How Hyperreal CEO Remington Scott Is Giving the Metaverse a Soul (video talk)
... Hyperreal, which is known for its “Hypermodel” digital humans, has ... with entertainment mogul Simon Fuller and Verizon, invented an AI-driven alien pop princess named Alta B who appeared with the boy band Now United in their “Jump” video. (With 60 million views, “Jump” is the most-watched video featuring a virtual being.) Signaling confidence in Hyperreal’s continued growth, the Korean giant CJ ENM took a minority stake in Hyperreal in April.
... The fact that the digital versions of real, flesh-and-blood humans are owned by their real, flesh-and-blood human selves (or their estate) means that they can one day bring those models into other virtual spaces in the metaverse — a critical component to Web3 and the metaverse. ...
See the full story here: https://www.thewrap.com/innovators-2022-remington-scott-hyperreal/?fbclid=IwAR1Kd40h_Wm4e-rNA50old4cB_YDnpKeBZPtbz_l4odGeGvxgtBHpfVx29U
Can Bruce Willis Lose the Right to His Own Voice?
... Additionally, the muddle probably ensued because Willis has been diagnosed with aphasia, a disorder that impacts speech. In March, he had announced his retirement from acting. AI can theoretically fix this by training itself on older recordings of his voice and synthesizing that into new content. It’s been done for other prominent actors but there’s no plan to do this for Willis. ...
In April, the union launched a campaign to strengthen performers rights amid a “huge growth of AI across the entertainment industry,” Budd said, adding that 93% of voice actors saw AI as a threat to their employment. ...
“We have cases where famous voice actors and big motivational speakers want to scale themselves to different regions,” says Alex Serdiuk, the Chief Executive of Respeecher, a Ukrainian AI firm that de-aged the voices of Mark Hamill and James Earl Jones for recent releases of the Star Wars franchise. Respeecher’s technology can also convert a person’s speech into different languages. ...
One potential resolution: Equity says it plans to reach out to AI firms to try and establish collective bargaining agreements and better terms and conditions for artists who do AI work. The union wouldn’t comment on which companies it is talking to, and didn’t mention any names like Respeecher. For its part, the Ukranian company said it had been talking to unions and was open to having conversations with industry groups about frameworks for payment. ...
See the full story here: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-10-11/actors-could-be-signing-away-lucrative-rights-to-their-own-voices
Why Silicon Valley is so excited about awkward drawings done by artificial intelligence
- Several new programs, commonly called generative AI, released in the past few years can take a single phrase and generate never-before-seen images that match the prompt.
- The pictures are anything but perfect.
- Most programs give you infinite images to choose from, and there’s nothing stopping a human from using a generated image as a starting point for a more polished piece.
How generative AI works
Startups, cloud providers, and chip makers could thrive
Ethical issues
See the full story here: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/08/generative-ai-silicon-valleys-next-trillion-dollar-companies.html
Uiterwaal using Catalyst award to marry augmented reality, quantum physics
... The new project — Quantum Business, Arts and Science for Society, or Q-BASS — comes courtesy of Nebraska U’s Grand Challenges Catalyst Competition. That four-year, $40 million effort will address what Chancellor Ronnie Green, the Office of Research and Economic Development, and the Husker community have identified as seven of the “wicked problems” facing society. Two of those seven themes? Quantum Science and Engineering, where Uiterwaal’s expertise lies, and Science and Technology Literacy for Society, where the augmented reality comes in.
Though Uiterwaal had known about AR for a while, it wasn’t until meeting Jesse Fleming, founding director of the Awareness-Based Design Lab at Nebraska’s Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts, that he began to grasp its true promise for quantum physics. Not long after, with support from the Carson Center and Department of Physics and Astronomy, the pair was creating a straightforward ARexperience that essentially served as a proof-of-concept for Uiterwaal’s vision. ...
The duo has since recruited Husker physicist Herman Batelaan, chemist Alena Moon and multimedia artist Jinku Kim, plus the University of Nebraska Omaha’s Chris Moore, to help create and assess the educational value of quantum-focused AR experiences. ...
See the full story here: https://news.unl.edu/newsrooms/today/article/uiterwaal-using-catalyst-award-to-marry-augmented-reality-quantum-physics/
Meta’s Virtual Reality Meets Facebook’s Harsh Real World
... And the company at least has some positive momentum to build on, given strong sales of its Quest 2 VR headset that launched in late 2020. That device is designed mostly for videogaming and sold nearly 8.8 million units last year—more than the total number of headsets sold by Meta for the previous five years combined, according to estimates by IDC.
But success in VR is a highly relative concept, as even gamers have been lukewarm on the technology. Total revenue from VR games last year was $1.5 billion—less than 3% of the total revenue generated by console games for the year, according to market research firm Newzoo. ...
Mr. Zuckerberg’s vision to bring the metaverse to a billion people is an expensive one; the company has maintained its target of spending up to $34 billion in capital expenditures this year, which is double what it has averaged over the past three years.
So having less money coming in the door is a problem. ...
See the full story here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-meta-virtual-reality-metaverse-11665087982
The future of augmented reality in four charts
... “Rather than seeing similar things it shows you something quite different, so we give creators the opportunity to break people out of that reinforcing bubble.”
Cohen, a tech humanist — or person who believes in using immersive technology to nurture intellectual and creative potential while centring the vulnerability in us all — thinks that augmented reality developers could learn from theme park experience design.
“Experience designers at The Walt Disney Company know that when you are building a world, you have to build a sanctuary for people,” she says. “You have to build in rest, you have to build in a space where people can breathe for a second.”
See the full story here: https://sifted.eu/articles/future-augmented-reality-data-brnd/
