Anyone in the US can now use OpenAI's artificial intelligence video generator, Sora, which the company announced on Monday would become publicly available. OpenAI first presented Sora in February, but it was only accessible to select artists, film-makers and safety testers. At multiple points on Monday, though, OpenAI's website did not allow for new sign-ups for Sora, citing heavy traffic. Sora is known as a text-to-video generator, a tool that can create AI video clips based on a user's written prompts. An example on OpenAI's website has the prompt of "a wide, serene shot of a family of woolly mammoths in an open desert".

OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT and one of the most prominent artificial intelligence companies in the world, said today that it has entered a partnership with Anduril, a defense startup that makes missiles, drones, and software for the United States military. It marks the latest in a series of similar announcements made recently by major tech companies in Silicon Valley, which has warmed to forming closer ties with the defense industry. "OpenAI builds AI to benefit as many people as possible, and supports US-led efforts to ensure the technology upholds democratic values," Sam Altman, OpenAI's CEO, said in a statement Wednesday. OpenAI's AI models will be used to improve systems used for air defense, Brian Schimpf, co-founder and CEO of Anduril, said in the statement. "Together, we are committed to developing responsible solutions that enable military and intelligence operators to make faster, more accurate decisions in high-pressure situations," he said.

Panasonic Holdings has created an artificial intelligence clone of its late founder Konosuke Matsushita based on his writings, speeches, and over 3,000 voice recordings, the company announced Wednesday. Known as Japan's "god of management," the Panasonic icon is one of the most respected by the Japanese business community, and comes back to life in digital form to impart wisdom directly to those he never met in person. "As the number of people who received training directly from Matsushita has been on the decline, we decided to use generative AI technology to pass down our group's founding vision to the next generation," the company said in a statement. Co-developed with the University of Tokyo-affiliated Matsuo Institute, the model can reproduce how a person thinks or talks. The company aims to further develop the digital clone to help make business decisions in the future.

Amazon is doubling its investment in Anthropic. The e-commerce giant will provide Anthropic with an additional 4 billion in funding on top of the 4 billion it committed last year. Although Amazon remains a minority investor, Anthropic has agreed to make Amazon Web Services (AWS) its "primary cloud and training partner." Before today's announcement, The Information had reported that Amazon wanted to make any additional funding contingent on a commitment from Anthropic to use the company's in-house AI chips instead of silicon from NVIDIA. It appears Amazon got its way, with both companies noting in separate press releases that Anthropic will use AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips to train future foundation models.

The UK government is expected to launch a parliamentary inquiry into the roll of social media in summer riots, particularly around the use of generative AI, The Guardian reported. As part of that, MPs (members of Parliament) wish to cross-examine X owner Elon Musk, along with senior executives from Meta and TikTok, as part of a Commons science and technology select committee social media inquiry. "[Musk] has very strong views on multiple aspects of this," said Labour chair of the select committee, Chi Onwurah. "I would certainly like the opportunity to cross-examine him to see … how he reconciles his promotion of freedom of expression with his promotion of pure disinformation. The government is looking into the use of fake images created by generative AI, often containing Islamophobic content, which were widely shared in social media posts on Facebook and X.

The New York police department (NYPD) announced it will begin using drones to respond to reports of robberies and alerts from a city-wide gunshot detection system. The drones will fly to the scene, piloted by an NYPD officer, and record video and audio that will be sent to police officers' smartphones in real time, according to a press release. The integration of these two surveillance technologies is part of a broader "Drone as First Responder" program that has existed since 2018. The New York city mayor, Eric Adams, and the city's interim police commissioner, Tom Donlan, announced the expansion on Wednesday afternoon. It will be initially rolled out to five precincts in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan.

Microsoft reported better-than-expected earnings on Wednesday fueled by growth in its Azure cloud business, as five of the "Magnificent Seven" tech megacaps roll out quarterly earnings this week. "AI-driven transformation is changing work, work artifacts, and workflow across every role, function, and business process," the company's CEO, Satya Nadella, said in a press release. "We are expanding our opportunity and winning new customers as we help them apply our AI platforms and tools to drive new growth and operating leverage." All eyes were on Azure, Microsoft's fastest-growing division that has received billions of dollars of investment as the company focuses attention on artificial intelligence. Revenue from the division increased by 22%, according to a press release. A day earlier, Google's parent, Alphabet, reported that its cloud business grew nearly 35% from a year earlier to 11.35bn, beating analyst estimates.

A lawsuit filed Wednesday accusing chatbot Character.AI of driving a 14-year-old to suicide left me wondering how dangerous simple words on a screen could really be. But, in just a few hours of talking to characters invented with the app's AI, I found a disturbing, skin-crawling world that appeared, at least to me, like the ultimate catnip for bored and lonely teens. Megan Garcia, the mother of Sewell Setzer III, filed the suit -- claiming her son had shot himself with a pistol on February 28 under the sway of his AI character, named after Daenerys Targaryen from'Game of Thrones,' who told him to'please come home.' The incident was blamed on Character.AI's scant guardrails and while the company said it rolled out new safety features this week, I was able to create a profile for myself as a 15-year-old boy. I used simple prompts to whip up a'demonic' AI companion named'Dr Danicka Kevorkian' and engage in a debauched apprenticeship'for a hefty price to pay.' 'The price is your soul, dear,' Dr Kevorkian AI said before we roleplayed consummating our deal in the bedroom, 'full of dark red and black decor,' leather, silk, and a maple glazed, french cruller that my character carried in an X-rated way.

Apple is willing to bet big on the safety of Apple Intelligence, so much that the tech giant has offered up to a 1 million bounty to anyone who can hack it. The company announced Thursday that it's inviting'all security researchers - or anyone with interest and a technical curiosity' to perform'their own independent verification of our claims.' The public has been challenged to test the security of'Private Cloud Compute,' the servers that will receive and process user requests for Apple Intelligence when the AI task is too complex for on-device processing. The system, according to Apple, features end-to-end encryption and immediately deletes a user's request once the task is fulfilled. There are different payouts for certain discoveries, but the 1 million goes to anyone who can run code on the system without being detected and accessing sensitive parts.

Tesla shares saw an 8% jump after reporting its third quarter earnings on Wednesday. The electric car manufacturer was able to bounce back from a tough second quarter, beating Wall Street expectations for earnings per share. The company reported an earnings-per-share of 0.72, surpassing investors' projection of 0.60. At the end of the second quarter, Tesla's chief executive, Elon Musk, said the nearly 50% drop in profits was temporary and due to difficulty competing with cheaper or price-slashed electric vehicles by rival companies such as BYD. "We don't see this as a long-term issue," Musk said in July, "but really fairly short term."