How AI is changing newsrooms worldwide

📰 13 Startups that Google Funded Under its First AI Startup Cohort

Google picked 13 startups for their first-ever AI Startup Cohort. These companies, from Europe, Israel, and the UK, are using AI to solve big problems in different fields, from renewable energy to legal digitization.

The program lasts 10 weeks and helps startups from their Seed to Series A stages, offering mentorship and technical expertise.

• Annea.AI, which focuses on predictive maintenance for renewable energy, to Releva, an AI solution for e-commerce marketing.

• Exactly.ai is an AI tool for artists to create images using just written descriptions, offering a unique approach to copyright issues.

• Neurons uses AI to predict marketing responses by measuring human subconscious signals.

• Sarus provides a way to work on data while keeping it private, which is super useful for machine learning projects.

• Semantic Hub uses AI and natural language processing to help healthcare providers understand the needs of patients with rare diseases.

• Vazy Data makes data analysis easy for people without technical know-how by letting them ask questions like they would to a human analyst.

• Visionary.AI uses AI to boost the image quality in cameras, with features like gaze correction and bokeh.

• Zenpulsar offers financial fraud solutions through SaaS, helping businesses navigate the wild west of social media misinformation.

• Zaya AI uses machine learning to improve disease diagnosis, helping healthcare pros make better and faster decisions.

Why it Matters: The support from Google could make these companies the next big thing.

📰 How AI is generating change in newsrooms worldwide

AI is shaking things up in newsrooms worldwide. A survey of 105 news organizations in 46 countries shows that AI, like ChatGPT, offers new opportunities for journalism but comes with challenges too.

• 73% of news organizations see AI as opening new doors for journalism.

• AI can handle time-consuming tasks like interview transcription and fact-checking, letting journalists focus on creative word.

• AI's got its risks: it needs a human check for things like bias and inaccuracy.

• Ethical concerns over AI use in journalism, such as accuracy and fairness, were noted by more than 60% of respondents.

• Challenges are especially tough for newsrooms in countries like Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa due to language, infrastructure, and politics.

Why it Matters: Understanding how AI is used in newsrooms can tell us a lot about the future of journalism. It's not just about making jobs easier; it's about ethical storytelling and making sure the news we get is fair and accurate.

📰 World’s first humanoid robot factory set to open this year

Agility Robotics is gearing up to open the world's first humanoid robot factory in Salem, Oregon, named "RoboFab." This facility is expected to be capable of producing 10,000 humanoid robots, specifically advanced versions of their flagship product, Digit, annually.

• Pioneering Step: This factory signifies the beginning of mass-produced commercial humanoid robots, according to Damion Shelton, Agility Robotics’ co-founder and CEO.

• Purpose and Capacity: Digit robots are designed to fill labor gaps and mitigate issues like worker injuries and burnout in industries ranging from logistics to industrial automation. The factory is set to produce hundreds of units in the first year, scaling to around 10,000 robots annually thereafter.

• Employment: The RoboFab facility is projected to employ over 500 people once it is fully operational.

• Advanced Features: The next generation of the Digit robot will have a cylindrical head and two animated LED eyes, designed for executing logistics-related tasks. The robot is expected to function securely in human environments and will perform tasks in the factory similar to those performed at Agility's customer sites.

• Market Availability: Customers enrolled in the Agility Partner Program can expect the initial delivery of Digits in 2024, while general market availability is planned for 2025.

Why It Matters: Mass-produce humanoid robots is a significant step toward mainstream adoption of robotics in various industries, with the capability to revolutionize the workforce and create more efficient, safer work environments.

⚗️ Vercel AI Playground - test AI models like Llama2, Claude2, Command Nightly, GPT-4, and open-source models from HuggingFace on a single platform. With API and reasonable prices.

💵 Prompt Hackatron - learn from workshops, create good prompts, win, and have fun, with up to $15K up for grabs :)

📚 Project Gutenberg puts 5,000 audiobooks online for free using synthetic speech - the team used AI and machine learning tools to produce dynamic and engaging narrations. The first batch of these audiobooks is now available on platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Here is a MidJourney prompt to create endless mock-ups with the 'Custom Zoom' option.

You may have to experiment a little, but the results are 'unique'—something that could be the key between 0 sales and success.

Select 'Custom Zoom' and change the prompt to:

Print on [OBJECT] —zoom 2

Where [OBJECT] could be anything - Wall, Mug, Tee, etc. Keep the '—zoom 2' part; otherwise, the prompt will not work.

Here is a test image

Instructions:

End result:

Enjoy!

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Until tomorrow,
- Tsvetelin (Bits and Neurons)