Ripple: ByteDance's New App Shaping The Future of Music Creation

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Meet Ripple: TikTok Parent’s New AI-Powered Music-Making App

ByteDance, the $220 billion company behind TikTok, is shaking things up in the music industry with a new music production app called Ripple. This free app allows users to sing or hum a melody which it then expands into an instrumental tune in various genres. The app doesn't use music from big record companies, but instead uses music licensed to ByteDance or produced in-house.

The aim of Ripple is to spur musical creativity and assist musicians and artists in expressing themselves. ByteDance anticipates that creators will use the app to create soundtracks for their short-form videos. The app can't distribute music to the TikTok song library, but users can share their creations on social media.

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Moody’s and Microsoft develop enhanced risk, data, analytics, research and collaboration solutions powered by Generative AI

Moody's Corporation and Microsoft are partnering to craft next-generation tools for data analysis, research, and risk management for financial services and more. Powered by Microsoft's Azure OpenAI Service, the team-up is designed to offer new insights into business intelligence and risk assessment. A key outcome is the "Moody's CoPilot," a tool that will leverage Moody's data, analytics, research, and Microsoft's AI tech to boost productivity and foster innovation.

The partnership also includes Moody's commitment to adopt Microsoft Teams to boost collaboration and productivity, while Microsoft will take advantage of Moody's Orbis database, a comprehensive resource on companies, for various applications. Further, both companies will explore opportunities to deliver data to their shared clientele via Microsoft Fabric, a new analytics platform for comprehensive data management.

According to Rob Fauber, CEO of Moody's, this partnership will unlock deeper, more integrated perspectives on risk, thereby helping customers make better decisions. Similarly, Bill Borden, Corporate Vice President of Worldwide Financial Services at Microsoft, highlighted that the partnership will transform productivity and collaboration while unlocking powerful business intelligence.

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Voice.ai raises $6M as its real-time voice changer approaches 500K users

Voice.ai, an innovative startup that offers real-time voice modification technology, has raised $6M in funding, after seeing significant user growth. The company provides over 50,000 voice filters to almost half a million users, who predominantly utilize the tools in gaming, content creation, and on various online platforms.

The funding will be used to hire more tech-savvy staff, develop software for additional platforms, offer multi-language support, and explore new applications like voice-centered singing. The funding could also potentially increase the company's server capacity, a vital step since the current user demand has maxed out server capacity, as shown by the app's user reviews.

Most users opt for Voice.ai's free service tier, where they contribute computational power to train the company's models. Despite its popularity among male users (who comprise 70% of the total user base), the company is discovering new user groups, including individuals seeking privacy, people wishing to align their voices with their gender identity, and those wanting to experiment with different online personas.

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Generative AI startup Typeface raises $100M to customize enterprise content creation

San Francisco-based startup Typeface, led by ex-Adobe CTO Abhay Parasnis, secured $100 million in funding for their innovative generative AI content services. Launched in February, Typeface has already partnered with giants like Google Cloud, Microsoft, and Salesforce. The service provides businesses the ability to create vast amounts of content using AI, tailored specifically for their needs, overcoming limitations found in generic large language models.

Recent growth shows businesses are seeing value in generative AI as more than just a fancy tool; they believe it will drastically change how they operate and enhance their workflows. For instance, one client is using the technology to revamp employee communication processes entirely, creating items such as LinkedIn job postings, internal communications, and payroll reports.

Parasnis anticipates the adoption of generative AI will follow a pattern similar to the shift to cloud computing, with different industries adopting at different rates. To assist companies in understanding and utilizing generative AI, Typeface has developed a 'gen AI maturity model.' This model, coupled with a consultative approach, helps businesses understand how generative AI can improve workflows.

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Gleamer, which provides AI software for radiologists, raises $29.5M

Gleamer, a French tech startup, has secured $29.5 million in a Series B funding round. The company, established in 2017, makes AI software that aids radiologists in diagnosing conditions like bone trauma lesions by highlighting potential issues in scans that might be hard to spot otherwise. Their products, including the popular BoneView and ChestView, are certified for use in Europe, and BoneView is approved by the FDA in the U.S.

The startup is seeking to meet the rising demand for medical imaging services due to factors like chronic diseases, aging populations, and strapped healthcare systems. This funding will allow Gleamer to expand its product range to cover CT scans and mammography, and grow its workforce in Europe and the U.S. The funding round was co-led by Supernova Invest and Heal Capital, with contributions from other investors and some European radiologists. Since its founding, Gleamer has raised a total of around $39.6 million.

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Slang taps AI to answer phone calls for brick-and-mortar businesses

Alex Sambvani and Gabriel Duncan, both ex-Spotify employees, have created an AI platform named Slang.ai to handle the incoming phone calls for businesses. This tool works like a virtual assistant, answering questions, managing reservations, and informing businesses when a customer will be late. Business owners can customize Slang to handle specific types of calls automatically or transfer certain ones to staff.

This technology, promising to understand accents of callers across different age groups, aims to reduce missed calls for businesses, especially those low on staff. It also offers insights about why customers are calling, highlighting recurring reasons and potential problems.

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Immuta updates its Data Security Platform for Databricks to strengthen AI workload protection

Immuta, a data security provider, has beefed up its Data Security Platform for Databricks with a goal to better protect AI workloads. The upgrade aims to increase data value, cut costs, boost innovation, and tighten data security. Key improvements include closer ties with Databricks Unity Catalog, improving security and access control, and refining data security management.

With a surge in data migrating to the cloud, data security is more critical than ever. Immuta's integration with Databricks aims to tackle this issue, allowing users to focus on extracting value from their data more efficiently. The integration includes row filtering and column masking capabilities, adding to Immuta's data discovery, security, access control, and monitoring offerings.

Immuta is dedicated to ensuring sensitive data is not included in models, implementing controls during the model training process. The updated platform offers customizable tools to decrease false positives and increase result relevancy.

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Kindred Ventures foresees a ‘massive explosion of startups’ courtesy of AI

Kindred Ventures, a San Francisco-based venture firm that funds startups across various sectors, anticipates a major increase in new startups thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence (AI). The firm, which began nine years ago, has already backed more than 100 startups and recently closed a $200 million fund, significantly increasing their assets under management to around $550 million. The firm's portfolio includes several successful businesses, such as Uber, Coinbase, and Postmates.

Kindred Ventures focuses heavily on 'frontier technology', such as AI, and sees a future where a significant amount of people can become builders due to increased accessibility to complex software tools. Examples of companies they have invested in include Humane, an undisclosed project by former Apple team members, and Hourone AI, a video AI company from Tel Aviv. The directors of Kindred Ventures, Steve Jang and Kanyi Maqubela, believe the accessibility to more advanced software tools will enable a larger number of people to start their own businesses.

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Draft EU artificial intelligence rules could hurt Europe

European Union's proposed artificial intelligence (AI) laws are seen as a potential risk to the continent's technological competitiveness and autonomy, say 160-plus executives from a variety of firms including Renault and Meta. These upcoming regulations might make AI-generated content like deep-fake images and systems like ChatGPT reveal themselves, and provide safeguards against unlawful content.

This concern comes following multiple public calls for AI regulation due to possible threats linked to uncontrolled AI development. Notable personalities who have previously endorsed such calls include Tesla's Elon Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and AI pioneers Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio. The latest letter sees participation from additional high-profile figures including Yann LeCun of Meta and execs from companies like Cellnex, Mirakl, and Berenberg.

The protesting parties target the EU's decision to shift from a risk-based approach to a technology-centric one. They argue that such a shift, not initially proposed, could mean more regulation for AI technologies, causing significant compliance expenses and liability risks for developers. This may result in inventive firms leaving Europe, with investors pulling back their funding from the European AI ecosystem.

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