The ‘eternal sunshine’ popstar commemorated her latest trip around the sun by looking back, showing that she always had a musical knack.
The ‘eternal sunshine’ popstar commemorated her latest trip around the sun by looking back, showing that she always had a musical knack.
Much of the conversation about AI has revolved around the use of copyrighted materials to train models. YouTube is allegedly taking steps to avoid this issue, offering major musical labels payment to license their songs for AI training, the Financial Times reports.
Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Records are all reportedly involved in talks with the Google-owned platform. However, it’s unlikely the companies will get the last word as it would reportedly be up to each artist whether they participate.
Many musicians are far from thrilled about allowing AI anywhere near their work. In April 2023, over 200 artists signed an open letter stating, “We must protect against the predatory use of AI to steal professional artists’ voices and likenesses, violate creators’ rights, and destroy the music ecosystem.”
In November, YouTube launched Dream Track, a tool that allowed select creators to pull from the lyrics and voices of singers such as John Legend and Charli XCX. However, only ten artists participated in the tool’s test, and YouTube apparently aims to have “dozens” participate in an AI song generator.
Record labels have taken a stand against companies they see using their copyrighted content. On June 24, the trio of Sony, Universal and Warner filed a suit against music generators Suno and Omio for “massive scale” copyright infringement. They demand injunctions against further use and up to $150,000 per work.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/youtube-reportedly-wants-to-pay-record-labels-to-use-their-songs-for-ai-training-125052503.html?src=rss
The “I’m Free” singer shared her terrifying experience when she was a teen at the Provo Canyon School during her opening testimony to Congress.
The “I’m Free” singer shared her terrifying experience when she was a teen at the Provo Canyon School during her opening testimony to Congress.
According to a new report, law enforcement believes there are several individuals who could be charged for the late ‘Friends’ star’s untimely death.
According to a new report, law enforcement believes there are several individuals who could be charged for the late ‘Friends’ star’s untimely death.
While there’s a bunch of third-party apps and services you can use to record your Steam games, you now have a native option that’s built right into the Steam client. Valve has launched its own game recorder in beta, and yes, it also serves as a native recorder on the Steam Deck. You can either set the feature to start recording in the background the moment you keep playing or set it to only start (and stop) recording when you press a hotkey. If you choose to record in the background, you can specify the maximum of amount of storage recordings can take. Steam will overwrite old recordings once you hit the limit.
A Replay capability will allow you to watch previous footage in the Steam Overlay, so you can see what you did wrong in case you lose a boss fight or take a wrong turn that gets you lost. You can even drop markers beforehand to make it easy to find clips you think you’d want to watch later. The new feature also makes it easy to send clips from your Steam Deck to your PC or mobile device if you want to share them with friends or to upload them online.
Valve says the feature will only capture footage of your games and not your desktop, but it can include audio from voice chat programs. It will also work for most games, even non-Steam titles, as long as they support Steam Overlay. Since the feature is still in beta, though, you’ll have to join a beta program to be able to access it. Go to Beta Participation in Interface under Settings to choose a beta program and then activate the Game Recording option that shows up in the Settings menu.
The new Steam Game Recording feature is on Steam Deck as well!
To try it out, make sure you’re opted into the Beta channel, and turn on Game Recording in Settings. Recordings automatically show up in the Media section. https://t.co/1fLGFTkTFs pic.twitter.com/vtSm7FLUlw
— Steam Deck (@OnDeck) June 26, 2024
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/steam-deck-gets-a-built-in-game-recorder-120019196.html?src=rss
While Google Translate is far from perfect, it’s still a helpful way to gain information or engage in conversation. Now, that option is expanding as Google uses AI to give Translate 110 new languages, such as Cantonese, Punjabi (Shahmukhi) and NKo. About a quarter of the languages come from Africa and Google claims that all the new ones together represent 614 million speakers — about eight percent of the global population.
Google credits its LLM, PaLM 2, as “a key piece to the puzzle, helping Translate more efficiently learn languages that are closely related to each other, including languages close to Hindi, like Awadhi and Marwadi, and French creoles like Seychellois Creole and Mauritian Creole.” Isaac Caswell, Senior Software Engineer, Google Translate, adds: “As technology advances, and as we continue to partner with expert linguists and native speakers, we’ll support even more language varieties and spelling conventions over time.”
Google Translate got its last big influx of languages in May 2022 with the help of Zero-Shot Machine Translation. Zero-Shot allows a model to learn a new language even though it doesn’t view examples. Later that year, Google announced the 1,000 Languages Initiative, which aims to create AI models that can support — you guessed it — the 1,000 most common languages spoken globally.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-uses-ai-to-add-110-new-languages-to-translate-123009750.html?src=rss
In the fast-paced world of car dealership marketing, staying ahead of the curve is essential. With the digital landscape constantly evolving, dealerships need a comprehensive guide to navigate the complexities of online marketing. Enter Automotive Search Marketing by Alex Melen, a must-read book that offers invaluable insights into leveraging digital marketing to boost your dealership’s online…
In the fast-paced world of car dealership marketing, staying ahead of the curve is essential. With the digital landscape constantly evolving, dealerships need a comprehensive guide to navigate the complexities of online marketing. Enter Automotive Search Marketing by Alex Melen, a must-read book that offers invaluable insights into leveraging digital marketing to boost your dealership’s online…
Twelve years on, Microsoft has finally made an Arm-powered Surface tablet that doesn’t send our reviewers into a rage. The 2024 Surface Pro, or the Surface Pro Copilot+, is the fastest and most efficient Microsoft tablet we’ve seen, especially when paired with its Flex keyboard. The new OLED screen is great, and its NPU allows for powerful AI features.
However, those much-hyped AI features are far less compelling than the one-two punch of speed and solid battery life. (Take note: That’s most of what we want, laptop/tablet makers.) You can use Cocreator in Paint to generate AI images alongside text prompts and doodles, and the device can translate 40-plus languages into English using Windows 11’s Live Captions feature. The controversial Recall capability, meant to help you find anything you were doing on your computer through a natural conversation, is nowhere to be seen. There are security concerns other accounts could get into your Recall data.
A shame the keyboards are sold separately, though. Check out the full review right here.
— Mat Smith
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A team of scientists from the University of Tokyo and Harvard University is investigating how to create humanoid robots with skin that feels real. The process includes creating partly terrifying and partly adorable experimental machines with skin, like this smiley face. Broadly, the process tries to attach the skin to a layer beneath it, like real skin. The technique is called perforation-type anchors.
Of course, AI nonsense will be connected to this year’s Olympics. “Your Daily Olympic Recap on Peacock” will let you choose your favorite sports and highlight types for the 2024 Summer Olympics, and an AI-generated Michaels will read a 10-minute customized recap of the previous day’s events based on your preferences. In fairness, you’d be hard-pressed to tell the AI-generated speech from Michaels’ real voice.
Amazon may be working hard on a new chatbot called Metis. The company is using a different generation model, called retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). RAG “redirects the LLM to retrieve relevant information from authoritative, predetermined knowledge sources.” This means the model can tap into data that can be updated separately without retraining and could allow it to access up-to-date information. According to a Business Insider report, the model would be for consumers, not businesses, where it’s already offering its Amazon Q AI model.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-microsofts-surface-pro-copilot-is-the-best-surface-tablet-yet-111534749.html?src=rss
The Oversight Board has published its latest annual report looking at its influence on Meta and ability to shift the policies that govern Facebook and Instagram. The board says that in 2023 it received 398,597 appeals, the vast majority of which came from Facebook users. But it took on only a tiny fraction of those cases, issuing a total of 53 decisions.
The board suggests, however, that the cases it selects can have an outsize impact on Meta’s users. For example, it credits its work for influencing improvements to Meta’s strike system and the “account status” feature that helps users check if their posts have violated any of the company’s rules.
Sussing out the board’s overall influence, though, is more complicated. The group says that between January of 2021 and May of 2024, it has sent a total of 266 recommendations to Meta. Of those, the company has fully or partially implemented 75, and reported “progress” on 81. The rest have been declined, “omitted or reframed,” or else Meta has claimed some level of implementation but hasn’t offered proof to the board. (There are five recommendations currently awaiting a response.) Those numbers raise some questions about how much Meta is willing to change in response to the board it created.
Notably, the report has no criticism for Meta and offers no analysis of Meta’s efforts (or lack thereof) to comply with its recommendations. The report calls out a case in which it recommended that Meta suspend the former prime minister of Cambodia for six months, noting that it overturned the company’s decision to leave up a video that could have incited violence. But the report makes no mention of the fact that Meta declined to suspend the former prime minister’s account and declined to further clarify its rules for public figures.
The report also hints at thorny topics the board may take on in the coming months. It mentions that it wants to look at content “demotion,” or what some Facebook and Instagram users may call “shadowbans” (the term is a loaded one for Meta, which has repeatedly denied that its algorithms intentionally punish users for no reason). “One area we are interested in exploring is demoted content, where a platform limits a post’s visibility without telling the user,” the Oversight Board writes.
For now, it’s not clear exactly how the group could tackle the issue. The board’s purview currently allows it to weigh in on specific pieces of content that Meta has removed or left up after a user appeal. But it’s possible the board could find another way into the issue. A spokesperson for the Oversight Board notes that the group expressed concern about demoted content in its opinion on content related to the Israel-Hamas war. “This is something the board would like to further explore as Meta’s decisions around demotion are pretty opaque,” the spokesperson said.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/metas-oversight-board-made-just-53-decisions-in-2023-100017750.html?src=rss
The popular movie franchise is in the works of being adapted into a television series, and it has the approval from the creator of the wizarding world.
The popular movie franchise is in the works of being adapted into a television series, and it has the approval from the creator of the wizarding world.
