Open AI Sued by Eight More Media Companies. Several weeks ago the NY Times revealed numerous tech companies ignored firewalls and deliberately broke copyright law when building their AI. Tuesday, Eight daily newspapers owned by Alden Global Capital, the second largest newspaper chain in the US (holdings include The New York Daily News, and Chicago Tribune) sued OpenAI and Microsoft. The Adlen companies said the chatbots regularly surfaced the entire text of articles behind subscription paywalls. It could take more than five years for these claims to work their way though the courts. Open AI has some powerful arguments, notably fair use and public good, but even if they were sanctioned, lets say more than any company in history, they could easily afford a multi-billion dollar fine. For this reason, some publishers, like Le Monde and Alex Springer, have opted to make deals with OpenAI instead.
Meet Vidu from China, Sora’s Extraordinary New Competitor. Developed by Tsinghua University and Chinese AI firm ShengShu Technology, Vidu is China’s first text-to-video generator. It has the ability to generate videos as long as sixteen seconds. Since the LLM model developed in China, it has a China-first view of the world. Not sure how or when it will be available to users in the West.
Chat GPT Now Remembers. This feature allows ChatGPT to remember details across multiple interactions, such as your daughter’s obsession with Minnie Mouse or a PowerPoint presentation you need to upload every time you want to ask a question, making it a more useful assistant. The memory function is now accessible to ChatGPT Plus users. To save a detail, you can instruct ChatGPT with “remember this …” You can also prompt ChatGPT to retrieve any stored memory. Users have full control over your stored information: you can enable, reset, or delete specific memories or all memories as needed.
Rabbit R1 “Barely Reviewable” says Marques Brownlee in the brutal YouTube takedown above. Controversy and harsh reviews have followed the release of The Rabbit R1, which created quite the buzz at CES in January. They’ve sold over 100,000 of $199 version 1 of their portable all-in-one AI assistant, which just shipped. The device was supposed to be the anti-smartphone, running all your apps in the cloud. Mishaal Rahman of Android Authority reproduced the R1 experience on an Android phone, concluding it should be an app. Rabbit CEO Jesse Lyu says the Rabbit R1 involves more complex integration with bespoke firmware and cloud services, which aren’t fully replicable on other devices. The broader critique of the R1 focuses on its limited functionality. Few would (or should) leave their smartphones behind. Who needs a second device? I have many AI apps on my phone already.
Paul Trillo’s new Sora-produced music video for the band Washed Out, The Hardest Part, is the first commercial music video made with OpenAI’s Sora. The filmmaker said it took 700 generations to create the 55 selected clips. “This was an idea I had almost 10 years ago and then abandoned,” said Trillo. “With Sora, I was finally able to bring it to life.” Trillo also created this remarkable vision of the future of the TED conference to open AI day at the show.
Filmmaker Jordan Ray Allen describes himself as “an eclectic artist/retro-enthusiast.” He is a huge admirer of Quentin Tarantino, and since the great filmmaker retires after his 10th film, Allen decided to pay homage by revisiting the character of Jules from Pulp Fiction. “I wanted to be brought up to speed on the retired hitman who left it all behind to walk the earth in search of redemption,” said Allen. “Pretty much, Kung Fu meets The Book of Eli.” Tools used (partial list): Images and animation Runway (Gen 2), Narration from Play HT (1.0), DaVinci Resolve to lend to the cinematic aesthetic.
Will An AI Movie Win An Oscar Within 7 Years? Will Hollywood embrace AI, fight it, or ignore it? The Academy Award as a proxy for acceptance.
This column, once called “This Week in XR,” is also a podcast hosted by author Charlie Fink, Ted Schilowitz, former studio executive and co-founder of Red Camera, and Rony Abovitz, founder of Magic Leap. This week our guests are Jennifer Tuft and Cassandra Rosenthal, Co-CEOs and founders of Kaleidoco. We can be found on Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube.
What We’re Reading
Marc Andressen Is A Maniac (Gizmodo)