The Entire Web is Up For Grabs
Den of Thieves, Part Two
When I first started working with the web, just after the turn of the century, it still had a ‘Wild West’ quality to it. Yes, the NASDAQ had come down to earth, but there was a whole new wave of companies promising to revolutionize everything. As someone who had gone to Art school and then worked as a Chef, I like the possibility of fewer rules and more fun (or so I thought). Now I work at the intersection of UX design and Front-end engineering and I am a total rule follower. Every few years, a new wave of renegades appears, once again promising to revolutionize everything, before being revealed as callow opportunists.
The Wild West mentality seems to still be in full swing, or perhaps we should compare it to the era of the Robber Barrons. A growing number of influential AI leaders or organizations seem to think that the entire web is up for grabs. Last week I wrote about Meta and Adobe using your images to train there models and Perplexity resorting to the type of plagiarism that would get you kicked out of school. At this point I just expect to hear Sam Altman shrug and say something like, “Well, we saw it just lying there…so we took it. Maybe it just fell of a truck?”
I was really alarmed when I saw the following quote from Mustafa Suleyman, former CEO of Deepmind, and currently running Microsoft’s AI operations.
I think that with respect to content that’s already on the open web, the social contract of that content since the ‘90s has been that it is fair use. Anyone can copy it, recreate with it, reproduce with it. That has been “freeware,” if you like, that’s been the understanding.
Andrew Nedimyer, if you’re reading this, maybe you can set him straight. Everyone else can read about it in this article from the Verge, Check it out
While I hate running into paywalls when I’m doing research and believe that I ‘deserve’ access to those articles, even I was shocked to learn that the AI Chatbot Poe will swipe entire articles for you and let you download them as HTML files.
WIRED was similarly able to retrieve articles from paywalled sites including The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Atlantic, Forbes, Defector, and 404 Media in downloadable format simply by entering URLs into the Assistant bot’s interface. This appears to be just the latest example of the AI industry’s cavalier approach to intellectual property law, which is rapidly undermining existing business models in fields like journalism and music. Check it out
I know it’s really easy to get swept in the excitement of ChatGPT 5, bigger and faster data centers, and Nvidia’s stock price going stratospheric. This is what the media is focusing as these companies ride the AI hype train to speculative valuations. However, there are some consistent voices that are asking for restraint and to see the forest for the trees. Please consider reading this article about five AI ethicists who are talking about a different course of action. Tldr; Tristan Harris, Timnit Gebru, Jaron Lanier, Bruce Schneier, Alka Roy. But, you should really check it out
Quickies
If you make short, practical videos for presentations as part of your job, you’re going to be thrilled with this new tools from Google Labs. If you make them as a freelancer for existing companies, you’re going to be depressed. Google Vids works just like Google slides, but with an AI assistant and a browser based video editor. Check it out
The most important skill you can put on your resume if you’re a new grad? Not surprising, it’s AI skills. I know that’s a pretty broad answer, but there are a lot of quick certifications that I’ve written about before. If you’re stuck, send me a message, or check it out
I haven’t actually used Character.ai yet, but I keep reading about. Apparently, people are spending up to two hours a day chatting with AI characters. Now they are adding voice calls, so that you can…talk with a bot? To be honest, I don’t get. Is this part of the contemporary loneliness epidemic? It’s so popular, that Meta and Google are rushing to put out similar products. First sign of the fall of civilization? Check it out
How are real life graphic designers using generative AI in their daily workflow? Mattel is having them rapidly iterate new concepts for packaging as they expand the Barbie line of products. To be clear, this is about packaging and not new concepts, but they mention having to “convince the higher ups”, so I couldn’t resist coming up with “Cyberpunk Samurai Barbie” in Midjourney. Check it out
I’ve Settled on RunwayML For My AI Film
Despite having complained about them in the past, I’ve had a change of heart because the tool can help me accomplish a lot of goals in this project, especially lip-synching. It means I can upload a Midjourney image, animate it, add audio, and lip-sync all in one place. As of today, July 1st, their anticipated Gen-3 features are not yet available.
Exactly.ai is Not Exactly Great, it’s Awful!
Last week I mentioned a tool called exactly.ai which promised to generate more images in your style. Surely, this would be a boon to busy illustrators. Well, I saw an ad on Instagram which promised just that. I’m not a brilliant illustrator, but I uploaded a dozen drawings I did a few years ago and it promised to train a model in my style in about an hour.
While the interface was easy to use and it did copy my style, the resulting anatomical abominations seemed like they were from the early days of generative AI. I’m giving this one a firm: Don’t Bother!
Wow is it July already? Summer is flying by. I hope you’re learning a lot and are enthralled with your creative side projects. Curious? Send me a message and I’ll do a deep dive.