More from From ChatGPT to Gemini: how AI is rewriting the internet
With exceptions for users under 18, posts that weren’t set to public, or EU accounts that opted out.
Now ABC reports on Australian senator David Shoebridge’s question to Meta’s global privacy director, Melinda Claybaugh.
Shoebridge: “...Meta has just decided that you will scrape all of the photos and all of the texts from every public post on Instagram or Facebook since 2007, unless there was a conscious decision to set them on private. That’s the reality, isn’t it?”
Claybaugh: “Correct.”
AB 1836, which requires studios to get express consent from dead performers’ estates before producing digital replicas of them, passed the state Senate yesterday, reports Variety.
The bill’s passage yesterday came days after California’s legislature passed AB 2602 with similar consent requirements for living actors. SAG-AFTRA released a statement calling the bill a “legislative priority” and encouraging Governor Gavin Newsom to sign it.
Kevin Roose, whose New York Times story about horny Bing chats went viral last year, writes that chatbots are at times very negative about him since, having seemingly picked up on criticism of his piece.
Now, he writes about how he used techniques that could be considered an AI-focused version of SEO to influence how they respond when asked about him — and what that portends.
That’s according to Forbes, which reports that the man had used a GoPro to record children at Disney World for the purpose:
... Justin Culmo, who was arrested in mid-2023, admitted to creating thousands of illegal images of children taken at the amusement park and at least one middle school, using a version of AI model Stable Diffusion ...
A reader asked the Denver Post why it hadn’t covered a grisly and salacious 2014 murder in Littleton, CO. It hadn’t, because the crime never happened.
But there it is on YouTube and Spotify, accumulating millions of views with seemingly AI-generated voiceovers and faces. True crime fans say they reported the videos months ago after YouTube recommended them, but they aren’t being removed.
The Post cites internal documents saying the voice assistant’s upgrades could include daily “Smart Briefing” AI-generated news summaries to drive more “recurrent engagement.” Other features like asking users about their preferences, and tracking sales of Amazon products could also help Amazon turn around losses in its devices business.
The documents also said Project Metis, Amazon’s rumored web-based ChatGPT competitor, could launch alongside it.
[The Washington Post]
The company closed the waitlist for its “prototype” generative search product, sending out emails like the one below to signed-up users who weren’t chosen to test it.
The company has said only 10,000 users will get access at first, which could help it if its searchbot gives bad recommendations like gluing slippery cheese to pizza.
You may need to close and reopen the app to see it, but according to Android expert Mishaal Rahman, Gemini is showing up for non-Google Workspace users.
Gemini can do things like summarize emails, suggest next steps, or draft replies. Before now, you’ve needed a Google AI premium subscription or a Workspace account for access to the AI assistant.
404 Media reports, with screenshots of Slack conversations and excerpts from emails, on a massive undertaking by Nvidia to scrape online videos for AI training that appears to go well beyond research.
According to the messages, they were attempting to download full-length videos from a variety of sources including Netflix, but were focused on YouTube videos. Emails viewed by 404 Media show project managers discussing using 20 to 30 virtual machines in Amazon Web Services to download 80 years-worth of videos per day.
Responding to the RIAA’s copyright lawsuit, AI songmaker sites defended their models as being like kids learning rock and roll or tools enabling creativity. Country artist Tift Merritt had a different take after being shown a song AI music generator Udio spat out when prompted to mimic her style:
... the “imitation” Udio created “doesn’t make the cut for any album of mine.”
“This is a great demonstration of the extent to which this technology is not transformative at all ... It’s stealing.”
I had similar thoughts back in March.