Welcome to the AI assistant revolution

PLUS: Time's 100 most influential people in AI

Author

Strange Magic
September 12, 2023

Hello, Human Friend!

AI assistants are popping up all across productivity tools and SAAS platforms. It’s as if Clippy mated with an AI and took over the internet. We’ve got the latest AI announcements from the tools we use for work, plus Time’s 100 most influential people in AI. Oh, and maybe don’t buy that mushroom foraging book on Amazon.

In this edition of Strange Magic…

  • 🖥️ Less work, more AI

  • 🧠 Time’s AI influencers

  • 🍄 Don’t trust AI with mushrooms

  • 👻 AI songwriter Ghostwriterr977 is back

Read time: 6 minutes

🔮 What’s New

Source: Midjourney

AI assistants are taking over productivity

When ChatGPT hit the market in November 2022, followed by big AI integration announcements from Microsoft and Google, every productivity software maker must’ve sprung into action at once. Because, we’re suddenly inundated with AI assistants in just about every tool we collectively use to get work done online. Just last week, AI features were announced for everything from Loom to Zoom. Here are some of the productivity tools getting AI upgrades.

  • Slack: Slack will begin testing Slack AI (clever name) this winter. The new tool will be able to summarize threads, recap channel highlights, and search for answers within messages.

  • Loom: Loom, the screen recording and presentation platform, just launched Loom AI (I detect a trend here), offering up automatic video titling and summaries, as well as video editing tools like one-click filler-word and silence removal.

  • Hubspot: The marketing CRM giant Hubspot has launched Hubspot AI (you get it now). Along with automating tasks and uncovering insights, Hubspot AI is also capable of generating marketing content from blog posts to ad imagery.

  • Zoom: Zoom has just launched the Zoom AI Companion for paid users. The comprehensive tool is integrated into most of Zoom’s core features with the ability to craft comments, translate and transcribe meetings in real-time, automate meeting planning, and more.

  • Intuit: Intuit is incorporating a unified AI called Intuit Assist across all its product line including TurboTax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks and Mailchimp. According to Intuit, the assistant incorporates a standardized interface, but taps into Intuit’s proprietary datasets to help personalize experiences and surface valuable insights for users within each software platform.

In Other News

  • Handy payment options: Amazon’s latest foray into AI tech comes by way of a new quick pay device for POS systems. The Amazon One system, arriving at some Whole Foods locations, scans palms attaching the biometric data to a user’s Amazon account, so they can pay with the wave of a hand.

  • AI and copyright… what are your thoughts?: The US Copyright Office is seeking public comments on issues related to generative AI, including copyright eligibility of AI-generated content, liability for infringing on it, and the required degree of human authorship to register a copyright on AI-driven content. If you have opinions, let them be heard! The public comment period will be open until November 15th.

📖 Good Reads

Time has put together a great list featuring many of the best minds involved in AI today. Sure, five of them work at OpenAI and and another six work for Google. But, there are plenty of innovators you probably don’t know on the list, as well as experimental artists exploring AI boundaries and thoughtful critics of the rapidly evolving space.

OpenAI has shifted from being a patent-free, open-source, and transparent company to a secretive product-development house with an unwarranted superiority complex, according to some industry insiders. Despite this, OpenAI insists that its true strategy is to provide a soft landing for the singularity and make the period before adaptation of AGI as painless as possible. OpenAI is also positioning itself in the center of the discussion of AI regulation and mitigation of risks.

More Reads

⚙️ Try These

  • Google Duet: Users of Google Workspace can now add Google’s AI powered Duet to the mix. For $30 a month, Duet (another AI assistant) will generate everything from spreadsheets to slide decks from user prompts.

  • Tafi Avatar: The company behind the Daz 3D software platform, Tafi, has just launched beta access for their newest 3D tool, Tafi Avatar. The promise of the platform is high-speed 3D character development from… you guessed it, text prompts.

🧪 The Lab

✨ We’re Diggin’

Source: Twitter

  • ghostwriter977: Back in April, the anonymous songwriter known as ‘ghostwriter977’ broke the internet with a track featuring an AI Drake clone on vocals. Ghostwriter even submitted the track for Grammy consideration, although the Academy CEO says it’s not eligible for some obvious reasons. Now they’re back to push some more boundaries with a new track featuring AI versions of Travis Scott and 21 Savage.

  • AI in early detection of Parkinson’s: Scientists have developed eye scans that use artificial intelligence to detect markers of Parkinson’s disease up to seven years before symptoms appear. Eye scans have also been shown to reveal signs of other neurological conditions and health issues, meaning this research could lead to a wide range of new early detection tools.

🌤️ Fresh Air

  • Someone give this kid a record deal: The super talented street performer Allie Sherlock gives a stirring rendition of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. But, it’s her 12 year old guest Fionn Whalen who steals the show with a delivery well beyond his years.

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