You've never seen a robot like this before...

They're Bringing Mona Lisa Back...as a Rapping Avatar??

Author

Brian Hanson
April 18, 2024

Welcome to Another Issue of
AI for Business

Hey y’all! 👋

Still catching up with all the AI happenings?

I know they’re bit overwhelming, but I’ve got you covered!

Today, we break down the most important AI updates and explore how they could impact your business operations and strategy.

Ready?

Let's dive in!

Read time: 3.5 minutes

TRENDING AI NEWS

What happened: Boston Dynamics has launched a new fully electric version of its iconic Atlas humanoid robot, designed specifically for real-world commercial and industrial applications.

The updated Atlas robot ditches hydraulics for an all-electric design in partnership with Hyundai. This allows for increased strength, broader range of motion, and new gripper variations to handle diverse manipulation tasks.

Some key enhancements include:

  • Fully electric design replaces hydraulics for increased strength and dexterity

  • Enhanced mobility to navigate challenging environments like factories

  • Modular grippers and attachments for versatile object manipulation

  • Optimized for tasks like warehouse work, manufacturing, construction

Through video demonstrations, Boston Dynamics showcased Atlas ability to lift objects, navigate terrain, and potentially take on human-scale physical work.

How it might impact you: For businesses, Atlas opens up opportunities to automate dangerous, labor-intensive, or higher-cost manual tasks, but it also somehow raises societal concerns around robot workforce displacement.

Do you think the new Atlas robot will create more jobs than it displaces?

I'd love to know your thoughts.

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What happened: Microsoft has unveiled VASA-1, a powerful new AI system that can turn any portrait photo into a photorealistic talking video avatar, animated just by an audio source.

Using just a single image and an audio clip, VASA-1 can generate highly lifelike videos showing that person's face seamlessly animated - with accurate lip syncing, natural head movements, emotional expressions, and more.

Key capabilities include:

  • Animating generic AI-generated faces or famous portraits like the Mona Lisa

  • Reproducing human conversational cues and emotional states

  • On-the-fly HD video generation at 40fps with negligible lag

  • Potential for real-time engagement with AI assistant avatars

How you can take advantage of it: For enterprises, it opens up new avenues for training videos, customer service chatbots, and data privacy by animating generic avatars instead of real people.

However, alongside these enterprise benefits, the potential to create misleading 'fake' videos and deepfakes is another issue Microsoft has also acknowledged, noting that safeguards will be essential to address this.

What happened: Meta has announced the rollout of its new AI assistant called Meta AI across all its major platforms - WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger.

Powered by Meta's latest large language model Llama 3, the virtual assistant offers a suite of generative AI capabilities:

  • Answering queries on virtually any topic with "real-time knowledge" from Google and Bing

  • Generating and editing images/animations from text prompts

  • Assisting with tasks like writing, math problems, coding etc.

  • Accessible via a universal search interface within Meta's apps

Users can access Meta AI through a search box interface within the respective apps or on the meta.ai website.

THE AI BUSINESS TOOLKIT

(Our Top 5 Weekly AI Picks)

AI Tools to Supercharge Your Business

  • Whisper Web: Transcribe videos and audios for free- no need to login.

  • SalesCred: AI-powered personal branding and B2B sales intelligence tool.

  • STORYD: Create business storytelling presentations, in seconds

  • Mailsplash: Create converting email in minutes.

  • KeywordSearch: Refine your Google and YouTube ad targeting by automating keyword research and competitor analysis.

WELL… THAT’S A WRAP!

Bye for now…

Join our private AI group on Facebook and explore more resources and get involved with our community 🤓 

As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions, or ideas. Don't hesitate to hit 'Reply' and share your insights with me!

Till next time,

Brian Hanson

CEO / Founder

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