Chaos & Amazement #2427 AI Missteps, the Iron House, and a Very Large Horse

Generative AI is still weird, a forgotten  blog comes back as a zombie 🧟, and a giant zoomable horse 🐎 awaits – this week's Chaos & Amazement has it all. Enjoy!

Tech News

• Beloved Apple blog TUAW was shut down in 2015, sold to private equity, then sold to a company in Hong Kong. It recently relaunched as an AI content farm using the stolen identities and bylines of its former human staff. A nightmare: https://www.404media.co/a-beloved-tech-blog-tuaw-is-now-publishing-ai-articles-under-the-names-of-its-old-human-staff/

• High-profile AI missteps by companies like Toys "R" Us or McDonald's highlight the challenges of implementing AI technology. As AI continues to evolve, careful planning and execution will be crucial for brands to avoid negative consequences. https://www.fastcompany.com/91147959/worst-brand-mistakes-of-the-ai-era-so-far

  

  • AI image generators are getting better, but the results are still creepy. This experiment shows huge improvement in detail, but results are still far from usable for real ads. Some images are almost perfect, but overall they lack human touch. https://www.creativebloq.com/ai/creepy-big-brand-experiment-shows-how-far-ai-art-has-come

  • In a similar vein: a Tom’s Guide reporter paired two chatbots and got an unexpected scream. When asked, the bot couldn't explain the noise, simply called it “a sound”. https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/i-had-two-voice-ais-talk-to-each-other-and-i-may-never-sleep-again Yeah, it’s probably nothing.

• “Tea,” “folks,” “bro,” “lit”—quirky language used to tell us where other people were coming from. Online, it’s all just a bunch of empty words, @DangerBrooks

  laments: https://theatlantic.com/family/archive/2024/06/social-media-american-slang-crisis/678754/ We all talk the same online now.

Fresh AI

• LivePortrait is a free tool on Hugging Face that animates still photos. Users upload a photo and a video, and the tool creates a moving portrait. It offers a side-by-side comparison for review. https://huggingface.co/spaces/KwaiVGI/LivePortrait Will try this one later.

• Still struggling with AI art prompts? Google Arts & Culture has a fun tool called Say What You See to help you learn! It's like a game, but it'll seriously improve your prompt writing skills. Give it a try! https://artsandculture.google.com/experiment/say-what-you-see/

From my blog

• An Iron Oddity in Maputo: Casa de Ferro https://www.bnox.be/2024/07/an-iron-oddity-in-maputo-casa-de-ferro.html

  

Weird and Wonderful

• I just played You Don’t Know Africa and found 20 African countries on the map in 3:48.8. Can you do better? https://youdontknowafrica.com/

  

• Gallop into this website with a giant zoomable horse!

  http://large.horse Each zoom level is a new hyperlink. Check it out and let me know what you think!

• Million Dollar Thing: which thing is better?

  https://milliondollarthing.com Currently, the Best Thing is… the Universe.