🗳️ China Using AI to Sway U.S. Elections? Microsoft Says 是的 (Yes)

Morning everyone!

As we continue to build in public, we're constantly making little tweaks. In today's issue, we're dropping an A/B test.

A: Short commentary on each article with an attempt at humor
B. Longer, more detailed description

Which one did you get, and which do you like better? Let us know!

Here’s what we’re booting up for you today:

• 8 Trending Web3 Stories 📈

• 5 Hot and Trending AI Tools 🧰

• 6 AI Stories HOT Off the Presses 🥵

• 3 New Midjourney Drops

Cheer up, It’s Friday, Let’s get it!

- Kevin

📈 Trending Web3 Stories

Turkish Crypto Boss sentenced to 11,196 years in jail. Prosecutors unhappy as they asked for 40,562 WTF (Read More)

China unveils the 3-year plan on their Metaverse industry development - guiding R&D funds to support the industry. (Read More)

SEC agrees with SEC for failing to register the offers and sales of its crypto lending product. (Read More)

Ex-FTX executive to plead guilty to criminal charges, including donating $24M of stolen customer funds to US politicians. (Read More)

Mexican billionaire says he only holds Bitcoin, MicroStrategy, Bitcoin miners, and gold miners in his portfolio. (Read More)

FBI says North Korean hackers ‘Lazarus Group’ are behind Stake.com’s $41 million crypto theft. (Read More)

JPMorgan Chase is developing a blockchain-based digital deposit token to speed up cross-border payments. (Read More)

NFL All Day NFT sales drop 87% year over year as season starts. (Read More)

🤖 Trending (and Cool) AI Tools

Slack AI: Key highlights on any challenge, summarize long threads with just one click and get questions answered in real-time with AI-powered search. (link)

CreatorKit: The first AI image editor build for product photography. Edit images with just text. (link)

Retool: Instantly integrate AI into your apps and workflows with pre-build blocks. (link)

M1-Project: Create comprehensive Ideal Customer Profiles (ICP) in 5 minutes. (link)

Dokkio: Find, organize and understand all your online files. (link)

📻 Trending AI Stories

Apple quickly developing conversational AI

Apple is now allocating millions of dollars daily towards advancing artificial intelligence. The dedicated conversational AI team, consisting of approximately 16 individuals and spearheaded by Ruoming Pang, is at the forefront of crafting foundational models. This group is exploring a novel approach to conversational AI, emphasizing enabling users to interact with their iPhones using intuitive language commands. For instance, users can command, "Create a GIF from the last five photos and send it to Kevin," facilitating an effortless and natural user experience. (Read more)

NVIDIA to develop LLM for AI in India

On September 8, NVIDIA and Reliance Industries declared a collaboration to advance India's artificial intelligence and semiconductor chip sector. This partnership intends to create a large language model, harnessing the rich linguistic diversity of India, for generative AI applications. The collaboration envisions constructing an AI infrastructure that significantly surpasses the capabilities of India's current fastest supercomputer. NVIDIA will supply its top-tier chips and cloud AI supercomputing services, with Reliance Jio overseeing the execution and implementation, leveraging its broad experience in various telecommunications sectors. (Read more)

Imbue raises $200M to build better AI agents

Imbue, a prominent AI research lab, recently secured $200 million in a Series B fundraising round, elevating the company's valuation to over $1 billion, with notable contributors including the Astera Institute and Nvidia. This financial influx boosts Imbue's total capital to $220 million, marking it as one of the most substantial investments in the AI startup sphere in recent times. This funding aims at hastening the development of AI systems capable of coding and reasoning, assisting in realizing broader objectives in the real world. Imbue maintains its commitment to crafting practical AI agents designed to undertake significant tasks in the real world safely. (Read more)

China suspected of using AI to sway US voters

On Thursday, Microsoft researchers identified a potential network of counterfeit social media accounts, allegedly controlled by Chinese operatives, using AI to manipulate US voters. In response, a representative from the Chinese embassy in Washington dismissed the claims as "prejudiced and malicious speculation," emphasizing China's stance on the secure application of AI technology. According to Microsoft's recent research report, these accounts are part of a broader disinformation operation suspected to be linked to an elite faction within China's Ministry of Public Security. The affected social media platforms are not explicitly named, although the report's screenshots hinted at the involvement of platforms like Facebook and X (Twitter). (Read More)

Ello raises $15M to help children learn to read

Ello, a startup combating childhood illiteracy through artificial intelligence and child speech recognition technology, has recently acquired $15 million in Series A funding. This investment, championed by lead investor Goodwater Capital, will fuel product development and broaden consumer access. The service, targeted at children from kindergarten to third grade, offers a monthly subscription of curated books alongside an AI tool that improves their reading skills by analyzing their speech and helping correct reading mistakes in real-time. While available only as a tablet app, efforts are underway to extend its reach to smartphones. (Read More)

eBay rolls out Gen AI listing tool

eBay is launching a new AI feature enabling marketplace sellers to create a product listing using a single photo. Initially available on the iOS app and soon on the Android version, this tool can auto-generate a title, description, and relevant product details such as release date, suggested category, pricing, and shipping cost from the uploaded photo. This innovation is part of eBay's larger initiative to incorporate AI into the selling process, which already includes automated product catalog descriptions and a tool to remove the background from listing photos. According to an eBay spokesperson, this "photo-to-listing" tool, developed internally, aims to streamline the listing process, making it more efficient and enjoyable for sellers. (Read More)

Midjourney AI-Images

Which table is the coolest?
#2 looks like it’s from the Jetson’s while I’m partial to the whole vibe of #5. Which is your favorite?

A different timeline
Having watched the towers fall, this one gets me. (Check out what’s different)

Want More?

• Which of these abandoned places would you want to spend 24 hours in?

That’s a Wrap

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