Digital human avatar technology provider Didimo Inc. is bringing generative artificial intelligence to the world of video game character creation. With today's launch of Popul8, Didimo says, game developers now have a simple way to create hundreds of unique game characters in a fraction of the usual time and cost. Popul8 is a generative AI tool that builds on Didimo's existing avatar creation toolset, accelerating the time it takes for developers to create extremely lifelike, 3D game and metaverse characters with full control over their appearance. Traditionally, it has taken developers countless hours to create realistic-looking characters for their computer games, with painstaking attention to detail a very necessary part of the design process. With Popul8, it becomes possible to design animated and diverse avatars in a matter of minutes. The tool allows for consistent designs, with users able to upload template characters from any game to ensure their new avatars match its aesthetic style.

Generative artificial intelligence company Stability AI Ltd. today released an updated version of its popular open-source photorealistic image generation model. London-based Stability AI is the developer of Stable Diffusion, an AI model that can automatically generate realistic-looking images based on text prompts. It's not the only AI model with that capability, but what differentiates it is that it's available under an open-source license and can run on relatively simple hardware. These two features have helped it quickly amass a large user base. The latest model is called Stable Diffusion XL, and it's the latest addition to the Stable Diffusion suite.

Nvidia Corp. wants to tell the world it's at the forefront of the generative artificial intelligence movement at a time when the hype over models such as ChatGPT reaches fever pitch. In particular, Nvidia is especially focused on making sure that anyone can access the infrastructure and software needed to train generative AI models. At its GTC 2023 today, the chipmaker unveiled a new AI supercomputing service to enable precisely that. It's called Nvidia DGX Cloud, and as the name suggests, it's a cloud-hosted version of its popular DGX platform, which has become the enterprise standard for AI training. In addition, the company announced a set of new cloud services under the banner of Nvidia AI Foundations, which can help companies use DGX Cloud to build, refine and operate customized large language and generative AI models trained on their own proprietary data, for unique, domain-specific tasks.

Yusuf Mehdi, the corporate vice president of Microsoft's modern life, search and devices group, announced the milestone in a Wednesday blog post. The update comes about a month after the company released a new version of Bing that features an artificial intelligence chatbot. The chatbot, which Microsoft developed in collaboration with OpenAI LLC, can generate elaborate natural language responses to user questions.

New York-based Runway develops AI models that ease image and video editing tasks for creative professionals. Last year, the startup helped co-create the popular Stable Diffusion generative AI model. In December, it raised $50 million Series C funding round a reported valuation of $500 million.

The viral awareness and adoption of artificial intelligence foundation models such as OpenAI LP's ChatGPT have created both an opportunity and threat to automation platforms generally and robotic process automation point tools specifically. On the one hand, large language models can reduce complexity and accelerate the adoption of enterprise automation platforms. The flip side is that software robots are designed to improve human productivity through intelligent automation and GPT models could cannibalize some, if not many, use cases initially targeted by RPA vendors. This reality is causing customers to rethink their automation strategies and vendors to evolve their messaging rapidly to position foundation models as an accelerant to their platforms. In this Breaking Analysis, we provide you with a perspective on how foundation models could have an impact on automation platforms. We review Enterprise Technology Research data that quantifies the ascendency of OpenAI.

The rise of predictive artificial intelligence and chatbots such as OpenAI Inc.'s ChatGPT has been well-documented, but not so well-documented is a concurrent rise in scams trying to take advantage of the hype in the sector. A new report from researchers at S.C. Bitdefender SRL today shines some light on the rise of highly sophisticated investment scams and how they're trying to use the excitement around ChatGPT to suck in potential victims. The "AI-powered" fraudulent campaigns typically begin with unsolicited emails that have subject lines such as "ChatGPT: New AI bot has everyone going crazy about it" and "New ChatGPTchatbot is make [sic] everyone crazy now – but it'll very soon be as mundane a tool as Google." The emails typically include fake OpenAI and ChatGPT graphics (image above) to make them appear to be legitimate emails. Upon accessing the link in the email, users are directed to a copycat version of ChatGPT, luring them with financial opportunities that pay up to $10,000 per month "on the unique ChatGPT platform."

The sky is no longer the limit for cloud computing giants, as the slowing economy strikes at one of tech's biggest growth stories of the past decade. Two of the top cloud providers, Amazon Web Services Inc. and Google LLC, today revealed revenues in their cloud units, which have boosted their growth and profits for years now. The results weren't bad -- but cloud is no longer on the kind of rocket ride that can overcome big slowdowns in e-commerce and ad spending. Alphabet's Google Cloud unit posted a 33% rise in its fourth quarter, to $7.315 billion, with an operating loss of $480 million, down significantly from a loss of $890 million a year ago. Zacks Consensus Forecast had Google Cloud revenue rising 32% from a year ago, to $7.3 billion, so it managed to meet expectations but was still down from 38% growth in the third quarter.

Putting data in the hands of every business user has become fundamental in today's enterprise ecosystem. As an end-to-end data science and machine learning platform, Dataiku enables any professional to be a data analyst for better decision-making through democratization, according to Jed Dougherty (pictured), vice president of platform strategy at Dataiku. "I don't know if data analysts are going away; I think everybody's just going to have to become a bit more of one," Dougherty said. "Just like how Excel taught everybody how to use the spreadsheet, in the future, in the next five, 10 years, the democratization of AI means that tools like Dataiku and other data science tools are going to teach everybody how to analyze data." Dougherty spoke with theCUBE industry analyst Lisa Martin at the recent AWS re:Invent conference, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media's livestreaming studio. They discussed how Dataiku facilitates data democratization so that anyone can be a data analyst.

Inbenta, a provider of a platform for conversational artificial intelligence tools such as chatbots, knowledge management and search, today announced that it has raised $40 million in new funding to continue building its product base and expand into new markets. The funding round was led by Tritium Partners and brings the total raised by the company to $60 million. Inbenta was founded in 2011 and provides a conversational AI platform that uses natural language processing, which allows it to understand human speech and context in order to answer questions rapidly and with a high degree of accuracy. The company's tools allow businesses to build tailor-made customer-facing solutions more easily that can be dropped into their existing communication channels, as well as knowledge base searches that can open up company information for customers. "Inbenta's conversational AI is a game changer for any business that has to handle customer inquiries, whether simple questions or more complicated tasks," said Chief Executive Melissa Solis.