We Got Scanned By Midjourney's New Body Machine

TL;DR

• 1

  Midjourney is pivoting hard into hardware: The AI image generation company plans eight products total, four hardware and four software, starting with a full-body ultrasound scanner and accompanying spa concept.

• 2

  The scanner repurposes existing tech creatively: Midjourney arranged dozens of Butterfly Network's handheld ultrasound chips in a 360-degree configuration, lowering users into water for roughly one-minute scans that produce terabytes of data.

• 3

  First AI model banned by US government: Anthropic's Fable model was banned with only 90 minutes notice, which the hosts characterize as government retribution for Anthropic not cooperating sufficiently with defense department requests.

• 4

  DeepMind bets on world models: DeepMind partnered with Eve Online maker CCP Games (now Fenris) to study the 20-year-old MMO's persistent universe as a training ground for AI world models.

• 5

  Major talent move: Noam Shazeer, co-author of the foundational Transformers paper, left Google for OpenAI to work on new model architectures despite Google having paid billions to acquire his previous company.

• 6

  Snap's AR glasses are a misfire: The $2,200 smart glasses are comically large and targeted at a demographic that cannot afford them, sending Snap's stock tumbling.