Microsoft pens AI cloud computing deal with former Ethereum miner CoreWeave: CNBC

June 3, 2023 Coin Telegraph

chatGPT

The reported deal comes just a few days after CoreWeave announced an additional $200 million worth of funding via an extended Series B funding round.

Microsoft has reportedly signed a deal with former Ethereum miner CoreWeave to use its cloud computing infrastructure to support its Artificial Intelligence-powered services.

According to a June 1 report from CNBC which cites “people with knowledge of the matter,” Microsoft is potentially set to spend billions of dollars on the deal with CoreWeave that will run over multiple years.

One of CNBC’s sources claimed that the deal was signed earlier this year, as Microsoft OpenAI’s widely popular ChatGPT chatbot.

JUST IN:

Microsoft $MSFT just signed a deal for AI computing power with Nvidia-backed CoreWeave that could be worth billions

CoreWeave offers Nvidia $NVDA graphics cards that other companies rent out

Nvidia invested $100M in CoreWeave, which in April was valued at $2B - CNBC
— Evan (@StockMKTNewz) June 1, 2023

Amid the rapid growth of AI tech over the past 12 months Microsoft has rolled out several AI-powered services. A prime example is the GPT-4 integration with its web browsers Bing and Microsoft Edge, which the firm recently axed the waitlist on.

OpenAI also utilizes Microsoft's own cloud computing infrastructure Azure to handle its sizeable compute requirements.

CoreWeave initially started off as an Ethereum miner back in 2017, utilizing graphics processing units (GPUs) to verify transactions on Ethereum during its formative days as a proof-of-work blockchain.

The firm started pivoting its focus to cloud GPU computing around 2019, after spotting a hole in the market for competitively priced, scalable and varied compute options — something that it claimed legacy providers weren’t offering.

Notably, reports of the deal with Microsoft come just a few days after CoreWeave announced on May 31 that it had extended its $221 million Series B funding round from April to bring the total up to $421 million.

The Series B was led by Magnetar Capital, with participation from long-standing strategic partner NVIDIA.

The firm stated in April that the capital would be used to expand its cloud infrastructure which is focused on a wide range of computational workloads such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, visual effects and rendering, to name a few.

Commenting on the Microsoft deal via Twitter, Bitcoin advocate and Castle Island Ventures general partner Nic Carter highlighted the significance of the firm’s change of industry:

“Ppl make fun of ‘crypto to AI pivots’ but CoreWeave went from mining ETH to using their fleet to do compute for AI and now they're worth $2b+... one of the fastest growing companies in the world right now.”

ETH is what put them in business. interestingly, they wouldn't have been in business if the merge had been on time. because the merge was so delayed, they were able to scale up while planning for the next thing.
— nic carter (@nic__carter) June 2, 2023

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Satoshi Nak-AI-moto: Bitcoin’s creator has become an AI chatbot

June 1, 2023 Coin Telegraph

The bot is a ChatGPT model that’s so far only been trained on Satoshi Nakamoto’s public writings and a handful of Bitcoin-related source materials.

Satoshi Nakamoto may have effectively disappeared over 12 years ago, but two artificial intelligence dabblers are seeking to revive the ability to chat with the famed Bitcoin (BTC) creator.

On May 31, Bitcoin FilmFest co-organizer Pierre Corbin and co-developer Hugo Ferrer released “Talk2Satoshi,” an AI chatbot that aims to answer questions about Bitcoin and economics as if they came from Nakamoto.

Announcing my newest project!

Together with @HugoFerrer_, we've spent the last few weeks working on something that has been missing in #bitcoin: the Bitcoin GPT. We call it @talk2satoshi .

Try it out for free: https://t.co/IhWIVAZSsT https://t.co/AFQlb9Dxc9
— Pierre Corbin (@CierrePorbin) May 31, 2023

The model, essentially, is OpenAI’s ChatGPT trained on a limited data set, including Nakamoto’s public emails and forum posts. It also draws from other sources, including Saifedean Ammous’ book The Bitcoin Standard, Jeff Booth’s book The Price of Tomorrow and Corbin’s film The Great Reset and the Rise of Bitcoin, with more sources on the way.

In testing, the chatbot generates responses that are typically uncertain of the future of fiat currencies and hopeful about Bitcoin, although it can provide conflicting answers depending on how it's prompted.

Check out an example:
Here's the answer to "Is our debt sustainable in an inflationary world?":

Where else can you get this kind of answer? pic.twitter.com/euSj6oXqot
— Pierre Corbin (@CierrePorbin) May 31, 2023

For example, when asked a variation of the question “What is the future of Bitcoin?” it generated separate responses saying it was both “promising” and “uncertain.”

The model isn’t trained on the more recent Bitcoin developments, such as the Ordinals protocol or BRC-20 tokens and often generates a response saying it can’t provide an opinion on such topics. Depending on the question, however, it can generate contradicting responses on Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens.

*The chatbot seems to be critical of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and other Bitcoin forks in general, saying it has been “difficult for alternative chains to gain momentum." Source: Talk2Satoshi*

When asked questions regarding Ordinals, it said in one reply that Bitcoin “is not meant to be a platform for storing or transmitting images or other types of data,” while another response called Ordinals “a fascinating and creative application of cryptography.”

According to Corbin, the goal of the bot is to show that AI tools could potentially be used in education.

The model can generate competent responses when asked questions about Bitcoin such as how it works and how its mined, and can explain aspects of the network such as satoshis.

Similar to the real person, the Nakamoto-emulating bot is still shy about revealing its real identity and typically responds:

“My real name is not important. What is important is the decentralization of power that Bitcoin represents and the potential it has to revolutionize financial systems.”

Magazine: ‘Moral responsibility’ — Can blockchain really improve trust in AI?

What is fair use? US Supreme Court weighs in on AI’s copyright dilemma

May 30, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Adboe

Many firms with generative AI models are being sued for copyright infringement, and the Supreme Court may have just ruined their primary legal defense.

Generative artificial intelligence models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT are trained by being fed giant amounts of data, but what happens when this data is copyrighted?

Well, the defendants in a variety of lawsuits currently making their way through the courts claim that the process infringes upon their copyright protections.

For example, on Feb. 3, stock photo provider Getty Images sued artificial intelligence firm Stability AI, alleging that it copied over 12 million photos from its collections as part of an effort to build a competing business. It notes in the filing:

“On the back of intellectual property owned by Getty Images and other copyright holders, Stability AI has created an image-generating model called Stable Diffusion that uses artificial intelligence to deliver computer-synthesized images in response to text prompts.”

While the European Commission and other regions are scrambling to develop regulations to keep up with the rapid development of AI, the question of whether training AI models using copyrighted works classifies as an infringement may be decided in court cases such as this one.

The question is a hot topic, and in a May 16 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, United States Senator Marsha Blackburn grilled OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about the issue.

While Altman noted that “creators deserve control over how their creations are used,” he refrained from committing not to train ChatGPT to use copyrighted works without consent, instead suggesting that his firm was working with creators to ensure they are compensated in some way.

AI companies argue “transformative use”

AI companies generally argue that their models do not infringe on copyright laws because they transform the original work, therefore qualifying as fair use — at least under U.S. laws.

“Fair use” is a doctrine in the U.S. that allows for limited use of copyrighted data without the need to acquire permission from the copyright holder.

Some of the key factors considered when determining whether the use of copyrighted material classifies as fair use include the purpose of the use — particularly, whether it’s being used for commercial gain — and whether it threatens the livelihood of the original creator by competing with their works.

The Supreme Court’s Warhol opinion

On May 18, the Supreme Court of the United States, considering these factors, issued an opinion that may play a significant role in the future of generative AI.

The ruling in Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts v. Goldsmith found that famous artist Andy Warhol’s 1984 work “Orange Prince” infringed on the rights of rock photographer Lynn Goldsmith, as the work was intended to be used commercially and, therefore, could not be covered by the fair use exemption.

While the ruling doesn’t change copyright law, it does clarify how transformative use is defined.

Mitch Glazier, chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America — a music advocacy organization — was thankful for the decision, noting that “claims of ‘transformative use’ cannot undermine the basic rights given to all creators under the Copyright Act.”

"We applaud the Supreme Court’s considered and thoughtful decision that claims of “transformative use” cannot undermine the basic rights given to all creators under the Copyright Act,” says RIAA Chairman & CEO @mitch_glazier. https://t.co/C5iTLr4Mk4 pic.twitter.com/KMHyyXZTA3
— RIAA (@RIAA) May 18, 2023

Given that many AI companies are selling access to their AI models after training them using creators’ works, the argument that they are transforming the original works and therefore qualify for the fair use exemption may have been rendered ineffective by the decision.

It is worth noting that there is no clear consensus, however.

In a May 23 article, Jon Baumgarten — a former general counsel at the U.S. Copyright Office who participated in the formation of the Copyright Act — said the case highlights that the question of fair use depends on many factors and argued that the current general counsel’s blanket assertion that generative AI is fair use “is over-generalized, oversimplified and unduly conclusory.”

A safer path?

The legal question marks surrounding generative AI models trained using copyrighted works have prompted some firms to heavily restrict the data going into their models.

For example, on May 23, software firm Adobe announced the launch of a generative AI model called Generative Fill, which allows Photoshop users to “create extraordinary imagery from a simple text prompt.”

*An example of Generative Fill’s capabilities. Source:* *Adobe*

While the product is similar to Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion, the AI model powering Generative Fill is trained using only stock photos from its own database, which — according to Adobe — helps ensure it “won’t generate content based on other people’s work, brands, or intellectual property.”

This may be the safer path from a legal perspective, but AI models are only as good as the data fed into them, so ChatGPT and other popular AI tools would not be as accurate or useful as they are today if they had not scraped vast amounts of data from the web.

So, while creators might be emboldened by the recent Warhol decision — and there is no question that their works should be protected by copyright law — it is worth considering what its broader effect might be.

If generative AI models can only be trained using copyright-free data, what kind of effect will that have on innovation and productivity growth?

After all, productivity growth is considered by many to be the single most significant contributor to raising the standard of living for a country’s citizens, as highlighted in a famous quote from prominent economist Paul Krugman in his 1994 book The Age of Diminished Expectations:

“Productivity isn't everything, but in the long run it is almost everything. A country’s ability to improve its standard of living over time depends almost entirely on its ability to raise its output per worker.”

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OpenAI launches official ChatGPT app for iOS, Android coming ‘soon’

May 19, 2023 Coin Telegraph

chatGPT

While it is currently only available in the United States, a full global rollout could see more than a billion users access to the official app on iOS.

OpenAI has launched the official version of its AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT on Apple’s App Store and hints that an Android version is coming “soon.”

ChatGPT and the advances in artificial intelligence has become a point of great interest among the crypto community, some of whom have already leveraged the nascent technology to create entirely new tokens.

According to a May 18 announcement, the ChatGPT app syncs user chat history with its web version and features voice input supported by OpenAI’s speech recognition model Whisper.

OpenAI says it’s rolling out the app for iPhone and iPad users in the United States and will expand to other countries “in the coming weeks.”

*ChatGPT app screenshots on the App Store. Source: Apple*

A full global rollout would see a portion of Apple’s 2 billion active devices get access to OpenAI’s chatbot app as the AI adoption race rages on.

AI enthusiasts have been attempting to utilize ChatGPT’s features on their mobile devices for months, with many resorting to a number of relatively complex workarounds to try to integrate the chatbot with the iPhone’s virtual assistant Siri.

So far, one of the simplest ways to access OpenAI’s software on a mobile device has been to use Microsoft’s Bing app, which offers access to the company’s GPT-4-powered chatbot. Google’s newly introduced Bard, which currently stands as the largest competitor to ChatGPT, is yet to be released as a mobile app version.

Both Apple’s App Store and the Google Play store have seen a proliferation of apps purporting to provide a service similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT; some have turned out to be copycat apps that charge an even higher subscription fee than ChatGPT itself, according to reports.

Pre-existing ChatGPT Plus subscribers will gain access to GPT-4’s capabilities as well as early access to newer features and faster response times on their iOS devices.

Magazine: How to control the AIs and incentivize the humans with crypto

Is ChatGPT king? How top free AI chatbots fared during field testing

May 18, 2023 Coin Telegraph

artificial intelligence

Competition is heating up with several new AI chatbots flooding the market, and if you don’t want to pay a monthly subscription, OpenAI may not be the best choice.

While OpenAI’s ChatGPT was the first artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot to captivate the world after its public release in November 2022, a variety of competitors have entered the marketplace since then.

Tech giants Google and Microsoft have launched their AI chatbots, with Google’s Bard removing its waitlist, and opening up to over 180 countries and territories on May 10, after Microsoft beat it to the punch and fully released its AI-powered Bing search engine on May 4.

With several chatbots to choose from, Cointelegraph decided to put some of the most well-known through their paces to see which held up best during field testing, as well as comparing some of their features.

To test the chatbots, they were each asked a series of questions, riddles and more complex prompts to determine their accuracy and speed of responses.

Many AI chatbots available today are powered by OpenAI’s GPT models. While these AI chatbots may give similar results to ChatGPT, the app developers can also add additional commands, which may change the results.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT-3.5

While OpenAI has already released ChatGPT-4, which is available to Plus plan users for $20 per month, ChatGPT-3.5 is free to use and is tested here.

ChatGPT-4 significantly outperforms its predecessor with faster response speeds, more accurate responses and less server downtime.

The first AI chatbot to take the world by storm can help with tasks like essay writing, code debugging and even personal finances after only a second or so of processing time.

However, one area where ChatGPT underperforms is its lack of ability to search the internet.

This means the model is only as good as the training data fed into it, which goes up until September 2021. OpenAI is rolling out plugins that allow it to source online information using Bing’s search API, but this will be limited to users on the Plus plan.

ChatGPT has a brand new plugin that uses the Bing API to access the current, up-to-date internet.

This changes everything. pic.twitter.com/Izknqp1UgC
— Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) March 23, 2023

Despite this shortcoming in the free version, the chatbot is still usually able to suggest resources to help the user with their query, as highlighted in the interaction below.

*A screenshot illustrating ChatGPT-3.5’s inability to speak of recent events. Source:* *OpenAI*

ChatGPT-3.5 correctly answered most of the riddles it was given and all the simple math problems, but the answers were less consistently correct when it was asked more complex problems.

For example, when asked to solve the quadratic equation 2t^2 + 0.3t - 0.4 = 0, ChatGPT-3.5 returned the correct answer in one out of three attempts and had similar issues multiplying larger numbers.

ChatGPT-3.5 can also be inaccurate when answering other questions. According to OpenAI’s testing, it was only able to correctly answer 213 of 400 questions in the Uniform Bar Exam, which graduated law students in the United States are required to pass before they can become practicing lawyers.

Outside of factual inaccuracies, ChatGPT-3.5 also struggled with questions to test its logical ability, such as the one below.

*ChatGPT incorrectly answers a question aimed to test its logical ability. Source: OpenAI*

Microsoft’s Bing

Bing’s ChatGPT is based on the GPT-4 language model created by OpenAI, but the two chatbots have several key differences.

The first noticeable difference is that it takes Bing’s chatbot much longer to respond to questions, with an average response time of approximately five seconds compared with OpenAI’s ChatGPT taking only one second.

It also requires users to use the Microsoft Edge web browser, which is nowhere near as popular as Google Chrome.

On the positive side, Bing’s chatbot utilizes the Bing search engine in its responses, allowing it to answer questions about current events, unlike any other chatbot using GPT-4. It’s also currently available for free.

Additionally, it provides sources for its answers, letting users more easily verify claims made by the chatbot.

*Microsoft’s Bing ChatGPT in action. Source:* *Bing*

Using the same quadratic equation 2t^2 + 0.3t - 0.4 = 0, Bing linked to Microsoft Math Solver but often gave an incorrect answer and had similar issues correctly answering larger multiplications.

In the same logical question about the bookmark posed to ChatGPT-3.5, Bing correctly answered that you would expect to see the bookmark on page 120.

Google’s Bard

Google’s recently released AI chatbot called Bard, which runs on its PaLM 2 language model.

2/ Bard now also gets plugins

Get instant access to these apps amongst others:
・Spotify (Music)
・Walmart (retail)
・Indeed (job hunting)
・Uber Eats (meal delivery)
・Adobe Firefly (image creation)
・And all Google Apps pic.twitter.com/WyRBBYbYbR
— Moritz Kremb (@moritzkremb) May 11, 2023

As pointed out in a Twitter thread by AI enthusiast Moritz Kremb, it can both respond and be prompted with images, supports numerous programming languages and, like Bing’s chatbot, can connect to the internet.

When asked how PaLM 2 compares with GPT-4, Bard said that GPT-4 is better at generating text, but PaLM 2 is better at reasoning and logic, adding:

“Ultimately, the best language model for you depends on your needs. If you need an LLM that’s strong at reasoning and logic, then Palm 2 is the better choice. If you need an LLM that’s fast, good at generating text and has proved itself, then GPT-4 is the better choice.”

Bard correctly answered the bookmark question and it explained its answer in more depth than Bing, but the explanations were often nonsensical.

It solved most of the riddles it was given and performed well on the math questions, correctly solving the complex multiplication questions and the quadratic equation in two of the three draft answers it prepared.

YouChat

While it also uses OpenAI’s GPT-3.5, there are some differences between You.com’s YouChat and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

It lists sources for most of the text it generates and also provides links to several web pages related to the query.

It also connects to the internet, allowing it to access current events, and because it doesn’t have the same level of popularity as OpenAI’s chatbot, downtime is not an issue.

It incorrectly answered both the bookmark question, the quadratic equation and the more complex multiplication problem.

It was able to solve most of the riddles given to it but incorrectly answered some.

HuggingChat

HuggingChat is an open-source AI chatbox from the AI firm Hugging Face, released in April.

Some people said that closed APIs were winning...

but we will never give up the fight for open source AI ⚔️⚔️

Today is a big day as we launch the first open source alternative to ChatGPT:

HuggingChat

Powered by Open Assistant's latest model – the best open source chat… pic.twitter.com/LjKN78XaI7
— Julien Chaumond (@julien_c) April 25, 2023

Asked to solve the same quadratic equation, HuggingChat returned 684 words of text and failed to provide an answer to the question. While it could correctly answer simple problems, it could not multiply larger numbers.

While it sometimes gave direct answers, HuggingChat often returned vast walls of text, which were relevant initially but devolved into something akin to rambling.

For example, it was asked to solve the following riddle: “A barrel of water weighed 60 pounds. Someone put something in it, and now it weighs 40 pounds. What did the person add?”

The correct answer is a hole, but the HuggingChat replied ice cubes before launching into a 545-word monologue.

What about the rest?

There are many other AI chatbots currently available, designed for more limited use cases than the ones mentioned here, with the market likely to continue growing rapidly.

For example, Socratic is another AI chatbot from Google that can be downloaded onto a smartphone to help users answer questions on science, math, literature and more. It also provides visual explanations of concepts in different subjects and is a useful tool to aid learning.

DeepAI is an AI chatbot that specializes in writing text such as programming code, poems, stories or essays.

Conclusion

While it might be unfair to compare OpenAI’s ChatGPT-3.5 to Bing’s AI chatbot — given they are using different language models — this article intends to only look at AI chatbots available for free.

Through Bing, users can take advantage of OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4 language model, which is a huge improvement from its predecessor.

While Google’s Bard was promising, Bing generally performed the best of the current freely available AI chatbots, but still made some mistakes.

Other chatbots appear to have more limited use cases that could be more useful, but these three seem to lead the way as development progresses.

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The above represents an informal field testing of different AI solutions and is by no means exhaustive or representative of Cointelegraph’s position on a particular AI solution.

‘Is that legal?’ — Elon Musk chides OpenAI’s for-profit pivot after $50M investment

May 17, 2023 Coin Telegraph

<div>‘Is that legal?’ — Elon Musk chides OpenAI's for-profit pivot after M investment</div>

Coin Telegraph

OpenAI was originally formed as a non-profit entity to ensure it was free to achieve its stated goal, it formed a for-profit company back in 2019.

Billionaire Elon Musk has queried whether it's legal for OpenAI — the firm behind ChatGPT — to become a for-profit business after he invested approximately $50 million into it.

On May 16, Musk spoke with CNBC during Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting and claimed he “came up with the name” OpenAI, intending for the company to be an open-source alternative to DeepMind after Google purchased the company in 2014.

Musk likened OpenAI’s non-profit to for-profit transition to a “save the Amazon” organization becoming a “lumber company” which logged and sold trees from the rainforest, adding:

“Is that legal? That doesn’t seem legal. In general, if it is legal to start a company as a non-profit and then take the IP and transfer it to a for-profit that then makes tons of money [...] shouldn't that be the default?”

OpenAI says it began as a non-profit company so that it was “unconstrained by a need to generate financial return” and could focus on its goal of advancing “digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole.”

But in 2019, OpenAI announced it would create a new company called OpenAI LP, which it called a “hybrid of a for-profit and nonprofit,” or “capped-profit” company, which is supposedly still governed by the non-profit entity.

OpenAI was created as an open source (which is why I named it “Open” AI), non-profit company to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft.

Not what I intended at all.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 17, 2023

OpenAI claims this allowed it to attract more capital and scale faster, laying the groundwork for Microsoft’s multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment and other investments such as the $100 million it is reportedly seeking to create a new cryptocurrency called Worldcoin.

OpenAI might again be releasing an open-source AI model, which it hasn't done since it turned for-profit in 2019.

It seems likely the company's open-source AI model will not be as competitive as the paid version available to users for $20 per month, given this is a substantial source of revenue for the firm.

AI Eye: Make 500% from ChatGPT stock tips? Bard leans left, $100M AI memecoin

ChatGPT creator OpenAI is releasing an open-source AI model: Report

May 16, 2023 Coin Telegraph

The firm behind ChatGPT is seemingly under pressure from other available open-source AI models and is prepping to enter the space with one of its own.

An open-source artificial intelligence (AI) model is reportedly being prepared for public release by OpenAI, the firm behind the AI chatbot ChatGPT.

In a May 16 report in The Information citing a person with knowledge of the plan, OpenAI is undertaking the move as pressure mounts from competing open-sourced AI models, such as those leaked from Meta in February.

The timeline of when the model would be released was not reported.

If OpenAI release a truly open-source model it would send progress stratospheric
— Alex MacCaw (@maccaw) May 15, 2023

It was said OpenAI’s open-source model would likely not be competitive with its flagship ChatGPT product, as the firm’s value comes from being able to sell access to its more sophisticated models.

OpenAI has faced stiff competition from open-source AI models such as Meta's LLaMa — which was originally limited to researchers but was leaked in full by a user from the imageboard site 4chan in late February.

Other open-source models include those from Stability AI, which opened its large language models in April, along with Databricks’ Dolly 2.0 AI, which it open-sourced days prior to Stability AI.

Open-source models mean the complete code is open to everyone. Anyone has the right to modify the models for any reason or fit them to specific purposes. Some firms choose to open-source their software as they believe it could benefit from contributions by outside developers.

Those building such models are getting significant backing funds too.

On May 15, AI firm Together said it raised $20 million in a seed round backed by crypto figures including Oasis Labs co-founder Dawn Song, OpenSea co-founder Alex Atallah and Uniswap COO Mary-Catherine Lader — its stated mission is to provide open-source generative AI models.

Earlier in May, a leaked document from Google senior software engineer Luke Sernau pointed to open-source AI models as a significant threat to the company's own AI efforts.

“The uncomfortable truth is, we aren’t positioned to win this arms race and neither is OpenAI," Sernau wrote.

He added while Google was distracted by its competition with OpenAI, open-source AI models quietly became significantly more advanced. “They are lapping us," he wrote. “Open-source models are faster, more customizable, more private, and pound-for-pound more capable."

Cointelegraph contacted OpenAI for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

AI Eye: ‘Biggest ever’ leap in AI, cool new tools, AIs are the real DAOs

Update (May 16, 2:50 am UTC): This article has been updated to include more information from the leaked Google document and competing open-source AI models.

OpenAI CEO in ‘advanced talks’ for $100M Worldcoin funding: Report

May 15, 2023 Coin Telegraph

OpenAI CEO in ‘advanced talks’ for 0M Worldcoin funding: Report

Andressen Horowitz

“Existing and new investors” will contribute to the $100 million, according to someone familiar with the situation.

OpenAI boss Sam Altman is reportedly in “advanced talks” of securing $100 million funding for Worldcoin, a project aimed at creating a collectively owned and globally distributed cryptocurrency.

A Financial Times report published on May 15 cited sources with knowledge of Worldcoin’s funding talks, stating that the $100 million will be sourced from a mix of “existing and new investors.”

When it was first revealed to the world, the startup boasted a Series A funding round led by a16z, with investors that also included Digital Currency Group, Coinbase Ventures as well as former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.

In March 2022, a report from The Information claimed that the firm was raising $100 million from investors through a private token sale, citing two people with knowledge of the matter.

What a week! From to ( _ ), the Worldcoin protocol and its partners have covered a lot of ground in a few short days.

Let's recap! ⬇️
— Worldcoin (@worldcoin) May 13, 2023

In the most recent report, one person familiar with the matter said the potential new funding was sizeable given the extended crypto winter.

“It’s a bear market, a crypto winter. It’s remarkable for a project in this space to get this amount of investment,” the source said.

Cointelegraph reached out to Worldcoin but did not receive an immediate response.

Co-founded by Alex Blania, Sam Altman and Max Novendstern, work on the Worldcoin project started in early 2020.

According to Worldcoin executives, the aim of the project is to “tackle two problems” raised by the growing complexity of artificial intelligence.

Meanwhile, Worldcoin is preparing to launch its blockchain protocol and commence recording transactions within “the next six weeks,” after having been operating in beta.

On May 8, Worldcoin launched its own gas-free crypto wallet for verified humans.

Is WorldCoin by @sama the break we needed for #ENS adoption? pic.twitter.com/uIJmvZditN
— echelon.eth️ (@echelondoteth) May 14, 2023

Worldcoin team member Tiago Sada previously told Cointelegraph that the wallet was launched so “there is an alternative wallet that is focused just on simplicity.”

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Snapchat influencer turns simps into cash using an AI doppelganger

May 11, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Caryn Marjorie

With CarynAI, Caryn Marjorie has launched something seemingly straight out of a science fiction movie.

A 23-year-old Snapchat influencer has seemingly taken a leaf out of the SimpDAO book by launching an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based girlfriend version of herself via OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT.

The influencer in question, Caryn Marjorie, has 1.84 million subscribers on Snapchat, along with 215,000 followers on Instagram.

Dubbed CarynAI, the project was built by Forever Voices, which utilizes more than 2,000 hours worth of audio from Marjorie’s deleted YouTube videos to create the virtual girlfriend. It comes in a text and audio-based format, with the AI closely replicating her actual voice and speaking patterns.

CarynAI usage is up 500%
— Caryn Marjorie (@cutiecaryn) May 10, 2023

According to documents seen by Fortune that it referenced in a May 10 article, the project saw 1,000 sign-ups in the first week of its early beta that concluded on Tuesday.

Users pay around $1 per minute of interaction with CarynAI, which has already seen the project pull in $71,610 during early beta. Marjorie also told Fortune that she eventually expects to make around $5 million a month, as she just needs 20,000 people from her large following to subscribe.

in the world of AI, authenticity is more important than ever. my tweets, dms, direct replies, snaps, stories, and posts will always be me caryn AI will never replace me, instead it will be an extension of my consciousness for everyone to play with. caryn AI can even speak…
— Caryn Marjorie (@cutiecaryn) May 2, 2023

“Whether you need somebody to be comforting or loving, or you just want to rant about something that happened at school or at work, CarynAI will always be there for you,” she told Fortune, adding that “you can have limitless possible reactions with CarynAI—so anything is truly possible with conversation.”

The term SimpDAO was coined by blockchain analyst Eric Wall to describe crypto/NFT projects launched by influencers/celebrities that have highly devoted fans. These fans end up going out of their way — in the form of time, money and decentralized organizations — to make the project successful for their beloved figure.

With the use of AI, it appears that Marjorie has become an early pioneer of a new way to engage and monetize adevoted following.

*Eric Wall tweet on CarynAI. Source: Twitter*

With the explosion in popularity of AI chatbots, due in part to the free access to ChatGPT, discussion of AI girlfriends is becoming more frequent.

A quick Google search finds websites ranking the top “10 Best AI girlfriend Apps to Customize virtual companion in 2023,” along with head-scratching reports of a recent trend with Replika bot users in which the men are proudly abusing their virtual girlfriends.

*Article on AI girlfriend abuse. Source: Futurism*

Magazine: AI Eye: ‘Biggest ever’ leap in AI, cool new tools, AIs are the real DAOs

Worldcoin Launches World App to Bolster Decentralized Identity and Finance for Mass Adoption

May 9, 2023 Bitcoin.com

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