Major ChatGPT-4o update allows audio-video talks with an “emotional” AI chatbot (6 minute read)

OpenAI announced a new AI model yesterday called GPT-4o that can converse using speech in real time, read emotional cues, and respond to visual input. It will roll out over the next few weeks for free to ChatGPT users and as a service through API. Paid subscribers will have five times the rate limits of free users. The API will feature twice the speed, 50% lower cost, and five times higher rate limits compared to GPT-4 Turbo. A 26-minute long video that introduces GPT-4o and demonstrates its abilities is available in the article.

Before launching, GPT-4o broke records on chatbot leaderboard under a secret name (3 minute read)

The mysterious chat-topping AI chatbot known as 'gpt2-chatbot' that had been undergoing testing on the LMSYS Chatbot Arena has been revealed to be OpenAI's newly announced GPT-4o model. The model had topped the Chatbot Arena leaderboard, achieving the highest documented score ever. OpenAI tested multiple versions of GPT-4o on Chatbot Arena before its announcement yesterday. The models surpass all other models by a significant gap and have become the strongest ever in the Arena.

Apple, Netflix, and Amazon Want to Change How They Pay Hollywood Stars (12 minute read)

Apple will soon begin basing pay on how a series or movie performs. Talent would receive bonuses on a points system, with the size of the bonuses being based on the number of people who signed up for Apple TV+ to watch, how much time they spent viewing, and the cost of the program relative to the size of its audience. Netflix and Amazon have also spent months developing plans for performance-based compensation, but neither have gone public yet with their models. Streaming services are becoming increasingly more transparent - the practice will make it easier to tie pay to performance.

'Tungsten wall' leads to nuclear fusion breakthrough (4 minute read)

Encasing fusion plasma inside tungsten allowed a tokamak in France to set a new record by sustaining plasma at about 50 million degrees Celsius for six minutes. Tungsten has an extraordinarily high melting point. Using a tungsten-wall environment is for more challenging than using carbon, but the material allows physicists to sustain hot plasmas for longer and at higher energies and densities. While research into nuclear fusion has been slow, the field has made significant strides over the last few years.

Popover API (6 minute read)

The Popover API allows developers to easily display popover content on top of other page content. It has a standard, consistent, and flexible mechanism that creates popover content that can be controlled declaratively using HTML attributes or via JavaScript. This documentation covers how to use the Popover API with examples.

Analyst on Starlink's rapid rise: “Nothing short of mind-blowing” (7 minute read)

SpaceX's Starlink satellite Internet business is now profitable. The company's first batch of 60 satellites was launched just five years ago. It will have an estimated free cash flow of about $600 million this year. The business is now self-sustaining and there's still room for significant growth.

GameStop, AMC soar more than 70% each as ‘Roaring Kitty' meme trader resurfaces (5 minute read)

'Roaring Kitty', the man who inspired the epic short squeeze of 2021, posted online for the first time in roughly three years on Monday, causing GameStop and AMC shares to rally dramatically. The picture he posted of a video gamer leaning forward on their chair garnered 63,000 likes in 13 hours. He later posted a few videos with scenes from popular TV shows and movies, but there is no clear indication of what these posts mean. GameStop's stock has started to move higher recently, which, along with the enormous amount of short interest in the stock, may have rekindled his interest.

Google is redesigning its search engine — and it's AI all the way down (6 minute read)

Billions of Google users will soon see AI-generated summaries at the top of many of their search results. The AI Overviews are designed to take out the hard work of searching so users can focus on the important things. Google announced several other AI-powered features at its I/O developer conference, such as a feature in Lens that lets users search by capturing a video, a planning tool that can generate trip itineraries and meal plans with a single query, and suggestions within search results. While similar products have come under scrutiny for summarizing content and not directing users to the actual sources of information, Google says that early data shows that the new way of searching will actually lead to more clicks to the open web.