Beauty pageant contestants have always been judged by their looks, and, in recent decades, by their do-gooderly deeds and winning personalities.

Still, one thing that’s remained consistent throughout beauty pageant history is that you had to be a human to enter.

But now that’s changing.

Models created using generative artificial intelligence (AI) are competing in the inaugural “Miss AI” pageant this month. — Read More

Today, I’m talking with Zoom CEO Eric Yuan — and let me tell you: this conversation is nothing like what I expected. Eric started Zoom after working at Cisco and realizing there was an opportunity to make videoconferencing simpler and easier to use. And he was right: Zoom is now a household name — especially after usage exploded during the pandemic.

But usage has since come down, and Zoom faces a number of business challenges he and I talked about. Yet, it turns out, Eric wants Zoom to be much, much more than just a video chat platform. He wants to take on Microsoft and Google in the enterprise software market by making docs and email and other productivity tools like chat. And like virtually every other company, Zoom now has a big investment in AI — and Eric’s visions for what that AI will do are pretty wild.

See, Eric really wants you to stop having to attend Zoom meetings yourself.  — Read More

If you search “shrimp Jesus” on Facebook, you might encounter dozens of images of artificial intelligence (AI) generated crustaceans meshed in various forms with a stereotypical image of Jesus Christ.

Some of these hyper-realistic images have garnered more than 20,000 likes and comments. So what exactly is going on here?

The “dead internet theory” has an explanation: AI and bot-generated content has surpassed the human-generated internet. But where did this idea come from, and does it have any basis in reality? — Read More

There was something strange about her voice, they thought. It was familiar but, after a while, it started to go all over the place.

Science presenter Liz Bonnin’s accent, as regular BBC viewers know, is Irish. But this voice message, ostensibly granting permission to use her likeness in an ad campaign, seemed to place her on the other side of the world.

The message, it turns out, was a fake – AI-generated to mimic Bonnin’s voice. Her management team got hold of it after they saw the presenter’s face on online ads for an insect repellant spray this week, something for which she did not sign up. — Read More

I’m stressed and running late, because what do you wear for the rest of eternity? 

This makes it sound like I’m dying, but it’s the opposite. I am, in a way, about to live forever, thanks to the AI video startup Synthesia. For the past several years, the company has produced AI-generated avatars, but today it launches a new generation, its first to take advantage of the latest advancements in generative AI, and they are more realistic and expressive than anything I’ve ever seen. While today’s release means almost anyone will now be able to make a digital double, on this early April afternoon, before the technology goes public, they’ve agreed to make one of me. — Read More

Last week, Ernie Smith, the publisher of the website Tedium, got a “copyright infringement notice” from a law firm called Commonwealth Legal: “We’re reaching out on behalf of the Intellectual Property division of a notable entity, in relation to an image connected to our client,” it read. 

… In this case, though, the email didn’t demand that the photo be taken down or specifically threaten a lawsuit. Instead, it demanded that Smith place a “visible and clickable link” beneath the photo in question to a website called “tech4gods” or the law firm would “take action.” Smith began looking into the law firm. And he found that Commonwealth Legal is not real, and that the images of its “lawyers” are AI generated.  — Read More

4chan users who have made a game out of exploiting popular AI image generators appear to be at least partly responsible for the flood of fake images sexualizing Taylor Swift that went viral last month.

Graphika researchers—who study how communities are manipulated online—traced the fake Swift images to a 4chan message board that’s “increasingly” dedicated to posting “offensive” AI-generated content, The New York Times reported. Fans of the message board take part in daily challenges, Graphika reported, sharing tips to bypass AI image generator filters and showing no signs of stopping their game any time soon.  – Read More