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📱 My Clone Has Your A.I. News This Week

📱 My Clone Has Your A.I. News This Week

Discover the latest news at the intersection of creativity and artificial intelligence.

Helen Todd (Human)
January 04, 2024

Creativity Squared: On A.I., Art & Consciousness

❝

“It’s through abstraction that we can do many great things. But it’s also very important to realize that in creating, we have selected from the complex and multifaceted reality that we experience through consciousness that all these things that we do, however great that they are, entail presenting and communicating something less than the totality.”

-Jason Schnieder

Dear Creativity Squared Member,

Happy New Year! Hope you had a fantastic holiday and that your 2024 is off to a wonderful start!

New podcast episodes will be back on Thursday, February 1, and I can’t wait to share them with you, starting with a fascinating conversation with Claire Silver, an A.I. artist whose career trajectory shot off after she discovered GenAI.

In case you missed it due to the holidays, check out last week’s newsletter to see my 2024 A.I. predictions. At the end of this year, I’ll check back in and see how I did. Do you have any you’d add to the list?

Creativity Squared launched on April 20, 2023, and for a quick wrapup, wanted to share some statistics on our first year with you:

48 Guests Interviewed for Season 1’s 33 Episodes
17 ArtsWave Black & Brown Artists Featured in a Special 3-Part Series
58 Total People Interviewed — Excited to Share Season 2 Soon!
3.2K Total Podcast Downloads (Goal is to get to 1K per month!)
15K Online Community
450K Impressions Across Trackable Channels
4K Active Email Subscribers with a 40.87% Open Rate — Thank You!

Most of 2023 felt like we were building the plane as we were flying it with this project and the whole team is incredibly grateful for you joining along the journey!

Scroll on to discover:

👩‍💻 Featured Blog Post: Identity: Defining the Indefinable
📆 Calendar of Events: A.I. Conference Radar + Cincy A.I. Events
🤯 A.I. + Creativity News Roundup
🎧 Featured Creativity Squared Podcast Episode
👯‍♀️ Apply to Join the Clone Club
💎 Creativity Squared Premium Member Benefits
💝 Milestone Rewards

👩‍💻 CREATIVITY SQUARED FEATURED BLOG POST

Identity: Defining the Indefinable by Jason Schneider

The concept of Identity has moved to center stage of today’s social, political, and philosophical discourse. It is the explicit or implicit subject of countless articles, books, papers, blogs, and social media posts on such broad subject categories as history, nationality, gender, ethnicity, economics, and sociology. And it lurks tantalizingly along the edges of cosmology, mathematics, and quantum physics. Like many words in any language “identity” provides us humans with the reassuring illusion of specificity, but it is really an abstract concept whose essential nature remains elusive and ever-changing, like Proteus the ancient Greek god. Pinning it down is complicated by the fact that identity is inherently dynamic, fluid, and above all, contextual.

We’re just getting started, and if you enjoy our content, I’d really appreciate it if you could share, review, like, subscribe, leave a comment, and help spread the word about Creativity Squared in whatever way you’re willing to. Your support is greatly appreciated, and the whole team looks forward to growing with your help. Thank you!

Here's to exponential possibilities!

Helen

Helen Todd (she/her)
Human behind Creativity Squared
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CreativitySquared.com
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How creatives are collaborating with A.I.

🙌 SUPPORT CREATIVITY SQUARED & ARTSWAVE

🎨 I want to live in a world where artists not only coexist with A.I., but thrive. And because it’s important to support artists, 10% of all revenue Creativity Squared generates goes to ArtsWave, a nationally recognized non-profit that supports over 150 arts organizations, projects, and independent artists. Consider becoming a Premium Member today!

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📆 A.I. CONFERENCE RADAR

😎 APRIL 5-9: Texas Eclipse Festival — If you’re looking for A.I. events to attend next year, do add the Texas Eclipse Festival to your list! On April 8, 2024, there will be a total solar eclipse. The festival, taking place April 5-9 at Reveille Ranch in Burnet, TX (outside of Austin), will bring people together from all over the world to celebrate the 4 minutes of totality amidst music, immersive art, tech talks, wellness activations, and so much more.

I can’t wait to be on stage there to talk all things A.I., avatars, and synthetic media alongside so many talented people and artists, including Alex & Allyson Grey, Android Jones, and Chris Dyer.

🤠 MARCH 8-15 SXSW — I’ll be back in Austin for SXSW in March for its Interactive Conference which starts on March 8, and will be staying for their A.I. track which is March 11-15. Let me know if you’ll be there — would love to say hi IRL! If you missed the episode with Hugh Forrest, SXSW Co-President & Chief Programming Officer, check it out here!

📆 CALENDAR OF A.I. EVENTS: CINCY

For those local in Cincinnati, join these upcoming A.I. events. 🥳

🤝 JAN 9 CincyAI Meetup - Join me and others interested in all things A.I. at the CincyAI Meetup for Humans, cohosted by Creativity Squared, on Tuesday, January 9, at the UC Digital Futures building from 3-5pm ET. Sign up now!

✏️ FEB 2 From Ellevate & IBM: Generative AI Summit Transforming Businesses for the Future - Excited to take the stage at this all-women conference on A.I. at my alma mater Xavier University to talk all things A.I. and the future of online communication with clones.

Looking forward to meeting those who can make it in person and geeking out about all things A.I. and creativity!

With all of the A.I. news flooding our feeds and screens, we’ve got you covered. News to check out includes:

The GPT store will launch next week OpenAI — Just this afternoon OpenAI sent out an email with news that their GPT store launch will be next week. The original launch was likely delayed due to the November saga around OpenAI’s board ousting and then bringing Sam Altman back. Get ready for a whole new wave of A.I. use cases with these GPTs!

New York Times sues OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement The Guardian — The Gray Lady is going to battle in federal court after negotiations for content licensing stalled with GenAI developers. NYT claims that its content is of higher quality than other sources of training data and that the publisher deserves compensation for unknowingly helping to train a competing GenAI product. The suit doesn’t list specific damages but says developers should have to fork over “billions.” Is this the Napster moment for GenAI? Stay tuned.

ChatGPT Replicates Gender Bias in Recommendation Letters Scientific American — LLMs parrot biased stereotypes of women in workplace contexts. Researchers asked both ChatGPT and an LLM developed at Stanford to write recommendation letters for imaginary male and female colleagues. Women were described as “warm” and “delightful” while men were described as “experts” and “authoritative.”

Things are about to get a lot worse for Generative AI Marcus on AI, Substack — Despite safeguards in place, GenAI can and does reproduce copyrighted works without coercion or tricks. Even vague prompts like “video game plumber” or “animated sponge” produce images that closely resemble Mario and SpongeBob. As more copyright lawsuits come out against GenAI developers, it seems that copyright holders have a leg to stand on.

Musk’s xAI Incorporates as Benefit Corporation With ‘Positive Impact’ Goal The Information — Elon Musk is setting up his GenAI company, xAI, to apparently prioritize public good over profits. xAI has incorporated in Nevada as a benefit corporation and follows a similar structure as A.I. competitor Anthropic. Musk has long been vocal about his concerns that profit-seeking will result in dangerous A.I., but we’re not holding our breath that he has the answer given the lack of guardrails on his for-profit Grok chatbot.

FOD#33: 2024 Priorities and Predictions from Yoshua Bengio and other prominent AI researchers and thinkers Turing Post — Small language models, fully integrated multimodal A.I. comprehension, and more computing power are some of the trends that experts think will continue in 2024. While investment in GenAI developers and hardware manufacturers is expected to continue, some experts here think subpar ROI will lead other companies to wind down their in-house A.I. investments.

OpenAI’s Annualized Revenue Tops $1.6 Billion as Customers Shrug Off CEO Drama The Information — Copyright lawsuits and internal turmoil weren’t enough to slow down OpenAI’s revenues in the last months of 2023. In fact, the company grew at an annualized rate of 20% between October and January.

Microsoft Copilot now lets you create AI songs from text prompts. Yes, there's a catch Mashable — You can now create an entire song for free through Copilot thanks to a new integration with the generative music tool Suno. Suno Pro and Premier subscribers get to keep the rights to the songs they make but tracks produced by free users belong to Suno, at least according to Suno. Their FAQ’s acknowledge that copyright law is complicated, and it’s unclear how Suno’s generative model was trained.

Listen: E23. Art, A.I. & Immortality
Explore the Human Urge to Create, Transcend Reality, and Express Consciousness with Creativity Squared Writer Jason Schneider

From reciting poems to thinking deeply about consciousness, art, and philosophy, I’m grateful to call Jason Schneider a dear friend and excited to share our thought-provoking conversation with you today.

Jason has built a long and prosperous career as a photographic journalist where he’s held numerous prestigious positions. He is perhaps best known as the writer and editor who created The Camera Collector column and rose through the ranks at Modern Photography magazine to become its Editorial Director. After leaving Modern, he became the Editor-in-Chief of Popular Photography, the world’s largest imaging magazine, a position he held for over 15 years.

Currently, Jason is a contributing writer for the Rangefinder Forum in addition to Creativity Squared. He’s also writing a book with the working title “Understanding Emily Dickinson: A Reader’s Guide To The Enlightened Master.”

I met Jason back in 2011 when my social media agency was launching and managing Leica Camera’s social media channels. We worked with Leica for over five years, and Jason was instrumental in writing questions and editing interviews for the Leica Camera Blog, which we also managed. We’ve been colleagues and friends ever since.

In Episode 23, Jason expands on the articles he’s written for Creativity Squared exploring A.I. and the question ‘What is art?’ You’ll also hear Jason’s perspective on human consciousness, art as representation, and the limitations of language and math.

You won’t want to miss why Jason is in awe of Emily Dickinson and hearing a few poems he recites, including one from his late and talented daughter Heidi.

Jason also points out what’s wrong with the premise of Descartes’s famous statement, “I think, therefore I am” and why cell phones are the best cameras ever made — check out Episode 23 today!

Ep23. Jason Schneider: Art, A.I. & Immortality

Ep23. Art, A.I. & Immortality: Explore the Human Urge to Create, Transcend Reality, and Express Consciousness with Creativity Squared Writer Jason Schneider

Apply to Join the Clone Club Today
Digitally Clone Yourself: The Avatar Experience Cincinnati

👯‍♀️ Ready to be digitally cloned? Get your own custom synthetic avatar! Creativity Squared is collaborating with our partner and sponsor, Render, to bring The Avatar Experience to Cincinnati, OH, by appointment that fits into your schedule. Digitally clone yourself to unlock streamlined and dynamic video content — Apply to be cloned today!

There are less than a thousand known hyper-realistic custom synthetic avatars in existence, so participants will be at the forefront of this groundbreaking A.I. technology. Custom synthetic avatars are part of a massive and growing digital avatar market and is projected to be $270B by 2030.

Custom synthetic avatars can be used for creating:

Dynamic online course instruction
Streamlined SEO video production of blog or audio-only content
Turnkey social media and email marketing video content
Engaging customer service messaging
And more!

👯‍♀️ In case you missed the announcement, I’ve digitally cloned myself! Learn all about mine in episode E14. Not Deepfaked! I Cloned Myself. You’ll meet Helen 2.ODD, my digital double, and discover why and how I made my A.I.-created custom synthetic avatar.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Thank You to Render

Creativity Squared is supported by Render which provides Digital Likeness solutions for personal brand businesses, thought leaders, influencers, and business leaders who want to leverage their synthetic, A.I.-powered Likeness to communicate more effectively online and create audio and video content from anywhere without going on camera. Learn more by visiting: https://rendermedia.ai.

Interested in partnering with Creativity Squared? Reach out!

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