🥟 Chao-Down #359 The rise of AI "friends" and companionship, OpenAI rolls out voice mode for ChatGPT, Instagram allows creators to make doppelgangers of themselves

Plus, the AI-powered deepfake tools used by cyber criminals.

Aug 02, 2024

Startups promising AI companionship are on the rise and they’re having a real impact on culture and our relationships.

Earlier this week, we saw a new company emerge that infamously used $1.8M of its $2.5M funding round to buy the domain friend.com. The company is building a pendant that only has the purpose of being a “friend” to the user. It does this by always listening to what wearers and others are saying and sending text messages to its owner in response.

Friend.com also released an accompanying video that many are saying gives off dystopian, Black Mirror vibes.

But the trend for human companionship with digital AIs seems to be only increasing here to stay as women now are looking towards AI boyfriends to provide connection and comfort. OpenAI releasing their Her-like voice mode for ChatGPT also only accelerates this future where people can look to their AIs to fulfill needs that otherwise would have been met in people.

What does this say about the future of our own relationships?

-Alex, your resident Chaos Coordinator.

What happened in AI? 📰

The AI boyfriend business is booming (Axios)

OpenAI starts rolling out its Her-like voice mode for ChatGPT (The Verge)

Power-Hungry Data Centers Are Gobbling Up Texas Because of AI (Bloomberg)

Instagram creators can now make AI doppelgangers to chat with their followers (Engadget)

AI-Powered Deepfake Tools Used by Cybercriminals (Trend Micro (US))

Websites are Blocking the Wrong AI Scrapers (Because AI Companies Keep Making New Ones) (404media.co)

Always be Learnin’ 📕 📖

How to Build an Effective Technical Team: A Comprehensive Guide (HackerNoon)

Extrinsic Hallucinations in LLMs | Lil'Log (lilianweng.github.io)

Building A Generative AI Platform (huyenchip.com)

Projects to Keep an Eye On 🛠

Introducing Cohere Prompt Tuner: Prompt Optimization at Your Fingertips (Cohere)

pytorch/torchchat: Run PyTorch LLMs locally on servers, desktop and mobile (Github)

AnswerDotAI/fasthtml: The fastest way to create an HTML app (Github)

The Latest in AI Research 💡

CoD, Towards an Interpretable Medical Agent using Chain of Diagnosis (arxiv)

Compact Language Models via Pruning and Knowledge Distillation (arxiv)

Knowledge Mechanisms in Large Language Models: A Survey and Perspective (arxiv)

The World Outside of AI 🌎

Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman and Other Tech Billionaires Brawl Over Politics (The New York Times)

Not Everyone Needs to Go to Therapy (The Atlantic)

Most renters want a home, but think they'll never afford one (qz.com)

LMVH and other global luxury brands are hurting as Chinese shoppers rein in spending (CNN Business)

Gen Z Isn't Playing the Corporate Language Game (Business Insider)

Counties most in need of cardiologists are the most likely to have none (The Washington Post)