The SEC Newgate AI Weekly

AiOS?

Greg Joswiak, Apple’s SVP Marketing, dropped a large hint this week that significant AI upgrades are on the way to the company’s iOS 18 operating system, promising that developer conference WWDC24 would be “Absolutely Incredible” – the capitalisation of those words was widely taken to be deliberate. Sceptics note that catching up with everyone else would be a good starting point for the tech giant, but any significant inclusion of generative AI, for example, would raise the number of global users of such technology instantly from millions to billions.

Peace for our time?

History was made at the UN this week as the General Assembly approved the first ever UN resolution on AI, focused on efforts to ensure that the technology is “safe, secure and trustworthy”, respecting human rights and benefitting all nations. Prominent political figures across the globe hailed the agreement as a major step forward, but it remains to be seen whether the UN, with its chequered track record at delivering global peace, will have much luck in an area which most governments are struggling to regulate.

Hollywood frights

OpenAI has approached filmmakers and studios offering access to its Sora video generation platform, according to a Bloomberg report this week. The video generator, which was released in February to a small group of beta testers but is not yet publicly available, has already been cited as the cause of an abandoned $800m studio expansion by Tyler Perry, and this latest development will not calm nerves in the industry. OpenAI have not revealed the source of the data used to train the model, with speculation that it might have been developed using the work of the very same skilled people who it could end replacing – expect legal battles around this in the future.

Instability AI

Stable Diffusion is one of the best image generators in the business, despite the ongoing drama at Stability AI, the company that developed the tool. There’s never a dull week at the tech unicorn, but even by their standards the resignation of a CEO is big news. Emad Mostaque stepped down “to pursue decentralized AI” according to a press release issued by the company on Friday night. Can the company be turned around despite investor concerns about its cashflow, the resignation of three of the five original developers of its model, and legal challenges? Possibly – but the situation highlights why it is dangerous for users to rely on technology that, whilst wonderful and innovative, doesn’t exactly scream “stability” and longevity.