Would you buy teeth from fake Tom Hanks?
Would you buy teeth from fake Tom Hanks?
10th October 2023
Welcome to AI Collision,
In today’s collision between AI and our world,
Bono’s in our technology again 📱
Tom’s future dental plan 🪥
Dr Seuss’s ass 🍑
If that’s enough to get your teeth chattering, read on…
Oh, and before I get started today, just a heads up that this week and next we’ll have some exclusive first-look video content for you as well. But more about that on Thursday.
AI Collision 💥 Sphere and Aura will blow your mind
My car has this weird quirk every time I connect my phone via the USB cable.
Normally, I connect the phone via Bluetooth, the car’s MMI system (that’s what Audi calls its navigation system) picks it up and I play my Spotify playlists through it – so far, so good.
However, when I connect the USB cable, the Bluetooth disconnects and it goes into “Jukebox” mode. It’s annoying because while I can still play Spotify, when I press the “next track” button on the steering wheel, it opens up a U2 album that exists deep in my iPhone’s memory.
I never put U2 on the phone. I doubt anyone ever put a U2 album on their iPhone… but we all have it. We’ve all been getting pushed U2 albums on our i-devices since 2014 when Apple and U2 came to some bizarre agreement to push “Songs of Innocence” onto every damn Apple device out there.
Annoying much?
Anyway, it seems like U2 has become the go-to band for jamming their music into something quite game-changing.
Just over a week ago, the Las Vegas Sphere officially opened with its first concert with none other than U2’s new show (in residence) titled, “UV Achtung Baby”.
From all accounts, it is like nothing else we’ve ever seen before in our lives.
Or as AV Club put it, “Everyone agrees: Humanity peaked with U2’s first performance at the Las Vegas Sphere”.
I must admit, while I’m no U2 fan (especially when they’re rammed down my i-device’s throat) next time I’m in Vegas, I’m almost certainly going to go see the show.
That’s because the Las Vegas Sphere looks amazing – I wouldn’t be surprised if it became one of the new wonders of the world.
What’s fascinating about the Sphere is that it’s owned by a publicly listed company, Sphere Entertainment (NYSE:SPHR).
Sphere Entertainment was actually spun out of Madison Square Garden (MSG) Entertainment (NYSE:MSGE) to separate all of MSGE’s live entertainment assets.
There’s also talk of MSGE building a Sphere in London – Stratford to be precise.
You can see the impact that the debut show (which was all over social media) had on the SPHR stock price!
So where exactly does AI collide with all this?
Well, there’s no doubt that the future of entertainment, both live and not-live, will be impacted by AI. We’ll save the AI Collision between the music industry and AI for another day, but what’s happening at the Sphere is a glimpse into the whole live music experience of the future, with AI as your friendly guide.
The Sphere is rolling out a number of humanoid robots, complete with AI, as part of its customer experience.
As the company explained in the announcement,
Aura the Robot, the world’s most advanced humanoid robot, today announced that she will permanently reside in the grand atrium of the Sphere in Las Vegas. Serving as the venue’s spokesbot, Aura will interact with guests at the next-generation venue and serve as an integral part of The Sphere Experience.
Notably, though, Aura will learn from its experiences with guests, making them more advanced over time and more helpful to visitors.
It might appear as a gimmick, but this is arguably the most advanced live event venue in the world, deploying AI-capable humanoid robotics to help guests.
Expect to see more of this in areas of live events, hospitality, robotics, AI and entertainment all colliding to provide a more enjoyable, immersive and hassle-free experience for paying guests.
It’s a ready-made glimpse into the future, right there, with U2 jammin’ away in the background…
AI Gone Wild 🤪
When is Tom Hanks not Tom Hanks?
That’s not some movie-based joke with a comical punchline. It’s a deep philosophical question.
The answer of course is: when he’s an AI avatar in a dental plan ad.
Ok, so maybe the answer is a comical punchline. It would be a joke if only it wasn’t so true.
I guess the line “funny because it’s true” certainly rings a bell here.
Recently Tom Hanks – well not quite Tom Hanks – was used in an advertisement for a dental plan company. The only problem was that it wasn’t Tom Hanks.
It was Tom’s AI avatar and voice clone used to advertise this company without Hanks’s approval. He obviously had to go public, saying that he had no affiliation with the company and that he hadn’t approved the use of his image or voice.
Whether or not it leads to a legal case… we’ll see, but it certainly opens Pandora’s box.
However, this isn’t new and it certainly isn’t unexpected.
Let me give you an example from my own first-hand experience…
What you’ll see below is like what happened to Tom Hanks. The person in the video below is me, but it’s also not me.
This is my AI avatar. Also, it’s my AI voice clone.
I used an AI video company to set up my own avatar and voice clone to see what AI could do. And while it’s a bit weird still and a little on the robotic side from the voice, it’s me (more or less).
The thing about this video is that all of it is AI.
The script that my voice is reading is generated by ChatGPT
The AI-me, voice and images, text and transitions of the video – all generated and rendered through Elai.io.
Now, I had full control over all this, but what if I didn’t?
What if someone else took this and changed the text-to-voice so that it said something I really didn’t want it to say? Or what if the video was used in a way that I really didn’t want it to be used… such as an unauthorised dental plan commercial?
Or if I’m using this myself in control but publishing it into the public domain, should I have to tell you that it’s AI? Or should I expect you’ll just know it’s AI? It’s pretty clear from this example (especially because the AI avatar rendering really struggles with beards apparently!).
That is, until you can’t tell it’s AI.
This is a Pandora’s box that has people worried about scammers, fraud, and the misuse of the image rights of people with a public profile.
These are legitimate concerns and it shows that technology is advancing a lot faster than regulations or rules can keep up.
There is no answer right now as to where this leads. But the use, abuse, and progress of this kind of AI technology is coming at us, at you, and it can be useful and functional, but can also take a nastier turn.
The first step towards figuring out where we end up with AI technology is to at least recognise it’s there and it’s happening right now.
Boomers & Busters 💰
AI and AI-related stocks moving and shaking up the markets this week. (All performance data below over the rolling week).
Boom 📈
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) up 8.59%
Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) up 6.12%
Teradyne (NASDAQ:TER) up 3.93%
Bust 📉
Vicarious Surgery (NYSE:RBOT) down 17.82%
Veritone (NASDAQ:VERI) down 8.76%
Darktrace (LSE:DARK) down 7.86%
From the hive mind 🧠
Artificial Polltelligence: The Results Show
Will the AI stocks boom or bust over the next 5 years?
This was the red hot question we wanted you to answer.
The potential answers were,
Boom,
Bust,
The whole market is going to zero.
Well, it’s been a week now and…
The results are in…
The winner, of the inaugural Artificial Polltelligence, is…
BOOM!
That’s right, of all the people that responded to our first poll, an overwhelming number of people said they believe that AI stocks would boom over the next five years.
It’s no great surprise to me, truth be told. It’s evident from the coverage that AI is getting bigger and the wild performance of AI-focused companies like Nvidia shows that investor appetite for AI stocks is red hot.
That is of course why I put together our special reports:
Make sure to read them in full if you haven’t already.
As for our next AI poll… well, you best keep an eye out on Thursday. The next one I promise is going to make you really think about AI, morality, ethics and the future of our society!
Weirdest AI image of the day
“Banned Dr. Suess books” – From r/weirddalle posted by u/unintellisense
ChatGPT quote of the day
"Artificial intelligence will reach human levels by around 2029. Follow that out further to, say, 2045, we will have multiplied the intelligence, the human biological machine intelligence of our civilization a billion-fold." - Ray Kurzweil
Thanks for reading, see you on Thursday. And if you’re enjoying our work, please like, share and leave comments below,
Sam Volkering
Editor-in-Chief,
AI Collision
