Hey there, welcome to this week’s AI update from TechCrunch. This week saw a significant change in the U.S. legal landscape as the Supreme Court overturned the “Chevron deference,” a long-standing rule that allowed federal agencies to interpret laws when Congress left them ambiguous. This decision now puts the onus on the courts to interpret laws, which could have far-reaching consequences. With this change, the future of nationwide AI regulation in the U.S. is uncertain. Congress was already struggling to pass basic AI policies, and now any regulations will need to be extremely specific to withstand legal challenges, which poses a significant challenge given the rapid pace of the AI industry.
In other news, Google released its 2024 Environmental Report, outlining its efforts to address environmental issues through technology. However, the report does not address the energy consumption of Google’s AI, which is known to be energy-intensive. Figma, a design tool, has disabled its AI feature temporarily after concerns that it was replicating designs from Apple’s Weather app. Meta, formerly Facebook, faced criticism for mislabeling photos as “Made with AI” and has now changed the tag to “AI info” across its apps.
On a lighter note, New York state is providing robot animals to the elderly to combat loneliness. Apple is expanding its AI features to its Vision Pro mixed-reality headsets, going beyond its existing offerings on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
In research, a study from Northeastern University delves into how text-generating models like GPT-4o process and generate human-like text. Researchers found that these models develop an implicit vocabulary that maps groups of tokens to meaningful units, shedding light on how these models function. Additionally, Meta has trained models to create 3D assets from text descriptions for use in apps and games, showcasing the potential of generative AI in the metaverse.
Apple’s partnership with OpenAI could see an Apple executive joining OpenAI’s board as an observer, signaling a deepening collaboration between the two companies. This move could have implications for the integration of OpenAI’s ChatGPT platform into Apple devices, with potential revenue-sharing agreements on the horizon.
Overall, the landscape of AI regulation, technological advancements, and industry collaborations continue to evolve, shaping the future of AI in various sectors. Stay tuned for more updates on the latest in AI developments.
