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And just like that, the first weekend of October is upon us. The good news? The U.S. economy added more jobs, bringing positive energy as we enter the last quarter of the year. Students are also feeling optimistic, with AI tools making studying easier than ever—we’ll share how. Plus, ChatGPT has a new feature that lets you interact more dynamically with its outputs. And as always, we have our “Building in Public” section—this week, we’re showcasing our facial recognition app. Yes, it’s a bit scary, just in time for Halloween! Enjoy your weekend!

Brought to you by OpenCV:

• 📰 News and Trends.

• “ChatGPT Canvas” A New Collaborative Workspace for Writing and Coding.

• Building in Public #5 (Facial Recognition App)

• Students Love NotebookLM to Study.

• 🧰 AI Tools (Services II)

📰 AI News and Trends

• OpenAI Nearly Doubles Valuation to $157 Billion in Funding Round (WSJ)

• Google is taking its rivalry with OpenAI to another level (Quartz)

• Character.ai abandons making AI models after $2.7bn Google deal .AI start-up’s new chief says race to build large language models against Big Tech got ‘insanely expensive’ (FT)

• Google begins wide rollout of ads in AI overview search results (Fortune)

• License Plate Readers Are Creating a US-Wide Database of More Than Just Cars. From political campaign signs to Planned Parenthood bumper stickers, license plate readers around the US are creating searchable databases that reveal Americans’ political leanings and more (Wired)

🌐 Other Tech news

• The U.S. economy added 254,000 jobs last month, the unemployment rate sits at 4.1%. A robust gain that eases fears of a labor market slowdown (BLS)

• Government agencies and private tech giants are collaborating to restart nuclear plants across the U.S., harnessing this powerful yet often misunderstood energy source for the first time in decades (Axios)

• Facebook says it paid content creators $2B this year (TC)

• EU votes to impose tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (CNBC)

• Amazon plans to hire 250,000 workers for the holidays, same as last year (CNBC)

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“ChatGPT Canvas” A New Collaborative Workspace for Writing and Coding.

OpenAI introduced “Canvas”, a new interface for collaborating on writing and coding projects with ChatGPT. Unlike the traditional chat format, Canvas allows users to work side by side with ChatGPT in a separate window. It supports direct edits, inline feedback, and shortcuts for tasks like adjusting text length or debugging code. Canvas, powered by GPT-4o, is available in beta for ChatGPT Plus and Team users and will roll out to Enterprise, Edu, and eventually Free users.

Key features include:

• Writing Tools: Users can receive suggestions, adjust reading levels, and enhance clarity.

• Coding Tools: Canvas offers code reviews, bug fixes, and language translations, making the iterative process of coding smoother.

Canvas automatically opens when needed and improves ChatGPT's ability to handle complex tasks by enabling targeted edits or full rewrites. Internal evaluations show Canvas significantly boosts performance, with 83% accuracy for triggering in writing tasks and 94% for coding. The tool is designed to evolve based on feedback, with plans for ongoing refinement.

Students Love NotebookLM to Study.

Google’s NotebookLM, powered by AI, has gained popularity for generating podcasts through its “Audio Overview” feature. Users can upload content like PDFs or YouTube links to create podcasts with lifelike AI voices. It’s being used for study guides, event summaries, and custom podcasts, including fun and creative experiments.

While engaging, the tool faces challenges like AI hallucinations and political bias. Despite these issues, NotebookLM is becoming a hit for education and content creation.

Yaro on Ai and Tech Trends is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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Building in Public #5

Facial Recognition App

This week in partnership with OpenCV, we developed a computer vision facial recognition app that allows users to capture an image of a person and compare it against a database of headshots to identify the individual. Such applications can be used for secure access control, unlocking doors, or granting entry to specific rooms for authorized individuals. While it has practical, beneficial uses, like enhancing security, it can also be adapted for background checks by comparing a person's face with social media profiles and other online data. The app can also be upgraded to support real-time face recognition for continuous, live monitoring. I loaded the code to a repository if you want the full code.

Current Flask App Functionality

• Manual Face Recognition: Users capture a snapshot from their webcam via the browser.

• The image is sent to the Flask backend, where “face_recognition” detects faces and matches them with known faces.

• Rectangles and labels are drawn around detected faces, and the processed image is sent back to the browser for display.

Limitations:

• Recognition only occurs after manually capturing an image.

• No real-time face tracking or live label updates.

Potential with Real-Time Face Recognition (`face-api.js`)

• Real-Time Processing: Using `face-api.js` in the browser, the app can continuously detect and recognize faces “while the camera is active”, eliminating the need to manually capture images.

• Live Labels and Rectangles: Faces will be labeled in real-time as they appear in the video stream.

• Client-Side Processing: The face recognition can happen entirely on the client-side, improving performance and reducing server load.

This enhancement would turn the app into a **real-time face recognition tool**, ideal for live scenarios, without needing manual image captures.

🧰 AI Tools

Services II

• Imagine by Magic Studio - A tool by Magic Studio that let's you express yourself by just describing what's on your mind.

• Alpaca - AI-powered canvas for digital artists and creatives that instantly stylizes and renders early concept sketches.

• Open Art - Your creative vision, elevated and realized by AI.

• Playground AI - Playground AI is a free-to-use online AI image creator. Use it to create art, social media posts, presentations, posters, videos, logos and more.

• modyfi - The image editor you've always wanted. AI-powered creative tools in your browser. Real-time collaboration.