YouTube announced this week the rollout of “Thumbnail Test & Compare,” a new tool for creators to see which thumbnail performs the best.
When creators publish a new video (or update an existing video), they can test up to three thumbnails, which will be shown “evenly” across viewers, the company explained in a post.
YouTube encourages testing thumbnails with distinct differences, such as variations in layout compositions, backgrounds, and text overlays, to ensure a comprehensive test.
Creators can test thumbnails on a variety of content, including regular videos, podcast episodes, archived livestreams, and public long-form content.
Over the coming weeks, Thumbnail Test & Compare will become available in YouTube Studio on desktop to all creators with access to advanced features.
When you’re looking for a startup idea that could slow climate change, you might become an expert at home energy assessments.
Instead, the startup has put together a small team of engineers to create its own AI model specialized in home energy assessments using machine learning.
The company uses open data, such as satellite images, as well as its own training data set with millions of photos and energy assessments.
In the company’s first tests, its home energy assessments have been accurate within 5% of old-fashioned assessments.
The startup has now raised €4.7 million ($5.1 million at today’s exchange rate) with Racine² leading the round and a non-dilutive investment from Bpifrance.
Google has developed a new AI tool to help marine biologists better understand coral reef ecosystems and their health, which can aid in conversation efforts.
The project began by inviting the public to listen to reef sounds via the web.
By crowdsourcing this activity, Google was able to create a library of new fish sounds that were used to fine-tune the AI tool, SurfPerch.
Although bird sounds and reef recordings are very different, there were common patterns between bird songs and fish sounds that the model was able to learn from, they found.
The project continues today, as new audio is added to the Calling in Our Corals website, which will help to further train the AI model, Google says.
And like all productivity tools, the ClickUp team has also heard the siren song of artificial intelligence.
The company has now launched what it calls “ClickUp Knowledge Management,” which combines a new wiki-like editor and with a new AI system that can also bring in data from Google Drive, Dropbox, Confluence, Figma and other sources.
With that, the company aims to build a tool that can rival other popular services like Notion and Atlassian’s Confluence.
The result, ClickUp argues, is a system that brings together the best of Notion, Confluence and Glean to allow users to quickly create documents.
This now enables the ClickUp Knowledge Management to perform retrieval augmented generation (RAG) — which has quickly become the industry standard for augmenting large language models (LLMs) with additional and up-to-date information.
Set to arrive in Wix’s app builder tool this week, the capability guides users through a chatbot-like interface to understand the goals, intent and aesthetic of their app.
But reviews of Wix’s AI site builder aren’t exactly glowing, with early adopters reporting bugs and generic-looking finished products.
So — given that the under-the-hood tech is similar, outside a few upgraded generative AI models — why should people expect Wix’s AI app builder to be any better?
Image Credits: WixAbrahami admitted that the AI app builder — like all generative AI tools — might make mistakes.
On Fiverr, a cursory search yields a long list of highly-rated app developers, some of whom charge around the same price as a subscription to Wix’s AI app builder.
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.
If you want to get your product in a grocery store in Mexico City, Dataplor has global location intelligence to help you do that.
The company raised $2 million in 2019 to bring Latin American food delivery vendors online.
Dataplor uses artificial intelligence, machine learning, large language models and a purpose-built technology platform to take in public domain data.
While that is not totally unique — there are companies like ThoughSpot, Esri and Near doing something similar around business and location intelligence — Dataplor’s “secret sauce” is combining all of that technology and public domain data with a human factor.
The round also includes participation from Quest Venture Partners, Acronym Venture Capital, Circadian Ventures, Two Lanterns Venture Partners and APA Venture Partners.
The “AI ClipHero” feature creates short clips from livestreamed selling events, which often last for hours.
“Shoppable ‘explainer’ videos are the most powerful video commerce medium right now, with TikTok and Instagram becoming the primary way Gen Z discovers, learns about products and purchases products.
However, creating shoppable videos [requires] significant production times,” CommentSold CEO Guatam Goswami told TechCrunch.
AI-powered clipping software isn’t new, but not many companies have developed AI-powered tools specifically designed for live commerce.
Since launching in 2017, CommentSold now helps over 7,000 small- and mid-sized businesses deliver live shopping and e-commerce experiences.
On Tuesday at the Google Cloud Next customer conference in Las Vegas, Google introduced a new AI-fueled video creation tool called Google Vids.
At Google Cloud Next, we’re unveiling Google Vids, a brand new, AI-powered video creation app for work,” Aparna Pappu, VP & GM at Google Workspace said, introducing the tool.
Examples of the kinds of videos people are creating with Google Vids include product pitches, training content or celebratory team videos.
Like most generative AI tooling, Google Vids starts with a prompt.
Along the way colleagues can comment or make changes, just as with any Google Workspace tool.
Logspace co-founder and CEO Rodrigo Nader previously worked on machine learning problems at enterprise AI company Bitvore, together with co-founder and CTO Gabriel Luiz Freitas Almeida.
“This acquisition will provide current Langflow developers and current DataStax developers additional resources and integrations to elevate their applications to match the scale of their ambitions,” said Chet Kapoor, CEO and chairman of DataStax.
“Langflow is focused on democratizing and accelerating generative AI development for any developer or company, and in joining DataStax, we’re working together to enable developers to put their wild new generative AI ideas on a fast path to production.”The DataStax team argues that this acquisition effectively completes its effort to build a one-stop generative AI stack.
Langflow will continue to operate as a separate entity, so existing users shouldn’t notice any immediate changes.
“We couldn’t be more excited about joining the DataStax team and supercharging our ability to grow the Langflow platform, bringing it to more researchers, developers, enterprises and entrepreneurs working on generative AI applications,” said Nader.
