Celebrity AI Slip, OpenAI, Google, & $50 Billion

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THEWHITEBOX

TLDR;

Welcome back! This week, we take a look at a varied manifold of news, from Will Smith’s unexpected AI controversy, OpenAI’s new model, and a deep analysis of Meta’s upcoming Manhattan-sized data center, to NVIDIA’s earnings, among other relevant news.

Finally, we examine Google’s new model’s impressive capabilities, which lead us to question whether text-based AIs are the focus we should be paying attention to, as a new revolution in image and video technology might be around the corner.

Enjoy!

MODELS

ChatGPT RealTime API

Literally minutes ago, OpenAI announced a new speech-to-speech model and the Realtime API, offering a low-latency audio service that is truly impressive.

It’s important to note that this isn’t an amalgam of models but a single, end-to-end model that takes in speech (and, notably, images, which was very impressive to see) and returns speech.

Unsurprisingly, the model is RL-trained, meaning it has been optimized to achieve specific goals. In particular, one of these goals seems to be steerability, allowing the user to steer the model’s prosody, tone, excitement, character, and so on.

→ SEE LIVE RELEASE

TheWhiteBox’s takeaway:

Is this the final piece in the customer support puzzle?

The live demo included a demonstration with T-Mobile, showing how they are utilizing these models to handle customer requests for device upgrades. I was particularly surprised by how effective the interruption system is; you can stop the model with ease, and it complies immediately, something that was not the case beforehand.

The model also excels at following instructions, a crucial requirement for enterprise-grade applications, and it’s considerably resistant to nefarious user intent to deviate from system prompt instructions. That is, if you’re deploying a customer support agent, you can define clear instructions that the model will not deviate from.

The model is also ‘agent-ready’, meaning that it will not only communicate effectively but also execute tools (both OpenAI-native connectors, such as Gmail, and the broader MCP ecosystem).

So, are we finally ready to automate the entire support process? Perhaps, but as someone fortunate enough to speak two languages, English and Spanish, I can assure you that the quality is not even close, which makes me believe that this is probably also the case for all languages except English.

VIDEO

Will Smith Accused of Using AI

Will Smith has been accused of using AI in a promotional video for his tour. The video features several crowd shots, including some highly suspicious faces.

TheWhiteBox’s takeaway:

It’s clearly AI; there is no possible debate. The faces appear distorted, clearly not those of humans. It’s a terrible look for Will Smith, but it says more about the future that awaits us:

We are about to be bombarded with AI content.

Will got caught because video-generation models are still not quite there, but in just a few months, video generation will be basically impossible to detect without watermarks.

I believe AI-generated content should be disclosed when used; we must remain capable of differentiating between what’s real and what…

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