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I used TripAdvisor’s new AI-powered hotel summary to plan my next vacation
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TripAdvisor is now using AI to summarize vast swathes of user hotel reviews from its site to provide tailored itinerary suggestions based on your preferred amenities or features. 

This differs from TripAdvisor's typical aggregation by using AI to validate personal preferences with specific details about the hotel. With the still-in-beta system, you can submit a destination, dates, and the kind of experience you’re looking for and TripAdvisor will plan a full-day itinerary with suggested hotels.

TripAdvisor

(Image credit: Future)

Let's travel the AI way

I tested this out by planning a trip to Spokane, WA. I was looking for a hotel that is central to all of the main attractions, yet close to outdoor activities. TripAdvisor was able to point out details such as which hotels had better windows or A/C units based on the time of year I would be traveling.

It also was able to weigh in through text field options on what kinds of food options were available within a half-mile walk. As a foodie, I feel like that is such an incredible detail, especially since I tend to travel with friends who have Celiac disease or other dietary restrictions.

TripAdvisor

(Image credit: Future)

Knowing this hotel summary works for smaller cities, like Spokane, I was curious to see how it worked in a larger city with an abundance of options.

Let’s try this with a staycation in Manhattan! I mentioned to the AI that I didn’t like fluorescent lights. Admittedly a very strange request for a hotel, but TripAdvisor's AI was able to find reviews that focused on lighting.

Knowing Manhattan prices, the options given were pretty exorbitant for my budget. I asked for hotels under $ 300/night. It returned hotels averaging $ 230/night. Overall the tool seems responsive to feedback.

TripAdvisor

(Image credit: Future)

The AI was able to refine my search for more affordable places that still had access to some of the attractions I wanted to see such as Lincoln Center or Central Park West.

While this is great for basic cursory searches, I still personally like to have more control over my results. I would love, for example, to be able to see more than three options for hotels.

Overall, this looks like a decent addition to TripAdvisor's growing lineup of AI-powered features.

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Forget ChatGPT – NExT-GPT can read and generate audio and video prompts, taking generative AI to the next level
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2023 has felt like a year dedicated to artificial intelligence and its ever-expanding capabilities, but the era of pure text output is already losing steam. The AI scene might be dominated by giants like ChatGPT and Google Bard, but a new large language model (LLM), NExT-GPT, is here to shake things up – offering the full bounty of text, image, audio, and video output. 

NExT-GPT is the brainchild of researchers from the National University of Singapore and Tsinghua University. Pitched as an ‘any-to-any’ system, NExT-GPT can accept inputs in different formats and deliver responses according to the desired output in video, audio, image, and text responses. This means that you can put in a text prompt and NExT-GPT can process that prompt into a video, or you can give it an image and have that converted to an audio output. 

ChatGPT has only just announced the capability to ‘see, hear and speak’ which is similar to what NExT-GPT is offering – but ChatGPT is going for a more mobile-friendly version of this kind of feature, and is yet to introduce video capabilities. 

We’ve seen a lot of ChatGPT alternatives and rivals pop up over the past year, but NExT-GPT is one of the few LLMs we’ve seen so far that can match the text-based output of ChatGPT but also provide outputs beyond what OpenAI’s popular chatbot can currently do. You can head over to the GitHub page or the demo page to try it out for yourself. 

So, what is it like?

I’ve fiddled around with NExT-GPT on the demo site and I have to say I’m impressed, but not blown away. Of course, this is not a polished product that has the advantages of public feedback, multiple updates, and so on – but it is still very good. 

I asked it to turn a photo of my cat Miso into an image of him as a librarian, and I was pretty happy with the result. It may not be at the same level of quality as established image generators like Midjourney or Stable Diffusion, but it was still an undeniably very cute picture.

Cat in a library wearing glasses

This is probably one of the least cursed images I’ve personally generated using AI. (Image credit: Future VIA NExT-GPT)

I also tested out the video and audio features, but that didn't go quite as well as the image generation. The videos that were generated were again not awful, but did have the very obvious ‘made by AI’ look that comes with a lot of generated images and videos, with everything looking a little distorted and wonky. It was uncanny. 

Overall, there’s a lot of potential for this LLM to fill the audio and video gaps within big AI names like OpenAI and Google. I do hope that as NExT-GPT gets better and better, we’ll be able to see a higher quality of outputs and make some excellent home movies out of our cats seamlessly in no time. 

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Microsoft clarifies Windows 11 23H2 update isn’t arriving next week
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Earlier this week, Microsoft made a big announcement about the launch of its Copilot AI in Windows 11 which is happening with an update next week – but in case you were wondering, this isn’t the 23H2 update.

It is a big update to Windows 11, for sure, just not the annual update for 2023, which will arrive for the OS later, in fact.

As Neowin spotted, Microsoft made the clarification in a blog post following the announcement of the launch of Copilot.

The Copilot update will arrive as part of a rollout kicking off on September 26, and Microsoft said it will “later be included in Windows 11, version 23H2, the annual feature update for Windows 11.”

The 23H2 update won’t be released until Q4 of 2023, though, we’re told, which means it won’t begin to filter out until October at the earliest, and possibly not until later than that.

Analysis: A useful clarification

It’s a useful clarification from Microsoft, and we have to admit, we figured when the software giant talked about a big update coming next week, we assumed this would be the 23H2 update. That’s not the case, after all, but Copilot will be the biggest change to Windows 11 this year, so it’s easy enough to see how the confusion arose.

Still, we know where we stand now, and this won’t affect who gets Copilot next week – presumably those who have ticked the box to get the latest updates for Windows 11 as soon as they’re available.

As to how Copilot will turn out in its initial incarnation, well, we’re still a little dubious about that – though some first impressions we were treated to were positive, no doubt.

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Microsoft quietly reveals Windows 11’s next big update could be about to arrive
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If you were wondering when Windows 11’s big upgrade for this year will turn up, the answer is soon, with Microsoft now making the final preparations to deploy the 23H2 update – with a revelation apparently imminent.

As Windows Latest tells us, Microsoft just shipped a ‘Windows Configuration Update’ which is readying the toggle to allow users to select ‘Get the latest updates as soon as they’re available’ and be first in line to receive the 23H2 update.

Note that nothing is actually happening yet, just that this is a piece of necessary groundwork (confirmed via an internal document from Microsoft, we’re told) ahead of the rollout of the Windows 11 23H2 update.

Okay, so when is the 23H2 update actually going to turn up? Well, Windows Latest has heard further chatter from sources that indicates Microsoft is going to announce the upgrade at an event later this week.

That would be the ‘special event’ Microsoft revealed a while back, taking place in New York on September 21 (Thursday). As well as the expected Surface hardware launches, we will also evidently get our first tease of the 23H2 update, at least in theory.

Analysis: Copilot on the horizon

An announcement this week makes sense to us, ahead of a broader rollout that’ll be coming soon enough.

As Windows Latest further points out, the 23H2 update will likely become available next month – at least in limited form. This means those who have ticked that toggle to get updates as soon as possible may receive it in October – at least some of those folks, in the usual phased deployment – before that wider rollout kicks off in November, and everyone gets the new features contained within the upgrade.

In theory, that means Windows Copilot, though we suspect the initial incarnation of the AI assistant is still going to be pretty limited. (And we do wonder why Microsoft isn’t going to keep on baking it until next year, but that’s a whole other argument – it seems like with AI, everything has to be done in quite the rush).

It’s also worth bearing in mind that if you’re still on the original version of Windows 11, 21H2, you’ll need to upgrade anyway – as support for that runs out on October 10, 2023. PCs on 21H2 are being force-upgraded to 22H2 right now, although you’ll pretty much be able to skip straight to 23H2 after that, should you wish.

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Meta takes aim at GPT-4 for it’s next AI model
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Meta is planning to meet, if not surpass, the powerful GPT-4 chatbots designed by OpenAI with its own sophisticated artificial intelligence bot. The company is planning on training the large language model (LLM) early next year, and likely hopes it will take the number one spot in the AI game. 

According to the Wall Street Journal, Meta has been buying up Nvidia H100 AI training chips and strengthening internal infrastructure to ensure that this time around, Meta won’t have to rely on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform to train its new chatbot. 

The Verge notes that there’s already a group within the company that was put together earlier in the year to begin work building the model, with the apparent goal being to quickly create a tool that can closely emulate human expressions. 

Is this what we want? And do companies care?

Back in June, a leak suggested that a new Instagram feature would have chatbots integrated into the platform that could answer questions, give advice, and help users write messages. Interestingly, users would also be able to choose from “30 AI personalities and find which one [they] like best”. 

It seems like this leak might actually come to fruition if Meta is putting in this much time and effort to replicate human expressiveness. Of course, the company will probably look to Snapchat AI for a comprehensive look at what not to do when it comes to squeezing AI chatbots into its apps, hopefully skipping the part where Snapchat’s AI bot got bullied and gave users some pretty disturbing advice. 

Overall, the AI scramble carries on as big companies continue to climb to the summit of a mysterious, unexplored mountain. Meta makes a point of ensuring the potential new LLM will remain free for other companies to base their own AI tools on, a net positive in my books. We’ll just have to wait for next year to see what exactly is in store. 

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Microsoft unveils Turing Bletchley v3: The AI model taking Bing to the next level
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Microsoft is working hard towards proving the 'intelligence' part in artificial intelligence, and has just revealed the latest version of its Turing Bletchley series of machine intelligence models, Turing Bletchley v3.

As explained in an official blog post, Turing Bletchley v3 is a multilingual vision-language foundation model, and will be integrated into many existing Microsoft products. If the name of this model sounds scary, don’t worry – let’s break it down. 

The ‘multilingual' part is self-explanatory – the model helps Microsoft products function better in a range of languages, currently standing at more than ninety. The ‘vision-language' part means that the model has image processing and language capabilities simultaneously, which is why this kind of model is known as ‘multimodal’. Finally, the ‘foundation model’ part refers to the conceptual and technical structure of the actual model. 

The first version of this multimodal model was launched in November 2021, and in 2022, Microsoft started testing the latest version – v3. Turing Bletchley v3 is pretty impressive because making a model that can “understand” one type of input (say, text or images) is already a big undertaking. This model combines both text and image processing to, in the case of Bing, improve search results. 

Incorporating neural networks 

The Turing Bletchley v3 model makes use of the concept of neural networks, which is a way of programming a machine that mimics a human brain. These neural networks allow it to make connections in the following manner, as described by Microsoft itself: 

“Given an image and a caption describing the image, some words in the caption are masked. A neural network is then trained to predict the hidden words conditioned on both the image and the text. The task can also be flipped to mask out pixels instead of words.”

The model is trained over and over in this way, not unlike how we learn. The model is also continuously monitored and improved by Microsoft developers. 

Where else the new model is being used

Bing Search isn’t the only product that’s been revamped with Turing Bletchley v3. It’s also being used for content moderation in Microsoft’s Xbox Live game service. The model helps the Xbox moderation team to identify inappropriate and harmful content uploaded by Xbox users to their profiles. 

Content moderation is a massive job scale-wise and often mentally exhausting, so any assistance that helps moderators actually have to see less upsetting content is a big win in my eyes. I can see Turing Bletchley v3 being deployed in content moderation for Bing Search in a similar manner.

This sounds like a significant improvement for Bing Search. The AI-aided heat is on, especially between Microsoft and Google. Recently, Microsoft brought Bing AI to Google Chrome, and now it’s coming for image search. I don’t see how Google doesn’t see this as direct competition in the most direct manner. Google still enjoys the greatest popularity both in terms of browser and search volume, but nothing is set in stone. Your move, Google. 

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Adobe Express adds Firefly AI to its free plan for next level creativity
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The all-in-one creative suite Adobe Express is getting a wave of new features; chief among them is the introduction of the Adobe Firefly generative AI.

With Firefly being added, you will be able to create “custom image and text effects” using nothing more than a simple text prompt. The official trailer displays these tools in action as it showing the steps of how to create a poster for a neighborhood event. Firefly is used to change the basic lettering of a short phrase into a “purple gloss balloon” font. It can also be used to generate decorative backgrounds for posters. 

So it's nothing groundbreaking or anything that will blow your mind, but it is a nice addition to the Express toolbox. The best part is it’s available on the free version of Adobe Express, meaning anybody can take the AI feature out for a spin. 

We do want to warn you to not expect too much from this rendition of Firefly. Like a lot of other free image generators, the results can look rather nightmarish, especially when they involve people. It’s nowhere on the same level as Generative Fill on Photoshop. We recommend keeping things simple, like throwing in graphical flourishes, if you ever decide to try out the Express AI.

The company states the prompts support over 100 languages including French, German, Japanese, Spanish, as well as Brazilian Portuguese. Something we found a little funny is how Adobe clarifies that the content Firefly generates is “designed to be safe for commercial use.” Given how several companies with AIs are currently being sued over copyright issues, it looks like the Photoshop-developer felt the need to offer some reassurance to its customers. 

Notable non-AI features

The update introduces a lot of other non-AI tools. For the sake of brevity, we’re just going to focus on the more notable ones. 

For instance, you have Quick Actions for faster editing. These actions can remove the background in images, immediately convert a video into a GIF, edit PDFs, and “animate a character using just audio”. That last one is fittingly called Animate from Audio which will have “characters come to life” as their bodies automatically sync up to recorded dialogue. It takes some of the busy work out of animating the finer details.

Adobe is also introducing an all-in-one editor consisting of various design elements and pre-made templates for social media platforms. So if you want to make videos for TikTok or Instagram but don’t know how to start, the editor can help you out tremendously. 

Availability

Everything you see here is currently available on Adobe Express for desktop. A full list detailing each feature can be found on the official website. The company says it has plans to bring the update to the mobile app soon, but declined to give an exact date for the future patch in its announcement. 

It is great to see Adobe offer some of its latest tech for free. Photoshop can be very expensive. If you’re looking for other options, check out TechRadar’s list of the best Photoshop alternatives for 2023. 

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Windows 11’s next big update could arrive sooner than expected
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Windows 11’s next big update, known as 23H2, could be coming sooner rather than later this year.

Or at least that’s the suggestion based off clues Windows Latest picked up on with the July cumulative update for Windows 11.

In that patch, the tech site notes that it has found references to several packages relating to ‘Moment 4’.

As you may be aware, the last feature drop for Windows 11 was Moment 3, so it follows that this is the next feature update – except this is a full upgrade for the OS. In short, Moment 4 is the 23H2 update.

Windows Latest further observes: “We found that Microsoft is testing an enablement package named Microsoft-Windows-23H2Enablement-Package.”

This lines up with what we know about 23H2, as Microsoft has already confirmed that it will be an enablement package. This means that the files for the upgrade will be preloaded to Windows 11 PCs, and can be sent live with a simple flick of an ‘enablement’ switch – a small download that’s easily applied at launch time.

Analysis: Early groundwork is a good sign

These clues being in place in Windows 11 now shows the groundwork for 23H2 is well underway, and this suggests we could see the annual update for the OS soon enough, maybe. Is there a chance it could keep pace with 22H2 and arrive in September? Maybe, though the rumor mill has been pointing to Q4 for 23H2, so October may still be a more realistic release date.

We shall see, but the Beta channel for Windows 11 just got a bunch of new stuff – including a File Explorer revamp, and RGB lighting hub – and again that suggests progress is ticking along nicely with the 23H2 update.

What could work against the ‘sooner rather than later’ theory is that Microsoft’s Copilot AI is still in a very barebones state, and it’s supposed to be included with 23H2. Our personal theory here, though, is this won’t make the cut for the 23H2 update – well, either that, or it’ll be a very limited version of Windows Copilot that’s released. And we don’t think the latter would be a very clever move for Microsoft in terms of making a good first impression with the AI (as we discussed recently in more depth).

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ChatGPT for Android is launching next week, and you can pre-register now
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iPhone owners have been able to make use of ChatGPT for iOS for a couple of months now, and those of you on Android won't have to miss out for very much longer: ChatGPT for Android is launching next week.

The news comes via a tweet from ChatGPT developer OpenAI, and the app is already listed on the Google Play Store. You can't download the app yet, but you can indicate your interest by clicking or tapping on the Pre-register button. That basically means you'll get an alert when it's available.

Details on the app are rather thin on the ground at the moment, but from the app screenshots and description, this looks to be very much like the iOS version. You can use the iOS app with both free and paid-for Plus ChatGPT accounts.

There's no indication yet as to whether ChatGPT for Android will be launching in every country at the same time – it took a week or so for ChatGPT for iOS to expand outside the US. For what it's worth, we were able to successfully pre-register for the Android app in the UK, so make of that what you will.

The usual ChatGPT experience

The ChatGPT mobile experience is almost identical to the desktop experience, only on a smaller screen. Your conversations get synced across all the devices you're logged in on, and you can ask about anything from gift ideas to ancient history.

It's not clear yet whether you'll be able to use voice input on ChatGPT for Android as you can with ChatGPT for iOS – but we'll be trying out the app just as soon as we can and giving you the lowdown on everything it offers. OpenAI has done well at integrating its app with iOS, and we're hoping for the same on Google's mobile platform.

The standard caveats apply when using ChatGPT on Android: remember that the AI-powered chatbot is prone to hallucinations and inaccuracies, and you should avoid sharing any personal or sensitive information in your conversations.

With Apple reportedly working on its own ChatGPT rival, and Google busy pushing AI into just about all of its products, OpenAI knows that it needs to keep ChatGPT relevant and fresh – and making the bot available for the billions of smartphones running Android worldwide should certainly help with that.

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Windows 11’s next major update might be a bit disappointing
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Windows 11’s feature update coming later this year may not be all that extensive in terms of what it introduces to the OS, as we’ve just been told that it’ll be an enablement package.

We’ll come back to what that means in a moment, but this discovery was made in an update Microsoft issued about the Windows client roadmap (for businesses, but this still applies to 23H2 for everyone, of course – it’s the same update wherever it’s applied).

As Thurrott.com spotted, Microsoft said: “The upcoming Windows 11, version 23H2 shares the same servicing branch and code base as Windows 11, version 22H2. What does it mean for you? If you’re running Windows 11, version 22H2, it will be a simple update to version 23H2 via a small enablement package.”

To explain this more fully, Microsoft has used these enablement packages with Windows 10 for the past few feature updates. What this means is that an upgrade is preloaded to the PC before it goes live, and then when that time comes, all Windows has to do is download a small enablement package. That, as the name suggests, is effectively a switch that enables all the features which are already preloaded on the PC (making for a swift and painless installation).

So, the Windows 11 23H2 update being delivered by an enablement package means that it runs on the same code base as 22H2, as Microsoft points out in the above statement. Meaning there likely won’t be any big (fundamental) changes coming with 23H2.

That’s typically the case with these enablement packages – they are relatively minor updates, and sharing the same code base, can be preloaded in this way. This is certainly what we’ve seen with Windows 10 upgrades delivered via the enablement route.

Analysis: Copilot not cleared for take-off in 2023?

Shouldn’t we expect all that much from the next Windows 11 update, then? That’s certainly the strong hint imparted by this announcement from Microsoft (which confirms speculation previously buzzing around the rumor mill).

But, you might be thinking, isn’t there a lot of stuff coming with Windows 11 23H2? Well, maybe not so much, if this latest move is any indication. True, we are expecting a big File Explorer revamp, and there’s something else rumored in the way of a major move: the introduction of Microsoft’s Copilot AI.

This certainly makes us think that maybe Copilot won’t be turning up ready to assist you on the desktop in 23H2. The rumor mill has indicated the AI is supposedly inbound with 23H2, but we’ve always been skeptical about that. Especially looking at the early working version of Copilot currently in testing, which is very basic indeed (and hardly does anything with the Windows environment – it’s more or less just a glorified integrated Bing chatbot in a side-panel on the desktop, at this point).

This enablement news, for us, is a strong indication Copilot won’t be coming with Windows 11 23H2. And really, it makes sense for Microsoft to take more time over the AI assistant – to ensure that Copilot is done right.

After all, first impressions very much count, and if Copilot gets branded as ‘another Cortana’ (or worse yet, Clippy), getting off on the wrong foot in this way could be very difficult for Microsoft to recover from.

Really, we believe it would be foolish for Microsoft to rush out Copilot in 23H2, and indeed, it makes perfect sense to keep it as a ’game-changing’ new feature for Windows 12 (or whatever next-gen Windows ends up being called in 2024).

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