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😺 safe word?

😺 safe word?

PLUS: $1 billion for AI voices

Pete Huang & Noah Edelman
January 23, 2024

Welcome, humans.

Recently, author Rie Kudan nabbed a prestigious literary award, using ChatGPT to write a portion of the novel. 1/20th of the novel, to be exact. This confirms our hypothesis that the future of writing isn’t 100% AI-generated but AI boosting already great work to excellence.

Here’s what you need to know about AI today:

Someone cloned Biden’s voice to interfere with the election.
The AI startup scene welcomes its newest billion-dollar member.
OpenAI banned a Dean Phillips chatbot.
Ohai introduced an AI-powered household assistant.

A.I. phone home 👽👉

Last week, we told you all political eyes were on AI's potential misuse in politics.

Since then, all we can see is the clock ticking. In fact, just two days ago, an AI-generated clone of Biden's voice misled voters with calls urging them not to vote.

Do the Germans have a word for being right and hating it?

With the tools for such shenanigans in plain sight for the last year (just search “AI voice cloning” for a bajillion options), the real question is: how is the U.S. government tackling this issue?

Here’s what we found:

President Biden’s Oct 2023 Executive Order mandates watermarking for AI-generated content.
But policy staff and tech industry insiders alike say nobody knows what “watermarking” should mean.
Meanwhile, lawmakers have introduced bills around AI that haven’t gone anywhere (1, 2).
26 attorneys general are urging the FCC do better when it comes to AI in telemarketing.

…Do the German have a word for "this is far from reassuring"?

Remember to stay hydrated and question everything, friends.

In the meantime, it’s wise to set up a safe word to use with loved ones, even if it seems a little overboard. Ours is “calico cat”—oops, forget you saw that!

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ElevenLabs is the latest AI sensation hitting unicorn status.

While the government is slowly waking up to the reality of these voice clones, investors are drooling over the companies that make them.

ElevenLabs, a platform that creates and clones voices, is now valued at $1 BILLION after raising $80 million today.

That's a staggering 10x increase in just seven months, barely two years since the company's inception.

And in case you're thinking, “That valuation seems a bit steep…”—you're spot on. Here’s a graphic from The Information that we artificially edited to include ElevenLabs:

warning: the above is a guess and we don’t actually know how much revenue ElevenLabs is generating

Why it matters: 2024 is shaping up to be a year where AI buzz is far from fizzling out. The 50-100x numbers from the chart are giving us major 2021 vibes, a time when people were shelling out millions for virtual rock images (oh, remember NFTs?!).

Meanwhile, several (non-AI) billion-dollar companies are feeling the heat more than ever this year. It seems like time is just looping back on itself!

Around the Horn.

We gave our awards to the best CES AI products. How about the worst?
After Hollywood writers went on strike (in part due to AI); Now the musicians turn.
Meta is training Llama 3 with over $10 billion of Nvidia chips. Their new stated goal is “artificial general intelligence”, the same as OpenAI.
Bloomberg is rolling out AI summaries in its terminals.
OpenAI banned a user who made a Dean Phillips chatbot.