Picture this: In a future not too far away, HBO is mulling whether to greenlight a new Game of Thrones spinoff but is on the fence about the project. So instead of dumping tens of millions of dollars to shoot a pilot it might wind up passing on, it uses a generative artificial intelligence system trained on its library of shows to create a rough cut in the style of the original. It ultimately decides not to move forward with the title. That process sans AI cost HBO troves of cash and time when it was mulling a potential successor to Thrones in 2018. A cast headed by Naomi Watts was assembled and massive new sets were built. All in all, HBO spent roughly $35 million to shoot a pilot that never saw the light of day. The cost of doing it with AI? A fraction of that figure.

The role of AI in the entertainment industry was a sticking point in talks during dual strikes by actors and writers last year, with the unions eventually negotiating guardrails on use, but the kind of tech capable of overhauling traditional production processes and outright replacing skilled workers was still thought to be years away.

Enter OpenAI’s Sora, which was unveiled Feb. 15 and marks the Sam Altman-led startup’s first major encroachment into Hollywood. — Read More

… The Future (You will experience this moment soon)

There’s a moment that stays with you—the first time you witness your thoughts materialize into visual marvels on the screen. It’s akin to the first successful alchemists turning lead into gold, except our lead is the raw, unshaped ideas, and our gold, the breathtaking visuals rendered from the ether of our imagination. The advent of AI-driven tools like OpenAI’s Sora has been nothing short of a revelation, a glimpse into a future where creating temporally consistent video content is as effortless as describing a sunrise to a friend. — Read More

In the week when gadget lovers around the world are enchanted by Vision Pro, a young, brave startup is trying to carve out a space for its augmented reality device that features a form factor starkly different from Apple’s device.

Today, Singapore-based Brilliant Labs announced its new product, Frame, a pair of lightweight AR glasses powered by a multimodal AI assistant called Noa. The glasses have captured the attention and investment of John Hanke, CEO of Niantic, the augmented reality platform behind games like Pokémon GO. Brilliant Labs declined to disclose the amount of funding it received from Hanke.  – Read More

George Carlin‘s family is pushing back against a new artificial intelligence-generated comedy special claiming to bring the legend’s work back to life.

The AI icon is true to form with an inflammatory set featuring opinions on Trump, transgender Americans, reality TV and tech. The hourlong comedy special from Dudesy features an AI spin on Carlin’s takes on current events. Dudesy is an AI comedy platform from Mad TV alum Will Sasso and podcaster Chad Kultgen.  –  Read More

YouTube Video

Is artificial intelligence going to put artists out of a job? Alan Warburton decided to make a film posing that very question – using AI. The result was disturbingly watchable.

A toilet bubbles over with sticky yellow goo. Bedazzled executives are treated to a speech by a cartoon ghost. Someone’s dog walks across a wall before reconfiguring its own body parts. Alan Warburton has created some truly mind-blowing images for his new documentary The Wizard of AI. But what’s most impressive – or maybe most alarming – is the fact that he didn’t actually create any of them at all.

“I would say 99% of it was made using generative artificial intelligence tools,” says the 43-year-old artist film-maker. So could his 20-minute film really be, as he has claimed, the world’s first ever AI documentary? — Read More

Artists suing generative artificial intelligence art generators have hit a stumbling block in a first-of-its-kind lawsuit over the uncompensated and unauthorized use of billions of images downloaded from the internet to train AI systems, with a federal judge’s dismissal of most claims.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick on Monday found that copyright infringement claims cannot move forward against Midjourney and DeviantArt, concluding the accusations are “defective in numerous respects.” Among the issues are whether the AI systems they run on actually contain copies of copyrighted images that were used to create infringing works and if the artists can substantiate infringement in the absence of identical material created by the AI tools. Claims against the companies for infringement, right of publicity, unfair competition and breach of contract were dismissed, though they will likely be reasserted. — Read More

In mid-September, YouTube announced a collection of new artificial intelligence tools coming to the platform. The tools touch basically every part of the content creation process, from generating topics to editing and even generating video footage itself through the Dream Screen feature. But even as AI features have caused an uproar in so many other creative industries, the response to YouTube’s new suite of tools has been muted. Instead, YouTubers are sharing other concerns about the ways generative AI is already affecting the platform.

… [E]xisting creators don’t seem particularly interested one way or the other. “No one’s heard of it yet,” says Jimmy McGee, a YouTuber who recently made a video titled “The AI Revolution is Rotten to the Core.” As the title might suggest, he’s not a huge fan of YouTube’s proposed tools, but he says it’s “strange” how they’ve been received. — Read More