Anthony Hopkins feature film distributed as NFT
Zero Contact starring Anthony Hopkins as a tech titan will be initially released as an NFT. LA-based start-up VUELE owns complete intellectual property on the productions and boasts that it’s:
“the first direct-to-consumer, full-length feature film NFT viewing and distribution platform.”
VUELE auctions off early access to the film plus perks and incremental distribution with more perks until it is transferred to traditional distribution channels and streamers.
See the offer here: https://vuele.io
Teens, Social Media and Technology 2022
From Shelly Palmer's daily news email.
Whether or not you have teenage children – even if you don't know a teenager – you must read the results of the latest Pew Research Center survey, Teens, Social Media and Technology 2022, which found that 95 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds have access to a smartphone and 46 percent of them say they are "almost constantly" online. That's up from 24 percent from eight years ago.
Pew researchers surveyed 1,316 teens in April 2022. More than half (54 percent) said it would be difficult for them to give up social media, especially for the older respondents aged 15 to 17.
These results are not surprising. However, as presented, the survey offers a directional understanding of just how difficult it is going to be to rein in social media addiction, online bullying, unintentional propagation of misinformation at scale, and (of course) weaponized information.
See the research study here: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social-media-and-technology-2022/?ck_subscriber_id=958930034&utm_source=convertkit&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Teen+Social+Media+Usage+Doubles%20-%208744296
The ‘Nonsense Language’ That Could Subvert Image Synthesis Moderation Systems
New research from Columbia university suggests that the safeguards that prevent image synthesis models such as DALL-E 2, Imagen and Parti from being able to output damaging or controversial imagery are susceptible to a kind of adversarial attack that involves ‘made up’ words.
The author has developed two approaches that can potentially override the content moderation measures in an image synthesis system, and has found that they are remarkably robust even across different architectures, indicating that the weakness is more than just systemic, and may key on some of the most fundamental principle of text-to-image synthesis. ...
The first, and the stronger of the two, is called macaronic prompting. The term ‘macaronic’ originally refers to a mixture of multiple languages, as found in Esperanto or Unwinese. Perhaps the most culturally-diffused example would be Urdu-English, a type of ‘code mixing’ common in Pakistan, which quite freely mixes English nouns and Urdu suffixes. ...
Cryptic Language in DALL-E 2
It has been suggested before that the gibberish that DALL-E 2 outputs whenever it tries to depict written language could in itself be a ‘hidden vocabulary’. However the prior research into this mysterious language has not offered any way to develop nonce strings that can summon up specific imagery. ...
See the full story here: https://www.unite.ai/the-nonsense-language-that-could-subvert-image-synthesis-moderation-systems/
Nvidia Unveils Virtual Human Builder for Metaverse Characters
Nvidia has introduced a new platform for building virtual beings to interact with in the digital realms of the metaverse, which Nvidia refers to as its Omniverse. The Nvidia Omniverse Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) provides a collection of AI models and related tools for users to design the AI creations that will populate their virtual worlds, including synthetic voices and visual media.
ACE SYNTHESIZED
The cloud-based ACE catalog streamlines building virtual beings and applies Nvidia’s computing power to setting up and embedding the AI avatars in digital worlds. ...
POPULATING THE OMNIVERSE
ACE is the next step in Nvidia’s metaverse project. The Omniverse began with scene-setting and building out the virtual landscape. Ace will help Nvidia and its partners populate it with the AI characters that make it more than just an empty digital wasteland. ...
See the full story here: https://voicebot.ai/2022/08/09/nvidia-unveils-virtual-human-builder-for-metaverse-characters/
This is how Snap is fostering the future of augmented reality
... Dominguez, who has spent her career popularizing virtual and augmented reality and wearable tech, is helping to build a developer community interested in using AR in increasingly ambitious domains, including education, information, and gaming. To this end, she’s helped roll out several tools in 2022, including Custom Landmarkers, which let third parties tie their Snapchat lenses to specific real-world locations, and Lens Cloud, a suite of cloud-based services for speeding AR creation.
A few hundred content creators also have access to the latest version of Snap’s Spectacles smart glasses, which incorporate dual 3D waveguide displays to weave AR right into the world people see before them....
See the full story here: https://www.fastcompany.com/90764936/sophia-dominguez-snap-most-creative-people-2022
18 Best Open-World Games That Support VR
1 Modbox
In the rush of VR integration, not a lot of games take into account how fun the technical sandbox formula is with new hardware. Where apps like Kingspray and Tilt Brush push the artistic envelope, Modbox is sort of a breakout experimental system on-par with what Garry's Mod was to PC users in the early 2000s.
Modbox allows players tools to create and explore with their own game mechanics in an open sandbox, with several pre-made examples that give players a fun experience with their friends, including an asymmetrical titan-battle mode.
See the full story here: https://gamerant.com/best-open-world-games-virtual-reality-vr/
The iRobot Deal Would Give Amazon Maps Inside Millions of Homes
... Those Roombas work in part by using sensors to map the homes they operate in. In a 2017 Reuters interview, iRobot CEO Colin Angle suggested the company might someday share that data with tech companies developing smart home devices and AI assistants.
Combined with other recent acquisition targets, Amazon could wind up with a comprehensive look at what’s happening inside people’s homes. ...
“People tend to think of Amazon as an online seller company, but really Amazon is a surveillance company. That is the core of its business model, and that’s what drives its monopoly power and profit,” says Evan Greer, director of the nonprofit digital rights organization Fight for the Future. “Amazon wants to have its hands everywhere, and acquiring a company that’s essentially built on mapping the inside of people’s homes seems like a natural extension of the surveillance reach that Amazon already has.” ...
See the full story here: https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-irobot-roomba-acquisition-data-privacy/?ck_subscriber_id=1646162133&utm_source=convertkit&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Amazon+Mapping+Your+Life%20-%208721407
Why the future of connected IoT in homes is child-centric
- AI-enabled IoT devices in homes shape and will shape the individual and societal development of the youngest generation.
- Matter – the upcoming interconnectivity standard – will enable diverse IoT devices to connect in homes while their inherent risks will affect children the most and put age-appropriate design requirements and standards to the test.
- Measures such as pretraining AI systems with synthetic data und using large open source databases are components that could form essential pillars in a child-centric IoT governance framework.
See the full story here: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/08/why-the-future-of-connected-iot-in-homes-is-children-centric/
