🎅 Santa's Voice Comes to ChatGPT!

Happy Friday, AI & Data Enthusiasts! The holiday season is off to an exciting start, and so is the world of AI! From ChatGPT getting a jolly new twist with Santa’s Voice to groundbreaking advancements in deepfake detection, generative AI, and multimodal features—this week’s tech news has it all.

In today’s edition: 

🎅 Santa's Voice Comes to ChatGPT!

🔒 Meta Introduces Video Seal to Tackle Deepfakes

🔍 Microsoft Unveils Phi-4: A Breakthrough in Generative AI

✨ ChatGPT Takes a Leap: Advanced Voice with Vision Is Here!

- Naseema Perveen

WHAT CAUGHT OUR ATTENTION MOST

🎅 Santa's Voice Comes to ChatGPT!

OpenAI is spreading holiday cheer by transforming ChatGPT into the jolliest AI companion. Say hello to Santa Mode, a festive feature that will make your December conversations merry and bright. Whether you’re chatting with family or delighting the little ones, Santa Mode is here to bring the magic of the North Pole straight to your home.

• A Voice Fit for the Holidays: ChatGPT’s new Santa Mode adds a warm, booming, and jolly voice to its Advanced Voice Mode feature. Think of the classic Santa voice we all know and love—OpenAI has captured it perfectly!

• Interactive & Visual Fun: As part of OpenAI's "12 Days of OpenAI" event, Santa Mode doesn’t just sound festive and understands live video from your camera. Imagine ChatGPT “seeing” your family as you share holiday moments!

• Accessible & Secure: Activating Santa Mode is as easy as spotting the snowflake icon near the prompt bar. It’s rolling out today on mobile, web, and desktop apps (MacOS and Windows). And for privacy-conscious users, rest assured—chats in Santa Mode won’t be saved in history or affect ChatGPT’s memory.

This festive feature comes at just the right time, as families gear up for cozy holiday gatherings. Whether you’re keeping kids entertained or adding a touch of holiday magic to your digital interactions, Santa Mode is a thoughtful way to celebrate the season. Plus, its new visual understanding capability brings an extra layer of interactivity to ChatGPT, making it a fun and engaging experience for everyone.

So, pour some hot cocoa, gather your loved ones, and let Santa Mode bring joy and laughter to your home. This year, Santa isn’t just at the mall—he’s right in your ChatGPT! 🌟

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH SYNTHFLOW

Handle your phone calls 24/7 with AI

Boost your business with Synthflow AI Phone Calls—available 24/7 to handle thousands of calls concurrently. Scale effortlessly as your needs grow and speed up lead response times. The assistants can book appointments into your calendar, transfer the calls to a human rep, and extract valuable info from each call. Integrates with your tech stack, get started from $29/month.

Let AI answer the phone

TECH TALK

Sundar Pichai shares insights into Google’s groundbreaking AI advancements, the delicate balance of regulation, and the tech giant’s roadmap for the future. From ethical AI to transformative technologies, dive into Pichai’s vision for shaping a responsible and innovative digital future.

💡 Watch now to get the inside scoop!

KEEP YOUR EYE ON IT

🔒 Meta Unveils Video Seal to Tackle Deepfakes

Deepfakes are on the rise, and with them, a wave of online fraud. Meta is stepping in with Video Seal, a new tool designed to watermark AI-generated videos, ensuring accountability and authenticity. Let’s dive into how this innovation is shaking up the fight against fake content.

• Advanced Watermarking: Video Seal embeds imperceptible watermarks in AI-generated videos, resilient against common edits like blurring, cropping, and compression. It even adds hidden messages to trace video origins.

• Industry Collaboration: To boost adoption, Meta is launching Meta Omni Seal Bench, a public leaderboard for watermarking methods, and hosting a workshop at ICLR 2025 to advance research in this space.

• Open-Source Approach: The tool is free and open-source, allowing developers to integrate it into their existing workflows and encouraging widespread use across industries.

With deepfakes making up 7% of all fraud in 2024, tools like Video Seal are essential for preserving trust online. Meta’s initiative could set a standard for watermarking AI content, pushing the industry toward greater transparency.

While challenges remain, including limited adoption and trade-offs in watermark visibility, Video Seal represents a step forward in combating fake content. 

🔍 Microsoft Unveils Phi-4: A Breakthrough in Generative AI

Microsoft is making waves in the AI space with the launch of Phi-4, the latest addition to its Phi family of generative AI models. Designed for precision and efficiency, Phi-4 is set to push boundaries in solving complex problems while remaining accessible for research purposes.

• Smarter Math Solutions: Phi-4 excels in mathematical problem-solving, thanks to better training data quality and post-training advancements.

• Small but Mighty: At 14 billion parameters, Phi-4 joins the ranks of compact, efficient AI models like GPT-4o Mini and Claude 3.5 Haiku, offering speed and cost-efficiency.

• Research-Exclusive Access: Available through Microsoft’s Azure AI Foundry, Phi-4 is currently offered under a research license for experimental use.

• Synthetic Data Innovation: Phi-4’s performance leap is attributed to its use of high-quality synthetic datasets combined with human-generated data, showcasing Microsoft’s commitment to cutting-edge AI research.

Phi-4 represents a significant step forward in the development of smaller, more efficient generative AI models. By focusing on research and innovation, Microsoft is not only driving AI advancements but also enabling researchers to explore new possibilities in the field.

Phi-4 is just the beginning of what’s next for compact AI & Microsoft continues to shape the future of intelligent systems.

✨ ChatGPT Takes a Leap: Advanced Voice with Vision Is Here!

OpenAI’s holiday streak continues as it unveils Advanced Voice with Vision, an exciting upgrade to ChatGPT’s capabilities. Announced as part of its “12 Days of OpenAI” event, this new feature brings a human-like conversational experience with a visual twist. ChatGPT can now see and hear you in real-time, making interactions more dynamic and natural.

• A Smarter, Multimodal ChatGPT: Advanced Voice with Vision combines speech, text, and video recognition. It can identify objects, guide you step-by-step, and even recognize faces or names during interactions.

• Interactive Screen Sharing: Show ChatGPT your phone or app screens to get real-time troubleshooting or advice, adding convenience to everyday tasks.

• Santa Mode for the Holidays: Enjoy a festive Santa voice this December, adding some cheerful spirit to your ChatGPT chats.

• Seamless Integration: Rolling out to Teams, Plus, and Pro subscribers globally (excluding Europe), this feature elevates conversations across devices.

Advanced Voice with Vision isn’t just about fun features—it’s a leap toward making AI more intuitive and human-like. Whether it’s guiding you through making coffee or helping with app issues, this upgrade highlights the potential of multimodal AI in our daily lives.

TERM OF THE DAY

Autoencoder

An autoencoder is a type of machine-learning model that learns to compress data and then recreate it. Think of it like a person trying to remember a picture by making a smaller version of it, and then using that smaller version to draw the full picture again. For example, if you give it a picture of a cat, it shrinks the image into a simpler form (like a puzzle with fewer pieces), and then reconstructs the cat's image from that simplified version. This helps the model understand the important parts of the data!

Read more terms like this in our Glossary. 

💌 Etcetra

• What’s the most futuristic technology inspired by nature? Learn more. 

• How do AI-generated art tools transform creativity? Explore here. 

• Could quantum computing redefine modern encryption? Read about it. 

• What is the future of bionic implants in medicine? Discover here. 

• Are self-healing materials the next big breakthrough? Find out more. 

ICYMI

• Canvas Evolution: OpenAI’s AI Tool Adds Python Execution and Custom GPTs.

• ElevenLabs’ AI Voice Generation ‘very likely’ used in a Russian influence operation

• ChatGPT and Sora Went Down for 6 Hours

• Google's Gemini 2 is Redefining AI 

• Day 5 of OpenAI's 12 Days: ChatGPT Teams Up with Apple Intelligence.

$$$ MONEY MATTERS

• Google’s $20B Renewable Energy Plan to Power AI Ambitions. 

• Dimension raises $500M second fund for investing at the intersection of tech and life sciences.

• Software testing platform LambdaTest secures $38M for AI push.

• Aqemia raises $38M to find new drugs by meshing theoretical physics with GenAI.

• Harvard and Google to release 1 million public-domain books as AI training datasets.

LINKS WE’RE LOVIN’

✅ Podcast: Yuval Noah Harari on The Power of Truth in the Age of AI.

✅Cheat sheet: A Cheat Sheet for System Design. 

✅Course: AI For Business Specialization.

✅Whitepaper: 6 Steps For Zero Downtime On A Manufacturing Line.

✅Watch: SORA Review. 

A Quick Question before you go…

SHARE THE NEWSLETTER & GET REWARDS

Your referral count: 0

Or copy & paste your referral link to others: https://aijournal.beehiiv.com/subscribe?ref=PLACEHOLDER

That’s all for now. And, thanks for staying with us. If you have specific feedback, please let us know by leaving a comment or emailing us. We are here to serve you!

Join 130k+ AI and Data enthusiasts by subscribing to our LinkedIn page.

Become a sponsor of our next newsletter and connect with industry leaders and innovators.