Matthias Bastian
Matthias is the co-founder and publisher of THE DECODER, exploring how AI is fundamentally changing the relationship between humans and computers.
Read full article about: Google replaces Assistant with Gemini
Google is replacing the Assistant on Android devices with the recently launched Gemini app by default. When users download the Google Assistant app from the Play Store, they will receive the Gemini app instead, including a modified app icon. To continue using Google Assistant, users will need to manually switch back in the settings. One Reddit user reported that the Assistant app on his new Galaxy S24 Plus automatically switched to Gemini after a regular app update, even though he had not previously selected Gemini. The standalone Gemini app was also not installed on his device. This suggests that Gemini will replace Google Assistant.
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Source: Android Authority
Read full article about: OpenAI rival Anthropic gets another $750 million injection from Menlo Ventures
OpenAI competitor Anthropic secured another $750 million in an investment deal with venture capital firm Menlo Ventures this month, the New York Times reports. This follows a year-long funding spree for the company, with investments totaling $7.3 billion. Major contributors include Google with $2 billion, Amazon with $4 billion, and two Asian telecom companies with $100 million. Anthropic initially raised $450 million last May from investors including Google and Salesforce. Part of the deal with Amazon, and likely Google, is that Anthropic will buy cloud capacity from AWS for AI training and inference. That way, big tech companies like Amazon, Google, Nvidia, or Microsoft can benefit from AI in two ways: they could get a big return on investment when AI stars one day turn a profit, and at the same time, they're creating future big customers.
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Source: The New York Times
Read full article about: Meta's Aria smart glasses dataset helps shape the future of AI conversations
Meta has released the MMCSG (Multi-Modal Conversations in Smart Glasses) dataset, featuring two-sided conversations recorded using Aria glasses. The dataset includes multi-channel audio, video, accelerometer, and gyroscope data, and is aimed at supporting research in areas such as automatic speech recognition, activity detection, and speaker diarization. The glasses capture video and audio with seven microphones, along with inertial measurement unit (IMU) measurements. All data was collected from consenting participants and has been anonymized to ensure privacy. The MMCSG dataset could potentially be used for applications like real-time language translation. More information can be found in the related research paper and the dataset is available for download under Meta's Data License.
