The Daily AI Briefing - 23/04/2025
Welcome to The Daily AI Briefing, here are today's headlines! Today we're covering some major developments in the AI landscape, from breakthrough speech technology created by undergraduates to new publishing partnerships with OpenAI. We'll also explore AI automation for sales, the future of AI employees in the workplace, and highlight a few trending AI tools that are making waves. Let's dive into these stories that are shaping the future of artificial intelligence. First up, a remarkable achievement from two undergraduate students who have created what they claim is state-of-the-art speech AI technology. Korean startup Nari Labs has released Dia, an open-source text-to-speech model developed without any funding that reportedly outperforms leading commercial offerings like ElevenLabs and Sesame. This 1.6 billion parameter model supports advanced features including emotional tones, multiple speaker tags, and even nonverbal cues like laughter and coughing. The model was inspired by Google's NotebookLM and utilized Google's TPU Research Cloud program for computing power. Side-by-side tests have shown Dia excelling in timing, expressiveness, and handling nonverbal scripts. What makes this story particularly impressive is that the founders, including Nari Labs' Toby Kim, created this technology with minimal experience, perfectly embodying Sam Altman's philosophy that "you can just do things" in the AI space. The startup now plans to develop a consumer app focused on social content creation. In media news, The Washington Post has joined OpenAI's growing alliance of publishing partners. This new partnership will allow ChatGPT to include summaries, quotes, and direct links to Washington Post articles when responding to user questions. The deal adds the Jeff Bezos-owned publication to OpenAI's expanding roster of media partners, which now includes over 20 major news publishers. This partnership comes at an interesting time, as OpenAI faces ongoing legal battles with other major publishers, including The New York Times, over training data and copyright issues. The Washington Post has been actively exploring AI technology, having already launched tools like "Ask The Post AI" and "Climate Answers" over the past year. This collaboration represents another step in the evolving relationship between traditional media and artificial intelligence companies. For those interested in practical AI applications, there's a new tutorial showing how to automate sales outreach using AI. The guide demonstrates how to use n8n to transform static contact lists into dynamic sales tools that automatically send personalized emails to prospects based on their company, role, and interests. The process involves creating a workflow that monitors when new leads are added to a Google Sheets document, then using an AI Agent node connected to a language model to process contact information and craft personalized messages. The system can be configured to create email drafts rather than sending them directly, allowing for human review before dispatching. This automation represents the growing trend of AI-assisted sales processes that can significantly increase efficiency while maintaining personalization. Looking to the future, Anthropic's Chief Information Security Officer, Jason Clinton, has made a bold prediction: AI-powered virtual employees will begin operating on corporate networks within the next year. These AI entities would have their own corporate accounts, passwords, and "memories," representing a significant advancement beyond today's task-specific AI agents. Clinton highlighted several security challenges this would introduce, including managing AI account privileges, monitoring access, and determining responsibility for autonomous actions. He describes virtual employees as the next "AI innovation hotbed," with security for these digital workers emerging as a critical focus area. Anthropic itself is concentrating on securing its AI models against attac