Meta Launches AudioCraft AI Tool to Generate Audio and Music from Text

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August 3, 2023

Meta launches AudioCraft AI tool generate audio music from text — Image Credits: Meta AI

A new open-source AI tool called AudioCraft has been made available by Meta. According to the Meta AI, this programme is made to let both experienced artists and non-professionals generate audio and music using straightforward text prompts.

MusicGen, AudioGen, and EnCodec are the three models that make up AudioCraft. MusicGen can create music from text inputs and was trained using Meta‘s own music library. On the other hand, AudioGen is skilled at creating sound effects for the general public and can produce audio from text inputs. The EnCodec decoder has also been upgraded, enabling the creation of music with higher quality and less undesired artefacts.

Users will be able to create environmental noises and sound effects like dogs barking, automobiles honking, or footsteps on a wooden floor, thanks to Meta’s pre-trained AudioGen models. In addition, Meta is giving the code and all of the model weights for the AudioCraft tool. Applications for this new tool include audio production, sound effect creation, compression methods, and composition of music.

Meta wants to make it possible for researchers and professionals to train their own models using their own datasets by making these models open-source. According to Meta, generative AI has advanced significantly in the areas of graphics, video, and text but not as much in audio. By offering a more approachable and user-friendly framework for producing high-quality audio, AudioCraft fills this gap.

According to Meta’s official blog, modeling complicated signals and patterns at many scales makes producing realistic and high-fidelity music particularly difficult. Since music is made up of both local and long-range patterns, it provides a special problem for audio generation.

Extended high-quality audio production is possible using AudioCraft. The company argues that by making the building of generative models for audio simpler, users will find it easier to play with the models that are already in place.

Ministry of Education Selects Oracle to Revamp National Education Platform DIKSHA

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Sahil Pawar

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August 2, 2023

Ministry of Education Oracle revamp DIKSHA — Image Credits: Oracle

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure announced on August 2 that the Ministry of Education has chosen it to revamp the Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing (DIKSHA) national education technology platform. The move will help DIKSHA become more accessible and cut its IT expenses.

Shailender Kumar, senior vice-president and regional managing director, Oracle India and NetSuite Asia Pacific and Japan, stated during a briefing held today, “We have transitioned and migrated DIKSHA onto Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.”

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure will assist the ministry in using DIKSHA to make educational resources available to millions more students, teachers, and collaborators around the nation as part of the seven-year collaboration agreement.

Since it recently switched to OCI, DIKSHA has improved its scalability, security, cost-effectiveness, and flexibility to adapt to demand-based capacity, according to the press release. This has allowed it to produce more material and serve more students and teachers as the platform grows.

Indu Kumar, head of department, ICT and Training, Central Institute of Educational Technology (CIET), Ministry of Education, said, “We need to embrace modern tools and technology to make education more easily available and securely accessible to everyone.”

One of India’s largest and most successful Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) initiatives, DIKSHA was created for school education and foundational learning courses. Through the use of the open-source Sunbird platform, created by the EkStep Foundation, DIKSHA assists teachers in promoting inclusive learning for communities that are underprivileged and children with disabilities across the nation.

More than 11,000 contributors’ content is accessed by more than 200 million students and 7 million teachers from public and private institutions on the platform.

Neuralink uses Realistic Brain Models to Ensure Patient-Specific Surgeries

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Sahil Pawar

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August 2, 2023

Neuralink uses realistic brain models patient specific surgeries — Image Credits: AD

Neuralink, Elon Musk’s neurotechnology company that is developing implantable brain to computer interfaces, recently took to Twitter to demonstrate in a video how it is using realistic head and brain models to ensure patient specific surgeries.

In a tweet, Neuralink said, “Our surgical team enhances their skills by training on realistic, patient-specific head and brain models, ensuring surgeries are tailored to each individual for safety and success.” In the video, a scientist can be seen holding a head model. Through a rectangular opening on the top of the model, the scientist shows the pulsating lifelike brain inside.

Our surgical team enhances their skills by training on realistic, patient-specific head and brain models, ensuring surgeries are tailored to each individual for safety and success 🧠 pic.twitter.com/1HvXbeG3Fm
— Neuralink (@neuralink) August 1, 2023

Elon Musk’s Neuralink recently announced that US regulators had given them permission to test their brain implants on human beings. The US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of Neuralink’s first in-human clinical research marked an important first step for its chip technology.

“We’ve been working hard to be ready for our first human (implant), and obviously we want to be extremely careful and certain that it will work well before putting a device in a human,” Elon Musk stated while discussing the implant. The company hasn’t announced a human trial yet.

In 2021, Neuralink demonstrated coin-sized product prototypes being implanted in the skulls of monkeys. Several monkeys could be seen playing simple video games or navigating a cursor on a screen during the Neuralink presentation. It is important to note that the trial also killed 15 out of 23 monkeys that year.

Microsoft Appoints Former AWS Executive Puneet Chandok as VP India

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Sahil Pawar

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August 2, 2023

Microsoft appoints former AWS executive Puneet Chandok VP India — Image Credits: Business Standard

Microsoft has announced that former AWS India President Puneet Chandok has been named Corporate Vice President of Microsoft India and South Asia. The announcement comes at a time when the two major international providers of cloud services AWS and Microsoft are increasingly competing for market share in India.

Chandok would take over the operational responsibilities from outgoing president of India Anant Maheshwari on September 1, 2023, who resigned last month.

According to the company, Chandok would be in charge of integrating Microsoft’s operations in South Asia, including Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Additionally, he will be in charge of the company’s focus on important industries using a customer-centric strategy with generative AI at its foundation.

Ahmed Mazhari, President Microsoft Asia said, “Puneet has a proven track record of starting, expanding, and using technology-based enterprises to create influence and change. Puneet’s leadership will be crucial in ensuring Microsoft’s continued success in South Asia as we embrace an AI-driven future. I also want to thank Anant Maheshwari for setting us on a growth path.”

Chandok oversaw the business operations for AWS in South Asia and India in his prior position there. He collaborated closely with large corporations, startups, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), and digital businesses to help them innovate, decrease technological debt, and add agility. A partner at McKinsey for more than ten years in India and Asia, he has also held senior regional and global positions at IBM.

Chandok has a bachelor’s degree in commerce, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta, as well as diplomas in high-level computer systems, networking, and computer programming.

AWS, Accel Announce Accelerator Programme to Support Indian Generative AI Startups

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Sahil Pawar

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August 1, 2023

A six-week accelerator programme called ML Elevate 2023 has been announced by venture capital firm Accel and Amazon Web Services (AWS) to support Indian businesses creating generative AI solutions.

By giving them access to useful AI models and tools, commercial and technical mentoring, curated resources, the AWS Activate programme, and up to USD 200,000 in AWS Credits, ML Elevate aims to promote generative AI businesses.

Other advantages include the chance to scale production-ready generative AI apps on Amazon SageMaker JumpStart and peer support from a network of top AI and ML startup founders.

Startups in generative AI that have created a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and plan to apply for funding in the ensuing 12 to 18 months are eligible to apply. Selected companies will participate in live virtual masterclasses, which will include fireside chats and panel discussions with investors, business titans, and AWS specialists.

Poonacha Kongetira, SVP Engineering at SambaNova, Anupam Datta, co-founder, President, and Chief Scientist at TruEra, Tom Mason, Chief Technology Officer at Stability AI, Vishal Dhupar, Managing Director, Asia-South of NVIDIA Graphics, Apurva Kalia, Senior Researcher at Tufts University, and others will be on the panel of speakers.

Through a dedicated Demo Week, the cohort will also have the chance to pitch to top VC funds, angel investors, and business titans in order to raise money.

“Our goal with ML Elevate is to help generative AI startups create solutions tailored to specific industries and invent to advance the digital economy,” Vaishali Kasture, Director of AWS India and South Asia at Amazon Web Services India.

New AI Model FraudGPT Assist Cyber Criminals With Illicit Activities

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Sahil Pawar

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August 1, 2023

Rakesh Krishnan, a security researcher for Netenrich, recently reported in a blog that he had discovered evidence of a model known as FraudGPT.

Under the nickname CanadianKingpin, the culprit of this programme asserts that FraudGPT may be used to generate malicious code, produce undetectable malware, locate leaks, and pinpoint vulnerabilities. The undetectable malware can circumvent conventional security measures and make it challenging for antivirus software to find and eliminate threats.

Identification of Non-Verified by Visa (Non-VBV) cards, which enables hackers to execute unauthorized transactions without additional security checks, is another feature of FraudGPT. Additionally, the programme has the ability to automatically create convincing phishing pages that look like authentic websites, which raises the success rate of phishing attempts.

FraudGPT may design various hacking tools that are suited to particular targets or exploits in addition to creating phishing pages. Furthermore, it can search the internet for secret hacker organizations, illicit websites, and markets where stolen data is sold.

Additionally, the application can create phishing emails to trick people into falling for scams. FraudGPT can also produce content to teach coding and hacking methods, giving cybercriminals resources to advance their skills. Finally, it helps in identifying cardable sites where credit card information can be stolen and used for unauthorized purchases.

Since July 22, 2023, FraudGPT has been making the rounds in darknet forums and Telegram channels. It may be obtained through membership for $200 per month, $1,000 for six months, or $1,700 for a year. Although the large language model upon which this model is based is unknown, the author asserts that it has amassed more than 3,000 verified sales and reviews.

DPDP Bill Can’t Be Referred To Any Committee Unless Done By Parliament, Says Rajeev Chandrasekhar

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Sahil Pawar

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August 1, 2023

The Digital Personal Data Protection bill has not been referred to any committee, according to Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar, and it can only be done if it is introduced in the Parliament.

Chandrasekhar made his remarks in response to a letter submitted by Rajya Sabha member John Brittas on July 28 asking the speaker of the Lok Sabha and the head of the Rajya Sabha to prevent the introduction of a report from the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and IT.

➡️This is misinformation and completely wrong.

➡️No bill including the proposed DPDP (Digital Personal Data Protection Bill) can be referred to any committee unless it is done so by Parliament

➡️In turn, the bill can be only referred to committee AFTER the Cabinet-approved… https://t.co/YJ7PnE9FsW
— Rajeev Chandrasekhar 🇮🇳 (@Rajeev_GoI) August 1, 2023

Curiously, Chandrasekhar also charged Brittas, a fellow committee member, with spreading false information about the bill that was, according to Birittas, “adopted” by the committee. A few days ago, Brittas and other opposition lawmakers from the IT committee left the meeting when the committee, presided over by Shiv Sena MP Jadhav Prataprao Ganpatrao, adopted a report backing the bill.

The members who opposed the report said that they were not provided with the updated version of the DPDP law, which had been approved by the Union Cabinet, and as a result were not aware of the report’s creation. The committee demanded that the DPDP Bill be passed into law right now, in the report.

According to a tweet from Chandrasekhar, no bill including the proposed DPDP can be referred to any committee unless it is done by Parliament. In turn, the bill can be only referred to committee only after the Cabinet-approved bill is introduced in Parliament. He added that DPDP has not been introduced into Parliament and so question of considering it in committee does not arise.

However, earlier, Ashwini Vaishnaw, the minister of electronics and information technology, courted controversy when he said, in a specific day, that the IT Committee had “approved” the bill. The minister’s assertions have been deemed untrue by committee members like Karti Chidambaram, Jawhar Sircar, and Brittas.

News Corp Uses AI to Create 3,000 Local News Stories Per Week

By

Sahil Pawar

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August 1, 2023

News Corp uses AI create 3,000 local news stories per week — Image Credits: NIE

According to executive chair Michael Miller, News Corp Australia is utilizing generative AI to produce 3,000 articles every week. According to a story in Mediaweek, Miller stated at the World News Media Congress in Taipei that a team of four employees uses the technology to produce thousands of local reports each week on the weather, fuel costs, and traffic conditions.

Peter Judd, the data journalism editor for News Corp, oversees the Data Local section, and he is credited in many of the stories. The unit augments the content that journalists write for the 75 hyperlocal mastheads owned by the corporations around the nation, including those in Penrith, Lismore, Fairfield, Bundaberg, and Cairns.

According to a News Corp representative, stories like “Where to find the cheapest fuel in Penrith” are produced by AI under the supervision of journalists. The fact that the reports are generated using AI is not disclosed on the page.

The spokeswoman claimed it would be more accurate to describe the 3,000 articles as giving service information and that Miller had in fact made the remarks at a conference last month.

For instance, the automated updating of local fuel prices, daily court lists, traffic and weather reports, and death and burial notices has been done for some time using artificial intelligence, according to the spokeswoman.

“I’d like to emphasize that the Data Local team’s working journalists oversee all such information and judgements,” she said. According to a recent job posting by News Corp for a data journalist, creating automated content to build a proposition and pipeline for revenue is one of the responsibilities.

In Australia, the majority of newsrooms are investigating AI’s potential. In a statement to Guardian Australia, the ABC said that it was concentrating on artificial intelligence applications that may improve content accessibility. This includes transcription of audio content, text-to-speech delivery of articles using AI voice and translation, as well as recommendations and personalization.

Andrew Ng and HuggingFace Introduce Free Course on Generative AI Using Gradio

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Sahil Pawar

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July 31, 2023

Leading AI expert Andrew Ng is back with another free short course called Building Generative AI Applications with Gradio, in association with Hugging Face. One will learn how to develop and demo machine learning applications fast in this course. Apolinário Passos, an ML Art Engineer at Hugging Face, will teach the course, which is meant for beginners.

Participants will experiment with a variety of Gradio-based activities during the course, such as text summarization, image captioning, and image production. With the help of the open-source Gradio Python library, users can quickly create customizable user interface elements for their machine learning model or any API and create user-friendly applications that can be used by people who are not programmers.

With a few lines of code, students will be able to develop a user-friendly app to take input text, summarize it with an open-source LLM, and display the summary. They will also create an app that lets the user upload an image, which uses image captioning to describe the image uploaded, and display both the image and its caption in the app.

Students will create an app that takes text and generates an image with a diffusion model, then displays the generated image within the app.

They will also create an interface to chat with an open source large language model using Falcon, the best-ranking open source LLM, according to the Open LLM Leaderboard.

After completing the one-hour training, you will have acquired useful skills for creating interactive apps and demos that will speed up project implementation and validation. Anyone who has basic Python knowledge and wants to learn to build and share apps and demos using Gradio, is eligible for the course.

Capgemini Introduces New Portfolio of Generative AI Services

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Sahil Pawar

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July 31, 2023

A portfolio of generative AI services, ranging from strategy definition to the practical development and execution of generative AI at scale, is being introduced by the French IT consulting firm Capgemini. The Group announced that during a three-year period, it will invest 2 billion euros (INR 18 million) in AI.

Franck Greverie, Chief Portfolio Officer, Global Business Lines leader, and Group Executive Board Member at Capgemini, said, “Generative AI is already becoming a key pillar of digital transformation for businesses. We see a breadth of opportunities to unlock substantial business value for our clients, which go far beyond important productivity gains.”

The Paris-based company said in the blog that it had completed numerous generative AI projects in recent years, particularly in the life sciences, consumer goods and retail, and financial services industries.

According to the recent portfolio, CXOs will build the proper groundwork in terms of people, process, and technology by using a generative AI strategy that prioritizes the pertinent use cases for their company. Four generative AI assistants for a highly personalized customer experience are part of generative AI for customer experience.

Moreover, improved software engineering with generative AI will result in a longer, more secure software lifecycle. According to the portfolio, Custom generative AI for business is a platform that allows pre-trained open large foundation models (LFMs) to be customized to each customer’s needs using business proprietary data.

Microsoft and Google Cloud already have generative AI collaborations with The Capgemini Group. By incorporating AI training into every aspect of its training programme, the company will also train a significant portion of its staff in generative AI.

The most recent statements were made on the same day that the company reported greater half-year revenue, driven by cloud, data, and AI operations. The Group is currently working with Heathrow Airport to improve customer service by developing solutions using generative AI.