🎧 Spotify's new AI 'DJ', Chinese apps remove ChatGPT

GM. GA. GE! It's Thursday, February 23rd - Warm welcome to the 279 people who joined yesterday.

- Omkar Birje

What’s happening in AI -

Spotify's new AI 'DJ' will talk you through its recommendations.

Spotify has launched a new personalized feature called "DJ" that uses generative AI to create a mix of songs personalized to the user's tastes. The feature combines Spotify's personalization tools with AI to create a selection of music, including old favorites and new tunes that fit in with what it thinks the user will like.

The AI voice of the DJ is generated by Sonantic, which Spotify acquired last year, and the dialogue is all generated on the fly by OpenAI. Spotify is using the AI tool as an augmentation to a personalized music channel and has created a "writer’s room" of scriptwriters, music editors, data curators, and engineers to ensure the accuracy and relevance of the information that the AI DJ drops.

The success of the feature will depend on whether it can pull up music that the user wants to hear.

Sci-fi magazine won’t accept submissions after surge of bot-written stories.

The science fiction magazine Clarkesworld has announced that it will no longer be accepting submissions after being inundated with stories generated by AI, including ChatGPT.

The magazine, which regularly publishes work from award-winning science fiction and fantasy writers, closed its submissions after seeing a continued spike in chatbot-generated submissions, with the number of entries doubling each month until hitting a watershed in February.

The tools designed to detect these works have proven unreliable against the test data, according to founder Neil Clarke, and the magazine is currently evaluating its options.

Chinese apps remove ChatGPT as the global AI race heats up.

ChatGPT is the AI chatbot developed by the American research lab OpenAI. While the chatbot is not officially available in China, some Chinese social media platforms had allowed access to it without the use of a VPN or foreign mobile number.

However, these platforms have now suspended their ChatGPT services due to a "violation of relevant laws and regulations." The reason for these closures is unclear, but state-run media recently released a video claiming that the chatbot could be used by US authorities to "spread disinformation and manipulate public opinion."

The success of ChatGPT has spurred a global AI race, with Microsoft and Google developing their own versions. Meanwhile, Chinese tech companies have grown into major international players and are also developing their own AI tools. Alibaba, for example, is testing its own ChatGPT-style tool, while Baidu plans to launch its AI chatbot ERNIE Bot in March.

Snippets -

‘Hollywood 2.0’: How the rise of AI tools like runway is changing filmmaking.

Samsung debuts a Bixby feature that creates an AI-generated copy of a user’s voice to answer calls.

Coca-Cola to use ChatGPT and other AI tools to enhance marketing courtesy of consultancy Bain's tie-up with OpenAI.

JPMorgan restricts employee use of ChatGPT.

Artifact, the AI-powered news app from Instagram’s co-founders, is now open to all.

Spoke AI is using generative AI to pull signals from workplace noise.

Microsoft brings its A.I. chatbot to the Bing app on iPhone and Android.

Things to try -

Krips - Remove background noise from live calls (Link)

BlackBox - Code using plain English (Link)

SlidesAI - Create presentation slides in seconds (Link)

BlueWillow - Midjourney free alternative (Link)

PlaygroundAI - A user interface for editing generative images (Link)

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