Synthetic voices have been proliferating for years, and the generative AI boom of the new '20s has sped that process right along. AI voices are everywhere--in podcasts, in political campaigns, and in chatbots where they maybe-not-so-subtly replicate celebrity voices. Soon, they'll be all up in your audiobooks too. Audible, the Amazon-owned audiobook company, announced a trial program for generating AI voice clones to read works in its audiobook marketplace. The announcement came via a post in ACX--Audiobook Creation Exchange--Audible's service that lets authors and publishers turn written books into audiobooks.

Apple is bringing sleep apnea detection to the most recent generations of its Watch, the company announced today. At the iPhones 16 launch event, Apple revealed the feature would come to the new Series 10, as well as the Series 9 and Ultra 2. If you wear your watch while you sleep, you'll get an alert in the morning if symptoms are detected through the night, urging you to visit your clinician. The data for this will be collated in the Health app on the iPhone. Rather than using oxygen saturation, which would be the logical approach, Apple says it's using motion tracking. This is likely related to the messy patent battle surrounding the blood oxygen sensor in the Watch that has stymied the company's work in this area.

The Competition and Markets Authority has begun a preliminary investigation into a partnership between Google and the AI startup Anthropic, marking the latest in a string of investigations into deals between big tech companies and smallerAI ones. Google invested 2bn (about 1.56bn) into Anthropic in 2023, shortly after signing a cloud computing agreement with the startup, which develops the Claude LLM and chatbot. The CMA is now considering whether the partnership has "resulted in the creation of a relevant merger situation" which would allow the agency to begin a formal investigation. It is inviting comments over the next two weeks. The move comes amid broader concerns about competition in the generative AI sector. A deal between Amazon and Anthropic is also being investigated by the CMA as a potential merger after Amazon took a 4bn stake in the company and signed a deal to become one of the startup's cloud computing providers.

The drone scandal surrounding the Canadian women's soccer team could have bigger implications than just this year's Games in Paris. Head coach Bev Priestman was removed from her position on Thursday night after two staff members were sent home from Paris after an investigation found that analyst Joseph Lombardi had used a drone to spy on New Zealand's practice sessions. Head coach Beverly Priestman reacts during the Women's Gold Medal match between Canada and Sweden on day 14 of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at International Stadium Yokohama on Aug. 6, 2021 in Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan. "Over the past 24 hours, additional information has come to our attention regarding previous drone use against opponents, predating the Paris 2024 Olympic Games," Canada Soccer CEO Kevin Blue said in a statement. "In light of these new revelations, Canada Soccer has made the decision to suspend Women's National Soccer Team Head Coach, Bev Priestman for the remainder of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, and until the completion of our recently announced independent external review."

Google executives may be fearing the worst once again as Microsoft-backed rival OpenAI launches a new AI-powered search tool. 'SearchGPT', which is being trialed as a prototype before a wider rollout, scours the web for live news and information just like Google Search. OpenAI says the new product is particularly useful for queries about current events, recent developments, or specific information that ChatGPT might not know. Social media users have noted the parallels with the world's biggest search engine, with one saying'Google Search is definitely in trouble'. Another said: 'Anyone who has been paying attention knows there will be a new king of search within 10 years.

OpenAI is testing a new search engine that uses generative artificial intelligence to produce results, raising the prospect of a significant challenge to Google's dominance of the online search market. SearchGPT will launch with a small group of users and publishers before a potential wider rollout, the company announced on Thursday. OpenAI ultimately intends to incorporate the search features into ChatGPT, rather offer a standalone product. OpenAI said SearchGPT is a temporary prototype that will combine the company's AI models, such as ChatGPT, with the ability to search the internet. It will respond conversationally to searches, while providing up-to-date information with "clear links to relevant sources".

The Neuralink CEO, Elon Musk, said on Wednesday that the company would soon test its pound-coin-sized implant and brain-computer interface on a second patient. The unnamed patient's surgery is slated for "the next week or so", Musk said. Surgery on a different patient intended to be the second participant in Neuralink's human trial had been scheduled for late June but was delayed when they experienced unspecified health issues contraindicating the procedure. The same day, the company announced that the wires attaching the first Neuralink patient's brain to the implant in his skull had become "more or less very stable" after detaching months ago. "Once you do the brain surgery it takes some time for the tissues to come in and anchor the threads in place, and once that happens, everything has been stable," said the Neuralink executive Dongjin "DJ" Seo during a live stream late on Wednesday on Twitter/X.

Time series models, typically trained on numerical data, are designed to forecast future values. These models often rely on weighted averaging techniques over time intervals. However, real-world time series data is seldom isolated and is frequently influenced by non-numeric factors. For instance, stock price fluctuations are impacted by daily random events in the broader world, with each event exerting a unique influence on price signals. Previously, forecasts in financial markets have been approached in two main ways: either as time-series problems over price sequence or sentiment analysis tasks. The sentiment analysis tasks aim to determine whether news events will have a positive or negative impact on stock prices, often categorizing them into discrete labels. Recognizing the need for a more comprehensive approach to accurately model time series prediction, we propose a collaborative modeling framework that incorporates textual information about relevant events for predictions. Specifically, we leverage the intuition of large language models about future changes to update real number time series predictions. We evaluated the effectiveness of our approach on financial market data.

Meta is updating its "Made with AI" labels after widespread complaints from photographers that the company was mistakenly flagging non-AI-generated content. In an update, the company said that it will change the wording to "AI info" because the current labels "weren't always aligned with people's expectations and didn't always provide enough context." The company introduced the "Made with AI" labels earlier this year after criticism from the Oversight Board about its "manipulated media" policy. Meta said that, like many of its peers, it would rely on "industry standard" signals to determine when generative AI had been used to create an image. However, it wasn't long before photographers began noticing that Facebook and Instagram were applying the badge on images that hadn't actually been created with AI.

Google usually reveals a new Pixel smartphone in the autumn – but this year it seems to be wasting no time to get ahead of the curve. The tech giant has confirmed that its annual'Made by Google' unveiling event will take place on August 13, where it will showcase new devices and software. It's expected to announce the latest smartphone in its Pixel line, the Pixel 9, which could be packed with a range of new AI features to rival Apple. The event may even launch a successor to its first foldable phone, the Pixel Fold that was released last year for an eyewatering 1,749. A brief teaser video contains the Google Pixel branding and the number nine in Roman numerals – referring to the ninth phone in the series. Google's teaser video shows the outline of a smartphone with 9 in Roman numerals - a clear indication it's preparing the new hotly-anticpated device The video, entitled'AI... meet IX at Made by Google', confirms the date of the event in Roman numerals – VIII-XIII-MMXXIV, or August 13, 2024.