Google has recently launched an exciting experimental feature—AI-generated podcasts. This feature can transform your research materials into engaging podcast segments, featuring two 'hosts' discussing the information you have gathered.

Amazon's Audible has announced an innovative plan to use artificial intelligence (AI) technology to train the voices of professional narrators in order to produce high-quality audiobooks. Starting this week, selected audiobook narrators from the U.S. will participate in the AI training process, ensuring that the AI-generated voices can compete with those of professionals. Narrators will have the opportunity to review the AI-generated voices to ensure they align with the style and tone of the work, and to fine-tune the AI's pronunciation and pacing. Audible has committed to compensating participating narrators based on book titles and royalty sharing.

Amazon has launched the AI Cloning Narrator project aimed at accelerating audiobook production. The project invites narrators to submit recordings to train AI for 'voice cloning'. Narrators can choose to participate in the project voluntarily, including live performances or AI-generated recordings. Audiobooks using AI cloning will be labeled on the product detail page, and narrators will be compensated through a royalty-sharing model, requiring narrator consent for AI cloning use. After beta testing in the U.S., this feature will expand to rights holders, aiming to provide narrators with more creative opportunities and enhance the audiobook market.

Amazon's audiobook service Audible is introducing AI voice training technology to generate new audiobook recordings, with plans to invite professional audiobook narrators in the U.S. to participate starting this week. The trained AI will be used for recordings, with narrators having the right to approve the use of their synthetic voice for specific works and the ability to edit pronunciation and pacing. Narrators participating in the program will be compensated for audiobooks created using their AI voice based on book titles and royalty splits.

Google has launched Illuminate, an innovative tool that transforms academic papers into engaging audio podcasts using the language model Gemini. Users can easily absorb knowledge through this platform, especially suitable for learning during fragmented time. Illuminate supports classic computer science papers and offers features like fast forward, rewind, and playback speed adjustment for convenient sharing. Currently, its functions mainly target English content, and it does not provide downloads or subtitles, but there are hopes for further optimization of user experience in the future.

On the occasion of its 16th anniversary, Zhangyue Technology has launched an upgraded version of the Zhangyue APP to provide a better reading experience. The new version of the APP optimizes the visuals and adjusts functionalities, offering an ad-free pure reading space that allows users to focus solely on reading.

Microsoft plans to introduce the 'Smart Media Search' feature in Windows 11, allowing users to search for indexed local video or audio files using voice commands. This feature requires user consent to scan media files on the device and will download and install AI models in the background for transcription and indexing. The feature is still in development, and the AI models may require dedicated neural processing units for calculations. It remains unclear whether users can select specific files for search, raising privacy concerns due to the AI's comprehensive scanning of media content. If selective processing is allowed for users, this feature...

Moore Threads has announced the open-source release of its audio understanding model, MooER, making it the first large-scale open-source speech model based on domestically produced full-feature GPUs. MooER supports Chinese and English speech recognition and translation, utilizing a three-part model structure that demonstrates robust multilingual processing capabilities. The inference code and a model trained on 5000 hours of data have been released as open source, with plans to further open-source training code and an enhanced version trained on 80,000 hours of data. In comparative testing, MooER-5K has shown outstanding performance, achieving a Chinese CER of 4.21% and an English WER of 17.98%, particularly.

MoE Technology has announced the open-source release of its independently developed audio understanding large model, MooER, which is the first large-scale open-source speech model trained and inferred on domestically produced full-featured GPUs. MooER was trained on a large-scale audio dataset in just 38 hours on the MoE KuaE Intelligence Computing Platform, demonstrating excellent performance in Chinese and English speech recognition, as well as Chinese-to-English speech translation, achieving an impressive BLEU score of 25.2 in the Covost2 Chinese-to-English test set, nearing industrial-grade effectiveness. MoE Technology plans to further open-source the training code.

Google AI Studio has released a new native prompt library that integrates features such as long-text context, multimodal inputs (images, videos, audio), and structured outputs. The aim is to provide users with a rich and diverse experience across various fields including education, programming, and travel. This library includes practical features like recipe generators, math tutors, math homework generators, treasure hunt design, unit test generators, and travel suggestions, all designed to enhance user exploration and innovation through intuitive displays and comprehensive information. Users only need to log into Google AI Studio.

The latest survey from the Game Developer Collective reveals the complex attitudes of game developers towards the application of generative AI. 30% of respondents expect AI to reduce development costs in the coming year, while 8% anticipate an increase in costs. Regarding quality, 17% of developers believe AI will enhance game quality, whereas 35% express concern over declining quality. Generative AI has sparked controversy in the gaming industry, with opponents arguing that it may cause greater environmental harm and lead to a decrease in product quality. In terms of application, 49% of developers have adopted it.

Pindrop has launched Pulse Inspect, a web-based audio and video file detection system that accurately identifies AI-generated speech with 99% accuracy, as part of the Pindrop Pulse product suite. The tool's unique capability lies in its ability to recognize audio generated by various AI tools or models, and it is currently in preview, designed to serve organizations aiming to prevent audio forgery risks on a large scale. With the rise of text-generating AI systems, audio forgery has become prevalent, making Pulse Inspect essential.

The actors' union SAG-AFTRA has signed an agreement with AI cloning startup Narrativ, allowing actors to legally license their voices for AI-generated audio advertisements. The agreement ensures that actors have the right to understand and reject brand proposals, set prices, and negotiate for fair compensation. SAG-AFTRA's benefit plans will receive a share of the advertising revenue, though the specific percentage has not been disclosed. This agreement aims to address the widespread dissemination of AI-cloned voices without authorization, following ongoing concerns within the AI industry.

Clapper is an AI generation and video editing tool developed independently by an individual developer, integrating various AI technologies including image generation, video creation, and audio. It offers APIs for image, audio, music, and video generation, allowing users to complete the entire process from creative conception to final production on a single platform. Clapper features a timeline function that supports content generation and editing orchestration, providing both a traditional interface and an infinite canvas mode to meet the needs of divergent thinking and precision editing. As an open-source tool, Clapper...

Baidu Wangpan's AI creative generation tool, 'Super Canvas', has launched a Pro version aimed at providing efficient and customized creative generation services for studios. Users can simply upload images and choose from over 70 styles to easily generate photoshoots with different makeup, clothing, and scenes. Its 'Background Redraw' feature intelligently identifies and extracts the subject, allowing users to switch backgrounds with one click, reducing setup costs. The Pro version is specifically designed for studios, supporting batch generation of entire style sets and enabling online collaboration across multiple devices, greatly enhancing work efficiency. It offers customized creative services to assist studios.

Alibaba recently launched the new open-source voice model Qwen2-Audio, which excels in speech recognition, translation, and audio analysis, achieving significant performance improvements. Qwen2-Audio offers a basic version and an instruction fine-tuning version, supporting multiple languages such as Chinese, Cantonese, French, English, and Japanese, facilitating sentiment analysis and translation applications. Compared to Qwen-Audio, Qwen2-Audio features comprehensive optimizations in architecture and performance, utilizing more natural language prompts during the pre-training phase.

Audible, the audiobook platform owned by Amazon, is testing an AI assistant named 'Maven' to provide personalized audiobook recommendations. Users can simply describe their needs in natural language, such as 'I'm looking for an inspirational novel with a female protagonist,' and Maven will recommend suitable content from nearly a million titles. This feature is currently available to some iOS and Android users in the U.S., covering about half of the audiobook library, though the specific details of the AI model have not been disclosed. Audible is also exploring the application of AI in generating book lists, summarizing reviews, and providing AI voiceovers.

In August 2024, Baidu Cloud Drive launched a solution tailored for the photography industry, integrating storage backup, AI photo editing, and efficient delivery. The aim is to help photography studios improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance business growth. Through research conducted with hundreds of photography studios, Baidu Cloud Drive identified common issues such as management difficulties, low efficiency, and high costs, and developed this targeted solution.

Recently, an AI-composed song titled 'Verknallt in einen Talahon' successfully entered the German Top 100 chart at 72nd place, featuring the tag from feat. udio.com. Its performance on Spotify was even more impressive, landing at 27th place. This phenomenon not only reflects the potential of artificial intelligence in music creation but also marks a shift in music consumption habits. The chart rankings take into account unique listener numbers, playback time, and Shazam recognition counts.