Technology

In its most full-blown incarnation, the metaverse won’t exist until someone crams hyper-realistic 3D display technology into something that looks like a garden-variety pair of eyeglasses and can run for an entire day on one battery charge. Progress will be made—progress is being made—but the necessary technologies can’t be willed into existence.

Source: Is the metaverse already dead?

Here’s the Music Ally angle: what does all this mean for the way music and artists are discovered online?  What will conversational search AIs be telling people about your artists? The rapid rollout of conversational AIs might also spur some talk about how they might fit into music services specifically. At some point will you find yourself chatting to a SpotifyGPT bot as if it were a wise record-store clerk quizzing you on your tastes then giving you suggestions?

Source: Is the music biz ready for a world of conversational search AIs? – Music Ally

Google is rolling out a conversational artificial-intelligence service, called Bard, to a select set of testers, and plans a broader public launch in coming weeks, as it plays catch-up with challengers such as OpenAI. The new experimental service, called Bard, generates textual responses to questions posed by users, based on information drawn from the web, Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google parent Alphabet Inc., said in a blog post published Monday.

Source: Google Opens ChatGPT Rival Bard for Testing, as AI War Heats Up

OpenAI’s Nov. 30 release of ChatGPT to the public marked the first time such a powerful AI tool was at the disposal of ordinary internet users. Yet generative AI technology already is finding applications in marketing, advertising, drug development, legal contracts, video gaming, customer support and digital art. Some Wall Street analysts compare the arrival of generative AI that creates content to Apple’s launch of the iPhone in 2008

Source: ChatGPT Is Just The ‘Tip Of The Iceberg’ In Content-Creating AI

The publisher of Sports Illustrated and other outlets is using artificial intelligence to help produce articles and pitch journalists potential topics to follow, the latest example of a media company investing in the emerging technology. Some articles in Men’s Journal are already AI-generated, the company said, such as “Proven Tips to Help You Run Your Fastest Mile Yet,” and “The Best Ways for Men Over 40 to Maintain Muscle.”

Source: WSJ News Exclusive | Sports Illustrated Publisher Taps AI to Generate Articles, Story Ideas

Researchers in both industry and academia found that the most popular and upcoming AI image generators can “memorize” images from the data they’re trained on. Instead of creating something completely new, certain prompts will get the AI to simply reproduce an image. Some of these recreated images could be copyrighted. But even worse, modern AI generative models have the capability to memorize and reproduce sensitive information scraped up for use in an AI training set.

Source: Researchers Prove AI Art Generators Can Simply Copy Existing Images

Last year, the UK emerged as a lightning rod for the AI training debate, due to government consultation on proposals to provide a copyright exception for ‘text and data mining.’ Cue a swift and unified backlash from British music industry bodies, later expanded on by BPI boss Geoff Taylor, who said the proposal “would essentially mean that anyone can train their AI on any music that’s ever been made, without seeking permission from anybody involved in the creation of that music”.

Source: UK government rethinks plans for AI-training copyright exception – Music Ally

A large part of the gaming industry’s ability to squeeze more value from its IP comes from the flexibility of the experience. While there may be a myriad of different formats games developers can choose from to reboot their franchises, there is only one way a viewer can experience an SVOD service: lean-back and watch. This must change if SVOD services want to maintain viewer engagement.

Source: The streaming wars will be won with technology, not content

Staking their claim as part of the evolution of NFTs in music entertainment are The Avila Brothers, Billy Ray Cyrus and Snoop Dogg. In collaboration with metaverse experts Animal Concerts and crypto media powerhouse Cointelegraph, the world-renowned music artists are taking their latest hit song “A Hard Working Man” to Web3 via an exclusive NFT collection depicting the artists in a wide range of hard-working professions.

Source: Evolution of music and art arrives with NFT project for hit cross-genre single

A British AI firm said it was rethinking its “safeguards” after its audio tool was used to clone celebrity voices and have them say racist and homophobic slurs. Eleven Labs tweeted on Monday that it had been a “crazy weekend” and admitted to finding “an increasing number of voice cloning misuse cases” just days after it released a demo version of the tool.

Source: AI voice tool ‘misused’ as deepfakes flood web forum