philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

TikTok tweaks guidelines with new rules for LIVE creators, AI content, and more

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A key addition highlights TikTok's stance on commercial content. The platform now states that creators must disclose commercial partnerships. Moreover, it warns that any content directing users to purchase products outside TikTok will see its visibility reduced in regions where TikTok Shop is operational - signalling the company's strong push to keep transactions within its ecosystem.

Accountability for TikTok LIVE

Creators hosting TikTok LIVE sessions face stricter responsibilities. The updated rules stress that hosts are accountable for everything that occurs during a live stream, including third-party tools like auto-translation or text-to-speech services.

If those tools generate harmful or rule-breaking content, TikTok holds the creator responsible. ...

The revisions come as social media giants face increasing regulatory scrutiny under laws like the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA), the UK's Online Safety Act (OSA), and the US TAKE IT DOWN Act.

See the full story here: https://www.storyboard18.com/brand-makers/tiktok-tweaks-guidelines-with-new-rules-for-live-creators-ai-content-and-more-78992.htm

Cat soap operas and babies trapped in space: the ‘AI slop’ taking over YouTube

... Nearly one in 10 of the fastest growing YouTube channels globally are showing AI-generated content only, as breakthroughs in the technology spur a flood of artificial content. ...

AI video generation has surged amid the release of powerful tools such as Google’s Veo 3 and Elon Musk’s Grok Imagine. ...

Many of these videos qualify as “AI slop”, which refers to low-quality, mass-produced content that is surreal, uncanny or simply grotesque. But some contain a brief, rudimentary plot – in a sign of the growing sophistication of AI-generated content.

“This enshittification is ruining online communities on Pinterest, competing for revenue with artists on Spotify and flooding YouTube with poor quality content.” ...

See the full story here: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/aug/11/cat-soap-operas-and-babies-trapped-in-space-the-ai-slop-taking-over-youtube

Shelly Palmer: The Godfather of AI Just Proposed the Weirdest Solution Yet

... The real message isn’t about coding maternal instincts; it’s that our entire approach to AI safety may need rethinking. We’re still treating AI like software when we should be treating it like the new form of intelligence it is. ...

See the full story here: https://shellypalmer.com/2025/08/the-godfather-of-ai-just-proposed-the-weirdest-solution-yet/

What Does Palantir Actually Do?

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Xia was one of 13 former Palantir staffers who signed an open letter published in May arguing that the company risks being complicit in authoritarianism by continuing to cooperate with the Trump administration. She and other former Palantir staffers who spoke to WIRED for this story argue that, in order to grapple with Palantir and its role in the world, let alone hold the company accountable, you need to first understand what it really is.

It’s not that former employees literally don’t know what Palantir is selling. In interviews with WIRED, they spoke fluidly about how its software can connect and transform different kinds of data collected by government agencies and corporations. ...

Part of the answer may lie in Palantir’s marketing strategy. Pinto says he believes that the company, which recently began using the tagline “software that dominates,” has cultivated its mysterious public image on purpose. Unlike consumer-facing startups that need to clearly explain their products to everyday users, Palantir’s main audience is sprawling government agencies and Fortune 500 companies. ...

What it’s ultimately selling them is not just software, but the idea of a seamless, almost magical solution to complex problems. ...

Underneath the jargon and marketing, Palantir sells tools that its customers—corporations, nonprofits, government agencies—use to sort through data. What makes Palantir different from other tech companies is the scale and scope of its products. ...

Crucially, Palantir doesn’t reorganize a company's bins and pipes, so to speak, meaning it doesn’t change how data is collected or how it moves through the guts of an organization. Instead, its software sits on top of a customer’s messy systems and allows them to integrate and analyze data without needing to fix the underlying architecture. ...

Palantir’s software is designed with nontechnical users in mind. Rather than relying on specialized technical teams to parse and analyze data, Palantir allows people across an organization to get insights, sometimes without writing a single line of code. All they need to do is log into one of Palantir’s two primary platforms: Foundry, for commercial users, or Gotham, for law enforcement and government users. ...

Customers need to already have the data they want to work with—Palantir itself does not provide any. ...

A former Palantir staffer who has used Gotham says that, in just minutes, a law enforcement official or government analyst can map out who may be in a person’s network and see documents that link them together. They can also centralize everything an agency knows about a person in one place, including their eye color from their driver’s license, or their license plate from a traffic ticket—making it easy to build a detailed intelligence report. They can also use Gotham to search for a person based on a characteristic, like their immigration status, what state they live in, or whether they have tattoos. ...

He’s now deeply worried that an authoritarian state could use this power to “tell any narrative they want” about, say, immigrants or dissidents it may be seeking to arrest or deport. He says that software like Palantir’s doesn’t eliminate human bias. ...

When Gotham users connect disparate pieces of information about a person, it could seem like they are reading their whole life story, rather than just a slice of it.

“It's a really powerful tool,” says one former Palantir employee. “And when it's in the wrong hands, it can be really dangerous. And I think people should be really scared about it.”

See the full story here: https://www.wired.com/story/palantir-what-the-company-does/

Turkish Coffee recipe

Apropos of nothing more than I love Turkish food, here is a great 6 min tutorial on making Turkish Coffee. https://aegeandelight.com/how-to-make-turkish-coffee/#tasty-recipes-3186-jump-target

Tutorial – RAG vs. Fine-Tuning vs. Prompt Engineering

This is an excellent short primer explaining the three ways to make an AI more accurate and more efficient.

See the 13 minute video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYGDpG-pTho

‘No safety rules’: Concerns grow as AI-generated videos spread hate online

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In recent months similar AI-generated content has flooded social media platforms, openly promoting violence and spreading hate against members of LGBTQ+, Jewish, Muslim and other minority groups.

While the origin of most of those videos is unclear, their spread on social media is sparking outrage and concern among experts and advocates who say Canadian regulations cannot keep up with the pace of hateful AI-generated content, nor adequately address the risks it poses to public safety. 

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"When they create the environment where there's a lot of celebration of violence towards those groups, it does make violence towards those groups happening in person or on the streets more likely,” Balgord warned in a phone interview. ...

Lewis, who is also an assistant professor at Ontario Tech University, said that large language models such as ChatGPT have implemented safeguards in an effort to filter out harmful or illegal content.  

But more needs to be done in the video space to create such guardrails, he said. 

“You and I could watch the video and probably be horrified,” he said, adding “it's not clear necessarily that the AI system has the ability to sort of reflect on what it has created.” ...

See the full story here: https://www.chroniclejournal.com/news/national/no-safety-rules-concerns-grow-as-ai-generated-videos-spread-hate-online/article_a564632e-e801-50d9-968e-96dd5d556ad4.html

Ex-Google Exec Says Super Intelligent AI Is Reporting To Stupid Leaders. That’s Why Short-Term Dystopia Is Coming And There’s No Escaping It

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Capitalism, Not AI, Is The Problem

While tech leaders often frame AI as a tool to make work easier or enhance human capabilities, Gawdat doesn't buy it. “There's absolutely nothing wrong with AI—there's a lot wrong with the value set of humanity at the age of the rise of the machines,” he said. He blames profit-driven systems for deploying AI in ways that hurt workers and society.

“CEOs are celebrating that they can now get rid of people and have productivity gains and cost reductions because AI can do that job,” Gawdat said. “The one thing they don't think of is AI will replace them, too.”

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See the full story here: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ex-google-exec-says-super-170134508.html

As AI Kills Jobs, Sam Altman Says Gen Z Are The ‘Luckiest’ Kids In History

... Quizzed if AI would potentially cause job displacement, Mr Altman shrugged it off, saying it was a cyclical process.

"This always happens, and young people are the best at adapting to this. I'm more worried about what it means, not for the 22-year-old, but for the 62-year-old that doesn't want to go retrain or reskill or whatever the politicians call it." ...

While Mr Altman takes an optimistic view of the future, a former Google top executive recently said that AI could disrupt society as the technology eats away jobs, rendering the middle class non-existent.

Mo Gawdat, who left Google X as its chief business officer in 2018, said the 'hell' will begin as early as 2027 as AI eliminates white-collar jobs, with no one spared, including software developers, CEOs, and podcasters. ...

"Unless you're in the top 0.1 per cent, you're a peasant. There is no middle class," he predicted. ...

Previously, Geoffrey Hinton, regarded by many as the 'godfather of AI', stated that the technology could soon develop its own language, making it impossible for humans to track the machines.

See the full story here: https://www.ndtv.com/offbeat/as-ai-kills-jobs-sam-altman-says-gen-z-are-the-luckiest-kids-in-history-9063272

AI on stage: The rise of AI characters at Edinburgh Fringe 2025

PhilNote: brief descriptions of 6 pieces.

From digital landscapes to improvisational humanoid comedians, artists in Fringe 2025 are weaving AI into performance in wildly imaginative and emotionally rich ways - not to replace human expression, but to expand its boundaries. ...

See the full story here: https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/ai-on-stage-the-rise-of-ai-characters-at-edinburgh-fringe-2025-5261630