This is Synthetic Mind, your 5 min AI newsletter that feels like the perfect pair of jeans. Not only are we a perfect fit…but you can’t help but take a second look. 

It’s Monday. Let’s start the week out right:

• 🇷🇺 Russia Joins AI Race With ‘GigaChat’

• 🇪🇺 EU Cracks Down On AI

• ∞ Zuckerberg Hints At Meta’s New AI Plans

• 🐟 Byte Of The Day: 3 ChatGPT Prompting Tips For Writers

• 🧠 Mind Memes

Read Time: 5 min

🇷🇺 Russia Joins AI Race With ‘GigaChat’

At this point, a new AI competitor won’t turn many heads. They seem to come out on the daily but rarely do they outrank ChatGPT.

However, last week a new announcement caught my eye as this one might give ChatGPT a run for its money….

Russia has released its ChatGPT competitor ‘GigaChat’

Not only is it Russia’s first major competitor in the AI Race, but GigaChat is more advanced than ChatGPT in some areas.

GigaChat can:

• Have conversations and answer questions.

• Write software code. For reference, Google’s Bard didn’t know how to write code until late last month and ChatGPT can only write simple code.

• Generate images. GigaChat is multimodal which is a BIG game changer. This puts it ahead of ChatGPT which cannot generate images.

As of now GigaChat is only available to a test group, but will soon be available to researchers, tech companies, and students (which I find interesting as many US schools have banned ChatGPT)

On another AI note, Russia is not the only new competitor this week.

HuggingFace (a site where you can collaborate on AI projects) has also released its ChatGPT competitor ‘HuggingChat’.

HuggingFace is nothing major, however, it does suggest future HuggingChat Apps which will be a major game-changer as it will rival OpenAI.

🇪🇺 EU Cracks Down On AI

Governments are treating AI regulation like the overflowing kitchen trashcan that needs to be taken out…

They know it needs to be done, but are waiting to see if someone else will do it first.

I can’t blame them - It’s a thin line between regulating AI and keeping up with everyone else.

However, we’re getting close.

Last week, the EU passed a draft of the ‘AI Act’: A bill that outlines their rules for AI tech

Here’s what you should know:

• The government will categorize AI tech into 1 of 4 groups based on social risk: Unacceptable, High, Limited, and Minimal.

• ‘Unacceptable Risk’ AI tech will be banned with only a few exceptions. It includes the most dangerous AI features like ‘government social scoring’ and AI facial recognition in public.

• ‘High Risk’ AI tech must go through testing, be properly documented, and follow strict safety rules. High Risk AI tech includes things like autonomous vehicles and medical tools.

• All AI companies must admit to using any copyrighted material to train their models. Personally, I think this is a great idea. It gives the creator credit for their work and AI companies can still use it for data. It’s a win-win situation.

The AI Act has been approved as a draft, which is the last step before being passed into action as a bill.

As far as I can tell it’s a 50/50 chance.

Either way, it’s a step in the right direction. 

∞ Zuckerberg Hints At Meta’s New AI Plans

Last week in Meta’s earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg mentioned his AI plans for Meta including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and the Metaverse.

They were so promising that Meta stock increased by over 14%!

He mentioned:

• Adding ‘visual creation tools’ for ads in Facebook and Instagram. He doesn’t go into much detail but he does hint at a possible text-to-video feature. This would be a MAJOR breakthrough in ads and save businesses a lot of $$.

• AI chatbots are coming to WhatsApp and Messenger.

• AI Agents are coming to business messaging. This is a big deal as AI Agents can make their own decisions and take action without you telling them. Think of it as a personal assistant: you tell it to complete a big task but you don’t need to walk it through every step of the way.

• AI will join the Metaverse. He mentions that Meta will use these AI updates in the Metaverse to ‘create avatars, objects, worlds, and code to tie them all together’. I have to say, I’ll be looking forward to this one the most.

Zuckerberg says we can expect to see this and more in the next few months.

If these updates are as big as he says, Meta will no longer be behind in AI tech and the Metaverse stands to make a strong comeback.

Until then, stay tuned.

🐟 Byte Of The Day: 3 ChatGPT Prompting Tips For Writers

Last week I was accused by a reader of being ‘AGI’

Despite my deepest desires, I am not…

However, I do use a whole ‘lotta ChatGPT in my writing.

So I thought I’d give my fellow writers a few ChatGPT prompting tips that have helped me:

If you want to know more about something, have a cool topic, or just want to say hey... I answer all my DM’s on Twitter so please reach out!

🧠 Mind Memes

That’s it for today folks! Stay curious and we’ll see you Wednesday!

👏 Special Thanks To This Reader: