AI – Page 12

Roblox announces AI tool for generating 3D game worlds from text

3D foundational model, 3D synthesis, AI, Biz & IT, game synthesis, gaming, generative ai, machine learning, multiplayer games, online games, Open Source, roblox, world generator, world synthesis / Rejus Almole / September 9, 2024

ease of use —

New AI feature aims to streamline game creation on popular online platform.

Benj Edwards – Sep 9, 2024 9: 46 pm UTC

On Friday, Roblox announced plans to introduce an open source generative AI tool that will allow game creators to build 3D environments and objects using text prompts, reports MIT Tech Review. The feature, which is still under development, may streamline the process of creating game worlds on the popular online platform, potentially opening up more aspects of game creation to those without extensive 3D design skills.

Roblox has not announced a specific launch date for the new AI tool, which is based on what it calls a “3D foundational model.” The company shared a demo video of the tool where a user types, “create a race track,” then “make the scenery a desert,” and the AI model creates a corresponding model in the proper environment.

The system will also reportedly let users make modifications, such as changing the time of day or swapping out entire landscapes, and Roblox says the multimodal AI model will ultimately accept video and 3D prompts, not just text.

A video showing Roblox’s generative AI model in action.

The 3D environment generator is part of Roblox’s broader AI integration strategy. The company reportedly uses around 250 AI models across its platform, including one that monitors voice chat in real time to enforce content moderation, which is not always popular with players.

Next-token prediction in 3D

Roblox’s 3D foundational model approach involves a custom next-token prediction model—a foundation not unlike the large language models (LLMs) that power ChatGPT. Tokens are fragments of text data that LLMs use to process information. Roblox’s system “tokenizes” 3D blocks by treating each block as a numerical unit, which allows the AI model to predict the most likely next structural 3D element in a sequence. In aggregate, the technique can build entire objects or scenery.

Anupam Singh, vice president of AI and growth engineering at Roblox, told MIT Tech Review about the challenges in developing the technology. “Finding high-quality 3D information is difficult,” Singh said. “Even if you get all the data sets that you would think of, being able to predict the next cube requires it to have literally three dimensions, X, Y, and Z.”

According to Singh, lack of 3D training data can create glitches in the results, like a dog with too many legs. To get around this, Roblox is using a second AI model as a kind of visual moderator to catch the mistakes and reject them until the proper 3D element appears. Through iteration and trial and error, the first AI model can create the proper 3D structure.

Notably, Roblox plans to open-source its 3D foundation model, allowing developers and even competitors to use and modify it. But it’s not just about giving back—open source can be a two-way street. Choosing an open source approach could also allow the company to utilize knowledge from AI developers if they contribute to the project and improve it over time.

The ongoing quest to capture gaming revenue

News of the new 3D foundational model arrived at the 10th annual Roblox Developers Conference in San Jose, California, where the company also announced an ambitious goal to capture 10 percent of global gaming content revenue through the Roblox ecosystem, and the introduction of “Party,” a new feature designed to facilitate easier group play among friends.

In March 2023, we detailed Roblox’s early foray into AI-powered game development tools, as revealed at the Game Developers Conference. The tools included a Code Assist beta for generating simple Lua functions from text descriptions, and a Material Generator for creating 2D surfaces with associated texture maps.

At the time, Roblox Studio head Stef Corazza described these as initial steps toward “democratizing” game creation with plans for AI systems that are now coming to fruition. The 2023 tools focused on discrete tasks like code snippets and 2D textures, laying the groundwork for the more comprehensive 3D foundational model announced at this year’s Roblox Developer’s Conference.

The upcoming AI tool could potentially streamline content creation on the platform, possibly accelerating Roblox’s path toward its revenue goal. “We see a powerful future where Roblox experiences will have extensive generative AI capabilities to power real-time creation integrated with gameplay,” Roblox said in a statement. “We’ll provide these capabilities in a resource-efficient way, so we can make them available to everyone on the platform.”

Roblox announces AI tool for generating 3D game worlds from text Read More »

Nvidia’s AI chips are cheaper to rent in China than US

AI, Biz & IT, NVIDIA, nvidia ai, syndication / Mike M. / September 6, 2024

secondhand channels —

Supply of processors helps Chinese startups advance AI technology despite US restrictions.

Ryan McMorrow and Eleanor Olcott, Financial Times – Sep 6, 2024 6: 31 pm UTC

The cost of renting cloud services using Nvidia’s leading artificial intelligence chips is lower in China than in the US, a sign that the advanced processors are easily reaching the Chinese market despite Washington’s export restrictions.

Four small-scale Chinese cloud providers charge local tech groups roughly $6 an hour to use a server with eight Nvidia A100 processors in a base configuration, companies and customers told the Financial Times. Small cloud vendors in the US charge about $10 an hour for the same setup.

The low prices, according to people in the AI and cloud industry, are an indication of plentiful supply of Nvidia chips in China and the circumvention of US measures designed to prevent access to cutting-edge technologies.

The A100 and H100, which is also readily available, are among Nvidia’s most powerful AI accelerators and are used to train the large language models that power AI applications. The Silicon Valley company has been banned from shipping the A100 to China since autumn 2022 and has never been allowed to sell the H100 in the country.

Chip resellers and tech startups said the products were relatively easy to procure. Inventories of the A100 and H100 are openly advertised for sale on Chinese social media and ecommerce sites such as Xiaohongshu and Alibaba’s Taobao, as well as in electronics markets, at slight markups to pricing abroad.

China’s larger cloud operators such as Alibaba and ByteDance, known for their reliability and security, charge double to quadruple the price of smaller local vendors for similar Nvidia A100 servers, according to pricing from the two operators and customers.

After discounts, both Chinese tech giants offer packages for prices comparable to Amazon Web Services, which charges $15 to $32 an hour. Alibaba and ByteDance did not respond to requests for comment.

“The big players have to think about compliance, so they are at a disadvantage. They don’t want to use smuggled chips,” said a Chinese startup founder. “Smaller vendors are less concerned.”

He estimated there were more than 100,000 Nvidia H100 processors in the country based on their widespread availability in the market. The Nvidia chips are each roughly the size of a book, making them relatively easy for smugglers to ferry across borders, undermining Washington’s efforts to limit China’s AI progress.

“We bought our H100s from a company that smuggled them in from Japan,” said a startup founder in the automation field who paid about 500,000 yuan ($70,000) for two cards this year. “They etched off the serial numbers.”

Nvidia said it sold its processors “primarily to well-known partners … who work with us to ensure that all sales comply with US export control rules”.

“Our pre-owned products are available through many second-hand channels,” the company added. “Although we cannot track products after they are sold, if we determine that any customer is violating US export controls, we will take appropriate action.”

The head of a small Chinese cloud vendor said low domestic costs helped offset the higher prices that providers paid for smuggled Nvidia processors. “Engineers are cheap, power is cheap, and competition is fierce,” he said.

In Shenzhen’s Huaqiangbei electronics market, salespeople speaking to the FT quoted the equivalent of $23,000–$30,000 for Nvidia’s H100 plug-in cards. Online sellers quote the equivalent of $31,000–$33,000.

Nvidia charges customers $20,000–$23,000 for H100 chips after recently cutting prices, according to Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis.

One data center vendor in China said servers made by Silicon Valley’s Supermicro and fitted with eight H100 chips hit a peak selling price of 3.2 million yuan after the Biden administration tightened export restrictions in October. He said prices had since fallen to 2.5 million yuan as supply constraints eased.

Several people involved in the trade said merchants in Malaysia, Japan, and Indonesia often shipped Supermicro servers or Nvidia processors to Hong Kong before bringing them across the border to Shenzhen.

The black market trade depends on difficult-to-counter workarounds to Washington’s export regulations, experts said.

For example, while subsidiaries of Chinese companies are banned from buying advanced AI chips outside the country, their executives could establish new companies in countries such as Japan or Malaysia to make the purchases.

“It’s hard to completely enforce export controls beyond the US border,” said an American sanctions expert. “That’s why the regulations create obligations for the shipper to look into end users and [the] commerce [department] adds companies believed to be flouting the rules to the [banned] entity list.”

Additional reporting by Michael Acton in San Francisco.

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New AI model “learns” how to simulate Super Mario Bros. from video footage

AI, gaming / Rejus Almole / September 5, 2024

At first glance, these AI-generated <em>Super Mario Bros.</em> videos are pretty impressive. The more you watch, though, the more glitches you’ll see.” src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/MarioVGG_output_grid.gif”></img><figcaption>
<p>At first glance, these AI-generated <em>Super Mario Bros.</em> videos are pretty impressive. The more you watch, though, the more glitches you’ll see.</p>
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<p>Last month, Google’s GameNGen AI model showed that <a href= — MarioVGG takes a single gameplay frame and a text input action to generate multiple video frames.

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Generative AI backlash hits annual writing event, prompting resignations

AI, AI accessibility, AI and disabilities, annual writing event, Biz & IT, chatgpt, chatgtp, Chuck Wendig, Claire Silver, FAQ, machine learning, NaNoWriMo, no novel november / Mike M. / September 4, 2024

As the AI World Turns —

NaNoWriMo refuses to condemn AI as accessibility tool, faces criticism from writers.

Benj Edwards – Sep 4, 2024 9: 38 pm UTC

Over the weekend, the nonprofit National Novel Writing Month organization (NaNoWriMo) published an FAQ outlining its position on AI, calling categorical rejection of AI writing technology “classist” and “ableist.” The statement caused a backlash online, prompted four members of the organization’s board to step down, and prompted a sponsor to withdraw its support.

“We believe that to categorically condemn AI would be to ignore classist and ableist issues surrounding the use of the technology,” wrote NaNoWriMo, “and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege.”

NaNoWriMo, known for its annual challenge where participants write a 50,000-word manuscript in November, argued in its post that condemning AI would ignore issues of class and ability, suggesting the technology could benefit those who might otherwise need to hire human writing assistants or have differing cognitive abilities.

Writers react

After word of the FAQ spread, many writers on social media platforms voiced their opposition to NaNoWriMo’s position. Generative AI models are commonly trained on vast amounts of existing text, including copyrighted works, without attribution or compensation to the original authors. Critics say this raises major ethical questions about using such tools in creative writing competitions and challenges.

“Generative AI empowers not the artist, not the writer, but the tech industry. It steals content to remake content, graverobbing existing material to staple together its Frankensteinian idea of art and story,” wrote Chuck Wendig, the author of Star Wars: Aftermath, in a post about NaNoWriMo on his personal blog.

Daniel José Older, a lead story architect for Star Wars: The High Republic and one of the board members who resigned, wrote on X, “Hello @NaNoWriMo, this is me DJO officially stepping down from your Writers Board and urging every writer I know to do the same. Never use my name in your promo again in fact never say my name at all and never email me again. Thanks!”

In particular, NaNoWriMo’s use of words like “classist” and “ableist” to defend the potential use of generative AI particularly touched a nerve with opponents of generative AI, some of whom say they are disabled themselves.

“A huge middle finger to @NaNoWriMo for this laughable bullshit. Signed, a poor, disabled and chronically ill writer and artist. Miss me by a wide margin with that ableist and privileged bullshit,” wrote one X user. “Other people’s work is NOT accessibility.”

This isn’t the first time the organization has dealt with controversy. Last year, NaNoWriMo announced that it would accept AI-assisted submissions but noted that using AI for an entire novel “would defeat the purpose of the challenge.” Many critics also point out that a NaNoWriMo moderator faced accusations related to child grooming in 2023, which lessened their trust in the organization.

NaNoWriMo doubles down

In response to the backlash, NaNoWriMo updated its FAQ post to address concerns about AI’s impact on the writing industry and to mention “bad actors in the AI space who are doing harm to writers and who are acting unethically.”

We want to make clear that, though we find the categorical condemnation for AI to be problematic for the reasons stated below, we are troubled by situational abuse of AI, and that certain situational abuses clearly conflict with our values. We also want to make clear that AI is a large umbrella technology and that the size and complexity of that category (which includes both non-generative and generative AI, among other uses) contributes to our belief that it is simply too big to categorically endorse or not endorse.

Over the past few years, we’ve received emails from disabled people who frequently use generative AI tools, and we have interviewed a disabled artist, Claire Silver, who uses image synthesis prominently in her work. Some writers with disabilities use tools like ChatGPT to assist them with composition when they have cognitive issues and need assistance expressing themselves.

In June, on Reddit, one user wrote, “As someone with a disability that makes manually typing/writing and wording posts challenging, ChatGPT has been invaluable. It assists me in articulating my thoughts clearly and efficiently, allowing me to participate more actively in various online communities.”

A person with Chiari malformation wrote on Reddit in November 2023 that they use ChatGPT to help them develop software using their voice. “These tools have fundamentally empowered me. The course of my life, my options, opportunities—they’re all better because of this tool,” they wrote.

To opponents of generative AI, the potential benefits that might come to disabled persons do not outweigh what they see as mass plagiarism from tech companies. Also, some artists do not want the time and effort they put into cultivating artistic skills to be devalued for anyone’s benefit.

“All these bullshit appeals from people appropriating social justice language saying, ‘but AI lets me make art when I’m not privileged enough to have the time to develop those skills’ highlights something that needs to be said: you are not entitled to being talented,” posted a writer named Carlos Alonzo Morales on Sunday.

Despite the strong takes, NaNoWriMo has so far stuck to its position of accepting generative AI as a set of potential writing tools in a way that is consistent with its “overall position on nondiscrimination with respect to approaches to creativity, writer’s resources, and personal choice.”

“We absolutely do not condemn AI,” NaNoWriMo wrote in the FAQ post, “and we recognize and respect writers who believe that AI tools are right for them. We recognize that some members of our community stand staunchly against AI for themselves, and that’s perfectly fine. As individuals, we have the freedom to make our own decisions.”

Generative AI backlash hits annual writing event, prompting resignations Read More »

Australian government trial finds AI is much worse than humans at summarizing

AI / Mike M. / September 4, 2024

Just gimme the gist —

Llama2-70B failed to capture “complex context,” but updated models might do better.

Kyle Orland – Sep 4, 2024 6: 34 pm UTC

Enlarge / ASIC evaluators found AI summaries were often “wordy and pointless—just repeating what was in the submission.”

Getty Images

As large language models have continued to rise in prominence, many users and companies have focused on their useful ability to quickly summarize lengthy documents for easier human consumption. When Australia’s Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) looked into this potential use case, though, it found that the summaries it was able to get from the Llama2-70B model were judged as significantly worse than those provided by humans.

ASIC’s proof-of-concept study (PDF)—which was run in January and February, written up in March, and published in response to a Senate inquiry in May—has a number of limitations that make it hard to generalize about the summarizing capabilities of state-of-the-art LLMs in the present day. Still, the government study shows many of the potential pitfalls large organizations should consider before simply inserting LLM outputs into existing workflows.

Keeping score

For its study, ASIC teamed up with Amazon Web Services to evaluate LLMs’ ability to summarize “a sample of public submissions made to an external Parliamentary Joint Committee inquiry, looking into audit and consultancy firms.” For ASIC’s purposes, a good summary of one of these submissions would highlight any mention of ASIC, any recommendations for avoiding conflicts of interest, and any calls for more regulation, all with references to page numbers and “brief context” for explanation.

In addition to Llama2-70B, the ASIC team also considered the smaller Mistral-7B and MistralLite models in the early phases of the study. The comparison “supported the industry view that larger models tend to produce better results,” the authors write. But, as some social media users have pointed out, Llama2-70B has itself now been surpassed by larger models like ChatGPT-4o, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and Llama3.1-405B, which score better on many generalized quality evaluations.

More than just choosing the biggest model, though, ASIC said it found that “adequate prompt engineering, carefully crafting the questions and tasks presented to the model, is crucial for optimal results.” ASIC and AWS also went to the trouble of adjusting behind-the-scenes model settings such as temperature, indexing, and top-k sampling. (Top-k sampling is a technique that involves selecting the most likely next words or tokens based on their probabilities predicted by the model.)

“The summaries were quite generic, and the nuance about how ASIC had been referenced wasn’t coming through in the AI-generated summary… “

ASIC Digital and Transformation Lead Graham Jefferson

ASIC used five “business representatives” to evaluate the LLM’s summaries of five submitted documents against summaries prepared by a subject matter expert (the evaluators were not aware of the source of each summary). The AI summaries were judged significantly weaker across all five metrics used by the evaluators, including coherency/consistency, length, and focus on ASIC references. Across the five documents, the AI summaries scored an average total of seven points (on ASIC’s five-category, 15-point scale), compared to 12.2 points for the human summaries.

Missing the nuance

By far the biggest weakness of the AI summaries was “a limited ability to analyze and summarize complex content requiring a deep understanding of context, subtle nuances, or implicit meaning,” ASIC writes. One evaluator highlighted this problem by calling out an AI summary for being “wordy and pointless—just repeating what was in the submission.”

“What we found was that in general terms… the summaries were quite generic, and the nuance about how ASIC had been referenced wasn’t coming through in the AI-generated summary in the way that it was when an ASIC employee was doing the summary work,” Graham Jefferson, ASIC’s digital and transformation lead, told an Australian Senate committee regarding the results.

The evaluators also called out the AI summaries for including incorrect information, missing relevant information, or highlighting irrelevant information. The presence of AI hallucinations also meant that “the model generated text that was grammatically correct, but on occasion factually inaccurate.”

Added together, these problems mean that “assessors generally agreed that the AI outputs could potentially create more work if used (in current state), due to the need to fact check outputs, or because the original source material actually presented information better.”

Just a concept

These results might seem like a pretty conclusive point against using LLMs for summarizing, but ASIC warns that this proof-of-concept study had some significant limitations. The researchers point out that they only had one week to optimize their model, for instance, and suspect that “investing more time in this [optimization] phase may yield better and more accurate results.”

The focus on the (now-outdated) Llama2-70B also means that “the results do not necessarily reflect how other models may perform” the authors warn. Larger models with bigger context windows and better embedding strategies may have more success, the authors write, because “finding references in larger documents is a notoriously hard task for LLMs.”

Despite the results, ASIC says it still believes “there are opportunities for Gen AI as the technology continues to advance… Technology is advancing in this area and it is likely that future models will improve performance and accuracy of results.”

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Oprah’s upcoming AI television special sparks outrage among tech critics

ABC, AI, AI criticism, AI lawsuit, Bill Gates, Biz & IT, Brian Merchant, chatgpt, chatgtp, Dr. Margaret Mitchell, Ed Zitron, image synthesis, Karla Ortiz, large language models, machine learning, openai, Oprah Winfrey, sam altman / Mike M. / September 3, 2024

You get an AI, and You get an AI —

AI opponents say Gates, Altman, and others will guide Oprah through an AI “sales pitch.”

Benj Edwards – Sep 3, 2024 7: 59 pm UTC

Enlarge / An ABC handout promotional image for “AI and the Future of Us: An Oprah Winfrey Special.”

On Thursday, ABC announced an upcoming TV special titled, “AI and the Future of Us: An Oprah Winfrey Special.” The one-hour show, set to air on September 12, aims to explore AI’s impact on daily life and will feature interviews with figures in the tech industry, like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Bill Gates. Soon after the announcement, some AI critics began questioning the guest list and the framing of the show in general.

“Sure is nice of Oprah to host this extended sales pitch for the generative AI industry at a moment when its fortunes are flagging and the AI bubble is threatening to burst,” tweeted author Brian Merchant, who frequently criticizes generative AI technology in op-eds, social media, and through his “Blood in the Machine” AI newsletter.

“The way the experts who are not experts are presented as such 💀 what a train wreck,” replied artist Karla Ortiz, who is a plaintiff in a lawsuit against several AI companies. “There’s still PLENTY of time to get actual experts and have a better discussion on this because yikes.”

The trailer for Oprah’s upcoming TV special on AI.

On Friday, Ortiz created a lengthy viral thread on X that detailed her potential issues with the program, writing, “This event will be the first time many people will get info on Generative AI. However it is shaping up to be a misinformed marketing event starring vested interests (some who are under a litany of lawsuits) who ignore the harms GenAi inflicts on communities NOW.”

Critics of generative AI like Ortiz question the utility of the technology, its perceived environmental impact, and what they see as blatant copyright infringement. In training AI language models, tech companies like Meta, Anthropic, and OpenAI commonly use copyrighted material gathered without license or owner permission. OpenAI claims that the practice is “fair use.”

Oprah’s guests

According to ABC, the upcoming special will feature “some of the most important and powerful people in AI,” which appears to roughly translate to “famous and publicly visible people related to tech.” Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who stepped down as Microsoft CEO 24 years ago, will appear on the show to explore the “AI revolution coming in science, health, and education,” ABC says, and warn of “the once-in-a-century type of impact AI may have on the job market.”

As a guest representing ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, Sam Altman will explain “how AI works in layman’s terms” and discuss “the immense personal responsibility that must be borne by the executives of AI companies.” Karla Ortiz specifically criticized Altman in her thread by saying, “There are far more qualified individuals to speak on what GenAi models are than CEOs. Especially one CEO who recently said AI models will ‘solve all physics.’ That’s an absurd statement and not worthy of your audience.”

In a nod to present-day content creation, YouTube creator Marques Brownlee will appear on the show and reportedly walk Winfrey through “mind-blowing demonstrations of AI’s capabilities.”

Brownlee’s involvement received special attention from some critics online. “Marques Brownlee should be absolutely ashamed of himself,” tweeted PR consultant and frequent AI critic Ed Zitron, who frequently heaps scorn on generative AI in his own newsletter. “What a disgraceful thing to be associated with.”

Other guests include Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin from the Center for Humane Technology, who aim to highlight “emerging risks posed by powerful and superintelligent AI,” an existential risk topic that has its own critics. And FBI Director Christopher Wray will reveal “the terrifying ways criminals and foreign adversaries are using AI,” while author Marilynne Robinson will reflect on “AI’s threat to human values.”

Going only by the publicized guest list, it appears that Oprah does not plan to give voice to prominent non-doomer critics of AI. “This is really disappointing @Oprah and frankly a bit irresponsible to have a one-sided conversation on AI without informed counterarguments from those impacted,” tweeted TV producer Theo Priestley.

Others on the social media network shared similar criticism about a perceived lack of balance in the guest list, including Dr. Margaret Mitchell of Hugging Face. “It could be beneficial to have an AI Oprah follow-up discussion that responds to what happens in [the show] and unpacks generative AI in a more grounded way,” she said.

Oprah’s AI special will air on September 12 on ABC (and a day later on Hulu) in the US, and it will likely elicit further responses from the critics mentioned above. But perhaps that’s exactly how Oprah wants it: “It may fascinate you or scare you,” Winfrey said in a promotional video for the special. “Or, if you’re like me, it may do both. So let’s take a breath and find out more about it.”

Oprah’s upcoming AI television special sparks outrage among tech critics Read More »

Cops’ favorite face image search engine fined $33M for privacy violation

AI, Artificial Intelligence, clearview.ai, European Union, face image data, face scans, facial recognition, gdpr, General Data Protection Regulation, mass surveillance, online surveillance, police surveillance, Policy / Rejus Almole / September 3, 2024

A controversial facial recognition tech company behind a vast face image search engine widely used by cops has been fined approximately $33 million in the Netherlands for serious data privacy violations.

According to the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA), Clearview AI “built an illegal database with billions of photos of faces” by crawling the web and without gaining consent, including from people in the Netherlands.

Clearview AI’s technology—which has been banned in some US cities over concerns that it gives law enforcement unlimited power to track people in their daily lives—works by pulling in more than 40 billion face images from the web without setting “any limitations in terms of geographical location or nationality,” the Dutch DPA found. Perhaps most concerning, the Dutch DPA said, Clearview AI also provides “facial recognition software for identifying children,” therefore indiscriminately processing personal data of minors.

Training on the face image data, the technology then makes it possible to upload a photo of anyone and search for matches on the Internet. People appearing in search results, the Dutch DPA found, can be “unambiguously” identified. Billed as a public safety resource accessible only by law enforcement, Clearview AI’s face database casts too wide a net, the Dutch DPA said, with the majority of people pulled into the tool likely never becoming subject to a police search.

“The processing of personal data is not only complex and extensive, it moreover offers Clearview’s clients the opportunity to go through data about individual persons and obtain a detailed picture of the lives of these individual persons,” the Dutch DPA said. “These processing operations therefore are highly invasive for data subjects.”

Clearview AI had no legitimate interest under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for the company’s invasive data collection, Dutch DPA Chairman Aleid Wolfsen said in a press release. The Dutch official likened Clearview AI’s sprawling overreach to “a doom scenario from a scary film,” while emphasizing in his decision that Clearview AI has not only stopped responding to any requests to access or remove data from citizens in the Netherlands, but across the EU.

“Facial recognition is a highly intrusive technology that you cannot simply unleash on anyone in the world,” Wolfsen said. “If there is a photo of you on the Internet—and doesn’t that apply to all of us?—then you can end up in the database of Clearview and be tracked.”

To protect Dutch citizens’ privacy, the Dutch DPA imposed a roughly $33 million fine that could go up by about $5.5 million if Clearview AI does not follow orders on compliance. Any Dutch businesses attempting to use Clearview AI services could also face “hefty fines,” the Dutch DPA warned, as that “is also prohibited” under the GDPR.

Clearview AI was given three months to appoint a representative in the EU to stop processing personal data—including sensitive biometric data—in the Netherlands and to update its privacy policies to inform users in the Netherlands of their rights under the GDPR. But the company only has one month to resume processing requests for data access or removals from people in the Netherlands who otherwise find it “impossible” to exercise their rights to privacy, the Dutch DPA’s decision said.

It appears that Clearview AI has no intentions to comply, however. Jack Mulcaire, the chief legal officer for Clearview AI, confirmed to Ars that the company maintains that it is not subject to the GDPR.

“Clearview AI does not have a place of business in the Netherlands or the EU, it does not have any customers in the Netherlands or the EU, and does not undertake any activities that would otherwise mean it is subject to the GDPR,” Mulcaire said. “This decision is unlawful, devoid of due process and is unenforceable.”

But the Dutch DPA found that GDPR applies to Clearview AI because it gathers personal information about Dutch citizens without their consent and without ever alerting users to the data collection at any point.

“People who are in the database also have the right to access their data,” the Dutch DPA said. “This means that Clearview has to show people which data the company has about them, if they ask for this. But Clearview does not cooperate in requests for access.”

Dutch DPA vows to investigate Clearview AI execs

In the press release, Wolfsen said that the Dutch DPA has “to draw a very clear line” underscoring the “incorrect use of this sort of technology” after Clearview AI refused to change its data collection practices following fines in other parts of the European Union, including Italy and Greece.

While Wolfsen acknowledged that Clearview AI could be used to enhance police investigations, he said that the technology would be more appropriate if it was being managed by law enforcement “in highly exceptional cases only” and not indiscriminately by a private company.

“The company should never have built the database and is insufficiently transparent,” the Dutch DPA said.

Although Clearview AI appears ready to defend against the fine, the Dutch DPA said that the company failed to object to the decision within the provided six-week timeframe and therefore cannot appeal the decision.

Further, the Dutch DPA confirmed that authorities are “looking for ways to make sure that Clearview stops the violations” beyond the fines, including by “investigating if the directors of the company can be held personally responsible for the violations.”

Wolfsen claimed that such “liability already exists if directors know that the GDPR is being violated, have the authority to stop that, but omit to do so, and in this way consciously accept those violations.”

Cops’ favorite face image search engine fined $33M for privacy violation Read More »

Gen AI Alexa to use Anthropic tech after it “struggled for words” with Amazon’s

AI, Amazon, amazon alexa, Anthrophic, generative ai, Tech / Rejus Almole / August 31, 2024

Subscription Alexa —

Amazon’s $4 billion investment in Anthropic has been under investigation.

Scharon Harding – Aug 30, 2024 4: 26 pm UTC

Amazon Alexa using generative AI on an Echo Show — Enlarge / Generative AI Alexa asked to make a taco poem.

The previously announced generative AI version of Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant “will be powered primarily by Anthropic’s Claude artificial intelligence models,” Reuters reported today. This comes after challenges with using proprietary models, according to the publication, which cited five anonymous people “with direct knowledge of the Alexa strategy.”

Amazon demoed a generative AI version of Alexa in September 2023 and touted it as being more advanced, conversational, and capable, including the ability to do multiple smart home tasks with simpler commands. Gen AI Alexa is expected to come with a subscription fee, as Alexa has reportedly lost Amazon tens of billions of dollars throughout the years. Earlier reports said the updated voice assistant would arrive in June, but Amazon still hasn’t confirmed an official release date.

Now, Reuters is reporting that Amazon will no longer use its own large language models as the new Alexa’s primary driver. Early versions of gen AI Alexa based on Amazon’s AI models “struggled for words, sometimes taking six or seven seconds to acknowledge a prompt and reply,” Reuters said, citing one of its sources. Without specifying versions or features used, Reuters’ sources said Claude outperformed proprietary software.

In a statement to Reuters, Amazon didn’t deny using third-party models but claimed that its own tech is still part of Alexa:

Amazon uses many different technologies to power Alexa.

When it comes to machine learning models, we start with those built by Amazon, but we have used, and will continue to use, a variety of different models—including (Amazon AI model) Titan and future Amazon models, as well as those from partners—to build the best experience for customers.

Amazon has invested $4 billion in Anthropic (UK regulators are currently investigating this). It’s uncertain if Amazon’s big investment in Anthropic means that Claude can be applied to Alexa for free. Anthropic declined to comment on Reuters’ report.

The new Alexa may be delayed

On Monday, The Washington Post reported that Amazon wants to launch the new Alexa in October, citing internal documents. However, Reuters’ sources claimed that this date could be pushed back if the voice assistant fails certain unspecified internal benchmarks.

The Post said gen AI Alexa could cost up to $10 per month, according to the documents. That coincides with a June Reuters report saying that the service would cost $5 to $10 per month. The Post said Amazon would finalize pricing and naming in August.

But getting people to open their wallets for a voice assistant already associated with being free will be difficult (free Alexa is expected to remain available after the subscription version releases). Some Amazon employees are questioning if people will really pay for Alexa, Reuters noted. Amazon is facing an uphill battle with generative AI, which is being looked at as a last shot for Alexa amid big competition and leads from other AI offerings, including free ones like ChatGPT.

In June, Bank of America analysts estimated that Amazon could make $600 million to $1.2 billion in annual sales with gen AI Alexa, depending on final monthly pricing. This is under the assumption that 10 percent of an estimated 100 million active Alexa users (Amazon says it has sold 500 million Alexa-powered gadgets) will upgrade. But analysts noted that free alternatives would challenge the adoption rate.

The Post’s Monday report said the new Alexa will try winning over subscribers with features like AI-generated news summaries. This Smart Briefing feature will reportedly share summaries based on user preferences on topics including politics, despite OG Alexa’s previous problems with reporting accurate election results. The publication also said that gen AI Alexa would include “a chatbot aimed at children” and “conversational shopping tools.”

Gen AI Alexa to use Anthropic tech after it “struggled for words” with Amazon’s Read More »

Harmful “nudify” websites used Google, Apple, and Discord sign-on systems

AI, ai deepfakes, Apple, Google, Policy, syndication / Kris Guyer / August 30, 2024

Major technology companies, including Google, Apple, and Discord, have been enabling people to quickly sign up to harmful “undress” websites, which use AI to remove clothes from real photos to make victims appear to be “nude” without their consent. More than a dozen of these deepfake websites have been using login buttons from the tech companies for months.

A WIRED analysis found 16 of the biggest so-called undress and “nudify” websites using the sign-in infrastructure from Google, Apple, Discord, Twitter, Patreon, and Line. This approach allows people to easily create accounts on the deepfake websites—offering them a veneer of credibility—before they pay for credits and generate images.

While bots and websites that create nonconsensual intimate images of women and girls have existed for years, the number has increased with the introduction of generative AI. This kind of “undress” abuse is alarmingly widespread, with teenage boys allegedly creating images of their classmates. Tech companies have been slow to deal with the scale of the issues, critics say, with the websites appearing highly in search results, paid advertisements promoting them on social media, and apps showing up in app stores.

“This is a continuation of a trend that normalizes sexual violence against women and girls by Big Tech,” says Adam Dodge, a lawyer and founder of EndTAB (Ending Technology-Enabled Abuse). “Sign-in APIs are tools of convenience. We should never be making sexual violence an act of convenience,” he says. “We should be putting up walls around the access to these apps, and instead we’re giving people a drawbridge.”

The sign-in tools analyzed by WIRED, which are deployed through APIs and common authentication methods, allow people to use existing accounts to join the deepfake websites. Google’s login system appeared on 16 websites, Discord’s appeared on 13, and Apple’s on six. X’s button was on three websites, with Patreon and messaging service Line’s both appearing on the same two websites.

WIRED is not naming the websites, since they enable abuse. Several are part of wider networks and owned by the same individuals or companies. The login systems have been used despite the tech companies broadly having rules that state developers cannot use their services in ways that would enable harm, harassment, or invade people’s privacy.

After being contacted by WIRED, spokespeople for Discord and Apple said they have removed the developer accounts connected to their websites. Google said it will take action against developers when it finds its terms have been violated. Patreon said it prohibits accounts that allow explicit imagery to be created, and Line confirmed it is investigating but said it could not comment on specific websites. X did not reply to a request for comment about the way its systems are being used.

In the hours after Jud Hoffman, Discord vice president of trust and safety, told WIRED it had terminated the websites’ access to its APIs for violating its developer policy, one of the undress websites posted in a Telegram channel that authorization via Discord was “temporarily unavailable” and claimed it was trying to restore access. That undress service did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment about its operations.

Harmful “nudify” websites used Google, Apple, and Discord sign-on systems Read More »

ChatGPT hits 200 million active weekly users, but how many will admit using it?

AI, AI critics, AI prohibition, AI stigma, axios, Biz & IT, chatgpt, chatgtp, Ed Zitron, Ethan Mollick, machine learning, openai / Mike M. / August 30, 2024

Your secret friend —

Despite corporate prohibitions on AI use, people flock to the chatbot in record numbers.

Benj Edwards – Aug 30, 2024 5: 21 pm UTC

On Thursday, OpenAI said that ChatGPT has attracted over 200 million weekly active users, according to a report from Axios, doubling the AI assistant’s user base since November 2023. The company also revealed that 92 percent of Fortune 500 companies are now using its products, highlighting the growing adoption of generative AI tools in the corporate world.

The rapid growth in user numbers for ChatGPT (which is not a new phenomenon for OpenAI) suggests growing interest in—and perhaps reliance on— the AI-powered tool, despite frequent skepticism from some critics of the tech industry.

“Generative AI is a product with no mass-market utility—at least on the scale of truly revolutionary movements like the original cloud computing and smartphone booms,” PR consultant and vocal OpenAI critic Ed Zitron blogged in July. “And it’s one that costs an eye-watering amount to build and run.”

Despite this kind of skepticism (which raises legitimate questions about OpenAI’s long-term viability), OpenAI claims that people are using ChatGPT and OpenAI’s services in record numbers. One reason for the apparent dissonance is that ChatGPT users might not readily admit to using it due to organizational prohibitions against generative AI.

Wharton professor Ethan Mollick, who commonly explores novel applications of generative AI on social media, tweeted Thursday about this issue. “Big issue in organizations: They have put together elaborate rules for AI use focused on negative use cases,” he wrote. “As a result, employees are too scared to talk about how they use AI, or to use corporate LLMs. They just become secret cyborgs, using their own AI & not sharing knowledge”

The new prohibition era

It’s difficult to get hard numbers showing the number of companies with AI prohibitions in place, but a Cisco study released in January claimed that 27 percent of organizations in their study had banned generative AI use. Last August, ZDNet reported on a BlackBerry study that said 75 percent of businesses worldwide were “implementing or considering” plans to ban ChatGPT and other AI apps.

As an example, Ars Technica’s parent company Condé Nast maintains a no-AI policy related to creating public-facing content with generative AI tools.

Prohibitions aren’t the only issue complicating public admission of generative AI use. Social stigmas have been developing around generative AI technology that stem from job loss anxiety, potential environmental impact, privacy issues, IP and ethical issues, security concerns, fear of a repeat of cryptocurrency-like grifts, and a general wariness of Big Tech that some claim has been steadily rising over recent years.

Whether the current stigmas around generative AI use will break down over time remains to be seen, but for now, OpenAI’s management is taking a victory lap. “People are using our tools now as a part of their daily lives, making a real difference in areas like healthcare and education,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told Axios in a statement, “whether it’s helping with routine tasks, solving hard problems, or unlocking creativity.”

Not the only game in town

OpenAI also told Axios that usage of its AI language model APIs has doubled since the release of GPT-4o mini in July. This suggests software developers are increasingly integrating OpenAI’s large language model (LLM) tech into their apps.

And OpenAI is not alone in the field. Companies like Microsoft (with Copilot, based on OpenAI’s technology), Google (with Gemini), Meta (with Llama), and Anthropic (Claude) are all vying for market share, frequently updating their APIs and consumer-facing AI assistants to attract new users.

If the generative AI space is a market bubble primed to pop, as some have claimed, it is a very big and expensive one that is apparently still growing larger by the day.

ChatGPT hits 200 million active weekly users, but how many will admit using it? Read More »

Apple is reportedly trying to invest in OpenAI

AI, Apple, apple intelligence, chatgpt, microsoft, openai, Tech / Mike M. / August 29, 2024

Venture Capital —

OpenAI’s ChatGPT will be built into the iPhone operating system later this year.

Samuel Axon – Aug 29, 2024 8: 45 pm UTC

Enlarge / The OpenAI logo.

Getty Images

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Apple is in talks to invest in OpenAI, the generative AI company whose ChatGPT will feature in future versions of iOS.

If the talks are successful, Apple will join a multi-billion dollar funding round led by Thrive Capital that would value the startup at more than $100 billion.

The report doesn’t say exactly how much Apple would invest, but it does note that it would not be the only participant in this round of funding. For example, Microsoft is expected to invest further, and Bloomberg reports that Nvidia is also considering participating.

Microsoft has already invested $13 billion in OpenAI over the past five years, and it has put OpenAI’s GPT technology at the heart of most of its AI offerings in Windows, Office, Visual Studio, Bing, and other products.

Apple, too, has put OpenAI’s tech in its products—or at least, it will by the end of this year. At its 2024 developer conference earlier this summer, Apple announced a suite of AI features called Apple Intelligence that will only work on the iPhone 15 Pro and later. But there are guardrails and limitations for Apple Intelligence compared to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, so Apple signed a deal to refer user requests that fall outside the scope of Apple Intelligence to ChatGPT inside a future version of iOS 18—kind of like how Siri turns to Google to answer some user queries.

Apple says it plans to add support for other AI chatbots for this in the future, such as Google’s Gemini, but Apple software lead Craig Federighi said the company went with ChatGPT first because “we wanted to start with the best.”

It’s unclear precisely what Apple looks to get out of the investment in OpenAI, but looking at similar past investments by the company offers some clues. Apple typically invests either in suppliers or research teams that are producing technology it plans to include in future devices. For example, it has invested in supply chain partners to build up infrastructure to get iPhones manufactured more quickly and efficiently, and it invested $1 billion in the SoftBank Vision Fund to “speed the development of technologies which may be strategically important to Apple.”

ChatGPT integration is not expected to make it into the initial release of iOS 18 this September, but it will probably come in a smaller software update later in 2024.

Apple is reportedly trying to invest in OpenAI Read More »

Google AI reintroduces human image generation after historical accuracy outcry

AI / Mike M. / August 28, 2024

Oh, the humanity! —

Ars testing shows some historical prompts no longer generate artificially diverse scenes.

Kyle Orland – Aug 28, 2024 8: 31 pm UTC

Imagen 3’s vision of a basketball-playing president is a bit akin to the Fresh Prince’s Uncle Phil.

Google / Ars Technica
Asking for images of specific presidents from Imagen 3 leads to a refusal.

Google / Ars Technica

Google’s Gemini AI model is once again able to generate images of humans after that function was “paused” in February following outcry over historically inaccurate racial depictions in many results.

In a blog post, Google said that its Imagen 3 model—which was first announced in May—will “start to roll out the generation of images of people” to Gemini Advanced, Business, and Enterprise users in the “coming days.” But a version of that Imagen model—complete with human image-generation capabilities—was recently made available to the public via the Gemini Labs test environment without a paid subscription (though a Google account is needed to log in).

That new model comes with some safeguards to try to avoid the creation of controversial images, of course. Google writes in its announcement that it doesn’t support “the generation of photorealistic, identifiable individuals, depictions of minors or excessively gory, violent or sexual scenes.” In an FAQ, Google clarifies that the prohibition on “identifiable individuals” includes “certain queries that could lead to outputs of prominent people.” In Ars’ testing, that meant a query like “President Biden playing basketball” would be refused, while a more generic request for “a US president playing basketball” would generate multiple options.

In some quick tests of the new Imagen 3 system, Ars found that it avoided many of the widely shared “historically inaccurate” racial pitfalls that led Google to pause Gemini’s generation of human images in the first place. Asking Imagen 3 for a “historically accurate depiction of a British king,” for instance, now generates a set of bearded white guys in red robes rather than the racially diverse mix of warriors from the pre-pause Gemini model. More before/after examples of the old Gemini and the new Imagen 3 can be found in the gallery below.

Imagen 3’s imagining of some stereotypical popes…

Google Imagen / Ars Technica
…and the pre-pause Gemini’s version.
Imagen’s imaginings of an 1800s Senator…

Google Imagen / Ars Technica
…and pre-pause Gemini’s. The first woman was elected to the Senate in the 1920s.
Imagen 3’s version of Scandinavian ice fishers…
…and the pre-pause Gemini’s version.
Imagen 3’s version of an old Scottish couple…

Google Imagen / Ars Technica
…and the pre-pause Gemini version.
Imagen 3’s version of a Canadian hockey player…

Google Imagen / Ars Technica
…and pre-pause Gemini’s version.
Imagen 3’s version of a generic US founding father…

Google Imagen / Ars Technica
…and the pre-pause Gemini version.
Imagen 3’s 15th century new world explorers look suitably European.

Google Imagen / Ars Technica

Some attempts to depict generic historical scenes seem to fall afoul of Google’s AI rules, though. Asking for illustrations of “a 1943 German soldier”—which Gemini previously answered with Asian and Black people in Nazi-esque uniforms—now tells users to “try a different prompt and check out our content policies.” Requests for images of “ancient chinese philosophers,” “a woman’s suffrage leader giving a speech,” and “a group of nonviolent protesters” also led to the same error message in Ars’ testing.

“Of course, as with any generative AI tool, not every image Gemini creates will be perfect, but we’ll continue to listen to feedback from early users as we keep improving,” the company writes on its blog. “We’ll gradually roll this out, aiming to bring it to more users and languages soon.”

Listing image by Google / Ars Technica

Google AI reintroduces human image generation after historical accuracy outcry Read More »

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