KC DEBRIEF WEEK 03, FRIDAY 2024/01/19
DIGITAL TITANS
_Apple has once again been banned from selling two smartwatch models in the US, while a legal battle continues over a patent dispute.The tech giant was earlier allowed to sell its Series 9 and Ultra 2 watches while proceedings were ongoing - but a US appeals court has since reversed that decision. Imports of watches are also affected.On Thursday, Apple said it will release watches without the disputed blood oxygen feature to keep them on shelves. It is the latest turn in a dispute between the firm and medical technology company Masimo.Masimo and spin-off Cercacor have accused the iPhone maker of poaching key staff and taking other steps to steal technology it developed to measure oxygen levels in the blood.In October, the US International Trade Commission said it agreed that Apple had violated some patent rights and issued an order barring certain imports and sales. This had been due to go into effect in late December but was paused while the appeal was underway.
_“Spotify influencers” are leveraging their followings on other social platforms to get people talking about and sharing their music playlists. The practice’s surging popularity is turning into a sort of digital mixtape culture, which is great for underserved artists. But it also may highlight that Spotify needs to introduce some actual social features if it wants to evolve with its user base, create an ecosystem of artist discoverability, and stay one step ahead of its competitors. A new crop of influencers is giving music discovery on Spotify a more personalized touch… by growing followers on TikTok.
· Ari Elkins (@arijelkins) pushed his 2.1 million followers to his 40 Spotify playlists, which now have thousands of likes.
· Kelsie Herzog (@theyellowbutton) leveraged her account into a Patreon subscription that curates unique playlists for subscribers (over 1,300 so far).
· Margeaux Labat (@marg.mp3), who daylights at Pitchfork, has over 400 public playlists on Spotify that have become bonafide tastemakers.
The grassroots discovery platforms these influencers have become demonstrates how much Spotify needs to rework its entire music-recommendation ethos. As the streamer has prioritized centralized curation over user recommendations, it’s built a service that has so much music… but may leave users stumped as to how to find something new to listen to.
ALSO
Spotify has launched an outspoken attack on new transaction fees of up to 27% being levied by Apple in the US. On Wednesday, Apple announced it would permit app developers to sell products in places other than its own store - but only if they still paid commission. Spotify said that was "outrageous" and accused Apple of "stopping at nothing" to protect its profits. It is urging the British government to prevent similar fees being levied in the UK. Apple has been approached for comment. The firm introduced the fees in the US as a result of a long-running legal battle with Fortnite developer Epic Games.
ALSO
Apple now has the lion's share of the global smartphone market, knocking Samsung off the top spot for the first time in 12 years. The American phone giant accounted for more than a fifth of phones shipped last year, according to data from the International Data Corporation (IDC). Samsung took 19.4% of the market share with Chinese phonemakers Xiaomi, OPPO and Transsion following behind. Smartphone sales have been faltering as many people upgraded in the pandemic. The IDC reports that almost 1.2 billion smartphones were sold last year - a drop of more than 3% on the previous year. It is the lowest amount sold in a decade, with many consumers tightening their purse strings in the face of economic challenges and high interest rates. Experts predict the market will recover this year.
_Samsung debuts the world's first transparent MicroLED screen at CES 2024. There's no word on pricing or when this tech will be available in retail devices, but it looks incredible.On Sunday night Samsung held its annual First Look event at CES 2024, where the company teased the world's first transparent MicroLED display. While there's still no word on how much it costs or when this tech will find its way into retail devices, Samsung showcased its transparent MicroLED display side-by-side next to transparent OLED and transparent LCD models to really highlight the differences between the tech. Compared to the others, not only was the MicroLED panel significantly brighter, it also featured a completely frameless design and a more transparent glass panel that made it easier to see objects behind it.
_Amazon is to axe hundreds of staff across its subsidiaries Twitch, Prime Video and MGM studios. More than 500 Twitch employees - a third of the streamer's workforce - will be laid off, according to a note from chief executive Dan Clancy. Amazon said several hundred employees at Prime Video and film studio MGM will also lose their jobs this week. The tech giant laid off more than 27,000 staff members in 2023 despite bumper profits. Twitch was initially set up for gamers to watch and share video gameplay online. It wasbought by Amazon in 2014 for $970m (£585m at the time). In an email to employees, Mr Clancy said he was taking the "painful step to reduce our headcount" to "build a more sustainable business". He added that the company paid out $1bn to streamers in 2023, but had "conservative predictions of how we expect to grow in the future."
_Fox corp, one of the largest media companies in the U.S., has publicly debuted a new blockchain platform called Verify to help media companies track how their content is being used online. Why it matters: Fox Corp. plans to use the Verify Protocol to negotiate deals licensing its content — an enormous trove of intellectual property across Fox News, Fox Sports, Fox Entertainment, and more — to artificial intelligence (AI) companies.
The company is also in active discussions with other media companies to use its protocol, suggesting that the tool will give them leverage in their negotiations with AI companies.
How it works: The Verify blockchain protocol is a distributed internet database of media content that's cryptographically signed to establish the content's origin and history.
It was developed in house by the Fox Corp's technology team in collaboration with Polygon Labs, a media software services firm.
Media companies can register their content to the platform to verify that it's theirs. Once the content is verified, they can grant usage rights to AI platforms that want to use their content to train the large language models (LLMs) that support apps like ChatGPT or Bard.
PEOPLE, MEDIA, CULTURE
_Why The NFL’s First Streaming-Only Playoff Matchup Is A Game Changer. Saturday night’s NFL playoff game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins has big implications, and not just for the two teams weathering brutal conditions on the icy road to the Super Bowl. The online-only ‘cast likely represents the next big step in the collapse of broadcast and cable business models. Comcast-owned NBCUniversal paid the league $110 million for exclusive streaming-only rights to the single game, to run on its consistently underachieving subscription service Peacock, now approaching its fourth birthday.Leading up to the game, NBCU ran ads on CNBC and its other outlets, calling the streamcast “history making” because, technically, it is the first time this has been done with an NFL playoff game, one of the most-watched experiences in the television industry.
_AI LA LA LAND
//Prominent voice actors say they weren't told about a landmark deal setting out how voices generated by artificial intelligence (AI) can be used in games. It has been struck by US actors' union Sag-Aftra and AI firm Replica Studios. The union says it guarantees "fully informed consent and fair compensation" for its members. But many voice artists, who have long been concerned AI will replace them, have reacted with fury with one calling the deal "garbage." In an email to members, seen by the BBC, Sag-Aftra said the deal was negotiated by a committee which included "actors with significant and diverse experience performing in games".
//A brand new substance, which could reduce lithium use in batteries, has been discovered using artificial intelligence (AI) and supercomputing. The findings were made by Microsoft and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), which is part of the US Department of Energy. Scientists say the material could potentially reduce lithium use by up to 70%. Since its discovery the new material has been used to power a lightbulb. Microsoft researchers used AI and supercomputers to narrow down 32 million potential inorganic materials to 18 promising candidates in less than a week - a screening process that could have taken more than two decades to carry out using traditional lab research methods.
//Artificial intelligence is set to affect nearly 40% of all jobs, according to a new analysis by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). IMF's managing director Kristalina Georgieva says "in most scenarios, AI will likely worsen overall inequality". Ms Georgieva adds that policymakers should address the "troubling trend" to "prevent the technology from further stoking social tensions". The proliferation of AI has put its benefits and risks under the spotlight. The IMF said AI is likely to affect a greater proportion of jobs - put at around 60% - in advanced economies. In half of these instances, workers can expect to benefit from the integration of AI, which will enhance their productivity. In other instances, AI will have the ability to perform key tasks that are currently executed by humans. This could lower demand for labour, affecting wages and even eradicating jobs.Meanwhile, the IMF projects that the technology will affect just 26% of jobs in low-income countries.It echoes a report from Goldman Sachs in 2023, which estimated AI could replace the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs - but said there may also be new jobs alongside a boom in productivity. Ms Georgieva said "many of these countries don't have the infrastructure or skilled workforces to harness the benefits of AI, raising the risk that over time the technology could worsen inequality among nations".
//A sexual assault in the metaverse has investigators questioning the future of virtual crime prosecution. The UK police are investigating a teenage girl's claim that her avatar was digitally gang-raped in a virtual reality game.MATTHEW KNIGHT via Getty Images
UK authorities are investigating the claim of a simulated gang rape of a teenager's VR avatar.
The teen told the police she was using a headset to play a VR video game when male players attacked her avatar.
Officials say the girl faced trauma akin to real-life assault — but others aren't so sure that's possible.
A teenager's claim that her avatar was gang-raped in an immersive virtual-reality game is being investigated by UK authorities, who are said to be considering the novel question of whether such an act in the metaverse can be criminally charged.The girl, who was identified only as being under the age of 16, was wearing a VR headset to play online when several male players attacked and "gang-raped" her digital avatar, British police sources told The Daily Mail.Though she was not physically injured, the outlet reported the girl was deeply distraught after the incident, and a senior police officer familiar with the case told The Daily Mail she experienced trauma similar to a real-life assault.Donna Jones, the chair of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, confirmed to The BBC that the incident was first reported to authorities in 2023, triggering an investigation by police. Still, BBC could not verify which force launched the probe into the attack.
// Getty Images (NYSE: GETY), a preeminent global visual content creator and marketplace, today announced the launch of Generative AI by iStock, an affordable and commercially safe generative AI tool to help users and businesses easily turn their creative visions into powerful content. Powered by NVIDIA Picasso, a foundry for custom generative AI models for visual design, and trained exclusively using high‑quality content and proprietary data from Getty Images’ creative libraries, Generative AI by iStock has been engineered to guard against generations of known products, people, places or other copyrighted elements. Not only does this mean businesses can have confidence in the content they are generating, but any licensed visual that a customer generates comes with iStock’s standard $10K USD legal coverage that customers have with iStock’s broader image and video libraries.The tool works seamlessly with iStock’s library of authentic and commercial-ready imagery, including millions of exclusive photos, illustrations and videos. The addition of Generative AI by iStock gives customers multiple ways to get the right visuals for any need, including print marketing, social posts, online promotions and more. “Using AI, creatives gain the ability to produce anything they can imagine. Our own VisualGPS research shows that 42% of SMBs and SMEs are already using AI-generated content to support their marketing efforts. Our main goal with Generative AI by iStock is to provide customers with an easy and affordable option to use AI in their creative process, without fear that something that is legally protected has snuck into the dataset and could end up in their work,” said Grant Farhall, iStock’s Chief Product Officer. “Our AI Generator is easy to use, produces relevant and high-quality visuals, and is backed by our legal protection so customers can now safely use this new service, in combination with our amazing pre-shot library, to elevate their work.” Customers will be able to download and license any generated visual, with legal indemnification at no extra cost, giving them a low cost of entry to explore commercially safe generative AI for their marketing efforts.iStock is also enabling advanced generative AI features through APIs for easy integration into creative applications and plugins, allowing for the modification of images.
//OpenAI debuts GPT Store for users to buy and sell customized chatbots. Through the new product models, chatbot agents could be developed with their own personalities or themes. OpenAI on Wednesday launched its GPT Store, a marketplace where paid ChatGPT users can buy and sell specialized chatbot agents based on the company’s language models. The company, whose wildly popular product ChatGPT helped kickstart the boom in AI, already offers customized bots through its paid ChatGPT Plus service. The new store will allow users to offer and monetize a broader range of tools.Through the new models, chatbot agents could be developed with their own personalities or themes, including models for salary negotiating, creating lesson plans and developing recipes. In a blogpost announcing the launch, OpenAI said more than 3m custom versions of ChatGPT have already been created. It also said it plans to highlight useful GPT tools within the store every week.
//Did a ChatGPT glitch reveal Twitter's huge bot problem? / BoingBoing
//A groundbreaking decision by a Chinese court, recognizing the copyright of an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated image, is positioned to catalyze creativity and provide a significant boost to the burgeoning AI industry, as stated by the presiding judge responsible for the landmark ruling.In an unprecedented judgment in mainland China, the Beijing Internet Court ruled in November that an image created through the text-to-image software Stable Diffusion qualifies as artwork entitled to copyright protection due to the originality and intellectual contribution of its human creator.The court’s move to confer legal status on generative AI content, under specific conditions in this case, is seen as an effort to inspire individuals to engage in creative endeavours using new tools, emphasized Judge Zhu Ge during a recent lecture reported by Chinese online news outlet The Paper.The judge expressed concerns about the potential negative impact on the industry if AI-generated content is not recognized as artwork, stating, “If no content created with AI models can be considered artwork, this would deal a blow to the industry.”While the ruling has ignited heated debates on whether AI-generated content should be safeguarded by copyright laws, the Beijing Internet Court asserts that future disputes involving an author’s personal expression in AI-assisted image creation should be assessed on a case-by-case basis.The legal precedent emerged from an intellectual property infringement lawsuit initiated in May of the previous year by a plaintiff named Li, who utilized the Stable Diffusion program from the US startup StabilityAI to craft an image posted on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu.Li accused blogger Liu of using the AI-generated image without permission on the Baidu-owned content-sharing platform Baijiahao. The court ruled in favour of Li, deeming the AI-generated image an artwork based on continuous human input into prompts and parameter adjustments reflecting “aesthetic choice and personalized judgment.”Judge Zhu underscored the ruling’s consideration of potential implications for “emerging industries” during her lecture, hoping that the decision in this case could serve as a guiding reference for future disputes.The court’s decision aligns with China’s evolving aspirations for generative AI, coinciding with global advancements in AI technology. Forecasts indicate that China’s generative AI industry is poised to contribute 30 trillion yuan in economic value by 2035, constituting a third of the industry’s projected global value of 90 trillion yuan, according to a report by the CCID Group, affiliated with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
_Why is the world investing so much in semiconductors?
_The Internet Is About to Get Weird Again. The new year offers many of the promises of an online moment we haven’t seen in a quarter-centuryIT’S A DRAMATIC, messy era on the internet. Everything is changing rapidly. There’s broad dissatisfaction with the dominant search engine, and activists are worried about the privacy implications of increasingly intrusive online surveillance. While investors prattle on about esoteric topics like digital currencies and virtual reality, back in the real world, users are concerned with how hard it is to message all their friends on the many different platforms that they’re using, and perhaps a bit curious about the new social networks that keep popping up. Amidst the backdrop of all this change, an off-putting nerd named Elon Musk won’t stop talking about an “everything app” called X that will help him manifest his extremist views. But more than anything, it is a time when the internet seems ripe for change, perhaps even being wide open to a new cohort of technologies and communities that could reshape the way it works. Millions of people seem poised to connect with each other in new ways, as they reconsider their fundamental relationship to technology.The era I’m talking about is 2000. But it could just as easily be 2024, because this new year offers many echoes of a moment we haven’t seen in a quarter-century. Some of the most dominant companies on the internet are at risk of losing their relevance, and the rest of us are rethinking our daily habits in ways that will shift the digital landscape as we know it. Though the specifics are hard to predict, we can look to historical precedents to understand the changes that are about to come, and even to predict how regular internet users — not just the world’s tech tycoons — may be the ones who decide how it goes.Across today’s internet, the stores that deliver all the apps on our phones are cracking open, the walls between social media platforms are coming down as the old networks fail, the headlong rush towards AI is making our search engines and work apps weirder (and often worse!). But amidst it all, the human web, the one made by regular people, is resurgent. We are about to see the biggest reshuffling of power on the internet in 25 years, in a way that most of the internet’s current users have never seen before. And while some of the drivers of this change have been hyped up, or even over-hyped, a few of the most important changes haven’t gotten any discussion at all.
BRANDS
_DOVE, Changing the game for Black hair. Code My Crown is a guide to the creation and celebration of Black hair textures and protective styles in video games. Our guide features instructions, personal insights, detailed references and full open-source code, created by people within the Black community, for anyone to use to create characters in the digital world.
_Sony Steers Its New Car Onstage Using A PlayStation Controller.
_World premiere at CES: Volkswagen integrates ChatGPT into its vehicles. At CES 2024, the world's leading electronics trade fair held from 9 to 12 January, Volkswagen will present the first vehicles in which the artificial-intelligence-based chatbot ChatGPT is integrated into its IDA voice assistant. In future, customers will have seamless access to the constantly growing artificial intelligence database in all Volkswagen models equipped with the IDA voice assistant and have researched content read out to them while driving. Cerence Chat Pro from technology partner Cerence Inc. is the foundation of the new function, which offers a uniquely intelligent, automotive-grade ChatGPT integration. Volkswagen will be the first volume manufacturer to offer Chat GPT as a standard feature from the second quarter of 2024 in many production vehicles. The new chatbot is offered in conjunction with the latest generation of infotainment in the following models: ID.7, ID.4, ID.5, ID.3, the all-new Tiguan and the all-new Passat, as well as in the new Golf. Enabled by Cerence Chat Pro, the integration of ChatGPT into the backend of the Volkswagen voice assistant offers a multitude of new capabilities that go far beyond the previous voice control. For example, the IDA voice assistant can be used to control the infotainment, navigation, and air conditioning, or to answer general knowledge questions. In the future, AI will provide additional information in response to questions that go beyond this as part of its continuously expanding capabilities. This can be helpful on many levels during a car journey: Enriching conversations, clearing up questions, interacting in intuitive language, receiving vehicle-specific information, and much more – purely hands-free.
MMMM OF THE WEEK
_Viral cat app captivates China. China has fallen in love with a new livestream app,街猫– or “Street Cat” in English. The app allows you to donate food to street cats and watch them dine. It achieved over one million active users within just four months of its launch. Some of the cats have even gone viral and inadvertently became “Cat KOLs”. Street Cat App have installed smart cat houses in 13 cities across China, including Shanghai, Hangzhou, Guangzhou and Changsha. These houses have HD cameras and offer three main features for users: virtual feeding, multi-angle viewing and smart monitoring. The app offers a feature where users can purchase "love coins" to feed the cats with food and treats. For 1.99 yuan, one can buy 32 love coins. 10 of these coins are enough to feed a cat 10 grams of food, and 20 coins will buy freeze-dried treats. The app has collaborated with pet brands for charity sales and neutering subsidies. Users can also donate to sponsor a cat house. However, many netizens noted that overfeeding at cat houses can lead to hygiene problems and attract dangerous wildlife.