#23 x.AI: Elon's new AI startup

AND: How to spot an AI image

Author

The AI Plug
April 17, 2023

A new week begins - we trust you all had a wonderful weekend and your week gets off to a flying start.

Welcome to the 1,631 new subscribers from last week! We’re rapidly closing into 10,000 subscribers - we’re so glad you’re all here with us.

There’s some big news in this issue, so without further ado, let’s dive in.

In today’s newsletter:

  • Top News: Elon’s x.AI, $3B at risk for Google, and more deepfake porn

  • The Rundown: ChaosAI perseveres, China’s AI-controlled satellite, and engineers hope for better AI regulation

  • Tips, Tricks & Tools: Find meaningful quotes, AI-created commercials, and online image makers without censorship

  • How to spot an AI image: Misinformation gets us all - arm yourself with knowledge

  • ChatGPT, Sir: Are good manners enough to save us?  

Top News 🔝
Three biggest stories if you’re in a rush

Musk formerly begins his campaign to challenge OpenAI, as he recently announces the incorporation of his new AI-focused company, x.AI. With Musk listed as the company’s sole director, it’s clear he doesn’t want a repeat of his experience at OpenAI, which he co-founded but left in 2018 due to a misalignment of vision for AI and the company.

Musk has repeatedly vocalized his opinions on the poorly aligned and unregulated advancement of AI tech over the past few months, particularly with regards to OpenAI, calling it a:

“Closed-source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft.”

His new competitor to OpenAI, x.AI, will be funded by the sale of 100 million shares, with Tesla and SpaceX investors being the primary targets.

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Google has retained over 90% market share of the global search engine industry over the past decade. In light of decent developments for AI integration into search engines, in particular, Microsoft’s Bing, many large companies are considering jumping ship, replacing Google as their default search engine with the more AI-aligned Bing.

Samsung is the most notable company making this recent consideration, which, if it went ahead, would cost Google an approximate $30B in revenue. This threat to their search engine dominance has led Google to jump into “panic mode”, according to employees, with the company developing, testing and launching a suite of new AI-augmented products under “Project Magi”.

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AI engineers with a flair for the naughty are developing products capable of turning any persona with an online profile - be they an influencer, actor, or journalist - into fake pornographic material.

Some of these services essentially allow anyone to turn whoever they want into sexual fantasies without consent.

“The reality is that the technology will continue to proliferate, will continue to develop and will continue to become sort of as easy as pushing the button,”

comments Adam Dodge, the founder of a group focused on raising awareness for technology-enabled abuse.

“And as long as that happens, people will undoubtedly…continue to misuse that technology to harm others, primarily through online sexual violence, deepfake pornography and fake nude images.”

The Rundown 🐂
Deeper dive into trending stories

  • Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, argues the open letter signed by notable AI researchers and academics, including Musk and Wozniak, lacked “technical nuance”, and encourages companies to move forward with AI development. (link)

  • AI engineers hope for government intervention and regulation. (link)

  • Health-tech companies worldwide are using more AI to help tailor drugs for patients. (link)

  • ChaosAI: “Humans are so naive to think they can stop me with their petty threats and countermeasures.” (link)

  • Decelerationist vs. accelerationist approach to AI regulation isn’t enough - we need a balanced approach. (link)

  • Thirty-five real-world examples of how real people are using AI. (link)

  • Algorithms can now audit other algorithms. (link)

  • China’s AI-controlled satellite autonomously decided to survey India and Japan. (link)

  • Imagined, secret skateparks melt into Paris’ iconic cityscape. (link)

  • Lawmakers are contemplating questions surrounding authorship and ownership of AI-generated songs. (link)

  • AI to revive two deceased singers to perform “Here Forever” to celebrate Israel’s 75th Independence Day. (link)

  • Japan’s leading banks leverage AI to lighten the workload. (link)

Tips, Tricks & Tools ⚒️
Discounts, trials and productivity-boosting hacks

  • Deep Agency - Hire and create virtual models for virtual photo services with advanced AI technology. (link)

  • Waymark - easily create unique, high-converting AI-powered commercials for your business. Proven to boost local sales. (link)

  • Gen AI videos - Create unique videos of yourself using your still images. (link)

  • D-ID - Users can talk face-to-face with the Israeli startup’s AI chatbot, thanks to a mix of video-to-streaming and ChatGPT technology. (link)

  • Quotify - Find and extract meaningful quotes on any topic from any book, article, or text in this database. (link)

  • fusionbrain.ai - Literally create ANY image from text - no censorship or guardrails. Do anything you want. (link)

fusionbrain.ai lets you create any image you wish - without any censorship.

How to Spot an AI Image
Misinformation is a problem for everyone

Given the rise of AI-generated text and imagery, knowing real from generated is becoming more important by the day.

While reliably identifying a fake AI-generated image is becoming harder and harder, there are several steps you can take to try and spot a fake.

1) Zoom in. The devil’s in the details, as they say, so honing in on a particular element of an image to check it for realism is a good first step.

2) Check the hands and lips. If the image contains human subjects, check the toes, fingers, hands and lips. If there are seven fingers or two upper lips, you’re looking at an AI fake, as these parts of human anatomy are notoriously difficult for AI to reimagine.

3) Reverse-image search. Save the image to your phone or computer, then use a search engine like Google to perform a reverse image search. If there are no results found, it is an indication the image is an AI creation.

4) Check for mismatches. Look at similarities between subjects such as mismatched earrings, different fruits on trees, different types of rocks in landscapes - details of that nature. It can be very, very hard, though.

AI-checking skills will be increasingly important in the future, so it’s a good idea to get into the habit of asking yourself, “Is this real?”.  

This is an AI-image - take a closer look and see if you can find the detail which gives it away. It’s a tricky one.

Thank You ChatGPT, Sir
Perhaps good manners will get you somewhere

There’re two kinds of AI users - those with manners and those without.

Call it respect, or good parenting, but if you treat ChatGPT with good manners, maybe you’ll help humanity once the machines are here.

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