Hollywood’s latest AI narrators

Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

Hollywood’s golden age just got a digital resurrection with AI, and your favorite books are about to get a heavy dose of star power.

With late celebrities like James Dean and Judy Garland entering into the narration game — are human voice actors getting a final curtain call in the method? Let’s dive deeper…

In today’s AI rundown:

• ElevenLabs launches ‘Iconic Voices’

• Leaks reveal Google Pixel AI upgrades

• Create talking photos with only a selfie

• Meta’s latest text-to-3D AI

• 5 latest AI tools & 4 latest AI jobs

• More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

ELEVENLABS

🗣️ ElevenLabs launches ‘Iconic Voices’

The Rundown: AI audio company ElevenLabs just announced a brand new ‘Iconic Voices’ feature for its recently released Reader App, allowing users to have text read by AI-generated voices of famous Hollywood stars.

The main points:

• The initial lineup includes AI-recreated voices of Judy Garland, James Dean, Burt Reynolds, and Sir Laurence Olivier, with more being added in the approaching months.

• ElevenLabs reached licensing agreements for the voices with CMG Worldwide, which manages the estates of late-featured celebrities.

• Users can have the AI voices read books, articles, PDFs, and other text content available inside the Reader App.

• The voices are only useable inside the Reader App itself, and can’t be chosen to create shareable content on the platform.

Why it matters: In case you’re a voice actor, the competition just got an entire lot fiercer. ElevenLabs just isn’t only showing off the powerful way forward for AI-generated voice clones, but in addition setting a powerful licensing precedent for the industry by working directly with the estates of the late Hollywood stars.

TOGETHER WITH RETOOL

📊 AI insights from 700+ tech pros

The Rundown: Retool just launched its latest State of AI report, full of data from 700+ devs and tech leaders to enable you cut through the hype and learn the way to leverage AI for real impact.

The excellent report includes:

• The great, the bad, and the ugly of the AI stack

• How much ROI builders are actually seeing from their AI use

• The actual AI use cases builders and businesses love most

Read Retool’s State of AI report here. 

GOOGLE

📱 Leaks reveal Google Pixel AI upgrades

The Rundown: Newly leaked details have emerged regarding a set of latest AI features for the upcoming Google Pixel 9 — including a privacy-focused tackle Microsoft’s controversial Recall tool.

The main points:

• ‘Pixel Screenshots’ will allow users to go looking and summarize manually captured screenshots, without being ‘always-on’ just like the Copilot Plus’ Recall feature.

• ‘Add Me’ is a brand new AI feature designed for group photos, while ‘Studio’ will reportedly bring latest creative capabilities to editing and sticker creation.

• The AI features will all be grouped under the ‘Google AI’ branding, with the brand new Pixel line set to be unveiled at a launch event on Aug. 13.

• The Pixel 8 line has already introduced several existing AI features, including Circle to Search, summarize and transcription tools, Audio Magic Eraser, and more.

Why it matters: Between Apple Intelligence, Google AI, and Microsoft’s Copilot line, the following device reveals feel just like the first true step into the AI era. Billions of users are about to get very accustomed to the way to use basic AI tools as they get added to each device.

AI TRAINING

🗣️ Create talking photos with only a selfie

The Rundown: Hedra Labs now transforms static photos into dynamic talking images, bringing your selfies to life with synchronized speech and facial animations.

Step-by-step:

1. Visit Hedra Labs’ website and create a free account.

2. Upload a high-quality, clear photo of yourself facing the camera directly.

3. Generate audio by typing text (as much as 300 characters) or import your personal audio file.

4. Click “Generate video” to create your talking photo.

5. Preview, download, or share your animated selfie!

Pro tip: For best results, use photos where you are not smiling, and there is high contrast between you and the background.

Get more AI tutorials →

PRESENTED BY COVALENT

🐍 Serverless H100s with one line of code

The Rundown: Searching for a faster option to develop and deploy your AI applications on advanced GPUs? With Covalent you’ll be able to train, fine-tune, and serve AI entirely in Python, & skip the devops.

The main points:

• Code locally and run 100s of GPUs immediately, just through the use of Python decorators

• Covalent handles the infrastructure — on-demand H100s, A100s & more, available now

• Only pay for compute used — no reservations or minimum spend

Join today and rise up to 30 hours in free compute.

AI RESEARCH

🧊 Meta’s latest text-to-3D AI

The Rundown: Meta just announced Meta 3D Gen, a brand new AI system that may generate detailed, high-quality 3D assets from text descriptions in lower than a minute.

The main points:

• Meta 3D Gen combines two components — Meta 3D AssetGen for the initial object generation and Meta 3D TextureGen for texture refinement.

• The system generates 3D assets with high-resolution textures and physically-based rendering (PBR) materials 3-10x faster than existing options.

• 3D Gen may also understand and apply complex ideas, like artistic styles or specific materials, to the objects it creates.

• In tests, 3D Gen outperformed state-of-the-art rivals in each visual quality and prompt adherence.

Why it matters: 3D object creation had previously been a painstaking process — but AI is opening latest possibilities for anyone to quickly and simply generate assets for sectors like video games, VR, product design, and more.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

Trending AI Tools

• 📱 Motiff – AI-powered UI design for professionals

• 🔒 GPT4All 3.0 – Run powerful LLMs locally in your computer

• 📈 Quill – AI-powered SEC filing, access reliable information from public investment material

• 👩‍🎤 Rapport – Animate and deploy virtual avatars of ChatGPT and other AIs

• 🎨 RunDiffusion – A cloud platform for generative art that permits you to run open-source models

Browse more AI tools →

Recent AI Job Opportunities

• 💻 Harvey – Head of IT

• 🌐 xAI – Network Engineer

• ✏️ Glean – Design Engineer

• 👓 Meta – Computer Vision Engineer, Reality Labs

Browse more AI jobs →

QUICK HITS

Figma temporarily disabled its newly launched ‘Make Design’ AI feature following a viral post showing the tool directly reproducing Apple’s Weather app design.

Runway is reportedly in talks for a brand new $450M funding round, which might bring the corporate’s value to almost $4B.

Google reported a 13% increase in emissions for 2023, falling in need of its ‘net zero’ climate goal set for 2030 — citing growing AI power demands as a key factor for the setback.

Anthropic launched an initiative to fund third-party organizations in developing latest advanced AI model evaluations, focused on AI safety assessments, capability metrics, and evaluation infrastructure.

Microsoft’s AI partnership with UAE firm G42 is facing scrutiny from U.S. officials over national security concerns, potentially jeopardizing plans for AI projects in emerging markets like Kenya.

A brand new Meta job listing hints at the corporate’s plan to infuse AI into its metaverse gaming efforts, detailing AI-powered consumer experiences like games that “change each time you play”.

THAT’S A WRAP

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