🧙🏼 Google's AI chess (literally)

Happy Thanksgiving, wizards.

I want to take a moment to say thank you to each one of you, who regularly take a few minutes out of your busy day to let me update you on what’s going on in AI. I’ll continue doing all I can to keep you ahead of the curve.

Here’s what’s cooking in AI today.

DARIO’S PICKS

1. Google’s AI-powered Chess is really cool

Google just released an experimental chess game, GenChess, that lets you customize your chess pieces using GenAI. You type in a description for the white pieces, and it generates them using the Imagen 3 model. It then makes suggestions for a suitable opponent (the black pieces). It doesn’t boast a ton of features for a chess app, but it works fine, and the main point here is showing off a simple way to implement character customisation into games.

The game was released alongside the 2024 World Chess Championship, where Google is the main sponsor.

Google now has five experimental game-like experiences (powered by AI) that you can try out right now. Here’s the other 4:

• Food Mood: A recipe generator to inspire your next meal.

• Learn About: AI that helps you learn any topic at your own pace.

• Say What You See: A game that helps you get better at image prompting.

• Musical Canvas: Make a drawing and generate a fitting soundtrack for it.

‎ Why it matters‎ ‎ This isn’t revolutionary, but the cool part is they’ve applied AI in a game where it actually enhances the experience. My bet is you’ll soon be able to generate your own character in nearly any game. It’s a small piece of the gaming experience, but AI makes a valuable contribution here.

PS I tried generating chess pieces with “OpenAI” as the inspiration, and when I pressed Generate Opponent, it suggested “Google” for the other side. Gemini knows!

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2. Eleven Labs launch their own “AI overviews”

Eleven Labs, the AI voice generator launched a reader app a few months back, and has finally taken notes from what Google is doing with “AI overviews” inside NotebookLM. The new feature, called GenFM, lets you turn any PDF, article, e-book, research paper, web link, etc. into a personal podcast with AI co-hosts – and it can do this in 32 languages. You also get a web link for these so you can share/listen to your podcasts on the web.

Currently only available for iOS, but Android is coming soon.

‎ Why it matters‎ ‎ NotebookLM just got a competitor. I did a short test and the voices sound very life-like, however the natural feel of the narration—and dynamics between the hosts—is nowhere near as engaging as NotebookLM is. The biggest advantage here is that ElevenLabs supports far more than languages than Google currently does.

Eleven Labs now boasts several AI audio solutions which are interesting. We’ve previously reviewed their products for voice cloning and generating sound effects.

THAT’S ALL FOLKS!

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