Synthetic Media & Generative AI News and Discussions

[firestar464]

Yeah, ideally we'd redistribute wealth already. The sad thing is it takes major crises for governments to do something about anything

[raklian]

[Time_Traveller]

AI-replicated Michael Parkinson to host 'completely unscripted' celebrity podcast

Monday 28 October 2024 16:19, UK



An AI-replicated Sir Michael Parkinson is set to host a new podcast, featuring a series of completely unscripted interviews with celebrities.

Virtually Parkinson is a world-first podcast according to its producers, Deep Fusion Films, and has been made with the support and involvement of Parkinson's family and estate.

Known for his interviews with the world's biggest stars, Parkinson died last year aged 88, following a brief illness.

The eight-part show will use AI technology to synthetically recreate the late presenter's voice and interview style, drawing from a back catalogue of over 2,000 of his interviews.

The system - dubbed "Squark" - uses AI tools to allow live humans to speak with voices from the past.

https://news.sky.com/story/ai-replicate ... t-13243556

[Time_Traveller]

'Sickening' Molly Russell chatbots found on Character.ai

30 October 2024, 12:02 GMT



Chatbot versions of the teenagers Molly Russell and Brianna Ghey have been found on Character.ai - a platform which allows users to create digital versions of people.

Molly Russell took her life at the age of 14 after viewing suicide material online while Brianna Ghey, 16, was murdered by two teenagers in 2023.

The foundation set up in Molly Russell's memory said it was "sickening" and an "utterly reprehensible failure of moderation."

The platform is already being sued in the US by the mother of a 14-year-old boy who she says took his own life after becoming obsessed with a Character.ai chatbot.

Character.ai told the BBC that it took safety seriously and moderated the avatars people created "both proactively and in response to user reports."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg57yd0jr0go

[firestar464]

Funny thing is, they shadowbanned my Taliban chatbot that wasn't created to glorify them (yes, I know, the Taliban suck, but any sane person is going to roleplay as someone fighting them) but they allowed all kinds of garbage bots like "dISaBlEd fRiEnD," "aUtIsTic gIrLfRiEnD" and "sChOOl sHooTer" and did nothing when I contacted them about it. Was one of the reasons I stopped using the service.

[firestar464]

[Powers]

https://oasis.decart.ai/welcome

[weatheriscool]

Microsoft Notepad and Paint, of All Apps, to Get AI Writing and Generative Fill Tools
Time to say goodbye to Gemini and Photoshop? Microsoft is modernizing its classic Windows Notepad and Paint apps with AI features.
By Devesh Beri November 7, 2024

Microsoft has started testing the integration of AI into two of its longstanding Windows applications, Paint and Notepad. These new AI-powered tools are currently available for Windows 11 Insiders in the Canary and Dev Channels.

Paint is getting two new AI features. The first is called "Generative Fill," similar to PhotoShop; it lets users add or modify elements in their artwork by describing the desired changes.

The second feature of Paint, "Generative Erase," lets users remove unwanted objects from their canvas, similar to Google Photo's Magic Eraser. The AI then fills in the empty space, making it look like the object was never there.

"With generative fill, you can make edits and additions with just a few words while maintaining the existing art style of your project. We are also introducing generative erase, a new AI-powered tool that helps you remove unwanted objects from the canvas, filling in the empty space left behind to make it look like the object was never there." said the product manager of the Windows Inbox Apps group, Dave Grochocki, reports Bleeping Computer.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/m ... generative

[firestar464]

AI-generated poetry is indistinguishable from human-written poetry and is rated more favorably

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-76900-1

Notably the model used was 3.5. 4o and later generations are obviously even better.

[Time_Traveller]

Coca-Cola Releases AI-Generated Remake of Christmas Ad and Everyone Hates It

Sat, November 16, 2024, 3:43 AM GMT



Coca-Cola’s 2024 Christmas ads are AI-generated, a decision that is being criticized across social media. The company commissioned three companies to remake its iconic Holidays Are Coming commercial, and the results are predictably terrible.

Coca-Cola is catching flak for its AI-generated remakes of its Holidays Are Coming ad. Viewers almost universally hate them despite Coke’s marketing research indicating the contrary would happen. X and YouTube comments are filled with vitriol and promises to boycott the company’s products.

But why did Coke feel the need to update the classic? According to AdAge, Jason Zada, founder of Secret Level, one of the three companies Coke commissioned to make an AI ad, stated it was to “re-imagine it for a whole new generation.” Coke’s European CMO Javier Meza says the company wanted to bring the 30-year-old ad to “today’s times.” However, when Coke ran the original 1995 version of Holidays Are Coming last year, it was ranked as the UK’s second most effective holiday ad overall by System1. It would seem that indicates that the new generation likes the old ad just fine.

Meza’s idea of bringing the ad up to date is that the crowd shown in the ad is more diverse than in the original. However, that’s not actually the case. Those aren’t real people in the ad. They’re AI-generated hallucinations. Pratik Thakar, Coca-Cola’s VP and global head of generative AI, stated that the people seen in the commercial are based on real actors who gave permission to use their likenesses, but that doesn’t change the fact that the human aspect has been almost entirely removed from its creation.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/coc ... =serp_auto

[Cyber_Rebel]

More curious what would've happened if they never said anything. People are quick to forget how much further along this is compared to even last year.

[firestar464]

How have corps not realized that AI isn't popular?

"BUT IT ISN'T REAL! NOT HUMAN!" Chill people, it's a bloody corporate ad. Did y'all expect this to be an Oscar winning short film? Regardless perhaps it's alright that people are cooling it on the Coke, as they'll drink healthier stuff now.

(It's also worth noting a lot of AI ethicists actually want people to responsibly disclose their use of AI. If they hadn't people would've gotten mad because of the lack of disclosure)

I also doubt the boycott will last. People can't even figure out how to boycott Amazon and X for far worse deeds.

[Powers]

Coca-Cola Releases AI-Generated Remake of Christmas Ad and Everyone Hates It

Sat, November 16, 2024, 3:43 AM GMT



Coca-Cola’s 2024 Christmas ads are AI-generated, a decision that is being criticized across social media. The company commissioned three companies to remake its iconic Holidays Are Coming commercial, and the results are predictably terrible.

Coca-Cola is catching flak for its AI-generated remakes of its Holidays Are Coming ad. Viewers almost universally hate them despite Coke’s marketing research indicating the contrary would happen. X and YouTube comments are filled with vitriol and promises to boycott the company’s products.

But why did Coke feel the need to update the classic? According to AdAge, Jason Zada, founder of Secret Level, one of the three companies Coke commissioned to make an AI ad, stated it was to “re-imagine it for a whole new generation.” Coke’s European CMO Javier Meza says the company wanted to bring the 30-year-old ad to “today’s times.” However, when Coke ran the original 1995 version of Holidays Are Coming last year, it was ranked as the UK’s second most effective holiday ad overall by System1. It would seem that indicates that the new generation likes the old ad just fine.

Meza’s idea of bringing the ad up to date is that the crowd shown in the ad is more diverse than in the original. However, that’s not actually the case. Those aren’t real people in the ad. They’re AI-generated hallucinations. Pratik Thakar, Coca-Cola’s VP and global head of generative AI, stated that the people seen in the commercial are based on real actors who gave permission to use their likenesses, but that doesn’t change the fact that the human aspect has been almost entirely removed from its creation.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/coc ... =serp_auto

Lion King tier.

[Powers]

How have corps not realized that AI isn't popular?

The self-sabotage and department are too strong to ignore.

[weatheriscool]

HeyGen to Easily Make Pictures into Video Clones
November 21, 2024 by Brian Wang

HeyGen offers some the best and easiest to use AI video cloning. You can upload a picture and it will create animations of the person in the picture.

There are many other systems for cloning voices from audio clips.

Vasa-1 is an unreleased Microsoft AI for near realtime mimicking of voices and video faces from a picture and an audio file.

Microsoft Research has still not released Vasa-1 which can clone voices and realistically animate faces in near realtime.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/11/h ... lones.html

[firestar464]

How Did You Do On The AI Art Turing Test?

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/how-di ... art-turing

[firestar464]

CAT4D: Create Anything in 4D with Multi-View Diffusion Models

https://cat-4d.github.io/

[weatheriscool]

Uncanny: AI video conversation agents can now look back at you
By Loz Blain
November 30, 2024

Every facet of AI feels like it's advanced by a decade in the last year, and in the whirlwind of new releases and capabilities, you may have missed something important: interactive video chatbots that can see, hear and converse with you in real time.

Look, don't mind me, I'm over here still blown away by how good ChatGPT's advanced voice mode is. Multimodal AIs are proving themselves every bit as capable at expressing themselves in audio and video form as they have in the written word.

A couple of years ago, the idea of having a video chat with a fairly lifelike, photorealistic AI would have seemed ridiculously futuristic. Yet here we are in 2024, I've just spoken to five of them, and I'm now so conditioned to immediately accepting new breakthrough technologies that it already feels completely normal.

https://newatlas.com/ai-humanoids/tavus ... -video-ai/

[firestar464]

A bit late, but

https://runwayml.com/research/introducing-frames

[wjfox]