{"id":15887,"date":"2025-02-04T19:13:54","date_gmt":"2025-02-04T19:13:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=15887"},"modified":"2025-02-04T19:13:54","modified_gmt":"2025-02-04T19:13:54","slug":"microsofts-mustafa-suleyman-poaches-deepmind-staff-behind-popular-ai-podcasting-feature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=15887","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft\u2019s Mustafa Suleyman poaches DeepMind staff behind popular AI podcasting feature"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> \n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__content-sign-up-topic-description\"><span>Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"article__content-sign-up-iframe close\" scrolling=\"no\" id=\"signUpIframe\" data-prev-url=\"\/register\/in-article-sign-up?ft-content-uuid=51bb0496-59ab-4a75-a410-14c097104594\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div id=\"article-body\">\n<p>Microsoft\u2019s artificial intelligence head Mustafa Suleyman has poached his former colleagues at Google DeepMind who built its popular podcast-generating feature, as the rival companies race to build lucrative applications from the cutting-edge technology.<\/p>\n<p>Suleyman, a British entrepreneur who co-founded DeepMind in 2010, has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/posts\/mustafa-suleyman_super-excited-to-have-the-amazing-zal%C3%A1n-borsos-activity-7292557584492888064-ybQ-\/\" data-trackable=\"link\">hired<\/a> Marco Tagliasacchi and Zal\u00e1n Borsos, two senior scientists behind \u201cAudio Overviews\u201d which is part of Google\u2019s AI research tool NotebookLM. The feature allows users to transform text into audio that has the style of an engaging conversational podcast.<\/p>\n<p>The pair also worked on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/fc2f9c44-76ad-4f00-8f1a-e15d268660f2\" data-trackable=\"link\">Astra<\/a>, DeepMind\u2019s upcoming AI agent, which can answer questions in real time across video, audio and text. <\/p>\n<p>A third hire from DeepMind, Matthias Minderer, will focus on developing vision capabilities, or the ability for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/artificial-intelligence\" data-trackable=\"link\">AI<\/a> models to analyse images. The researchers will join Microsoft\u2019s new AI lab in Zurich.<br \/><strong><br \/><\/strong>The three men announced their moves on Tuesday. A person familiar with the hires said the researchers were integral to Suleyman\u2019s push to build the next generation of Copilot, as Microsoft seeks to create interactive <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/a0e54dd5-b270-42cc-8c4c-18a0b8b3e6cc\" data-trackable=\"link\">AI agents<\/a> which can complete tasks from booking flights to managing calendars.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a stellar team and will be an important hub for [Microsoft AI] alongside our London office, which is growing fast too!\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/stream\/96ff6c54-6c92-4eee-8003-cd383170c2b2\" data-trackable=\"link\">Suleyman<\/a> wrote on LinkedIn. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cAI continues to be a transformative force, with audio playing a critical role in shaping more natural, intuitive and immersive interactions,\u201d wrote Tagliasacchi <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/posts\/marco-tagliasacchi_pleased-to-announce-i-have-joined-microsoft-activity-7292546389115326466-_8kB\" data-trackable=\"link\">on LinkedIn<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>The move comes amid a fierce battle for talent between rival tech groups for the best AI talent. <\/p>\n<p>Suleyman left DeepMind in 2022 to work as a venture investor, and later created AI start-up Inflection.<\/p>\n<p>He joined Microsoft in March 2024 as part of a deal that brought several members of Inflection\u2019s staff to the US tech giant. Suleyman has hired members of Google DeepMind\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/c41b9dec-d823-466f-a880-d223e3c34e19\" data-trackable=\"link\">health AI unit<\/a>, as well as prominent AI researchers from the company such as Nando de Freitas. Google has also lost top AI talent to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/87054a60-dc4d-4238-a4b9-93ab48f22f56\" data-trackable=\"link\">competitor Apple<\/a>.<\/p>\n<aside aria-labelledby=\"aside-label\" class=\"n-content-recommended--single-story n-content-recommended--inset\" data-component=\"recommended\">\n<p class=\"n-content-recommended__title\">Recommended<\/p>\n<div class=\"o-teaser o-teaser--article o-teaser--small o-teaser--stacked o-teaser--has-image js-teaser\" data-id=\"fa8bad75-dc55-47d9-9eb4-79ac94e54d82\">\n<div class=\"o-teaser__image-container js-teaser-image-container\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/fa8bad75-dc55-47d9-9eb4-79ac94e54d82\" data-trackable=\"image-link\" tabindex=\"-1\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"o-teaser__image-placeholder\" style=\"aspect-ratio:2048\/1152\"><\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Microsoft and Google are among the companies focusing on creating agents through \u201cmultimodal\u201d AI models, which can analyse and comprehend the content in audio, videos or images. <strong\/><\/p>\n<p>Last year, OpenAI launched an advanced voice mode for ChatGPT, which, for example, allowed users to interact with AI in a more natural-sounding way. Google\u2019s Astra voice-powered AI agent Astra is due to launch in 2025, while Amazon is seeking to introduce AI models to its voice-powered digital assistant Alexa.<\/p>\n<p>Google DeepMind declined to comment. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/51bb0496-59ab-4a75-a410-14c097104594\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":15888,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tech","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}