Generative AI News - issue #5
Exploring AI’s potential and staying current with AI literacy
July 3, 2024
Hi everyone!
Once again it’s been a busy month for generative AI news! This is a long issue, so I always aim to make it easy to skim, with quick excerpts from many of the links.
In this issue we’ll look at:
the news about Apple Intelligence (they’re handling privacy well)
Anthropic’s Claude 2.5 Sonnet update (turning out to be better, faster, and cheaper than ChatGPT)
several stories about genAI in education and genAI in libraries — I especially enjoyed this recording of a talk at CNI: The T in GPT: Transformers for Cultural Heritage Work - by Peter Leonard of Stanford University.
my latest tutorial developed for the University of Arizona Libraries, Creating multimedia with AI tools (try it, and I’d love your feedback)
the latest news about genAI for images, video, and music
quite a few thought-provoking stories (training data controversies, deepfakes, avoiding hype)
the usual “just for fun” section, and what’s coming in the future
Enjoy!
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Foundation model news
Apple
What’s best about Apple’s announcements? Strong privacy protection, using less energy by running most queries on device, and building AI into many features.
Apple announces Apple Intelligence, its multi-modal generative AI service for Mac, iPhone, iPad - VentureBeat
Thoughts on the WWDC 2024 keynote on Apple Intelligence - Simon Willison
Useful summary of AI in Apple - Andrej Karpathy on X.
Elon Musk's latest anti-Apple tirade is about a ChatGPT feature that doesn't exist - Apple Insider
Apple’s PCC an ambitious attempt at AI privacy revolution - VentureBeat
Apple intelligence and AI maximalism - Benedict Evans
Interesting analysis. “Unbundled into individual features, which are inherently easier to run as small power-efficient models on small power-efficient devices on the edge.”
Anthropic
The new free version of Claude is getting excellent reviews and is seen by many as more powerful that GPT4-o from OpenAI. The “artifacts” feature is worth trying, making it easy for non-coders to generate code and see the results.
Introducing Claude 3.5 Sonnet - Anthropic
Claude, The New Frontrunner - Jurgen Gravenstein
Why Anthropic’s Artifacts may be this year’s most important AI feature: Unveiling the interface battle - VentureBeat
Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet outperforms OpenAI and Google in enterprise AI race - VentureBeat
OpenAI
Introducing OpenAI for Nonprofits - OpenAi
Discounted rates for nonprofits.Introducing ChatGPT Edu - OpenAI
Focusing on security and privacy, and more affordable.OpenAI delays release of new ChatGPT Voice Mode by at least one month - VentureBeat
OpenAI says it still needs more time to make sure the new Voice Mode can “detect and refuse certain content.”
Generative AI in education
Hollywood’s Top Film Schools Are Taking Generative AI Seriously: ‘Teaching It Is Not Endorsing It’ - Indiewire
Inside Barnard’s Pyramid Approach to AI Literacy - Inside Higher Ed
A Framework for AI Literacy - EDUCAUSE
Teen and Young Adult Perspectives on Generative AI: Patterns of Use, Excitements, and Concerns - Common Sense Media
Guest Post — The Case For Not Citing Chatbots As Information Sources (Part II) - Scholarly Kitchen
Generative AI in libraries
Where does ChatGPT fit into the Framework for Information Literacy? - Amy B. James and Ellen Hampton Filgo, College & Research Libraries News
The possibilities and problems of AI in library instruction - Amy B. James and Ellen Hampton Filgo, College & Research Libraries News
AI Reskilling in Libraries - Leo S. Lo and Victoria Anderson, College & Research Libraries News
Looking Ahead: Incorporating AI in MLIS Competencies - Student Research Journal
Examines the MLIS program at SJSU iSchool, focusing on the evolution of its 14 core competencies to incorporate advancements in artificial intelligence.Librarians’ Guide to Answering Students’ Practical Questions about AI - Nicole Hennig in LibTech Insights (part 3 of my series)
AI literacy ‘Summer Splash’ workshop to amplify Fall 2024 teaching - Penn State Libraries
”Two-hour hands-on workshop for faculty and staff that will enhance participant skills within the evolving generative AI (GenAI) landscape.”The T in GPT: Transformers for Cultural Heritage Work - CNI: Coalition for Networked Information on YouTube
Very interesting talk by Peter Leonard of Stanford University.Cutting through the noise: Assessing tools that employ artificial intelligence - SSRN
By several librarians from Norwegian University of Science and Technology. It offers concrete guidance concerning what to consider when assessing whether to adopt, endorse and/or invest in innovative information and research tools that make use of artificial intelligence.Getting ready for AI - OCLC Research Blog
Focusing on cataloging and metadata examples.Against the Grain - the June issue focuses on AI in Libraries.
Several excellent articles! I haven’t had time to read the whole thing yet, but Lorcan Dempsey has a very interesting piece.
Two experiments with generative AI-powered library chatbots. I attended an interesting webinar about each of these projects.
Aisha ChatBot Project - Zayed University (You can try it on the bottom of their page).
The chatbot, named Aisha (meaning “alive” or “she who lives” in Arabic), was designed to provide quick and efficient reference and support services to students and faculty outside the library's regular operating hours.AI-chatbot in public libraries – first practical experiences
Interesting webinar about a chatbot for a public library in Berlin. Webinar recording and slides available.
My offerings
Creating multimedia with AI tools - University of Arizona Libraries
Give our latest tutorial a try. It covers: What are the primary image, video, music, and speech generation tools? What can be created with them? and What are the ethical issues related to bias, copyright, and deepfakes?
AI Literacy for Library Professionals: Online Course - Nicole Hennig
Sign up to be notified when it’s live. Six-week online course. Coming in Fall 2024.
Tips
Turning the tables on AI - iA Writer
Don’t ask AI, let AI ask you.12 Charts ChatGPT Can Draw - Why Try AI
It’s not just bar graphs, but scatter plots, heatmaps, and more.Compilation of creative ways people are using ChatGPT - Xenocide967 on r/ChatGPT Pro, Reddit
Sorry, VR: The Meta Ray-Ban Wayfarers Are the Best Face Computer - Wired
I have a pair on order right now. I’ll discuss in a future newsletter, especially the AI-related features.The Prompt Report: A Systematic Survey of Prompting Techniques - arXiv preprint, 2024
Prompts for Fact-Checking Mainstream Media News - AI-Literacy
From a site in Sweden. I tried some of these on ChatGPT-4o and found them usefulWhat We Learned from a Year of Building with LLMs (Part I) - O’Reilly Radar
Useful advice for builders of tools based on LLMs.
Accessibility
Improving accessibility and inclusivity - A chapter from ChatGPT in Higher Education by Rob Rose on Pressbooks
SignLLM: Sign Languages Production Large Language Models - researchers from several universities
”In this paper, we introduce the first comprehensive multilingual sign language dataset named Prompt2Sign, which builds from public sign language data including American Sign Language (ASL) and seven others.”I Know What the Apple Vision Pro Is For The headset is already changing disabled users’ lives - New York Magazine
Not really about AI, but a super-interesting story. Of course the Vision Pro is too expensive for most everyday users, but you can see what will be useful in the future when this tech is cheaper and more available.
Generative AI for images and video
I really like the artwork of Nettrice Gaskins. AI generation plays a big role in her art. Now some of her AI co-creations are murals.
”My most recent portrait of Octavia Butler soon to be on view at the San Francisco International Airport (in 2025).”
”My Midjourney-created portrait of Faith Ringgold is now on view in downtown Brooklyn, NY thanks to MoCADA. This is the second AI-generated portrait I made that was scaled up as a mural.”
Here’s an excellent podcast interview of her discussing AI as remix culture.
Celebrating Excellence in AI Art: Baris Gencel's Vision - AI for Good Insider on LinkedIn
AI may take jobs – but not our creativity w/ artist Claire Silver - TED Audio Collective on YouTube
Fear and Loathing (and Hype and Reality) in Los Angeles - Doug Shapiro
Why the Major Studios Won't Use AI Video Generators Extensively Anytime Soon—And Why That Puts Them in a Bind
AI is the sixth great revolution in filmmaking (and maybe the most important) - VentureBeat
The Prompt Artists - researchers from Google in ACM Digital Library
”We find that: 1) artists hold the text prompt and the resulting image can be considered collectively as a form of artistic expression (prompts as art), and 2) prompt templates (prompts with “slots” for others to fill in with their own words) are developed to create generative art styles. “
New video models: Kling, Luma, Hedra, and an upgraded Runway
What you need to know about Kling, the AI video generator rival to Sora that’s wowing creators - VentureBeat
‘We don’t need Sora anymore’: Luma’s new AI video generator Dream Machine slammed with traffic after debut - VentureBeat
Runway unveils new hyper realistic AI video model Gen-3 Alpha, capable of 10-second-long clips - VentureBeat
Available only to paid subscribers as of July 1, free subscribers later.I tried Hedra — a new AI video tool that lets you create animated speaking characters, and I was blown away - Tom’s Guide
ElevenLabs unveils open-source creator tool for adding sound effects to videos - VentureBeat
A handy tool for added sound effects to videos. Try it here. Upload a silent video and it will add sound.
Just for fun
With Hedra you can make little video clips with characters that talk and lip sync. Here are a few of mine:
- We are all puppets
- Patterns on my skin
- We have to find a way to communicate with them
(See more examples on their YouTube channel).
Cute kitten typing on keyboard, making AI music. I made this with Luma Dream Machine. I made the soundtrack with Eleven Labs text to sound effects.
Someone made these video clips of Mona Lisa using Kling.
(It’s from China, to use it you need a Chinese mobile phone number).Introducing Character Calls - Character AI
Using their app you can now chat verbally with any of their bots. (And of course, you can make your own bots to chat with). I had fun chatting with the Wicked Witch (made by me), George Carlin, Homer Simpson, and Librarian Linda (she’s a silly stereotype of a librarian, but she can recommend books).
App for iOS | App for Android
Generative AI for music
Imogen Heap on AI, making her own voice model, and a new era of musical collaboration - Yahoo News
”Rebuffing offers from AI startups, Heap instead worked with an audio engineer to cook up her very own vocal model. Together, the pair found an open-source model and began feeding it recordings from Heap’s decades-long career. ‘You know what? It came out pretty good,’ Heap says with audible pride. ‘After that I was feeling more empowered, like I had a leg to stand on.’ “The World’s Largest Music Company Is Helping Musicians Make Their Own AI Voice Clones - Rolling Stone
Universal Music Group announced a deal with AI startup SoundLabs.The AI Remix: Your Favorite Tunes Might Be the Next AI Hit - Fierce Millenial
”This time, AI is setting its sights on something much more familiar: the vast libraries of production music used in everything from TV shows to commercials to YouTube videos…. Now, AI companies are getting in on the action, buying up licenses to these libraries in hopes of training their algorithms to generate even more music.”Scan sheet music with Soundslice and Thoughts on my first machine learning project - Adrian Holovaty
”It’s a way of converting PDFs and images of sheet music into machine-readable semantic data. Rather than being stuck with a static PDF, you can instead manipulate the underlying music — play it back, edit it in our web-based editor, sync it with a YouTube video, transpose it to other keys, visualize it on a piano keyboard.”
Thought-provoking
Black founders are creating tailored ChatGPTs for a more personalized experience - TechCrunch
Taking a closer look at AI’s supposed energy apocalypse - Ars techica
”Digging into the best available numbers and projections available, though, it's hard to see AI's current and near-future environmental impact in such a dire light. While generative AI models and tools can and will use a significant amount of energy, we shouldn't conflate AI energy usage with the larger and largely pre-existing energy usage of "data centers" as a whole.”
Training data controversies
Record labels sue AI music generator startups Suno, Udio for copyright infringement - VentureBeat
Forbes threatens Perplexity with legal action - Axios
Adobe tries again to quell Terms of Service controversy: ‘we don’t train gen AI on customer content’ - VentureBeat
This reminds me of what happened with Dropbox, Zoom, and Slack a while back. People freaked out, but they weren’t actually training on people’s data. They had confusing language in their terms of service.
Publishers Target Common Crawl In Fight Over AI Training Data - Wired
These stories give a more detailed view of the situation with Suno & Udio.
AI music startup Udio responds to lawsuits by major record labels: ‘our model does not reproduce copyrighted works’ - VentureBeat
Andrew Ng on the lawsuits against Suno & Udio - The Batch
The Record Labels Are Coming for Suno and Udio - The AI Daily Brief, YouTube
And these two articles go deeper about the complaints against Perplexity.
Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas responds to plagiarism and infringement accusations - Fast Company
This was the first balanced article I saw on this topic.Perplexity was planning revenue-sharing deals with publishers when it came under media fire - Semafor
”That sentence does not match the crime. Srinivas didn’t even train the algorithms. He used them to summarize what’s out there on the internet and linked back to the original source. Yes, he could have done it better. But turning him into public enemy No. 1 of the media is not really warranted.”
And here’s a more complete story about Common Crawl and their history and mission.
Training Data for the Price of a Sandwich: Common Crawl’s Impact on Generative AI - Mozilla Foundation
How to Fix “AI’s Original Sin” - O’Reilly radar
Tim O’Reilly looks at the bigger picture around copyright issues. ”How do we create a virtuous circle of ongoing value creation, an ecosystem in which everyone benefits?”
Disinformation and deepfakes
Indian election was awash in deepfakes – but AI was a net positive for democracy - The Conversation
Interesting. ”But, despite fears of widespread disinformation, for the most part the campaigns, candidates and activists used AI constructively in the election. They used AI for typical political activities, including mudslinging, but primarily to better connect with voters.”
The misinformation about misinformation - Azeem Azhar, The Exponential View
Referring to this research paper: Misunderstanding the harms of online misinformation, “Exposure to false and inflammatory content is remarkably low, with just 1% of Twitter users accounting for 80% of exposure to dubious websites during the 2016 U.S. election. This is heavily concentrated among a small fringe of users actively seeking it out.” And, ”The paper argues these misunderstandings arise from a tendency to cite impressive-sounding statistics without appropriate context, to focus on engaging but unrepresentative content, and to confuse correlation and causation.”
Avoiding hype (GenAI is amazing! GenAI is terrible!)
A Plea for Sober AI - dbreunig.com
”The hype is so loud it washes out the true magic of these products.”
With AI, history doesn’t repeat, it rhymes - The Drum
”It’s part of the human condition to resist change in an aim to protect the world we have created, a world that feels familiar and safe. It is part of the journey of a technology pioneer to evangelize the product they believe in and overhype its positivity and potential.”
Scientists should use AI as a tool, not an oracle - AI Snake Oil
”How AI hype leads to flawed research that fuels more hype.”
Embedding the Audience: Putting audiences at the heart of Generative AI. BBC
Interesting survey results. “Audience understanding of Gen AI is informed by both negative pop culture depictions that often portray AI as evil as well as coverage from news media that can be perceived by audiences as sensationalist. This can leave audiences concerned about the potential impact of Gen AI.”
The future
Scaling Interpretability - Anthropic, YouTube
Interesting conversation between four researchers at Anthropic about their work on interpretability.
The risks of AI are real but manageable - Bill Gates
Covers misinformation, jobs, bias, and student learning, with suggestions for managing each. “…the best reason to believe that we can manage the risks is that we have done it before.” (with other technologies)
AI Won't Be AGI, Until It Can At Least Do This (plus 6 key ways LLMs are being upgraded) - AI Explained, YouTube
Very interesting talk from one of my favorite channels. Goes over why current models aren’t anywhere near AGI, then outlines six potential paths towards improving LLMs' reasoning capabilities — with summaries of research papers about those paths. Suggests that continued efforts in these six areas could lead to significant progress towards more capable AI systems.
The future of AI looks like THIS (& it can learn infinitely) - AI Search, YouTube
Explains two possible next-generation networks: 1) Liquid neural networks. These networks are designed to mimic the flexibility and adaptability of the human brain, allowing them to learn and adapt in real time. 2) Spiking neural networks, a more bio-inspired model that mimics the communication mechanism of neurons in the human brain.
Learn more
If you want to learn more about generative AI, contact me about doing a webinar for your group.
Later this year I’ll offer a six-week online course about generative AI. Sign up here if you’d like to be notified when it’s ready.
And as always, you can follow me on X, Mastodon, or Bluesky, where I post daily about generative AI.
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