See you in court, AI

PLUS: Anthropic's Claude takes aim at ChatGPT

Author

Strange Magic
July 17, 2023

Hey, Stranger!

Welcome back to the hyper-evolving world of emerging tech. This week, AI expands its reach while fueling backlash. The battle for creator rights is an important one that will shape the future of AI training and implementation. Let’s get to it!

In this edition of Strange Magic…

  • ⚖️ The AI legal battlefield heats up

  • 💬 Claude takes aim at ChatGPT

  • 📍 Is the metaverse over or ready to reboot?

  • 🖼️ Make your own infinite zooms with our template

Read time: 6 minutes

🔮 What’s New

Sarah Silverman

The promise of AI as a fountain of knowledge has collided head-on with copyright law, as tech giants face a barrage of lawsuits over their thirst for training data. This week, the battle turned into a full-fledged melee as OpenAI, Meta, and Google confronted accusations of scraping the web for material without creator consent.

Sarah Silverman teamed up with authors Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey to lead the charge, slapping lawsuits on OpenAI and Meta with allegations of negligence, unjust enrichment, and unfair competition. Meanwhile, Google is staring down a proposed class action lawsuit on behalf of potentially millions whose online musings may have been sucked into Google's AI training set without permission. Google maintains it uses public data "responsibly," and has been clear about it for years. Guess we should’ve been reading those EULA’s a little more closely.

For its part, OpenAI signed deals with the AP and Shutterstock for training content it can use with full permission. The move suggests tech companies are realizing they can't just take what they want from the web's trove of data - they have to ask first. As the battlefield shifts, one thing is clear: the rules of AI training are being rewritten on the fly.

Anthropic's Claude chatbot has emerged as a new challenger to ChatGPT's conversational AI crown with the release of Claude 2 this week. Coming off a $450 million funding round, Anthropic is moving quickly to gain ground.

The updated Claude touts improvements like handling hundreds of pages of input and providing lengthy responses. Claude has also been hitting the books, improving test scores on the GRE and coding challenges.

Claude already mimicked ChatGPT's ability to work with uploaded documents. But for now, you can use these features free of charge with Claude, unlike ChatGPT's premium Code Interpreter, only available with a paid plan.

Anthropic is angling to overthrow ChatGPT as the go-to virtual assistant. You can see if Claude 2 has the chops to claim the chatbot throne by taking it for a spin yourself at claude.ai.

In Other News

  • Firefly for all: Adobe has been aggressively rolling out its own set of generative AI tools called Firefly. Now they’ve making the suite available worldwide through their web service. Adobe claims users have already generated a mind-blowing 1 billion assets through the 4 month old service.

  • x.AI joins the party: Iron Man turned PT Barnum, Elon Musk is launching an AI company called x.AI. After the announcement, introducing an all-star team, Musk took to Twitter Spaces, pontificating about everything except his new venture. Behind the bombast, x.AI remains mostly a mystery other than the goal “...to understand the true nature of the universe." While Musk is aiming for the moon, we just want AI that can generate normal-looking hands.

  • Apple TV in 3D: Rumor has it that “Monarch” the latest production from Apple TV is being shot for 3D video viewing in the Vision Pro. Further (and more far fetched) rumors suggest Apple has been filming its shows in 3D for years in preparation for the Vision Pro. If true, could Apple possibly revive the dormant 3D TV market?

     

📖 Good Reads

“The metaverse hype is dead.” At least according to Meta’s VP of Metaverse. Kate Wagner’s essay, and take-down, calls out the over-hyped tech and missing market. With the hype buried, it's time to build anew. VR, AR, and spatial computing's futures remain open. These technologies may still usher in the next era of computing. But, like the mobile era before it, we can’t force it into a single predetermined vision. We won’t know what it looks like until it arrives.

AI’s rise sounds alarm bells, demanding guardrails and scrutiny. But, there are no shortage of upsides to the rapid developments unfolding in front of us either. From the potential for long awaited disease cures to better climate change solutions, the new wave of AI progress could actually make the world a better place.

More Reads

⚙️ Try These

  • Stable Doodle: This new (free for now) text-to-image generator from Clipdrop by Stability AI adds a simple doodle component that gives users better control of their image generations. It’s a fun way to get better image results.

  • AudioPen: Audio notes are convenient but hard to organize. Dictate an audio note into AudioPen and AI will accurately transcribe and rewrite your thoughts for clarity. Paid accounts include tagging and a host of other features

  • Momento: For video creators, Momento offers a suite of tools that turn long-form videos into sharable short-form moments with AI assistance. Upload a clip to automatically find the sharable content, generate captions and titles, and even use AI to write post descriptions.

🧪 The Lab

Rat Benatar

✨ We’re Diggin’

The Strangest Flea Market

  • The Strangest Flea Market: This Instagram account imagines a menagerie of bizarre items and visitors at a very strange flea market, all generated in Midjourney.

  • Wear your robot well: Researchers at the Small Artifacts Lab are developing a tiny robot, that zips around your clothing on a special rail to handle tasks like health monitoring an exercise coaching. There might be actual tracks on your next track suit.

🌤️ Fresh Air

Go on, touch some grass.

  • Park life: If there is one account to follow this summer, it’s gotta be the Nation Park Service. Perhaps the most fun use of our tax dollars, the NPS Instagram account manages to be hilarious, cute, and educational, the trifecta of social media prowess. 🐯 

  • What lies beneath: The Action Adventure Twins delve into the deepest caves to uncover amazing hidden worlds like this mysterious blue hole deep inside a river cave.

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Well, that’s enough strangeness for one day. Hope you learned something new. If you enjoyed it, please tell your friends! Our robot has picked a private school. 🤖

And, of course, if you have anything interesting to share, or just want to say hi, please feel free to reach out to us!