xAI’s Grok API, Nvidia Stock Surge, and Meta’s Breakthrough in AI & Facial Recognition

Happy Tuesday, AI & Data Enthusiasts! Today we’ve got updates on new APIs, Nvidia’s soaring stock, and Meta’s latest push for safer AI adoption. Let’s dive into these key developments and explore how they’re shaping the future of AI!

In today’s edition: 

• xAI Unveils API for Grok AI: The Latest Move in Musk’s AI Ambitions

• Nvidia Stock Hits Record High as Wall Street Stays Optimistic Ahead of Earnings

• Meta FAIR Unveils New AI Models and Tools: A Breakthrough for Open-Source AI

• Meta Expands Facial Recognition to Combat Celeb-Bait Scams & Improve Account Recovery

- Naseema Perveen

WHAT CAUGHT OUR ATTENTION MOST

xAI Unveils API for Grok AI: The Latest Move in Musk’s AI Ambitions

Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI, has officially launched its API for Grok, the company’s flagship generative AI model. While this launch has generated excitement, the API is currently in its early stages, with limited features and a few challenges that need to be ironed out. Still, this marks a key milestone for xAI as it positions itself to compete with industry giants like OpenAI and Anthropic.

• Pricing and Model Availability: The API currently offers the “grok-beta” model, which is priced at $5 per million input tokens (~750,000 words) and $15 per million output tokens. This token-based pricing structure mirrors that of other AI providers, but users have expressed concerns about payment issues when purchasing usage credits.

• Functionality and Features: The xAI API supports function calling, which allows the Grok model to interact with external tools like databases and search engines. Although vision models, which would enable analysis of both text and images, are not yet live, the documentation suggests that these features are in development.

• Integration with X: Grok is already deeply embedded in the X platform (formerly Twitter), where it powers features like image generation (via Flux), news summaries, and trending event overviews. While these integrations have drawn attention, they’ve also sparked controversy due to the lack of content guardrails and occasional mistakes in Grok’s outputs.

While the xAI API is still in its infancy, this release reflects Musk’s larger ambitions to integrate AI across his various businesses. Despite challenges—such as technical issues and concerns from Tesla shareholders—xAI is forging ahead in the race to develop powerful generative AI models. As the platform evolves, the coming months will reveal how well it can stack up against its more established rivals.

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KEEP YOUR EYE ON IT

Nvidia Stock Hits Record High as Wall Street Stays Optimistic Ahead of Earnings

Nvidia’s stock soared to a record high on Monday, driven by strong market confidence ahead of its earnings report next month. Wall Street analysts remain bullish on the AI chipmaker, with several firms raising their price targets, citing Nvidia’s leadership in the AI sector.

• Stock Surge: Nvidia’s stock rose over 4%, closing at $143.71 per share, as analysts reiterated their Buy ratings.

• Raised Price Targets: Bank of America lifted its price target to $190, while CFRA increased theirs to $160, driven by strong demand for AI technologies.

• Enterprise AI Strength: Nvidia’s partnerships with Microsoft and Accenture further support its dominance in the AI enterprise market, according to Bank of America’s Vivek Arya.

• AI Market Growth: Analysts like Dan Ives forecast a tenfold growth in AI infrastructure spending by 2027, with Nvidia leading the charge in this $1 trillion market.

With analysts projecting an 84% increase in earnings per share and an 83% revenue boost, Nvidia’s stock is poised for continued growth. However, any slowdown in AI demand could still cause volatility, as the market remains highly reactive to Big Tech's performance.

Meta FAIR Unveils New AI Models and Tools: A Breakthrough for Open-Source AI

Meta’s Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) team just announced a series of powerful new models and datasets, further strengthening their leadership in the AI space. These new releases span image segmentation, multimodal language models, and solutions to improve large language model (LLM) performance.

• Spirit LM: This open-source multimodal language model integrates speech and text, producing more natural-sounding and expressive speech.

• SAM 2.1: The latest version of Meta’s image and video segmentation tool builds on its predecessor, which had over 700,000 downloads in just 11 weeks.

• Layer Skip: An innovative end-to-end solution that accelerates LLM generation times by nearly 2x, without requiring specialized hardware.

• Additional Releases: Other new tools include SALSA for security testing, Meta Lingua for language model training, and a synthetic data generation tool.

Meta continues to advance AI with these groundbreaking tools, setting a high standard for open-source innovation. As the gap between open and closed AI models narrows, Meta's contributions are reshaping the competitive landscape in the AI industry.

Meta Expands Facial Recognition to Combat Celeb-Bait Scams & Improve Account Recovery

Meta is expanding its use of facial recognition technology to combat scam ads and improve account recovery. This initiative aims to address "celeb-bait" ads, where scammers use images of public figures to lure users into engaging with misleading content. By utilizing facial recognition, Meta aims to match the faces in suspect ads with the profile pictures of celebrities on Facebook and Instagram. If the system confirms a match, the ad will be blocked, and the generated facial data will be immediately deleted.

Meta is also testing facial recognition for account recovery purposes. Users who have been locked out of their accounts after falling victim to scams may soon be able to use video selfies to verify their identity. This method, similar to Apple’s Face ID, aims to make account recovery faster and easier compared to the traditional process of submitting a government-issued ID. Meta emphasizes that the facial data collected through video selfies will be encrypted and deleted after use. These facial recognition tests are currently being rolled out globally, with exceptions in the U.K. and EU, where stricter data protection laws apply.

🎤 VOICE YOUR OPINION

ICYMI

• Perplexity AI in funding talks to more than double valuation to $8 billion.

• IBM releases new AI models for businesses as genAI competition heats up.

• Microsoft will let clients build AI agents for routine tasks starting in November.

• The new AI model efficiently reaches clinical-expert-level accuracy in complex medical scans.

• Google introduced 10 voice options for Gemini Live.

MONEY MATTERS

• OffDeal announced a $4.7 million round to improve M&A for small businesses.

• Microsoft invests €4.3B to boost AI infrastructure and cloud capacity in Italy. 

• TSMC has reported an impressive 45% increase in sales, driven by surging demand for AI chips.

• OpenAI bets $60M on SF-based AI-powered webcam startup. 

• AI Company Smartcat Raises $43M Series C.

LINKS WE’RE LOVIN’

✅ Podcast: Listen to the AI Show Epside #111 on Grok-2 Controversy, Demis Hassabis.

✅Cheat sheet: Cheat sheet on Microservices Design Patterns.

✅Course: Introduction to Generative AI by Google Cloud.

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