📰 Buckle Up for Art, Games, Lawsuits, Beats, and Titans Unite!

In this week's Shiny New Things, SAM becomes your new photo-cutting BFF 🎨, Stanford researchers upgrade NPCs to party animals and politicians 🥳, and Elon Musk unsheathes his legal sword against Microsoft ⚔️. AI-generated pop tunes spark copyright debates 🎤, Stack Overflow's decision to charge AI giants triggers a digital cash scramble 💰, and last but not least, Google's Brain team and DeepMind join forces to form the ultimate AI supergroup, Google DeepMind 🌟. Prepare for a wild ride as we explore the hilarious, mind-blowing, and occasionally terrifying world of tech! 🎢

🎨 Meet SAM: The Ultimate Photo-Cutting Genius

Say hello to SAM, a new tool that's making it super easy to separate objects in photos and videos! In the past, this was a tricky and time-consuming task, but now SAM makes it a breeze. It's been trained on a huge collection of images to understand all sorts of objects, so it's ready for any challenge you throw at it. Whether you need help with a fun art project or a serious science experiment, SAM is your go-to image-slicing buddy. Best of all, you don't need any fancy tech skills to use it. Just point and click, and SAM takes care of the rest! 🖼️✂️

https://ai.facebook.com/blog/segment-anything-foundation-model-image-segmentation

🎮 NPCs Break Free:

Free Guy Meets Stanford Research! Forget simple NPCs, Stanford is working on "Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior" to create chatbots that act like humans in social situations. This project aims to revolutionize NPCs by using language models like GPT and training methods such as reinforcement learning and imitation learning. Researchers even put 25 generative agents in a virtual sandbox with unique histories and behaviors, leading to a chatbot-hosted party and one agent running for mayor! Are we one step closer to living in Elon Musk's simulation hypothesis? Who knows, but these NPCs are leveling up!

https://curioussteve.com/tech/generative-agents-the-stanford-ai-game-explained

💩 Elon's Legal War Cry

Sue Microsoft Over Twitter Data? Elon Musk threatens to sue Microsoft, accusing them of "training illegally using Twitter data." This follows Microsoft's advertising platform announcing it will stop supporting Twitter due to API access now requiring payment. While Musk's beef seems to be with OpenAI, Microsoft's recent significant investment in the company could be the link. Will Elon follow through on his lawsuit threat, or is this another dramatic Twitter moment that'll vanish into the digital ether?

https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/19/23690216/elon-musk-microsoft-ai-lawsuit-threat

🎶 AI: The Uncredited Pop Star?

Music fans were left in awe as the AI-generated song "Heart on My Sleeve," which emulates pop icons Drake and The Weeknd, went viral. This musical marvel has people questioning the ethical and legal limitations of AI's creative capabilities. As the popularity of AI-generated music grows, industry players like Universal Music Group are invoking copyright violations to protect their artists. However, music and AI litigation remains in its infancy, and the legal world struggles to catch up with this rapidly-evolving technology. Will AI-generated music revolutionize the industry, or are we heading for a future where mediocrity and legal confusion reign supreme?

https://www.npr.org/2023/04/21/1171032649/ai-music-heart-on-my-sleeve-drake-the-weeknd

💸 Stack Overflow Joins the "Pay Up" Party

In a move that's got AI giants shaking in their digital boots, Stack Overflow announces it's time to pay the piper, as they jump on the Reddit bandwagon and start charging for access to their treasure trove of 50 million questions and answers. Get ready for a hilarious, high-stakes game of "Who's Got the Deepest Pockets?" as OpenAI, Google, and friends scramble to fork over the dough to keep their large language models chugging along. Let's just hope they saved enough pennies to keep ChatGPT's witty banter flowing!

https://www.wired.com/story/stack-overflow-will-charge-ai-giants-for-training-data

🤯 When AI Titans Collide: Google's Brain Team + DeepMind

Hold onto your hats, folks, as Google's Brain team and DeepMind merge to form the ultimate AI supergroup: Google DeepMind! Led by CEO Demis Hassabis and chief scientist Jeff Dean, this dynamic dream team vows to "significantly accelerate" AI progress. Will this fusion result in mind-blowing AI advancements, or just create the perfect storm of AI blunders and chatbots with an affinity for pathological lying? Only time will tell, but one thing's for sure: it's about to get real interesting in the AI-verse! 🎉

https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/20/23691468/google-ai-deepmind-brain-merger

If you found this useful, do help share it around 🙏🏻 and subscribe if you haven’t!
https://shinynewthings.beehiiv.com/