China drives EV boom this year amid strong demand for hybrid vehicles

EV shipments, including fully battery-powered vehicles and hybrids, were up 18% in the first three months of 2024 compared with the same period last year. 

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Maad raises $3.2M seed amid B2B e-commerce sector turbulence in Africa

Maad, a B2B e-commerce startup based in Senegal, has secured $3.2 million debt-equity funding to bolster its growth in the western Africa country and to explore fresh opportunities in the wider Francophone region. The seed round was led by Ventures Platform, with participation from Seedstars International Ventures, Reflect Ventures, Oui Capital, Launch Africa, Voltron Capital […]
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AI boom to keep supply of high-end memory chips ‘tight’ this year, analysts warn

SK Hynix and Micron – the world’s largest memory chip suppliers – are out of high-bandwidth memory chips for 2024, while the stock for 2025 is also almost sold out.

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OpenAI Startup Fund raises additional $5M

The fresh funds were raised from two investors who transferred the capital into a special purpose vehicle, a legal entity associated with the OpenAI Startup Fund.
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What is OpenAI’s new GPT-4o model? Free users get more features including advanced audio

OpenAI is launching a new flagship generative AI model named GPT-4o, which will be introduced “iteratively” into the company’s developer and consumer products over the coming weeks. There had been speculation that a search engine would be rolled out but CEO Sam Altman denied the rumors.
OpenAI’s CTO, Muri Murati, stated that GPT-4o offers “GPT-4-level” intelligence while improving the capabilities of GPT-4 in text, vision, and now audio.
Murati stressed the growing complexity of these models and the goal of making interactions more natural and effortless, stating, “We want the experience of interaction to actually become more natural, easy, and for you not to focus on the UI at all, but just focus on the collaboration with [GPTs].”

Say hello to GPT-4o, our new flagship model which can reason across audio, vision, and text in real time: https://t.co/MYHZB79UqN
Text and image input rolling out today in API and ChatGPT with voice and video in the coming weeks. pic.twitter.com/uuthKZyzYx
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) May 13, 2024

What features does GPT-4o have?
During a keynote at OpenAI’s offices, Murati explained, “GPT-4o reasons across voice, text and vision. This is incredibly important, because we’re looking at the future of interaction between ourselves and machines.”

@openai GPT-4o reasons across text vision and speech.
Starting today anyone can use-GPTs and ChatGPT-4o-vision-memory-browse (research across your chats)-qualitiy and speed in 50 different languagesfor free.
Paid users will have 5x more capacityChatGPT-4o is:2x faster… pic.twitter.com/7E5UQuV0dB
— Erik Machorse (@erikmachorse) May 13, 2024

The predecessor, GPT-4, was capable of processing both images and text, performing tasks such as extracting text from images or describing their content. GPT-4o extends these functionalities to include speech.
Significantly changing the ChatGPT experience, GPT-4o allows for more interactive and assistant-like interactions. Previously, ChatGPT included a voice mode that converted text to speech. Now, GPT-4o enhances this feature, enabling users to interrupt ChatGPT during responses, with the model offering “real time” responsiveness. It can also detect emotional cues in the user’s voice and respond in various emotive tones.
GPT-4o also boosts ChatGPT’s visual capabilities. Whether analyzing a photograph or a computer screen, ChatGPT can now rapidly respond to queries ranging from software code analysis to identifying clothing brands. The company is also releasing a desktop version of ChatGPT and introducing a revamped user interface.
Starting today, the new model is accessible in the free tier of ChatGPT and is also available to OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus subscribers with “5x higher” message limits. OpenAI plans to introduce the new voice feature powered by GPT-4o to Plus users in alpha within the next month.

BREAKING: OpenAI’s new voice assistant acts as a translator. Impressive range of emotion and fluency throughout. pic.twitter.com/JPNJjLAGhn
— Zain Kahn (@heykahn) May 13, 2024

The model also has improved multilingual capabilities, with enhanced performance across 50 different languages, according to OpenAI. In OpenAI’s API, GPT-4o operates at double the speed of its predecessor, specifically GPT-4 Turbo, which costs half as much and offers higher rate limits.
What new features are available for free ChatGPT users?
With the rollout of GPT-4o, ChatGPT free users are set to experience a suite of new features, including GPT-4 level intelligence. Users will be able to receive answers directly from the model, as well as access information pulled from the web.
GPT-4o will also be able to do data analysis and visualizations such as creating charts. People will also be able to use the chat function to talk about their photos, allowing users to engage in discussions or seek information about images they upload. The model also supports users with more complex tasks such as file uploads for help with summarizing documents, writing content, or performing detailed analyses.
Finally, there is now a Memory feature, designed to build a more helpful experience, remembering previous interactions and context to provide a more cohesive and personalized user journey.
Featured image: Canva
The post What is OpenAI’s new GPT-4o model? Free users get more features including advanced audio appeared first on ReadWrite.

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Early Facebook investor Accel raises $650 million fund to back European and Israeli startups

Accel said Tuesday it’s raised $650 million for its eighth fund targeted at investing in European and Israeli early-stage startups.

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Accel has a fresh $650M to back European early-stage startups

Accel has invested in more than 200 startups in the region to date, making it one of the more prolific VCs in this market.
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Cruise founder Kyle Vogt is back with a robot startup

Kyle Vogt, the former founder and CEO of self-driving car company Cruise, has a new VC-backed robotics startup focused on household chores. Vogt announced Monday that the new startup, called the Bot Company, has raised $150 million from former Github CEO and investor Nat Friedman, Pioneer founder and investor Daniel Gross, Spark Capital general partner […]
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Amazon-backed Anthropic launches its Claude AI chatbot across Europe

Anthropic says that, starting Tuesday, individuals and businesses in Europe will be able to access its Claude chatbot through the web and via an iOS mobile app.

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Anthropic is expanding to Europe and raising more money

On the heels of OpenAI announcing the latest iteration of its GPT large language model, its biggest rival in generative AI in the U.S. announced an expansion of its own. Anthropic said Monday that Claude, its AI assistant, is now live in Europe with support for “multiple languages,” including French, German, Italian and Spanish across […]
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