Snapchat’s “My AI” drawing flak

Good Morning folks, with the opportunities that AI presents, everyone wants to use it. But that doesn't mean everyone is happy with how it's being used.

Here’s what we have lined up for you today -

1. Snapchat’s “My AI” drawing flak

2. Scaling Transformer to 1 Million tokens

3. AI and copyrights in the entertainment industry

4. Harry Potter characters, Wes Anderson style

5. Sundar Pichai on 60 minutes

As always if you enjoy reading our posts be sure to spread the word !

Snapchat’s “My AI” drawing flak

Last week we discussed Snapchat’s “My AI” being released to users globally. In it’s launch event Snapchat shared how the feature was popular amongst users with a potential to disrupt how social media platforms might look in the future.

However, something that Snapchat was hoping not to happen has happened instead. In the week following the announcement Snapchat’s average U.S. App Store review was 1.67, with 75% of reviews being one-star. In Q1 of 2023 Snapchat’s average user rating was 3.05 with only 35% reviews being one star.

Snapchat received 3x more one-star ratings on 20th April, the day after “My AI’s” global release was announced.

The Snapchat and My AI criticism comes at a time when the hype around AI has continued to soar. There is not one company that has not thought about integrating the technology in its offerings.

Users have expressed multiple issues with the feature -

• The feature is pinned to the top of their feed and cant be removed or unpinned. This gets in the way of regular conversations taking up more real estate on the screen.

• Removing it from the feed requires a paid subscription.

• Users have found it to be creepy, specifically how the AI is aware of their location even if they are not sharing it on the Snap Map feature.

My AI shows how much personal data social apps really have about us, something that users were aware of but didn’t see it explicitly. Now this same reality is being brought forward directly to the users through features like My AI which are exposed to such data.

Clearly it has left users divided.

Scaling Transformer to 1M tokens

If this research paper can really do what it claims, it could potentially drive the next paradigm of longer and allegedly unlimited token limits.

Why is this important ?

GPT models have a context length that they cannot exceed. For models to understand language, words and characters are converted to tokens. The model then predicts and produces the next string of tokens which it outputs for the user to see.

Currently the state of the art commercial use model for token limit is GPT-4, which can process ​​up to 32K tokens for its inputs and outputs. Now imagine increasing the token limit by at least 30x.

This is what this paper promises !

AI and copyrights in the entertainment industry

Last week we shared how Tiktok user “Ghostwriter” used AI to create a song featuring Drake and The Weeknd. The song garnered over 20 millions streams in 2 days, some chart topping numbers !

Universal Music Group, which reps both Drake and The Weeknd quickly got the song removed from Spotify and Apple Music.

The Schumacher family is also taking legal action against the media outlet that used AI to release a deep fake interview featuring the former F1 champion.

Anyone who is moderately famous will eventually have an AI cloned out of them. IP lawyers have their work cut out for them with the opportunity to make big bank suing impersonators.

Around the industry -

1. AI is hijacking these actors’ voices. Can you tell the difference?

2. Britain sets up $125 million taskforce to drive AI

3. AI in Hiring and Evaluating Workers: What Americans Think

4. OpenAI's speech-to-text API "Whisper" just got supercharged

5. The computing platform underlying AI with Nvidia’s CEO

6. Google brings generative AI to cybersecurity

7. AI app Petey uses ChatGPT to make Apple Music playlists for you

8. GitLab’s new security feature uses AI to explain vulnerabilities to developers

9. US Supreme Court rejects computer scientist's lawsuit over AI-generated inventions

Product Corner -

There are way too many cool products to showcase just one !

• Meticulous AI : Catch UI bugs without writing or maintaining UI tests

• HealthGPT : Interact with your health data from Apple health

• ChartGPT : Insert data and build interactive charts

• AI Diary : Your intelligent personal diary for growth

• SafeGPT : Browser extension to detect

• Gnbly : Your daily communications automated by AI

Harry Potter characters, Wes Anderson style

60 mins with Sundar Pichai