This might come as a shock to you but the things people put on social media aren't always truthful — really blew your mind there, right? Due to this, it can be challenging for people to know what's real without context or expertise in a specific area. That's part of why many platforms use a fact-checking team to keep an eye (often more so look like they're keeping an eye) on what's getting shared. Now, Threads is getting its own fact-checking program, Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram and de-facto person in charge at Threads, announced. He first shared the company's plans to do so in December.
Mosseri stated that Threads "recently" made it so that Meta's third-party fact-checkers could review and rate any inaccurate content on the platform. Before the shift, Meta was having fact-checks conducted on Facebook and Instagram and then matching "near-identical false content" that users shared on Threads. However, there's no indication of exactly when the program started or if it's global.
Then there's the matter of seeing how effective it really can be. Facebook and Instagram already had these dedicated fact-checkers, yet misinformation has run rampant across the platforms. Ahead of the 2024 Presidential election — and as ongoing elections and conflicts happen worldwide — is it too much to ask for some hardcore fact-checking from social media companies?
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/threads-gets-its-own-fact-checking-program-130013115.html?src=rss
At last year's Google I/O developer conference, the company introduced Project Gameface, a hands-free gaming "mouse" that allows users to control a computer's cursor with movements of their head and facial gestures. This year, Google has announced that it has open-sourced more code for Project Gameface, allowing developers to build Android applications that can use the technology.
The tool relies on the phone's front camera to track facial expressions and head movements, which can be used to control a virtual cursor. A user could smile to "select" items onscreen, for instance, or raise their left eyebrow to go back to the home screen on an Android phone. In addition, users can set thresholds or gesture sizes for each expression, so that they can control how prominent their expressions should be to trigger a specific mouse action.
The company developed Project Gameface with gaming streamer Lance Carr, who has muscular dystrophy that weakens his muscles. Carr used a head-tracking mouse to game before a fire destroyed his home, along with his expensive equipment. The early version of Project Gameface was focused on gaming and uses a webcam to detect facial expressions, though Google had known from the start that it had a lot of other potential uses.
For the tool's Android launch, Google teamed up with an Indian organization called Incluzza that supports people with disabilities. The partnership gave the company the chance to learn how Project Gameface can help people with disabilities further their studies, communicate with friends and family more easily and find jobs online. Google has released the project's open source code on GitHub and is hoping that more developers decide to "leverage it to build new experiences."
Catch up on all the news from Google I/O 2024 right here!
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/googles-project-gameface-hands-free-mouse-launches-on-android-123029158.html?src=rss
At last year's Google I/O developer conference, the company introduced Project Gameface, a hands-free gaming "mouse" that allows users to control a computer's cursor with movements of their head and facial gestures. This year, Google has announced that it has open-sourced more code for Project Gameface, allowing developers to build Android applications that can use the technology.
The tool relies on the phone's front camera to track facial expressions and head movements, which can be used to control a virtual cursor. A user could smile to "select" items onscreen, for instance, or raise their left eyebrow to go back to the home screen on an Android phone. In addition, users can set thresholds or gesture sizes for each expression, so that they can control how prominent their expressions should be to trigger a specific mouse action.
The company developed Project Gameface with gaming streamer Lance Carr, who has muscular dystrophy that weakens his muscles. Carr used a head-tracking mouse to game before a fire destroyed his home, along with his expensive equipment. The early version of Project Gameface was focused on gaming and uses a webcam to detect facial expressions, though Google had known from the start that it had a lot of other potential uses.
For the tool's Android launch, Google teamed up with an Indian organization called Incluzza that supports people with disabilities. The partnership gave the company the chance to learn how Project Gameface can help people with disabilities further their studies, communicate with friends and family more easily and find jobs online. Google has released the project's open source code on GitHub and is hoping that more developers decide to "leverage it to build new experiences."
Catch up on all the news from Google I/O 2024 right here!
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/googles-project-gameface-hands-free-mouse-launches-on-android-123029158.html?src=rss
Google boss, Sundar Pichai, wrapped up the company’s I/O developer conference by noting its almost-two-hour presentation had mentioned AI 121 times. It was everywhere.
Google’s newest AI model, Gemini 1.5 Flash, is built for speed and efficiency. The company said it created Flash because developers wanted a lighter, less expensive model than Gemini Pro to build AI-powered apps and services.
Google says it’ll double Gemini’s context window to two million tokens, enough to process two hours of video, 22 hours of audio, more than 60,000 lines of code or 1.4 million-plus words at the same time.
But the bigger news is how the company is sewing AI into all the things you’re already using. With search, it’ll be able to answer your complex questions (a la Copilot in Bing), but for now, you’ll have to sign up to the company’s Search Labs to try that out. AI-generated answers will also appear alongside typical search results, just in case the AI knows better.
Google Photos was already pretty smart at searching for specific images or videos, but with AI, Google is taking things to the next level. If you’re a Google One subscriber in the US, you will be able to ask Google Photos a complex question, like show me the best photo from each national park I’ve visited. You can also ask Google Photos to generate captions for you.
And, if you have an Android, Gemini is integrating directly into the device. Gemini will know the app, image or video you’re running, and you’ll be able to pull it up as an overlay and ask it context-specific questions, like how to change settings or maybe even who’s displayed on screen.
While these were the bigger beats, there was an awful lot to chew over. Check out all the headlines right here.
One of Google’s bigger projects is its visual multimodal AI assistant, currently called Project Astra. It taps into your smartphone (or smart glasses) camera and can contextually analyze and answer questions on the things it sees. Project Astra can offer silly wordplay suggestions, as well as identify and define the things it sees. A video demo shows Project Astra identifying the tweeter part of a speaker. It’s equal parts impressive and, well, familiar. We tested it out, right here.
Elon Musk continues to add policy after baffling policy.
The increasingly unhinged world of X (Twitter) now considers the term ‘cisgender’ a slur. Owner Elon Musk posted last June, to the delight of his unhingiest users, that “‘cis’ or ‘cisgender’ are considered slurs on this platform.” On Tuesday, X reportedly began posting an official warning. A quick reminder: It’s not a slur.
Ilya Sutskever announced on X, formerly Twitter, he’s leaving OpenAI almost a decade after he co-founded the company. He’s confident OpenAI “will build [artificial general intelligence] that is both safe and beneficial” under the leadership of CEO Sam Altman, President Greg Brockman and CTO Mira Murati. While Sutskever and Altman praised each other in their farewell messages, the two were embroiled in the company’s biggest scandal, last year. Sutskever, who was a board member then, was involved in both of their dismissals.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-the-biggest-news-from-googles-io-keynote-111531702.html?src=rss
Google boss, Sundar Pichai, wrapped up the company’s I/O developer conference by noting its almost-two-hour presentation had mentioned AI 121 times. It was everywhere.
Google’s newest AI model, Gemini 1.5 Flash, is built for speed and efficiency. The company said it created Flash because developers wanted a lighter, less expensive model than Gemini Pro to build AI-powered apps and services.
Google says it’ll double Gemini’s context window to two million tokens, enough to process two hours of video, 22 hours of audio, more than 60,000 lines of code or 1.4 million-plus words at the same time.
But the bigger news is how the company is sewing AI into all the things you’re already using. With search, it’ll be able to answer your complex questions (a la Copilot in Bing), but for now, you’ll have to sign up to the company’s Search Labs to try that out. AI-generated answers will also appear alongside typical search results, just in case the AI knows better.
Google Photos was already pretty smart at searching for specific images or videos, but with AI, Google is taking things to the next level. If you’re a Google One subscriber in the US, you will be able to ask Google Photos a complex question, like show me the best photo from each national park I’ve visited. You can also ask Google Photos to generate captions for you.
And, if you have an Android, Gemini is integrating directly into the device. Gemini will know the app, image or video you’re running, and you’ll be able to pull it up as an overlay and ask it context-specific questions, like how to change settings or maybe even who’s displayed on screen.
While these were the bigger beats, there was an awful lot to chew over. Check out all the headlines right here.
One of Google’s bigger projects is its visual multimodal AI assistant, currently called Project Astra. It taps into your smartphone (or smart glasses) camera and can contextually analyze and answer questions on the things it sees. Project Astra can offer silly wordplay suggestions, as well as identify and define the things it sees. A video demo shows Project Astra identifying the tweeter part of a speaker. It’s equal parts impressive and, well, familiar. We tested it out, right here.
Elon Musk continues to add policy after baffling policy.
The increasingly unhinged world of X (Twitter) now considers the term ‘cisgender’ a slur. Owner Elon Musk posted last June, to the delight of his unhingiest users, that “‘cis’ or ‘cisgender’ are considered slurs on this platform.” On Tuesday, X reportedly began posting an official warning. A quick reminder: It’s not a slur.
Ilya Sutskever announced on X, formerly Twitter, he’s leaving OpenAI almost a decade after he co-founded the company. He’s confident OpenAI “will build [artificial general intelligence] that is both safe and beneficial” under the leadership of CEO Sam Altman, President Greg Brockman and CTO Mira Murati. While Sutskever and Altman praised each other in their farewell messages, the two were embroiled in the company’s biggest scandal, last year. Sutskever, who was a board member then, was involved in both of their dismissals.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-the-biggest-news-from-googles-io-keynote-111531702.html?src=rss
Ilya Sutskever has announced on X, formerly known as Twitter, that he's leaving OpenAI almost a decade after he co-founded the company. He's confident that OpenAI "will build [artificial general intelligence] that is both safe and beneficial" under the leadership of CEO Sam Altman, President Greg Brockman and CTO Mira Murati, he continued. In his own post about Sutskever's departure, Altman called him "one of the greatest minds of our generation" and credited him for his work with the company. Jakub Pachocki, OpenAI's previous Director of Research who headed the development of GPT-4 and OpenAI Five, has taken Sutskever's role as Chief Scientist.
After almost a decade, I have made the decision to leave OpenAI. The company’s trajectory has been nothing short of miraculous, and I’m confident that OpenAI will build AGI that is both safe and beneficial under the leadership of @sama, @gdb, @miramurati and now, under the…
While Sutskever and Altman praised each other in their farewell messages, the two were embroiled in the company's biggest scandal last year. In November, OpenAI's board of directors suddenly fired Altman and company President Greg Brockman. "[T]he board no longer has confidence in [Altman's] ability to continue leading OpenAI," the ChatGPT-maker announced back then. Sutskever, who was a board member, was involved in their dismissal and was the one who asked both Altman and Brockman to separate meetings where they were informed that they were being fired. According to reports that came out at the time, Altman and Sutskever had been butting heads when it came to how quickly OpenAI was developing and commercializing its generative AI technology.
Both Altman and Brockman were reinstated just five days after they were fired, and the original board was disbanded and replaced with a new one. Shortly before that happened, Sutskever posted on X that he "deeply regre[tted his] participation in the board's actions" and that he will do everything he can "to reunite the company." He then stepped down from his role as a board member, and while he remained Chief Scientist, The New York Times says he never really returned to work.
Sutskever shared that he's moving on to a new project that's "very personally meaningful" to him, though he has yet to share details about it. As for OpenAI, it recently unveiled GPT-4o, which it claims can recognize emotion and can process and generate output in text, audio and images.
Ilya and OpenAI are going to part ways. This is very sad to me; Ilya is easily one of the greatest minds of our generation, a guiding light of our field, and a dear friend. His brilliance and vision are well known; his warmth and compassion are less well known but no less…
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/openai-co-founder-and-chief-scientist-ilya-sutskever-is-leaving-the-company-054650964.html?src=rss
Ilya Sutskever has announced on X, formerly known as Twitter, that he's leaving OpenAI almost a decade after he co-founded the company. He's confident that OpenAI "will build [artificial general intelligence] that is both safe and beneficial" under the leadership of CEO Sam Altman, President Greg Brockman and CTO Mira Murati, he continued. In his own post about Sutskever's departure, Altman called him "one of the greatest minds of our generation" and credited him for his work with the company. Jakub Pachocki, OpenAI's previous Director of Research who headed the development of GPT-4 and OpenAI Five, has taken Sutskever's role as Chief Scientist.
After almost a decade, I have made the decision to leave OpenAI. The company’s trajectory has been nothing short of miraculous, and I’m confident that OpenAI will build AGI that is both safe and beneficial under the leadership of @sama, @gdb, @miramurati and now, under the…
While Sutskever and Altman praised each other in their farewell messages, the two were embroiled in the company's biggest scandal last year. In November, OpenAI's board of directors suddenly fired Altman and company President Greg Brockman. "[T]he board no longer has confidence in [Altman's] ability to continue leading OpenAI," the ChatGPT-maker announced back then. Sutskever, who was a board member, was involved in their dismissal and was the one who asked both Altman and Brockman to separate meetings where they were informed that they were being fired. According to reports that came out at the time, Altman and Sutskever had been butting heads when it came to how quickly OpenAI was developing and commercializing its generative AI technology.
Both Altman and Brockman were reinstated just five days after they were fired, and the original board was disbanded and replaced with a new one. Shortly before that happened, Sutskever posted on X that he "deeply regre[tted his] participation in the board's actions" and that he will do everything he can "to reunite the company." He then stepped down from his role as a board member, and while he remained Chief Scientist, The New York Times says he never really returned to work.
Sutskever shared that he's moving on to a new project that's "very personally meaningful" to him, though he has yet to share details about it. As for OpenAI, it recently unveiled GPT-4o, which it claims can recognize emotion and can process and generate output in text, audio and images.
Ilya and OpenAI are going to part ways. This is very sad to me; Ilya is easily one of the greatest minds of our generation, a guiding light of our field, and a dear friend. His brilliance and vision are well known; his warmth and compassion are less well known but no less…
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/openai-co-founder-and-chief-scientist-ilya-sutskever-is-leaving-the-company-054650964.html?src=rss
At I/O 2024, Google’s teaser for Project Astra gave us a glimpse at where AI assistants are going in the future. It’s a multi-modal feature that combines the smarts of Gemini with the kind of image recognition abilities you get in Google Lens, as well as powerful natural language responses. However, while the promo video was slick, after getting to try it out in person, it's clear there’s a long way to go before something like Astra lands on your phone. So here are three takeaways from our first experience with Google’s next-gen AI.
Sam’s take:
Currently, most people interact with digital assistants using their voice, so right away Astra’s multi-modality (i.e. using sight and sound in addition to text/speech) to communicate with an AI is relatively novel. In theory, it allows computer-based entities to work and behave more like a real assistant or agent – which was one of Google’s big buzzwords for the show – instead of something more robotic that simply responds to spoken commands.
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
In our demo, we had the option of asking Astra to tell a story based on some objects we placed in front of camera, after which it told us a lovely tale about a dinosaur and its trusty baguette trying to escape an ominous red light. It was fun and the tale was cute, and the AI worked about as well as you would expect. But at the same time, it was far from the seemingly all-knowing assistant we saw in Google's teaser. And aside from maybe entertaining a child with an original bedtime story, it didn’t feel like Astra was doing as much with the info as you might want.
Then my colleague Karissa drew a bucolic scene on a touchscreen, at which point Astra correctly identified the flower and sun she painted. But the most engaging demo was when we circled back for a second go with Astra running on a Pixel 8 Pro. This allowed us to point its cameras at a collection of objects while it tracked and remembered each one’s location. It was even smart enough to recognize my clothing and where I had stashed my sunglasses even though these objects were not originally part of the demo.
In some ways, our experience highlighted the potential highs and lows of AI. Just the ability for a digital assistant to tell you where you might have left your keys or how many apples were in your fruit bowl before you left for the grocery store could help you save some real time. But after talking to some of the researchers behind Astra, there are still a lot of hurdles to overcome.
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
Unlike a lot of Google’s recent AI features, Astra (which is described by Google as a “research preview”) still needs help from the cloud instead of being able to run on-device. And while it does support some level of object permanence, those “memories” only last for a single session, which currently only spans a few minutes. And even if Astra could remember things for longer, there are things like storage and latency to consider, because for every object Astra recalls, you risk slowing down the AI, resulting in a more stilted experience. So while it’s clear Astra has a lot of potential, my excitement was weighed down with the knowledge that it will be some time before we can get more full-feature functionality.
Karissa’s take:
Of all the generative AI advancements, multimodal AI has been the one I’m most intrigued by. As powerful as the latest models are, I have a hard time getting excited for iterative updates to text-based chatbots. But the idea of AI that can recognize and respond to queries about your surroundings in real-time feels like something out of a sci-fi movie. It also gives a much clearer sense of how the latest wave of AI advancements will find their way into new devices like smart glasses.
Google offered a hint of that with Project Astra, which may one day have a glasses component, but for now is mostly experimental (the glasses shown in the demo video during the I/O keynote were apparently a “research prototype.”) In person, though, Project Astra didn’t exactly feel like something out of sci-fi flick.
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
It was able to accurately recognize objects that had been placed around the room and respond to nuanced questions about them, like “which of these toys should a 2-year-old play with.” It could recognize what was in my doodle and make up stories about different toys we showed it.
But most of Astra’s capabilities seemed on-par with what Meta has already made available with its smart glasses. Meta’s multimodal AI can also recognize your surroundings and do a bit of creative writing on your behalf. And while Meta also bills the features as experimental, they are at least broadly available.
The Astra feature that may set Google’s approach apart is the fact that it has a built-in “memory.” After scanning a bunch of objects, it could still “remember” where specific items were placed. For now, it seems Astra’s memory is limited to a relatively short window of time, but members of the research team told us that it could theoretically be expanded. That would obviously open up even more possibilities for the tech, making Astra seem more like an actual assistant. I don’t need to know where I left my glasses 30 seconds ago, but if you could remember where I left them last night, that would actually feel like sci-fi come to life.
But, like so much of generative AI, the most exciting possibilities are the ones that haven’t quite happened yet. Astra might get there eventually, but right now it feels like Google still has a lot of work to do to get there.
Catch up on all the news from Google I/O 2024 right here!
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-project-astra-hands-on-full-of-potential-but-its-going-to-be-a-while-235607743.html?src=rss
At I/O 2024, Google’s teaser for Project Astra gave us a glimpse at where AI assistants are going in the future. It’s a multi-modal feature that combines the smarts of Gemini with the kind of image recognition abilities you get in Google Lens, as well as powerful natural language responses. However, while the promo video was slick, after getting to try it out in person, it's clear there’s a long way to go before something like Astra lands on your phone. So here are three takeaways from our first experience with Google’s next-gen AI.
Sam’s take:
Currently, most people interact with digital assistants using their voice, so right away Astra’s multi-modality (i.e. using sight and sound in addition to text/speech) to communicate with an AI is relatively novel. In theory, it allows computer-based entities to work and behave more like a real assistant or agent – which was one of Google’s big buzzwords for the show – instead of something more robotic that simply responds to spoken commands.
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
In our demo, we had the option of asking Astra to tell a story based on some objects we placed in front of camera, after which it told us a lovely tale about a dinosaur and its trusty baguette trying to escape an ominous red light. It was fun and the tale was cute, and the AI worked about as well as you would expect. But at the same time, it was far from the seemingly all-knowing assistant we saw in Google's teaser. And aside from maybe entertaining a child with an original bedtime story, it didn’t feel like Astra was doing as much with the info as you might want.
Then my colleague Karissa drew a bucolic scene on a touchscreen, at which point Astra correctly identified the flower and sun she painted. But the most engaging demo was when we circled back for a second go with Astra running on a Pixel 8 Pro. This allowed us to point its cameras at a collection of objects while it tracked and remembered each one’s location. It was even smart enough to recognize my clothing and where I had stashed my sunglasses even though these objects were not originally part of the demo.
In some ways, our experience highlighted the potential highs and lows of AI. Just the ability for a digital assistant to tell you where you might have left your keys or how many apples were in your fruit bowl before you left for the grocery store could help you save some real time. But after talking to some of the researchers behind Astra, there are still a lot of hurdles to overcome.
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
Unlike a lot of Google’s recent AI features, Astra (which is described by Google as a “research preview”) still needs help from the cloud instead of being able to run on-device. And while it does support some level of object permanence, those “memories” only last for a single session, which currently only spans a few minutes. And even if Astra could remember things for longer, there are things like storage and latency to consider, because for every object Astra recalls, you risk slowing down the AI, resulting in a more stilted experience. So while it’s clear Astra has a lot of potential, my excitement was weighed down with the knowledge that it will be some time before we can get more full-feature functionality.
Karissa’s take:
Of all the generative AI advancements, multimodal AI has been the one I’m most intrigued by. As powerful as the latest models are, I have a hard time getting excited for iterative updates to text-based chatbots. But the idea of AI that can recognize and respond to queries about your surroundings in real-time feels like something out of a sci-fi movie. It also gives a much clearer sense of how the latest wave of AI advancements will find their way into new devices like smart glasses.
Google offered a hint of that with Project Astra, which may one day have a glasses component, but for now is mostly experimental (the glasses shown in the demo video during the I/O keynote were apparently a “research prototype.”) In person, though, Project Astra didn’t exactly feel like something out of sci-fi flick.
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
It was able to accurately recognize objects that had been placed around the room and respond to nuanced questions about them, like “which of these toys should a 2-year-old play with.” It could recognize what was in my doodle and make up stories about different toys we showed it.
But most of Astra’s capabilities seemed on-par with what Meta has already made available with its smart glasses. Meta’s multimodal AI can also recognize your surroundings and do a bit of creative writing on your behalf. And while Meta also bills the features as experimental, they are at least broadly available.
The Astra feature that may set Google’s approach apart is the fact that it has a built-in “memory.” After scanning a bunch of objects, it could still “remember” where specific items were placed. For now, it seems Astra’s memory is limited to a relatively short window of time, but members of the research team told us that it could theoretically be expanded. That would obviously open up even more possibilities for the tech, making Astra seem more like an actual assistant. I don’t need to know where I left my glasses 30 seconds ago, but if you could remember where I left them last night, that would actually feel like sci-fi come to life.
But, like so much of generative AI, the most exciting possibilities are the ones that haven’t quite happened yet. Astra might get there eventually, but right now it feels like Google still has a lot of work to do to get there.
Catch up on all the news from Google I/O 2024 right here!
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-project-astra-hands-on-full-of-potential-but-its-going-to-be-a-while-235607743.html?src=rss
We just wrapped up coverage on Google's I/O 2024 keynote, and we're just so tired of hearing about AI. In this bonus episode, Cherlynn and Devindra dive into the biggest I/O news: Google's intriguing Project Astra AI assistant; new models for creating video and images; and some improvements to Gemini AI. While some of the announcements seem potentially useful, it's still tough to tell if the move towards AI will actually help consumers, or if Google is just fighting to stay ahead of OpenAI.
Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!
Hosts: Cherlynn Low and Devindra Hardawar Music: Dale North
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/engadget-podcast-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ai-of-google-io-2024-221741082.html?src=rss