This Week's AI Snack: Facebook's MusicGen, ClipDrop by Stability AI & More

Welcome back, everyone, to our latest deep dive into some of the most interesting technology and design tools out there. Without further ado, let's delve straight in.

Music Gen: A Novel Music Creation Tool

Our first highlight is an impressive demo from Music Gen, a creation of Facebook's research group. Similar to Google's LLM, Music Gen facilitates music creation with a unique twist - the ability to condition melodies. Despite a few connection hitches during our demo, it eventually lived up to expectations, crafting a 90s rock song with heavy drums and an electric guitar, just as we had specified.

Not only does it give you several pre-filled prompts to work with, but you also get the chance to experiment with creating your own tunes. The more I explore it, the more I realize how much potential there is for non-musicians like me to tap into their latent creativity. With Music Gen, music production is becoming increasingly accessible, and we look forward to seeing how this evolves.

ClipDrop by Stability AI: Powerful Image Manipulation

Next up is ClipDrop by Stability AI, a site teeming with valuable image manipulation tools. Whether you're looking to replace a background, upscale an image, remove unwanted elements, or clean up your images, ClipDrop has got you covered.

A standout feature is the uncropping tool, quite similar to Adobe's Generative Fill, which seamlessly fills in the edges of an image. It performed remarkably well even on abstract art, offering a broader view of the initial image. Furthermore, their Re-Imagine XL tool provides various alternatives from a single image - perfect for when you need a fresh perspective.

While ClipDrop's free account has some limitations, like watermarked images, the range of offerings in their paid version is worth considering, especially if it becomes part of your workflow.

Bard's Continuous Improvements: Google Sheets and More

Bard recently rolled out some understated updates that further enhance its user experience. They now provide the option to export data directly to Google Sheets, a feature that data analysts might find particularly useful.

Bard also upgraded its tech computational prompts, improving its ability to tackle mathematical tasks, coding questions, and string manipulations. They run code in the background using Python, akin to ChatGPT's code interpreter plugin. While there is no option for file uploads yet, this step towards executing code on behalf of users indicates a promising trajectory.

Automator for Figma: Design Automation at its Best

Last but certainly not least is Automator for Figma. This plugin allows you to automate tasks such as spec'ing out your design or importing data from Airtable, saving you valuable time. It even comes with a find and replace feature.

What's more, the community page offers user-created automations, providing inspiration on how to best utilize the plugin and streamline your design process.

That's it for this week's exploration of tech and design tools. We hope you found these insights helpful and feel inspired to check out some of these impressive tools. Stay tuned for more exciting updates in our next piece. Thank you for joining us, and we'll see you next time!

https://huggingface.co/spaces/facebook/MusicGen

https://clipdrop.co/

https://bard.google.com/updates

https://automator.design/

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