Google says it will launch its 'AI Overview' search summaries to billions of users by year's end
| For May 14, 2024 |  |
| Here’s a look at today's AI briefing: - Google expands AI Search summaries to U.S. users.
- xAI negotiating $10B cloud server deal with Oracle.
- The Bot Company, founded by former Cruise CEO, raises $150M.
- Anthropic iOS app trails ChatGPT in first-week downloads.
Beth
p/beth-duckett | |
| 1 | | Google rolled out "AI Overviews" to U.S. users of its main search engine today, marking its largest overhaul to Search in years. The feature uses AI to summarize answers to complex questions at the top of search results. After a year of testing, Google expects to deploy the AI overviews to over 1 billion Search users globally by year's end. AI Overviews: - "AI Overviews," formerly the Search Generative Experience, uses AI to gather and synthesize information from multiple web sources.
- The overviews only appear when Google's tech deems them the fastest and most effective response for complex queries.
- For simpler searches, users will continue to see Google’s standard ranked web links in results.
- The overviews are an extension of Search and cannot be completely turned off.
More: - Google announced the rollout of AI Overviews alongside other AI features at today's I/O developer conference.
- Google DeepMind announced a prototype AI agent called "Project Astra."
- It's an early version of a universal assistant that answers real-time questions through video and audio in a conversational way.
- Astra can use a smartphone's camera and audio to analyze and "see" its surroundings, such as locating glasses left in a room.
- Google launched an upgraded version of Gemini 1.5 Pro, including the ability to handle more data, as well as a new Gemini 1.5 Flash AI model that's as powerful but faster to run for smaller tasks.
- Both models can process text, images, and videos.
- Google says Gemini will one day replace its Assistant on Android phones.
Other I/O announcements: - Google's new video-generating AI, Veo, produces high-quality 1080p videos of over a minute in different styles, competing with OpenAI's Sora.
- "AI Sandbox" is a suite of generative AI tools for crafting music and sounds using user prompts.
- Google revealed Trillium, its sixth-generation tensor processing unit (TPU), set for late 2024 cloud customer release.
- Additionally, Google Cloud plans to offer Nvidia's Blackwell GPUs starting in early 2025.
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| 2 | | Elon Musk's AI startup xAI is negotiating a $10B cloud server deal with Oracle, The Information reported. The multiyear cloud-computing contract would make xAI one of Oracle's biggest customers. More: - xAI reportedly wants to rent Oracle cloud servers over an undisclosed number of years, a source told The Information.
- The talks are ongoing and there's no certainty that an agreement will be reached.
- Last year, Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison said xAI had signed a deal to train its AI models in Oracle's cloud infrastructure.
- XAI is reportedly Oracle's largest H100 customer, using over 15,000 of the Nvidia-made AI chips.
- Ellison said Musk's company wanted more computing power and Oracle was "in the process of getting them more.”
Zoom out: - Last month, reports claimed xAI was about to close a funding round of $6B, valuing the AI company at $18B.
- The funding could help boost xAI's development of Grok, its "witty and rebellious" chatbot.
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| 3 | | The Bot Company, a startup specializing in household robots, secured $150M in seed funding, reaching a valuation of $550M. The company was formed by Cruise's Kyle Vogt and Luke Holoubek alongside Tesla's Paril Jain. More: - Vogt, Cruise's founder and former CEO, described the new venture on X, writing The Bot Company is "building bots that do chores so you don't have to."
- He continued: "So many things compete for our time — commutes, longer working hours, and the complexities of modern life."
- The Bot Company's team "has spent years building robots (including the self-driving kind) that give people some of that time back," Vogt added, "And we’re taking that a step further with this company.”
- Key investors in the $150M round include Stripe's Patrick and John Collison, Spark Capital's Nabeel Hyatt, angel investor Daniel Gross, and Nat Friedman, the former GitHub CEO who now runs a major AI fund.
Zoom out: - Vogt founded Cruise in 2013 and sold it to GM in 2016. He stepped down as CEO in November, shortly after the self-driving car company suspended its vehicles on public roads.
- Jain, The Bot Company's CTO, is a former tech lead and AI manager at Tesla who worked on its Full Self-Driving software.
- Holoubek, an engineer at Bot, is a former technical adviser to Cruise's CTO.
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| 4 | | Anthropic's new iOS app featuring Claude 3 garnered 157,000 global downloads in its first week, trailing ChatGPT's 480,000 U.S. installs in the same timeframe. 
What happened: U.S. AI startup Anthropic launched its first iPhone app for its chatbot Claude on May 1. The free offering competes with the iOS version of OpenAI's ChatGPT, along with others like Perplexity's app and Inflection AI's Pi. What the numbers show: The Claude iOS app saw an initial strong uptake mainly in the U.S., though downloads fell significantly within a week of its release, from 43,000 on day one to 8,000 by day seven. What it means: Interest in non-ChatGPT mobile AI apps like Claude may be low, possibly due to lesser brand recognition and a more competitive market than when ChatGPT first launched on iOS a year ago. | | | |
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 | AI and technology writer | | Beth is a contributing editor and writer of Inside's AI and Tech newsletters. She has written for publications including USA Today, the Arizona Business Gazette, and The Arizona Republic, where she received recognition with a Pulitzer Prize nomination and a First Amendment Award for collaborative reporting on state pension cost increases. You can reach her at Beth.Duckett@yahoo.com. | | This newsletter was edited by Beth Duckett | |
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