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.

If you've been dreaming about spending your summer whispering sweet nothings into the digital ears of one of the seductive ChatGPT voice assistants that OpenAI showed off last month, you'll have to dream a little longer. On Tuesday, the company announced that its "advanced Voice Mode" feature needs more time in the oven "to reach our bar to launch." The feature will be available to a small group of users to gather feedback, and then launch to all paying ChatGPT customers in the fall. "We're improving the model's ability to detect and refuse certain content," OpenAI posted on X. "We're also working on improving the user experience and preparing our infrastructure to scale to millions while maintaining real-time responses." We're sharing an update on the advanced Voice Mode we demoed during our Spring Update, which we remain very excited about: We had planned to start rolling this out in alpha to a small group of ChatGPT Plus users in late June, but need one more month to reach our bar to launch.… Voices have been a part of ChatGPT since 2023.

The frontier of AI just got pushed a little further forward. On Friday, Anthropic, the AI lab set up by a team of disgruntled OpenAI staffers, released the latest version of its Claude LLM. The company said Thursday that the new model – the technology that underpins its popular chatbot Claude – is twice as fast as its most powerful previous version. Anthropic said in its evaluations, the model outperforms leading competitors like OpenAI on several key intelligence capabilities, such as coding and text-based reasoning. Anthropic only released the previous version of Claude, 3.0, in March.

The music industry has officially declared war on Suno and Udio, two of the most prominent AI music generators. The plaintiffs seek damages up to 150,000 per work infringed. The lawsuit against Suno is filed in Massachusetts, while the case against Udio's parent company Uncharted Inc. was filed in New York. Suno and Udio did not immediately respond to a request to comment. "Unlicensed services like Suno and Udio that claim it's'fair' to copy an artist's life's work and exploit it for their own profit without consent or pay set back the promise of genuinely innovative AI for us all," Recording Industry Association of America chairman and CEO Mitch Glazier said in a press release.

When OpenAI announced GPT-4, its latest large language model, last March, it sent shockwaves through the tech world. It was clearly more capable than anything seen before at chatting, coding, and solving all sorts of thorny problems--including school homework. Anthropic, a rival to OpenAI, announced today that it has made its own AI advance that will upgrade chatbots and other use cases. But although the new model is the world's best by some measures, it's more of a step forward than a big leap. Anthropic's new model, called Claude 3.5 Sonnet, is an upgrade to its existing Claude 3 family of AI models.