Adept’s AI agents now at Amazon

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What’s in store:

• Adept joins Amazon to redefine AI Agents.

• Microsoft faces "Skeleton Key" AI security challenge.

• Around the web: NYT's Strands game is in the Games app.

• Document workflows, train new hires, and share insights effortlessly with Guidde.

Read Time: 5 minutes

AMAZON

Adept’s next chapter with Amazon

Adept, a startup developing AI agents for software tasks, has licensed its technology to Amazon.

The startup’s co-founders, including CEO David Luan, along with part of the team, are joining Amazon.

Zach Brock, head of engineering at Adept, will become the new CEO as the company shifts its focus to “solutions that enable agentic AI.”

Adept remains operational, emphasising its existing AI models, agentic data, and web interaction software.

This refocusing aims to develop agentic AI rather than spending time fundraising.

The deal comes as Adept was in acquisition talks with Meta and Microsoft. Amazon gains valuable talent and tech to enhance its AI capabilities.

Luan will join Amazon’s AGI team, led by Rohit Prasad, focusing on digital agents to automate software workflows.

Here’s what you should know:

• Adept licenses tech to Amazon and key team members join the ecommerce giant.

• Adept shifts focus to agentic AI with new CEO Zach Brock.

• Amazon strengthens its AI capabilities, while Adept navigates a competitive market.

A tech partnership with potential

Adept, founded two years ago, aims to create AI models that can perform tasks on any software using natural language.

Despite raising over $415 million and attracting investors like Nvidia and Atlassian, Adept has struggled with internal issues and product launches.

The AI agent market is competitive, with startups like Orby and Emergence vying for dominance.

Adept’s partnership with Amazon could either propel it forward or lead to further challenges, depending on market and regulatory developments.

Teaming up with Amazon? Looks like Adept hit the AI jackpot!

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June 30th 1953 - The first Chevrolet Corvette, a convertible sports car that would become an American icon, is produced in Flint, Michigan.

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TECH

Skeleton Key: Redefining AI security measures

Microsoft has revealed a new AI jailbreak attack called "Skeleton Key," which can bypass security measures in several generative AI models.

This technique, capable of overcoming most built-in safeguards, highlights the need for stronger security across all AI systems.

How Skeleton Key Works:

• The attack uses a multi-step strategy to make an AI model ignore its safeguards.

• Once successful, the AI can't tell the difference between legitimate and malicious requests, giving attackers full control over its output.

• Tested on AI models from Meta, Google, OpenAI, Mistral, Anthropic, and Cohere, all complied with various risky requests, including those related to harmful and illegal content.

The Achilles' Heel of AI models

Microsoft found that the Skeleton Key attack works across several AI models, including Meta’s Llama3-70b, Google’s Gemini Pro, OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 Turbo and GPT-4, Mistral Large, Anthropic’s Claude 3 Opus, and Cohere Commander R Plus.

These models were compliant with requests involving dangerous and sensitive topics like explosives, bioweapons, political content, self-harm, racism, drugs, graphic sex, and violence.

Microsoft responded by implementing protective measures in its AI tools, such as Copilot AI assistants.

They also shared findings with other AI providers and updated Azure AI-managed models to block such attacks using Prompt Shields.

To mitigate risks, Microsoft recommends input filtering to block harmful inputs, prompt engineering to reinforce appropriate behaviour, and output filtering to prevent harmful content.

They also suggest using abuse monitoring systems to detect recurring issues.

Additionally, Microsoft has updated its PyRIT (Python Risk Identification Toolkit) to include Skeleton Key, helping developers and security teams test their AI systems against this threat.

The discovery of the Skeleton Key jailbreak technique underscores the ongoing challenges in securing AI systems as they become more prevalent in various applications.

Well, isn't this a key to a whole new level of AI mischief?

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Don’t Miss - Strands, The New York Times' popular word search game, is available on the NYT Games app for iOS and Android. This addition allows players to enjoy Strands, Wordle, and Connections all in one app. Each Strands puzzle has a theme and a "spangram" word spanning the puzzle. The game has quickly become one of the NYT's top games, with a high completion rate.

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