The Olympic Games in Paris finished last month, and acclaimed filmmaker Josh Kahn was inspired to test video GenAI capabilities to assess the current stage of its development:
“Kahn, who has been toying with AI video tools for some time, used the latest version of Runway to dream up what the Olympics of the future could look like, entering a new prompt in the model for each shot. The video is just over one minute long and features sweeping aerial views of a futuristic version of LA where sea levels have risen sharply, leaving the city crammed right up to the coastline. A football stadium sits perched on top of a skyscraper, while a dome in the middle of the harbor contains courts for beach volleyball.” James O’ Donnell
MIT Technology Review
Lately, AI Generated Video ads have been intruging marketers more and more, as a few months ago a fake Volvo ad has made a quite a splash in the community:
Sure, there are some quirks commonly seen in AI-generated content, but if we can find a way to smooth these out, we may be on the verge of a revolution in the advertising world. 
CrowdStrike accepts award for ‘most epic fail’ after global IT outage
CrowdStrike isn’t shying away from the spotlight.Read the article ontechcrunch.com
Acceptance is the final stage of grief, and it seems CrowdStrike has come to terms with their major mistake and they are ready to move on—at least psychologically:
Just a few weeks after its software update triggered a global IT meltdown, CrowdStrike isn’t shying away from the spotlight. In fact, the company’s president Michael Sentonas even took the stage at the Pwnie Awards to accept the award for Most Epic Fail. (…) The organizers explained that this final award was a last-minute switch, because… how could CrowdStrike not win? Then, as a comically large trophy was brought onstage to loud cheers, Sentonas admitted this is “definitely not the award to be proud of receiving.” Antohny Ha,
Tech Crunch
:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25355957/STK263_CANVA_D.png)
Canva says its AI features are worth the 300 percent price increase
The design software company is massively jacking up subscription prices for some users.Read the article ontheverge.comCanva has adopted a rather interesting business strategy, raising its prices by a staggering 300%, justifying the increase with the integration of AI features:
“In the US, some Canva Teams users are reporting subscription increases from $120 per year for up to five users, to an eye-watering $500 per year. A 40 percent discount will be applied to bring that down to $300 for the first 12 months. In Australia, the flat $39.99 AUS (about $26 USD) per month fee for five users is switching to $13.50 AUS (about $9 USD) for each user. That means a team of five will pay at least 68 percent more, not withstanding any other discounts.” Jess Wheaterbed
Tech Crunch
xAI unveils Grok-2 to challenge the AI hierarchy
xAI has announced the release of Grok-2, a major upgrade that boasts improved capabilities in chat, coding, and reasoning.Read the article onwww.artificialintelligence-news.comThe new release from X, Grok-2, promises to change the AI chatbot status quo:
“xAI’s internal evaluation process employs AI Tutors to assess the models across various real-world tasks. The company states that “Grok-2 has shown significant improvements in reasoning with retrieved content and in its tool use capabilities, such as correctly identifying missing information, reasoning through sequences of events, and discarding irrelevant posts”. Benchmark results shared by xAI indicate that both Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini demonstrate substantial improvements over Grok-1.5. The models show competitive performance in areas such as graduate-level science knowledge, general knowledge, and maths competition problems. Notably, Grok-2 excels in vision-based tasks, delivering state-of-the-art performance in visual maths reasoning and document-based question answering.” AI News
