🛟 Stack Overflow needs AI floaties

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Greetings, fellow humans. 👋

This is Not A Bot - the newsletter about AI that was definitely not written by AI. I’m Haroon, CEO of Autoblocks and founder of AI For Anyone, and I share the latest news, tools, and resources from the AI space.

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Stack Overflow, the Q&A forum for programmers, was a cheat code for me during college. My Google search template for any coding-related question would always have a “stack overflow” in the end.

“loop over an array in javascript stack overflow”

“What does [insert error here] mean stack overflow”

You get the idea.

But unfortunately, Stack Overflow has become AI’s latest prey. The company has seen monthly traffic drop since the beginning of 2022, with the average drop being 6%.

The culprits are ChatGPT and GitHub’s Co-Pilot, which offer a quick and easy way for programmers to debug their code rather than posting on a forum and waiting hours for a suitable response.

So what’s their best bet? Join the party. Stack Overflow announced that ~10% of the company is working on “features and applications leveraging GenAI” that have the potential to increase engagement, with early previews being available for their “Stack Overflow for Teams” users.

Hey, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right? (Kevin Durant may know a thing or two about that.)

Read more: Gizmodo

After Google’s impressive showing during its Google I/O event, Microsoft knows it has work to do to maintain the edge it created earlier in the year.

In that vein, they announced their strategic investment in Builder.ai, the world's first AI software expert that helps businesses order tailor-made software.

The collaboration will involve the two companies working on AI solutions, with Builder's "Natasha" AI being available to users of MS Teams “when they are looking to build apps and software.”

This is excellent exposure for the Series C startup, seeing as Teams has close to 280 million MAU, according to $MSFT’s latest earnings report.

The companies will also integrate Azure OpenAI Service and other Azure Cognitive Services with Builder.ai's software assembly line and form partnerships across Microsoft Developer Platforms.

This might be a recurring theme for Microsoft in the race for superior AI - partnering with businesses with proven traction to supercharge their product offerings instead of developing technology in-house.

What do you think of that strategy?

Read more: TechCrunch

Oh no - things are getting strange again.

What if I told you that you could potentially date… an AI chatbot. Oh yeah, you read that right.

Caryn Marjorie, a Snapchat influencer with over 1.8 million followers, launched an AI chatbot based on herself - CarynAI.

And for $1/minute, she can be your girlfriend. Wowza.

The tech was developed using OpenAI’s GPT-4 API and can have conversations about anything from global politics to exploring “uncharted territories of pleasure.” Honestly, not even sure what that means.

It’s also pretty lucrative. The bot already has 1000 paying customers and generated an astounding $71K in its first week (!). Marjorie estimates that this could easily be a $5M/month service.

AI companions could be a massive market. But while the upside is great for Marjorie and her followers, there are also serious pitfalls associated with a lack of human interaction and genuine relationships.

So… penny for your thoughts? Comment below, or reply to this email!

Read more: Insider

ThreatFabric Raises $12.5 Million to grow fraud detection solution.

Everseen Raises $71 Million to battle retail theft with AI.

Disclaimer: AI is (partially) used to summarize these articles.

EU draft legislation will ban AI for mass biometric surveillance and predictive policing [The Verge] - The EU has drafted new regulations that restrict mass facial recognition programs and the use of predictive policing algorithms to identify potential future criminals. It also demands that public officials and government authorities form a “high-risk” AI systems deployment database to inform EU citizens about when this technology impacts them. (Read more)

Japan AI Stocks Surge as SoftBank Joins ChatGPT Clone Race [Yahoo Finance] - SoftBank Group's mobile unit announced its participation in a global competition to develop a version of ChatGPT, causing a set of Japanese AI-related companies to surge in stock price. (Read more)

😱 These demos are crazy

And that does it for today's issue.

As always, thanks for reading. Have a great day, and see you next time! ✌

— Haroon: (definitely) Not A Robot and @haroonchoudery on Twitter