Friday Links: Brain Eats Phone, Lip Syncing, and Don't Learn to Code

Here are this week's standout links:

• Hugging Face will undoubtedlyMalicious code in some Hugging Face AI models. As with any large content community, there will be abuse. Software supply chain vendor JFrog identified a number of models that could hijack user machines. Hugging Face will undoubtedly step up policing this, but it's a reminder that when something is as new as AI, it's a great attack vector since users will be doing unfamiliar things as they try to get set up.
• Brain.AI becomes your phone. I've written before about how there could be a paradigm shift in user access to the digital world. One of the demos at MWC this week showed another glimpse of that with an OS overlay called Brain.AI that makes an entire phone UI AI-driven. It's not surprising this is interesting to Telcoms providers such as T-Mobile since it presents another potential change to own the pane of glass onto the digital world. It seems unlikely the telcos will ultimately retain that control, though. Most people will want their AI assistants to be available anywhere, no matter who the network provider is.
• Pika labs adds Lip-syncing video. Fresh from the shock and awe of last week's Sora demos, we have another jump forward in AI video. Pikalabs video creation now has a lip-syncing feature. It's only available on the pro-plan, but that's quite accessible. No doubt other providers will also add the feature in time. This is one of those features that could unleash a whole new level of AI video content.
• Microsoft made a $16M investment in Mistral AI (and oh boy, did that make some people mad...). Microsoft's stake will ultimately amount to less than 1% of Mistral and very likely with no control, but some European politicians and press were decidedly angry. Mistral, Aleph, and other similar companies have been touted as European or national "AI Champions" to help free Europe from American big tech. So, having those same companies invest is seemingly triggering. This seems wholly counterproductive. Seen another way: US investment cash flows TO EUROPE this way to enhance a European-owned company. We should also be clear that companies like this may ultimately even be bought outright by non-EU buyers. That's how capitalism works. There really is only one antidote: keep funding and growing great companies in Europe so they can stay independent and attract investment from anywhere. (There is, of course, another way: legislate to block investments or acquisitions... which will result in massive investment drops in Europe, and those founders likely being forced to move to the US or elsewhere: definitely a losing proposition.)
• "It is our job to create computing technology such that nobody has to program." Jensen Huang wins this week's viral video award with this short clip. He states that it used to be good advice that kids should learn to program, but ... that this is now wrong: going forward, computer systems should become smart enough that programming them is no longer necessary. I like some of the sentiment behind this - technology must improve to empower more people. However, many of these systems still need to be built, and there is great work to be done in that endeavor.

Wishing you a great weekend!