philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Do AI video-generators dream of San Pedro? Madonna among early adopters of AI’s next wave

Whenever Madonna sings the 1980s hit “La Isla Bonita” on her concert tour, moving images of swirling, sunset-tinted clouds play on the giant arena screens behind her.

To get that ethereal look, the pop legend embraced a still-uncharted branch of generative artificial intelligence – the text-to-video tool. Type some words — say, “surreal cloud sunset” or “waterfall in the jungle at dawn” — and an instant video is made. ...

Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela said while some see these tools as a “magical device that you type a word and somehow it conjures exactly what you had in your head,” the most effective approaches are by creative professionals looking for an upgrade to the decades-old digital editing software they're already using. ...

“The common thread of a lot of use cases is people use it as a way of augmenting or speeding up something they could have done before." ...

“What diffusion models do is they reverse that process,” said Phillip Isola, an associate professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “They kind of take the randomness and they congeal it back into the volume. That's the way of going from randomness to content. And that’s how you can make random videos.” ...

Generating video is more complicated than still images because it needs to take into account temporal dynamics, or how elements within the video change over time and across sequences of frames, said Daniela Rus, another MIT professor who directs its Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. ...

“I still believe in humans," said Waibel, the CMU professor. ”I still believe that it will end up being a symbiosis where you get some AI proposing something and a human improves or guides it. Or the humans will do it and the AI will fix it up."

See the full story here: https://www.gazettextra.com/entertainment/do-ai-video-generators-dream-of-san-pedro-madonna-among-early-adopters-of-ais-next/article_1a6be537-ad8a-5d2a-b3df-997eea41ae83.html

Nvidia CEO Predicts Coming of General AI, but Not Everyone’s Onboard

... He explained that the timeline is significantly influenced by how the goal is characterized. ...

There’s widespread confusion among the public about the difference between AGI and AI. AI follows specific instructions. AGI aims for autonomous intelligence, Duncan Curtis, SVP of AI Product and Technology at the AI data firm Sama, told PYMNTS in an interview. 

Models like ChatGPT struggle to create entirely new content or combine different information to solve unfamiliar problems, Curtis said. They can sometimes sound overly confident, even when they’re not completely accurate. On the other hand, AGI is designed to handle new challenges effortlessly and to continuously learn and improve. ...

See the full story here: https://www.pymnts.com/artificial-intelligence-2/2024/nvidia-ceo-predicts-coming-of-general-ai-but-not-everyones-onboard/

Generative “Eno” Documentary Reshapes the Film for Every Viewing

PhilNote: this entry was much discussed at this year's Sundance Festival.

• “Eno,” about the career of famed musician and visual artist Brian Eno, was created as a generative, cinematic documentary.
• Instead of a standard bio-doc, filmmaker Gary Hustwit and his collaborators have assembled a “modular” film that shuffles unpredictably between time periods and mediums to offer a composite portrait of its subject.
• The technology is developed by Hustwit’s own startup Anamorph, which they call a “generative system” rather than generative AI.

... “I like movies where you learn different things about the subject, but you, as the viewer, make the connections… I always think that’s a lot more rewarding, as a viewer. It’s a different kind of filmmaking, but it’s also a different kind of film watching.”

It helps that the first and last scenes of the 85-minute doc are always the same. Plus, there are certain scenes pinned to the same timeslot in each version, including a scene where Eno discusses generative art....

“When we premiered Eno at Sundance, all the big streaming companies loved it, but they also admitted that their systems can’t handle the tech involved… These streamers need to differentiate, and I think enabling the films and shows they’re releasing with generative technology is a way to do that,” says Hustwit. ...

“Something that the theater industry badly needs right now is a reason to get people to come in, and if there is a uniqueness about the live cinema experience, that’s one way that can be achieved,” he adds.

Screenings across 50 cities will be presented this year. The full schedule can be found here.

See the full story here: https://amplify.nabshow.com/articles/ic-generative-eno-documentary/

This Is Actually a Very Self Aware AI-Generated Documentary

• “The Wizard of AI” by British artist, animator and video essayist Alan Warburton is potentially the first AI-generated documentary, exploring the impact of generative AI on creativity and the arts.
• The film navigates our current Epoch of “Wonder-Panic,” reflecting the mixed emotions of awe and anxiety that AI evokes within the creative community.
• Warburton employed a range of AI tools like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and DALL-E 3, alongside Adobe’s creative suite, to craft this visual essay.
• Commissioned for the ODI Summit 2023 by the Data as Culture program, the short film challenges conventional documentary filmmaking and delves into ethical, aesthetic, and legal considerations of AI in art.
• The project has sparked significant discussion on the future role of AI in art and design, emphasizing the need for a balanced approach to technology that considers both its potential and pitfalls.

See the full story here: https://amplify.nabshow.com/articles/ic-wizard-of-ai/

AI and Machine Creativity

... His co-authored paper, “The Power of Generative Marketing: Can Generative AI Reach Human-level Visual Marketing Content,” compared how people responded to human-made versus synthetic images. In the study, AI-generated images outperformed human-made images on perception, were comparable on social media engagement, and achieved significantly higher click-through rates. ...

Lee’s co-authored paper, “Generative AI, Human Creativity, and Art,” examines the ability of text-to-image AI to help humans create high-quality digital art. Using a dataset of more than 4 million artworks by more than 50,000 users, the study found that text-to-image AI enhanced creative productivity by 25% and the art’s value by 50% over time. The key takeaway is that AI-assisted artists experience more creativity and value, producing more content ideas and more art that is favorably evaluated. ...

See the full article here: https://ai.wharton.upenn.edu/updates/ai-horizons-ai-and-machine-creativity/

‘Baby AGI’ could be a reality in early 2025: SingularityNET founder

... “We’re building decentralized AI infrastructures that are agnostic with respect to what AI approach you may want to take,” he said, noting the aim was that a “12-year-old genius from Tajikistan” could contribute to a breakthrough. ...

Scheduled for release in Alpha in April, Hyperon is described in a research paperwith numerous coauthors as “a framework for AGI at the human level and beyond” that incorporates the latest ideas, software and techniques. OpenCog is an open-source AI project founded by Goertzel in 2008 and is affiliated with SingularityNET. ...

Goertzel also threw his support behind Vitalik Buterin’s defensive acceleration (d/acc) approach to developing superintelligent AI.

Opinion on AGI development is currently split between accelerationists (e/acc) who want to rush toward the technology due to its benefits, and decelerationists (decel), who want to slow down development for fear of the existential risks. ...

Goertzel has just written a new book about AGI called The Consciousness Explosionthat argues AGI will have enormous benefits and will liberate humans from repetitive labor, end all physical and mental diseases, cure aging and potentially prevent involuntary death. 

While he says these benefits outweigh the risks, AGI could still go wrong in a number of ways. 

He outlined some of those risks in his address, including China and the United States developing “super AGI whose goal is to clobber the other guy” or an unethical rollout of AGI that only benefits the global elite and makes the poor even poorer. ...

See the full story here: https://cointelegraph.com/news/artificial-general-intelligence-agi-prototype-early-2025-ben-goertzel

Fossil’s experience building an internal AI image generator

... Hallucinations as a feature, not a bug

... The design is visually striking, featuring a wristband embedded with a jeweled, stylized face of a panther. But upon closer examination, "you'll see there's something missing, right?" Dubois pointed out in the presentation. Namely, despite the watch's style appeal, the design didn't show any way to tell the time. ...

Perhaps counterintuitively, one way to address this issue is to enable generative AI to be more creative -- even impractical -- rather than less. Inaccurate output is a common problem in generative AI, with worrying implications for many enterprise use cases. But in creative fields like fashion, hallucinations can actually be a benefit, as they can lead to unusual, striking designs that differ from what a human creator might produce. ...

"We're not using the outcome of these models directly," Fernandez-Lamela pointed out, which reduces the risk of copyright infringement. ...

Mitigating generative AI risks and cost challenges

Instead, the organization went with a private, localized option, using their own training images and hosted on a private cloud using Google Cloud Platform. This had multiple benefits, including reducing vulnerability to cyber threats such as data poisoning and exposure to third parties. "If you have a localized, privatized environment, then you don't have to worry about those data leakage issues," Barrington said. ...

See the full story here: https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/news/366562594/Fossils-experience-building-an-internal-AI-image-generator?mkt_tok=NTIwLVJYUC0wMDMAAAGRj9k_m9YuULW6_jpxXf7rZc5j1E0wIg23pplh7m_tZPJ8kTWM7lr_7SjivMbt0TptyJulkyvkNCoQE0rhQbI38wJxjiWSQvvCdwTX96lEk16ft9VTTlRfiuLNaDsa

Amazon Studios Hit With ‘Road House’ Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Involving AI Abuse Claims

The feud is the latest in a series of lawsuits mostly initiated by authors, who are taking advantage of a provision in copyright law that allows authors to reclaim the rights to their works after waiting a period of time, typically 35 years. It has become a massive thorn in the side of studios that face the prospect of losing franchise rights to iconic works from the 1980s. Litigation has ensued over Predator, Terminator and Friday the 13th, among several other titles and properties, with the majority of the suits settling.

According to the complaint, Hill, who goes by the pseudonym David Lee Henry, moved to recover the copyright to his screenplay on Nov. 10, 2021, meaning that he would claw back the rights to his work in two years. He alleges that MGM and Amazon refused to acknowledge the termination and to license his screenplay.

Instead, the studio “steamrolled ahead with the production of a remake of the 1989 Film derived from Hill’s Screenplay,” states the complaint, which notes that the movie was not completed until late January 2024, “well after the effective date of Hill’s statutory termination.”

Hill stresses that he wrote the screenplay “on spec,” meaning that he wrote it on his own volition in the hope of finding an interested buyer. United Artists, which was acquired by MGM, bought it, culminating with the release of the film starring Patrick Swayze in 1989.

see the full story here: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/amazon-studios-hit-copyright-infringement-lawsuit-road-house-1235837713/

Oppo’s AR glasses really look like regular glasses

...

The glasses are used either by touching the frame to activate the AI voice assistant and then issuing voice commands, or by using the touch interface to perform voice calls, listen to music, browse through photos and the like. The glasses feature four microphones and noise isolation, meaning that you should be able to hear music in high quality while still not annoying the people near you. 

The AI assistant in question is Oppo's LLM (large language model) called AndesGPT. It's currently not available outside of China, so it's unlikely that these glasses see a global launch very soon. ...

See the full story here: https://mashable.com/article/oppo-ar-glasses

Sarah Silverman, Authors See Most Claims Against OpenAI Dismissed by Judge

... The authors failed to cite “any particular output” that is “substantially similar — or similar at all — to their books,” the court explained. They were given leave to amend, meaning that they will have another chance to refile the suit. A claim for a violation of California’s unfair competition law was permitted to advance under the theory that the company’s use of copyrighted works to train its AI model for profit constitutes an unfair business practice. Notably, OpenAI didn’t move to dismiss a claim for direct copyright infringement. ...

See the full story here: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/sarah-silverman-openai-lawsuit-claims-judge-1235823924/#recipient_hashed=a6e2884a34712fc25fa7dc5082aa50d7fefd0cc19c453cea91ea56cfa6b633c2&recipient_salt=36a09661fc615ebada975d9fe54129622be14f2b90c0bfb5237c0b270d67f92a