An “Apple Intelligence” (AI)-powered feature coming in iOS 18 will allow iPhone users to create AI images of people they’re messaging with — a feature that works something like an AI-upgraded Bitmoji.
Image Credits: AppleFor example, Apple showed off making an AI Bitmoji of a friend celebrating their birthday with an image that included cake, balloons and flowers.
The Genmoji can be used as a sticker for reacting to messages with a Tapback or inline with your messages, Apple said.
Apple Intelligence will also suggest concepts related to your messages conversation, but all this takes place on the device, according to Apple.
Also at WWDC 2024, Apple announced updates to Siri and introduced macOS Sequoia.
Today at its annual WorldWide Developer Conference in Cupertino, Apple announced updates to VisionOS, the operating system running on the Vision Pro.
The upgraded VisionOS — VisionOS 2 — brings with it productivity enhancements and “new immersive experiences.” One lets you “spatialize” photos from regular photos, leveraging AI tech.
Another is a new navigation option: VisionOS 2 lets you switch to the home screen by just tapping, or flip your hand over to bring up the control center with notifications, shortcuts and more.
eBay’s newest AI feature allows sellers to replace image backgrounds with AI-generated backdrops.
eBay’s background enhancement tool could benefit sellers who lack the equipment or skills to take professional-looking or high-quality photos.
It may also improve on eBay’s previous offering, which used computer vision technology to give listing photos a simple, white background.
The new AI feature is powered by the open-source model Stable Diffusion.
The latest announcement comes a year after eBay introduced an AI feature that generates titles and descriptions for a product listing.
Readyverse Studios partnered with Warner Bros.
Readyverse Studios founders debuted Open in a trailer today during the South By Southwest (SXSW) festival.
Of course, the new experience features a Ready Player One biome where players can explore environments, get skins inspired by the novel, and compete against each other.
In the trailer, viewers see Ready Player One protagonist Wade Watts (a.k.a.
For those who aren’t familiar with Cline’s work, Ready Player One is set in 2045, when the planet is on the verge of collapse.
The NYT Games app is debuting a new redesign to help users discover games and track their progress more easily.
The redesign comes nearly a year after the New York Times renamed its games-focused app from “NYT Crosswords” to “NYT Games” to better represent its growing family of games.
NYT Games principal product designer Lian Chang told TechCrunch that the redesign caters to both old and new players.
Chang says the redesigned game cards incentivize players to come back to a game and finish it.
The idea behind the redesigned game cards was to not only be inviting for discovery purposes, but also be functional.
The two new Dodge Charger EV coupes — the 2024 Charger Daytona Scat Pack and the milder Daytona R/T trim — are scheduled to enter production in mid-2024.
Gas-powered two-door and four-door Dodge Charger vehicles are also scheduled to begin production in the first quarter of 2025.
The 2024 Dodge Charger launch comes at a precarious time for U.S. and European automakers attempting to navigate an ever-changing EV landscape, where Chinese manufacturers continue to gain ground.
So that’s why we keep it flat out.”EV nuts and boltsThe 2024 Charger Daytona Scat Pack and Daytona R/T trim will come standard with all-wheel drive and a 100.5 kilowatt-hour battery pack.
Those driving modes, which are available in the Scat Pack trim, perform like they sound.
The startup built its platform on top of the open source Stable Diffusion model, letting users enter text-based prompts to generate their creations.
The company was founded by Darya Sesitskaya, a former Snap design lead responsible for designing Snapchat’s AR camera, Lens Studio, Lens Cloud, and more.
She also worked at Wanna (formerly Wannaby), an AR technology company known for its virtual try-ons for sneakers, clothing, and watches.
Since launching its beta version, Shader has garnered approximately 3,000 downloads.
In the near future, we also plan to implement the ability to create voice-to-AR effects and 3D background replacements,” says Sesitskaya.
OpenAI is launching a new subscription plan for ChatGPT, its viral AI-powered chatbot, aimed at smaller, self-service-oriented teams.
Aptly called ChatGPT Team, the plan provides a dedicated workspace for teams up to 149 people using ChatGPT as well as admin tools for team management.
ChatGPT Team also lets people within a team build and share GPTs, custom apps based on OpenAI’s text-generating AI models.
ChatGPT Team is priced at $30 per user per month or $25 per user per month billed annually — higher than ChatGPT Plus, OpenAI’s individual premium ChatGPT plan, which costs $20 per month.
ChatGPT Team seems tailor-made for small- and medium-sized business customers who want team-oriented ChatGPT features without having to pay top dollar for them.
Most notably, Walmart is launching a new generative AI search feature on iOS that will allow customers to search for products by use cases, instead of by product or brand names.
These enhanced search results will span categories, rivaling Google’s SGE (Search Generative Experience), which can recommend products and show various factors to consider, along with reviews, prices, images, and more.
At the time, Walmart teased that a generative AI-powered search feature was also in the works.
In another area, Walmart’s generative AI tool for store associates, My Assistant, will be expanded to 11 countries outside the U.S. in 2024, where it will work in employees’ native languages.
Outside of AI, Walmart is looking to other new technology for faster deliveries.
Google’s making the second generation of Imagen, its AI model that can create and edit images given a text prompt, more widely available — at least to Google Cloud customers using Vertex AI who’ve been approved for access.
Text and logo generation brings Imagen in line with other leading image-generating models, like OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 and Amazon’s recently launched Titan Image Generator.
These techniques also enhance Imagen 2’s multilingual understanding, Google says — allowing the model to translate a prompt in one language to an output (e.g.
Google didn’t reveal the data that it used to train Imagen 2, which — while disappointing — doesn’t exactly come as a surprise.
Instead, Google offers an indemnification policy that protects eligible Vertex AI customers from copyright claims related both to Google’s use of training data and Imagen 2 outputs.
