Adobe Premiere Adds AI Features
Including Sora, RunwayML, and Pika
Probably the biggest news of the week came out of NAB yesterday as Adobe demo’d some new AI features which we’ll see (might see) in the near future. What they’re calling “Firefly generative fill” allows you to add or remove sections of an individual frame in a video and then allow that edit to exist for all the following frames. But the real kicker came when they toggled the controls and showed that you can also select from OpenAI, RunwayML, and Pika Labs when you want to generate additional b-roll footage. You can see a demo video as well as read a longer review from Sabrina Ortiz.
AI Skills Will be Essential for Creatives
This article is required reading for my students this week. Check it out
Most dramatic of all was the finding that industry leaders ranked the ability to implement AI tools or "work with AI" as the most important skill for the future across a range of industries. This was ranked as the top skill in architecture and construction, design and manufacturing, games and advertising, publishing and graphic design. In the film sector, it was ranked third behind digital skills and data analytics.
The Humane AI Pin Underwhelms on Arrival
To be honest, I was really excited about this one and a year ago I was showing it to my classes as some huge advancement in the intersection of AI and UX. After all, the team of former Apple employees had exquisite credentials and an unlimited budget. Perhaps the veneer of AI is loosing some of it’s luster, as the initial reviews are across the board awful.
“Half the time I tried to call someone, it simply didn't call. Half the time someone called me, the AI Pin would kick it straight to voicemail.” Core 77
“If I can briefly put all the schadenfreude aside, I’ll admit that I’m personally disappointed that Humane’s first attempt has gone so sideways. I’m not an AI evangelist by any stretch. I work in an industry the technology seems gung-ho on subsuming first.” Gear Patrol
“The wearable Humane AI Pin was an attempt to free us from the tyranny of our phones, but first reviews call it slow, clunky, and often a liar.” Gizmodo
Marques Brownlee, who also goes by MKBHD, is a hugely influential technology reviewer with over 18 million subscribers on YouTube and yesterday he posted his review for the much-hyped AI pin which he titled “The Worst Product I’ve Ever Reviewed… For Now.” PetaPixel
Adobe’s Firefly Was Trained on Midjourney
Adobe has made much of the point that Firefly was trained on public domain material and images from Adobe Stock, its own library of licensed assets. In theory, that makes it more ethical than the AI image generators that were trained by scraping the entire web, sucking up artists' and photographers' work without permission. So reports that Firefly was also trained on Midjourney images are a little embarrassing for the software giant. Check it out
Udio is like Sora for Audio: Amazing!
I had barely gotten up to speed on Suno (the previous #1 AI audio generator), when news of Udio came my way. I’ve only just started using it and I’m writing a comparison piece on the two, so I can’t really say anything intelligent yet. So if you’d like to get a better understanding and here the actual audio samples it produced, check out this excellent article from Tom’s Guide. Prepare to have your mind blown
The State of AI in 13 Charts
I spend every day trying to make sense of this stuff and frequently feel like I’m falling behind. If you’re a numbers person and you’d like to distill some order from charts and graphs, the kind people from Stanford University’s Human Centered Artificial Intelligence program have an excellent resource. Check it out
That’s it for today, but there is so much more that I want to write about. Thank you so much for reading and supporting my work. If you’re getting some value out of this newsletter, please forward it to a friend. And if you have any questions or suggestions, please send them my way.
~Be relentlessly positive