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Big bucks. OpenAI is reportedly raking in a whopping $1.3 billion in revenue a year (yes, that’s billion with a B). According to insiders, CEO Sam Altman told staff this week the company is generating over $100 million per month, which is up 30% from this summer and up a whole lot more than last year when revenue was a “mere” $28 million. Talk about hockey stick growth.
In other news… AI agents, a CO2-sucking home, and the next era of AI-powered IG filters.
Top Trends
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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Bot bullpen // Illustration by Kate Walker
“AI agents” are already reshaping the internet
The Future. Leveraging ChatGPT’s ability to talk with the API of a website, app, or software, researchers at Nvidia taught ChatGPT to play the game Minecraft without human intervention… paving the way for the chatbot to become a full-fledged “AI agent” and handle any number of online tasks. While there’s still a lot of development to be done, the AI agents will likely be able to automate the tasks of most white-collar jobs — putting office workers on a collision course with optimization.
Bot population
ChatGPT is taking on a life of its own.
The Nvidia team taught ChatGPT to “swim, gather plants, hunt pigs, mine gold, and build houses” within Minecraft.
This functionality turns chatbots into “a new kind of autonomous system called an AI agent,” per NYT, that can eventually be retrofitted into a personal assistant to handle any number of online tasks.
Some firms have already taught AI agents to schedule meetings and craft presentations (with graphs, bar charts, etc.) — typically the purview of entry-level office jobs.
And Microsoft VP Ashley Llorens said the company is working on projects that envision “A.I.s working with other A.I.s on your behalf.”
Jeff Clune, an OpenAI vet who’s now a computer science professor at the University of British Columbia, says these types of capabilities open up “a huge commercial opportunity, potentially trillions of dollars” — one that has “a huge upside — and huge consequences — for society.”
Just how huge? A recent survey of 800 executives and 800 employees found half of each group believes their skills will be obsolete in just two years. And SEC chair Gary Gensler believes AI will spark a financial crisis sometime in the next decade.
Essentially, the future is much closer than we think.
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SUSTAINABILITY
Courtesy of Partanna
LA Lakers star Rick Fox builds a CO2-sucking home
The Future. Rick Fox’s construction company, Partanna, finished building its first prototype home using a cement-less and carbon-negative alternative concrete. With concrete production representing 8% of greenhouse gas emissions (almost all thanks to cement), the material could be a building block for a more sustainable industry… and get the marketing push it needs thanks to Fox’s global reputation.
Green lawns and green construction
After trading his NBA career for acting, Rick Fox is now playing in the world of sustainable construction.
Partanna’s concrete is made from slag (a byproduct of steel construction) and brine (waste from water desalination plants) instead of typical cement.
The concrete is sustainable in two ways — 1. it can be made at ambient temperature (cement is made at pollution-generating high heat) and 2. “binder ingredients” in the concrete literally pull CO2 out of the air and store it.
The 1,250 square-foot home can reportedly capture as much carbon as 5,200 trees, according to carbon credit certifier Vera.
The Bahamian government has partnered with Partanna on 1,000 homes, where Hurricane Dorian destroyed 75% of the homes on the island of Abaco in 2019. The Bahamian Fox was determined to help out and found a partner in California-based architect Sam Marshall, whose home was damaged in the 2018 Woolsey Fire and who was looking for a novel way to fix it.
Thanks to the alternative concrete’s ability to become stronger when exposed to seawater (thank the brine), these homes may be able to more than withstand the next major hurricane.
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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Courtesy of Google
New photo-editing tools are changing reality
The Future. While photo-editing tools have been around for years, touch-up tools on Google’s new Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro phones make Instagram filters look antiquated, giving users unprecedented accessibility and ease in “capturing” the perfect shot. Soon, Instagram may be littered with not just touched-up pics but also photos of entirely fictionalized moments.
Fake smiles
The photo touch-up tools on Google’s new Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro phones make Instagram filters look antiquated.
The “Best Take” feature allows users to swap out faces from a series of shots to craft the one where everybody is smiling, has their eyes open, and is having a good hair day.
The “Magic Editor” tool gives users the power to move themselves around the photo, change the color of objects, and even alter the time of day.
The “Magic Eraser” tool lets users delete unwanted people or things from the background (also available to Google Photos users).
And as a little bonus for videos, the “Audio Magic Eraser” feature can get rid of unwanted background noise.
How do the Pixel phones pull this off? Generative AI, of course, which looks at the image and guesses what should be there. As Google’s AI system continues to develop, it may become impossible to tell which images are genuine and which are slyly manipulated… even for deepfake-forensic software.
It could make the plot of last year’s movie Not Okay suddenly feel like a period piece.
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Highlights
The best curated daily stories from around the web
Media, Music, & Entertainment
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour made a whopping $123.5 million globally over the weekend, which is a record October box office debut… but also, amazingly, a little below expectations. Read more → bloomberg
Bad Bunny’s new album, nadie sabe lo que va a pasar mañana, broke the record for the most-streamed album in a single day on Spotify. Read more → hypebeast
Actress and filmmaker Eva Longoria and Cris Abrego, Chairman of the Americas of French-production powerhouse Banijay, have formed Hyphenate — a Chernin Entertainment-like media holding company and production studio. Read more → thr
Fashion & E-Commerce
Goldman Sachs really wants out of its high-yield savings account partnership with Apple as the firm looks to reverse course on all of its consumer-lending ambitions. Read more → wsj
Spotify’s algorithm isn’t just serving song recommendations; it’s now serving merch recommendations on its new Merch Hub. Read more → techcrunch
Bottega Veneta is launching a trade school, which will give 50 fashion design students seven weeks of courses annually and a guaranteed job at the fashion house after graduation. Read more → hypebeast
Tech, Web3, & AI
Disney is testing free-roaming droids that can “imitate artistic motion” at Disneyland’s Star Wars-themed Galaxy’s Edge. Read more → deadline
A Vermont utility company has asked the state to let it buy power wall batteries for customers instead of building more power lines — a real canary in the coal mine. Read more → nyt
Australian design student Alexander Burton won the prestigious James Dyson Award for inventing a relatively cheap kit for turning any gas-powered car into a hybrid. Read more → fastcompany
Creator Economy
Atmosfy is making social media hyper-local with a short-form video app that focuses on users discovering and reviewing nearby businesses. Read more → tubefilter
YouTube is releasing a new ad product that offers brands an AI-powered way to target and serve ads on videos that center around specific cultural moments. Read more → techcrunch
Portal A has announced the inaugural nine projects selected for its $500,000 Moonshots grant that aims to highlight experimental, creator-driven content. Read more → tubefilter
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Melody Song. Copy edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.