Runway Goes 3D With New AI Video Camera Controls for Gen-3 Alpha Turbo

As the AI video wars continue to wage with new, realistic video generating models being released on a near weekly basis, early leader Runway isn’t ceding any ground in terms of capabilities.

Nov 03, 2024

Rather, the New York City-based startup — funded to the tune of $100M+ by Google and Nvidia, among others — is actually deploying even new features that help set it apart. Today, for instance, it launched a powerful new set of advanced AI camera controls for its Gen-3 Alpha Turbo video generation model.

Now, when users generate a new video from text prompts, uploaded images, or their own video, the user can also control how the AI generated effects and scenes play out much more granularly than with a random “roll of the dice.”

Runway post on X: https://x.com/runwayml/status/1852363185916932182

Instead, as Runway shows in a thread of example videos uploaded to its X account, the user can actually zoom in and out of their scene and subjects, preserving even the AI generated character forms and setting behind them, realistically putting them and their viewers into a fully realized, seemingly 3D world — like they are on a real movie set or on location.

More about Runway’s advanced AI camera controls on VentureBeat

Steve Wozniak Talks Apple’s AI Offerings

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says his first Siri searches with Apple’s AI offerings “worked fine,” but he needs more time before commenting further. He also discusses Apple’s product offerings and explains why he’s “a user-type person, not an investor.”

AI On Your Smartphone? Hugging Face’s SmolLM2 Brings Powerful Models to the Palm of Your Hand

Hugging Face today has released SmolLM2, a new family of compact language models that achieve impressive performance while requiring far fewer computational resources than their larger counterparts.

The new models, released under the Apache 2.0 license, come in three sizes — 135M, 360M and 1.7B parameters — making them suitable for deployment on smartphones and other edge devices where processing power and memory are limited. Most notably, the 1.7B parameter version outperforms Meta’s Llama 1B model on several key benchmarks.

Small models pack a powerful punch in AI performance tests

“SmolLM2 demonstrates significant advances over its predecessor, particularly in instruction following, knowledge, reasoning and mathematics,” according to Hugging Face’s model documentation. The largest variant was trained on 11 trillion tokens using a diverse dataset combination including FineWeb-Edu and specialized mathematics and coding datasets.

This development comes at a crucial time when the AI industry is grappling with the computational demands of running large language models (LLMs). While companies like OpenAI and Anthropic push the boundaries with increasingly massive models, there’s growing recognition of the need for efficient, lightweight AI that can run locally on devices.

More about Hugging Face’s SmolLM2 on VentureBeat

Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy on the Future of AI and Data

Nine months into his role as Snowflake’s CEO, Sridhar Ramaswamy sat down for a candid discussion on the journey so far & what’s ahead.

He uncovered details about his transition to Snowflake CEO, the operational changes he’s put in place to accelerate product development, and his bold predictions for AI’s future—along with how he’s guiding a vision for Snowflake to fit into that landscape.

Sridhar also reflects on how his leadership has evolved, from leading a major Google unit to founding Neeva (acquired by Snowflake) and now running Snowflake.

Meet The 17-Year-Old CEO Behind A $12M AI-Powered Nutrition App

In an era where artificial intelligence is revolutionising every aspect of our lives, a 17-year-old high school senior is making waves in the health and fitness tech space. Zach Yadegari, co-founder and CEO of Cal AI, has built a nutrition tracking app that's challenging legacy industry giants by leveraging AI and innovative marketing strategies.

From Coding Lessons to Million-Dollar Ventures

"I've really been into building companies since I was 10," says Yadegari, who began his entrepreneurial journey teaching coding lessons for $30 an hour. "I started scaling up. I posted an ad on a local Facebook group. I doubled my student body from one student I was tutoring to two. Then that turned into three, and for a kid at 10 years old, I felt pretty rich." He isn't the only one, the recently covered Apex team is following a similar path.

His early exposure to entrepreneurship, combined with inspiration from unexpected sources, shaped his business mindset. "I watched 'The Social Network,' which made me realise it wasn't scalable to trade my time for money," Yadegari reflects. "Seeing Mark Zuckerberg, what he created, that really inspired me to achieve something similar and financial freedom at such a young age."

AI, Robotics & the New Global Arms Race

In this episode, a16z co-founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz explore the intensifying competition between the U.S. and China in artificial intelligence and robotics, assessing the U.S.'s strengths in software development while raising concerns about China’s growing dominance in hardware (particularly in drone technology).

Marc and Ben present a "nightmare scenario" where Chinese drones could pose significant risks within the U.S., highlighting the urgent need for strong domestic manufacturing capabilities. They also examine China’s rapid ascent in the automotive sector, citing Xiaomi as a key example.

Additionally, the two discuss the critical importance of addressing supply chain vulnerabilities to bolster U.S. competitiveness and underscore the necessity for a renewed focus on robotics and embodied AI in light of these challenges.

A Glimpse of the Future of AI Robots

Physical Intelligence, a well-funded startup chasing breakthroughs in robotic intelligence, has developed a robot capable of doing various household chores remarkably well.

The idea of a robot that does a wide range of household chores, from unloading the dryer to folding laundry to cleaning up a messy table, has long seemed like pure science fiction—perhaps most famously embodied by the 1960s fantasy that was Rosey in The Jetsons.

Physical Intelligence, a startup in San Francisco, has shown that such a dream might actually not be so far off, demonstrating a single artificial intelligence model that has learned to do a wide range of useful home chores—including all of the above—by being trained on an unprecedented amount of data.

The feat raises the prospect of bringing something as magical and generally capable as other AI models like ChatGPT into the physical world.

Why I Left OpenAI ... | Miles Brundage

Miles Brundage, a former OpenAI senior adviser on artificial general intelligence readiness, stops by to tell us how his old company is doing when it comes to being ready for superintelligence, and whether we should all keep saving for retirement.

Thats all for today, however new advancements, investments, and partnerships are happening as you read this. Subscribe today, so you don’t miss any AI related news.