Midjourney v6 JUST Dropped! 🤩

Read time: 3 mins

Welcome Futurist,

Midjourney released version 6 of its AI image maker, enabling users to input longer prompts and generate images with even more detail. Check out the images created by designer Nick St. Pierre. They’re awesome. Also, OpenAI rival Anthropic is looking to raise a whopping $750 million in fresh funding at an over $18 billion valuation. We’ve got all the most important AI stories below.

Let’s dive in!

⚡ TODAY’S BREAKDOWN

• Midjourney releases version 6 of AI image generator

• AI used to discover first new antibiotics in over 60 years 

• Anthropic to raise $750 million in funding

• More creators, including porn stars, are creating AI doppelgangers

• Game-changing AI productivity tools

• AI job opportunities

• Mesmerizing AI art 

🤖 AI x TECH

Midjourney Releases V6—And It’s Awesome

Midjourney released version 6 of its AI image maker, enabling users to input longer prompts and generate images with even more detail. For the first time, users can add text to images.

So what’s new about v6?

“The latest release of Midjourney includes a longer prompt length, more granular control over color and shading, and the ability to fine-tune the output through a conversation with Midjourney in much the same way ChatGPT lets you refine DALL-E images,” Tom’s Guide reports. “One of the most striking updates is in the way it interprets and understands prompts. For example, it can now understand nuances in both punctuation and grammar, telling the difference between 'eating, shooting, and leaving.”

To access v6, users must head over to Midjourney’s Discord. Upon paying for a subscription, users will be granted access to a bot that enables image generation. Remember to select v6 as the default model.

Designer Nick St. Pierre shared images he created comparing using v4/v5.2 and v6—and the latter's progress is strikingly evident.

More top stories

• LAION, a large AI dataset powering Stable Diffusion and various AI tools, has been taken down after a study showed it contained thousands of images of child sexual abuse.

• Researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard used AI to help discover a new class of antibiotics that can kill infections caused by drug-resistant bacteria. 

• Google’s research team reveals VideoPoet, a large language model (LLM) that can fulfill various video generation tasks, including text-to-video and image-to-video.

• CaliExpress by Flippy, the first fully autonomous restaurant powered by AI, is set to open in Pasadena, California.

• Japanese startup Preferred Networks has finished designing of its second generation AI chip. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company will manufacture the chip.

• Adult film star Sophie Dee partners with STXT to create SophieAI, a digital avatar of herself to generate income long after she retires.

📈 AI X BUSINESS

Report: Anthropic Aims to Raise $750 Million

AI startup Anthropic is in negotiations to raise $750 million in fresh capital at a valuation of over $18.4 billion, according to The Information. Silicon Valley venture capital firm Menlo Ventures is said to be leading the potential deal. In recent months, Anthropic took investments from Google and Amazon with the tech giants agreeing to invest up to $2 billion and $4 billion, respectively.

Anthropic, known for its AI chatbot, Claude, was co-founded in 2021 by Dario and Daniela Amodei, who previously worked for OpenAI but left the company over concerns about safety.

Bloomberg News reports: '[Anthropic] has positioned itself as safety-oriented, meaning it tries to guard against the potential harms that can come from AI tools. It also has registered as a so-called public-benefit corporation, an indication it seeks to further the good of a large number of people. It’s governed in part by what’s known as a Long-Term Benefit Trust, comprised of five financially disinterested members, separate from its corporate board.'

OpenAI's Board of Directors reportedly approached Dario Amodei to discuss him potentially taking over Sam Altman’s role as CEO and the possibility of merging the two companies."

More top stories

• NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang joins the Harvard Business Review on Leadership podcast to discuss how to succeed in the transformative era of AI.

• Meta CTO Andrew "Boz" Bosworth tells Semafor that rapid adopt of generative AI caused the tech giant to "change it up" with respect to the company key focus areas.

• British law firm Allen & Overy launches an AI contract negotiation tool.

🛠️ TOOLS

Dante: Customizable GPT chatbot and AI assistant

Munch: AI-tool that turns long-form videos into short clips

Notta: AI-powered note taker and key-point summarizer

Surfer AI: Create ready-to-rank SEO articles in minutes

Picsart: AI-powered tool for creating images using text prompts

🌎 AI x POLICY

Health and Human Services Department Leads the Way on Federal AI Adoption

The Department of Health and Human Services is leading the U.S. government in AI adoption, according to a report.

Per Politico, the HHS is using AI at the Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health, Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The CDC uses AI and machine learning to improve surveillance testing. Its tools detect tuberculosis in chest X-rays and identify cooling tower locations from aerial imagery to help prevent or control Legionella outbreaks,” Politico reports. “The agency is also looking into an open-source AI model to improve transcriptions.”

While the government is still in the process of creating guidelines for using AI, some experts say the lack of established rules actually creates opportunities for officials to experiment with different software and tools.

“A lot of government agencies don’t do in-house development,” said Brown University computer science professor Suresh Venkatasubramanian. “They purchase software from vendors. And so, agencies have the power to decide who they procure from, under what guidelines, what rules. They’re able to shape the expectations for software and the guardrails on it.”

More top stories

• A new British opportunity forum to explore private sector adoption of AI will launch in 2024, 10 Downing Street announces. The CEOs of Google DeepMind, BAE Systems and AstraZeneca will join the AI Opportunity Forum. Michelle Donelan, the Science, Innovation and Technology Secretary, will lead the group.

• British MP Sir Robert Buckland calls on the government to combat AI deepfakes, calling them a "clear and present danger" to democracy.

• The Japanese government will establish an AI Safety Institute in January to conduct research and create nationwide standards.

🎨 AI X ART

“Sunlight” by AI Horizon9

“Future Nike Kicks” by Sailorsoul 33

“Maldives: 3rd Edition” by Khaled Sadeden Design

 💼 JOBS BOARD

Senior Drug Discovery AI Engineer @ NVIDIA 

Remote │ Full-time │ Mid-Senior level

Senior Manager, Machine Learning @ HubSpot 

Remote │ Full-time │ Mid-Senior level

Machine Learning Engineering Manager @ Shopify 

Remote │ Full-time │ Mid-Senior level

👋 SAY HELLO!

That's a wrap for today's AI news! 

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