr Ive and OpenAI boss Sam Altman have already taken place, while Japanese tech giant SoftBank is said to have pledged more than $1 billion towards the project. Few details are given about what form the device might take, with possibilities ranging from a standalone ChatGPT-enabled smart speaker, to headphones that allow wearers to interface directly with the AI bot. Mr Ive left Apple in 2019 after 27 years at the company to form his own design company, called LoveForm, which is involved in the latest collaboration. Alongside the iPhone, Mr Ive played a crucial role in designing other Apple products like the iPad, iPod and MacBook. His latest creation is likely to forego a screen, according to people familiar with the matter. The Independent has reached out to OpenAI for comment. Reports of the partnership emerged in the same week that OpenAI announced that ChatGPT now has direct access to the internet, as well as the ability to “see, hear and speak”. The addition of voice and image recognition tools gives the generative AI similar capabilities to virtual assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri. The internet connectivity feature also brings it in line with other leading AI tools like Google’s Bard. “ChatGPT can now browse the internet to provide you with current and authoritative information, complete with direct links to sources,” OpenAI announced on Wednesday. “It is no longer limited to data before September 2021. Browsing is particularly useful for tasks that require up-to-date information, such as helping you with technical research, trying to choose a bike, or planning a vacation.” Meta also announced the launch of several new chatbots this week, with chief executive Mark Zuckerberg saying the AI bots will come with different personalities based on real people. The chatbots will work through Meta’s apps, which include Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. Read More ChatGPT boss says he’s created human-level AI, then says he’s ‘just memeing’ Elon Musk says he’ll live stream himself doing ‘silly stuff’ on X tonight TikTok finds and shuts down secret operation to stir up conflict in Ireland ChatGPT now has direct access to the internet

STPeach has a height that falls within the range of average heights for female streamers, with variations among individuals in the streaming community

'Let Bronny be who he wants to be with,' Adin Ross said in support of Bronny James after the latter received racial slurs following the prom

TL;DR: A lifetime subscription to Microsoft Office is on sale for under £25. Software subscriptions

A new initiative will aim to find missing people faster by issuing urgent appeals directly onto people’s phones via the Trainline app. The app will display images of people who have gone missing nearby and has the potential to reach millions of train travellers across the country, the charity Missing People has said. The project has been supported by relatives who are still searching for missing family members. The father of Andrew Gosden, who vanished more than 16 years ago, said anything that can help raise awareness of his son or any missing person is vital. Andrew, from Doncaster, South Yorkshire, was 14 when he disappeared on September 14 2007 and his case became one of the most high-profile missing person probes in the North. He emptied his bank account of about £200 and went to Doncaster station, where he bought a one-way ticket to London King’s Cross. His family and police believe he boarded a train at 9.35am, arriving at King’s Cross at 11.20am. CCTV images captured at the London station are the last known sighting of Andrew, with no further information about his movements corroborated by officers. In 2008 Andrew became the first person to feature in a new nationwide milk carton campaign aimed at tracing missing people. Two men were arrested in December 2021 by detectives investigating Andrew’s disappearance but they were eliminated from the police inquiry in September. Speaking about the Trainline project, Andrew’s father Kevin Gosden said: “If this had existed back in 2007, Andrew’s image could have been displayed to thousands of members of the public in the area where he went missing. “Anything that can help to raise awareness of Andrew, and the appeals for any missing person, is vital in keeping the search active and ensuring people are continuing to keep a look out for those who are missing”. Mr Godsen added: “It’s so important to have these appeals out there. You never know when someone might remember something, or may have seen a missing person. “It’s also important to know that there is help for anyone considering disappearing, including support that may help people take the step to return home, or think twice before leaving in the first place.” Paul Joseph, head of helplines at Missing People, said: “When someone vulnerable has disappeared, they can often use the transport network as a safe place. “Missing People is so proud to be working with Trainline to raise awareness of individual disappearances. “Together, we hope to raise awareness and potentially help find missing people. For the loved ones of those featured, knowing that action is being taken to find them, helps to keep hope alive.” A British Transport Police spokesperson added: “Rail passengers can play a vital role in alerting the authorities to people who are at risk. Your reports may help rescue someone from a dangerous situation or even save a life. “There are over 2,500 stations and 10,000 miles of track in Great Britain. These new alerts are so powerful because they can harness the eyes and ears of people who may be in the same train carriage as a missing person.” Read More Data protection watchdog offers tips on buying smart devices on Black Friday Meta to allow users to delete Threads accounts without losing Instagram AI among biggest threats to next UK election, cyber security agency warns AI can create Caucasian faces that look more real than actual humans – study AI among the biggest threats to the UK, cyber security agency warns Meta faces renewed criticism over end-to-end encryption amid child safety fears

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 22, 2023--

News publisher Associated Press said on Thursday that it had reached an agreement with OpenAI to share access

The iPhone is a lot of things. It's a social networking portal, it's a games console – sometimes it's even a phone. For Apple's Jon McCormack, Apple's vice president for camera software engineering, it's "primarily a camera that you can text from". It wasn't always this way. When Steve jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007, he famously described it is an iPod, a phone and an internet communications device; the first iPhone had a camera, new iPhones are cameras. The pictures that first iPhone turned out were more useful than beautiful. Today, however, the iPhone's pictures have grown up, and it is now the most popular camera in the world. Now the question is how sharp the pictures should be, and there has even been some criticism that the pictures it turns out are too sharp, if anything. The iPhone's camera is no longer just a useful addition but is used in professional contexts, and is often given as the main reason to upgrade to new models. The new iPhone 15s, in particular the premium Pro and Pro Max, continue Apple's mission to turn its smartphones into cameras like nothing in the history of photography. They have new image formats, the addition of extra focal lengths, and the iPhone 15 Pro Max even includes a 5x lens that makes use of a "tetraprism" lens that bounces light around inside the phone to add dramatically more zoom without making the phone any bigger. All of that additional hardware works in collaboration with improved software: users no longer have to click into portrait mode, for instance, because the camera automatically captures depth information when taking a picture of people, so that background blur can be added and edited even after the photo has been taken. Apple has also added a host of features that many people are unlikely ever to even look at, let alone use, but are important to professionals. They include the addition of Log encoding and the Academy Color Encoding System – both key to those who need them. Apple also says that the new iPhone has "the equivalent of seven pro lenses", despite really only having three; what they mean is that you can choose different crops, which is in part an attempt to appeal to those professional photographers who stubbornly say that they will only ever work with a 50mm lens, for instance. (Those new lens choices are not only a cropped version of the existing lenses, says McCormack, since the phone also has custom neural networks specifically designed to optimise images at that focal length.) Those complex new features are a reminder that the iPhone is many things to many users: some may simply want to remember important events, or snap pictures of their pets. Others might be truly professional photographers, needing to rely on their iPhone to capture valuable and fleeting events. Some people are, no doubt, both – and Apple is aware that the iPhone has to be both, too. "For us, what we feel is really important – especially since computational photography started to blur the line between hardware and software, and really enable anybody to take stunning shots with minimal effort – is making sure that that tool that we have in your pocket is adapting to your needs," says Maxime Veron, Apple's senior director for iPhone product marketing. "So if you're just trying to take a quick photo of your kids can get out of the way and just allow you to do that. And if you want to create a professionally created Hollywood style video, it can also give you the customisation and the power to do that." McCormack says that Apple builds the camera from "the core belief that everybody has got a story that is worth telling". For some people that story might be their child taking their first steps, captured in a video that will be shared with only a few people. Or it might be a photojournalist taking images that are going to be shared with millions. "Our belief is that your level of technical understanding shouldn't get in the way of you being able to tell that story," he says. High-end cameras have often required their users to think about a whole host of questions before they even get to actually pressing the button to take a picture: "the temperature of light, the amount of light, the direction of light, how fast is the subject moving? What are the skin tones?" notes McCormack. "Every second that you spend thinking about that, and playing with your settings and things like that, are seconds that you are drawn out of the moment," he says. "And what we want to create is this very deep connection between the photographer, the videographer and the moment." He points to the action button on this year's Pro models, which can be programmed to launch the camera with a push. "It's all about being able to say all of this crazy complexity of photography, or videography – Apple's taken that, and understood that, and hidden that from you," he says. "You as a photographer, you get to concentrate on the thing that you want to say, and finding that decisive moment, finding that beautiful framing, that says the thing that you want to say. "But the motivation for all of this and using all of this crazy, great computational photography, computational videography, is that we don't want to distract you from telling the story that you want to tell." That has meant building the iPhone's camera in a way that the features "unfold", he says. "Out of the box, we are going to give you an amazing thing that is going to cover most of your moments, with lots of dynamic range, lots of resolution, zero shutter lag, so you can capture the moment. "But of course, there are folks who are going to look at this and say, you know, I've got a very specific and very prescriptive vision," he says. He points to a variety of new tools that are built into the phone, such as the ProRAW format, which makes huge files and is not especially useful to most – but can be key to someone who really wants to ensure they are able to process every detail of a photograph after it is taken. Those are hidden within settings, there for the people who need them but not troubling those who don't. Veron also notes that many of those extra features are enabled by "an amazing ecosystem of third party partners" who make apps that allow people to get features they are looking for. It is a reminder of just how much is going on as soon as someone takes a picture with the iPhone. First, light travels through one of Apple's three lenses and hits a 48 megapixel sensor – but that's just the beginning of a long process of computational photography that analyses and optimises that image. The picture that is taken is not just the one image, for example: it is actually made up of multiple exposures, with more or less light, that can then be merged into a picture with the full dynamic range. "This year for the first time, we merge them in a larger resolution," says McCormack. It takes one image in 12 megapixels, to give a fast shutter speed and plenty of light, by combining pixels together; then it grabs a 24-megapixel frame, which collects the detail. "Then we register those together and use a custom machine learning model to go and transfer the detail from the 48 over into what has now become a 24." That creates something like the negative in old camera terms, which the iPhone’s processor can then get to work on, using parts of its chip focused on machine learning. "We use the neural engine to go decompose that photograph, bit by bit." It will notice if people have different skin tones, and develop those parts of the image accordingly; hair, eyes, a moving background and more are all taken to pieces and optimised on their own. (The intensity of that process has occasionally led to questions over whether the phone is working too hard to make its images look good.) Then there's yet more work for the camera system. The iPhone uses tonemapping to ensure that images pop on the bright screens of modern iPhones, but also that they still look bright on a compressed image that might be sent around the internet; one of the many changes that smartphones have brought to photography is that, for the first time, the photos are mostly looked at on the same device they were taken with, but that they can also be sent and seen just about anywhere. If the image is taken using night mode, then there's even more work, with new tools that ensure that colours are more accurate. And that isn't even mentioning portrait mode, which when it registers that there is a person (or a pet) in the frame will gather the relevant depth information to ensure that the background can be manipulated later. That whole process – those five paragraphs, and thousands of calculations by the phone – happen within the tiniest moment after pressing the button to take the photo. The phone may look as if it is serenely offering up an image to its users, but it has been busily working away in the background to ensure the picture is as accurate and vibrant as possible. All that work done by the camera and the rest of the device depends on a variety of choices made not only by the iPhone but by Apple, which accounts for the look of the modern iPhone picture – Veron says that its aim in making those decisions is to make "beautiful, true-to-life memories in just one click". McCormack is clearly keenly aware of the responsibility of that task; his vision decides what the world's memories look like. "This is your device that you carry with you all time the time, and we want to be really, really thoughtful of that," he says. That responsibility carries into the design of the camera within the phone: rumours had suggested that this year's model would include a "periscope" design for the long zoom, bouncing the light through the length of the iPhone, but McCormack says that Apple went for the five-way prism to ensure that it could "both retain the industrial design that we want, to just make iPhone feel so good in your hand, but also be able to get that extra focal length". "It is just of one of those crazy things – only Apple is going to do something like that. And I'm really glad that that's the way we think about product." Read More Tim Cook says Vision Pro release is on track: ‘I watched Ted Lasso Season 3 on it’ Apple Store goes offline as Apple opens pre-orders for iPhone 15 Apple to update iPhone 12 after fears over radiation iPhone 12 is not emitting dangerous radiation, Apple says, amid fears of Europe ban France’s iPhone 12 ban could spread across Europe, regulators say Everything Apple killed off at iPhone 15 event