... Just over half of Amazon Fresh stores are equipped with Just Walk Out. The technology allows customers to skip checkout altogether by scanning a QR code when they enter the store. Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts. The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped.
Instead, Amazon is moving towards Dash Carts, a scanner and screen that’s embedded in your shopping cart, allowing you to checkout as you shop. These offer a more reliable solution than Just Walk Out. Amazon Fresh stores will also feature self check out counters from now on, for people who aren’t Amazon members. ...
See the full story here: https://gizmodo.com/amazon-reportedly-ditches-just-walk-out-grocery-stores-1851381116?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
... Perhaps the most striking findings in this year’s report relate to the changing nature of social media, partly characterised by declining engagement with traditional networks such as Facebook and the rise of TikTok and a range of other video-led networks. Yet despite this growing fragmentation of channels, and despite evidence that public disquiet about misinformation and algorithms is at near record highs, our dependence on these intermediaries continues to grow. Our data show, more clearly than ever, how this shift is strongly influenced by habits of the youngest generations, who have grown up with social media and nowadays often pay more attention to influencers or celebrities than they do to journalists, even when it comes to news. ...
Facebook remains one of the most-used social networks overall, but its influence on journalism is declining as it shifts its focus away from news. It also faces new challenges from established networks such as YouTube and vibrant youth-focused networks such as TikTok. The Chinese-owned social network reaches 44% of 18–24s across markets and 20% for news. It is growing fastest in parts of Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Latin America. ...
Despite hopes that the internet could widen democratic debate, we find fewer people are now participating in online news than in the recent past. Aggregated across markets, only around a fifth (22%) are now active participators, with around half (47%) not participating in news at all. In the UK and United States, the proportion of active participators have fallen by more than 10 percentage points since 2016. Across countries we find that this group tends to be male, better educated, and more partisan in their political views. ...
Meanwhile, the proportion of news consumers who say they avoid news, often or sometimes, remains close to all-time highs at 36% across markets. We find that this group splits between (a) those who are trying to periodically avoid all sources of news and (b) those that are trying to specifically restrict their news usage at particular times or for certain topics. News avoiders are more likely to say they are interested in positive or solutions-based journalism and less interested in the big stories of the day. ...
News podcasting continues to resonate with educated and younger audiences but remains a minority activity overall. Around a third (34%) access a podcast monthly, with 12% accessing a show relating to news and current affairs. Our research finds that deep dive podcasts, inspired by The Daily from the New York Times, along with extended chat shows, such as The Joe Rogan Experience, are the most widely consumed across markets. We also identify the growing popularity of video-led or hybrid news podcasts. ...
See the full story here: https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2023/dnr-executive-summary
... The overall goal of Europa, as with ETC’s previous projects, is to experiment with and validate new cinematic techniques while exposing students to a professional environment in preparation for careers in film and television. For this project, the latest technologies to be tested included metadata, artificial intelligence in various forms and a new virtual production stage facility at Sony Pictures Studios, operated by Pixomondo. ...
The production employed cloud-first principles, allowing for global collaboration across different time zones and regions, including the US, Australia, New Zealand, India, Scandinavia, Iceland, and Canada. ...
Sony is one of Europa’s major supporters, providing Stage 7, its state-of-the-art virtual production volume at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California. The stage features Sony Crystal LED B-series 1.5mm panels in a classic C-shape with a ceiling and Sony’s proprietary processors. Sony also loaned VENICE 2 cameras with a custom Virtual Production Tool Set to enhance their use in a virtual production environment. Virtual VENICE, Sony’s Camera and Display Plugin for Unreal Engine, is a unique tool that visualizes undesirable moiré artifacts before they can potentially ruin a shot, a key concern in virtual production along with the ability to preview wall content on specific optics and a suite of Color Calibrator tools geared to the VENICE’s sensor. ...
Artificial Intelligence for Virtual Production
Another important area of exploration for Europa is artificial intelligence and how it can enhance virtual production workflows. One of the critical challenges for VP is content creation. To successfully capture in-camera visual effects, the virtual environment displayed on the LED volume must be camera-ready before production commences. This is inverted to the more traditional visual effects workflow, where a significant portion of the frame is captured as a proxy via a greenscreen or other placeholder. Then, the visual effects are completed during a more extended post-production period.
Creating this content can be a bottleneck because virtual production works best with photorealistic backgrounds. Artificial intelligence offers a potentially powerful shortcut by creating custom visuals in minutes rather than weeks or months. Europa used Cuebric, an AI image generator designed for virtual production backgrounds on a test shot, to explore its viability as a tool. Addy Ghani, vice president of virtual production at Disguise, whose show-running software is tightly integrated with Cuebric, says, “Cuebric enables creators to go from concept to the wall within a matter of minutes.” ...
It’s also helpful to distinguish between generative AI tools such as Cuebric and utility AI tools, which are much more commonplace in production workflows. Utility tools help to automatically apply metadata, identify elements within captured footage, maintain color balance and automate quality control. Europa aimed to leverage these existing utility AI while also exploring the more cutting-edge flavors of generative AI. ...
See the full story here: https://virtualproducer.io
... But this AI doesn’t have a singular form. Instead, every time Simone interfaces with the algorithm she’s hoping to turn off, she has to speak with and through a human proxy: “Mrs. Davis” is constantly made human by those devoted to her, a case not of AI entrapping us, as Drescher ominously warns us, but us entrapping ourselves. ...
See the full story here: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2024-03-31/the-1999-project-ai-and-the-matrix
... The new policy from the White House Office of Management and Budget will guide AI use across the federal government. It requires more transparency as to how the government uses AI and also calls for more development of the technology within federal agencies. The policy sees the administration trying to strike a balance between mitigating risks from deeper use of AI—the extent of which are not known—and using AI tools to solve existential threats like climate change and disease. ...
Countries around the world are moving to regulate AI. The EU voted in December to pass its AI Act, a measure that governs the creation and use of AI technologies, and formally adopted it earlier this month. China, too, is working on comprehensive AI regulation.
See the full story here; https://www.wired.com/story/white-house-new-guardrails-government-use-of-ai/
... It’s tempting to dismiss the 15-person outfit as out of touch. But Mayer may be onto something with Sunshine, and that’s nostalgia. Throwback tech is all the rage these days. Further, while most Silicon Valley startups focus on the newest new thing, America is getting older, as the U.S. Census Bureau declared last year. Mayer says Sunshine is tackling problems for people “of all ages,” but targeting a slightly older demographic that gravitates toward the familiar would be a smart move. Older Americans now account for a record share of spending. They have the time to socialize and take pictures. Sunshine’s interface is even steeped in the same purple hue that was long associated with Yahoo, which she famously led for five years beginning in 2012. ...
“The core thesis has always been to take the mundane and make it magical.” ...
See the full post here: https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/27/marissa-mayers-startup-just-rolled-out-apps-for-group-photo-sharing-and-event-planning-and-the-internet-isnt-sure-what-to-think/?utm_medium=TCnewsletter&tpcc=TCdailynewsletter
SingularityNET (SNET), the world’s first decentralized Artificial Intelligence (AI) network, Fetch.ai, a Web3 platform for the new AI economy, and Ocean Protocol, a decentralized data exchange platform to protect data, today announced the launch of the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance. The creation of the largest open-sourced, decentralized network through a multi-billion token merger is a major step that accelerates the race to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
The Alliance is the brainchild of three leading minds in decentralized AI. Dr. Ben Goertzel, renowned as the “Father of AGI”, founded SNET as a blockchain-based marketplace and framework for AI services. DeepMind founding investor Humayun Sheikh built Fetch.ai as a decentralized multi-agent platform to deploy and commercialize AI applications. Trent McConaghy, the architect of the AI-based software that most chip designers use to drive Moore’s Law, formed Ocean Protocol to provide a platform for data exchange and the seamless trade of tokenized data assets.
See the full story here: https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-wire-news-releases-pmn/fetch-ai-ocean-protocol-and-singularitynet-unite-to-create-artificial-superintelligence-alliance
The Rundown: Researchers at MIT just introduced a new method called ‘Distribution Matching Distillation’ — enabling faster AI image generation while maintaining the quality of the original model.
The details:
DMD distills the knowledge of a multi-step model (like Stable Diffusion) into a faster model that generates images in a single step.The method utilizes two diffusion models as guides to train the new, fast model, ensuring stability and consistency. In tests, DMD generated images 30 times faster than Stable Diffusion while maintaining or surpassing the quality level of outputs.
Why it matters: By dramatically reducing the computational cost and time required for high-quality image generation, DMD could unlock new possibilities for tools like real-time visual editing, design tools, drug discovery, and 3D modeling applications.
See the full story here: https://news.mit.edu/2024/ai-generates-high-quality-images-30-times-faster-single-step-0321?utm_source=www.therundown.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=apple-s-ai-master-plan
... Presented by The Music Center, “Music off the Wall: An EyeJack Experience” by Campbell’s art and technology company, Eyejack, transforms the Jerry Moss Plaza and Plaza Gallery into an AR adventure. The 16 digital artworks with accompanying music come to life through smartphone lenses in this free exhibit, which will be on view until Saturday, May 4. ...
“Music off the Wall” will be the first in a series of local artist residencies at the Jerry Moss Plaza. Each artist or group will take over the plaza for several months with free reign; the only requirement is to “animate” the space with participatory and digital elements, explained Kamal Sinclair, senior manager of The Music Center’s Digital Innovative Initiative. ...
The digital artworks were previously exhibited in EyeJack’s Prosthetic Reality V.1 and V.2. collection, the world’s first NFT art book. In 2022, more than 60 artists, animators and sound designers from around the world converged to showcase the unprecedented book. As the exhibit’s name suggests, the selected works from the project each have a musical element. ...
“Music Off the Wall”
WHEN: Noon to 11 p.m. Tuesday to Sunday,
through Saturday, May 4
WHERE: Jerry Moss Plaza and Plaza Gallery at The Music Center, 135 N. Grand Avenue, Los Angeles
COST: Free
See the full story here: http://www.ladowntownnews.com/arts_and_entertainment/music-off-the-wall-the-music-center-unveils-its-first-ar-art-exhibit/article_5173807e-e8a4-11ee-988e-07e98bc2576f.html
