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Runway To Fund Independent AI Movies
AI Breakfast
September 27, 2024
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Good morning. It’s Friday, September 27th.
Did you know: On this day in 1983, Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov prevented nuclear war by disobeying orders when the USSR’s early warning system erroneously detected nuclear missile launches from the United States. He believed it was a false alarm and chose not to follow Soviet military protocol.
In today’s email:
OpenAI To Remove Non-Profit Status, Give Altman Equity
RunwayML’s $5M AI Movie Fund
Sora Update
Meta Connect Announcements
5 New AI Tools
Latest AI Research Papers
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Today’s trending AI news stories
OpenAI to remove non-profit control and give Sam Altman equity
OpenAI is gearing up for a major shift, with plans to restructure as a for-profit benefit corporation and hand CEO Sam Altman a 7% equity stake—the first time he'll hold ownership in the company. The non-profit board, currently in control, will scale back to a minority stake, making OpenAI more palatable to investors and pushing its valuation toward $150 billion.
This restructuring comes on the heels of CTO Mira Murati's sudden exit. Murati, alongside Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew and research lead Barret Zoph, also recently stepped down, with their departures described as independent and amicable. Murati, who briefly served as interim CEO during last year’s upheaval, cited a desire for personal exploration.
These leadership changes follow earlier exits from co-founders Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever, and the company is now focused on balancing its mission of building "safe" AGI within a more profit-driven framework, similar to those of Anthropic and Elon Musk’s xAI. Read more.
Runway earmarks $5M to fund up to 100 films using AI-generated video
Runway has introduced the Hundred Film Fund, allocating $5 million in cash and additional service credits to support up to 100 films that utilize its generative AI video technology. This initiative seeks to stimulate the emerging AI film ecosystem by providing grants for various formats, including features, shorts, documentaries, and music videos, with filmmakers eligible for financial backing and up to $2 million in service credits, potentially increasing total funding to $10 million.
Runway's Head of Creative, Jamie Umpherson, emphasized that each project will be evaluated based on its specific production needs. Notably, Runway will not claim ownership over the films but will require biweekly production updates.
In light of this, industry veteran Michael Black pointed out that casting a wide net and funding numerous projects may be wise. He described the approach as “spray and pray,” suggesting that among the 100 films, at least one or two might demonstrate the potential of AI-generated video effectively. Read more.
OpenAI's video AI Sora reportedly gets an upgrade to produce longer, higher quality clips faster
OpenAI is taking strides to revamp its video AI, Sora, which made its debut in February, with a mission to crank out longer, higher-quality video clips with greater speed. The original version garnered some unfavorable feedback, often taking over ten minutes per clip and struggling with stylistic coherence and accurate object representation. Filmmaker Patrick Cederberg, for instance, found himself churning out hundreds of clips before landing on a usable product, hindered by inconsistencies and physics errors.
To refine Sora, OpenAI is amassing millions of hours of high-resolution video footage as training data, with the intent of reducing biases and reinforcing the model's dependability. As the video AI arena heats up—with new contenders sprouting in China and innovations from Runway ML—Sora remains in research mode while OpenAI fine-tunes its release plans and works to trim production costs. Read more.
Meta Connect 2024: the biggest announcements
Meta has made a series of announcements at its Meta Connect event, showcasing an array of hardware and AI innovations. The new Quest 3S VR headset, priced at $299.99, retains many features of its predecessor, the Quest 3, while forgoing certain enhancements like depth sensing to accommodate a lower price point. In augmented reality, Meta's Orion glasses use Micro LED projectors to overlay digital information in the user's field of view, offering interactive capabilities similar to those found in the updated Ray-Ban smart glasses.
The latest Llama 3.2 AI model has also been introduced, featuring enhanced image processing abilities that bring it in line with competitor offerings. Additional updates include new AI-generated content in users' Facebook and Instagram feeds, alongside advancements in real-time translation and celebrity chatbots across Meta's platforms. Read more.
📣 Introducing Llama 3.2: Lightweight models for edge devices, vision models and more!
What’s new?
• Llama 3.2 1B & 3B models deliver state-of-the-art capabilities for their class for several on-device use cases — with support for @Arm, @MediaTek & @Qualcomm on day one.
•… x.com/i/web/status/1…— AI at Meta (@AIatMeta)
5:28 PM • Sep 25, 2024
5 new AI-powered tools from around the web
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