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Chinese AI startup Shengshu launches image-to-video tool, rivaling Sora

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Pictured here is an AI-generated clip from Vidu’s website. The tool can create videos from text or image prompts.

Evelyn Cheng | CNBC

BEIJING — Beijing-based Shengshu Technology on Wednesday said that its artificial intelligence-powered text-to-video tool Vidu will now be able to generate videos by combining images.

Vidu already allows users worldwide to create 8-second clips based on written prompts. While OpenAI the maker of ChatGPT — in February revealed that its AI model Sora could generate one-minute videos from text, it has yet to release that publicly.

Vidu’s new AI feature can combine three pictures — such as a shirt, person and moped — into a video of the person wearing the shirt and driving the moped through a scene, Shengshu said.

Other platforms claim they can turn text or images into videos using AI, but the quality of output varies. The breakthrough that Shengshu claims is the ability to take three unique images and integrate them with visual consistency into an AI-generated video.

“Very early on we pinpointed [visual consistency] as the problem, and wanted to solve it well,” Fan Bao, chief technology officer at Shengshu, said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC.

Vidu launched in April and its ability to turn two profile photos into lifelike videos of people hugging went viral on TikTok.

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The AI video generator is already making money from advertisers, animators and other businesses, Shengshu co-founder and CEO Jiayu Tang said in Mandarin, according to a CNBC translation. He said monthly usage rates per customer can range from 100,000 yuan to 1 million yuan ($13,871 to $138,711).

To address copyright issues, Tang said a company might sign a deal with an artist that allows the AI to mimic the artist’s style of painting for an advertisement. He said he hadn’t seen significant legal cases around consumers’ use of images.

Tang added that Vidu doesn’t allow the public to generate content using images of celebrities or “sensitive” individuals. He said the AI tool also bans nudes and violent images. As for personal photos, Tang said Vidu destroys the data in accordance with general data protection regulation — a global benchmark.

Shengshu was founded last year with backers including Baidu Ventures, Alibaba-affiliate Ant Group, Chinese startup Zhipu AI, Qiming Venture Partners and Beijing city, according to PitchBook.

Tang said Vidu’s AI runs off rented cloud servers in China and abroad.

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Donald Trump selects Kevin Hassett to lead National Economic Council

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White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Kevin Hassett addresses reporters during the daily briefing at the White House in Washington, U.S. February 22, 2018.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

President-elect Donald Trump picked Kevin Hassett to lead the National Economic Council, a role that puts him at the center of the administration’s policy-making discussions from trade to taxes and deregulation.

The move brings Trump closer to rounding out his economic team, with U.S. trade representative being the last of the key positions left.

Trump made the announcement in a post on Truth Social.

During Trump’s first administration, Hassett served as the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for two years, supporting the Republican’s corporate tax cuts and defending Trump’s punitive tariffs.

The 62-year-old Hassett also worked with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner on immigration and backed a move to end waivers of sanctions for countries that buy Iranian oil.

The appointment came as Trump renewed his vow to raise tariffs by an additional 10% on all Chinese goods coming into the U.S. and impose tariffs of 25% on all products from Mexico and Canada. Such a move would end a regional free trade agreement.

Trump is set to be inaugurated as the next U.S. president on Jan. 20. He cited illegal immigration and illicit drug trade as reasons for the tariffs.

Hassett previously served as a scholar of fiscal policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank before Trump nominated him to the White House role in 2017.

Late last week, Trump signaled his intention to nominate Scott Bessent, founder of hedge fund Key Square Group and a seasoned market pro, as his Treasury secretary.

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Fed officials see interest rate cuts ahead, but only ‘gradually,’ meeting minutes show

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Federal Reserve officials expressed confidence that inflation is easing and the labor market is strong, allowing for further interest rate cuts albeit at a gradual pace, according to minutes from the November meeting released Tuesday.

The meeting summary contained multiple statements indicating that officials are comfortable with the pace of inflation, even though by most measures it remains above the Fed’s 2% goal.

With that in mind, and with conviction that the jobs picture is still fairly solid, Federal Open Market Committee members indicated that further rate cuts likely will happen, though they did not specify when and to what degree.

“In discussing the outlook for monetary policy, participants anticipated that if the data came in about
as expected, with inflation continuing to move down sustainably to 2 percent and the economy
remaining near maximum employment, it would likely be appropriate to move gradually toward a more neutral stance of policy over time,” the minutes said.

The FOMC voted unanimously at the meeting to take down its benchmark borrowing rate by a quarter percentage point to a target range of 4.5%-4.75%. Markets expect the Fed could cut again in December, though conviction has waned among concerns that President-elect Donald Trump‘s plans for tariffs could stoke inflation higher.

The meeting concluded two days after the contentious presidential election campaign resulted in the Republican emerging as the victor and set to begin serving his second term in January.
There was no mention of the election in the minutes, save for a staff notation that stock market volatility rose before the Nov. 5 results and fell after. There also was no discussion of the implications of fiscal policy, despite anticipation that Trump’s plans, which also include lower taxes and aggressive deregulation, could have substantial economic impacts.

However, members did note a general level of uncertainty about how conditions are evolving. In addition, they expressed uncertainty over where the rate cuts would need to stop before the Fed hit a “neutral” interest rate that neither boosts nor restrains growth.

“Many participants observed that uncertainties concerning the level of the neutral rate of interest complicated the assessment of the degree of restrictiveness of monetary policy and, in their view, made it appropriate to reduce policy restraint gradually,” the minutes said.

Conflicting signals on inflation and the uncertainty over Trump’s policies have caused traders to scale back their outlook for interest rate cuts ahead. The market-implied probability of a rate trim in December has drifted below 60%, with an expectation of just three-quarters of a percentage point in reductions through the end of the 2025.

Committee members appeared to spend much of the meeting talking about progress on inflation and a generally stable economic outlook.

Policymakers in recent days have expressed confidence that current inflation readings are being boosted by shelter cost increases that are expected to slow as the pace of rent rises eases and makes its way through the data.

“Almost all participants judged that, though month-to-month movements would remain volatile, incoming data generally remained consistent with inflation returning sustainably to 2 percent,” the document said.
“Participants cited various factors likely to put continuing downward pressure on inflation, including waning business pricing power, the Committee’s still-restrictive monetary policy stance, and well-anchored longer-term inflation expectations,” it added.

Policymakers had been expressing concern about the labor market. Nonfarm payrolls rose only 12,000 in October, though the meager gain has been attributed primarily to storms in the Southeast and labor strikes.

Officials indicated that the state of the labor market is generally solid.

“Participants generally noted … that there was no sign of rapid deterioration in labor market conditions, with layoffs remaining low,” the minutes said.

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