Google Bard Gets Image Generator and Better Gemini Pro

Google has announced major upgrades to its AI assistant Bard, including the addition of image generation capabilities using its Imagen 2 model. This enables Bard to respond to text prompts by creating images, positioning it as a stronger competitor to OpenAI's ChatGPT Plus which uses DALL-E 3 for images. Imagen 2 produces photorealistic images within 30-40 seconds from description prompts like "a dog surfing."

Bard's Gemini Pro AI has also been expanded to support over 40 languages with its capabilities now available in more than 230 countries and regions globally. These advances help close the gap with rivals as initial tests found Gemini Pro lagged OpenAI's GPT-3.5 Turbo model. Separately, Google is experimenting with a new Imagen 2-powered tool called ImageFX available in its AI Test Kitchen, which offers "expressive chips" to iteratively build on image prompts.

Google says it takes steps to avoid sensitive outputs from Imagen 2, such as filtering people and optionally reviewing generated media for legal issues. Watermarks are also embedded in pixels to distinguish AI images. While initial searches yielded consistent results, some prompts failed to generate images as intended. Only English is currently supported for Imagen 2 in Bard.

The updates establish Bard as a more full-featured AI assistant comparable to ChatGPT Plus by adding image generation. They provide broader multilingual access to Gemini Pro's abilities while Google continues experimenting with new AI tools like ImageFX in its AI Test Kitchen platform.

Shopify Rolls out ‘Magic’ AI-Image Editor for Products

Shopify's upcoming Winter Edition rollout includes several new features leveraging generative AI. Its new Magic Media Editor allows merchants to edit product images by selecting different AI-generated background styles, manually matching to an existing image, or removing backgrounds. Styles include Minimal, Vibrant, Natural and others. Separately, Shopify is improving search with semantic capabilities so queries like "warm winter clothes" return relevant clothing item results beyond direct keyword matches. Merchants will also benefit from better merchandising tools to showcase up to 2,000 variants of a single product across variables like color and material. A new app provides combined listing management for Shopify Plus users.

Additional updates include headless storefronts allowing B2B merchants to use custom front-ends with Shopify's back-end APIs. Shopify had previously dabbled in AI for merchants through a Sidekick bot for navigating the platform launched in June 2023. Generative AI background editing aims to help merchants easily improve product images for different audiences.

By improving search, variants display and B2B capabilities, Shopify intends these Winter Edition updates to boost merchants' online businesses. They come after the company reported 25% yearly revenue growth to $1.7 billion in Q3 2023, then laid off 20% of staff and sold its Fulfillment unit to Flexport later in 2023 amid broader economic disruptions.

Meta Releases Open Sourced ‘Code Llama’ with 70B Parameters

Meta has significantly upgraded its free Code Llama AI programming tool with the release of Code Llama 70B, claimed to be the largest and best performing model yet. Code Llama was originally launched in August 2022 to help developers generate and debug code using natural language prompts. Code Llama 70B outperforms previous versions by handling more complex queries, allowing programmers to provide more context while coding and improving accuracy. It achieved 53% accuracy on the HumanEval benchmark, surpassing GPT-3.5 and approaching results reported for OpenAI's GPT-4 model. The new 70B model is available across Code Llama's code generation and Python/instruction focused tools and was trained on 1TB of code data.

Code Llama 70B offers improved programming assistance through the free Hugging Face environment according to Meta. Other Big Tech companies also released code generators in 2022, such as Amazon's CodeWhisperer and Microsoft leveraging Copilot from OpenAI, increasing competition in the space. However, Meta positions Code Llama 70B as the best available option through its record-breaking scale and superior performance on benchmark tasks versus previous models.

By upgrading to Code Llama 70B, Meta aims to solidify its leadership position in AI-assisted programming relative to competing products from industry giants. The improved model capabilities are provided at no cost for both research and business applications.

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PlayStation’s State of Play Included Big Announcements like Death Stranding 2 and New Kojima Stealth Game

Sony's recent State of Play presentation featured reveals from major publishers. Headlining was Death Stranding 2: On The Beach, the sequel to Hideo Kojima's acclaimed title. Norman Reedus and Léa Seydoux return as the focus shifts more towards combat when connecting new lands. Kojima is also developing a new stealth game for PS5 after Death Stranding 2 releases in 2025. In a surprise, Konami's acclaimed Silent Hill series saw the unveiling of a free-to-play first-person title Silent Hill: The Short Message, as well as a remake of Silent Hill 2.

Sega announced Sonic x Shadow Generations, continuing the 2D-3D Sonic Generations formula with Shadow the Hedgehog. Until Dawn will be remastered for PS5 and launched on PC. Additional titles highlighted were Dave The Diver with April/May additions, V Rising, Zenless Zone Zero as well as PSVR2 games Legendary Tales and Metro Awakening.

Further announcements included extended looks at titles like Stellar Blade and Rise of the Ronin. New trailers were shown for Dragon's Dogma, Foamstars and Helldivers 2. Additionally, Ken Levine's new studio revealed a story trailer for their game Judas. Indie hits like Godzilla themed DLC for Dave The Diver in May were also announced. Ports to PS5 are planned for popular games like Until Dawn, which will also launch on PC for the first time.

Blizzard Entertainment Names Ex-Call of Duty General Manager Johanna Faries as New President

Blizzard Entertainment has appointed Johanna Faries as the company's new president. Faries will assume the role on February 5th, succeeding Mike Ybarra who recently departed. She originally joined Activision Blizzard in 2018 as the commissioner of Call of Duty esports. More recently, Faries served as the general manager of Call of Duty. Prior to joining Activision Blizzard, she spent eleven years at the NFL in various business development roles, last working as the vice president of club business development.

In an announcement to Blizzard employees, Faries expressed her honor in taking on the new position while acknowledging mixed emotions due to recent personnel changes. She said she feels immense excitement about joining Blizzard and building on the company's momentum for its next chapter. Faries also conveyed her commitment to helping Blizzard thrive with care and consideration for employees as well as preserving what makes each of the company's games unique. The appointment aims to provide new leadership as Blizzard works to strengthen its development efforts and rebuilding trust following its recent workplace misconduct issues and layoffs.

Embracer Group Cancels New Deus Ex Game Following Layoffs

Embracer Group has canceled an unannounced new Deus Ex game that had been in development at Eidos-Montréal for two years, and laid off 97 employees at the studio. This follows Embracer's restructuring efforts after a major deal fell through last year. Eidos-Montréal is known for Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. The layoffs are part of a wave of downsizing across the games industry in 2023, with over 10,000 jobs cut last year and already over 5,500 in January 2024 alone at companies like Microsoft, Activision Blizzard, Riot Games, and People Can Fly.

Other recent layoffs include 50 employees at Black Forest Games in January, 170 at Discord, and cuts also occurred at PTW, Thunderful Group, Behaviour Interactive, and elsewhere. In 2023, layoffs took place at Striking Distance Studios, BioWare, Ascendant Studios, Epic Games, Naughty Dog, Telltale Games, Media Molecule, Amazon Games, Ubisoft, Bungie, 505 Games' parent company, Hasbro, and others. Embracer Group also closed development studios Volition and Free Radical Design.

Jupiter’s Massive $700M Airdrop

Jupiter conducted one of the largest token airdrops in blockchain history on Wednesday by distributing approximately $700 million worth of its new JUP token to nearly 1 million Solana wallets. In the first hour after distribution began at 10am ET, over 20% of the planned 1 billion JUP allocation was claimed by recipients. As wallets moved to acquire the free tokens, the price of JUP quickly rose from its first bids above $0.40 to surpass $0.70 within a few hours of trading, valuing the project at more than $6 billion fully diluted. While some RPC interface nodes experienced initial overload from heavy user traffic, validators responsible for validating transactions on the Solana blockchain reported that the core consensus layer processed all the additional volume without any significant issues.

In preparation for the high-profile launch, Jupiter had staged smaller warmup airdrops and trials of systems like their "Launchpad" deployment solution throughout January. This helped identify and address potential points of failure before the full-scale JUP distribution. For most individual recipients, the airdrop represented a notable windfall of free tokens worth tens to hundreds of dollars each. However, savvy validators on the Solana network were capable of earning even greater rewards totaling tens of thousands of dollars by facilitating large trades from arbitrage bots through "tipping" incentives.

The successful processing of such enormous transaction volumes from the JUP airdrop demonstrated Solana's growing ability to handle widespread real-world usage at massive scale. While minor temporary interface frustrations occurred, the underlying blockchain remained operational without disruptions. This large-scale stress test helped validate ongoing work to advance the network's performance capabilities to meet the needs of its expanding ecosystem. Overall, Jupiter and Solana achieved a major milestone through the largely smooth execution of one of the largest distributed token launches to date.

Heroes of Mavia Worldwide Release and Airdrop Campaign

Heroes of Mavia is a new strategy base-building mobile game that recently launched globally on iOS and Android app stores. Like Clash of Clans, the game involves building and defending your own base while leading troops to attack other players. Users are tasked with gathering resources and upgrading their headquarters and armies.

Upon its worldwide release, Heroes of Mavia reached over 100k downloads in under 12 hours. They also began an expanded airdrop campaign to reward the first 100,000 users who download the game from the Apple App Store or Google Play. It allows new players to claim tokens from the project's $MAVIA governance token.

To participate in the airdrop, users must complete a brief in-game tutorial that teaches the basics of base building. They then link their mobile account to a new profile on the Mavia website. This credentials the same user on both platforms. Players who then verify the successful sync between interfaces on the site will have a spot reserved in the airdrop distribution.

Actual token claiming for airdrop participants will commence on February 6th. This date marks Heroes of Mavia's token generation event. Over 50,000 players had already signed up for the airdrop by February 2, showing strong initial interest in both the new game and its cryptocurrency incentives upon launch. The maximum cap of 100,000 airdrop slots aims to reward the earliest community members and drive valuable player onboarding.

Apple Launched its Vision Pro with Over 600 New Apps

More than 600 new apps and games have been designed to take advantage of the unique capabilities of Apple Vision Pro. These special "spatial apps" will be available starting February 2nd and join over 1 million compatible apps already available on the App Store.

Apple's VP of Developer Relations Susan Prescott said developers have created a wide range of "spatial experiences" for Vision Pro that expand what's possible. These apps will change how users experience entertainment, games, productivity and more through spatially aware computing.

Sports fans can enjoy apps like PGA TOUR Vision for an immersive golf viewing experience in 3D. The NBA app allows streaming up to 5 games simultaneously with stats overlays. Top entertainment apps from Disney+, Warner Bros, and Apple TV+ offer new spatial viewing modes for movies, shows and more.

Vision Pro provides an "infinite canvas" for productivity apps to appear side by side at any scale. Apps like Box, MindNode and Microsoft 365 take advantage of this for collaboration and multitasking. meeting apps like Webex and Zoom support multiple shared windows.

Games on Vision Pro include over 250 Arcade titles and spatial experiences on the App Store. Developers are creating new immersive gameplay using the environment and controls. Educational and creative apps transport users to new places for learning music and more through spatial computing.

Shopping, home design and other apps demonstrate dynamic spatial experiences as well. Wellness apps help users focus and meditate with calming virtual environments. More apps continue launching to explore this new platform.

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