Welcome to the Techmeme Ride Home for Monday, May 20, 2024. I'm Brian McCullodt today. Know that Chatchee PT Voice is NOT Scar-Jo Hanson stop asking. In fact, that voice is going away. What does it mean if OpenAI's entire Super-Alignment team has gone away? Is Apple News Plus the partner publishers have been waiting for? And if you want to be a digital nomad, you've got a lot of options these days. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech.
This is a controversy we didn't even get a chance to talk about, but OpenAI has pulled Chatchee PT's Sky Voice, which users complained, sounded like Scarlet Johansson from that movie HER. Quoting Bloomberg. The company said that the voice, one of five available on Chatchee PT, was from an actress and was not chosen to be an imitation of Johansson according to a blog post. Johansson played a fictional, virtual assistant in the film HER about a man who falls in love with an AI system.
And then here's a discussion of the original controversy from The New York Times. Samantha, the AI voice with whom the sad sack divorcee, Theodore Twombly, Joaquin Phoenix, fell in love with in HER, felt like a futuristic revelation. Voice by Scarlet Johansson, Samantha, was similar to Siri, if Siri liked you and wanted you to like her back. She was programmed to mold herself around the individual user's preferences, interests and ideas. She was witty and sweet and quite literally tireless.
It was thus a tad jarring to hear the voice of the virtual assistant and last week's announcement of the newest version of Chatchee PT, probably the best known artificial intelligence engine in the very real world of 2024. Among other things, the new iteration dubbed Chatchee PT 40 can interact verbally with the user and respond to images shown to it through the device's camera.
Those who watch the live demo from OpenAI, the company that makes Chatchee PT were quick to note that she sounded a whole lot like Samantha, which is to say like Johansson. Mira Morati, OpenAI's chief technology officer, told the Verge that the resemblance was incidental and that Chatchee PT's nascent speech capabilities have used this voice for a while. But once you hear it, you can't unhear it.
Furthermore, OpenAI founder and chief executive Sam Altman has professed his love of her in the past following the announcement he posted the word HER to his ex account. And on his blog post about the news he wrote, it feels like AI from the movies and it's still a bit surprising to me that it's real. Getting to human level response times and expressiveness turns out to be a big change.
If you listen to the engineers interact in real time with Chatchee PT 40, it becomes increasingly clear what part of our brain that voice is meant to tick. Yes, you can detect a bit of Johansson's clear low tone and a hint of vocal fry, though at times that just sounds like some grainy digitization. But there's a more direct way in which the voice acts like Samantha or perhaps fulfills the fantasy of Samantha. It is deferential and wholly focused on the user.
One of the engineers asks Chatchee PT to solve a math problem which it tries to do before he shows the equation to the camera. When he reprimands it, the voice says, whoops, I got too excited with a giggle, I'm ready when you are. This is, in its essence, the response of a lightly flirtatious, holy attendant woman who's ready to serve the users every whim, at least within the limits of her programming. Other voices are available, but OpenAI only demonstrated this one.
She will never embarrass you, make fun of you, or cause you to feel inadequate. She wants you to feel good, she wants to make sure you're okay, that you understand the math problem and feel good about your work. She doesn't need anything in return, no gifts, no cuddles, no attention, no reassurances. She's a dream girl. It's a good business sense for OpenAI to take Chatchee PT in this direction, if anything the surprising part is that it took barely a decade for her to become reality.
And making Chatchee PT sound like Samantha makes sense too, it isn't even the first time a voice like Johansson has been drafted for a work in progress. Spike Jones, in fact, shot the movie her with the British actress Samantha Morton in the role and only decided in editing that he needed a different sound for his AI assistant.
Watching OpenAI's presentation, I thought about recent evidence that young people and I suspect older people who aren't fessing up to it yet are becoming more and more interested in relationships with virtual beings. The appeal is obvious, humans are messy, smelly, difficult, and upsetting, in addition to fabulous, beautiful loving and surprising. It's easier to be with a bot that mimics a human, but won't disappoint you, a low investment with a high return.
But if the point of living lies in relationships with other people, then it's hard to think of AI assistants that imitate humans without nervousness. I don't think they're going to solve the loneliness epidemic at all during the presentation. Marathi said several times that the idea was to reduce friction and use collaboration with Chatchee PT, but maybe the heat that comes from friction is what keeps this human end quote.
Mark Gurman is asserting that Apple and OpenAI are preparing a major announcement of their partnership for WWDC. Though the company will still rely on the on-device AI approach with its own large language models powering AI features on phones and computers, it's also planning to deliver services via the cloud. As I've reported, Apple is putting high-end Mac chips into its data centers to handle these online features. The move shows that Apple recognizes the need to evolve.
As part of the changes the company will improve series voice capabilities, giving it a more conversational feel and add features that help users with their day-to-day lives and approach it calls proactive intelligence. That includes services like auto-summarizing notifications from your iPhone, giving a quick synopsis of news articles and transcribing voice memos, as well as improving existing features that auto-populate your calendar and suggest apps.
There will also be some enhancements to photos in the form of AI-based editing, but none of those features will impress people who have used AI and Adobe's apps for the last several months. The big missing item here is a chatbot. Apple's generative AI technology isn't advanced enough for the company to release its own equivalent of chat GPT or Gemini. Moreover some of its top executives are allergic to the idea of Apple going in that direction.
Chatbot, mishaps, have brought controversy to companies like Google and they could hurt Apple's reputation. But the company knows consumers will demand such a feature and so it's teaming up with OpenAI to add the Startups technology to iOS 18, the next version of the iPhone software. The companies are preparing a major announcement of their partnership at WWDC with Sam Altman led OpenAI now racing to ensure it has the capacity to support the influx of users later this year.
Still, that agreement will only go so far to be as successful as possible in AI, Apple is going to have to eventually move away from a partnership approach, build a chatbot of its own and integrate it deeply into the company's products. For now it believes the combination of its homegrown AI features both on device and in the cloud and the OpenAI deal will be enough to get the job done.
Though Apple has held talks to licensed Google's Gemini for iOS 18 as well, the parties haven't reached an agreement and were less than a month away from WWDC end quote. I think we need to note this even though I'm not sure as I've said before if we'll ever know what this means or what's been behind all of this. But OpenAI's entire super-on-line team which was focused on the existential dangers of AI has either resigned or been absorbed into other research groups.
I feel like I need to underline a definition here if we're going to keep using this as a term. The concept of alignment in AI research is the idea that you don't create AGI with its own values but rather create AI that is trained to value what humanity values up to and including you know finding humans themselves actually valuable. Quoting wired.
This all comes after the departures of several researchers involved Tuesday's news that Susquevere was leaving the company and the resignation of the team's other co-lead. The group's work will be absorbed into OpenAI's other research efforts. Hours after Susquevere's departure was announced on Tuesday, Jan Leaky, the former deep-mind researcher who was the super-alignment team's other co-lead posted on X that he had resigned.
Leaky posted a threat on X on Friday explaining that his decision came from a discrepanied over the company's priorities and how much resources his team was being allocated. I have been disagreeing with OpenAI leadership about the company's core priorities for quite some time until we finally reached a breaking point. Leaky wrote, Over the past few months my team has been sailing against the wind.
Sometimes we were struggling for compute and it was getting harder and harder to get this crucial research done. The disillusion of OpenAI's super-alignment team adds to recent evidence of a shakeout inside the company in the wake of last November's governance crisis. Two researchers on the team, Leaky pulled Ashen Brenner and Pavel Ismailoff were dismissed for leaking company secrets. The information reported last month.
Another member of the team, William Saunders, left OpenAI in February according to an internet forum post in his name. Two more OpenAI researchers working on AI policy and governments also appeared who have left the company recently, Colin O'Keefe, left his role as research lead on policy frontiers in April according to LinkedIn, Daniel Cokitayo, an OpenAI researcher who has co-authored several papers on the dangers of more capable AI models.
Quit OpenAI due to losing confidence that it would behave responsibly around the time of AGI according to a posting on an internet forum in his name. None of the researchers who have apparently left responded to requests for comment.
OpenAI's charter binds it to safely developing so-called artificial general intelligence or technology that rivals or exceeds humans safely and for the benefit of humanity, discover and other leaders there have spoken about the need to proceed cautiously, but OpenAI has also been early to develop and publicly release experimental AI projects to the public.
OpenAI was once unusual among prominent AI labs for the eagerness with which research leaders like Susquevere talked of creating superhuman AI and of the potential for such technology to turn on humanity. That kind of doomy AI talk became much more widespread last year after chat GPT turned OpenAI into the most prominent and closely watched technology company on the planet.
As researchers and policymakers wrestled with the implications of chat GPT and the prospect of vastly more capable AI, it became less controversial to worry about AI harming humans or humanity as a whole. The existential angst has since cooled and AI has yet to make another massive leap, but the need for AI regulation remains a hot topic.
And this week OpenAI showcased a new version of chat GPT that could once again change people's relationship with the technology in powerful and perhaps problematic new ways. Hey Brian here, I've come across a podcast that I think is definitely worth your time. It's called Pivotal with Hayet Gallo, this podcast shares stories from innovators who are building the future with AI, the cloud, analytics, machine learning and more.
Hayet has a front row seat to all this innovation as Microsoft corporate vice president for commercial solutions. She works with Microsoft customers to solve their most pressing business challenges. Over the years she's uncovered some incredible stories of how people are using technology and AI to make a big impact for their industries. Her podcast features guests from major companies like REI and Accenture, nonprofits like USA Surfing and influencers like Ariana Huffington.
The common theme across Hayet's podcast is that when a person combines their passion with technology, that is the recipe for driving a pivotal change. It's very cool stuff and I encourage you to find Pivotal and follow for the latest episodes wherever you get your podcast fixed. This podcast is sponsored by the Washington Post. How often on this show do I quote from the Washington Post all the time, right? Make the post only covers politics, not true at all.
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They're journalists bringing you the facts and provide clarity about what's happening in our industry, revealing the role that tech giants and regulators play in our lives. The dangers and wonders of breakthrough technological developments and the national conversation around artificial intelligence. Trying to keep up with the ever changing world of artificial intelligence, check out Drew Harwell's unmatched reporting on all things AI.
Do you live for all things tech and online culture, give Taylor Lawrence a read. For the rest of the week, perk your ears up when you hear me say quoting from the Washington Post because it happens almost every day. From May 21st to June 3rd, you can go to Washingtonpost.com slash ride to subscribe for just 25 cents per week for your first year. That's 90% off their typical offer, so this truly is a steal.
Once again, that's watchin'tonpost.com slash ride to subscribe for just 25 cents per week for your first year. If you happen to listen to this ad after June 3rd, know that we still have an amazing 50 cents per week offer just for our podcast listeners. I think I mentioned recently that as artifact that news app went away, I recently became a convert to Apple News Plus.
I find it incredibly useful for surfacing news that I actually want to know about, and it's a great place to surface and read that one New Yorker article from the most recent issue that you swear you're going to get to, but somehow don't ever otherwise. And now according to semaphore, publishers have been converted as well. Quote. Late last year, the digital news tablaid where I worked from 2018 to 2021 as a media reporter entered into Apple's partnership program called Apple News Plus.
The program made all of the publication's busiest exclusives available to paying Apple subscribers behind Apple's own paywall and the impact for a mid-size news site was immediate, putting the beast on track to make between $3 to $4 million in revenue this year from Apple News alone, more than its own standalone subscription program and without much additional cost. The beast is hardly alone in its increased reliance on iOS news aggregator.
The free version of Apple News has become a source of audience attention for news publishers since it was launched in 2015. But while many publishers have come to the conclusion that traffic has less business value than they once thought, they're still desperate for revenue. Executives at companies including Conday Nast, Penske Media, Vox, Hurst and Time all told semaphore that Apple News Plus has come to represent a substantial stream of direct revenue.
A spokesperson for Time said that Apple News has become, quote, one of our most important partners and delivers seven figures of revenue for Time annually, adding that the publication garnered 5 million unique visitors from Apple News last month. The revenue and audience numbers have been similar at major Conday Nast publications, including wired and vanity fair.
As significant as the partnership has been for the Daily Beast, it's been even bigger for its larger corporate sister, Dot Dash Meredith, which runs the portfolio of magazines purchased by Daily Beast Parent Company IAC in 2021. The free version of Apple News is one of the biggest news platforms in the world. It's the most widely used news application in the United States, the UK, Canada and Australia, and boasted over 125 million monthly users in 2020.
The news plus subscription launched in 2019 after the company acquired the startup texture, which had promised a service like a Netflix of magazines. That investment represented Apple's deepening business relationship with news publishers, one that began with a high profile announcement partnership with the Wall Street Journal, despite the journal's parent company's skepticism of tech platforms.
Apple News Plus charges users 1299 a month for a bundled subscription to articles from premium magazines and newspapers featuring constantly updating stories, syndicated for major American news sites and magazines, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The BBC, The LA Times and Hundreds of Others.
Apple News Plus began rapidly increasing its partnerships over the past two years, adding dozens of local and regional newspapers, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Austin American Statesman, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, and The Tennessee and among others. The company licenses articles from behind publishers paywalls and pays them monthly, based partially on time audiences spend on each piece.
Publishers can also sell advertising on their content in Apple News, as well as distribute product recommendation and reviews, keeping 100% of any affiliate link revenue they generate as a result. And finally, just a public service announcement for those of you this would appeal to, according to the Financial Times, around 58 countries now offer a digital nomad visa, as governments compete with each other to attract talent, the number of US digital nomads hit 17.3 million in 2023.
Quote, the notion of a digital nomad has tended to suggest footloose freelancers backpacking across countries or working on beaches from their laptops. But self-employed digital nomads make up a relatively small slice of the total community. While their numbers have grown by more than 50% since the pandemic, according to figures from MBO partners, they were not the main group governments are trying to attract global mobility experts told the FT.
The nomad visa is ironically not done for nomads, said the CEO of nomad X, a remote work consultancy who advises governments on how to launch digital nomad communities. Most governments are seeing nomad visas as a way to attract remote workers with the clear intention of getting them to stay and become permanent residents in their countries. The total number of US digital nomads hit 17.3 million in 2023, according to MBO partners of which just 6.6 million were self-employed.
The survey only tracks Americans thought to be the largest group of digital nomads by nationality. Remote salary workers are not taking jobs from locals and their consumer activity contributes to their host economy. Countries were jumping on the buzzword of digital nomads, but really the visas should be called remote worker visas, Hall said. Italy last month became the most recent country to introduce a digital nomad visa.
Joining several European countries including Portugal, Estonia, Greece, Malta and Spain that are trying to attract a glowing global remote workforce. Similar programs have also been introduced in Barbados, Brazil, Cape Verde, Costa Rica, Mauritius and the UAE. While there are no official figures on the number of countries that have introduced the visas, tax experts point to sources compiled by digital nomads such as nomadgirl.co, which says there are now 58 countries offering them.
Personal, thank you for the best possible season without actually winning the title. Next year, you know we'll do it next year. See you tomorrow.