Seamless Voice 🗣️🎙️

👀 TLDR:

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover new updates for SeamlessM4T, the AI translation model from Meta. AI speech and translation tools are poised to revolutionize how we consume content, and with this new release, Meta has made translation faster and much more expressive than we’ve heard to date. Also this week, we have a look at what’s going on at Spotify. Everyone was talking about Spotify Wrapped, but the gloss has been taken off after the company announced massive layoffs. We also have quick reports on the prospect of a new gaming app store from Microsoft, as well as the latest from AWS re:Invent. Our Stat looks at how AI is helping smartphone sales. And What’s dAppening covers the President of El Salvador, whose policy of buying Bitcoin looks like it is finally paying off.

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Takes 🎬

🗣️🔮 Meta – New Features Make AI Translation More Expressive and Seamless

We firmly believe AI speech and translation tools are going to revolutionize how we consume content. Right now, there is an arms race between the likes of Google, Meta, and Samsung to perfect text-to-speech and language translation tech. It’s arguably advantage to Meta, which has released updated v2 architecture for SeamlessM4T, its Multimodal AI translation tool. The key new feature is called “SeamlessExpressive”, which allows the AI to mimic human expressions, tone, pitch, and so on. In short, it makes the AI sound more natural, like a real human. It addresses a challenge we have been facing in our experiments in text-to-voice, using tools from WellSaid Labs and Eleven Labs. Both these options are pretty good, but nowhere near perfect. As for SeamlessM4T, while we’ve been watching this since August, this is the first time we’ve been able to try it out for real, and with such wonderful results We’ll be launching a multilingual wellness app early next year, and this new model will most certainly be used for translating the videos, currently only narrated in English. This will obviously save our client thousands of recording hours, not to mention dollars. #SeamlessAI Try it out here…

🚨 Newsflash! 🚨Now is probably the right time to introduce our own current experiments in Voice AI! We’ve got a new What’s Appening Podcast, released every week along with this newsletter. Sure, the Voice AI is not perfect, but it shows you what’s possible today, and reveals insights into how the world might look like tomorrow. If you’re interested, join that conversation on LinkedIn.

👎🎸 Spotify – Everyone’s Talking About Wrapped, But Layoffs Bite

As a marketing exercise, it doesn’t get much better than Spotify Wrapped. The annual highlight reel of our musical tastes is a cultural event in itself, creating a communal moment on social media and normally leading to a surge in new downloads as those without the app suffer from FOMO. Yet, Spotify Wrapped 2023 has been overshadowed by the announcement that the company would be shedding 17% of its staff. That’s an estimated 1500 people. Spotify is expanding both in terms of user numbers and types of content. But it’s finding it difficult to be profitable, with estimated losses of over $500 million in the first nine months of the year. Something is wrong when the world’s favorite music streaming platform can’t turn a profit, and it might take a lot more than reducing the employee headcount to fix it. #UnwrappingSpotify Read more here.

🎮 Microsoft Hints Gaming App Store Is Coming. Microsoft/Xbox has big plans for all that lovely gaming intellectual property it owns after the Activision Blizzard takeover. That includes launching a gaming app store (although it won’t text us exactly when) with the aim of challenging Google and Apple’s duopoly. Read about it here.

🆕 There were many more announcements at re:Invent. While we brought you the highlights from AWS’s re:Invent 2023 last week, there was plenty more from the five-day showcase of the cloud industry. From Neptune Analytics to SageMaker HyperPod to new serverless offerings, you can get a good breakdown of all the announcements here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 4%

📱↗️ Smartphones – AI Predicted to Boost Sales by 4% Next Year

Global smartphone sales have seen a marked decline in 2023. But could AI be the difference maker for a bounce back? Samsung, for example, is aiming to offer ChatGPT-like functionalities built into models from 2024 onward, and many see the boom in AI-powered apps on the horizon. Both Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley believe this will be key to reviving the market, projecting that AI apps could lead to a 4% increase in smartphone sales in 2024, and a 4.4% increase in 2025. #AIPhoneBoom Read more here.

🕸️ What’s dAppening?

🪙📈 Bitcoin – El Salvador President Wants an Apology From Critics

Bitcoin is up around 150% year-to-date, strengthening the perception that the Crypto Winter is finally over. One individual who is basking in the glow of the digital token’s resurgence is El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele. He adopted the “Bitcoin standard” for his country in 2021, making it legal tender and becoming the first government to openly buy Bitcoin as a state investment strategy. Bukele received a lot of criticism over the past two years, including from the IMF. Yet, he took to Twitter yesterday to announce that El Salvador was now in profit – millions of dollars of profit – on its Bitcoin holdings. Bukele claims the (still relatively impoverished) country won’t cash in on its holdings yet and that Bitcoin is needed for its long-term economic security. But for now, Bukele has demanded an apology from all those who doubted him. Will his Bitcoin bet pay off in the long run? #BitcoinPresident Read more here.

Meanwhile at 3Advance...

It’s the holiday season, so what better way to celebrate than to welcome new members to the 3Advance team! 🙌 Technically, one of them has been working with us for the past six months, but on December 1st, Austin-based Engineer, Riley Stephens put pen to paper and joined us full-time. Riley has a true passion for his craft and while his expertise in server development - AWS, Serverless, Blockchain - is what we value most right now, his front-end skills ain’t half bad either. Riley has led cutting-edge software projects and teams, and his founder experience also contributes to his obvious leadership capabilities. We see great things for Riley at 3Advance in the coming year… Next up is Chloe Shōko Rogers! Chloe is our latest Product Manager Trainee. Originally from 3A’s backyard in Arlington VA, Chloe is based in New York, and has enjoyed a diverse range of roles before embarking on her Product Management journey earlier this year. She will be the third trainee in this role, following in the fantastic footsteps of Kayne Lynn and Jackson Jost. No pressure Chloe! 😉 It’s an exciting time to join 3Advance as we look to wrap up 2023 and embark on the new AI-packed year ahead.

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