Sources: Google in Talks to Invest in AI Startup Character.AI

FILE PHOTO: An illuminated Google logo is seen inside an office building in Zurich, Switzerland December 5, 2018. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: An illuminated Google logo is seen inside an office building in Zurich, Switzerland December 5, 2018. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo
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Sources: Google in Talks to Invest in AI Startup Character.AI

FILE PHOTO: An illuminated Google logo is seen inside an office building in Zurich, Switzerland December 5, 2018. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: An illuminated Google logo is seen inside an office building in Zurich, Switzerland December 5, 2018. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo

Alphabet's Google is in talks to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Character.AI, as the fast growing artificial intelligence chatbot startup seeks capital to train models and keep up with user demand, two sources briefed on the matter told Reuters.
The investment, which could be structured as convertible notes, according to a third source, will deepen the existing partnership Character.AI already has with Google, in which it uses Google's cloud services and Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) to train models.
Google and Character AI did not respond to requests for comment.
Founded by former Google employees Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, Character.AI allows people to chat with virtual versions of celebrities like Billie Eilish or anime characters, while creating their own chatbots and AI assistants. It is free to use, but offers subscription model that charges $9.99 a month for users who want to skip the virtual line to access a chatbot.
Character.AI's chatbots, with various roles and tones to choose from, have appealed to users ages 18 to 24, who contributed about 60% of its website traffic, according to data from Similarweb. The demographic is helping the company position itself as the purveyor of more fun personal AI companions, compared to other AI chatbots from OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard.
The company previously said its website had attracted 100 million monthly visits in the first six months since its launch.
Character.AI is also in talks to raise equity funding from venture capital investors, which could value the company at over $5 billion, sources said. In March, it raised $150 million in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz at $1 billion valuation.
The talks with Google are ongoing and terms of the deal could change, said the sources, who requested anonymity as the discussions are private, Reuters reported.
Google has been investing in AI startups, including $2 billion for model maker Anthropic in the form of convertible notes, on top of its earlier equity investment. Anthropic uses Google's cloud services as well as its latest version of TPUs.
That is part of a recent trend in which big tech cloud services providers are striking deals with AI companies to entice them to use certain cloud or hardware in the computer-intensive race to build models and serve consumers, including Microsoft investments in OpenAI and Google and Amazon's bets on Anthropic.



SDAIA, KAUST Launch MiniGPT-Med Model to Help Doctors Diagnose Medical Radiology through AI

SDAIA, KAUST Launch MiniGPT-Med Model to Help Doctors Diagnose Medical Radiology through AI
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SDAIA, KAUST Launch MiniGPT-Med Model to Help Doctors Diagnose Medical Radiology through AI

SDAIA, KAUST Launch MiniGPT-Med Model to Help Doctors Diagnose Medical Radiology through AI

The Center of Excellence for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) have introduced the MiniGPT-Med model.

The large multi-modal language model is designed to help doctors quickly and accurately diagnose medical radiology using artificial intelligence techniques.

Dr. Ahmed Alsinan, the Artificial Intelligence Advisor at the National Center for Artificial Intelligence and head of the scientific team at SDAIA, explained that the MiniGPT-Med model is capable of performing various tasks such as generating medical reports, answering medical visual questions, describing diseases, locating diseases, identifying diseases, and documenting medical descriptions based on entered medical images.

The model was trained on different medical images, including X-rays, CT scans, and MRIs.

The MiniGPT-Med model, derived from large-scale language models, is specifically tailored for medical applications and demonstrates significant versatility across different imaging methods, including X-rays, CT scans, and MRI. This enhances its utility in medical diagnosis.

Dr. Alsinan highlighted that the MiniGPT-Med model was developed collaboratively by artificial intelligence specialists from SDAIA and KAUST.

The model exhibits advanced performance in generating medical reports, achieving 19% higher efficiency than previous models. It serves as a general interface for radiology diagnosis, enhancing diagnostic efficiency across various medical imaging applications.