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Taylor Swift AI scandal
Spotlight: Apple prepares to bring AI to iPhone
Jack Shields
January 26, 2024
Happy Friday!
Today’s news is not good for the AI industry. Sexually explicit deepfakes have been a looming threat for a few months, but they’ve finally hit one of the most famous people in the world.
In today’s Daily Update:
🗞️ Explicit deepfake images of Taylor Swift flood social media
🤖 Google reveals Lumiere
📸 Apple prepares to bring AI features to iPhone
🚨 AI Roundup: Four quick hits
Read time: 2 minutes
TOP STORY
🗞️ Explicit deepfake images of Taylor Swift flood social media
Source: Scott Eisen / Getty Images
Sexually explicit AI-generated images of Taylor Swift are running rampant on X (formerly Twitter) despite attempts to remove the content.
What you need to know:
One post was live on X for about 17 hours prior to its removal. It attracted over 45 million views, 24,000 reposts and hundreds of thousands of likes.
The user who shared the images was suspended, but they were quickly reposted by other accounts and new deepfakes have appeared.
Swift’s fan base is outraged, criticizing X for allowing the posts to remain live for as long as they have.
The images reportedly originated in a Telegram group where users share explicit AI-generated images of women.
Wake up call: Scandals involving AI-generated sexual content have been severely underreported until now. Sexually explicit deepfakes are sweeping through high schools around the U.S., and despite involving underage girls, these incidents haven’t moved lawmakers or AI companies to require tighter guardrails for AI image generators. Hopefully Swift’s deepfakes finally create a sense of urgency to solve this issue.
AI TOOL OF THE DAY
🤖 Google reveals Lumiere
Google researchers just unveiled Lumiere, a new AI model for video generation that achieves unmatched realism and stylization.
Key points:
Lumiere is a “space-time diffusion model.” It generates five-second video clips in a single pass, while other existing models synthesize distinct key frames.
In non-techie terms, this technique allows for high levels of consistency, eliminating a lot of the choppiness seen in other models.
Lumiere can create videos from text prompts and still images. It also offers video inpainting and advanced stylization.
The bottom line: This is a huge breakthrough in AI video generation, but that might be disconcerting in light of the Taylor Swift scandal.
BUSINESS SPOTLIGHT
📸 Apple prepares to bring AI features to iPhone
DALL-E 3
Apple is quietly preparing to run AI models directly on the next generation of iPhones through acquisitions, hires and hardware upgrades.
What you should know:
Apple has silently acquired 21 AI startups since the beginning of 2017.
Nearly half of the company’s AI job postings mention “deep learning,” referring to the algorithms that power generative AI.
New Apple chips (such as the M3 Max and A17 Pro chip) feature greater capabilities to run generative AI.
Recent Apple research papers also described new methods for shrinking AI models to run on mobile devices.
A look ahead: Apple has been characteristically secretive about its AI plans, but it seems fairly safe to assume that the next generation of iPhones will feature on-device AI in some capacity. Given that Samsung’s AI-powered Galaxy S24 is already available for preorder, billions of smartphone users around the world will soon use AI everyday.
MORE TRENDING NEWS
🚨 AI Roundup: Four quick hits
DALL-E 3
THAT’S ALL FOR THIS WEEK