☕️ Apple Intelligence, iPhones, and AirPods - Everything Shown @ Apple Event 2024

The spotlight was on Apple and Tim Cook this Monday as millions tuned in to watch the company unveil the latest of what it's been working on in California. Other key highlights of the week include:

• Reflection 70B and its creator, Matt Shumer, are under fire as reports of fraudulent activity and lying about the model's true nature begin to surface

• AMD quietly hints at dropping its plans to compete with Nvidia's high-end gaming GPUs in favor of more AI development

• Elon Musk refutes reports that say xAI and Tesla are negotiating a revenue deal to license the AI startup models

Join us at AI Tangle as we untangle this week's happenings in AI!

Here's everything announced and unveiled at Apple Event 2024

Apple's glowing 2024 event slowly comes to a close at its headquarters in Cupertino, California, unveiling a wide array of products and updates, including more news of its highly-anticipated AI system - Apple Intelligence. With a whopping peak of nearly 3.6 million concurrent viewers on YouTube, the heat was on Apple and Tim Cook to deliver an event to remember.

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What did Apple and Tim Cook announce?

Built "from the ground up for Apple Intelligence" and taking center stage, the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus will debut in 6.1-inch and 6.3-inch displays along with "Action Buttons," enhanced A18 chips, and improved cameras. Meanwhile, the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max come with screens 0.2" inches bigger than their non-premium counterparts, new A18 Pro chips, 4K 120 FPS video capture, and "the best iPhone battery life ever" for the Pro Max one.

The event also put a spotlight on Apple Intelligence, which will be available on the entire iPhone 16 line, the iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max. Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi, talked on stage about how Apple Intelligence operates, its promise to deliver privacy, a generative emoji feature, a new era for its Siri voice assistant, and an upcoming feature called "Visual Intelligence."

Other product announcements, most with preorders starting on September 20th, made at the event were:

• The Apple Watch Series 10 sports a thinner design, brighter screen, and sleep apnea detection

• Apple's AirPods Pro 2 comes with clinical-grade hearing aid and various new health features

• Just three new colors and USB-C charging for its AirPods Max​

• The AirPods 4 in the smallest ever wireless charging case, the most comfortable design, and the best sounding AirPods

• A debut in satin black - The Apple Watch Ultra 2

Reflection 70B's open-source AI model crown becomes tainted after a single weekend following accusations of fraud

An insurmountable wave of interest in HyperWrite's open-source Reflection 70B AI model might just come crashing down on its CEO, Matt Shumer, as evidence suggests that the whole thing might be a sham. Initially touted as the top open-source AI model, independent attempts failed to reproduce the alleged benchmarks, to which Matt Shumer blamed upload issues for the benchmark scores. Many from the AI community are accusing Matt Shumer of fraud, with some reporting that Reflection 70B is merely a wrapper of Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet.

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AMD deprioritizes its flagship gaming GPUs in favor of further AI acceleration

AMD has started quietly shifting its focus to AI chips over flagship gaming GPUs, prioritizing AI as the company's growth engine. In an interview with Tom's Hardware, AMD's Jack Huynh explained that while gaming remains important, the company's current strategy is to gain market share with affordable GPUs rather than challenge Nvidia's high-end dominance. AMD plans to merge its gaming (RDNA) and data center (CDNA) architectures into a universal architecture it calls UDNA, aiming to capture both AI and gaming markets.

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Elon Musk refutes claims of xAI negotiating a revenue deal with Tesla to license its AI

A recent report from The Wall Street Journal concerning potential plans of xAI striking a deal with Tesla to share xAI-made models for use in the automakers' Full Self-Driving (FSD) system recently got shut down by the CEO of both, Elon Musk. In his X/Twitter post, he states that Tesla has "no need to license anything from xAI," saying that xAI's models are too gigantic for Tesla's onboard computer to handle.

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The voice of Darth Vader will live on as James Earl Jones signs over rights for AI recreation before his death

Known for his performances as Darth Vader in Star Wars and Mufasa in The Lion King, beloved voice actor James Earl Jones passed away at 93 at his home in Dutchess County, New York. However, after spanning across 190 credit screens since his debut in 1952, Jones made sure the array of characters he voiced would live on. In 2022, Jones officially retired from voicing Darth Vader, signing over the rights to film production company Lucasfilm to use AI to recreate his voice for future projects.

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South Korea holds a summit in Seoul to discuss the "blueprint" of military AI among nations

South Korea recently hosted an international summit in Seoul on the 9th of September, gathering over 90 nations, including the US and China, to discuss a blueprint for the responsible military use of AI. The two-day event, co-hosted by the Netherlands, Singapore, Kenya, and the UK, looks to establish non-binding guidelines for AI applications in defense, which follows up on last year's summit in Amsterdam. Highlighted topics include legal reviews, human oversight of autonomous weapons, and AI's role in modern conflicts, such as the Russia-Ukraine war.

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AI book-keeping startup from Miami, finally, raises $50 million in Series B and acquires a $150 million credit line

Miami-based AI book-keeping startup finally (yes, lowercase) recently raised $50 million in Series B funding and a $150 million credit line, putting its total to $305 million in debt since its 2018 inception. Co-founded by Felix Rodriguez, his wife Glennys, and Edwin Mejia, the company helps small and mid-sized businesses manage their financial side of things, along with offering a corporate card and business banking functions. Though the company refused to reveal hard figures, finally says it has seen annual revenue growth of 300% since its Series A in March of 2022.

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A Grade-A Brain Softener (6-min read)

After hatching a plan to go viral with Kermit the Frog icons, The Atlantic's Damon Beres took to X/Twitter with his creation to explore how generative AI amplifies engagement on social media while questioning its creativity, purpose, and role in the online content ecosystem.