Friday, June 14
Do we all need to get AI Powered phones now? Apple certainly made that clear with it’s announcement of ‘Apple Intelligence’ on Monday. Even though they are way late to the party, they made smooth move by calling it ‘AI for the rest of us’.
The next day, Google did a pretty slick job with this promotional video promising a whole world of AI assistance, but it wasn’t just limited to the latest model. They’re actually migrating some of these features back to existing phones. At least both of these tech titans-style leaders can agree that we have to use gradient text to say “AI”
OpenAI only released ChatGPT4o a month ago and with the current rate of change, there will be another paradigm shift by the time those new Apple Phones are released in September. What if I don’t upgrade? Will I fall behind, get fired, or be out of sync with the culture at large? Seventeen years ago, Steve Jobs turned the world upside down when he promised the entire internet in our pockets. However, most of now use these smart devices to keep ourselves distracted instead of getting smarter.
To be honest, I don’t know if I can get any smarter. (I don’t mean to imply that I’m super intelligent, I just can’t increase the rate of change). Between my academic research and my creative work, I use AI tools throughout the day and I have multiple channels of input and output. I have a steady system of reading, watching, making, and writing and I feel pretty overloaded. Personally, I can’t see any benefit of getting even more information/organization/efficiency out of my phone like the Apple exec did in Monday’s demo. I’m fine with leaving the AI magic on my laptop and just keep using last year’s phone.
However, based on the early reports, it looks like Apple has already won, despite being late to the party.
Apple Proved That AI Is a Feature, Not a Product
Apple Intelligence is what Google Gemini should've been from the start
iOS 18 has ended the iPhone vs. Android debate
Siri Can Now Do What Google Gemini and Rabbit Can Only Dream Of
And, if it weren’t already painfully obvious, this marks the final nail in the coffin for dedicated AI devices like Humane and Rabbit.
Dream Machine: The Next AI Video Generator
Last week I was feeling stuck in my AI filmmaking pursuits; everything pales in comparison to Sora, yet Sora is nowhere near ready for public release. I’ve been making due with Pixverse.ai, because it’s affordable and the output is pretty reliable (so much better than RunwayML), but I’ve been pining for the next great tool to come out. Well, my dreams have been answered (almost) with Dream Machine from Luma Labs. The quality is amazing, the coherence is awesome, and it produces 5 second clips. It’s supposed to be really fast at generation but I think everyone just discovered it and now I’m waiting a long time for my videos to generate. Hopefully they clear this up soon. Here are a few clips of a tiger I was able to generate.
Luma Labs also makes a text to 3D product called ‘Genie’ that is similar to Rodin that I discussed earlier this week. While it took about 5 minutes, I was pretty impressed with the output from this prompt: Cutest penguin astronaut, adorable, detailed
The general perception is: Adobe is an evil company that will do whatever it takes to FUCK its users.’
That’s according to internal company messages obtained by Business Insider, regarding frustration among staffers over how Adobe handled the controversy surrounding a recent Terms of Service update. That continued this week in internal discussions, where exasperated employees implored leadership to not let it be the “evil” company customers think it is. Check it out
Google’s New AI Alphabet Generator is Super Fun!
In my pursuit of typography side projects, I have frequently spent hours or weeks crafting entire alphabets. This also makes a great assignment for students, but now it can be accomplished in about 30 seconds. Describe what you want and it generates an alphabet. Don’t like a certain letter? Just hit ‘regenerate’. The type out entire phrases, save as a .png. Read about it | Take it for a test drive
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For the Newcomers
I’ve had a whole bunch of new subscribers recently, so welcome, and thank you! In the past I’ve written extensively about the different image generators, but if you’re just getting started, you can read this comparison of Midjourney, Dalle-3, and Stable Diffusion
Wow, what an amazing week, I can barely keep up with the developments. I’m really excited about everything I’m studying this summer and I hope you are too. If you have any questions, research requests, or just want to say “hola”, I’m available.
Ha. I ordered a Rabbit R1 in like February. Have not received it yet and probably won't until September or so. At least it comes with a year subscription to perplexity, so it was not a total waste of money.