In the previous post we looked at a digital twin created with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) application. Let's continue the AI thread reviewing some of the AI news from the last few days.
A music video with a deepfake twist
In October Björk and Rosalía announced they were joining forces. The Icelandic and Spanish singers collaborated indeed on a song to benefit the campaign against industrial salmon farming in Björk's native Iceland.
In a statement posted on Instagram last month, Björk stated: "People at the fjord Seyðisfjörður have stood up and protested against fish farming starting there. We would like to donate sales of the song to help with their legal fees and hopefully it can be an exemplary case for others."
She added that Iceland is "the biggest untouched nature in Europe" with sheep roaming free in the mountains, and fish swimming free in lakes, rivers and fjords. "When Icelandic and Norwegian businessmen started buying fish farms in the majority of our fjords, it was a big shock (…) We don't understand how they had been able to do this for a decade with almost no regulations stopping them." (it is worth remembering that with the 2022 merger Ice Fish Farm acquired Laxar Fiskeldi, now majority-owned by the Norwegian company Måsøval. Ice Fish Farm manages the Seyðisfjörður fjord and three others in the east, aiming to process 10 million salmon annually).
The industrial farming of salmon, Björk claims, "has already had a devastating effect on wildlife and the farmed fish are suffering in horrid health conditions. And since a lot of them have escaped, they have started changing the DNA in the Icelandic salmon for the worse, and could eventually lead to its extinction."
The open-pen salmon-farming industry has indeed come under scrutiny in Iceland after it was reported that up to 3,500 salmon may have escaped from the Arctic Fish (one of Iceland’s largest salmon-farming companies) facility in August. This is a serious situation as farmed salmon can severely impact the local populations of fish living in the wilderness.
In a recent message on Instagram, Björk stated: "Industrial salmon farming in open enclosures is horrible for the environment. Farmed salmon go through immense suffering and cause serious damage to our planet. This is an extraordinarily cruel way of making food."
The single, entitled "Oral", was released earlier on this week: fans of Björk may recognize in it nuances that hark back to the singer's late '90s production. This track, a love song actually, was indeed recorded 25 years ago, between the albums "Homogenic" (1997) and "Vespertine" (2001).
The single was abandoned and forgotten as Björk remembered the melody but not the title. Then, while watching CNN news during her tour in Australia, the title came back to her. On the recording Björk, who recently turned 58, was the same age as Rosalía who has helped her update the track, so there is an interesting connection between the two singers.
All proceeds of the track, produced by Sega Bodega, will be donated to the AEGIS non-profit organisation to combat open pen fish farming in Iceland (fans and environmental activists can learn more about the issue and support the cause through the Icelandic Wildlife Fund).
The song was released earlier on this week accompanied by a video: directed by visual artist Carlota Guerrero (known for her work with a wide range of artists, actors and musicians such as Solange Knowles, Penélope Cruz and Emilia Clarke, and fashion brands including Paloma Wool, Givenchy, Mugler, Dior, and Nike), the video features Björk and Rosalía dressed in martial art gowns training in what looks like a vast hangar-like space that wouldn't look out of place in a Star Wars film.
The video was actually filmed in one of the pavilions of the Granja de la Ricarda (Ricarda Farm View this photo) in El Prat de Llobregat (Barcelona), the reproduction of a dairy farm established in 1909 by Manuel Bertrand, pioneering modern methods in cattle breeding and milk production.
A palette in neutral colours characterizes it, but there is a high-tech twist in it as the singers are AI-generated deepfakes, so real women did all the stunts, but then the singers' faces were incorporated into the choreography of the fight, using artificial intelligence (yes, undoubtedly, there is an uncanny valley feel to it, but it still looks cool).
"Carlota came up with the concept and executed the video, exploring the use of AI technology and embracing the glitches blurring the line between reality and virtuality whilst challenging the notions of identity," reads a press release of the video. "Throughout the piece, female rage is explored through Björk's and Rosalía's avatars."
The two singers aren't indeed fighting each other, but getting ready to fight against a bigger enemy.
A new AI tool
If you like Artificial Intelligence and experimenting with new tools, Krea AI will bring you lots of surprises and joy. Krea functions with the usual textual prompts, but also allows you to create images in real time, just by drawing and painting on the screen or using your webcam.
As you start drawing, you will see Artificial Intelligence in action creating live mind-blowing images. So, fear not if you can't draw at all, you will definitely create a masterpiece.
Besides, you can also train your AI model with your own images, something that opens up an entire world of possibilities.
Krea AI is currently only available on closed beta, so you must receive an invite to start creating, but there are two exciting tools that you can instantly enjoy creating - logo illusions and patterns - and that will prove extremely useful for fashion designers.
With the former you can play around with pre-uploaded logos or upload yours and transform them through the logo illusion tool; the latter allows you instead to enter a prompt or a phrase, select a pattern (or upload yours) and fine-tune it with Pattern Strength, Guidance Scale, and the option to Add Negative Prompts. You can also animate both the logos and the patterns created.
You're warned, this is addictive, but very stimulating also for accessory designers (try and play around with the patterns to create jewelry designs).
Last but not least...the OpenAI saga
Last week, OpenAI fired its co-founder and CEO, Sam Altman, reportedly for lying to the company. Following his departure, Greg Brockman, the President & Co-Founder of OpenAI, also resigned from his role as board chair.
Then, on Monday nearly all the company's 750 staff signed an open letter and threatened to leave the company if Altman wasn't brought back. Altman was supported also by OpenAI's biggest investor, Microsoft, and initially it was thought that he would have moved there to lead a new artificial intelligence unit. The OpenAI board in the meantime appointed an interim CEO, Mira Murati, then the chief technology officer at the company, but by Sunday they had already tapped another - the former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear. Eventually on Tuesday night Altman was reinstated, turning this into the shortest firing in the history of Big Tech companies.
Before Altman's dismissal, reports indicated that the company was working on an advanced model called Q* (Q-Star), which alarmed staff due to its remarkable power. Concerns about the safety of the new model were raised by workers to the board before Altman's sacking, stating that it could pose a threat to humanity. According to Reuters, apparently model Q* demonstrated the ability to solve basic math problems it had not encountered before, causing unease among safety researchers.
Shear mentioned that Altman was not removed over any safety disagreement. But the swift dismissal of Altman and the secrecy and lack of transparency around it and of clear ethical justifications raised urgent questions about the safety of the technology, especially considering the fact that there aren't any established standards, laws and regulations yet in the field of AI.
We know that there may be divisions at OpenAI between those who would like to slow down the development and deployment of AI and those who would instead press the accelerator, and further doubts are rising about favouring speed over societal good.
At the moment, AI remains a terrifically entertaining tool for the majority of users with some perversely dangerous implications (job losses and discrimination among the others), so, while we play with text-to-image or AI text tools, we should remain vigilant and train to recognise a threat, just like Björk and Rosalía's deepfakes.
In the meantime, film and TV production companies may start to consider the possibility of shooting a series about OpenAI, with "the Oppenheimer of Our Age", as New York Magazine dubbed Sam Altman, as its protagonist.
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