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OpenAI Announces Benchmarks for AI Life Sciences Research. Its Best Model Failed 63.9% of the Test

This week OpenAI announced a 750-task test to to measure "whether AI systems can support realistic life science research tasks, not just answer biology questions." But while OpenAI's top-performing GPT-Rosalind model led the rankings, Slashdot reader BrianFagioli notes that "it achieved a pass rate of just 36.1 percent, failing nearly two-thirds of benchmark tasks." Nerds.xyz points out that means "the best-performing model failed nearly two-thirds of the benchmark's tasks." The benchmark also revealed a familiar weakness. AI systems generally perform better when everything is presented as text. Once they are forced to work with supporting documents, figures, or complex datasets, performance drops noticeably. GPT-Rosalind's pass rate fell from 45.1 percent on text-only tasks to 28.1 percent on tasks involving artifacts or URLs. To be fair, the benchmark is not intended to suggest AI is useless in research. Quite the opposite. OpenAI found that models are becoming increasingly capable of scientific communication, evidence synthesis, and translating research findings into practical explanations. Those are valuable skills, particularly for researchers drowning in information. But LifeSciBench serves as a useful reminder that today's AI systems are still far from autonomous scientists. They can help. They can assist. They can sometimes provide surprisingly useful insights. What they cannot reliably do, however, is replace the expertise, judgment, and skepticism that real scientific research requires.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Tech Pundit Cringely Co-Founds Startup '2Brains Inc' to Solve LLM Hallucinations

Long-time tech pundit Robert Cringely started his career at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab back in 1978. Last month 73-year-old Cringely explained why his site went on a two-year hiatus — and it's not just because of a heart attack and a stroke last July: Just like everyone else, I've been busy all this time on Artificial Intelligence, founding with two partners a company called 2Brains... The work we were doing together is unfinished, but it's not stopped. The patents are filed, the architecture is documented, and the small team continuing the work includes me. Cringely's first piece made the cast that "the trillion-dollar bet the AI industry is making right now may be wrong, and that there's an architectural alternative we've patented and built." In Machines of Loving Grace, Amodei made the case that scaling compute would eventually solve essentially every hard problem in artificial intelligence. Buried in that optimism — or maybe not buried, maybe right out in the open — was a quiet absolution. Hallucinations, the embarrassing tendency of these systems to state falsehoods with total confidence, would take care of themselves. Make the models big enough, train them long enough, and the problem dissolves. You don't have to solve it. You just have to wait, and spend. And so the entire AI industry breathed a sigh of relief. I have spent forty years watching this industry, and I know a permission slip when I see one. Because that is what the essay became, whatever Amodei intended. It gave every other person writing nine- and ten-figure checks a reason not to worry about the one thing that should worry them most. The hallucination problem is the difference between a clever toy and a system a hospital or a bank or a court can actually rely on. It is the whole ballgame for enterprise AI. And the prevailing wisdom, blessed from the top, is that you needn't address it directly. Scale will provide... A small company I helped start, 2Brains Inc., set out in 2022 to solve hallucinations — before ChatGPT, before the scaling consensus hardened into received truth, back when the polite assumption was that the problem was simply insurmountable. We did not solve it by waiting for bigger models. We solved it architecturally, by separating the part of the system that generates language from the part that retrieves and verifies facts, and reconciling the two before anything reaches the user. It runs on ordinary processors. It is cheap. And on the industry's own benchmark for this kind of faithfulness, it more than doubles the published baseline, with no fabricated facts in the verified case at all. The article asks whether scaling will, at tremendous cost, eventually reduce hallucinations — or even worse, if the largest companies in the world "are spending a fortune chasing a cure that is not coming." And last week Cringely pitched more advantages for their solution, noting that most prompts aren't even chatbot-level creative prompts — but just requests to retrieve simple data: The reason 2Brains doesn't lie and the reason it's cheap are the same reason. It looks the fact up instead of guessing it — so it cannot fabricate, and the lookup runs on a processor that sips power instead of a chip that gulps it. Trust and thrift are not a trade-off you balance against each other. They fall out of a single design decision. You do not pay extra for the honest version. The honest version is the cheap version. That sentence is the whole company.

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Waymo Recalls About 3,900 Robotaxis After Some Drove Into 'Freeway Construction Zones'

CNBC reports: Waymo is recalling almost 3,900 robotaxis in the U.S. to fix software issues after some cars drove into freeway construction zones, according to notices filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The voluntary recall, the Alphabet-owned company's second in just over a month, followed 13 known incidents where Waymo robotaxis drove into construction zones on freeways in Phoenix, or entered freeway lanes with active construction in the San Francisco area, the filings published Thursday said... A letter posted to the regulator's website... noted that, "Driving through a closed construction zone increases the risk of a crash..." [Waymo said in a statement emailed to CNBC] "We voluntarily restricted freeway operations last month while making improvements, proactively notified state and federal regulators, and decided to file a voluntary software recall with NHTSA. We continue to safely serve riders on surface streets in all the cities where we operate...." The company implemented another voluntary recall in May after some of its robotaxis had driven into flooded zones or standing water. The NHTSA Safety Board also initiated a probe of Waymo after a January incident in which a robotaxi illegally passed a stopped school bus.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Est-il possible de tester Siri AI en France malgré le blocage en Europe ?

Au lancement, Siri AI ne sera pas disponible sur iPhone, iPad et Apple Watch dans les pays de l'Union européenne, sur fond de désaccord entre Apple et la Commission européenne. Comme avec Apple Intelligence il y a deux ans, il est possible de contourner le blocage avec un compte App Store américain et un appareil en anglais. Mais la méthode est loin d'être adaptée à un usage du quotidien.

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Emmanuel Macron appelle à un sursaut européen pour ne pas être « consommateurs d’une technologie faite par d’autres »

Emmanuel Macron a clôturé une semaine très dense pour la tech française par un discours dédié aux 10 ans de VivaTech. Coupure de Claude Fable en Europe, déploiement de l'Assistant IA dans la fonction publique, nouvel investissement français et appel à développer des alternatives aux États-Unis et à la Chine, notamment en s'appuyant sur l'open source… Le président de la République donne un cahier des charges à quelques mois de son départ.

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The Korean Telecom Giant At the Center of Anthropic's Mythos Controversy

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: The Trump administration's move to impose export controls on Anthropic's most powerful AI technology followed a spat over the company granting South Korean telecom giant SK Telecom access to its Claude Mythos model, according to people familiar with the matter. US officials were concerned about what they alleged were SK Telecom's ties to China, those people said. Those concerns appear to have compounded when Amazon later flagged vulnerabilities to the White House it identified in Fable 5, a highly safeguarded version of Mythos that Anthropic released to the public on June 9. The Amazon researchers claimed that it was possible to circumvent some of Fable 5's guardrails and access Mythos' formidable cybercapabilities, though Anthropic and outside cybersecurity experts have argued these risks are not unique to Claude. The confluence of events is what ultimately led the White House to determine that it could not trust Anthropic to safeguard its most advanced AI technology, according to a person close to the administration. On Friday, the Trump administration ordered Anthropic to revoke access to Mythos and Fable 5 for all foreign nationals, including immigrants inside the US. Rather than gate access to its technology based on nationality, a process that would be difficult to implement while also preserving privacy, Anthropic decided it was better to disable access to the models entirely. The White House and Anthropic still remain at odds after days of negotiations about bringing Claude Mythos and Fable 5 back online. SK Telecom was one of roughly 150 organizations granted early access to Anthropic's vulnerability-detection model Claude Mythos through Project Glasswing, notes Wired. The White House later asked Anthropic to revoke the company's access, reportedly amid concerns about alleged China ties, and Anthropic immediately complied. There was, however, no mention of the telecom in the government's formal demand to restrict Mythos and Fable 5 to U.S. nationals. SK Telecom told a Korean newspaper that the "anonymous insider's remarks in foreign media lack verified facts, and our company has no ties to China."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Midjourney Pivots From AI Image Generation To Body Scanning Medical Spa

Midjourney is expanding beyond AI image generation with plans for a medical-imaging business built around a water-based, full-body ultrasound scanner that uses hundreds of thousands of sensors and AI to reconstruct MRI-like images. "As you descend into the water, hundreds of thousands of tiny elements take turns, sending out waves, listening together, compressing and then streaming data to a massive cluster where thousands of computers split the task," Midjourney explained in the announcement. "By looking at how the shapes of all the waves change, we reconstruct a detailed map or 'image' which basically lets us figure out what's in there." The company hopes to open a San Francisco scanning "spa" in late 2027, with 50,000 or more deployed around the world by 2031. The Register reports: It's not clear how fast the process is with the prototype unit, but Midjourney said its goal is for the whole thing to take around a minute. "We think it's completely possible that with enough early imaging in the future, the world could avoid 30% of all deaths and 50% of all healthcare costs," the company added. According to a "technical" video included in the announcement, there's a ring of 40 scanners included in the prototype unit the company has built. That ring of 40 elements contains 358,000 ultrasonic elements made up of tiny transducers that create ultrasound waves in water while listening for how they change when they slap the body of whoever is in Midjourney's dunk tank up to a thousand times a second. [...] Midjourney said that it's planning to open its first ultrasound scanner spa at the end of 2027, but it has another hurdle to jump: FDA approval. Beyond improving its tech so that the second-generation scanner is ready for its 2027 spa date, "regulation is the next limit," the company said. "Normally, for every diagnostic medical capability you need FDA approval," Midjourney explained. "We're starting by just giving you detailed body composition maps -- and we'll be submitting regular test results to the FDA for increased capabilities." Midjourney also fails to mention how it will store and secure those scans, whether it will use said scans to train its body composition-detection algorithms, and how it's ensuring those algorithms get things right that it usually take a human a few years of education and training to learn.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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AI Will Lead To Labor Shortages, Bezos Says In Optimistic Talk

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Artificial Intelligence will lead to labour shortages, not the replacement of humans, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos predicted in a highly optimistic appearance at the VivaTech technology conference in Paris on Wednesday. Bezos put forward a rosy vision of how technology will help humanity, speaking about projects including his space venture Blue Origin and his new AI startup Prometheus, which is aimed at speeding up physical manufacturing. "I know there's a lot of concern that many people have, including many smart people, that AI is going to make humans redundant and so on," Bezos said. "I totally disagree with this point of view. And I think, in fact, AI is going to create a labor shortage." Half of Americans fear the rise of AI could put them or someone in their household out of work, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found this month. Bezos, the world's fourth-richest person with a net worth around $250 billion, argued that people have "endless" things to do, and are currently limited by barriers that he said AI would lower. One goal of space exploration is to move polluting industries off Earth, said Bezos, whose Blue Origin aims to compete with trillionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX in rockets. "If space travel gets reliable enough and inexpensive enough, and we can get materials from asteroids and near-Earth objects and the moon, then this garden planet can be returned to its pre-Industrial Revolution state," Bezos said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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« On s’est retrouvés sous les projecteurs » : Mistral profite du Chaton Fat pour dévoiler son nouveau modèle prévu cet été

Dans une série de messages publiés sur les réseaux sociaux, Arthur Mensch, PDG de Mistral AI, a profité de l’attention accrue portée à l’entreprise ces jours-ci pour esquisser la suite de sa stratégie et renforcer son positionnement dans l'intelligence artificielle.

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Arrêtez d’utiliser ChatGPT : OpenAI mise tout sur Codex

En déplacement en France à l'occasion d'une conférence sur ses ambitions européennes, OpenAI a dévoilé plusieurs nouveautés pour Codex, son application initialement pensée pour les développeurs. L'outil se débride dans l'Union européenne et, à terme, devrait intégrer toutes les fonctions de ChatGPT. OpenAI pense qu'à l'ère des IA agentiques, Codex incarne plus l'avenir qu'un simple chatbot.

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« La meilleure défense, c’est l’attaque » : le gouvernement dévoile son plan pour une IA souveraine dans l’État

ENTRETIEN - Le ministre de l’Action et des Comptes publics David Amiel détaille à Numerama sa stratégie systémique pour déployer une IA souveraine au cœur de l'administration française. Plusieurs outils seront généralisés à l'ensemble des agents à partir de ce mardi 16 juin 2026.

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C’est quoi Le Chaton Fat, le « modèle » de Mistral AI qui affole les réseaux sociaux ?

Sur X (anciennement Twitter), « Le Chaton Fat » est un des sujets les plus discutés du week-end, en France et à l'international. Ce prétendu nouveau modèle surpuissant de Mistral AI, meilleur que Claude Mythos dans les premiers benchmarks, est en réalité une blague. Certains s'amusent juste du nom, d'autres en profitent pour railler Emmanuel Macron et son discours sur la « relance européenne » de l'IA. Même le patron de Mistral AI se prête au jeu.

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Workers Spend As Much Time 'Botsitting' AI As Producing Useful Work, Survey Finds

"As the use of artificial intelligence spreads across companies worldwide, it is relieving workers of tedious old chores but creating new ones," reports the Los Angeles Times. "Most people don't realize the amount of time that they're spending working on the tools to get the time savings that they're professing," said Paul Leonardi, Duca Family professor of technology management at UC Santa Barbara." Leonardi is one of the co-authors of the new study published by the Work AI Institute, whose contributors include academics from Stanford University and UC Berkeley. The institute is sponsored by AI company Glean... The research surveyed 6,000 digital workers across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia between December and January. The report found that we are in a phase of significant personal productivity gains, but few companies are translating these gains into revenue and business growth. While 75% of individuals reported a boost in productivity, only 13% of the organizations say they have seen significant business gains as a result of AI adoption, the survey found... The reason the boost in productivity sometimes leads to waste, Leonardi said, is the time people spend correcting the bot's work and gathering the right files, documentation, and tacit knowledge required for it to produce high-quality output. "It's pretty striking the amount of time and effort people are spending," Leonardi said. Most employees now spend over six hours a week of their workday babysitting their work chatbots, the survey said. There is a "thick, mostly invisible layer of human labor holding the whole thing together," the report said. The survey found that for every hour a worker spends getting useful output from AI, they spend roughly another hour making it usable. Of the total time workers spend interacting with AI each week, 37% goes to botsitting, 36% to actually using the tool to produce work. Part of the reason so much time disappears into botsitting is how often the tools fall short: Workers report that more than a third of AI sessions fail outright, requiring a full restart or substantial rework. Paradoxically, as more workers hand over bigger parts of their jobs to AI, they are offloading personal judgment and responsibilities to the bots. The survey found 41% of workers say they sometimes deliver AI-generated work they couldn't explain if asked... "I think what's happening with a lot of these Gen AI tools right now is we're essentially expecting individual contributors to act as managers," Leonardi said. "They're just managing these AI tools, AI agents, and we're expecting that they'll be able to produce way more, but we're not taking into account all of the work that actually goes into managing." This problem isn't likely to go away.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Will Meta's $14 Billion Bet on AI Ever Pay Off?

"A year after spending over $14 billion to bring in Alexandr Wang and a group of his top Scale AI engineers to revamp its artificial intelligence efforts, Meta is at least back on the map in AI," reports CNBC, "though it's still far behind OpenAI, Anthropic and Google in the market." Wang's big accomplishment was the delivery of the Muse Spark AI model in April, marking Meta's first jump into proprietary foundation models and away from a strict adherence to open source, or open weight as it's more commonly called in AI... "Meta needs to provide more proof points of both adoption and commercialization," said Ralph Schackart, an analyst at William Blair who recommends buying the stock. "Investors are looking for Meta to monetize a new AI-first product, beyond the substantial positive impact AI is having on enhancing the advertising models." Wall Street, at least so far, is unimpressed. Meta's stock is down 18% over the past 12 months, the worst performer in the megacap group, along with Microsoft, which has its own challenges in AI. That's even after Meta reported 33% revenue growth in the first quarter, the fastest rate of expansion for any period since 2021. For Meta, the problem started with what some industry experts called, in hindsight at least, a strategic blunder. The company jumped into AI with its Llama family of models, offering an open-source approach that allowed developers to freely tinker, while the other big model makers charged for access. In April of last year, Meta's release of Llama 4 fell flat, failing to captivate developers and leading Zuckerberg to reconsider his company's approach to AI development... Since the release of Muse Spark, Meta has unveiled new AI and business-related subscription plans as part of an effort to expand its business beyond online ads. Historically, it hasn't worked. Meta still counts on ads for 98% of revenue. Schackart said he wants to see "tangible evidence of a growing list of new, AI-first products created by Muse Spark, even if monetization lags." He said that's "what investors are looking for." No matter how good Wang's model may be, Zuckerberg has a high hill to climb with developers coming off the Llama debacle. "I think the AI community largely ignores Meta at this point," said Rob May, CEO of the startup Neurometric, which works in the realm of token engineering.... Krish Subramanian, the CEO of consulting firm KOI AI and former product head at IBM Consulting, said developers are more excited about Google's AI models than what Meta is offering. The appeal of Llama was that it specifically targeted developers wanting open-weight alternative models, while with Muse Spark, Meta has made little effort in that direction, he said. "The lack of developer trust will come back to hit them if they don't focus on third-party developers," Subramanian said, noting that it took years for Microsoft to regain trust from open-source coders during the early days of Azure. "To just focus on a walled-garden kind of an ecosystem and ad revenue as the main source of income, they probably will never become the big player," he said. A Meta spokesperson pointed to Wang's recent comments about the company's continued support for the open-source ecosystem, and said Meta still plans to offer outside developers access to Muse Spark's underlying technology via an API, as it previously announced. "We're already testing with some early partners, and look forward to releasing it this month," the spokesperson said. "That Zuckerberg's metaverse and virtual reality ambitions have generated over $80 billion in total losses since late 2020 makes the AI pitch a tougher sell," the article points out, citing this observation from Howard Yu, business professor at Switzerland's International Institute for Management Development. "He's running out of the space for his credibility to last," Yu said. "I think the virtual reality foray may have burned up a lot of his goodwill in front of investors."

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How America's Energy Department is Building a National Platform for Doing Science with AI

America's Energy Department "wants to build a single national platform for doing science with AI," reports Communications of the ACM: It is called the Genesis Mission, and the idea is to connect the country's 17 national laboratories, their supercomputers, scientific datasets, and a growing layer of AI models and agents into one system researchers can access. The DOE has taken to calling it 'a national operating system for science.' That means treating compute, data, and AI models the way the country treats power lines and highways, as shared national plumbing everyone else builds on top of. If it works, Genesis will change how scientific work gets organized, checked, and scaled, with AI helping run the whole pipeline from hypothesis to simulation to experiment and back. The pitch is that this is better understood as infrastructure policy than as another research program. Genesis is now moving from announcement into execution. President Trump signed the executive order launching it in November 2025. This past February, the DOE published 26 science and technology challenges for the program, and in March it opened a $294-million call for research teams in fields like nuclear energy, quantum information science, semiconductors, and biotechnology. The program is also beginning to reach beyond U.S. borders. In June 2026, Japan moved to become Genesis's first international partner. The two governments plan to invest a combined $1 billion over five years, with Japan contributing $500 million toward joint work in quantum technology, nuclear fusion, and biotechnology. The stated goal is staying ahead of China in the fields where AI is advancing fastest. The open question is whether a federated platform this big can actually work, or whether it ends up as one more expensive coordination exercise.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Shutterstock 'Evolves' Into 'Human-Led, AI-Powered Creative Platform'

Slashdot reader BrianFagioli writes: Shutterstock has unveiled what it calls a "human-led, AI-powered" creative platform that combines its massive library of [human] contributor-created content with AI image and video generation, AI editing, conversational search, prompt enhancement, and automated model selection tools. The company says the goal is to help creators move from idea to finished work faster [in a single application] while maintaining commercial licensing protections and contributor royalty payments... While Shutterstock repeatedly emphasizes human creativity, much of the platform's future appears centered on AI-generated and AI-modified content. An article at Nerds.xyz suggests Shutterstock's AI tools let users "transform existing content into something new," while noting Shutterstock's repeated references to human creativity "almost feel defensive." But it points out other companies including Adobe and Canva "and countless startups are all racing to integrate AI into creative workflows."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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OpenAI Investigated By Coalition of America's State Attorneys General

"A coalition of state attorneys general has opened an investigation into OpenAI," reports the Wall Street Journal, citing "people familiar with the matter." OpenAI was served Friday with a subpoena seeking documents related to a broad range of its activities and impact on users, including advertising, user engagement and retention, handling of consumer data and health data, activities related to minors and seniors, deep learning models, model sycophancy and company policies, some of the people said. The subpoena, viewed by The Wall Street Journal, was sent by New York's attorney general.... Earlier this month, Florida became the first state to file a lawsuit against OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman. The lawsuit claims OpenAI and Altman knowingly released an unsafe product and ignored warnings that it could harm users. Florida's Attorney General, James Uthmeier, opened a criminal investigation into OpenAI in April over the role its chatbot played in a mass shooting that killed two people at Florida State University last year. The suspect allegedly turned to ChatGPT as a confidant and sounding board to plan the attack, and the chatbot dispensed advice for his questions... State attorneys general have been scrutinizing OpenAI's competitors in the AI industry as well. In December, a coalition of 42 state attorneys general led by Pennsylvania's Dave Sunday sent a letter to companies including OpenAI, Meta, Anthropic, Google and xAI. In the letter, the Attorneys General demanded safeguards to protect vulnerable users from harmful interactions with chatbots, warning that "developers may be held accountable for the outputs of their GenAI products" for "encouraging an individual to commit a criminal act." "We take the concerns raised by state attorneys general seriously," OpenAI told the Journal in a statement, "and intend to engage constructively with their offices." The article also acknowledges that The Wall Street Journal's parent company "has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Quick AI Background Removal with Aiarty Image Matting (43% off Lifetime License + Extra Coupon)

Removing backgrounds from images has always been one of the more time-consuming parts of photo editing. Fine hair, fur, feathers, and semi-transparent objects like glass or veils often require precise manual masking, which slows down the entire workflow.

Fortunately, recent advances in AI-powered image processing are making this task easier. One solution gaining attention among designers and photographers is Aiarty Image Matting, an AI-driven background removal tool designed to deliver precise cutouts while preserving intricate details.

Aiarty Image Matting: Precise Background Removal with AI

Aiarty Image Matting uses advanced AI algorithms to automatically detect subjects and separate them from backgrounds with minimal user input. You can batch export transparent cutouts, replace background color, or refine the matte to blend the subject with any new backgrounds.

Key advantages include:

  • 1-click detection with AI for one or multiple subjects.
  • Precise masking for transparent, fuzzy edges, or solid subjects.
  • Preserve transparency variations in tricky edges, hair, lace, glass, etc.
  • Quick auto masking and optional brush editing for refinements.
  • atch export transparent cutouts, mattes, or custom backgrounds.

For product listings, portraits, custom stickers, and creative composites, Aiarty Image Matting makes background removal faster and more precise. It is particularly useful for portrait, wildlife, and commercial photographers dealing with challenging subjects that contain fine edge details.

Anniversary Offer: 43% OFF Lifetime License + Extra Saving

Aiarty is currently celebrating its anniversary with 43% OFF Aiarty Image Matting Lifetime License. For photographers and designers looking to streamline their workflow, it’s a nice chance to enjoy these benefits:

  • Unlock full features and use on up to 3PCs/Macs.
  • Free updates to all versions for a lifetime.
  • 30-day money-back guarantee.

Besides, by entering the limited-time code “ANNIVERSARY” at checkout, you can also enjoy extra $5 OFF Aiarty Image Matting, or extra $10 OFF Bundle product purchase. The special offer ends June 21.

Below are some hands-on tests of this background remover and background replacement tool, from professional projects to family and hobbyist use cases.

Remove Backgrounds and Preserve Fine Hair, Fur, and Feathers

Traditional masking tools often require hours of manual tracing around complex edges, and they fail to preserve the natural edges in flowing hair or fuzzy fur.

AI models in Aiarty Image Matting are trained to recognize and preserve individual strands of hair, animal fur, and bird feathers, producing a clean result for both transparent output and blend in with new backgrounds.

Handle Transparent and Semi-Transparent Subjects

Glass, lace, veils, and transparent materials are notoriously difficult to mask accurately. Aiarty maintains gradual transparency values while separating the subject from the background, delivering realistic transitions.

This image background remover helps photographers maintain a professional look when working with product photography, event banners, and creative composites.

Separate Subjects from Complex Backgrounds

A complex environment often confuses traditional background remover tools, with background remnants sticking around a subject in cutouts.

To solve that, AI inference in Aiarty Image Matting helps distinguish subjects even when backgrounds contain complicated textures, branches, foliage, or overlapping elements.

Create Stickers for Journals and Creative Projects

For wildlife photographers, nature journal hobbyists, and school projects, Aiarty Image Matting makes it handy to create stickers in batches, which can be used in field journals, presentations, banners, infographics, posters, and other creative projects.

Flexible Auto Masking and Manual Refinement

Some background removal tools fall into one of two extremes: fully automatic tools that offer little control over the result, or manual masking features that require time-consuming tracing.

Aiarty Image Matting combines the strengths and flexibility of both approaches. With a single click, its AI models can auto-detect and isolate subjects, creating a high-quality mask as a strong starting point for most images.

For further refinement, it also provides editing tools to adjust masks, erase unwanted areas, or brush over to bring back details. The combination of the Mask alpha curve tool and erasing threshold is handy to handle challenging areas such as hair, fur, lace, and transparent objects.

Batch Processing for Large Projects

Editing and masking hundreds of images individually is inefficient. Aiarty supports batch processing, allowing designers and photographers to process large numbers of images automatically.

Whether handling event photography, wildlife shoots, or e-commerce catalogs, photographers can save editing time with precise masking and background removal.

Optionally, you can use the built-in 2X upscaling feature to enhance image quality, making the cutouts clear even at 4K and 8K displays.

Specialized AI Models for Different Scenarios and Subject Types

For clean cutouts and transparent PNGs, users might prefer a clear edge around the subjects. For background replacement, such as placing the person on a new canvas, a natural blend-in requires transparency transitions near the edges.

Instead of providing a one-size-fits-all tool, Aiarty Image Matting has 4 AI models optimized for different image types and masking scenarios.

Masking Model: AlphaStandard V2

It is designed for semi-transparent and translucent subjects such as wedding veils, glassware, water splashes, fine hair, and animal fur.

When you prefer to preserve natural transparency and smooth transitions, apply this model.

Masking Model: AlphaEdge V2

For those semi-transparent and translucent objects mentioned above, when you want to prioritize edge sharpness over soft transparency variations, then instead of using AlphaStandard, apply AlphaEdge.

Masking Model: EdgeClear V2

It is built for detailed solid objects such as vehicles, jewelry, sports equipment, and furniture. When you want to emphasize edge clarity while maintaining realistic detail, use this model for background removal and replacement.

Masking Model: SolidMat V2

It is trained for products and structured subjects with defined boundaries, including: buildings, consumer products, electronics, and commercial catalogs.

Besides the 4 AI models, Aiarty has an Alpha mask curve, brushes, and erasers, and more options to refine selection. With both auto masking and optional manual adjustment, it is versatile enough to tackle various subjects and scenarios, be it for semi-transparency variations, fuzzy edges, or solid subjects.

Final Thoughts

Background removal doesn’t have to be slow or tedious. With AI-powered subject isolation and optional manual refinement, Aiarty Image Matting offers photographers and designers a faster way to create clean cutouts while keeping full control over tricky edges.

For PhotoRumors readers, Aiarty Image Matting is currently available for $65 (43% off the regular price). The Lifetime License works on up to 3 Windows or Mac computers and includes free lifetime upgrades. Apply the code ANNIVERSARY at checkout to get an extra $5 off. The special offer ends June 21.

For those looking for a more creative toolkit, Aiarty also offers Anniversary bundles with image enhancement, upscaling, and video software – currently discounted up to 52%.

Learn more and grab the Anniversary offer here >

The post Quick AI Background Removal with Aiarty Image Matting (43% off Lifetime License + Extra Coupon) appeared first on Photo Rumors.

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Jeff Bezos' AI Startup Aims To Build an 'Artificial General Engineer'

Jeff Bezos says his new AI startup, Prometheus, is working toward an "artificial general engineer" capable of helping design complex physical products such as robots, drugs, manufacturing systems, and rocket engines. The Verge reports: The NYT first reported on Prometheus last November, but now Bezos is sharing more information about the startup after a $12 billion funding round, putting the company at a $41 billion valuation. Bezos serves as co-CEO of Prometheus alongside Vik Bajaj, who co-founded Alphabet's health-focused research group, Verily. The startup currently has around 150 employees. The tools Prometheus intends to build could help develop physical products across several industries, including robotics, drug design, and manufacturing, the NYT reports. "Blue Origin is a perfect example of a company that could benefit from the tools that Prometheus is building," Bezos tells the NYT. "Any company that is building sophisticated devices -- like rocket engines -- would benefit greatly from this kind of technology."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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