AI and TikTok avatars, move over Sora, and AI for preventing bank failures — the top 3 AI news items of the week

Intro

I imagine that only someone deprived of all media missed the news from Apple last week about the development of Apple Intelligence. This week, it will be difficult to overtake the volume of those info points. But I worked to find the week’s freshest events, though, which show us the development of neural networks and tools based on machine learning.

Item #1 — Tiktok and AI avatars

In May, TikTok announced the launch of TikTok Symphony. Symphony is a set of tools that will assist brands by creating advertising generated by artificial intelligence. TikTok has now expanded this set of tools to include generative avatars created with AI.

Brands and creators can choose stock, pre-built avatars, or a custom avatar that represents the brand's creator or other significant person associated with the brand.

For end users, this means only one thing: the amount of AI content on the platform continues to relentlessly increase. Influencers, who continually need to intensify their media presence, have an increasing array of tools to do so. Are all creators who are not well known going to be replaced by avatars?

Item #2 Sora, move over and hold my beer

Remember this name: Luma AI Dream Machine. Why? Because it is a text and image-to-video tool that is expected to fiercely compete with Sora from OpenAI.

Luma is not using a subscription model (at least for now), instead, users can test and generate high-quality video materials for free. Does this bring to mind the well-known truth that if the product is free, then the product is you? At this point, the model is still raw and its use by a large number of users will help to refine it, arguably making it more perfect. Only time will tell.

According to insiders, the company's goal is to create a "universal imagination engine" that can "dream up just about any video concept,” including all of its individual components, such as scripts and character support, as well as music videos and, ultimately, full-length films.

Item #3 — Turn financial data into diamonds, no magic, just AI

A startup by the name of Finbourne, founded in London, announced the conclusion of a funding round that generated $70 million for a new technology platform to help banks organize their data and also actively use more of it.

Remember 2008, when the Royal Bank of Scotland almost collapsed in the U.K. financial crisis? Now, one of its former senior employees has built a startup that should help avoid such disasters. No magic involved, just skillful data processing, scalable tech, and a bit of AI.

Who would have thought that some of the most cautious, conservative companies, such as Highland Europe and AXA Venture Partners, would support this project? Apparently, the idea is so good that even conservative investors can't resist it.