Static Photo to Talking Video Generator, Apple Joins OpenAI Board, and Email Spam
A few AI links before the July 4th holiday begins!
Morning y’all!
Tomorrow is Fourth of July and so I’ll be taking the day off to relax and do absolutely nothing! Most of my team is taking the rest of the week off too so maybe I’ll extend it another day if I’m feeling particularly aggressive on my relaxation needs.
I hope you have a good one! Make it a day worth remembering (or not).
※\(^o^)/※
— Summer
More thoughts on how AI video is impacting Hollywood:
The idea is that GenAI will democratize high production-value video creation and exacerbate the low-end disruption of Hollywood that is already underway by creator content.
In this post, I explore another angle: why it will be so hard for the major studios to capitalize on these tools—especially AI video generators like Sora, Veo and Runway Gen-3—themselves.
It’s a long post but it’s got a ton of links and reference material.
Coca Cola CMO on the impact on AI:
Arroyo was joined on the panel by Mondelez senior vice-president of global brands Mie-Leng Wong, who explained her business is at the beginning of its experimentation with AI. She cited the success of Cadbury India, which used Generative AI to create more than 300,000 personalised ads for corner shop owners across the country featuring Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan.
The impact is real; the question is one of profitability now.
The irony of this is really palpable. I mean, YouTube has had so many legal issues with record labels and “creative impact” and now it seems they’ve finally caved because of artificial intelligence? Huh.
Nope, this isn’t my podcast, but, it is using the word “Summer”!
AI can’t teach basic reading:
The leading AI fails spectacularly at replacing the role of a first-grade or even preschool teacher.
Oh well. Maybe next week it’ll be better.
Phil Schiller, of Apple, is joining OpenAI as a board observer. That’s a big deal since it’ll give Apple insight into some of their biggest competitor’s movements.
Here are some thoughts on how to hire AI engineers.
Now this is neat:
AI audio company ElevenLabs just announced a new ‘Iconic Voices’ feature for its recently released Reader App, allowing users to have text read by AI-generated voices of famous Hollywood stars.
The iinitial lineup includes AI-recreated voices of Judy Garland, James Dean, Burt Reynolds, and Sir Laurence Olivier, with more being added in the coming months.
Hedra Labs now transforms static photos into dynamic talking images, bringing your selfies to life with synchronized speech and facial animations. I actually gave this a try myself using one of my existing photos and the results are… interesting.
The first one is a british-swedish accent while this one is very much american:
I don’t think I like the animations but they’ll get better, I’m sure.
Meta just announced Meta 3D Gen, a new AI system that can generate detailed, high-quality 3D assets from text descriptions in less than a minute.
Funny and a bit sad:
I used AI agents to send out nearly 1,000 personalized emails to developers with public blogs on GitHub.
The offending person, Raymond and his Wisp product, shared how he did it, ofc. I see this from both ends and I don’t see a problem here because I’m not sure one should have their email public like that in the first place (but that’s just me).
And that’s it folks! Have a great one and I’ll see you in a few days!
※\(^o^)/※
— Summer
