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Edge Browser Will AI Improve All Web Images

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Microsoft Bing announced a new AI technology that will bring 4K image experience to websites through Microsoft Edge, automatically enhancing website images. The technology, called Turing Image Super-Resolution, makes images display at a high resolution, no matter how poor the original image is.

The new technology was developed by Microsoft’s Project Turing AI development team.

Already Used in Bing Maps

The new technology is already in use in Bing Maps to sharpen the quality of their sattelite aerial imagery.

Below is a comparison of aerial imagery of Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, CA.

The screenshot of Bing Maps is on the left and the corresponding image from Google Maps is on the right:

Bing Maps vs Google Maps

Side by side comparison of Bing Maps versus Google Maps Aerial images

How Microsoft Built the Technology

There were four important insights that led to the success of the model.

  1. Human Raters
  2. Noise Modeling
  3. Perceptual and GAN Loss
  4. Transformers for Vision: Enhance and Zoom

Human Raters

Microsoft realized that metrics used to measure success of image-related models didn’t align with human visual perception. So they created a side-by-side visual comparison tool that used human raters to help evaluate the success of the model.

Noise Modeling

Microsoft took the approach of starting with high quality images and then degrading them by adding noise to them and then teaching the model to get the image back to the original high quality state of the image.

Perceptual and GAN Loss

This was part of the effort to align the results to human vision.

The Microsoft announcement stated:

“… we found that optimizing our models solely using pixel loss between the output images and ground truth images was not enough to produce the optimal output that aligned with a human eye’s perception.

In response, we also introduced perceptual and GAN loss and tuned an optimal weighted combination of the three losses as an objective function.”

Transformers for Vision

Microsoft leveraged the power of Transformers which were used in language models, focusing on enhance and zoom.

What that means is enhancing the image and also focusing on scaling the image up, which is a difficult thing to do.

Typically it’s easy to shrink an image. But to take a small image and scale it up generally ends up maginfying the low resolution artifacts of the original image.

So what the researchers did was create a system that can calculate and “recover” the missing image data from the lower resolution image and bring it to a higher resolution.

Microsoft calls the process of scaling an image up, DeepZoom.

Edge: 4K TV of Web Browsers

Microsoft envisions this new AI feature as a way to bring a 4K visual experience to surfing the web, as well as enhancing video meetings and family photos uploaded to the web.

The technology is already available in the experimental version of Edge called Edge Canary.

The new feature will be rolling out to the mainstream version of Edge browser over the coming months.

Citation

Read Microsoft’s Announcement

Turing Image Super-Resolution

 

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Google’s AI Overviews Avoid Political Content, New Data Shows

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Google's AI Overviews Avoid Political Content, New Data Shows

Study reveals Google’s cautious approach to AI-generated content in sensitive search results, varying across health, finance, legal, and political topics.

  • Google shows AI Overviews for 50% of YMYL topics, with legal queries triggering them most often.
  • Health and finance AI Overviews frequently include disclaimers urging users to consult professionals.
  • Google avoids generating AI Overviews for sensitive topics like mental health, elections, and specific medications.

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Executive Director Of WordPress Resigns

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WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy resigns,

Josepha Haden Chomphosy, Executive Director of the WordPress Project, officially announced her resignation, ending a nine-year tenure. This comes just two weeks after Matt Mullenweg launched a controversial campaign against a managed WordPress host, which responded by filing a federal lawsuit against him and Automattic.

She posted an upbeat notice on her personal blog, reaffirming her belief in the open source community as  positive economic force as well as the importance of strong opinions that are “loosely  held.”

She wrote:

“This week marks my last as the Executive Director of the WordPress project. My time with WordPress has transformed me, both as a leader and an advocate. There’s still more to do in our shared quest to secure a self-sustaining future of the open source project that we all love, and my belief in our global community of contributors remains unchanged.

…I still believe that open source is an idea that can transform generations. I believe in the power of a good-hearted group of people. I believe in the importance of strong opinions, loosely held. And I believe the world will always need the more equitable opportunities that well-maintained open source can provide: access to knowledge and learning, easy-to-join peer and business networks, the amplification of unheard voices, and a chance to tap into economic opportunity for those who weren’t born into it.”

Turmoil At WordPress

The resignation comes amidst the backdrop of a conflict between WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg and the managed WordPress web host WP Engine, which has brought unprecedented turmoil within the WordPress community, including a federal lawsuit filed by WP Engine accusing Mullenweg of attempted extortion.

Resignation News Was Leaked

The news about the resignation was leaked on October 2nd by the founder of the WordPress news site WP Tavern (now owned by Matt Mullenweg), who tweeted that he had spoken with Josepha that evening, who announced her resignation.

He posted:

“I spoke with Josepha tonight. I can confirm that she’s no longer at Automattic.

She’s working on a statement for the community. She’s in good spirits despite the turmoil.”

Screenshot Of Deleted Tweet

Josepha tweeted the following response the next day:

“Ok, this is not how I expected that news to come to y’all. I apologize that this is the first many of you heard of it. Please don’t speculate about anything.”

Rocky Period For WordPress

While her resignation was somewhat of an open secret it’s still a significant event because of recent events at WordPress, including the resignations of 8.4% of Automattic employees as a result of an offer of a generous severance package to all employees who no longer wished to work  there.

Read the official announcement:

Thank you, WordPress

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Wirestock Creators

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8% Of Automattic Employees Choose To Resign

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8% Of Automattic Employees Choose To Resign

WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO announced today that he offered Automattic employees the chance to resign with a severance pay and a total of 8.4 percent. Mullenweg offered $30,000 or six months of salary, whichever one is higher, with a total of 159 people taking his offer.

Reactions Of Automattic Employees

Given the recent controversies created by Mullenweg, one might be tempted to view the walkout as a vote of no-confidence in Mullenweg. But that would be a mistake because some of the employees announcing their resignations either praised Mullenweg or simply announced their resignation while many others tweeted how happy they are to stay at Automattic.

One former employee tweeted that he was sad about recent developments but also praised Mullenweg and Automattic as an employer.

He shared:

“Today was my last day at Automattic. I spent the last 2 years building large scale ML and generative AI infra and products, and a lot of time on robotics at night and on weekends.

I’m going to spend the next month taking a break, getting married, and visiting family in Australia.

I have some really fun ideas of things to build that I’ve been storing up for a while. Now I get to build them. Get in touch if you’d like to build AI products together.”

Another former employee, Naoko Takano, is a 14 year employee, an organizer of WordCamp conferences in Asia, a full-time WordPress contributor and Open Source Project Manager at Automattic announced on X (formerly Twitter) that today was her last day at Automattic with no additional comment.

She tweeted:

“Today was my last day at Automattic.

I’m actively exploring new career opportunities. If you know of any positions that align with my skills and experience!”

Naoko’s role at at WordPress was working with the global WordPress community to improve contributor experiences through the Five for the Future and Mentorship programs. Five for the Future is an important WordPress program that encourages organizations to donate 5% of their resources back into WordPress. Five for the Future is one of the issues Mullenweg had against WP Engine, asserting that they didn’t donate enough back into the community.

Mullenweg himself was bittersweet to see those employees go, writing in a blog post:

“It was an emotional roller coaster of a week. The day you hire someone you aren’t expecting them to resign or be fired, you’re hoping for a long and mutually beneficial relationship. Every resignation stings a bit.

However now, I feel much lighter. I’m grateful and thankful for all the people who took the offer, and even more excited to work with those who turned down $126M to stay. As the kids say, LFG!”

Read the entire announcement on Mullenweg’s blog:

Automattic Alignment

Featured Image by Shutterstock/sdx15

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