Though Tesla's We, Robot event may have come to a close, it sure didn't do so peacefully, as Elon Musk, event organizer and EV automaker Tesla, and Warner Bros. Discovery all find themselves being sued by production company Alcon Entertainment for copyright infringement and meticulous AI image generator use. Other key takeaways include:

• IBM debuts Granite 3.0, its next line of enterprise AI models, with a commitment to open-source
• The rift between Microsoft and OpenAI widens as the two are reportedly renegotiating their partnership deal terms
• ByteDance confirms rumors of the termination of an intern who sabotaged one of the company's model training programs

Join us at AI Tangle as we untangle this week's happenings in AI!

THE BIG AI STORY

As if Elon Musk and his companies getting into lawsuits hadn't turned into a gag enough already, Elon Musk, along with his EV company Tesla and Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), finds himself being sued following the automakers' We, Robot event. Known as one of the production companies behind Blade Runner 2049, LA-based Alcon Entertainment is suing the trio for using an AI-based image generator to create promotional stills for the event based on the film to get around Alcon's disapproval.

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What do we know of the lawsuit?

The lawsuit claims that Tesla and WBD requested permission to use imagery from Blade Runner 2049 mere hours before the event, but was denied by Alcon due to concerns about its brand's association with Musk's controversial behavior. Despite this, Alcon alleges Tesla fed movie stills into an AI image generator to create a stylized screen resembling Blade Runner's dystopian aesthetic for the event, with Musk even referencing the franchise during the event while describing sci-fi visions of the future. Alcon believes Tesla, Musk, and WBD "understood the unauthorized nature" of the act, and is thus seeking unspecified damages for copyright infringement.

6 QUICK HITS

To keep up with competition in the enterprise side of GenAI, ​IBM recently debuted its latest batch of for-business AI models, Granite 3.0​. Similar to IBM's previous Granite family of models, the Granite 3.0 ones are open-source under the permissive Apache 2.0 license, unlike business models of competitors, like Microsoft. For enterprise use, IBM offers a paid tool called watsonx, which helps businesses run and customize these models within their own data centers. Additionally, some Granite models will be available on Nvidia platforms, utilizing the company's H100 GPUs to enhance performance.

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​According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft and OpenAI may be revising the terms of their partnership, with either side hiring investment banks, OpenAI for Goldman Sachs and Microsoft for Morgan Stanley, for advice. The negotiations focus on the size of Microsoft's stake in OpenAI following the AI startup's restructuring into a for-benefit corporation. Despite OpenAI CEO Sam Altman previously describing the partnership between the two as "the best bromance in tech," OpenAI's and Microsoft's relationship may now be in limbo.

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TikTok owner ByteDance recently confirmed that back in August it had terminated an intern for "maliciously interfering" with a model training project, amid speculation on Chinese social media. The company clarified that reports of the incident, which allegedly involved disrupting more than 8,000 H100 GPUs and causing the company millions of dollars in losses, were exaggerated and inaccurate. ByteDance emphasized that its commercial projects, operations, and large language AI models were entirely unaffected by this and that the intern was reported to industry associations and their university for further action.

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Microsoft is ​introducing autonomous AI agents as part of Copilot Studio​ and its efforts to monetize its AI and cloud investments, with a public preview set for next month at Microsoft Ignite 2024. These AI-powered tools aim to automate specific enterprise tasks, such as sorting emails or handling data, through a no-code or low-code platform. Users can build and guide the agents via Copilot Studio using simple natural language instructions, such as what kind of information needs to be pulled out of an email and what needs to be done with the information.

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Elon Musk recently fulfilled a promise made in August to make his AI company's storefront model, Grok, available via an API in the future, with Elon Musk announcing the release of it on X/Twitter. The API debuted with just a single model, "grok-beta," priced at $5 per million input tokens or $15 per million output tokens, which may either be Grok 2 or Grok mini, according to references made in the API documentation. However, some were quick to point out the fairly plain nature of the API, along a few users reporting problems of struggling to pay for usage credits.

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Known for its rise to fame as an AI search engine startup, Perplexity is reportedly in talks to raise $500 million in a fundraiser to bring its valuation up to $8 billion. Reported first by the Wall Street Journal, the deal would more than double the company's previous valuation of $3 billion. Perplexity, which uses a chatbot-like interface to allow users to browse the web, has been heavily accused of plagiarism and web scraping by multiple publications, including the Wall Street Journal, but Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas remains adamant about working together with publishers instead of fighting in court.

4 AI TOOLS

​​Latitude​ - Level up your prompt game with Latitude, an open-source engineering platform that evaluates your prompts to chatbots and helps you refine them.

​Echo - Think deeper with Echo, an AI-powered voice and text note-taking app that refines your thoughts and brings your notes to life with smart organization.

​Afforai - Afforai is the AI-integrated reference manager that helps researchers manage, annotate, cite papers, and conduct literature reviews with AI reliably.

​insMind - Generate studio-quality product photos with AI-generated backgrounds and customized designs with ease using insMind, a powerful AI-enhanced photo editor for production at scale.

AI EXTRA READ

A Turning Point for The AI World (2-min read)

In a recent Axios interview, Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, reflected on AI's transformative potential and growing recognition, which he has anticipated for decades. While he feels AI is currently overhyped, he believes many overlook its long-term possibilities and is excited about the future.