Microsoft Announces VALL-E, CNET Experiments With A.I., Google Cloud Intros Inventory Tool

Here are the week's top stories about artificial intelligence

1. Google Cloud intros an AI tool for retailers to monitor shelf inventory

Google Cloud announced a new AI tool that can detect the availability of CPGs (consumer packaged goods) on shelves from videos and images provided by ceiling-mounted cameras and self-driving robots. According to a Wall Street Journal report, the tool will become more broadly available in the coming months.

2. CNET says it has been experimenting with an AI Assistant

Media company CNET says its Money editorial team started testing an AI assistant in November and has published around 75 articles. In response to criticism, it changed the byline on these stories to CNET Money and made a disclosure more prominent. Buzzfeed jumped on the bandwagon and wrote a response entirely using ChatGPT.

3. OpenAI takes steps to monetize with a waitlist for ChatGPT Professional

OpenAI asked users this week, “at what price (per month) would you consider ChatGPT to be so expensive that you would not consider buying it?” The company also outlined benefits for ChatGPT Professional, including no unavailability windows, no throttling, and unlimited messages.

4. Microsoft announced a new text-to-speech model called VALL-E

Calling its new technology a “neural codec language model,” Microsoft launched a new text-to-speech AI that can closely simulate a person’s voice with only a three-second audio sample. The model can mimic voice in a way that preserves the speaker’s emotional tone, and builds on a technology called EnCodec, which Meta announced in October 2022.

5. This tweet thread about ChatGPT prompts had me laughing

Jack Raines @Jack_Raines

99.99% of people know about ChatGPT, but only 0.01% know how to use it correctly. I have spent 1,000 hours studying AI so YOU don’t have to. Here are the best uses I found: