So far, almost all contentious AI-generated images have been debunked within hours, mostly because of the power of social media to quickly crowdsource errors in these photos that are often otherwise imperceptible. Big Tech companies and independent fact-checkers, too, have prioritized finding and removing such harmful politically motivated falsehoods. But audio remains uncharted territory.
Source: Spot the deepfake: The AI tools undermining our own eyes and ears
This upgraded version enables the artificial intelligence (AI) tool to engage in more natural conversations. OpenAI said that the latest model, “gpt-4-turbo-2024-04-09,” boasts writing, math, logical reasoning and coding enhancements, along with an updated knowledge base. However, this update could worsen the ongoing challenge of writers sounding like AI despite having written the articles themselves.
Source: OpenAI makes ChatGPT ‘less verbose,’ blurring writer-AI distinction
We ought to heed the warning that technology evolves in uncertain ways. However, there is one class of AI risk that is generally knowable in advance. These are risks stemming from misalignment between a company’s economic incentives to profit from its proprietary AI model in a particular way and society’s interests in how the AI model should be monetised and deployed.
Source: To understand the risks posed by AI, follow the money
Though it still requires ratification by SAG-AFTRA members, the deal is a significant development for recording artists as it establishes safeguards for what the union calls “ethical and responsible treatment” in the use of artificial intelligence technology. The deal requires “clear and conspicuous consent” for the use of an artist’s voice in AI-generated content, along with minimum compensation levels, and details of the intended use of the AI replica.
Source: SAG-AFTRA strikes new deal with major labels on sound recordings, including protections for AI use
Tech companies have scraped vast swathes of the web to gather the data they claim is needed to create generative AI—with little regard for content creators, copyright laws, or privacy. On top of this, increasingly, firms with reams of people’s posts are looking to get in on the AI gold rush by selling or licensing that information. Looking at you, Reddit.
The federal government is trying to promote efforts to counter so-called audio deepfakes by awarding four organizations prizes for developing technologies to distinguish between authentic human speech and audio generated by artificial intelligence. The prizes, awarded Monday by the Federal Trade Commission, come as the agency has issued warnings to consumers about scams using AI-generated voices and as concerns grow about the influence of deepfakes on this year’s elections.
Source: The FTC announced winners of a contest to tell real voices from deepfake audio
A new movement of AI labeling is rising despite OpenAI dropping watermarking due to low accuracy (26%). Instead of labeling content themselves, which seems futile, big tech (Google, YouTube, Meta, and TikTok) pushes users to label AI content with a carrot/stick approach. Google uses a double-pronged approach to fight AI spam in search: prominently showing forums like Reddit, where content is most likely created by humans, and penalties.
OpenAI, Google, and the French artificial intelligence startup Mistral have all released new versions of their frontier AI models within 12 hours of one another, as the industry prepares for a burst of activity over the summer. The unprecedented flurry of releases come as the sector readies for the expected launch of the next major version of GPT, the system that underpins OpenAI’s hit chatbot Chat-GPT.
Source: AI race heats up as OpenAI, Google and Mistral release new models
We knew that OpenAI, Google and Meta relied on copyrighted material to train their generative AI models. The companies themselves have acknowledged as much by raising a fair use defense in the myriad lawsuits brought against them by copyright owners, including in the New York Times Co.’s copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft.
We also know that AI developers are increasingly desperate for new sources of high-quality data to train on as they rapidly exhaust the published contents of the World Wide Web, and are pushing the envelope in the pursuit of untapped resources.
Meta is updating its AI-generated content policy and will add a “Made with AI” label beginning in May, the company announced. The policy will apply to content on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads. Acknowledging that its current policy is “too narrow,” Meta says it will start labeling more video, audio, and image content as being AI-generated.
Source: Meta will require labels on more AI-generated content