philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Kraft Heinz’s Delimex amplifies loud chewing in quesadilla campaign

• Kraft Heinz’s Delimex brand of frozen taquitos is expanding into quesadillas with a multichannel campaign centered on loud chewing, per details shared with Marketing Dive. 
• Ads depict people’s extreme reactions to hearing the sounds of chowing down, such as storming out of an office. Delimex is also investing heavily in “sound-driven” marketing for the first time with custom ads on iHeart Media, an auditory Snapchat augmented reality filter, a mobile game and sound-on TikTok content.
• Packaging for Delimex Crispy Quesadillas displays cheeky labels warning of the crunchy quality found within. This is the second Kraft Heinz brand to apply the company’s 360Crisp technology that aims to innovate in the frozen food category. 

Read the full story here: https://www.marketingdive.com/news/Kraft-Heinz-Delimex-chewing-ASMR-CPG-food-innovation/729854/

Emteq Labs Unveils World’s First Emotion-Sensing Eyewear

... Now, Emteq Labs has developed Sense: a patented, AI-powered eyewear platform that provides lab-quality insights in real life and in real time. This includes comprehensive measurement and analysis of the wearer’s facial expressions, dietary habits, mood, posture, attention levels, physical activity, and additional health-related metrics. ...

Emteq’s Sense glasses are equipped with contactless OCO sensors that detect high-resolution facial activations at key muscle locations, as well as a downward-facing camera for instantly logging food consumption. Data collected is analyzed using proprietary AI/ML algorithms, and securely transferred to the Sense app and cloud platform. The user has full control over the data and can choose to share it with researchers, trainers, coaches, or clinicians upon consent. ...

See the full story here: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/10/15/2963261/0/en/Emteq-Labs-Unveils-World-s-First-Emotion-Sensing-Eyewear.html

I Paid for a 90-Minute AI MasterClass Course and Haven’t Stopped Using AI Since

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For me, what was most fascinating was how overwhelmed I've been by AI's amazing abilities and where that's taking us. As a reporter and consumer, I have so much more to learn. 

According to Mollick, AI's growth is doubling or tripling the pace of Moore's Law, the observation that the power of computers doubles every two years. In short: AI is moving faster than our brain's ability to respond. But not forever: At some point, he says, AI will settle into a more graspable pace of evolution. 

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Should you watch MasterClass's GenAI series?

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A MasterClass subscription costs between $120 and $240 per year, but there is a 30-day money-back guarantee included with membership. If another monthly bill doesn't seem economical, two-week guest passes pop up in chat threads, which can give you more opportunities to try the learning and education platform without commitment. 

So hear me out: While you may consider yourself adept at all things tech, I'd advocate spending 90 minutes of your day on this series, if for no other reason than for a brushup on artificial intelligence-specific definitions and metaphors. 

At the most, an increase in awareness for how something with such rampant growth operates as a system, collaborator — and in some scenarios, a mentor, personal trainer and twin. ...

See the full story here: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/i-paid-for-a-90-minute-ai-master-class-and-havent-stopped-using-ai-since/

Apple won a Wild patent for an Augmented Reality Light System that projects AR content onto tables, walls+ without a Headset

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Embodiments of the AR light system may provide both room illumination, as per conventional room lighting (e.g., light fixtures or light bulbs), as well as projecting both high and low resolution AR and VR imagery onto surfaces in the room. The imagery may, for example, be projected onto the floor, walls, and ceiling of a room. However, the AR light system may also intelligently augment particular objects found within the room.

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See the full story here: https://www.patentlyapple.com/2024/10/apple-won-a-wild-patent-for-an-augmented-reality-light-system-that-projects-ar-content-onto-tables-walls-without-a-headset.html

One Year After Governor Shapiro Signed Executive Order, Pennsylvania is Leading the Way in Responsible, Ethical Use of Artificial Intelligence that Empowers Workers

Governor Shapiro spoke at the inaugural AI Horizons Summit in Pittsburgh and joined leaders from Carnegie Mellon University, University of Pittsburgh, and NVIDIA to Launch First-of-its-Kind AI Tech Community in Pittsburgh

The Shapiro Administration has incorporated introductory lessons about generative AI into training for Commonwealth employees, launched a first-in-the-nation pilot program with OpenAI to empower state workers, and leveraged partnerships with leading universities and private sector innovators

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See the full story here: https://www.pa.gov/en/governor/newsroom/2024-press-releases/ethical-use-of-artificial-intelligence-that-empowers-workers.html

California’s AI Safety Bill Is Dead, but the Regulation Debate Lives On

... “I think we should be very narrowly focused on the application of AI, not the training of AI models and the operation of AI models,” Aaron Levie, co-founder and chief executive of Box, said at The Wall Street Journal’s CIO Network Summit in New York on Tuesday. Levie added that he was against SB 1047 and the government shouldn’t risk slowing down the pace of AI innovation.

“Right now, we need as much progress as humanly possible,” he said. Levie added that is especially the case since he believes we are still far away from any kind of existential risk from AI - although that is debated. ...

See the full story here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/specter-of-dead-california-ai-safety-bill-haunts-cio-event-42db9a6b

How GenAI makes foreign influence campaigns on social media even worse

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 The same campaign can post a message with one account and then have other accounts that its organizers also control “like” and “unlike” it hundreds of times in a short time span. Once the campaign achieves its objective, all these messages can be deleted to evade detection. Using these tricks, foreign governments and their agents can manipulate social media algorithms that determine what is trending and what is engaging to decide what users see in their feeds. ...

In addition to posting machine-generated content, harmful comments, and stolen images, these bots engaged with each other and with humans through replies and retweets. ...

In a recent paper, we introduced a social media model called SimSoM that simulates how information spreads through the social network., The model has the key ingredients of platforms such as Instagram, X, Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon: an empirical follower network, a feed algorithm, sharing and resharing mechanisms, and metrics for content quality, appeal, and engagement. ...

These insights suggest that social media platforms should engage in more - not less - content moderation to identify and hinder manipulation campaigns and thereby increase their users’ resilience to the campaigns. ...

Regulation should therefore target AI content dissemination via social media platforms rather than AI content generation. For instance, before a large number of people can be exposed to some content, a platform could require its creator to prove its accuracy or provenance. ...

See the full story here: https://www.fastcompany.com/91205647/generative-ai-foreign-influence-campaigns-social-media-research

Shelly Palmer email

In the news: Meta has launched Movie Gen, a new AI-powered video creation tool for small businesses. Movie Gen allows users to generate video content from prompts, edit existing videos, and add synchronized sound effects and music. It will not be available for open developer use but is intended for collaboration with the entertainment industry and content creators.

The big win for businesses is lower production costs – not only direct reduction of non-working media budgets, but also a significant decrease in the workflow timelines and an even more significant reduction in the number of people who will have to be involved.

Movie Gen joins other AI video generation tools such as OpenAI's Sora, Google's Lumiere, Runway Gen-2, Stability AI's Stable Video Diffusion, Pika Labs, and Nvidia's Vid2Vid, but it is purpose built to help users quickly create video ads suitable for Facebook and Instagram.

The value of generative AI video tools is clear. The only question is, "When will one of these tools suit your needs." For many, the answer will be Meta's Movie Gen. And, remember, today is the worst these tools will ever be.

Fox Technology Chief Calls on Entertainment Companies to Be ‘Peers to Big Tech’ While Exploiting AI

Hollywood studios need to approach artificial intelligence as “peers” rather than subordinates to Big Tech, Fox’s chief technology officer Melody Hildebrandt said at TheGrill conference on Tuesday. “There’s incredible opportunity, but I think we really need to think of ourselves as peers to Big Tech in the exploitation of it,” she said.

Hildebrandt spoke on TheGrill panel “The Next Frontier: How AI Is Reshaping the Studio System” alongside Yves Bergquist, director of AI and neuroscience in media at USC’s Entertainment Technology Center. ...

“The media industry is very much a technology industry,” Bergquist said. “The media industry is actually the only industry that has been successful at integrating technology and human creativity.”

While expressing a strong belief in AI’s utility, Hildebrandt noted that the entertainment industry can’t just be the creators of content that gets sucked up by AI.

“There’s a real risk where, again, we just become the inputs,” Hildebrandt said. “And I think we’ve kind of been through this rodeo before, a little bit, with technology, where we take a short-term view, and we really need to take a long-term view and participate as equity holders through the exploitation of the technology in a fair way with the right guardrails around it.” ...

Hildebrandt shared ways that AI is being quietly shared throughout projects in ways that many members of the audience have no idea about, including in Fox’s sports coverage. Hildebrandt also noted that Fox has encouraged the use of AI by its employees throughout the organization in day-to-day activities, giving an example of one staff member who used ChatGPT’s customization options to automate a significant portion of her workflow working with metadata across a variety of systems. ...

See the full story here: https://www.yahoo.com/tech/fox-technology-chief-calls-entertainment-231619033.html

It’s Time to TerminateEverything You Believe About A.I.

... (describe generative AI)

Imagine you have a robot that can create things like text, pictures, or even music based on instructions you give it. This robot doesn’t “think” like a human, but it’s trained to understand and learn from a huge amount of information, like books, websites, or images. Then, when you ask it to do something, it uses that knowledge to generate something new that looks or sounds like it was made by a person.

For example, you could ask it to write a story, and it will come up with one for you, or you could ask it to make a picture of a sunny beach, and it will create that too. This ability to create, or “generate,” is why it’s called “generative” AI. It helps people by automating creative tasks that would usually take time and effort!

... When working with AI, the key is to ask open-ended questions. Closed questions usually get limited answers, but open-ended questions can lead to deeper thinking and creative ideas. Once you ask a question, think of it as a dialogue. Keep asking to get better and deeper answers. ...

Maintain Evolving AI Conversations

Iterative questioning: Start broad, then narrow it down based on responses. “How should I analyze my competition in the market?” Then, “How could I look at my pricing strategies compared to these competitors?”

Contextual Prompts: Provide relevant information to guide the AI.

• Company Data: Share relevant metrics, recent performance reports, market trends, and competitor analysis.

• Project Details: Include project goals, timelines, team roles and any current challenges.

• Customer Insights: Data on customer preferences, pain points and feedback.

• Role-Playing Scenarios: Ask the AI to adopt specific personas or roles: “As a financial advisor, how would you approach investment diversification?”

These techniques en­sure your interaction re­mains dynamic and productive, tapping into the current potential of AI collaboration for idea generation and problem-solving.

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An AI Augmented Workforce

Sometimes, it’s natural to think that bigger is better. But there’s a line of thinking in VR that smaller language models are more suited to specific tasks. The next stage of AI development will see function-specific AIs working together as teams. ...

Everyone Will Have An AI Version of Themselves

Meta’s recent release of AI Studio marks a significant leap in the realm of Creator AI. This platform allows anyone to craft an AI avatar, essentially creating a digital twin capable of interacting with audiences on their behalf. ...

This development brings up critical questions regarding content ownership and authenticity. If anyone can create an AI version of a public figure, how do we ensure its legitimacy? For instance, could someone unauthorizedly produce a Bob Cooney AI? (Hint: I already have.) ...

See the full story here: https://www.replaymag.com/bob-cooney-siggraph-2024/?utm_source=thevrcollective.beehiiv.com&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=inside-vr-ai-pac-man-vr-haunts-and-so-much-more