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Welcome to The Dispatch! We are the newsletter that keeps you informed about AI. Each Thursday, we aggregate the major developments in artificial intelligence; we pass along the news, useful resources, tools or services, and exciting projects in open source. Even if you aren’t an engineer, we’ll keep you in touch with what’s going on in AI.

OpenAI had recently struck deals with media giants Axel Springer and the Associated Press for the right to train models on published news content, but the Times said previous talks broke down with Microsoft and OpenAI in April over reaching an agreement on the usage of its articles. The suit additionally calls for the destruction of all chatbot models and training datasets that used copyrighted Times materials.

Even if you aren’t a ChatGPT subscriber, you can now use the most advanced publicly available model (GPT-4) for free on your smartphone thanks to Microsoft. The tech giant has released the updated and rebranded Copilot chatbot as a free Android app, which include free access to both GPT-4 as well as OpenAI’s text-to-image generator, DALL-E 3.

Copilot also has GPT-Vision, so you can upload photos for analysis and the chatbot will converse with you about them, which can lead to some interesting use cases. Message/usage limits will apply, but since direct access to GPT-4 and DALL-E 3 costs $20/month via OpenAI - the Copilot smartphone app is a welcome freemium alternative.

First, the researchers trained a deep learning model using substantially expanded datasets. They generated this training data by testing about 39,000 compounds for antibiotic activity against MRSA, and then fed this data, plus information on the chemical structures of the compounds, into the model. To further narrow down the pool of candidate drugs, the researchers trained three additional deep learning models to predict whether the compounds were toxic to human cells.

The researchers then purchased about 280 compounds and tested them against MRSA grown in a lab dish, allowing them to identify two (from the same new class) that appeared to be very promising antibiotic candidates. In tests in two mouse models, one of MRSA skin infection and one of MRSA systemic infection, each of those compounds reduced the MRSA population by a factor of 10.

Electronics giant LG has just announced a new AI-powered smart home robot (referred to as the ‘smart home AI agent’) in an effort to push the company’s “Zero Labor Home” vision. The robot has a two-legged wheel design and is made to act as a central hub for a household’s entire smart ecosystem. It can monitor pets, act as a security guard, save energy by checking for open windows or lights left on, and even greet homeowners with music that ‘matches their mood’ based on facial recognition.

The robot and full functionality will be unveiled during the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas from January 9-12.

More in AI this week:

• OpenAI Is in Talks to Raise New Funding at Valuation of $100 Billion or More

• An anticipated wave of AI specialist jobs has yet to arrive

• India’s Paytm fires over 1,000 employees: 'AI delivered more than we expected it to'

• Congress warns NIST over AI grant to tech-linked think tank

• AI companies would be required to disclose copyrighted training data under new bill

• PS5 Pro or next-gen PlayStation 6 may use AI processor for real-time predictive gaming

• Apple’s iPhone Design Chief enlisted by Jony Ive, Sam Altman to work on AI Devices

• Anthropic forecasts more than $850 million in annualized revenue rate by 2024-end

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