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- Generation Gen-AI marches on
Hello, Human Friend!
While generative AI tools can do some impressive things, they they aren’t always the easiest tools to try, until now. Adobe is throwing down the gauntlet with its latest updates. Plus your favorite stars might not be real (in the future), and there could be a reason your boss seems a bit robotic.
In this edition of Strange Magic…
🔥 Adobe releases Firefly AI for all subscribers
✨ Octavia Spencer and Tom Hanks embrace AI
🖥️ It’s time we get to know the ‘transformer’ (not that one)
🤖 Yes, they did name an AI robot as CEO
Read time: 5 minutes
🔮 What’s New
Source: Adobe
We’ve talked a lot about the rapid developments and user growth in generative AI, particularly across tools for image, video, and audio creation. Perhaps the biggest move so far came from Adobe last week when they pushed their experimental Firefly AI tools out of beta and into their newest releases of popular apps like Photoshop and Illustrator. With a subscriber base around 30M, a lot of people are suddenly going to find generative AI right in the middle of their creative workflows. This will be truest test yet whether or not creatives choose to embrace or reject AI in their work. For what it’s worth, Adobe has apparently started to pay bonuses to artists who’s work contributed to training the Firefly models.
In the generative audio space, the company behind Stable Diffusion joined the music party with the release of their first text-to-music model called Stable Audio. Similar to Google’s MusicLM, Stable Audio can generate somewhat high-fidelity song clips from basic text prompts. Unlike MusicLM, Stable Audio offers a paid tier that includes longer audio clips (up to 90 seconds) more generations, and a commercial use license.
In Other News
I shall never grow old: Some of Hollywood’s biggest talent, including Octavia Spencer, Tom Hanks, and Anne Hathaway are using new software from Metaphysic, a generative AI tech firm, to manage the creation and use of their likeness through AI. Metaphysic previously revealed that Hanks, along with Robin Wright, were using its tech for “de-aging” in an upcoming film.
Washington has AI fever: The folks in the Capital can’t get enough of AI right now. And, that’s probably a good thing, since we will need smart regulation as the technology continues to unfold. Last week, a group of tech leaders including, future cage fighters, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, met with Senators to discuss what is happening with AI in order to eventually legislate it. Baby steps. Meanwhile, across town, the IRS announced plans use AI to help “restore fairness in tax compliance”.
📖 Good Reads
Source: Midjourney
What today’s AI platforms can accomplish feels like a bit like magic. But, at their core, most of the AI advances we are see today stem from one major scientific development in 2017. It’s called the transformer. And, this visual guide from the Financial Times is about the best way to understand how it works without a computer science degree.
The most common debate about AI these days seems to be around its ability to replicate human creativity or worse, to replace it. But, Alberto Romero reminds us that we really have nothing to worry about. Because, in the end, humans connect with other humans, and AI can’t compete with that.
More Reads
⚙️ Try These
Learn.xyz: Learn aims to keep learning fun and make it sharable with AI powered lessons that you can create and share through the mobile app.
Poe: Poe offers a single dashboard for interacting with various AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude, as well as tools for generating your own chatbots, and exploring bots made by others on the platform.
✨ We’re Diggin’
Source: arsTechnica
It’s all just an illusion: After some clever so-and-so figured out a way to make working AI art QR codes back in June, another tinkerer found a way to generate optical illusion art using a similar method with Stable Diffusion and Control Net. The new method caused quite the ripple on social media last week because, let’s be honest, it’s fun to look at.
“♫And on the farm they had a robot, A-I-C-E-O♫”: Honestly, this could go down as the worst decision in business history, but how could you not want to see what comes of the Polish beverage company Dictador’s new AI robot CEO?
🌤️ Fresh Air
The best light show since Pink Floyd: Can you ever really get enough of the Northern Lights? Check out this stunning images captured as the Aurora Borealis spread across the horizon in parts of the UK last week.
Mr Riceside: Nothing could prepare you for the supreme viral TikTok meets local commercial mash-up that is “Mr Riceside” from Ubran Tandoor.
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