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Zora, an NFT Platform, is Providing AI Model Creators With a New Means of Monetization

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Zora, an NFT Platform, is Providing AI Model Creators With a New Means of Monetization

The co-founder of the firm, Dee Goens, stated on Chain Reaction that Zora, an NFT-based social network platform, is continuing to venture outside of the cryptocurrency space and into the burgeoning artificial intelligence market.

Zora is a text-to-video technology by OpenAI that promises to assist creators, companies, and artists in better monetizing their content using NFTs. It should not be confused with Sora. According to Goens, Zora had “just under” 500,000 monthly transacting users last month, and in the previous 30 days, content creators on the platform earned over $1.3 million from submitting their work. Check out the episode we posted with Goens on Zora by clicking this link.

The layer-2 blockchain Optimism, which aims to expand the Ethereum ecosystem, is the foundation upon which the Zora Network is constructed. According to Zora’s website, since its founding in 2020, it has amassed over $300 million in secondary transactions, had over 4 million NFTs coined or posted, and has over 1 million individual collectors.

However, there is still work to be done. Goens and Jacob Horne, co-founders of Zora, consider AI and cryptocurrency as complimentary technologies that may enhance each other.

“Crypto wants information to be on-chain so that it can be valued and add value to the system,” Goens said. “And then AI wants information to be on-chain so that it can be freely accessed and utilized by the system. So we’re on this kind of collision course where we want to put more stuff on-chain, in order to effectively add value, create value.”

Put simply, AI requires access to more data in order to train its models and expand, and cryptocurrency needs data on-chain in order to expand its ecosystem.

“We need systems that can help bring all of these things on-chain and that’s what we’re trying to do at Zora,” Goens said. It is trying to create a platform that ushers in the transition of AI onto blockchains.

Zora announced earlier this week that creators may now use AI to mint—a technical term for documenting or uploading a transaction to the blockchain—on its platform. According to Goens, this implies that a user can input anything they want, have an image created practically quickly, and mint it soon after.

“This is a zero to one moment, one of the first passive income streams for the creators of large language models like Stability AI,” Goens said. This means these AI creators have the ability to capture value from their models’ outputs when people mint them and the payouts are split in half automatically. “We’re really excited to usher in an era where model creators, not just the creators of the output, but the model makers themselves, also have a way to reap the rewards of creativity that they’re helping to produce.”

Goens stated that he generally observes a high level of demand for additional AI capability and tooling from the NFT creator side. “This is a net new thing in many ways and I think they’re excited to innovate.”

He stated that he believes blockchains will have the ability to help in the future to validate, authenticate, and demonstrate the ownership of creative – not just for models, data, and information, but also the source of the media itself.

According to Goens, “I think crypto could survive without AI in its current trajectory.” However, he and others believe that blockchains are necessary for AI to support its story about identification and verification.

“I’m excited to see the models on-chain and see more open sourcing of these models, so that we can all have the opportunity to investigate and inspect them in a way where we can make an informed decision,” Goens said. “That opens up an opportunity for us to put our money where our mouth is.”

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Apple has revealed a revamped Mac Mini with an M4 chip

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A smaller but no less powerful Mac Mini was recently unveiled by Apple as part of the company’s week of Mac-focused announcements. It now has Apple’s most recent M4 silicon, enables ray tracing for the first time, and comes pre-installed with 16GB of RAM, which seems to be the new standard in the age of Apple Intelligence. While the more potent M4 Pro model starts at $1,399, the machine still starts at $599 with the standard M4 CPU. The Mac Mini is available for preorder right now and will be in stores on November 8th, just like the updated iMac that was revealed yesterday.

The new design will be the first thing you notice. The Mini has reportedly been significantly reduced in size, although it was already a comparatively small desktop computer. It is now incredibly small, with dimensions of five inches for both length and width. Apple claims that “an innovative thermal architecture, which guides air to different levels of the system, while all venting is done through the foot” and the M4’s efficiency are the reasons it keeps things cool.

Nevertheless, Apple has packed this device with a ton of input/output, including a 3.5mm audio jack and two USB-C connections on the front. Three USB-C/Thunderbolt ports, Ethernet, and HDMI are located around the back. Although the USB-A ports are outdated, it’s important to remember that the base M2 Mini only featured two USB-A connectors and two Thunderbolt 4 ports. You get a total of five ports with the M4. You get an additional Thunderbolt port but lose native USB-A.

Depending on the M4 processor you select, those Thunderbolt connectors will have varying speeds. While the M4 Pro offers the most recent Thunderbolt 5 throughput, the standard M4 processor comes with Thunderbolt 4.

With its 14 CPU and 20 GPU cores, the M4 Pro Mac Mini also offers better overall performance. The standard M4 can have up to 32GB of RAM, while the M4 Pro can have up to 64GB. The maximum storage capacity is an astounding 8TB. Therefore, even though the Mini is rather little, if you have the money, you can make it really powerful. For those who desire it, 10 gigabit Ethernet is still an optional upgrade.

Apple has a big week ahead of it. On Monday, the company released the M4 iMac and its first Apple Intelligence software features for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. (More AI functionality will be available in December, such as ChatGPT integration and image production.) As Apple completes its new hardware, those updated MacBook Pros might make their appearance tomorrow. The business will undoubtedly highlight its newest fleet of Macs when it releases its quarterly profits on Thursday.

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Apple Intelligence may face competition from a new Qualcomm processor

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The new chip from Qualcomm (QCOM) may increase competition between Apple’s (AAPL) iOS and Android.

During its Snapdragon Summit on Monday, the firm unveiled the Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform, which includes a new, second-generation Oryon CPU that it claims is the “fastest mobile CPU in the world.” According to Qualcomm, multimodal generative artificial intelligence characteristics can be supported by the upcoming Snapdragon platform.

Qualcomm, which primarily creates chips for mobile devices running Android, claims that the new Oryon CPU is 44% more power efficient and 45% faster. As the iPhone manufacturer releases its Apple Intelligence capabilities, the new Snapdragon 8 platform may allow smartphone firms compete with Apple on the AI frontier. Additionally, Apple has an agreement with OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT, to incorporate ChatGPT-4o into the upcoming iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia.

According to a September Wall Street Journal (NWSA) story, Qualcomm is apparently interested in purchasing Intel (INTC) in a deal that could be valued up to $90 billion. According to Bloomberg, Apollo Global Management (APO), an alternative asset manager, had also proposed an equity-like investment in Intel with a potential value of up to $5 billion.

According to reports, which cited anonymous sources familiar with the situation, Qualcomm may postpone its decision to acquire Intel until after the U.S. presidential election next month. According to the persons who spoke with Bloomberg, Qualcomm is waiting to make a decision on the transaction because of the possible effects on antitrust laws and tensions with China after the election results.

According to a report from analysts at Bank of America Global Research (BAC), Qualcomm could expand, take the lead in the market for core processor units, or CPUs, for servers, PCs, and mobile devices, and get access to Intel’s extensive chip fabrication facilities by acquiring Intel. They went on to say that Qualcomm would become the world’s largest semiconductor company if its $33 billion in chip revenue were combined with Intel’s $52 billion.

The experts claimed that those advantages would be outweighed by the financial and regulatory obstacles posed by a possible transaction. They are dubious about a prospective takeover and think that Intel’s competitors may gain from the ambiguity surrounding the agreement.

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iPhone 16 Pro Users Report Screen Responsiveness Issues, Hope for Software Fix

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Many iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max users are experiencing significant touchscreen responsiveness problems. Complaints about lagging screens and unresponsive taps and swipes are particularly frustrating for customers who have invested $999 and up in these devices.

The good news is that initial assessments suggest the issue may be software-related rather than a hardware defect. This means that Apple likely won’t need to issue recalls or replacement units; instead, a simple software update could resolve the problem.

The root of the issue might lie in the iOS touch rejection algorithm, which is designed to prevent accidental touches. If this feature is overly sensitive, it could ignore intentional inputs, especially when users’ fingers are near the new Camera Control on the right side of the display. Some users have reported that their intended touches are being dismissed, particularly when their fingers are close to this area.

Additionally, the new, thinner bezels on the iPhone 16 Pro compared to the iPhone 15 Pro could contribute to the problem. With less protection against accidental touches, the device may misinterpret valid taps as mistakes, leading to ignored inputs.

This isn’t the first time Apple has faced challenges with new iPhone models. For instance, the iPhone 4 experienced “Antennagate,” where signal loss occurred depending on how the device was held, prompting Steve Jobs to famously suggest users hold their phones differently. Apple eventually provided free rubber bumpers to mitigate the issue.

To alleviate the touchscreen problem, using a case might help by covering parts of the display and reducing the chances of accidental touches triggering the rejection algorithm. The issue appears on devices running iOS 18 and the iOS 18.1 beta and does not occur when the phone is locked. Users may notice difficulties when swiping through home screens and apps.

Many are hopeful that an upcoming iOS 18 update will address these issues, restoring responsiveness to the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max displays.

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