TOGETHER WITH

Good morning, human brains, and welcome back to your daily munch of AI news.

Here’s what’s on the menu today:

• BMW locks lips with Figure 🤖 ❤️

  Figure will deploy humanoid robots in BMW’s South Carolina plant.

• AI mops the floor with coronavirus 🦠 😡

  Microsoft Research made strides in AI drug development.

• Your voice with AI > Morgan Freeman’s voice? 🦾 😎

  Adobe rolls out new audio features in Premiere Pro.

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MAIN COURSE

Chill while bots make your new car 🤖 ❤️

Back in May, we reported on Sanctuary AI’s humanoid robot. It took $100 million to develop and can lift 55 lb.

Then in June, we covered 2023 5 most promising humanoid robots. One of these Figure’s humanoid prototype, Figure 01.

More news about Figure’s bots?

You figured it out. 😏

Yesterday, Figure announced a partnership with BMW. They will deploy its humanoid robots in BMW’s manufacturing facility in South Carolina.

Why would they do this?

Figure says the robots will increase the safety, productivity, and cost-effectiveness of the plant.

Isn’t BMW in Germany?

Its Spartanburg plant in South Carolina is the only BMW facility in the US. It’s an 8-million-square-foot-campus that boasted the highest yield among its factories anywhere in the world.

Do the robots know what they’re doing?

No, they will essentially learn on the job. They’ll be trained via reinforcement learning, simulation, and teleoperation.

So BMW just bought a bunch of robots?

Figure will lease the robots through a Robotics as a Service (Raas) model. They also plan to use this model through other partnerships, though they didn’t mention any names.

Is that it?

The companies will also develop more AI, robotics, and manufacturing technology together.

RECOMMENDED READING

Like Bot Eat Brain? Want to go deeper into Artificial Intelligence? Then you should check out Agent AI, written by Dharmesh Shah:

SIDE SALAD

AI vs. the big Rona 🦠😡

In November, we reported on Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold update. Its advancements in protein folding directly leads to new drugs.

In December, we covered MIT researchers discovering a new class of antibiotics. These antibiotics, unearthed by a trained AI model, kill MRSA cells.

More drugs?

“Be a lot cooler if you did.” 🤤

On Tuesday, Microsoft Research achieved significant progress in drug development. More specifically, drugs that tackle infectious diseases.

So, what happened?

Microsoft Research and the Global Health Drug Discovery Institute (GHDDI) used AI to accelerate the development of new drugs.

They used AI models to design compounds that target and disrupt specific proteins found in tuberculosis and coronavirus.

Why is this a big deal?

Traditional discovery methods for these compounds can take years. This reduced this process to just five months.

Also, the effectiveness of the new compounds equalled, and sometimes surpassed, existing ones.

How did they design the compounds?

The compounds were created, tested, and tweaked through a collaborative feedback loop between the researchers and the AI models.

This continually enhanced the effectiveness of the compounds and the performance of the AI system.

To check out the paper, click here.

A LITTLE SOMETHING EXTRA

Sound dope in your videos, fast 🦾 😎

In October, we reported on Adobe’s Project Stardust. It’s a photo editing tool that lets you manipulate objects in images with text prompts.

A few days later, we covered Adobe’s Icon of Transparency. It’s an AI content watermark that Adobe claims you can’t edit out.

More Adobe stuff?

Indeed.

On Monday, Adobe announced new AI audio editing features in Premiere Pro. It began rolling out Enhanced Speech, Audio Categorization, and more.

What’s Enhanced Speech?

It automatically cleans up dialogue so it sounds more professional. It automatically removes background noise, applies EQ, adjusts volume, and more.

It is initially in beta, but will be available to all Premiere Pro users soon.

Sweet. What about Audio Categorization?

This automatically tags sound clips as dialogue, music, sound effects, and more. Then, it packages commonly used effects and settings into each category.

Cool. Anything else?

Yes, it now features interactive fade handles that allow you to quickly adjust audio transitions.

Not only this, it includes tons of quality-of-life improvements like resizable waveforms, enhance clip visibility, more intuitive timeline customization, and more.

For all the goodies, click here.

YOUR DAILY MUNCH

Tools

Nurgo — BrainSoup is a multi-agent, multi-LLM AI platform for Windows that lets you create specialized AI agents that can interact with your local computer to perform tasks autonomously. [Sponsored]

Pinokio — an open-source, intuitive AI browser that you can install, run, and tweak the settings of any application on.

MakeShorts — turns YouTube videos into vertical, short-form content.

AI Picasso — turns photos into dance animations for TikToks, Shorts, and more.

Think Pieces

How the EU demands more transparency in streaming services. The goal is to cut down on DeepFakes, AI-generated media, and more.

Android Auto’s AI integration in your vehicle’s infotainment system. How it will help you navigate, send texts, make suggestions, and more.

Why the FDA approved this device that detects skin cancer. It enables 300,000 U.S. primary care physicians to test for all types of skin cancer.

Startup News

Google announced the Samsung Galaxy S24 will come with Gemini. It will bring AI functionality to Notes, Voice Recorder, Keyboard, and more.

AI startup, Farm-ng, received $10 million in Series A funding. The money will fund the development of agricultural robots.

Vicarius, an IT startup, received $30 million in Series B funding. The goal is to develop AI-powered cybersecurity tools for businesses.

Research

Infinite LLM — A technique that enables context lengths up to 1900k tokens for cloud-based LLMs.

Discerning Synthetic Images — Cornell University research paper on using AI to differentiate real images from AI-generated, fake ones.

Parrot — increases the image quality of text-to-image models via a reinforcement learning framework with multiple reward systems in place.

MEMES FOR DESSERT

TWEET OF THE DAY

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AI ART-SHOW

Until next time 🤖😋🧠