The Apple Car is Dead: Company Shifts Focus to AI🚘

Welcome to another edition of Horizon AI,

In a surprising move, Apple has decided to halt its decade-long endeavor to develop an autonomous electric car. Instead, the company is reportedly shifting its focus to Generative AI.

Let's get into it!

Read Time: 3.5 min

Here's what's new today in the Horizon AI

• A Chart to Kickstart Your Day 📈: Gartner forecasts surge to 295 Million AI PCs and Gen AI Smartphones by year-end

• Apple Cancels Decade-long Electric Car Project in Favor of AI 🚘

• Tumblr, WordPress Plan to Sell User Data to OpenAI and Midjourney to Train AI Models

• AI Tutorial: Chat with Gemini directly in Google Messages on your Android phone

• AI Tools to check out

• The Latest in AI and Tech 💡

A chart to kickstart your day

Gartner forecasts surge to 295 Million AI PCs and Gen AI Smartphones by year-end

• A new report from Gartner predicts that by the end of this year, there will be 295 million AI PCs and GenAI smartphones, a significant jump from 29 million in 2023.

Source

AI News

APPLE

Apple Cancels Decade-long Electric Car Project in Favor of AI 🚘

In a surprising move, Apple has stopped its long-rumored development of an electric car under "Project Titan.". The iPhone maker will shift part of the 2,000-person team to focus on other priorities instead - namely generative AI efforts.

Details:

• Apple reportedly struggled with high turnover, constantly changing plans, and internal skepticism around the ambitious project.

• There will be layoffs from the team, but details remain unclear on the number of affected employees.

• Resources from the discontinued car project will shift to expanding Apple's AI capabilities.

The news comes as electric vehicle sales have disappointed, leading several major carmakers to reduce investments and cut prices. Meanwhile, AI is experiencing a surge, and Apple's reported shift in resources could help it close the gap with rivals such as Microsoft and Google.

Source

AUTOMATTIC

Tumblr, WordPress Plan to Sell User Data to OpenAI and Midjourney to Train AI Models

Automattic, the company behind popular online platforms like WordPress and Tumblr, is planning to sell user content to AI companies like MidJourney and OpenAI for training purposes.

Details:

• The goal is to use personal blog posts, images, and other data to train AI.

• Automattic claims they “will share only public content that’s hosted on WordPress and Tumblr from sites that haven’t opted out.”

• The company plans to introduce an opt-out setting to disable the use of your content for AI training. It is unclear if the opt-out will be on by default or require manual disabling by each user.

This move has caused controversy among the user base and even some internal conflict at Automattic, with one manager pulling their own Tumblr photos due to privacy concerns.

Source

AI Tutorial

Chat with Gemini directly in Google Messages on your Android phone

Google has just announced a new feature starting this week: the ability to chat directly with Gemini within the Google Messages app.

This feature is being released gradually and only to Google Messages beta testers for now. To have access to it you need to follow these steps:

*Note: Only available on select Android devices for now: Pixel 6 or later, Pixel Fold, Samsung Galaxy S22 or later, and Samsung Galaxy Z Flip or Z Fold.

1. Sign up for beta testing.

2. Make sure your phone’s language is set to English (might be available in other languages at a later date)

3. On your Android phone, open Google Messages.

4. Tap the chat with Gemini, or tap Start chat and then Gemini.

5. Enter your question or prompt. You can also add a photo by tapping 'Show attach media screen'.

6. Give feedback: Touch and hold the response you want to give feedback on and select either 👍 or 👎 .

AI Tools to check out

✍🏻 Paperpal: Comprehensive AI writing toolkit that helps students and researchers achieve 2x the writing in half the time.

💹 Hook Generator GPT: Generate hooks to make viral threads and boost your Twitter game.

💡 Slogan Generator: Summarize your marketing in 1 sentence.

📱 Clipral: AI-powered tool for transforming long videos into short, viral clips for TikTok, Instagram, and more.

🎶 Spytik: Find a winning niche on TikTok in just a few clicks.

The latest in AI and Tech

OpenAI accuses NYT of hacking ChatGPT to set up copyright suit

OpenAI claims the New York Times hired someone to hack and exploit bugs in ChatGPT to generate misleading evidence for the case. OpenAI says the Times caused the technology to reproduce its material through "deceptive prompts that blatantly violate OpenAI's terms of use."

Former Twitter engineers building AI-powered newsreader called Particle

A team led by former Twitter engineers is developing a new platform to aid individuals in processing news and information using AI. Particle.news has recently entered its private beta stage, providing a "multi-perspective" news reading experience that utilizes AI to summarize the news.

Samsung introduces new memory chip with 'highest capacity' for AI

Samsung has developed a groundbreaking new high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chip called HBM3E 12H that boasts over 50% higher capacity and performance compared to previous models. The chip is tailored to meet the growing data processing demands of AI services with its ultra-high capacity.

Google CEO blasts ‘Unacceptable’ Gemini image generation failure

In a memo Tuesday evening, Google CEO Sundar Pichai addressed the company’s artificial intelligence mistakes, which led to Google taking its Gemini image-generation feature offline for further testing. Pichai described the issues as "problematic" and "completely unacceptable," stating that they "have offended our users and shown bias."

Klarna says its AI assistant does the work of 700 people

Swedish payment app Klarna deployed an AI assistant using OpenAI to handle customer service chats. In its first month, the bot managed 2.3 million conversations, equal to 700 human agents' work. The company claims customer satisfaction was on par with human agents and it resolved issues 25% more accurately and in less time.

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Gina 👩🏻‍💻