Your Breakdown of AI News For This Week

This week's tech news cycle was dominated by the news of Twitter rebranding to X. This move is still somewhat confusing, considering there's almost 2 decades of brand equity built into the Twitter name. Who knows, Elon has bigger moves at play apparently.

There was, however, quite a bit of news in the AI world that likely flew under the radar. All the big AI companies are starting to work together on safety, we got a new AI image model with SDXL, Photoshop added another new AI feature, we've seen advancements in image-to-video technology, and Sam Altman launched a new crypto project to differentiate humans from non-humans.

Over the past few months, I've been a little bored with most of the new AI tools that I've come across. Almost everything has been a rehash of the same tools. I've gotten really strict on what I approve on Future Tools. I can only list so many "resume writing" tools and so many new image generators that just use Stable Diffusion under the hood. If I list 100 tools that all do the same thing, I wouldn't be a very good curator of tools. That being said, over the past couple of weeks, I've been fairly impressed with some of the new and unique ways people are starting to use this AI tech. I'm starting to see less copycats and more innovation and unique niche use-cases. I'm becoming more and more energized by the latest crop of AI tools I'm seeing.

Just had to go off on that quick tangent... Let's break down what I've seen this week:

Thank You To This Week’s Sponsor!

Masterworks

🛠️ 5 Amazing Future Tools

1. Ubie: This tool is a health quiz that provides tentative diagnoses based on user-reported symptoms. To use it, simply describe your symptoms and the tool will ask you a series of clarifying questions. It will then provide a possible diagnosis. This is not meant to replace doctors - any results should be confirmed by a healthcare professional. However, in my testing I found it extremely easy to use and helpful for suggesting possible conditions to investigate further.
(Free)

2. Belva: Do you hate waiting on hold forever? I certainly do. Whenever I try to call my internet service provider to get help with connection issues, I often end up stuck on hold for hours. Belva aims to solve this problem. It's a service that will wait on hold and navigate phone menus for you. Belva can even respond to basic questions using an AI-generated voice, helping get you to a real human agent faster.
(Paid / Has Free Trial)

3. Platoria: This new AI tool aims to streamline your decision making. Simply input the product you're looking for, like a smartphone, and it will instantly compare prices across thousands of vendors to find the best match for your budget. It also summarizes customer reviews into a concise overview, so you don't have to read hundreds of opinions. With just a few clicks, you can effortlessly compare brands, find good prices, and analyze feedback to make a smart purchasing choice.
(Free)

4. Respell: Respell is an automation platform that allows users to create workflows called "spells" powered by AI. Users can build custom spells from scratch using Respell's visual workflow builder, which utilizes a drag-and-drop interface to easily visualize how an automation will play out. All spells created on the platform leverage AI capabilities so workflows can be automated without the need for coding.
(Free & Paid Plans)

5. Hexometer: Hexometer acts like a personal AI website assistant, continuously monitoring a site 24/7 to catch problems with availability, speed, user experience, SEO, health, and security. Hexometer uses AI to automatically detect issues and alerts you in real-time so you can fix problems before customers notice. You can perform on-demand audits powered by AI to troubleshoot and improve site performance over time.
(Paid / Has Free Trial)

🗞️ AI News & Articles

1. Netflix Lists AI Job Worth $900,000 - Netflix is hiring AI engineers and product managers for salaries up to $900,000, to expand the use of its machine learning platform in film and TV production. This comes right after Netflix released a Black Mirror episode satirizing the use of AI by a fictional streaming service very similar to Netflix. The timing is notable since writers and actors in Hollywood are currently on strike partly over concerns about lack of protections against exploitative uses of AI. Netflix seems to be doubling down on AI despite the controversy, and other studios like Disney are also hiring more AI roles.

2. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Launches Worldcoin - The new crypto project Worldcoin launched this week. It was created by Sam Altman, the head of OpenAI (the company behind ChatGPT). The goal is to give everyone in the world a unique digital ID using iris scans, which could open up financial opportunities for people who don't have IDs today. It's meant to help regular people, not just the tech elite. There's been some controversy already, but it's still an interesting idea that shows how AI could change finance. Definitely something to keep an eye on as Altman tries to put this bold experiment into action.

3. Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI launch Frontier Model Forum - Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic are teaming up to form something called the Frontier Model Forum, which is basically a group aimed at making sure powerful AI models are developed responsibly. They want to promote best practices for safety, fund research on technical ways to make the models safer, and share info between companies and governments about risks. The goal is to try to maximize the benefits of AI while minimizing potential downsides. They plan to work with academics, civil society groups, and policymakers too. It seems like a smart move to get the major players on the same page about AI safety, though some people will probably be skeptical of the companies' motives.

Other News:

• Bing Chat comes to Chrome and Safari for ‘select users’

• OpenAI Quietly Shuts Down Its AI Detection Tool

• ChatGPT for Android is now available

• ANNOUNCING SDXL 1.0

• Adobe adds Generative Expand option to Photoshop beta

📺️ Must-Watch Videos

📢 Announcements

• I’m going to be at SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles between August 6th and August 9th. I’ll be wondering the halls and popping into interesting panels and discussions. Say hello if you see me!

• I’m going to be co-hosting a panel and participating in other panels at the Artificial Conference (also in LA) on August 16th and 17th. If you make it out to that one, you’re likely to see me hanging out in the various sessions.

• I’ll also be hosting a panel for NVIDIA’s AI day in September (virtual), hosting a panel at VidSummit in Dallas, Texas in October, and giving a presentation about AI for creators at Social Media Marketing World in February… But those are all still far off so I’ll share more details as they come closer. :)

💰️ A Money Idea To Try

Create Niche AI-generated Art T-Shirts:

Sites like Printful and Printify make it really easy to sell “print-on-demand” t-shirts. If you can pick out a niche of rabid buyers, you can easily generate a ton of designs using tools like MidJourney or InstantArt.

For example, my wife’s aunt is obsessed with the dog breed shih tzu. She wears the t-shirts, has mugs, pictures on the wall, the whole nine… If you were to generate loads of images of shih tzus, you could easily create a niche store and crank out shirt after shirt with the dog breed in different poses and different situations. Fans of the breed would eat them up, share them on Instagram, and keep coming back for more!

Find more AI income ideas at the AI-Income Database here.

Thanks for checking out this week's Future Tools newsletter!

If you haven’t already, be sure to follow me over on Twitter and/or Threads as well, I like to share news and AI updates as they happen. :)

And don't forget to check out all of the newest tools we've just added on Future Tools!

Finally, if you have any feedback for me or ideas for this newsletter, get in touch! Replying to these emails will get to me and I will read all replies (but may not be able to reply to all). I want to improve this and continue to make it something that you're super excited about each week. So all ideas are welcome!

You rock! See ya next week. :)

Matt Wolfe (FutureTools.io)

P.S. This email was 95% written by a human. Claude checked my grammar for me.