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Lore Issue #40: Announcing Alpha

Author

Nathan Lands
July 19, 2023

Good morning.

We’ve got a lot of exciting news today, with Facebook teaming up with Microsoft to launch LlaMA 2.0 and much more.

But first, we’ve got an exciting announcement of our own.

For the last few months, we’ve been exploring the creation of an AI agency to help serve the exponentially growing need for AI expertise. Eventually, this led us to talk with the great folks at Tiny, owned by Andrew Wilkinson.

Today, we're thrilled to announce that we're collaborating with Tiny on their new AI agency, Alpha.

Alpha is a product design studio that aims to become the leading agency supporting companies as they transition into the Age of AI. They have a capable team of designers and builders who can bring any generative AI product to life.

Backed by Tiny, the owner of Meta Labs, the agency behind early product designs for tech giants like Uber and Slack, Alpha is well-positioned to navigate the complexities of integrating AI into product ecosystems. And we’re building a killer team.

We hope this partnership with Alpha will help us to share more hands-on AI expertise based on insights and learnings from real projects. This is one of several moves we plan to make at Lore over the next year to help put us at the center of all things AI and provide more value to the community we’re building.

  • Wing Closes $600 Million AI-Focused Fund. (Link)

  • Tractable snaps up $65M led by SoftBank for car and property damage appraisals using AI. (Link)

  • Vendict emerges with $9.5M in funding to automate security compliance with generative AI. (Link)

  • RecruitBot raises $8.2M in additional seed funding to expand AI-driven recruitment platform. (Link)

  • Infinite Canvas raises $6M in funding, launches AI-powered Discord game. (Link)

  • Reworkd AI has raised a $1.25M pre-seed to build AI agents for business tasks. (Link)

Meta and Microsoft Partner To Launch Llama 2.0

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg

Meta has announced Llama 2, the next generation of their open-source large language model. Available free for both research and commercial use, Llama 2 represents an expanded partnership between Meta and Microsoft.

Llama now being available for commercial use is a big deal. It means that companies have a real alternative to using GPT-4.

Considering Microsoft’s deep relationship with the closed-source rival to Llama 2, ChatGPT by OpenAI, we're curious how this relationship will work.

We recommend you try out Llama and compare it to different LLMs for yourself. The easiest way is to use the Vercel AI playground.

Elon Musk Unveils New AI Venture, xAI, on Twitter Space

Elon Musk recently unveiled his latest project, a new AI company named xAI, and gave more details about it during a Twitter Space.

Musk clarified the mission: to develop an AI focused on understanding the universe and pursuing truth. He stated that you can’t really have AGI until an AI has solved at least one fundamental physics problem.

He expressed his intent to democratize AI research by creating tools that will empower broader research and societal advancements.

In the session, Musk voiced concerns over AI being trained to be politically correct and stated that xAI's AI will be allowed to express what it considers to be true, even if it sparks controversy.

He sees xAI as a potential competitor to industry giants like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI, focusing on making strides in real-world AI applications beyond just large language models. He also suggested that xAI will likely collaborate with Twitter and Tesla for training data, tho made it clear it will be done with independent board approval and structured in a way that benefits all parties.

To hear more about xAI's mission and Musk's thoughts, you can listen to the full recording of the Twitter Spaces session here.

Wix Introduces AI-Driven Website Builder

Wix AI

In a significant step forward, website builder Wix is introducing an AI Site Generator tool. Wix already had AI tools in their editor, but this is something new.

Now, users can create a full-featured site by simply typing a description and responding to a few prompts. The AI generates everything, from design to text and images.

We’re excited to see what happens when anyone can create a beautiful website with just some words. Imagine what kind of opportunities that will create for more people to become entrepreneurs.

Other news:

  • Air, a conversational AI with reportedly 50,000+ businesses on the beta waitlist, was announced by the founder on Twitter. Founder Caleb Maddix claims AIr can perform a full 5-40 minute long sales & customer service call with AI. (Link)

  • Indian AI Anchorwoman ‘Lisa’ Introduces Herself To Viewers On Odisha TV, a new channel created for her. (Link)

  • AP and OpenAI agree to share select news content and technology in new collaboration. (Link)

Harness the Power of Generative AI with Alpha

Navigating the new era of AI and need some help? Alpha is here to guide your journey.

Alpha specializes in unlocking generative AI's potential, transforming it into actionable solutions for your business.

Here's what Alpha brings to the table:

  • Interface Design: Alpha merges aesthetics with functionality, crafting user-centric interfaces that make AI intuitive.

    Model Selection: Alpha chooses the ideal AI models for your needs, optimizing performance and efficiency.

    Prompt Engineering: They're masters at designing prompts that produce precise, desired outputs.

    Fine Tuning: Alpha ensures AI models are perfectly trained and tuned for new domains and custom use-cases.

    Configuring API Usage: With Alpha, frequent changes in AI models don't disrupt your product operations.

    Data Protection: Alpha prioritizes your privacy, securing personal and sensitive data.

    With Alpha's three-step process - understand, build, unleash - you'll not only get innovative AI products, but also continual optimization to improve results over time.

    Due to high demand, they’ve got a waitlist. Join the waitlist today!

Generative TV Arrives During Writer’s Strike

Amid the Hollywood writer’s strike, The Simulation has announced a paper and demo of Generative TV & Showrunner Agents.

The video shows a demo where people can create their own South Park episodes without Trey Parker and Matt Stone ever having to get out of bed.

Check out the tweet below and the paper to learn more. Notably, there isn’t a public demo, and Ben Nash, a well-known AI video creator, believes it’s a hoax.

Regardless if the project is actual or not, the concept is fantastic.

Johnny Cash Sings Barbie Girl

AI Music is getting good. Listen to this song where Johnny Cash sings Barbie Girl, mixed in with Spice Girls and others. It’s not perfect, but it’s like 95% there.

Flappy Birds Created in 7 Minutes with Code Interpreter

OpenAI’s Code Interpreter continues to blow us away with all it can do.

Our friend Alex Ker used it to create a full demo of Flappy Birds in only 7 minutes! Check out his thread if you want to learn how he did it.

  • ElevenLabs V2: AI-powered voices, now improved. (Link)

  • Coframe: AI-powered A/B testing. (Link)

  • Wope: Data + AI: powerful SEO insights for generative search era. (Link)

  • Promp: A Marketplace to Discover, Collaborate, and Innovate AI Prompts (Link)

Find more tools at FutureTools.io.

  • A16Z Companion-App Github Repo: A lightweight stack to create and host your own AI companions. (Link)

  • How Is ChatGPT’s Behavior Changing Over Time? (Link)

  • How AI Will DISRUPT The Entire World In 3 Years | Tom Bilyeu interview with Emad Mostaque. (Link)

  • INVE: Interactive Neural Video Editing. (Link)

  • State of AI Development: 34000% growth in AI projects, OpenAI's dominance, the rise of open-source, and more. (Link)

  • DreamTeacher: Pretraining Image Backbones with Deep Generative Models. (Link)

That's it!

See you next week!

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