The writers’ strike is over, ChatGPT can now “see, hear, and speak,” and Getty Images has joined the next generation of artificial intelligence.
Adweek’s weekly AI Watch collection keeps up with the latest news, regulatory processes, and business developments in the world of generative AI.
Here are this week’s news items:
Laws and rules:
The Writers Guild of America has made an agreement in principle on a new contract. This ends a strike that lasted nearly 150 days. This means that the writers can get right back to work. The newly negotiated contract will be in place until May 2026. It includes many changes, such as higher pay and perks, job protection against advances in artificial intelligence, and incentives based on how well employees do their jobs.
The nuts and bolts:
Amazon has put up to $4 billion into Anthropic, a company that competes with OpenAI. This is another way that Big Tech is using AI, as the shopping giant announced Monday. Amazon will get a small share of Anthropic in exchange for using its technology in a number of goods, such as the Amazon Bedrock service for AI applications. Anthropic will use Amazon’s custom processors to build and launch AI models, and it will use Amazon Web Services as its main cloud provider.
Monday, OpenAI said that it had added voice features to ChatGPT. The new voice tools are similar to what Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri have to offer.
Getty pictures and Nvidia worked together to make Generative AI by Getty Images, a tool that lets people make pictures by using Getty’s huge collection of licensed photos. This way, people don’t have to worry about copying someone else’s work.
CEO Daniel Ek says that Spotify has chosen not to put limits on music made by AI. This year, the site took down a song where Drake and The Weeknd’s voices were copied by AI. In an interview with the BBC, Ek said that AI has real uses in making music, but it shouldn’t be used to pretend to be artists without their permission. He also said that using AI in the music business will probably be controversial for “many, many years.”
Microsoft does something big to help its AI projects. Microsoft is looking for a principal program manager to handle its nuclear energy strategy and carry out a plan for small modular reactors. This is because AI data centers use a lot of electricity, which could hurt the company’s climate goals.
Google announced on Thursday that their AI-powered search, called SGE (Search Generative Experience), is now open to 13–17-year-olds in the US who have a Google account and use the Chrome desktop or the Google app.