The race toward achieving AGI (artificial general intelligence) continued apace with what felt like a monumental week in the rapid development of AI.
From Apple giving us a taste of its Intelligence to huge advances in AI-generated video, let’s take a look at some of the top AI stories from this week.
It was an eventful week for the Cupertino-based device manufacturer. We saw the public debut of iOS 18, WatchOS 11, and MacOS 15, immediately followed by the iPhone 16 and Apple Watch 10 going on sale, as well as Apple rolling out its first update to the new OS with 18.1 beta.
The beta doesn’t offer the AI’s full feature suite — we don’t expect to see that until 18.1’s official release in October — but it is enough to give interested users a taste of what the generative AI agent will soon be capable of.
Though, from what Digital Trends already seen, Apple Intelligence is going to likely need more refinement and polish before it’s ready for the public.
Weird, I could have sworn last summer’s Hollywood writers strike happened specifically in opposition to Hollywood’s ill-considered embrace of generative AI. That collective action has apparently done little to dissuade Lionsgate from jumping right back on the AI bandwagon, which announced this week that it is partnering with Runway, makers of the Gen-3 Alpha video generation model.
The agreement will see the two companies collaborate to develop and train a video generation model using Lionsgate’s expansive catalog of film and TV content. The two plan to use it to “develop cutting-edge, capital-efficient content creation opportunities,” which we all know is the hallmark of great cinema and not a poorly conceived attempt to disenfranchise the thousands of storyboard artists, lighting and effects designers, actors, musicians, and others that perform the actual labor of producing movies and TV series by replacing them with a slapped-together generative AI.
Snap keeps trying to make AR glasses a thing. This week the company released the fifth and latest iteration of its Spectacles AR glasses line. The new hardware offers a wider field of view and a display that appears similar to “a 100-inch display 10 feet away,” while SnapOS and the associated smartphone app have both received significant upgrades over their previous versions. Snap is also reportedly teaming with OpenAI to bring “cloud-hosted multimodal AI models” to the smart glasses.
The new specs also weigh a hefty 226 grams, which is over 100 grams more than last year’s edition, and look like something Edna Mode would wear. They’re currently only available to developers who shell out $99/month for program access, and there is no word yet on when a consumer version will be released.
In an effort to lower the barrier to entry for new content creators and better compete with short form video platforms like TikTok, YouTube introduced a bevy of new AI-enhanced production tools this week. Google announced Wednesday at its Made on YouTube event in New York City that DeepMind’s Veo video generation model will be incorporated into YouTube Studio. The model can generate six-second clips in 1080p resolution and a wide variety of cinematic styles, from only a text prompt.
The company is billing these new features as a “brainstorm” assistant that can suggest topics for the video, as well as generate a title, thumbnail, and the first few lines of the script. Users will also be able to use Veo in conjunction with Dream Screen, which generates AI background images. You’ll be able to create a static background with Dream Screen then animate it using Veo.
Coincidentally, did you know that having a chatbot write a 100-word email for you consumes the equivalent of three bottles of water and 14 LED light bulbs running for an hour? Maybe try using that noggin of yours to brainstorm some original ideas instead of boiling lakes to hear a large language model’s recursive suggestions.
Runway Gen-3 Alpha just leveled up with Video-to-Video
Now you can transform any video's style using just text prompts at amazing quality.
10 wild examples of what's possible:pic.twitter.com/onh12zCzpI
— Min Choi (@minchoi) September 15, 2024
Before it announced its partnership with Lionsgate, Runway started the week by rolling out a new feature for its Gen-3 Alpha video generation model: the ability to change the cinematic style of any video through text prompts. AI enthusiasts are having a field day with the new tool.
You can see the technology in action in the social media post above. Runway also debuted an API this week that will enable third-party developers to incorporate the video model into their own apps, systems, and devices.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.