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Read more Emergence Capital has closed its $1 billion seventh fund, it reported on Tuesday It’s the firm’s first raise in nearly four years. In May 2021, the San Mateo, California-based venture firm rounded up nearly a billion dollars in capital commitments across two funds. At that time, it closed its sixth early-stage fund with $575 million; […]
Read more The startup uses AI to quickly search for minerals over wide areas, identifying promising potential deposits for exploration.
Read more OpenAI has released a new image generator that’s designed less for typical surrealist AI art and more for highly controllable and practical creation of visuals—a sign that OpenAI thinks its tools are ready for use in fields like advertising and graphic design.
The image generator, which is now part of the company’s GPT-4o model, was promised by OpenAI last May but wasn’t released. Requests for generated images on ChatGPT were filled by an older image generator called DALL-E. OpenAI has been tweaking the new model since then and will now release it over the coming weeks to all tiers of users starting today, replacing the older one.
The new model makes progress on technical issues that have plagued AI image generators for years. While most have been great at creating fantastical images or realistic deepfakes, they’ve been terrible at something called binding, which refers to the ability to identify certain objects correctly and put them in their proper place (like a sign that says “hot dogs” properly placed above a food cart, not somewhere else in the image).
It was only a few years ago that models started to succeed at things like “Put the red cube on top of the blue cube,” a feature that is essential for any creative professional use of AI. Generators also struggle with text generation, typically creating distorted jumbles of letter shapes that look more like captchas than readable text.
OPENAI
Example images from OpenAI show progress here. The model is able to generate 12 discrete graphics within a single image—like a cat emoji or a lightning bolt—and place them in proper order. Another shows four cocktails accompanied by recipe cards with accurate, legible text. More images show comic strips with text bubbles, mock advertisements, and instructional diagrams. The model also allows you to upload images to be modified, and it will be available in the video generator Sora as well as in GPT-4o.
OPENAI
It’s “a new tool for communication,” says Gabe Goh, the lead designer on the generator at OpenAI. Kenji Hata, a researcher at OpenAI who also worked on the tool, puts it a different way: “I think the whole idea is that we’re going away from, like, beautiful art.” It can still do that, he clarifies, but it will do more useful things too. “You can actually make images work for you,” he says, “and not just just look at them.”
It’s a clear sign that OpenAI is positioning the tool to be used more by creative professionals: think graphic designers, ad agencies, social media managers, or illustrators. But in entering this domain, OpenAI has two paths, both difficult.
One, it can target the skilled professionals who have long used programs like Adobe Photoshop, which is also investing heavily in AI tools that can fill images with generative AI.
“Adobe really has a stranglehold on this market, and they’re moving fast enough that I don’t know how compelling it is for people to switch,” says David Raskino, the cofounder and chief technical officer of Irreverent Labs, which works on AI video generation.
The second option is to target casual designers who have flocked to tools like Canva (which has also been investing in AI). This is an audience that may not have ever needed technically demanding software like Photoshop but would use more casual design tools to create visuals. To succeed here, OpenAI would have to lure people away from platforms built for design in hopes that the speed and quality of its own image generator would make the switch worth it (at least for part of the design process).
It’s also possible the tool will simply be used as many image generators are now: to create quick visuals that are “good enough” to accompany social media posts. But with OpenAI planning massive investments, including participation in the $500 billion Stargate project to build new data centers at unprecedented scale, it’s hard to imagine that the image generator won’t play some ambitious moneymaking role.
Regardless, the fact that OpenAI’s new image generator has pushed through notable technical hurdles has raised the bar for other AI companies. Clearing those hurdles likely required lots of very specific data, Raskino says, like millions of images in which text is properly displayed at lots of different angles and orientations. Now competing image generators will have to match those achievements to keep up.
“The pace of innovation should increase here,” Raskino says.
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
Ethically sourced “spare” human bodies could revolutionize medicine
Many challenges in medicine stem, in large part, from a common root cause: a severe shortage of ethically-sourced human bodies.
There might be a way to get out of this moral and scientific deadlock. Recent advances in biotechnology now provide a pathway to producing living human bodies without the neural components that allow us to think, be aware, or feel pain.
Many will find this possibility disturbing, but if researchers and policymakers can find a way to pull these technologies together, we may one day be able to create “spare” bodies, both human and nonhuman.
These could revolutionize medical research and drug development, greatly reducing the need for animal testing, rescuing many people from organ transplant lists, and allowing us to produce more effective drugs and treatments. All without crossing most people’s ethical lines. Read the full story.
Why the world is looking to ditch US AI models
—Eileen Guo
A few weeks ago, when I was at the digital rights conference RightsCon in Taiwan, I watched in real time as civil society organizations from around the world, including the US, grappled with the loss of one of the biggest funders of global digital rights work: the United States government.
Some policymakers and business leaders—in Europe, in particular—are reconsidering their reliance on US-based tech and asking whether they can quickly spin up better, homegrown alternatives. This is particularly true for AI. Read the full story.
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here.
How to… delete your 23andMe data
Consumer DNA testing company 23andMe has filed for bankruptcy protection, following months of speculation around CEO Anne Wojcicki’s plans to take the firm private. The news means that 23andMe—and the genetic data of millions of its customers—could soon be put up for sale.
But although customers worried about the security of their DNA data can request its deletion, truly scrubbing your information from the company’s archives is easier said than done. Read the full story.
—Rhiannon Williams
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 US security leaders accidentally added a journalist to a secret Signal chat
The group used the unapproved platform to discuss classified military strikes in Yemen. (The Atlantic $)
+ It raises questions over how the US government is handling sensitive information. (Vox)
+ The Trump administration has embraced the encrypted messaging app. (WP $)
2 Donald Trump’s H-1B visa crackdown could seriously harm US tech firms
Amazon is likely to be hit particularly hard. (Rest of World)
+ US visa and green-card holders are being detained and deported. (NY Mag $)
+ Tariffs, DOGE and scams are weighing heavily on the tech industry. (Insider $)
+ America relies heavily on skilled overseas workers. (The Conversation)
3 DeepSeek’s runaway success is shaking up China’s AI startups
They’re overhauling their business models in an effort to keep up. (FT $)
+ The AI development gap between China and the US is narrowing. (Reuters)
+ How DeepSeek ripped up the AI playbook—and why everyone’s going to follow its lead. (MIT Technology Review)
4 AI companies don’t want to be regulated anymore
Emboldened by the Trump administration, the industry’s biggest firms are lobbying for fewer rules. (NYT $)
5 Colorado is experimenting with psychedelic mushrooms
It plans to administer them in ‘healing centers’ across the state. (Undark)
+ Job titles of the future: Pharmaceutical-grade mushroom grower. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Tesla sales are plummeting in Europe
As customers turn to its Chinese rival BYD. (The Guardian)
+ Elon Musk’s companies are under increasing pressure from their rivals. (Economist $)
+ BYD was one of our 2024 Climate Tech Companies to Watch. (MIT Technology Review)
7 This Indian city relies on the wind to stay cool
Palava City is a living testbed of technological innovation. (WP $)
+ No power, no fans, no AC: The villagers fighting to survive India’s deadly heatwaves. (MIT Technology Review)
8 Filming your online routine is not for the faint of heart
Absurd clips are doing the rounds on social media yet again. (NY Mag $)
9 Floating wood could help to refreeze the Arctic
By helping to seed the formation of new ice. (New Scientist $)
+ Inside a new quest to save the “doomsday glacier.” (MIT Technology Review)
10 Silicon Valley workers are ditching dating apps
Instead, they’re attending carefully vetted dating meetups IRL. (Wired $)
Quote of the day
“The path to saving TikTok should run through Capitol Hill.”
—Three Democratic senators urge Donald Trump to work with Congress to save TikTok from shutting down in the US, the Verge reports.
The big story
How AI is changing gymnastics judging
The 2023 World Championships last October marked the first time an AI judging system was used on every apparatus in a gymnastics competition. There are obvious upsides to using this kind of technology: AI could help take the guesswork out of the judging technicalities. It could even help to eliminate biases, making the sport both more fair and more transparent.
At the same time, others fear AI judging will take away something that makes gymnastics special. Gymnastics is a subjective sport, like diving or dressage, and technology could eliminate the judges’ role in crafting a narrative.
For better or worse, AI has officially infiltrated the world of gymnastics. The question now is whether it really makes it fairer. Read the full story.
—Jessica Taylor Price
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.)
+ These plants are quite possibly math geniuses.
+ Inside the weird and wonderful world of animal art.
+ Get me on a (sustainable) trip to the Cook Islands immediately.
+ It’s officially cherry blossom season around the world! 
The report covers content removals, AI manipulation, coordinated activity, and more.
TikTok’s experiment with an alternative image sharing app hasn’t worked out.
With just days to go before TikTok’s US sell off deadline expires, here’s an overview of the latest.
Some new updates for TikTok’s in-stream sales tools.