Also, Runway signs AI deal with Lionsgate.
Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station was decommissioned in 2019. / Adobe Stock
Microsoft is aiming to reopen Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station to fuel its growing AI energy demands, The Washington Post reported Friday.
The deal between the tech giant and the plant’s owner, Constellation Energy, would need to pass significant regulatory hurdles. If successful, it would reportedly grant Microsoft 100% of the plant’s energy output for 20 years, starting in 2028.
Three Mile Island was the site of a partial reactor meltdown in 1979, which raised alarms across the nation about nuclear energy. The plant was decommissioned in 2019 for financial reasons. But interest in the sector has been growing lately in Silicon Valley, the Post reports, as tech companies look for carbon-neutral means of generating vast quantities of energy for the ongoing AI boom.
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On Tuesday, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed three new laws intended to curb the spread of election-related AI deepfakes. One of those laws will require large social media platforms and websites to label or remove flagged political deepfakes within 72 hours.
Though there are currently no laws at the federal level regulating deepfakes, California is one of many steps that have taken action to address them. Some leading tech companies have also introduced labeling or watermarking policies in recent months as countries around the world undergo high-stakes elections.
A number of free speech and digital rights advocacy groups oppose the new bills in California, according to The New York Times.
In a first-of-its kind deal for Hollywood, AI startup Runway has partnered with Lionsgate, the production studio behind household-name film franchises like The Hunger Games and John Wick.
Through the agreement, Runway will gain access to Lionsgate’s expansive content library to create a custom AI model that the studio will use to augment its TV and film production efforts. The model will initially be deployed to assist with backend creative tasks, like storyboarding, and will eventually be used to generate tricky special effects.
The deal has, predictably, sparked controversy.
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Snap has released an early version of an AI-generated video tool for creators on Snapchat, the company announced during its annual Partner Summit on Tuesday.
The tool will allow creators to generate videos from text prompts, and eventually from images. All AI-generated videos shared on the platform will be clearly labeled as such, according to the company.
While details surrounding the new feature are scant – it’s only been launched in beta to a small group of early testers – experts have expressed optimism about its potential to open new creative doors for creators and also to attract ad dollars to the platform.
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Google has announced a slew of new AI-powered features designed to give brands using its ad platform more control over campaign development and management.
The announcement – made Wednesday at Dmexco, a digital marketing conference in Cologne – marks Google’s latest effort to court advertisers with AI tools. Some of the new features are expansions of preexisting offerings: the company’s Gemini-powered ’conversational experience’ tool, for example, which allows advertisers to automatically generate campaign assets like headlines and images, will soon be available in German, French and Spanish.
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