Author HubMatthias Bastian
Elon Musk's AI company, xAI, has just released its Grok chatbot as a free iOS app for US users. The app gives people access to xAI's latest language model, Grok 2, and lets them ask questions, create images, and analyze photos they upload. To keep its answers current, Grok pulls information from Twitter and the web. For now, the app is limited to iPhone users in the US. Musk had previously announced that Grok 3 would arrive by the end of 2024, calling it the "the world's most powerful AI by every metric by December," but it hasn't been released. If the rumor mill is right, Grok 3 is currently being tested and could be released in the coming weeks.
An engineer who goes by "STS 3D" caught OpenAI's attention - and not in a good way. The developer built a rifle system that could be controlled through ChatGPT voice commands, demonstrating in a viral video how the system could automatically aim and fire at targets using OpenAI's Realtime API. OpenAI quickly stepped in, revoking the developer's API access for violating their terms of service. While OpenAI has its own military contracts, the company has a strict policy against anyone using tools like ChatGPT for weapons systems.
Google is experimenting with a new feature called "Daily Listen" that uses AI to create personalized podcast-style summaries in its Discover feed. The system pulls together a roughly five-minute audio episode based on topics and stories you follow, serving it up in the carousel below the search bar in Google's mobile apps. If you're in the US and want to try it out, you can enable Daily Listen through Search Labs on either Android or iOS. Once activated, your first AI-generated episode will show up the following day.
The technology seems to share DNA with Google's NotebookLM podcast system. Like other AI tools that process text, these audio summaries make up facts, especially when trying to digest and synthesize large amounts of diverse content. It is better to treat these summaries as helpful but fallible assistants than as authoritative sources.
