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Tuesday’s top story: Meta is refusing to confirm whether it’s using the images taken with its AI Ray-Ban smart glasses to train its AI models.

🌤️ This Morning on AI Tool Report

1. 🕶️ Meta Ray-Bans: A privacy risk?

2. 🔁 How to consolidate and automate your outbound workflow

3. 🔥 SoftBank joins OpenAI’s $6.5B round

4. 📰 How to get the key take-aways from all your newsletters in seconds

5. ✌️ How to establish trust and credibility using ChatGPT

6. 🛡️ Germany strengthens power over Microsoft

Read Time: 5 minutes

FACT OF THE DAY

🤔 In 2018, an AI called AlphaFold (developed by Google’s DeepMind) solved one of biology’s greatest challenges—predicting how proteins fold into 3D shapes which helped design new drugs and treatments for diseases.

STOCK MARKETS

🧊 Market dynamics shifted as investors cooled on big tech's AI spending and welcomed lower inflation. The Fed cut rates amid economic strength, sparking a broader rally. Various sectors outperformed tech, value beat growth, and small-cap stocks surged, diversifying the market beyond its previous reliance on a few tech giants. Learn more.

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PRIVACY

🕶️ Meta Ray-Bans: A privacy risk?

Our Report: Meta is “not saying either way” whether it’s using the images taken by its AI-powered Ray-Ban smart glasses—which have a discreet camera on the front that takes photos, not just when you ask it to, but also automatically, with certain trigger words like “look”—to train its AI models.

🔑 Key Points:

• Its latest AI feature scans the environment and takes a continuous stream of images (producing a live video)—sometimes without the user knowing—allowing it to answer questions about its surroundings, naturally.

• For example, if a user asks it to pick an outfit out of a closet, to provide them with an answer, the smart glasses will take multiple photos of their personal space and upload them to an AI model in the cloud.

• Meta’s refusal to confirm what happens with these photos, once they’re in the cloud, raises huge privacy concerns, as no one knows how many images are being collected and how they might be used.

🤔 Why you should care: This comes after Meta recently admitted that, since 2007, it’s been using all public US Instagram and Facebook posts to train its AI models (calling it "publicly available data"), leaving many concerned that it’s doing the same with the images taken by its Ray-Ban glasses, but after the backlash over privacy that Google received when it launched its own (now discontinued) smart glasses—Google Glass—(many were uncomfortable about being photographed without giving their consent), it’s surprising that Meta hasn’t adopted a stronger stance over privacy and issued a statement reassuring users that photos/videos will remain private and siloed to just the face camera.

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FUNDING

🔥 SoftBank joins OpenAI’s $6.5B round

Our Report: Japanese tech company, SoftBank, is rumored to be the latest investor in OpenAI’s highly-anticipated $6.5B funding round (which is valuing the company at $150B) and is reportedly looking to contribute $500M from its Vision Fund.

🔑 Key Points:

• The round will be led by Thrive Captial—which is contributing $1B—with other contributions coming from the likes of Microsoft and NVIDIA, and previously Apple, which has now removed its hat from the ring.

• Leaked investor documents show that the company revenue has increased by 1,700% since last year, but they’re also expected to drop $5B thanks to operational costs, salaries, and overheads.

• This is SoftBank's first contribution to OpenAI—although it did invest between $10-20M in its rival, Perplexity, in June—and follows its stake in UK chip designer, Arm (giving it majority ownership) contributing to a $4.6B gain.

🤔 Why you should care: This comes as OpenAI considers a major restructuring, to transition from a not-for-profit to a for-profit corporation, to appease investors, with CEO, Sam Altman, reportedly receiving a 7% equity stake as part of the deal.

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Tuesday’s Prompt: How to establish trust and credibility using ChatGPT

Type this prompt into ChatGPT:

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COMPETITION

🛡️ Germany strengthens power over Microsoft

• German competition authority—Federal Cartel Office (FCO)—has put Microsoft under a five-year control regime which allows them to intervene if they believe they’re engaging in anti-competitive practices.

• FCO officials—although yet to make any decisions on “proceedings”—have done this because Microsoft is “of paramount significance for cross-border competition,” and it will allow them to move quickly.

• FCO officials have already looked into Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI, and found it didn’t meet the requirements for a traditional merger review, but they now have more power to step up scrutiny measures.

🕊️ Which is the most popular search engine now: Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, or none of these?

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Until next time, Martin & Liam.

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