philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

AI is coming for music, too

... By transforming random noise into coherent patterns, diffusion models can generate new images, videos, or speech, guided by text prompts or other input data. The best ones can create outputs indistinguishable from the work of people, as well as bizarre, surreal results that feel distinctly nonhuman.  ...

For years, diffusion models have stirred debate in the visual-art world about whether what they produce reflects true creation or mere replication. Now this debate has come for music, an art form that is deeply embedded in our experiences, memories, and social lives. Music models can now create songs capable of eliciting real emotional responses, presenting a stark example of how difficult it’s becoming to define authorship and originality in the age of AI. ...

Is creativity, whether in artificial neural networks or biological ones, merely the result of vast statistical learning and drawn connections, with a sprinkling of randomness? If so, then authorship is a slippery concept. If not—if there is some distinctly human element to creativity—what is it? ...

Studies have shown that highly creative people may perceive very semantically distinct concepts as close together. Artists have been found to generate word associations across greater distances than non-artists. Other research has supported the idea that creative people have “leaky” attention—that is, they often notice information that might not be particularly relevant to their immediate task. ...

Musical images

The approach works much the same way for music. A diffusion model does not “compose” a song the way a band might, starting with piano chords and adding vocals and drums. Instead, all the elements are generated at once. The process hinges on the fact that the many complexities of a song can be depicted visually in a single waveform, representing the amplitude of a sound wave plotted against time.  ...

The results of Udio and Suno so far suggest there’s a sizable audience of people who may not care whether the music they listen to is made by humans or machines. Suno has artist pages for creators, some with large followings, who generate songs entirely with AI, often accompanied by AI-generated images of the artist. These creators are not musicians in the conventional sense but skilled prompters, creating work that can’t be attributed to a single composer or singer. In this emerging space, our normal definitions of authorship—and our lines between creation and replication—all but dissolve. ...

See the full story here: https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/04/16/1114433/ai-artificial-intelligence-music-diffusion-creativity-songs-writer/

Phase two of military AI has arrived

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Consider this phase two of the US military’s AI push, where phase one began back in 2017 with older types of AI, like computer vision to analyze drone imagery. Though this newest phase began under the Biden administration, there’s fresh urgency as Elon Musk’s DOGE and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth push loudly for AI-fueled efficiency. 

As I also write in my story, this push raises alarms from some AI safety experts about whether large language models are fit to analyze subtle pieces of intelligence in situations with high geopolitical stakes. It also accelerates the US toward a world where AI is not just analyzing military data but suggesting actions—for example, generating lists of targets. Proponents say this promises greater accuracy and fewer civilian deaths, but many human rights groups argue the opposite. ...

What are the limits of “human in the loop”? ...

Is AI making it easier or harder to know what should be classified?

One specific problem is called classification by compilation. ...

How high up the decision chain should AI go? ...

See the full story here: https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/04/15/1115078/phase-two-of-military-ai-has-arrived/

AI-generated action figures were all over social media. Then, artists took over with hand-drawn versions.

...The action figure starter pack trend is the latest iteration of a growing AI meme cycle, in which internet users who discover ideas for AI-generated artwork quickly inspire others to produce content using the same prompt. Over the last few years, AI-inspired fads have spurred growing scrutiny over how they’re contributing to issues like environmental waste and the devaluation of human labor. ...

Soon, artists like Rolfe began circulating their own hand-drawn versions of the trend, shared on various social media platforms under the hashtag #StarterPackNoAI, to counter the wave of AI-produced content. ...

OpenAI told NBC News at the time that it prevents image generations “in the style of individual living artists, but we do permit broader studio styles." ...

See the full story here: https://www.yahoo.com/news/ai-generated-action-figures-were-023204858.html

MIT Media Lab To Put Human Flourishing At The Heart Of AI R&D

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It is the central question of the Lab’s newly launched Advancing Humans with AI (AHA) program.

Heralded as a bold, multi-year initiative not to just improve AI, but to elevate human flourishing in an AI-saturated world, a star-studded symposium kicked off the concept and the different research domains it will tackle. Speakers included Arianna Huffington who spoke of AI being like a ‘GPS for the soul’, and Tristan Harris who warned about systems exploiting human vulnerabilities under the guise of assistance. Both agreed that AI shouldn’t just be optimized for efficiency rather it should be designed to cultivate wisdom, resilience, and reflection. ...

Pat Pataranutaporn, co-lead of the AHA program, summed this up to the assembled audience, asking, ”What is the point of advancing artificial intelligence if we simultaneously devalue human intelligence and undermine human dignity? Instead, we should strive to design AI systems that amplify and enhance our most deeply human qualities” ...

The message is clear: it’s time to measure the wellbeing of humans not just the performance of machines. ...

As Professor Pattie Maes, co-lead of the AHA program and director of the Fluid Interfaces group, told me after the event, ‘We are creating AI and AI in turn will shape us. We don’t want to make the same mistakes we made with social media. It is critical that we think of AI as not just a technical problem for engineers and entrepreneurs to solve, but also as a human design problem, requiring the expertise from human-computer interaction designers, psychologists, and social scientists for AI to lead to beneficial impact on the human experience.’

See the full story here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/traceyfollows/2025/04/14/mit-media-lab-to-put-human-flourishing-at-the-heart-of-ai-rd/

The AI magic behind Sphere’s upcoming ‘The Wizard of Oz’ experience

philNote: the story quotes Buzz Hays,

“The Wizard of Oz” may not be the first film shot in color, but many people remember it that way because of how director Victor Fleming cleverly used black-and-white film for the scenes set in Kansas.

Likewise, “The Wizard of Oz” may not be the first film to be reconceptualized with AI, but it may soon be known for that, too. ...

 The team also had to account for all the camera cuts in a traditional film that remove characters from parts of certain scenes, which wouldn’t work at the new, theatrical scale that was envisioned. ...

Yet for all the powerful new technology at play, one of the biggest breakthroughs comes from following the traditions of cinema: having plenty of extra material to work with. In addition to old footage, the team scoured archives to build a vast collection of supplementary material, such as the shooting script, production illustrations, photographs, set plans and scores.

Through a process known as fine-tuning, these materials are uploaded to Veo and Gemini so the models can train on specific details of the original characters, their environments and even elements of the production, like camera focal lengths for specific scenes.

With far more source material than just the 102-minute film to work with, the quality of the outputs dramatically improved. Now, Dorothy’s freckles snap into focus and Toto can scamper more seamlessly through more scenes. Every change, Hays notes, was made in close collaboration with Warner Bros., to ensure continuity with the spirit of the original. ...

See the full story here; https://blog.google/products/google-cloud/sphere-wizard-of-oz/

Harvard Law Review – Artificial Intelligence

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Chapter I examines how state and federal bills aimed at regulating discriminatory AI fit into the larger framework of antidiscrimination law.  ...

Chapter II interrogates the “double bind” AI creates for artistic communities — the artist’s urge to use a new tool for greater creativity while that very tool simultaneously threatens the same human artist with irrelevance. ...

Following Chapter II’s consideration of specific professional contexts, Chapter III expands the discussion of affected communities to a global scale. This Chapter explores the importance of preserving democratic values in the governance of AI.  ...

On the topic of governance, corporations have experimented with uncommon forms of governance to channel the development of AI in a safe direction. While these corporate structures can control for traditional profit seeking by shareholders, Chapter IV investigates the mystery of “superstakeholders” — parties who wield unanticipated influence over the corporate board and may undermine a company’s prosocial mission in unexpected ways. Therefore, traditional theories of “amoral” drift may not offer a full explanation for events such as OpenAI’s firing-rehiring of Sam Altman and seeming pivot to profit.  ...

Revisiting themes raised in earlier Chapters, Chapter V sounds an alarm about inadequate oversight of AI. Drawing on examples of how a deregulatory approach to internet content has left injured individuals without legal recourse and even plausibly facilitated violence, the Chapter identifies accountability, transparency, and democracy as gaps in the internet’s current regulatory framework — problems echoed in the current context of generative AI, as well. ...

Together, these Chapters seek to advance how the legal world is grappling with AI’s challenges and opportunities.  ...

See (and download) the full article here: https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-138/introduction-10/

‘Wizard of Oz’ AI makeover is ‘total transformation,’ sparking mixed reactions: experts

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"What truly matters is the outcome," Chew explained. "If a reimagined classic resonates, its value will speak for itself. Dismissing it without seeing the result is less about merit and more about discomfort with change. A classic doesn’t stop being a classic because it’s expressed in a new way. In fact, the heart of a classic is its ability to endure, evolve, and inspire across generations. Some may say reimagining beloved films with AI is gimmicky or disrespectful. My take? Don’t engage with the remake if it’s not your thing — but let others explore and create. The only real line we shouldn’t cross is legal or ethical: copyright, attribution and transparency."

He continued: "From an evolutionary standpoint, nothing should be frozen in time. Reimagining classics with generative AI opens up new doors — for education, storytelling and accessibility." ...

Classic films with "strong visual signatures" would be good candidates for an AI remake, Walker told Fox News Digital. Those movies include "2001: A Space Odyssey" or "Lawrence of Arabia."

Other films that could benefit from the AI transformation would be silent features, black-and-white movies and additional modern classics. ...

See the full story here; https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/wizard-of-oz-ai-makeover-total-transformation-sparking-mixed-reactions-experts

MIT study finds that AI doesn’t, in fact, have values

... The co-authors of the MIT study say their work suggests that “aligning” AI systems — that is, ensuring models behave in desirable, dependable ways — could be more challenging than is often assumed.

“One thing that we can be certain about is that models don’t obey [lots of] stability, extrapolability, and steerability assumptions,” Stephen Casper, a doctoral student at MIT and a co-author of the study, told TechCrunch. “It’s perfectly legitimate to point out that a model under certain conditions expresses preferences consistent with a certain set of principles. The problems mostly arise when we try to make claims about the models, opinions, or preferences in general based on narrow experiments.” ...

According to the co-authors, none of the models was consistent in its preferences. Depending on how prompts were worded and framed, they adopted wildly different viewpoints. ...

“A model cannot ‘oppose’ a change in its values, for example — that is us projecting onto a system,” Cook said. “Anyone anthropomorphizing AI systems to this degree is either playing for attention or seriously misunderstanding their relationship with AI … Is an AI system optimizing for its goals, or is it ‘acquiring its own values’? It’s a matter of how you describe it, and how flowery the language you want to use regarding it is.”

See the full story here; https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/09/mit-study-finds-that-ai-doesnt-in-fact-have-values/

How AI can help supercharge creativity

... Wilson, a researcher at the Creative Computing Institute at the University of the Arts London, is just one of many working on what’s known as co-­creativity or more-than-human creativity. The idea is that AI can be used to inspire or critique creative projects, helping people make things that they would not have made by themselves. She and her colleagues built the live-­coding agent to explore how artificial intelligence can be used to support human artistic endeavors—in Wilson’s case, musical improvisation. ...

...The aim is to develop AI tools that augment our creativity rather than strip it from us—pushing us to be better at composing music, developing games, designing toys, and much more—and lay the groundwork for a future in which humans and machines create things together. ...

But for a number of researchers and artists, the hype around these tools has warped the idea of what creativity really is. ...

These tools do not give you what you want; they give you what their designers think you want. ...

In short, existing generative models have made it easy to create, but they have not made it easy to be creative. ...

“Unfortunately, we’re removing the one thing that you have to do to develop creative skills for yourself, which is fail,” says Cook. “But absolutely nobody wants to hear that.” ...

Cook thinks the real promise of AI will be to help us get better at what we want to do rather than doing it for us. For that, he says, we’ll need to create new tools, different from the ones we have now. ...

Ask a range of researchers studying creativity to name a key part of the creative process and many will say: reflection. ...

Looking for ways that AI might support or encourage reflection—asking it to throw new ideas into the mix or challenge ideas you already hold—is a common thread across co-creativity research. ...

Bryan-Kinns is fascinated by how artists and designers find ways to use new technologies. “If you talk to artists, most of them don’t actually talk about these AI generative models as a tool—they talk about them as a material, like an artistic material, like a paint or something,” he says. “It’s a different way of thinking about what the AI is doing.”  ...

Bryan-Kinns sums it up like this: “The problem is that you’ve got this gulf between the very commercial generative tools that produce super-high-quality outputs but you’ve got very little control over what they do—and then you’ve got this other end where you’ve got total control over what they’re doing but the barriers to use are high because you need to be somebody who’s comfortable getting under the hood of your computer.”

“That’s a small number of people,” he says. “It’s a very small number of artists.” ...

Some have claimed that writing prompts is itself a creative act. “But no one struggles with a paintbrush the way they struggle with a prompt,” says Cook. ...

See the full story here: https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/04/10/1114256/ai-creativity-art-collaboration-music/

Google and Sphere Announce Technology Partnership and Reveal New Details on the AI Technology Behind Upcoming The Wizard of Oz at Sphere

... To present The Wizard of Oz at Sphere, which opens in Las Vegas on August 28, 2025, Google Cloud and Google DeepMind are working together to deploy fine-tuned Gemini models, Veo 2, and Imagen 3 to intelligently enhance the film's resolution, extend backgrounds, and digitally recreate existing characters who would otherwise not appear on the same screen.  ...

Key techniques being used for the film include:

• Super Resolution: Veo is being used to intelligently enhance the film's resolution, filling in missing pixels and creating an ultra-crisp 16k image, essential for Sphere's 16k x 16k resolution interior display plane. ...
• Outpainting: To expand the film's visual scope ... involves generating coherent and consistent foreground and midground elements that were true to the original film.
• Performance Generation: Using Veo for generation – combined with Gemini for instructions – the team developed innovative storytelling techniques that allow multiple characters to remain on screen for extended periods, even when traditional editing would have dictated cuts. This enhances the audience's immersion, making them feel like they were part of the epic journey.
• Context Window: Gemini and Veo's extra-long context window capabilities are crucial for maintaining coherence across extended sequences. ...

See the full story here: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/google-and-sphere-announce-technology-partnership-and-reveal-new-details-on-the-ai-technology-behind-upcoming-the-wizard-of-oz-at-sphere-302422950.html