Today in AI

• News roundup

• Today’s big story

• AI research changing the world

• The tool we’re loving

• This week on the podcast

News roundup

The top stories in AI today.

NEW LAUNCHES

The latest features & products in AI innovation.

• Google Unveils 10 New Voices for Gemini AI Assistant

• LG Launches Alliance Program to Connect Startups with Strategic Partners

• T-Mobile and OpenAI to Develop AI-Powered Customer Support Platform

• Sam Altman-Backed Worldcoin Launches Competitor to Apple’s Face ID

• Google Announces New AI Features for AI-Driven Ad Campaigns

• MIT’s New AI Tool Accelerates Startup Process for Entrepreneurs

• Amazon is Incorporating Generative AI into the Shopping Experience

FUTURE OF WORK

Jobs are changing — are you?

• 63% of Brands Now Embrace Gen AI in Marketing, Research Shows

• How This Fintech Company Achieved 70% Productivity Gains With Gen AI

• How Sales Teams Can Effectively Learn and Use AI Tools

• Why Jensen Huang and Marc Benioff Think Agentic AI is the Next Big Thing

MODELS

Deployment, research, training, infrastructure

• Hume Launches ‘EVI 2’ AI Voice Model with Emotional Responsiveness

• Scientists are Designing “Humanity’s Last Exam” to Assess Powerful AI

• Lionsgate Runway Deal Is a Test of Hollywood’s Relationship With AI

• Tencent, Johns Hopkins Unveil New Text-to-Audio AI Model

• How Data, Machine Learning and AI are Transforming Industries

GOVERNMENT

Press releases, regulation, defense & politics.

• Saudi Arabia Embraces AI to Drive Vision 2030 Goals

• The UN is Treating AI with the Same Urgency as Climate Change

• AI’s Limited Impact on 2024 European Elections Surprises Experts

• Indiana Launches AI Chatbot to Enhance Public Information Access

• Opinion: Making SB 1047 a Law is the Best Way to Improve It

GADGETS

Computers, phones, chips & AI powered devices

• Apple Intelligence to Include These New Languages in 2025

• iPhone 15 Plus vs 16 Plus: Which Offers Better Value?

• How to Use Pixel Studio to Generate AI Images on the Google Pixel 9

THE MONEY FLOWS

Economics, wall Street, investing & fundraising

• AI Startup ‘With’ Raises $10M to Improve Community Engagement

• How AI Infrastructure Investment Will Drive Affordability and Adoption

• Rep.ai Raises $7.5M to Launch ‘Digital Twin’ Sales Reps

• 71% of Investment Bankers Now Use ChatGPT, Survey Finds

• AI’s Insatiable Need for Energy is Presenting Big Investment Opportunities

What’s happening in AI right now

AI Reshapes Community Engagement and Customer Support

The landscape of community engagement and customer support is undergoing a significant transformation, driven by the integration of advanced AI technologies. Two recent developments highlight this trend: With's $10 million funding round for AI-powered community engagement solutions, and T-Mobile's partnership with OpenAI to develop IntentCX, a sophisticated AI customer support platform.

AI-driven community engagement

With, a U.S.-Israeli tech firm, has secured a $10 million investment to expand its AI-powered community engagement platform. The company's technology centralizes events, updates, and services for local governments, serving over 100 cities and counties across the United States, Canada, and Israel. With claims to increase event participation by an average of 315 percent, demonstrating the potential impact of AI-driven solutions on civic engagement.

This investment reflects a growing interest in leveraging AI to enhance the relationship between local governments and their constituents. By centralizing information and improving accessibility, With's platform addresses a critical need in the govtech sector: bridging the gap between citizens and their local administrations.

T-Mobile's AI-powered customer support revolution

In a parallel development, T-Mobile has partnered with OpenAI to create IntentCX, an advanced AI-powered customer support platform set to launch in 2025. This system promises to revolutionize customer experience by offering sophisticated conversation comprehension, task execution capabilities, and integration with T-Mobile's operations systems. T-Mobile reports that customer support calls have decreased by up to 75% since 2021 due to AI and data analysis. This efficiency gain allows companies to reallocate resources to more complex tasks or improved services.

IntentCX's ability to understand complex, multi-threaded conversations in multiple languages and execute tasks independently (with customer permission) represents a significant leap in AI-driven customer support. T-Mobile's approach of integrating AI deeply into its operations while maintaining a human touch through physical stores offers a blueprint for balancing automation with personalized service.

AI's impact on sales and account management

The influence of AI extends beyond customer support and community engagement. In the sales industry, AI is optimizing time allocation, customizing pitches, and enhancing sales skills. AI-powered tools are providing comprehensive analyses of sales interactions, offering personalized coaching, and enabling data-driven decision-making.

This transformation in high-value interpersonal work like sales and account management underscores the broader impact of AI across various business functions. The speed and scale of AI adoption in sales are unprecedented, reshaping the industry and requiring sales leaders to adapt their roles to leverage AI-driven strategies.

Navigating the AI-driven future

The developments at With, T-Mobile, and in the sales industry demonstrate that AI is not just a futuristic concept but a present reality reshaping how organizations interact with their customers and communities. As we navigate this AI-driven future, the challenge lies in harnessing its potential while addressing the ethical, societal, and economic implications it brings.

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AI research changing the world

The latest breakthroughs and most pivotal papers — broken down in language anyone can understand.

Latent Diffusion Models Unleash New Creative Potentials

Imagine a world where creating stunning, high-resolution images from text descriptions or partial sketches is as simple as typing a sentence or drawing a rough outline. This isn't a glimpse into a distant future—it's the reality crafted by the latest research from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and Heidelberg University, Germany, in collaboration with Runway ML. Their study, "High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models," marks a significant leap forward in the field of generative AI, offering a transformative tool for artists, designers, and content creators. The research showcases Latent Diffusion Models (LDMs), an innovative approach to image synthesis that operates in the latent space of powerful pretrained autoencoders. Unlike traditional methods that directly manipulate pixel space, LDMs significantly reduce computational demands without compromising on quality or flexibility. This breakthrough allows for near-optimal complexity reduction and detail preservation, delivering visuals with remarkable fidelity.

The practical implications are vast. LDMs have set new state-of-the-art scores for image inpainting and class-conditional image synthesis, demonstrating highly competitive performance across a range of tasks including text-to-image synthesis, unconditional image generation, and super-resolution. This is all achieved while drastically cutting down on computational costs compared to pixel-based diffusion models.

This week on the podcast

Can’t get enough of our newsletter? Check out our podcast Future-Proof.

In this episode Anthony, Shane, and Elizabeth discuss the transformative impact of AI on sales processes and e-commerce. The conversation highlights the competitive edge that AI-native companies have over traditional businesses, the evolving landscape of customer interactions, and the potential for AI to streamline workflows and enhance personalization at the same time.