Technology

The Berlin-based AI sound wellness app was founded by a collective of developers and artists. It runs a cross-platform ecosystem of AI-powered apps that produce personalized sounds to help people focus, relax, and sleep. Now, Endel is partnering with Amazon Music to produce a sleep playlist using its extensive research into the neuroscience of sleep. The playlist lasts about eight hours or until the listener awakens. Amazon Music released it on Friday (February 17).

Source: Amazon Music strikes playlist partnership with generative AI music company Endel

A new program designed to bring global arts and cultural institutions into the world of Web 3.0—the decentralized third generation of the Web that is home to blockchain, cryptocurrencies and NFTs—has selected 12 institutions, including the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the House of Electronic Arts, Basel (HeK), and the Royal College of Art in London, to join a fellowship that aims to engage with blockchain technology to preserve and promote cultural heritage.

Source: Twelve institutions join Web 3.0 fellowship to harness the power of blockchain

Of all the commentary about OpenAI’s model ChatGPT some of the more level-headed observations for the publishing industry may come from Thomas Cox, a specialist in computer science and the managing director of Arq Works near Oxford. Cox talks about how the software can “hallucinate,” as technologists call it, generating a stream of authoritative sounding verbiage that’s in fact utterly wrong. “Which is to say, it will lie to you,” Cox says. “Like it’s the truth. Because it has no idea that it’s not the truth.”

Source: What ‘AI’ Isn’t: An Interview With Thomas Cox on ChatGPT

Lickd, Kobalt, and Empire formally unveiled their partnership with three-year-old Decentraland today. Under the newly inked “milestone” pact, London-headquartered Lickd – which is backed by Warner Music, itself a major investor in and proponent of emerging platforms – has created a music player called Chorus. And it’s through Chorus that Decentraland users will have access to “thousands of hours of music” from Kobalt and Empire, higher-ups communicated.

Source: Lickd, Kobalt, and Empire Unveil Decentraland Music Partnership

Pioneering artists such as Picasso, Pollock, Calder, Basquiat and Bourgeois all broke new ground, with their radical work offering implicit commentary on what came before. The same can be said of creators in every other medium, with this iterative approach based on influence and inspiration helping to transform each respective field over time. In all these explorations and exchanges, however, the original artists prospered from their own creative work, and the public benefitted, immeasurably.

Source: Something New: Artificial Intelligence and the Perils of Plunder

Jason Chatfield, president of the National Cartoonists Society, says that many artists are primarily looking for credit, consent and compensation from AI art generation companies. He adds: “Legislators will take forever to even fathom the tech, let alone build in any guardrails, so it takes things like litigation and public debate to move the needle on the ethical use of this technology.”

Source: Artists are alarmed by AI — and they’re fighting back

David Guetta is bringing the topic of artificial intelligence to the forefront after proving just how well the new technology works at replicating the voices of pop artists. Last week, the French DJ and producer shared a video of him playing a song during one of his sets that used AI technology to add the “voice” of Eminem to one of his songs. “Let me introduce you to… Emin-AI-em,” Guetta wrote in the Twitter post’s caption.

Source: David Guetta Replicated Eminem’s Voice in a Song Using Artificial Intelligence

While there’s still a ways to go before A.I. generators such as Midjourney will have any significant impact on the art world, there is something endearing about the USCO’s valuation of human touch – maybe a line should be drawn around our understanding of art if only to one day preserve our significance in a world where both humans and A.I. technologies co-exist. But putting our existential worries to the side, if art itself is theoretically evasive, should A.I.- generated art be left out of the definition?

Source: To Be, or Not to Be? Considerations for A.I.- Generated Art

Voice actors are increasingly being asked to sign rights to their voices away so clients can use artificial intelligence to generate synthetic versions that could eventually replace them, and sometimes without additional compensation, according to advocacy organizations and actors who spoke to Motherboard. Those contractual obligations are just one of the many concerns actors have about the rise of voice-generating artificial intelligence, which they say threaten to push entire segments of the industry out of work.

Source: ‘Disrespectful to the Craft:’ Actors Say They’re Being Asked to Sign Away Their Voice to AI

The creator economy rose to prominence on Web2 platforms like YouTube and Instagram, but an emergent breed of services, such as Patreon, and Twitch are helping the growth of direct creator-to-fan content, sidestepping the traditional gatekeepers and opening the door to new methods of monetization. However, those new platforms may soon be surpassed by the growth of Web3 technologies like blockchain, cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens, social tokens, and DAOs.

Source: Beyond Crypto: How Web3 Is Transforming the Creator Economy