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The future isn’t asking for consent anymore. The United Arab Emirates made a national move no tech giant dared to try. A former Meta exec warned that following copyright law could kill AI altogether. UBS replaced its analysts with cloned avatars. And a 19-year-old founder thinks your robot should sweat before it moves.
When governments, banks, and startups all bypass the old playbook, who’s really setting the AI agenda now?
In today’s Generative AI Newsletter:
UAE offers ChatGPT Plus to all citizens, reshaping AI geopolitics
UBS rolls out AI analyst avatars in finance
Nick Clegg says consent laws could stall entire AI sectors
Robots start sweating thanks to Intempus’ physiological AI
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🌴 This Country Just Made ChatGPT Plus Free for Everyone
Image Source: G42
The United Arab Emirates is giving every citizen free access to ChatGPT Plus, normally a $20/month subscription, through a sweeping national partnership with OpenAI, marking the most ambitious AI public access program to date.
Key Developments:
Universal Access: Every UAE citizen will receive complimentary ChatGPT Plus access, eliminating financial barriers to frontier AI.
Strategic Partnership: The deal is part of OpenAI for Countries, a new initiative supporting sovereign AI capabilities, launched in coordination with the U.S. government.
Massive Infrastructure Push: The UAE is also building Stargate UAE, a 1GW data center in Abu Dhabi, starting with 200MW in 2026, as a regional AI compute hub.
Dual Investment: UAE will invest in U.S.-based Stargate infrastructure, building on a broader $1.4 trillion U.S.-UAE tech partnership.
Sectoral Reach: The AI rollout will support UAE's innovation efforts in healthcare, education, government, energy, and more.
This is a geopolitical power move disguised as a tech giveaway. By making ChatGPT Plus a public utility, the UAE is not only building AI fluency into its citizenry but also asserting itself as an AI-forward state.
đź‘€ Ex-Meta Exec Warns: Mandatory Consent Could Derail AI
Image Source: The Verge
Former Meta executive Nick Clegg has sparked fresh debate by warning that requiring permission to train AI models on copyrighted data could “basically kill” national AI sectors. Speaking at a book event, Clegg argued that mandated consent is incompatible with how large-scale AI works.
Key Points:
Preemptive Permission “Implausible”: Clegg said seeking consent from every rights holder beforehand would “collide with the physics of the technology.”
UK AI Risk: He warned that if Britain enforced strict consent rules while others didn’t, its AI industry would be “killed” by regulatory imbalance.
Opt-Out Suggestion: As a compromise, he floated the idea of an opt-out system, which he claimed would offer a “natural justice” for artists.
Industry Stakes: The remarks come as lawsuits from artists, authors, and media companies pile up over the use of copyrighted training data.
The industry depends on sprawling datasets, much of it copyrighted, but now faces mounting legal and moral scrutiny. An opt-out system might buy time, but without real compensation frameworks, the trust gap between creators and AI firms is only going to widen.
🏦 UBS Deploys AI Avatars to Replace Analyst Videos
Photo credit: LT archives
UBS has started using AI avatars of its analysts to deliver research insights to clients. The program, launched in January, already includes over 36 avatars and could soon scale to thousands of videos annually.
Key Points:
UBS uses Synthesia to generate realistic avatars of analysts, replicating their voice and appearance for client-facing research videos.
Content is converted into scripts using OpenAI models, reviewed by analysts, and rendered as personalized avatar videos.
UBS aims to jump from 1,000 to 5,000 videos per year, helping analysts focus on research while expanding reach.
In countries like Switzerland, avatars enable fast translation across multiple languages, enhancing accessibility.
All avatar videos are labeled as AI-generated to avoid misleading clients, though rollout has slowed for some due to accent rendering issues.
This is one of the clearest examples of AI avatars entering regulated, high-trust sectors like finance. UBS is betting that clients care more about speed and format than whether a human delivered the message.
🤖 Should Robots Sweat, Stress, and Smile?
Image Credit: Teddy Warner Via Youtube
Nineteen-year-old founder Teddy Warner is building Intempus, a startup focused on giving robots a human physiological state. By capturing signals like heart rate, sweat, and body temperature to improve how AI learns spatial dynamics.
Key Points:
Warner got the idea while working at AI lab Midjourney, where he realized that robots lacked a critical middle layer of "physiological state"
Intempus built a system that lets robots simulate stress, joy, or calm helping them move more naturally and signal intent through body motion.
Rather than relying on facial expressions, robots use subtle torso and limb movements to convey emotion, mirroring how humans interpret nonverbal cues.
Launched in September 2024, Intempus has already signed seven enterprise robotics partners and joined the Thiel Fellowship. Robots that can express emotion through genuine physiological modeling and could be a turning point in human-machine interaction.
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