1. One thing that helps
Can AI help you navigate the perils of an angry partner? Is the AngryGF app just what you need? Well, no it’s not. But it is fun!
Based on GPT-4, it’s a chatbot that simulates an angry girlfriend (sorry ladies but surprisingly I couldn’t find one for d*ckhead boyfriends). The premise is that it can help you develop communication skills or practice getting yourself out of the doghouse. You start by choosing a scenario. You could be trying to get out of a planned event to hang with friends, maybe you were caught looking at an attractive stranger, have you lost money in the stock market, or did you save your mother before your girlfriend when both were drowning? Pick which scenario to prepare for and you have 10 attempts to appease your angry partner.
You start on a forgiveness level from 0-100 depending on the scenario and you need to use your best chat game to get the meter up to 100 forgiveness level. Give it your best shot and get some skills to help you navigate your relationship (disclaimer: I take no responsibility for what will happen in your life if you take this advice).
Luckily, I don’t need this as my girlfriend is always delightful and understanding (see what I did there 🙂 ).
2. One to be wary of
In 2024, more than 2 billion voters are estimated to head to the polls. The EU has sensibly ordered tech platforms to deploy transparency tools in their advertisements to protect voters from disinformation. However a partnership between Mozilla and Check First, found that every tool used by big tech platforms has significant shortcomings.
These shortcomings include poorly catalogued ad-content, insufficient details on ad sponsors, and inadequate search functionalities. The report singled out X’s (formerly Twitter) transparency tools, describing them as an “utter disappointment.”
The major issues to be addressed include being open about who is paying for the ad, displaying if it is AI-generated, and fact-checking the claims it makes.
We’ve already seen what happens when these platforms are left unchecked. Here’s hoping that progress has been made in the last few years and that manipulation is no longer so easy.
3. One to amaze
I am a huge music nerd, and (obviously) a technology nerd. I am incredibly nervous about AI encroaching into music creation, but also a little excited.
The synthesiser, Garage-Band, Auto-tune and plenty of other things – were all viewed as a threat to music creation. All of these were adopted and used to create amazing new music in ways we never saw coming. Is AI-generated music a music-killer or another step forward?
Stability AI has launched Stable Audio 2.0, a music generation model that allows users to create high-quality music using prompts. This version can create full audio tracks with an intro, progression and an outro. Try it, it’s free and a heap of fun. Come up with your best prompt to describe the kind of music you want to create. Or even better, use audio-to-audio prompts by humming or singing the melody you have in your head and it will generate a new track using that. Amazing!
The best part is, this model has been trained on a licensed data set that honours opt-outs. There are also steps taken to ensure that there will be no copyright infringements on other music creators. This tool will be useful for people like me who want to create music but are lacking in the talent department. It would also be helpful for soundtracking a vacation video or work presentation. If you’re into exploring AI-generated music, there’s also Stable Radio that streams music generated by Stable Audio.
I guess we’re adding another musical genre?