Chaos & Amazement: BingGPT, Full Rainbow, and the LOL Verifier

Weekly newsletter about the impact of digital technology on our daily lives

Jan 7

If you’re reading this, you made it to the other side - we’ve moved from Revue to Substack. I’m still playing with the bubble wrap, so bear with me. It’s been an interesting week for tech, full of Chaos and Amazement. Let’s dive right in.

2023 is going to be an interesting year for search engines. Microsoft is set to release a new feature for Bing powered by ChatGPT, aimed at making its search engine more competitive with Google. The update is expected to be available by the end of March.
You.com is an AI driven search engine that summarizes the best parts of the internet for you, for the time being without ads and with great privacy. Founded in 2021 by former Salesforce employees and now in public beta, this California-based search engine summarizes web results using website categories instead of a list of links.
The days of letting ChatGPT do your homework for you may be over. The AI driven messaging platform has introduced a new feature for watermarking text. This involves using cryptography to embed a pattern of words, letters, and punctuation as a secret code. This new feature adds an extra layer of security to the platform and helps protect against unauthorized use of content.
Canva, the popular design platform, has announced that it now has over 100 million monthly active users, nearly four times the number of Adobe's creative software users. Canva's user base has grown significantly since its launch in 2013, thanks in part to its easy-to-use interface and extensive library of templates and design elements. The company's success has also attracted the attention of investors, with Canva raising over $300 million in funding to date.
No, TikTok does not have grand plans to "free the nipple," but the company has recently updated its app so that creators can prohibit younger viewers from seeing any of their short-form videos better suited for a wholly adult audience.
Apple has quietly introduced a range of books narrated by artificial intelligence, which can be found by searching for 'AI narration' in the Books app. Amazon and Google have also been experimenting with AI narration technology.
Grandma may be lonely at the retirement home, but companies like Rendever offer VR apps to redress elderly isolation. They’ve just acquired the Alcove app that brings grandma into a VR living room, where she can watch movies, chat, share photos, play games with friends and family.
Excellent new BBC podcast series on the rise of online gurus.
No matter what you're drawn to — how to be healthier, how to be more productive, how to get rich — you'll find someone ready to provide recipes for success. And these gurus are drawing huge audiences.
The cryptocurrency industry has seen a surge in speculative investing, with many by-products of bitcoin being embraced by investors. While bitcoin was originally intended to be a reimagining of money, it seems that it is being used more as a speculative investment rather than a currency.
China is seeing an increase in companies, including state tourism boards and state media, hiring virtual people to generate content. These virtual spokespeople can cost around $14,300 per year and are attractive to brands looking for immune spokespeople that won't face negative press or other legal issues.
Interesting twitter thread by Paul Fairie with a list of predictions made in 1923 about 2023. Well, the year is still young. Anything can happen:
- The work day will be four hours long
- Women will blacken their teeth and shave their heads
- Radio will replace gasoline
- All people will be beautiful
- Life expectancy will be 100 years
- Life expectancy will be 300 years
- People will wear kidney cosies
- Men will curl their hair
- The US will have a population of 300 million
- Canada will have a population of 100 million
- Utensils will be made of pulp
- Flights from Chicago to Hamburg will only take 18 hours
- Newspapers will have been out of business for 50 years
- Private kitchens will disappear
- Cancer will be eradicated
- War will be wireless and we might have telepathy
- People will communicate using watch-size radio telephones

Twitter Graphs tool for tracking trending topics: twit.deta.dev

Example: for Tom Waes, who was trending in Belgium the past week.

Full Rainbow: another daily word game, solve an anagram against the clock. Everyone needs more rainbows in their life.

“For keen eyes, you'll see Thom Yorke being handed a guitar for the second tune but all of a sudden he's playing bass while Jonny Greenwood's bass is suddenly a guitar.”