Daily Archives: August 20, 2021

Unknown's avatar Rick's Cafe AI 9:47 am on August 20, 2021
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Zion Wants to Free Social Media from Big Tech Through the Lightning Network

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Social network Zion onboards users to the Lightning Network to free them from big tech censorship, revenue restrictions and data collection.

Announced earlier today, Bitcoin-based social network Zion has launched with the mission of eliminating reliance on large tech companies for content creation and sharing, providing an alternative that does not collect user data, censor speech or withhold portions of payments meant for content creators.

“With Zion, technology companies are completely eliminated and users interact in a secure, censorship-resistant, private utility that facilitates free and open flow of content and payments between users and their audiences,” according to a press release from the platform. “There is no way to manipulate how users experience the network and absolutely no data is collected, ever.” Read More

#blockchain

Unknown's avatar Rick's Cafe AI 9:43 am on August 20, 2021
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Warner Bros. ‘Reminiscence’ promo uses deepfake tech to put you in the trailer

If you want to see yourself on screen with Hugh Jackman, this is your chance. The promo for Warner Bros. upcoming Reminiscence movie uses deepfake technology to turn a photo of your face — or anybody’s face, really — into a short video sequence with the star. According to Protocol, a media startup called D-ID created the promo for the film. D-ID reportedly started out wanting to develop technology that can protect consumers against facial recognition, but then it realized that its tech could also be used to optimize deepfakes.

For this particular project, the firm created a website for the experience, where you’ll be asked for your name and for a photo. You can upload the photo of anybody you want, and the experience will then conjure up an animation for the face in it. The animation isn’t perfect by any means, and the face could look distorted at times, but it’s still not bad, considering the technology created it from a single picture.  Read More

#gans, #image-recognition

#fake

Unknown's avatar Rick's Cafe AI 9:36 am on August 20, 2021
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Amazon taps its SocialBot challenge to boost conversational AI

Earlier this week, Amazon announced the winners of its annual Alexa Prize SocialBot Grand Challenge, which ​​promotes research into coherence, context awareness, fluency of response, and other areas fundamental to the future of conversational AI. Participating university teams design social bots for Alexa-enabled devices and can validate their ideas by directly engaging with Amazon’s millions of Alexa customers.

But the competition isn’t just a way for participants to experiment and earn research grants. Each research team maintains ownership of the intellectual property in its systems, and a win might mean an opportunity to integrate their research into Amazon’s future plans. Some fairly significant advancements in conversational AI and subsequent scientific papers typically come out of the event. Read More

#robotics