The Voicebot Podcast

We have another Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for you today. It was recorded on June 16, 2023. Some special segments this week include: OpenAI's function calling, expanded context window, and price cuts Generative AI search, brands, latency, and features that matter Eric, special guest Michal Stanislawek, and I also go through the generative AI winners and losers of the week. That has been a fun addition to the show. Generative AI News (GAIN) Links related to the top stories in today's show are included below in case you are looking for additional details. OpenAI Cuts Prices and Announced the Most Significant Feature Expansion This Year Google Rolls Out Access to LLMs, Text-to-Image, Generative Code, and More Google's Virtual Try-On Fuses Fashion with Generative AI Generative AI Search Already Shows that SEO is Changing - New Report Microsoft Bing AI Chat Gets Multimodal on Windows with Voice and Image Search Salesforce Ups Generative AI Fund to $500 Million, Launches AI Cloud More About GAIN GAIN is recorded live and streamed via YouTube and LinkedIn at 12:00 noon ET on Thursdays. You can re-watch each week's discussion on Voicebot's YouTube channel. Please join us live next week on YouTube or LinkedIn. Also, please participate in the live show by commenting, and we are likely to give you a shoutout and may even show your comment on screen. Please share this post with a friend, and don't forget to subscribe to the YouTube channel. Thanks!

The latest Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown is live and was recorded on June 8, 2023. Some special segments this week include: Apple's Vision Pro opts for gestures over voice commands, and generative AI is nowhere to be found. OpenAI and Google both reveal better generative AI reasoning skills for chatbots, and Google may be in the lead! We break down two very different approaches to make large language models (LLM) better at math, science, and complex thinking. Eric and I also have the generative AI winners and losers of the week. I am sure you will find that to be a fun addition to the show. Generative AI News This week's top stories include a lack of news from Apple, the latest LLM research, Instacart's shopping assistant, Quora's response to an existential crisis, McKinsey's claim that (only) 50% of its staff is using generative AI, and more. Links related to the top stories are included below in case you'd like to explore the news in more detail. Let me know what you think about this week's topics and commentary. Apple is Long on VR and Short on Generative AI OpenAI Shows How ChatGPT is Going to Get Better at Math Google Bard's Reasoning Skills Improve by 30% Bard Goes Local and Multimodal Intuit Has a Big Generative AI Vision for Small Businesses Jasper Campaigns Introduces Enterprise AI Writing Features Quora's Poe Expands Generative AI Q&A Instacart Offers ChatGPT-powered Shopping Assistant OpenAI Will Distribute $1M in Cybersecurity Grants McKinsey Says 50% of Staff Using Generative AI Please share Synthedia GAIN with a friend or colleague. Let's spread generative AI literacy! Share More About GAIN GAIN is recorded live and streamed via YouTube and LinkedIn at 12:00 noon ET on Thursdays. You can re-watch each week's discussion on Voicebot's YouTube channel. Please join us live next week on YouTube or LinkedIn. Also, please participate in the live show by commenting, and we are likely to give you a shoutout and may even show your comment on screen.

Aleksandr Tuilkanov is a lawyer specializing in AI policy, regulation, and legal frameworks. Early work in GDPR and AI regulation before the generative AI frenzy led him to be hired by several governments to help draft AI policy. Few people that have focused on AI policy exclusively or a significant period of time, and his insights are grounded in that experience. His work was influential at the Council of Europe, a key player in the latest EU AI regulatory framework. We talk about imitation vs inappropriate use of data, appropriationism, whether chatbots are capable of defamation, copyright, IP protection, and what the real level of urgency is around regulating generative AI. We also talk about his recent colorfully-titled post, "Let's not bomb the AI data centers just yet." Aleksandr Tiulkanov is an AI, data, and digital policy counsel. He earned his law degree at the University of Edinburgh and has specialized in AI regulation since 2015. He is a former senior manager at Deloitte, where he worked with corporations on AI policies. He later worked for several governments, including the Council of Europe, to design their AI policy and regulatory frameworks. He is currently a researcher at the Center for International Intellectual Property Studies and working independently with government agencies on AI policy.

The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for June 1, 2023, is here. We have some special segments for you today with hosts Eric Schwartz from Voicebot.ai and Bret Kinsella. These include: An Nvidia video demo of a humanlike conversation with an in-game non-player character Live demos of Bing search inside of ChatGPT and Google Bard's similarity A short video showing how the Google Search Generative Experience beta release works. Eric and Bret also introduced a new segment, generative AI winners and losers of the week. I am sure you will find that to be a fun addition to the show. ***Note: There are a couple of videos that we ran on the live video stream that did not record properly, so there were removed from the audio. Generative AI News This week's top stories include multiple NVIDIA announcements, OpenAI's new AI reasoning capabilities, Runway's big payday and Google's investment, Spotify voice clones may be coming, TikTok tests a generative AI-powered assistant, how search is changing, and, of course, the lawyer's ChatGPT debacle. Please double-click on the video above and give us a like 👍. I'd appreciate the help with YouTube's AI black box algorithms. 😀🎉🚀 Links related to the top stories are included below in case you'd like to explore the news in more detail. Let me know what you think about this week's topics and commentary. Nvidia ACE for Games Brings Humanlike Conversation to NPCs Nvidia WPP Collaboration OpenAI's Improved Mathematical Reasoning Google SGE First Look at Conversational Search to Rival ChatGPT and Bing Chat Perplexity Adds New Copilot Features and an Android App Runway Just Netted $100 in Cash and a New Giant Valuation TikTok Starts Testing Generative AI Chatbot Tako Spotify to Offer Voice Clones to Podcasters and Advertisers Lawyer Faces Sanctions After Submitting Brief Written by ChatGPT with Erroneous Legal Citations Falcon-40B Becomes the Top Performing Open Source LLM MORE ABOUT GAIN The show is recorded live and streamed via YouTube and LinkedIn at 12 noon ET on Thursdays. You can re-watch each week's discussion on Voicebot's YouTube channel. You can also view this entire podcast on YouTube or just listen here. Whatever works best for you. Please join us live next week on YouTube or LinkedIn. Also, please participate in an upcoming live show by commenting, and we are likely to give you a shoutout and may even show your comment on screen.

Robert Scoble did the first live stream of a ride in a Tesla. The driver was Elon Musk. The Siri mobile app launched to the world in his living room. He is the leading author on spatial computing, is an AR/VR expert, and has seen a lot of technology innovation up close over the years. He and I caught up at Project Voice in April for a live interview right after he interviewed the three Siri co-founders onstage. In addition to his comments on the evolution of tech and Silicon Valley over the past 30 years, we also go deep on ChatGPT and Apple. His take on ChatGPT and the rise of AI companions is intriguing. He also offers insight into what he expects Apple to launch this year, maybe even in the next week at WWDC - a new Siri with AR and generative AI capabilities. The leaks we saw this week in the media confirm he has some inside knowledge of what is coming. Robert Scoble was a Futurist at Rackspace Hosting, an evangelist and strategist at Microsoft, and an executive at several startups. He started as a journalist and ran several high-profile tech conferences in the 1990s. He is also the author of The Infinite Retina and The Fourth Transformation.

Your Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for May 25, 2023, is here. Spellbook's Scott Stevenson joined Eric Schwartz from Voicebot.ai and Bret Kinsella (that's me) to discuss the news and his company's $10.9 million funding round. We have some exclusives for you if you want to hear the latest about the OpenAI GPT-powered lawyer copilot from Spellbook. These include the surprising number of lawyers that signed up in April and the enormous customer onboarding backlog. Plus, Spellbook is hiring aggressively right now. Generative AI News Beyond the live interview segment with Spellbook, we also cover new ChatGPT features on desktop and in the iOS app, additional comments on key Microsoft announcements from this week, news from Adobe, Opera, Hugging Face, and Google. In addition, we have two interesting stories about Tesla, one involving robots and the other deepfakes. So, that should hold your attention. Please double-click on the video above and give us a like 👍. I'd appreciate the help with YouTube's AI black box algorithms. 😀🎉🚀 Links related to the top stories are included below in case you'd like to explore the news in more detail. Let me know what you think about this week's topics and commentary. Legal Generative AI Assistant Spellbook Raises $10.9 Million Anthropic Closes $450 Million in Funding ChatGPT's iOS App Demo and Highlights Microsoft Announcements About AI Copilots, Plugins, and ChatGPT Signal a Market Shift Opera Unveils Native Browser Generative AI Service Aria Adobe Brings Firefly Generative AI to Photoshop Hugging Face Introduces Generative AI Coding Assistant StarCoder The AI Code Generation Battles Heat Up with Google Codey Debut Watch Tesla's Humanoid Robots Walk into the Future Deepfake Ryan Reynolds Pitches for Tesla, Elon Musk for Aviation Gin More About GAIN GAIN is recorded live and streamed via YouTube and LinkedIn at 12 noon ET on Thursdays. You can re-watch each week's discussion on Voicebot's YouTube channel. Please join us live next week on YouTube or LinkedIn. Also, participate in the live show by commenting, and we are likely to give you a shoutout and may even show your comment on screen.

Microsoft Build 2023 was more hotly anticipated than Apple WWDC which is hard to believe. However, that is the new reality created by ChatGPT and OpenAI's partnership with Microsoft. In this special episode of the generative AI news rundown, (GAIN), Voicebot's Bret Kinsella and Eric Schwartz break down the five top announcements from the event and the implications for users and for the market. Topics include: Bing Search coming to ChatGPT Microsoft adopted ChatGPT Plugin model for Bing, GPT AI models on Azure, and for other applications Window AI Copilot is coming GitHub Copilot is adding an AI-chat interface Azure OpenAI Studio will let any company build their own copilot We cover a few more topics as well. MORE ABOUT GAIN The show is recorded live and streamed via YouTube and LinkedIn at 12 noon ET on Thursdays. You can re-watch each week's discussion on Voicebot's YouTube channel. You can also view this entire podcast on YouTube or just listen here. Whatever works best for you. Please join us live next week on YouTube or LinkedIn. Also, please participate in an upcoming live show by commenting, and we are likely to give you a shoutout and may even show your comment on screen.

My guest today is a giant in the world of voice assistants and AI. Adam Cheyer is the co-founder of Siri, which was originally an app that, as you know, was acquired by Apple and launched as the key feature of the iPhone 4s in 2011. That is how Siri came to define expectations for modern-day voice assistants. However, Cheyer and one of his Siri cofounders Dag Kittlaus, were disappointed that Apple decided to dramatically narrow the scope of the assistant to better align with its goal of making Siri a feature of the iPhone as opposed to a general purpose assistant. Cheyer and Kittlaus founded Viv Labs, which eventually sold to Samsung and, after a few years, became the technology behind the new Bixby after Samsung's initial voice assistant flopped. A key part of the story here is that Cheyer was the visionary behind 50% of the four leading voice assistants to emerge over the past 15 years. You can imagine that gives him unique insights into what is happening today with the rise of generative AI and ChatGPT in particular. Cheyer and I speak at length about his initial reaction to ChatGPT, what he thinks OpenAI got right, and foreshadows an emerging issue about how the company applies Plugins. In addition, you will want to hear more about Cheyer's four critical elements for an assistant and the difference between a knowing and doing assistant. This creates a stark contrast between ChatGPT and Alexa. Sit back and get ready for some gems of insight.

Here is the Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for May 18, 2023. Eric Schwartz from Voicebot.ai and Bret Kinsella break down the biggest industry stories of the week. Some of those stories include OpenAI, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Anthropic, Zoom, Gather, and an AI virtual girlfriend that went viral. - Has Alexa been generative AI all along? Amazon says so, sort of. But is it true? - Are we emerging from the AI Autopilot Era to the Copilot Era with more human control? Satya Nadella says so. But is it true? Links related to the top stories are included below in case you'd like to explore the news in more detail. Let me know what you think about this week's topics and commentary. AI Virtual Girlfriend Nets $72K in its first week Amazon surpasses 500M Alexa devices, but do its claims of generative AI leadership ring true? OpenAI's Sam Altman wows U.S. Senators, asks them to regulate AI Satya Nadella says the AI copilot era is more human friendly than the AI autopilot era Anthropic introduces a giant LLM context window Zoom to add Anthropic to its feature set Gather raises $20M for opensource generative AI Meta has new generative AI tools for advertisers ChatGPT Pluse subscribers now have access to Plugins! More About GAIN The show is recorded live and streamed via YouTube and LinkedIn at 12 noon ET on Thursdays. You can re-watch each week's discussion on Voicebot's YouTube channel. You can also view this entire podcast on YouTube or just listen here. Whatever works best for you. Please join us live next week on YouTube or LinkedIn. Also, please participate in an upcoming live show by commenting, and we are likely to give you a shoutout and may even show your comment on screen.

The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for May 11, 2023, is here. Special guest and Google Developer Expert (GDE) Allen Firstenberg joined me to go in-depth on all the Google I/O stories. We discuss Bard, extensions, conversational search, the PaLM and Gemini models, and much more. We also review the "Google Has No [generative AI] Moat" memo. That is followed by a discussion of Wendy's adoption of Google PaLM for drive-thru order taking, Bing Chat going general availability worldwide, the White House's efforts around AI, and a developer that created mini-Trip Advisor website targeting families with children with 2370 activities in 237 cities, 2,600 images, and nearly 250,000 words. He did this in two days and spent $53. The implications are significant. I hope you enjoy the show. Don't miss Allen's commentary on these items in the video. Given his role as a GDE and independent ambassador for several Google technologies, he has particularly interesting insights into Google's moves, lack of progress on many fronts, and unrecognized progress on others. Bard Breakdown Top Google I/O Announcements Wendy's Chooses Google PaLM for Drive-thru Automation Google Has No Moat [READ THIS!] Bing Chat Now Available to Everyone The White House Brings in AI Leaders and Announces New Research Labs A Developer Shows How to Re-create Trip Advisor with ChatGPT and DALL-E More About GAIN GAIN is recorded live and streamed via YouTube and LinkedIn at 12 noon ET on Thursdays. You can re-watch each week's discussion on Voicebot's YouTube channel if you'd like to see the visuals and the host's beaming visage. Please join us live next week on YouTube or LinkedIn. Also, participate in the live show by commenting, and we are likely to give you a shoutout and may even show your comment on screen.

Dag Kittlaus is the CEO and co-founder of Riva Health, a company that has set out to revolutionize how patients manage hypertension and heart disease. We discuss the innovation behind Riva, which turns a smartphone into a health management assistant that collects data and connects patients with a proactive care team. Hearing Dag talk, you can see how this might extend into traditional assistant functionality for managing chronic heart conditions. He breaks down the Riva journey thus far and we go back into his history as a co-founder of Siri (acquired by Apple) and Viv Labs (acquired by Samsung) and what he learned along the way about assistants, technology, and how users interact with novel solutions. We also go into depth on the rise of generative AI and ChatGPT. From a ChatGPT perspective, we spent considerable time discussing the new Plugins model to integrate third-party services. Kittlaus was doing this for the Siri app 15 years ago before the Apple acquisition. He did it again with Viv Labs and Samsung's Bixby assistant and knows the challenges of creating a plugin ecosystem. His observation is that the problems are largely the same and OpenAI is in for a rude awakening. I am sure you will enjoy this wide-ranging discussion about innovation, technology adoption, and overcoming barriers to growth with someone that has been influential in shaping our views, experiences, and assumptions about intelligent assistants of all kinds.

We have a breakdown of the week's top generative AI news stories and what they mean for the industry. Today's hosts are Bret Kinsella, Voicebot.ai's Eric Schwartz, and industry analyst Jeremiah Owyang. The top stories just this week in a generative AI galaxy that is very, very near include: Unleashing a Synthetic Force Wes Anderson's Star Wars: In a galaxy not so far away, director Caleb Ward unleashed a one-minute cinematic masterpiece that sent millions of Twitter and YouTube users into a frenzy, dividing the fandom with the power of ironic humor. Aided by the formidable force of AI allies, Midjourney and ChatGPT, our hero Ward swiftly crafted this viral sensation destined to echo through the corridors of cyberspace. Augie Shoots for the Stars: In a realm where time is of the essence, an industry analyst harnesses the power of the enigmatic Augie to forge a captivating tale in a mere 15 minutes. This alliance breathes life into the epic saga of a brave girl's conquest of the big city, forging a triumphant path through adversity and ultimately, success. Stable Expansion to the Outer Rim The Rise of the Models: In a galaxy where AI reigns supreme, Stability AI unveils two powerful allies: Deep Floyd IF, a text-to-image wizard skilled in rendering text with unparalleled accuracy, and Stable Vicuna, an open-source chatbot prodigy trained through the ancient art of reinforced learning from human feedback. Cohere Looks for Clear Trade Lanes Star Words. The Text Awakens: In a sector riddled with fierce competition, Cohere's valuation soars to an impressive $2 billion amidst a cosmic $250 million funding round. As they forge their unique path among the stars, Cohere's unwavering focus on text-based LLMs and business-oriented applications sets them apart from the likes of OpenAI and Stability AI, giving them a chance to become the galaxy's leading alternative LLM option. The Enterprise Strikes Back Rise of the Generative Alliance: In a bold move to conquer the cosmos of generative AI, business services titan PwC prepares to invest a staggering $1 billion, joining forces with Microsoft's Azure OpenAI Service to revolutionize their business practice and usher in a new era of AI-driven solutions. Samsung Travels to the Galaxy of Corporate Caution: The tech giant Samsung bans the use of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools for work purposes, citing security risks while developing its own AI solutions in an ever-evolving battle for productivity and privacy. Disruption in the Workforce The Rise of AI Denial: In a galaxy not so far away, 62% of Earthlings foresee a great disturbance in the workforce due to the rise of artificial intelligence, yet mysteriously, only 28% sense the impact on their own fates. This perplexing phenomenon discovered by Pew Research, known as "AI Denial Syndrome," baffles minds across the cosmos. Rise of the Clones Alternate Reality: In the midst of an interstellar digital revolution, Tencent unveils a service for Earthlings to create their own deepfake "digital human" avatars for a mere $145, while rivals such as Synthesia charge a heftier fee and D-ID offers this for just a few credits. With this new power, social media influencers, small business owners, and professionals from all corners of the galaxy can create their own clone armies. A New Force Awakens: In a galaxy where TikTok rules the social media universe, the platform now tests its generative AI prowess, allowing users to create synthetic avatars from a mere handful of photos. These digital doppelgängers may soon populate the TikTok-verse, transforming the way all living things express themselves in the cosmic dance of creativity. The Chatbot Wars A New Life of Pi: A new droid has joined the cosmic conversational realm – Pi, short for Personal Intelligence, a creation of Inflection AI. This emotionally intelligent chatbot, infused with empathy and compassion, aims to transform the way we interact with artificial entities, but not all is as it seems. Bing Spreads Access to the AI Force: As the cosmic winds of innovation continue to blow, Microsoft's Bing AI Chat emerges from the shadows of its waitlist, unveiling its newfound powers of visual search and third-party plug-in integration. The galaxy awaits as these advancements promise to reshape the way intergalactic explorers seek knowledge and wield artificial intelligence. Interstellar Plugins and the UX Chronicles - In a galaxy not so far away, ChatGPT unveils 22 mighty plugins, bestowing users with the power of multimodal displays and real-time data. Yet, in this epic tale, our heroes grapple with the dark side of UX limitations as multiple plugins clash and "Incognito" mode remains elusive. This episode was originally broadcast live on YouTube. If you prefer watching so you can see the videos and other visuals, go to Voicebot's YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/@voicebotai. You can find the videos in the Synthetic Media and News sections or in the Live tab. While you are there

Lee Mallon is a CTO, developer, and technical advisor for AI and complex software projects. He created a hotel brand and brochure with his daughter using generative AI in just 7 hours. That project inspired him to see how quickly he could recreate a Trip Advisor for family travel activities website using generative AI. It took him two days and cost $53 to publish a website with over 2k activities, 2.6k images, and nearly 250k words. Learn how Lee did this, some tips, and what he sees next for automating digital experiences.

Mobile World Congress 2023 had a lot of AI solutions on display. D-ID's Yaniv Levy talked about a new streaming API for its virtual human solution paving the way for real-time and dynamic interactive digital people. Don't miss the second segment with SK Telecom's Youngsup Shin. It is about A., (that's pronounced A [dot]), a virtual assistant that is also a personal companion. A. has 1 million users in its beta period, is based on a large language model (LLM), and has some features similar to ChatGPT. MyManu is a new hearables headset connected to the 4G cellular network so you can access the internet without your smartphone. It is coming to market later this year and company founder Danny Manu offers us a sneak peek. We finish up with Patrick Esslinger, the co-founder of VUI Agency. He shares what his team has learned about voice assistant experience design and how those solutions are evolving. 6:03 - D-ID streaming virtual humans 20:10 - SK Telecom on A. virtual companion 34:15 - MyManu about Titan, a new hearables solution 47:10 - VUI Agency on voice assistant experience design

The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for April 27, 2023, is here. Another week of breaking news has piled up, and we have a breakdown of the top stories and what they mean for the industry. The developments include news from ChatGPT, HuggingFace, Google, Nvidia, Sensory, Hour One, D-ID, deepfake musicians, and more. Your hosts today are Bret Kinsella and Voicebot.ai's Eric Schwartz. The top stories in generative AI land this week include: ChatGPT En Fuego Plugging in a new vision: Greg Brockman from OpenAI demonstrated some new ChatGPT plugin features; several are jaw-dropping. The "super app" virtual assistant we were promised: Brockman's demo and the discussion about the product philosophy offer an insight into where ChatGPT is headed. Move over, Alexa. Get out of the way, Siri. ChatGPT may be the virtual assistant we have always wanted. ChatGPT is anything but incognito: While everything ChatGPT seems to play out in the public eye, OpenAI recognized that not every user wanted every one of their chat conversations saved in perpetuity and used for future model training. Incognito (i.e., private chatting) is now available, and a "business mode" is coming soon. HuggingChat Embraces Open Source Open source competition for ChatGPT: Hugging Face stepped up and provided a ChatGPT alternative built on open source models and data. It's a smaller AI model than ChatGPT and is pretty good. Deepfake Entertainment Drake, The Weeknd, Bad Bunny, and Rihanna go viral: Viral hits from big stars are common. Deepfake viral hits mimicking the voice, style, and likeness of big stars may also become common. ghostwrider777 strikes again! Joe Rogan comments run deep: New deepfakes mimicking Joe Rogan's podcast have the comedian and commentator talking about a "slippery" slope. Grimes jumps on board: The musical artist says she will split royalties 50/50 with anyone deepfaking her voice. She has no label and no binding legal constraints giving her more flexibility than most musicians. More Virtual Human Expansion Prompt-to-video: Hour One introduced a new text-to-video solution that enables full video generation for presentations from a single prompt. Canva gets digital people: D-ID introduced a new Canva app that enables you to add generative videos to any project. Chatbots are suddenly popular: Character AI landed $150M in funding at an obscene valuation. Virtual Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and 2.7 million other chatting avatars with personalities have driven 100M user visits in just two months. Google Ups Generative Game Bard learns to code: Google is slowly catching up with the generative AI leaders. It's ChatGPT competitor—or, is it a Bing Chat competitor—can now code. This is not a true competitor to GitHub Copilot yet. Sec-PaLM gets into security: Google also rolled out a new cybersecurity solution with the parsimonious name of Google Cloud Security AI Workbench. It is based on a fine-tuned version of the PaLM large language model (LLM). Nvidia and Sensory Plug Market Gaps ChatGPT gets an edge: Sensory rolled out a new hybrid on-device and cloud solution that can enable the use of ChatGPT and similar services on devices. Nvidia on rails: NeMo, Nvidia's LLM, now has a new feature for adding guardrails to other LLMs to align model outputs with companies' safety and security requirements. NeMo Guardrails is open source and designed to work with any LLM.

The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for April 20, 2023, was recorded live at the Model Mania conference, which focused on enterprise generative AI solutions. News this week has more on Elon Musk and some surprising news from Stability AI. We also talk about a deepfake of Drake and The Weeknd that went viral, Adobe Firefly, Atlassian, ChatGPT in government legal actions, Universal Music lawsuits, and more. Bret Kinsella hosted this week with his Voicebot.ai colleague Eric Schwartz. The top stories in generative AI land this week include: StableLM and Stable Diffusion XL Big Data LLM: Stability AI introduced a new large language model trained on 1.5 trillion data tokens. It's open-source and comes in a variety of model parameter sizes. Stable Diffusion for the Enterprise: The new XL model from Stability AI offers better photorealism, more coherent text, and is positioned for enterprise use. Oh, and the company's valuation may have risen from $1B to $4B in less than six months. Adobe Firefly for Video Generative AI for designers and video makers: Adobe Firefly will make it easier for designers to incorporate generative AI into their workflow. The new services for video production will take that to a new level in Premiere and After Effects. Atlassian Intelligence In-Context Search and Answers: The creator of Jira, Confluence, and Trello has added generative AI features for summarization, text generation, and question-answering from your productivity software data. Elon Musk and X.ai What is Elon up to now: Musk created a new company in Nevada last month called X.ai. He says he wants to create a third option beyond OpenAI and Google offerings. Justice Dept Mentions ChatGPT Name recognition on another level: The U.S. Justice Department's suit against Google for alleged search monopolization said ChatGPT might have come sooner if not for the company's stranglehold on the market. The Weeknd and Drake Deepfake Goes Viral Viral Music duo: 10M TikTok views and 600k Spotify streams later, a popular deepfake of a The Weeknd and Drake called "Heart on My Sleeve" was taken down due to a request from one of the music labels.

The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for April 13, 2023, included some breaking news on Amazon Bedrock, the new service competing directly with OpenAI and Microsoft's Azure AI services. We also discussed Twitter's generative AI ambitions, HuggingGPT, a positive generative AI launch from MailChimp and a lackluster implementation by Expedia, OpenAI's bug bounty, the Italy ChatGPT saga, a deepfake of Charles Barkley, Alibab's everything AI bot, and a bit more. Bret Kinsella (that's me) hosted again this week with my Voicebot.ai colleague Eric Schwartz. The top stories in generative AI land this week include: Amazon Takes on OpenAI & Microsoft A multivendor Bedrock approach: Amazon Bedrock now offers easy access to many generative AI models, including AI21 Labs, Anthropic, Stability AI, and Titan. Copilot gets a competitor: Amazon's CodeWhisperer, a text-to-code generator, is now general availability and free. GitHub Copilot may have a market share lead with 400,000 paying subscribers, but free is a good way to accumulate users. Elon Musk Goes Shopping Twitter and Generative AI: Elon Musk has reportedly purchased 10,000 GPUs after he was out recruiting some well-known AI researchers. So, why did he want OpenAI and others to pause their AI research? We'll see. Musk may want Twitter to be an "everything app," and generative AI would be a key element. Or, he may just want advertisers to have a useful feature. HuggingGPT and Multi-Model Systems Microsoft's latest take on hybrid AI: Microsoft researchers released a paper and a GitHub repository with a new multi-model LLM controller (orchestrator) that can govern access to a variety of AI models for a single interface called HuggingGPT. We will see more of these multi-model services. MailChimp Gets AI Copywriter Building on the core product: MailChimp added AI writing capabilities via an OpenAI integration. It looks like a clean, on-point generative AI feature. There is no extra cost for the feature right now, but at what point will the companies start passing along the model inference costs to users? Expedia Misses the Plot Generating misperception: Expedia also announced some new generative AI features, but it actually only enables you to learn more about hotels and activities. You can't actually book a flight or hotel even though the press release language was cleverly written to suggest there is more there than travel review search. Speaking of search, the new GPT-4-powered Bing not only does a better job of trip planning and research, but it also enables you to book a flight and hotel. Alibaba Goes for Everything A generative cornucopia: Alibaba announced its new generative AI solution. The ChatGPT competitor is called Tongyi Qianwen. It is integrated into the Tmall Genie assistant (i.e., Alibaba's voice assistant), takes meeting notes, writes emails, and creates business documents. It can also help you shop and the company says it supports both Chinese and English. OpenAI Bug$ Out Crowdsourcing security vulnerabilities: OpenAI launched a new Bug Bounty program which will pay out between $200 - $20,000 to developers that find "vulnerabilities, bugs, or security flaws." This follows OpenAI's highly publicized security vulnerability and subsequent investigations by privacy regulators in Italy and Canada. FanDuel Goes Deep A young Charles Barkley pitches sports gambling: FanDuel has a new commercial that includes a real-life Charles Barkley and a deepfake of his younger self. Deepfakes are becoming mainstream. Or, maybe they already are. The show was originally broadcast live on YouTube and LinkedIn, and we also added it to the Voicebot Podcast for your convenience. You can see the video here on YouTube.

Nico Perony is the director of AI research at the game development platform Unity. He was a co-founder and CTO of OTO, which was acquired by Unity in 2021. OTO was a pioneer in emotional intelligence for conversation data. It was known for "Enabling emotional intelligence everywhere, so human and artificial intelligence can interact with awareness and empathy." Perony led the integration of OTO technology into the Unity platform and, more recently, has focused on new conversation AI features and generative AI tooling for game developers. He previously was the founder of Slow Motion Projects and an engineer at Hyperloop Transportation Technologies. Perony has a PhD in complex systems and a Master's degree in electrical engineering.

The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for April 6, 2023, focused on regulators and OpenAI, ChatGPT's popularity compared to the iPhone, deepfake disclosure, authentication and ownership, monetizing those generative AI models, what's Meta doing, and more. Bret Kinsella (that's me) hosts this week with guests Nina Schick, the author of the 2020 book Deepfakes, and Eric Schwartz, head writer at Voicebot.ai. The top stories in generative AI land this week include: ChatGPT Gets Banned A time-out chair for OpenAI and some unfortunate users: Italy took action. Canada opened an investigation. France received complaints. Germany and Ireland indicated they'd like to get involved. Regulators have OpenAI in their sights. How will it go down? ChatGPT vs. Alexa vs. iPhone Compared to what?: ChatGPT is a phenomenon, but how does it stack up to the hype of earlier products? We compare ChatGPT to some notable break-out hits. Deepfake Solutions Provenance in the unreal valley: It's a deepfake, but you want to disclose its synthetic origins. You also want to show its history and ownership. How about a cryptographic signature from Truepic that tracks the life of the digital artifact? The unbearable likeness of your being: Those amazingly lifelike avatars don't have a clear ownership model today. Someone could make a deepfake of you, and what recourse do you have? However, if you owned the copyright to your digital likeness… Bing Chat Ads Arrive Paying for those GPT-4 inference costs: We knew they were coming, and now we know what they look like, at least one format. Bing Chat has ads that look a lot like what you see in web searches today, with a twist. Generative AI definitely has a revenue model. Meta Gets Objective Alignment is king: Meta rolled out another researcher-only generative AI model. However, this time it showed up with a demonstration app. Segment Anything is a new AI (foundation) model for identifying objects in images and being able to save them separately from the picture with two clicks. Canva, the True Believer Taking the lead over Microsoft: The Redmond giant has talked about DALL-E and GPT-4 in Microsoft Designer and coming to PowerPoint. Canva just started adding new features. A light skepticism from the company in December (ironically about new generative AI features) was replaced by more robust tools and a bigger vision. More About GAIN The show is recorded live and streamed via YouTube and LinkedIn at 12 noon ET on Thursdays. You can re-watch each week's discussion on Voicebot's YouTube channel. Please join us live next week on YouTube or LinkedIn. Also, participate in the live show by commenting, and we are likely to give you a shoutout and may even show your comment on screen.

The Future of Life Institute, an organization funded by the Musk Foundation, issued a letter calling for a pause of "giant AI experiments" for six months. Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, AI legend Yoshua Bengio, and many thousands of others signed the letter. The idea behind the letter is that the risks posed by AI models such as GPT-4 are potentially so high that we must give policy-makers and technology leaders a chance to assess what guardrails are necessary. But is this a good idea? What are the risks of a pause? What are the objectives and conflicts of interest of the people that signed the letter? Muddu Sudhakar, the CEO of Aisera, joined me to talk about the letter and all of the discussion it has sparked. We also discussed some alternative approaches, common misunderstandings, and how generative AI is rapidly changing assumptions about our world. Sudhakar previously appeared on Voicebot Podcast episode 280. He is a former senior VP and GM at ServiceNow, Splunk, VMWare, and Pivotal. He was CEO at Caspida when the company was acquired by Splunk, where he assumed leadership for machine learning, AI, and analytics-based solutions. Sudhakar was also the CEO and founder of the big data startup Cetas, which was acquired by VMWare, and founded Sanera Systems, which was acquired by Brocade/McData. He began his career as an engineer at IBM and SGI and earned his PhD in computer science from UCLA. Go Bruins!

The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for March 30, 2023, had controversy, competition, Coca-Cola, and more. Is there a more dynamic market right now than generative AI? I don't think so. This week's show is hosted by Bret Kinsella with guests Silke Hahn, technology editor at Heise Online, and Eric Schwartz, head writer at Voicebot.ai. The top stories in generative AI land this week include: Musk Wants to Slow Down AI The Letter: A letter from the Future of Life Institue signed by Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Stability AI founder Emad Mostaque, and 17k others called for a six-month moratorium on "the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4." But maybe this isn't an entirely altruistic activity. Google Rumors and More Issues Haunted by ChatGPT: Google rumors pointed to the company using ChatGPT data in Bard training and efforts to combine DeepMind brains and Google AI team brains to catch up with OpenAI's chatbot. The headlines don't tell the real story. OpenAI Declares War and Defends the Citadel ChatGPT Plugins: OpenAI is adding plugins to ChatGPT. This puts everyone on notice that OpenAI is now an end-user application product provider and an AI model provider. ChatGPT Security: A serious ChatGPT security vulnerability was discovered by a security researcher and promptly patched by OpenAI. There is a bigger story here. Perplexity AI Lands Funding Conversational search wars: It's not cheap to compete in the search business. Perplexity AI just raised $25.6 million to challenge Bing Chat and Google Bard for conversational search market share. Stanford Finds Its LLiMit Alpaca sent packing: Stanford University launched a web demo of its Alpaca generative AI model based on Meta's LLaMA model and trained using ChatGPT-generated data. It was shut down in just a couple of days due to safety and cost concerns. Zoom Goes Generative From video to smart companion: Zoom IQ is adding new generative AI features to extend the value of video conferencing beyond the meeting. Coke Tapping into DALL-E Magic New (Coke) custom OpenAI model: Coca-Cola has a new marketing campaign that asks artists to create Coke-themed imagery using a custom implementation of DALL-E. The show was originally broadcast live on YouTube and LinkedIn, and we also added it to the Voicebot Podcast for your convenience.

Reghu Thanumalayan is a senior vice president at Deutsche Telekom and oversees the Magenta voice assistant. He was my featured guest in Voicebot Podcast Ep 148 three years ago. Reghu joined me to share an update on how things have evolved since launching the product in late 2019. Magenta has won awards, expanded integrations with TV and smart home devices, and introduced a new call center application. However, the company has also discontinued the smart speaker and learned some tough lessons. Reghu breaks down the journey and the learnings. We also talk about a new solution that sounds likely to be a breakout consumer hit and where voice assistants truly excel. This interview was conducted onsite at Mobile World Congress 2023 at the Deutsche Telekom booth.

The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for March 23, 2023, was packed with significant announcements. Bret Kinsella hosts this week along with Eric Schwartz. The top stories in generative AI land this week include: Nvidia Moves up the Stack Picasso and NeMo: Nvidia isn't going just to cash checks for GPU sales related to the generative AI tsunami. They now offer text-to-image and text-to-text models that compete directly with OpenAI, Google, and Stable Diffusion. Omniverse Upgrade: Omniverse is an open platform for 3D design collaboration and real-time physically accurate simulations. It announced new services for creating virtual factories mirroring real-world facilities, the option to stream simulated experiences and train to AI-powered robots, and a simulator for testing autonomous vehicles. Google Teases Gen AI Features and Models Show your PaLMs: Google is now letting testers use its giant large language model (LLM) PaLM. This is different from LaMDA and might eventually be a replacement for the brains behind Bard. Right now, it is Google's answer to GPT-3/GPT-4. A tool to help developers using PaLM called MakerSuite was also announced. Gmail and Docs to Get AI writing assistant: Docs and Gmail are getting PaLM-enabled text generation features. Bard announced again: Google says it is now offering access to Bard to the general public. But there is a waitlist. AI-Generated Beauty Midjourney 5 is here: There are several minor upgrades, but the key benefits are enhanced quality, more coherence, better photorealism, and more detail. Bing adds DALL-E: You can now create images in Bing through a new DALL-E integration. The quality seems better to me than DALL-E 2, which you can access today on OpenAI. Might this be the long-awaited DALL-E 3? Synthetic Media Policy TikTok to tighten deepfake rules: TikTok announced new policies around synthetic media and deepfake use on the platform before its CEO's Congressional testimony. The policy description grew from 30 words to nearly 400. Will others social platforms take this as a cue to make their own updates? Games Go Generative Roblox wants to make development easier: Roblox added generative AI tools that enable developers to use natural language to create objects and generate code. Unity wants generative AI NPCs: Unity didn't make any concrete announcements. However, its CEO told Reuters that generative AI would help game makers write dialogue and enable non-player characters to interact more naturally with human players. Other News LinkedIn goes generative: The Microsoft-owned company added new generative AI features to create user profiles and job descriptions. SoundHound shows Chat AI assistant: The new mobile app offers an assistant that blends SoundHound's NLU-based assistant with new LLM features. More About GAIN The show is recorded live and streamed via YouTube and LinkedIn at 12 noon EST on Thursdays. You can re-watch each week's discussion on Voicebot's YouTube channel. Please join us live next week on YouTube or LinkedIn. Also, participate in the live show by commenting.

The Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown for March 16, 2023, required some tough decisions. So much happened this week that we zeroed in on the biggest stories and how they will shape the market. We might get to some of the others, like Midjourney 5, next week. In this episode, Bret Kinsella hosts along with Eric Schwartz. The top stories in generative AI land this week include: Generative AI for Knowledge Workers Microsoft 365 Copilot: A natural language assistant that is a system and not just a bunch of bolt-on LLM features. Can it live up to the ambition? It's definitely impressive. Google Workspace: Some generative AI features are coming to Google Docs and Gmail. Still closed access and little detail, but an official signal about new features. Also, the approach today is less ambitious than Microsoft's. The Long Wait is Over GPT-4 is Here: The much-hyped and long-awaited GPT-4 launch finally arrived. It is multimodal with a vision input element, but that is not widely available. However, the output quality is clearly better, OpenAI claims that factuality is higher and hallucinations rarer, and the context window quadrupled. ChatGPT Contenders Take a Step Forward Anthropic Claude: The ChatGPT competitor was formally announced. However, there is still a waitlist! Quora to Monetize Poe: Quora might face an existential crisis as answers become easier to find with ChatGPT, Perplexity, and the New Bing. However, Poe doesn't rely on one LLM. It allows the user to access many. And Quora is charging for access. LLMs and Popular Culture ChatGPT on South Park: The latest South Park episode featured ChatGPT. When new enterprise technology starts showing up in iconic popular culture venues, something important is happening. Plus, this is just funny. More About GAIN The GAIN Rundown was originally broadcast live on YouTube and LinkedIn, and we also added it to the Voicebot Podcast for your convenience. If you would like to watch the show live join us on YouTube or LinkedIn at 12 noon EST on Thursdays. You can re-watch each week's discussion on Voicebot's YouTube channel and view the visuals that go along with the show.

The top generative AI news (GAIN) of the week is back for March 9, 2023. This week, Bret Kinsella hosts along with Eric Schwartz from Voicebot.ai and our guest, Brandon Kaplan, chief innovation officer at Journey, and the founder of Skilled Creative. Stories in generative AI land this week include: Enterprise apps all in on LLMs SlackGPT: A new ChatGPT feature for Slack developed by OpenAI Salesforce GPT: Einstein GPT features that Salesforce rolled out this week Grammarly GPT: Grammarly also adds generative AI features for its 30 million users, putting it on a collision course with Jasper AI, AI21's Wordtune, and Microsoft. The Evolution of Search Answer Box Mania: Both Brave and DuckDuckGo have new search summarization features that appear to replicate the Google answer box. The companies are applying LLMs, but the features are not nearly as ambitious as Bing or Bard. What they do show is how quickly the search experience is changing. Larger Language Models Large, Larger, and Largest: AI21 Labs, a competitor to OpenAI, announced some new, larger, and more polished large language models. The announcement was accompanied by a number of new APIs for a variety of LLM features that developers can access by the drink. Talk with ChatGPT ChatGPT Gets a Face: We also have D-ID's new virtual human-led chat that enables you to have a conversation with ChatGPT-enabled avatar. This discussion included a conversation about the role of virtual humans in interactive bot experiences. Elon Musk Rumors A Singular Generative AI: We finish with a discussion about Elon Musk's plans to challenge OpenAI, a company where he was a co-founder. The show was originally broadcast live on YouTube and LinkedIn, and you can watch it on Voicebot's YouTube channel.

If you want to get caught up on the top generative AI news of the week, Eric Schwartz and Andrew Herndon from Voicebot.ai and Synthedia break down the top headlines for the first week in March 2023. On tap this week in the video (with links if you want to read more): ChatGPT API Snap My AI Spotify AI DJ New Bing in Windows 11 Meta joins the LLM wars…sort of More About GAIN The Generative AI News (GAIN) Rundown is recorded live and streamed via YouTube and LinkedIn at 12 noon EST on Thursdays. Join us live if you can make it. You can re-watch the discussion on Voicebot's YouTube channel.

Eric Schwartz, head writer at Voicebot.ai, joins me today to talk about some of his key learnings from a recent set of tests he conducted with ten different large language model based writing assistants. In particular, he will break down what the market looks like today in terms of the LLM suppliers and how the AI writing assistants compare across several use cases. In this interview, he compares AI21 Labs, ChatGPT, and GPT-3 models. This interview was originally recorded at the Synthedia 2 event at the end of 2022. It is also available in Voicebot's YouTube channel at youtube.com/@voicebotai. You might enjoy checking that out now or after listening today because we share on screen several of the writing sample outputs discussed in the interview. Also, when you are there, please give a Like and Subscribe to the channel.

DeFiance Media is a video news platform that provides coverage of decentralized culture, technology, and finance. It was founded by CEO, Marc Scarpa in 2021. Scarpa is well known as an innovator in participatory broadcasts. He was the founder of JumpCut in the 1990s which was known for producing Woodstock 99, three of the Tibetan Freedom Concerts, and Artisan Entertainment's Blair Witch WebFestival. Earlier in his career, he was the New York Bureau Chief for CNET TV. He also worked for YouTube, Olgilvy and Global Environment Media. In today's discussion, Scarpa talks about the idea behind launching a new live news media broadcaster, native to the web but also leveraging over-the-top broadcast distribution channels directly to consumer televisions. He also goes into detail about what it takes to launch the world's first virtual human newscaster, Roxanna. He also goes into detail about what he has learned after 1,500 broadcasts led by a digital persona, and how that complements the dozens of human broadcasters on the network.

In today's interview, Bakz T. Future walks through the history of OpenAI, where recent developments behind ChatGPT originated, the rise of DALL-E, image generators, and other generative AI technologies. Bakz because is both an everyday user of these technologies as well as a developer that works directly with the OpenAI APIs, so you are going to learn a lot today. Get ready for a discussion about InstructGPT and how that upgrade in February 2022 was instrumental to all of the recent mania around generative AI. He also discusses the importance of using adversarial thinking when using generative AI models, particularly large language models, and he finishes up with some predictions for 2023. There is also a video of this episode in Voicebot's YouTube channel if you would prefer to watch. Just go to youtube.com/@voicebotai. While you are there look around at the more than 100 videos we have posted since June of last year on AI technologies. And, of course, give us a click to subscribe.

Welcome to our third edition of GAIN, the generative AI news rundown. On tap today, we lead off with the Bing Boomerang. After some negative press about Bing Chat Mode going off the rails, Bing put some tight restrictions on usage to reduce the risk of generating inappropriate content. Then it reversed itself a few days later. OpenAI Foundry is a new set of tools for enterprise users, GitHub Copilot got an update with new code completion and info security features. In addition, we saw Huggingface partner with Amazon Web Services to host generative AI models and Roblox outlined a generative AI future for game developers. Eric Schwartz of Voicebot.ai is the lead host this week, while Michal Stanislawek for #voicelunch, Utter.one, and Hearme.ai, joins him as co-host. Links to the main stories include: Bing puts on the breaks and reverses course: https://voicebot.ai/2023/02/22/microsoft-restricts-then-relaxes-eases-bings-generative-ai-chat-over-4-days/ OpenAI to offer more customization: https://synthedia.substack.com/p/openai-to-offer-chatgpt-customization OpenAI Foundry: https://voicebot.ai/2023/02/23/openais-new-foundry-program-offers-llm-clients-dedicated-processing-fine-tune-controls/ Hugging Face partners with AWS: https://voicebot.ai/2023/02/21/generative-ai-startup-hugging-face-picks-aws-to-host-future-large-language-models/ GitHub Copilot: https://synthedia.substack.com/p/github-copilot-just-made-itself-even Roblox to add generative AI features for game development: https://synthedia.substack.com/p/roblox-to-add-generative-ai-tools You can also watch the show's live recording on Voicebot's YouTube Channel. Follow Bret Kinsella on LinkedIn to get notified of future live recordings.

Chandra Khatri is CTO and co-founder of Got-It AI, a company that built an AI that builds conversational AI solutions. It can ingest existing conversation data and automatically generate an intent model and conversation flows that designers can edit in a no-code platform. That same technology was more recently applied to checking the output of GPT-3. Known as CheckGPT or Truth Checker, it verifies the truthfulness of large language model outputs, one of the key concerns of enterprise users of generative AI. Khatri earned a master's degree in machine learning in 2015 and took that knowledge to eBay, where he implemented a generative AI solution for automatically creating product listings. He then went to work in Amazon's Lab126 where he was a founding team member that launched the Alexa Prize.

We had another big week in generative AI news. The testers of the new Bing Chat Mode made some disturbing discoveries, but Microsoft also made some changes and revealed a 71% approval rate by early users. Google is pulling out all of the stops to get Bard tested and ready for launch, while Jasper AI and Vertione introduced new generative AI enterprise solutions. And we had Opera and Yext provide new evidence that web browsing and SEO are about to change. Voicebot.ai's Bret and Kinsella, and Eric Schwartz break down the news, provide updates, and put the developments in context, all while answering questions from the live audience. Links to stories: Bing Chat Mode: https://synthedia.substack.com/p/bing-chat-goes-wild-with-hallucinations Google Bard Code Red: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/15/google-asks-employees-to-rewrite-bards-incorrect-responses-to-queries.html Jasper AI goes enterprise: https://voicebot.ai/2023/02/14/jasper-introduces-generative-ai-api-and-enterprise-tools/ Veritone's new generative AI enterprise applications: https://voicebot.ai/2023/02/16/veritone-releases-generative-ai-features-to-fuel-entertainment-and-advertising/ Opera's GPT-3 features: https://synthedia.substack.com/p/how-llms-will-change-web-browsing You can also watch the show's live recording on Voicebot's YouTube Channel. Follow Bret Kinsella on LinkedIn to get notified of future live recordings.

Andrei Papancea co-founded NLX in 2018 to solve some of the problems he faced as a software engineer working on natural language understanding at American Express. He worked extensively with designers and analysts that could not make improvements to customer self-service and conversational support channels without engaging software engineers to hardcode the changes. He was confident that you could build conversational systems that enabled non-technical users to make these changes. In addition, he was particularly interested in how conversational systems could be married with visual channels on the web and mobile to deliver even better customer self-service solutions. These ideas led to NLX, which is used by companies ranging from Copa Airlines to Red Bull. More recently, NLX integrated with GPT-3 to provide users with generative AI solutions to augment conversational customer experiences. He stopped by the Voicebot Podcast to discuss the origins of the company and how things have changed with NLX clients since the introduction of ChatGPT. He also breaks down how NLX's new GPT-3-powered features work and how he expects adoption to play out.

A lot happened this week in the generative AI and synthetic media. Today introduces a new weekly (or when appropriate) addition to the Voicebot Podcast. The GAIN Rundown is the generative AI news of the week. So much is happening in this space and it is so important to the conversational AI industry, we thought that a short weekly rundown of the top headlines would be useful. Let us know what you think. The big news for this episode was Google's ChatGPT competitor Bard and Microsoft's debut of what we like to call BingGPT. We also saw schools banning ChatGPT and David Guetta show off an Eminem deepfake. The show starts off looking at some OpenAI data that you are likely to find interesting. If you would like to view the videos that we included in the discussion, you can see those segments on YouTube through the links below. 5:02 - Microsoft https://lnkd.in/gid_Gq4v 14:00 - Google https://lnkd.in/gZ6P8kCq 29:40 - David Guetta: https://lnkd.in/ghtNjsns Also, we are publishing these recorded videos on Voicebot's YouTube channel. If you would prefer to watch the discussion, subscribe to the channel and watch here: https://www.youtube.com/@voicebotai

Karen Kaushansky is a conversation designer at Google that led the Google Assistant UX design for WearOS and, more recently, for the Pixel Watch. While there has been a lot of attention around conversational UX on smart speakers and mobile phones, wearables introduce new variables and different mental models. Kaushansky goes into detail about designing voice experiences for the watch, what it's like to be an API or embedded in the software, how it's different when you also control the hardware or run software on the device, and more. The interview also discusses how conversation design has changed over the past 25 years. Kaushansky started in the industry in the 1990s and has seen many technology shifts over the years. This also enables us to update our discussion on multimodal interfaces, which was the focus of her appearance on episode 40 of the Voicebot Podcast five years ago. We finish up with a discussion about large language models and the role of conversation designers in applications built on generative AI technologies. She also offers a great tip for designers on navigating this change that is the center of so much discussion today. Kaushansky began her career as a speech technology designer at Nortel, then spent time at Nuance, Microsoft, and Jawbone. At Microsoft, she was part of the team that created Cortana and deployed it on the Windows phone. She joined Google in 2019 and has led user experience design for Google Assistant on a number of products.

My guest is D-ID co-founder and CEO Gil Perry. We talk about how the company logically evolved into tools for creating talking digital people and how its capabilities in GANs and protecting consumers from facial recognition technology were the ingredients for a unique AI-based video solution. The company is well known for powering MyHeritage's Deep Nostalgia product, which has animated over 100 million photographs for consumers. D-ID was also instrumental in helping Jean-Baptiste Martinoli win two film festival awards for his AI-generated short film in 2022. Last fall, the company introduced Creative Reality Studio. That solution enables anyone to upload someone's picture, add some text, and quickly create a scripted video with an avatar in the likeness of the photo. In December, D-ID added the ability to create the script using a prompt to GPT-3 and upload images created by Stable Diffusion. This is a great example of how synthetic media is often enhanced by layering several generative AI solutions together. The new use cases are also why these markets are the hottest in tech today. Perry, a former software developer that worked on the viral hit mobile apps Meerkat and HouseParty, offers an insider's view of the rapid rise and current trajectory of generative AI and synthetic media.

The launch of ChatGPT on November 30, 2022, spurred new interest in conversational search. For the first time in over a decade, many people are beginning to think about what comes after the Google search model that has become so familiar. Dustin Coates knows a lot about search. He is the principal product manager the implemented Algolia's voice search products and worked on the integration with OpenAI's GPT-3 in 2021. Algolia is a search giant in its own right, with over 17,000 customers using its website search capabilities instead of Google technology for 1.75 trillion annual searches. Coates walks through different types of search such as keyword, semantic, concept, and conversational. He breaks down how machine learning and AI are changing search models and performance. This includes a comparison between how Algolia, Google, ChatGPT, and other services handle search today. Coates also offers insights into where GPT-3 powered search does and does not work for its clients and why concept search has become so popular.

"The adoption of large language models and generative AI is booming, and I think it began with creativity use cases. And now we are seeing as it slowly moving toward productivity use cases.... and that's is going to be the most valuable trend over the next couple of years," says AI21 Labs CEO Ori Goshen. AI21 Labs is known for developing a large language model and using it to develop products such as Wordtune and Wordtune Read. The company is focused on productivity gains for professionals, changing the way we write and consume written text, and providing the means for other companies to build new applications using LLMs. Prior to AI21, Ori Goshen was the founder and VP of technology for Crowdx which was acquired by Cellwize. He was the founder and VP of R&D for Tawkon and an entrepreneur-in-residence at Cisco. He has a background in cybersecurity, software development, and big data analytics.

Bret Kinsella wrote this: Jasper AI quietly built one of the top AI-based writing assistants atop OpenAI's GPT-3 large language model (LLM). Then, suddenly its growth and recognition exploded ... in a good way. That led to a $125 million series A funding round that was well-timed ahead of the new interest in the AI-writing assistant space after the introduction of ChatGPT. Shane Orlick is president of Jasper AI and walks through the company's origins, the product, and how customers use these tools today. He even mentions some product features that have not yet been announced (breaking news on the Voicebot Podcast once again) and how users are applying the new Jasper Chat (a ChatGPT-like interface) versus the templates that Jasper has created and refined for specific use cases. For those of you interested in the technical stack behind Jasper and the company's move to build an internal NLU and new AI models that supplement the OpenAI APIs, this may be the only conversation out there with that insight. Shane also discusses the broader market news, such as the impact of ChatGPT, the emergence of text-to-image models, and the rumors about OpenAI's big valuation and potential new investment from Microsoft. We cover a lot of ground around products, user behavior, generative AI, and the broader synthetic media market. Jasper AI rewrote the above to this: Jasper AI is quickly becoming a leader in the AI-writing assistant space. Founded atop OpenAI's GPT-3 large language model (LLM), the company has seen tremendous growth and recognition, so much so that it was able to secure a $125 million series A funding round just before the rise of interest in AI-writing assistants with ChatGPT. Shane Orlick, president of Jasper AI, outlines the company's origins, product features (including some exclusive news!), and how customers are using these tools. In addition, he dives into the technical stack behind Jasper, which includes an internal NLU and new AI models beyond what OpenAI APIs offer. He also shares his thoughts on the broader synthetic media market, including ChatGPT's influence, text-to-image models, OpenAI's potential big valuation, and Microsoft potentially investing. This podcast offers an insightful look at what users can expect from Jasper as well as trends in generative AI and user behavior when it comes to writing and creating content with these tools. ***** Let me know which one you like better!

Taylan Kamis was inspired by the movie Her to pursue AI technologies that could make synthetic characters and voices more lifelike. After several years with Microsoft, including time on the media and applications team and serving as a CFO for some venture-stage startups, Kamis co-founded DeepZen in 2017. The first problem the DeepZen team sought to address was one of the harder ones in the industry: creating synthetic voices that were high enough quality to be used as narrators for audiobooks. A key element of this problem is the length of the content. The synthetic voice or voices must be pleasing enough to be suitable for long passages and hours of listening at a time. Another important element is the emotive quality of the synthetic voices. DeepZen today provides audiobook production services and enables voice actors to create custom voices and monetize them without having to be in the studio for every project. We talk at length about the audiobook solution and how it works. That is followed by a discussion around new applications that are taking DeepZen into even larger markets.

2022 was the year of synthetic media. The mainstreaming of deepfakes and voice clones, along with the rise of text-to-image AI models, assured synthetic media of a breakout year. Then ChatGPT came along. It changed the conversation entirely and consumed news media and social media cycles for weeks. The GPT-3.5 model was better than expected, and the fine-tuning that delivered ChatGPT showed that large language models were ready to up end a lot of assumptions about what technology in general, and AI in particular, can do. Joining host Bret Kinsella to break down the top synthetic media news of 2022 are Rupal Patel of Veritone, Michal Stanislawek of Utter.one and Hearme.ai, and Eric Schwartz of Voicebot.ai. Get ready for an in-depth discussion about everything from digital waste to the meaning of mortality. Along the way, the group discusses OpenAI, DALL-E, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, GPT-3, Google LaMDA, virtual humans, synthetic voices, America's Got Talent, and more.

Enterprise voice AI has been overshadowed for years by the tech giants' activities. That meant the consumer applications often drowned out what was happening in the enterprise. At the same time, most enterprises were moving slowly. That has changed over the past two years. Enterprise adoption of voice and conversational AI solutions is growing steadily and expanding into new use cases. Today we will talk about the contact center, restaurants, automotive, and media sectors. We also go into some detail about large language models and how enterprises are thinking about ChatGPT, Omnichannel, and more. Susan Westwater is the founder of Pragmatic Digital and Strategy Director at Vixen Labs. She is also the author of the book, "Voice Strategy: Creating Useful and Usable Voice Experiences." Jason Fields is the chief strategy officer at Voicify, a leading platform for voice experience creation. He was formerly a senior vice president at Rightpoint and an adjunct professor at Emerson College. Braden Ream is the CEO and co-founder of Voiceflow; the leading conversation AI design collaboration platform. Braden also was recently named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list. Susan, Braden, and Jason are each working on the front lines with enterprises, so you will get some fresh and practical perspectives. Enjoy!

This is the first of Voicebot's voice AI 2022 year-in-review episodes, and today we focus on consumer solutions. There was no lack of news this year, and industry insiders Peachy-Jean Retizos, Tom Hewitson, and Eric Schwartz join me to break it all down for our sixth annual year-in-review show. Amazon's layoffs that impacted the Alexa and devices groups dominated industry discussions late in the year. However, it was just a few months earlier that a similar move by Google drove industry news cycles. The two tech giants have set the tone for voice AI in consumer solutions since 2014, so the pullbacks were big news. We lead off with these stories and how they are reshaping the voice AI consumer sector. While the moves are generally viewed negatively in the market, we also talk about the positive elements and how they were not exactly unexpected. There is also a discussion about what is getting additional focus in 2023 and where the new paths of growth are emerging. However, the tech giants are not the only game in town. SoundHound became a public company in 2022 and became the first large-scale voice AI pureplay to tap into public financial markets since Nuance. Synthetic speech engines had a notable year in terms of customer growth and acquisitions. And large language models are taking natural language in an entirely new direction, plus we hit on a few other topics. It's been a pretty amazing year with highlights and lowlights, and it was good to get some front-line experts in to hash it all out. Enjoy!

Jesse Shemen is CEO of Papercup, a company he co-founded in 2017. The company transforms audio and video media into multiple languages to broaden its reach. Papercup estimates that 99% of all content is only available in one language. Using AI tools in conjunction with human translators and a synthetic speech engine, Papercup is working with companies such as Bloomberg and Insider to make their content available in the native language of their international audience. Shemen has a finance degree from NYU. He previously was a venture lead at Octopus where he helped launch a wealth technology platform for financial advisors, and a co-founder of Deloitte Ventures UK.

Chris Parkinson began working on the idea behind RealWear while at Kopin back in 2007. In 2015, he founded WearNext to explore routes to further technical development and commercialization of the productivity tool for connected industrial workers. That ultimately led to co-founding RealWear in 2016. The company presents itself as providing the first hands-free and fully ruggedized head-mounted tablet solution. But it's not quite a tablet. It's a headset for voice interactive hands-free access to data, information, and applications. Earlier in his career, Parkinson was a senior engineer at Alien Technology and a researcher at Battelle Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He earned a PhD in computational and theoretical chemistry from the University of Manchester.

Dom Esposito is a top YouTuber that worked with Hour One to create a digital twin. That's a virtual human clone of himself. In this interview, we show Dom's clone and talk to the real Dom about his motivation behind the project. We also discuss the process for creating the clone and use cases he thinks will be most impactful. Dom Esposito began creating tech review videos on YouTube way back in 2012. He was previously a writer at 9-to-5 Mac and AppAdvice and a Creatives Producer at ClearChannel, now known as iHeart.

Natalie Monbiot from Hour One joined me for the recent Synthedia event to present several new use cases in language learning, media, and entertainment that are expanding the market for virtual humans. She shows how synthetic media is being used at Berlitz, Defiance Media, and people creating entertainment on YouTube. Monbiot joined Hour One as head of strategy in 2019. Prior to Hour One, she was an SVP at Publicis, where she worked on new technologies and the Samsung account. She was an SVP at UM Worldwide before that, and earlier in her career worked at IPG Media Lab. Monbiot earned a Masters's Degree from Oxford. To hear an earlier interview with Natalie and the full Hour One origin story as of summer 2021, check out episode 219.

Maaike Coppens is the author of the new book Design Conversationnel published in French by Eyrolles with a forthcoming English edition. Maaike and I first met at an event in 2018 in Paris, and that provided a springboard to discuss how the priorities and expectations around conversation design have changed. One important topic we discuss is the rising focus on task completion for voice assistant applications as opposed to likeability and building affective trust. Much of this is driven by changing consumer behaviors and preferences. Coppens is the vice president of design at OpenDialog AI, the developer of the open source conversation management framework. Previously, she was a senior user experience and conversation design consultant for Accor Hotels, Applause, and XAPPmedia. She also worked as a conversation designer at voice-first game maker labworks.io and is an Alexa Champion.

John Campbell is the founder and managing director of the voice AI agency Rabbit & Pork, a division of TIPi Group. Previously he was head of performance marketing and SEO at another TIPi agency ROAST. The agency's start was automating the collection of answers from Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant for a variety of questions. That data led to several reports which captured the attention of brands, and from there, Rabbit & Pork began building Alexa skills, Google Actions, and other voice interactive experiences in addition to voice SEO projects. Campbell goes into some detail in our interview about how Rabbit & Pork automated voice search result collection. He also discusses where voice assistants source their answers to common questions, the strategies brands use today to improve their ranking, and approaches that do not work. In addition, we discuss how the Alexa Answers service works today, how it is evolving, and what that indicates about voice search. Beyond search, Campbell goes through the differences in building for Alexa versus Google Assistant and how Google's pullback from the third-party Conversational Action ecosystem has impacted how brands are approaching voice assistants today. We conclude by discussing a variety of industry use cases for voice and chatbot solutions.

Zohaib Ahmed joined us at the Synthedia synthetic media conference in September to discuss Resemble's work re-creating the voice of famed pop artist Andy Warhol. A Netflix documentary was under development that centered around Warhol's diaries. The creators thought it would be more impactful if the viewers could hear the ideas and experiences of Warhol in the artist's own voice. So, they began searching for a synthetic speech provider that could create a voice clone. Ahmed goes through the creation process and some of the challenges faced along the way. Plus there are a couple of nuances that you will find interesting. Zohaib Ahmed is the CEO and co-founder of Resemble AI. He appeared previously on the podcast in episodes 251 and 103. Ahmed previously was a lead software engineer at Magic Leap and Hipmunk and a developer at Blackberry. Voicebot's Eric Schwartz interviews Ahmed in this episode and Bret Kinsella adds commentary at the end about the evolution of synthetic speech.