Author HubMatthias Bastian

Matthias is the co-founder and publisher of THE DECODER, exploring how AI is fundamentally changing the relationship between humans and computers.
AI in practice

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince sees trouble ahead for the open web

AI research

Wait a minute! Researchers say AI's "chains of thought" are not signs of human-like reasoning

AI in practice
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US Copyright Office says fair use does not cover AI trained on "vast troves of copyrighted works

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AI in practice
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Google is making Imagen 4 available via the Gemini API and in AI Studio. According to Google, the new text-to-image model offers significantly better quality when rendering text than the previous version, Imagen 3. There are two variants: Imagen 4 for general tasks ($0.04 per image) and Imagen 4 Ultra ($0.06 per image), which Google says is designed more for accurate following of prompts. The following AI slop comic was generated with Imagen Ultra 4, which can be tested free of charge in Google AI Studio.

Image: Imagen 4 Ultra prompted by THE DECODER
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AI in practice
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OpenAI has removed all references to its "io" project after a trademark dispute with IYO Audio, whose name is pronounced the same as "io." The planned AI device, a collaboration between Sam Altman and Jony Ive, was originally teased under the "io" name, but IYO Audio objected and took legal action. IYO Audio, which is working on a similar AI product and presented it during a 2024 TED Talk, claims rights to the name. OpenAI says it disagrees with IYO's trademark claim and is reviewing its options. It's unclear if Ive intended to keep using the "io" name after OpenAI acquired the hardware startup, which was founded before the official announcement of the partnership.

AI in practice
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Cybercriminals are upgrading WormGPT with stronger AI models. The original WormGPT, which launched in June 2023, used the open source GPT-J model to create a censorship-free LLM for cybercrime. Now, Cato CTRL reports that two new versions have surfaced on BreachForums: "keanu-WormGPT," which actually taps Grok from xAI through its API using a custom jailbreak, and "xzin0vich-WormGPT," which runs on Mixtral from Mistral AI. Both are distributed via Telegram and get around the original models' safeguards by manipulating system prompts. This lets them generate phishing emails, malicious code, and other attack tools. Cato calls this a "significant shift" in the misuse of large language models.

WormGPT now comes in new variants powered by Grok and Mixtral, making it easier for cybercriminals to create phishing emails and malicious code. | Image: Cato Networks
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AI in practice
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Google has released Magenta RealTime (Magenta RT), an open-source AI model for live music creation and control. The model responds to text prompts, audio samples, or both. Magenta RT is built on an 800 million parameter Transformer and trained on about 190,000 hours of mostly instrumental music. One technical limitation is that it can only access the last ten seconds of generated audio.

The code and model are available under open licenses on GitHub and Hugging Face. Users can test the model for free on Colab TPUs. Google plans to add local use, customizations, and publish a research paper soon.

AI in practice
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Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati has raised $2 billion for her new AI startup, Thinking Machines Lab. The six-month-old company is now valued at $10 billion, with no public product or revenue. According to its website, the startup focuses on human-AI collaboration and customizable AI, avoiding the more lofty superintelligence goals promoted by other labs. Murati left OpenAI in fall 2024 after internal disagreements. The high valuation appears driven by her reputation, similar to Safe Super Intelligence, the startup led by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, which is valued at over $30 billion with no product.

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AI in practice

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince sees trouble ahead for the open web

AI research

New Othello experiment supports the world model hypothesis for large language models

AI in practice

ChatGPT might be draining your brain, MIT warns - what ‘cognitive debt’ means for you

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