☕️ Meta's Llama Returns to Triumph

In the closing days of the week, big AI news took the world by storm with Meta's Llama 3 showcase at the forefront of it, rivaling flagship models of the present - and they've got another model still in training. On the other hand, Microsoft gave the world a sneak peek of its image-to-video model called VASA-1, Logitech went all-in on the "AI PC" hype with "AI peripherals," and Israeli-based Mentee Robotics became another competitor in the humanoid robot scene. Join us at AI Tangle as we untangle this week's happenings in AI.

Meta debuts its most powerful model yet - Llama 3

In trying to keep up with the ever-evolving arms race of AI models, Meta recently debuted a new family of models nicknamed Llama 3. The models, of which Meta indulged the public in just two so far, Llama 3 8B and Llama 3 70B, are claimed to be "among the best-performing generative AI models available today" and rival the likes of Anthropic's Claude 3 and Google's Gemini 1.5 line, according to Meta. With such a hefty claim, what do they have to back it up with, and what else can people expect to see?

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What do we know of Llama 3?

Trained on two custom-built 24,000 GPU clusters, the Llama 3 8B and 70B models both showcase standout competitiveness, with the latter being able to go toe-to-toe with the likes of Gemini 1.5 Pro and Claude 3 Sonnet, though it falls short against Opus in popular benchmarks like MMLU, ARC, DROP, etc. However, that could be subject to change as Meta gave early sneak peeks of the in-training Llama 3 400B, a vastly more powerful and sophisticated model. Though Llama 3 isn't multilingual nor multimodal yet, the company states it is well in their goals.

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Microsoft showcases its eerily realistic image-to-video AI model dubbed VASA-1

Microsoft's most recent AI research paper introduces VASA-1 to the world, a model that creates lifelike, animated talking faces from a single photo and audio file with impressive lip-syncing and head movement. This technology could see use in making natural-looking lip-syncing for games, creating virtual avatars for social media videos, and AI-based movie-making. Despite its potential, the technology is currently solely available to the Microsoft Research team, and there are no plans for a public release as of yet.

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Logitech unveils an "AI button" for its most recent computer mice

Logitech has introduced the Logi AI Prompt Builder, a tool that uses a dedicated "AI button" on a mouse or keyboard to summon ChatGPT. The tool provides users with preset "recipes" for prompting the AI, such as rephrasing text or summarizing press releases. Currently, the Prompt Builder works with ChatGPT in English and is part of Logitech's Logi Options+ bundled software, though the company has stated that they are looking into integrations with other chatbots and adding more languages.

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Israeli-based Mentee Robotics shows the world a glimpse of its Menteebot humanoid robot

Mentee Robotics, an Israeli firm co-founded by Mobileye founder Amnon Shashua, has unveiled its Menteebot, a prototype humanoid robot introduced to a niche field mainly occupied by Figure. The system, which emphasizes computer vision and generative AI, uses large language models to interpret commands and complete tasks. The company has so far raised $17 million and aims to release a production-ready prototype for both industrial and home markets as early as 2025.

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Brave introduces AI to its privacy-centered Brave Search engine

The popular privacy-centered internet browser Brave recently announced that its search engine, Brave Search, is getting a healthy dose of AI to assist in answering user queries, available worldwide already, powered by Mixtral's 8x7B and 7B as its main models. Dubbed "Answer with AI," the feature returns neatly formatted answers to informational questions like "All the Presidents of the United States" and other similar automatically, while non-informational queries require users to activate the AI manually.

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Nothing's fresh line of AI-enhanced earbuds comes equipped with ChatGPT

​Nothing, a UK-based tech company with a name not to be confused with literally nothing, has announced updates to its earbud line, integrating OpenAI's ChatGPT into its latest Ear and Ear (a) models. Users can interact with the AI program via a connected Nothing handset, and the earbuds also feature improved sound, longer battery longevity, and a noise-canceling system. The Ear and Ear (a) models clock in at $149 and $99, respectively, with global shipping starting on April 22.

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Evolution Equity Partners raises $1.1 billion for an AI and cybersecurity fund

NYC-based growth capital investment firm Evolution Equity Partners recently announced that it had launched a cybersecurity and AI fund totaling $1.1 billion. It is the third of its kind in Evolution's history, giving the fund the aptly fitting name of Evolution Technology Fund III with an overabundance of interest. The fund has already backed 15 leading cybersecurity companies, according to one of Evolution's founders, Richard Seewald, and it'll continue chasing investments in the $20 million to $150 million range.

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Protecting The Youth on The Internet (3-min read)

The internet has become wildly accessible over the past decade, with youths getting into the web sooner than ever. Some governments are starting to worry about the young ones' cyber safety - the UK thinks AI could help.

An Overnight AI-valanche (17-min watch)

Join up with AI Explained, a YouTube channel dedicated to covering the latest in AI and tech, as he goes over the monstrous developments in AI that happened overnight, from LLaMa 3 to VASA-1 to more.