Strange Daily Issue #8

Youtube teams up with Universal Music Group to launch a Music AI Incubator, Spanish soccer league LaLiga partners with Microsoft on a suite of AI services for sports

Welcome to your bi-weekly bulletin of the latest in AI, technology, and creativity.

This week, we are seeing lots of partnerships between media, sports, and technology giants as Youtube launches a Music AI incubator with Universal Music Group, and Spanish soccer league LaLiga partners with Microsoft to build AI for sports. Technical research moves forward with interesting papers in robotics, computer vision, and zero-shot text-to-speech synthesis. 

Latest news

  • YouTube announces AI music principles and launches YouTube Music AI Incubator with artists, songwriters, producers from Universal Music Group [Link] 

  • Instagram working on an audio notes feature that allows users to share voice messages through Notes [Link]

  • ByteDance’s subsidiary initiates trial testing for AI companion Doubao [Link]

🤝 Partnerships

  • IT services giant Globant and Spanish soccer’s LaLiga partner with Microsoft to create AI services for the sports industry: Creating a suite of tools targeting coaching, fan engagement, and broadcasting [Link]

  • Google gifts a grant to Argentinian education non-profit Chicos.net to develop HumanIA, an AI-focused education program [Link]

🎓 Recent Academic Papers

  • Google DeepMind researchers propose 6 composable transformations to incrementally increase the size of transformer-based neural networks while preserving functionality [Link to abstract/full-text] 

  • Microsoft researchers introduce SpeechX: A versatile speech generation model capable of zero-shot TTS and various speech transformation tasks [Link to abstract/full-text]

  • CoTracker: An AI approach that jointly tracks multiple points in a video [Link to abstract/full-text]

  • Google AI introduce STUDY: A socially aware-temporally causal recommender system for audiobooks in an educational setting [Link to abstract/full-text]

  • Researchers at Stanford crack the code of natural vision as new model reveals how eyes decode visual scene [Link to abstract/full-text]

  • MIT and Harvard researchers propose (FAn): A comprehensive AI system that bridges the gap between SOTA computer vision and robotic systems-providing an end-to-end solution for segmenting, detecting, tracking, and following any object [Link to abstract/full-text]

  • This AI research from UCLA indicates large language models (such as GPT-3) have acquired an emergent ability to find zero-shot solutions to a broad range of analogy problems [Link to abstract/full-text]

🔧 Cool Tools and Experiments

  • Google DeepMind introduces Visualising AI, a free-to-use stock library of images and videos that aim to enhance AI storytelling through accurate portrayals [Link]

  • Packback introduces Writing Lab, an AI-driven platform for student writing and engagement [Link] 

  • Buildbox introduces StoryGames.AI, an AI tool for creators to build game narratives [Link]

  • Trackmatic: A tool that provides creators with instant AI-powered song matches based on video descriptions and themes [Link]

  • FRVR AI: A generative AI system that creates video games from text prompts [Link]

💰 Latest Startup Fundings

  • Speech AI startup Contiinex raises $2M in pre-Series A funding for global market expansion [Link]

  • SportsVisio secures $3M in seed funding for its AI-driven sports analytics [Link]

  • Mobile game developer Made on Earth Games raises $3.25M in seed funding to launch the 4X strategy game Everbright [Link]

  • No-code customer engagement platform Beamer raises $20M from Camber Partners [Link]

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