AI is helping create realistic “Fake news!” videos and it’s going to be a problem
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The ability of “unethical actors” to create realistic looking video and audio of famous people to generate “Fake news!” is accelerating exponentially and politicians are already way behind the curve. Over the past couple of years, even before “Fake news!” became the monster topic...
The world’s first AI produced music album breaks cover
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF In the short term musicians and artists will increasingly find themselves collaborating alongside with AI, but by next year we’ll start seeing AI’s go it alone. This week it was announced that Taryn Southern, who’s no stranger to the music industry with over 500...
Brace yourselves AI is about to make the “Fake News!” problem a whole lot worse
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF We are approaching a dangerous threshold where one day, in the next few years, you won’t be able to trust what you see, or easily distinguish fake news from real news, and it could have big consequences on democracy and society. Over the past...
Euclideon unveils the world’s first multi-user hologram table
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Holograms are a science fiction staple, and using a trick of the light, Euclideon and their new holographic table have gotten closer to bringing them to reality than anyone else. This week Australian company Euclideon announced they’ve managed to build what is being dubbed...
Brain controlled Virtual Reality comes to the HTC Vive
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF It’s almost fated that one day we’ll be able to interface and engage with new virtual reality worlds without the need for cumbersome tech but until that time arrives we’ve got the next best thing – Brain controlled VR. It was inevitable that one...
Futurist keynote, Amsterdam: The Future of Money, iGaming Super Show
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As more industries look to engage their new digital, omni-channel customers in new ways they often look to the gaming world for inspiration, and there’s plenty of inspiration to be had. Firstly, I’d like to thank Michael Caselli, the Editor in Chief of iGaming...
Some of the biggest names in A&R are using AI to pick future stars
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF AI’s list of tricks and new skills know no bounds and now it’s increasingly being used by the A&R industry to filter out the winners from the losers. $100 million. That’s the value, that Music XRay, a 21st century A&R company that uses Artificial Intelligence...
Doodle a face and watch this AI image generator make it look more “Human”
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As AI gets its proverbial head around creating synthetic content the field’s now starting to accelerate, and fast. Machine Learning is, perhaps, the most common platform for existing Artificial Intelligence (AI) networks. The basic idea is that an AI can be taught to reach its own...
Facebook launches itself into developing brain reading tech
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Mark Zuckerberg wants to create the world’s largest, and maybe only, telepathic network and he’s slowly pulling all the pieces together. As if Facebook wasn’t already pervasive enough in everyday life, with the total number of users reaching two billion people, the company’s newly...
Inside the Sony lab making the world’s first AI music album
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Artificial intelligence is getting creative and later this year Sony plan on releasing the first AI produced album. Will you buy it? and more importantly will you know the difference? Some 70 years ago, computer scientist Alan Turing famously set the bar for Artificial...
Beware false dreams, Strange Beasts reveals technology’s dark side
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Sometimes we can forget how powerful, and how immersive, technology can be and this short film provides a timely reminder. Strange Beasts is a dystopian British short film of Netflix’s drama Black Mirror – and it packs an equally strong punch in about a fifth of...
Watch: Sony released two new songs from an unsigned AI
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Creative machines should be decades away but they’re here, today, and increasingly it looks like “creativity” is just another word for “algorithm.” Sony recently announced that they’ve released two brand new pop songs from a new, unsigned artist, and while the announcement shouldn’t seem even...
Neural networks can now transfer the style of one photo to another
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As we see continue to see the rise of new types of synthetic content and tools style transfer could one day help us create new games and videos faster. Interested in the Exponential Future? Connect, download a free E-Book, watch a keynote, or browse my blog. As we continue...
Disney hopes children will love its new autonomous story-telling robots
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Sometimes the best technology is the technology that comes across as magic, and that’s what Disney is playing up to. It’s rare that Disney ever lifts the covers off of its R&D labs, and that sucks when I want to write about it. However, while...
Humans come up trumps as Facebook rolls out its solution for fake news
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Fake news is now regarded as one of the most politically destabilising developments in recent years, Facebook’s new solution hopes to turn the tide on the fakers Ironically, for all the amazing things that artificial intelligence (AI) can do, from running Wall Street hedge...
World first as Norway turns off FM radio and goes digital only
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Old FM analogue technologies have been with us for centuries but demanding infrastructure requirements, poor signal quality and low data rates mean that a switch to DAB is long overdue. All of you reading this article will have grown up listening to FM radio...
Bach lives again, in AI form
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Trying to emulate human skills and talents isn’t easy – even for humans – but increasingly AI is muscling in on what we once considered to be unique human traits. Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasing parking its caravan on humanity’s lawn. Traits that we...
Point. Click. Create your own 3D avatar and put yourself in the game
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Avatars will play an increasingly important role in the future – whether they’re being used to depict, or replace actors in movies, VR simulations or to compliment bots, Loom.ai’s new product makes the process of creating one simple. We’re entering a new world of,...
Manga legend scolds AI created zombie animation as an insult to life
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Artificial intelligence systems are getting increasingly good at constructing, designing and animating their own short movies, automating more of the tasks that, up until now, have been thought of as the preserve of humans and humans alone Born in 1964 it’s safe to say...
MIT’s new AI can create videos of the future by looking at a photo
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The human brain is good at looking at a scene and figuring out what happens next, now an AI can look at a photo and create a video of the future from it and that opens up some interesting applications. Love the Exponential Future?...
