Oh, so now X cares about content moderation
If something felt off during your daily morning search for ‘Taylor Swift’ on X, you’re not alone. That’s entirely by design, as X has begun blocking searches of the insanely popular pop star thanks to the recent influx of AI-generated imagery that puts her under a not-so-flattering light. We won’t dig into any specifics of the images, but we imagine you can guess why X, or Taylor Swift, doesn’t want those images floating around the web.
Searching ‘Taylor Swift’ or ‘Taylor Swift AI’ or something similar will net you a “Something went wrong” message. According to the platform’s head of business, Joe Benarroch, the measure is temporary, designed to “prioritize safety” for Swift. Specifically, that involves blocking those terms we’ve mentioned, and “actively removing all identified images and taking appropriate actions against the accounts responsible for posting them,” X said in a statement.
That’s great. If, you know, it worked. Getting around the block isn’t exactly difficult, as throwing those terms between two of these ” should serve you just fine. It worked at the time of writing, at least. X has at least done a decent job of removing the images too explicit for your average school child, though plenty of artificially generated images of the singer are still floating about.
PlayStation left in a State of Play
There’s little worse than sitting through some highly anticipated PlayStation State of Play, Xbox Showcase, or Nintendo Direct, only to find out that the company’s slate includes nothing more substantial than a couple of cosy campfire games and… Starfield. So when a leak threatens to absolve our responsibility of checking out PlayStation’s next unveiling, we listen up.
According to @Shpeshal_Nick, one of the bigger leakers in the industry at the moment, and one of his enigmatic tweets, PlayStation’s got another State of Play on the cards, taking place “on the 31st (roughly)”.
“On the 31st (roughly), Ronins will Rise, we’ll die stranded, have a rebirth and Kojima will fulfil his dream. Sonic will live in the shadow of his generation while the hills will remain silent until the dawn when you’ll need to catch the metro. Just don’t be a Judas about it,” the tweet reads.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what Nick reckons Sony has lined up for the event this week, but we’ll help you out anyway. Rise of the Ronin, Death Stranding 2, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Silent Hill 2, Metro, Judas, and what might be yet another rehashing of the Sonic brand are on the cards. In a reply to a tweet, Nick mentions the possibility that this is an incomplete list and that the actual show might contain a couple more secrets. We’re willing to take our chances, though.
If you thought Taylor Swift’s deep fakes were scary, Google’s Lumiere is a regular Jordan Peele movie
Until now, artificially generated video is usually quite obviously so. That’s all got to do with how current models handle video output — which usually involves splicing together extremely short videos or still frames to create a somewhat smooth, but still artificial-looking final result. Google’s in the mood to change all that. At least, that’s what its announcement of Lumiere is telling us.
To put it simply, Lumiere is what Google calls a “Space-Time Diffusion Model” that’s reportedly capable of spitting out artificially generated video — mostly of animals at this stage — and doing a bloody good job of it. Remember how we said current models all focus on piecing bits of a video together? Lumiere doesn’t do that.
Instead, it uses a “Space-Time U-Net architecture that generates the entire temporal duration of the video at once, through a single pass in the model.” That means the model can accurately judge a video or image’s objects through both space and time, allowing the model to take the reins and create a video in one smooth process without the need for many moving parts.
It’s quite a capable little piece of tech, too. It’ll create videos from text, convert images into video, generate videos based on an image’s style, create cinemagraphs (animating specific areas of a still image), or rearrange an image’s subject without much hassle. Sounds good, right? There’s just one issue: regular folk can’t get their paws on it. At least, not yet. At the time of writing, Google hasn’t discussed any plans to release Lumiere. And it might stay that way. At least until it can land on a firm asking price.
Minimalism looks like a… Blackberry?
Have you found yourself yearning to rid yourself of modern-day smartphones and return to something more simple; say, a Blackberry? Well, too bad. Blackberry is officially defunct as of 2022, and it’s going to stay that way. Fortunately, there’s a new phone on the block, titling itself ‘The Minimal Phone’ that wants to recreate that hype in the form of physical keyboards, e-ink displays, and a four-day battery life that would put Xiaomi to shame.
Except, it doesn’t exist. It’s merely a concept that’s designed to promote the phone’s “Live More. Scroll Less” motto that’s only alive through a couple of renders and a website that invites you to ‘Join the waitlist” without ever committing to anything serious. The idea is a sound one, though. A technically ‘smart’ phone that’s only capable of the basics and won’t hog your time scrolling through TikTok or something similar. There’s always the ability to just… not scroll through TikTok, but that involves expending restraint and some rational thinking.
If it ever gets enough attention to become a reality, it’ll run off MinimalOS — a custom derivative of Android — and a 4,000mAh battery that’ll apparently last four days thanks to the lighter-than-most OS and e-ink display. There’s no word yet on pricing (it doesn’t even exist yet), but we’re guessing it won’t be cheap enough to convince most souls to make the switch away from something with some colour.