Don't miss these Text-to-speech AI models are getting smarter: LLMs get lots of attention for their ability to write intelligent sentences, but text-to-speech AI models are also advancing rapidly. A team at Amazon recently discovered that as they increased the data size to create "the largest ever text-to-speech model yet," the resulting technology got much better. Indeed, the model started showing "emergent" capabilities to handle very complex sentence structures, Amazon's team said. Space drugs cleared for landing: Varda Space, a startup that wants to take drug manufacturing into orbit, has been cleared to bring back its low-gravity-produced pharmaceutical crystals to the planet. The company took a while to get the approval, but this marks a key step for the startup – and for the rest of us who could benefit from specialized, in-orbit manufacturing. Alibaba looks to shed IRL stores: When Alibaba started touting the idea of "new retail" that would meld online and offline shopping in 2017, the Chinese e-commerce giant held a very different market position (for context, its share price was higher in 2017 than it is today). Since then, new rivals have taken to the battlefield, and Alibaba itself went through the regulatory wringer. Now, the company wants to divest some of its physical retail businesses. Solar startup Arnergy catches $3M worth of fresh rays: The Nigerian power grid has a long way to go before it can meet the country's energy needs. Arnergy wants to improve the situation by bringing solar power and batteries to more businesses and homes. After raising a $9 million Series A back in 2019, the company recently returned to raise a modest bridge round. Solar power is getting cheaper and battery tech is slowly improving as well, so the combination holds a lot of potential for Arnergy. GM is taking its self-driving tech to the country: If you own a GM vehicle, you may be familiar with Super Cruise, the company's hands-free driving technology that has so far been quite limited in terms of where it could be used. In 2022, GM expanded its total purview to more than 400,000 miles of roads in the United States and Canada. Now, the automaker is targeting 750,000 total miles, which will include "rural and minor highways that often connect smaller cities and townships," Kirsten Korosec reports. As long as self-driving cars continue to improve, I am content. Driving is the worst. |
