Creativity Squared: On Dalí and Immortality, Art, and A.I.

Dear Creativity Squared Member,

What if you could have a phone conversation with Salvador Dalí? Now you can…with the A.I. reimagined Dalí!

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Surrealism, we have a special Creativity Squared episode for you today with none other than the legendary Surrealist artist, Salvador Dalí…or rather, the A.I. version of him.

The Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida is one of the most innovative museums in the world. Today, the museum is unveiling its latest project bringing Salvador Dalí back to life through artificial intelligence called Ask Dalí. This custom-built chatbot is trained on Dalí’s writings and voice so museumgoers can interact directly with the artist through one of his Surrealist lobster phone-inspired creations. 

Ask Dalí was born from a collaboration between The Dalí Museum and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. The project harnesses the power of several modern machine-learning models, including GPT-4 from OpenAI and Eleven Multilingual V2 from ElevenLabs, to breathe new life into the eccentric artist's legacy.

To add color and context to this conversation, we also have GS&P’s Martin Pagh Ludvigsen, Director of Creative Technology and A.I., joining us in Episode 44. Martin was on a SXSW panel called, “Salvador Dalí, AI, and The Future of Creativity.” Ask Dalí was demoed on stage, where during audience questions, I asked if Dalí would be a guest on Creativity Squared — “He” said yes!

What is Dalí’s answer to the question, "How can the cold, calculated precision of artificial intelligence be melted into the surreal, liquid dreams of human creativity?" Listen in to find out!

This is one of my favorite interviews to date — I hope you enjoy it as much as I had fun recording it. 😊 

Check out Episode 44 today!

Hope you had a wonderful eclipse experience wherever you were in the world!

I just got back from the Texas Eclipse Festival which was a beautiful celebration of Monday’s celestial event, reminding us how we’re all interconnected on this planet we’re floating on in space together.

The festival had programming on art, space, and technology in addition to amazing music performances.

It was a distinct honor to be on stage discussing A.I. with Professor De Kai who invented and built the world’s first global-scale online language translator that spawned Google Translate, Yahoo Translate, and Microsoft Bing Translator. Stay tuned for more on our conversation next week!

Scroll on to discover:

• 👩‍🎨 Featured Blog Post: From Dalí to DALL-E: A Century of Surrealism

• 📆 Calendar of Events: A.I. Conferences & Events Radar

• 🤯 A.I. + Creativity News Roundup

• 🎧 More on Episode 44

• 👯‍♀️ Apply to Join the Clone Club

• 💎 Creativity Squared Premium Member Benefits

• 💝 Milestone Rewards

• ❤️‍🔥 Premium Members: Episode NFT

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

p.s. One newsletter pro tip: I know this newsletter is long and often gets truncated. If you click or tap the link “Read Online” in the upper right-hand corner, you can view the web version for easier reading.

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

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📆 A.I. CONFERENCE & EVENTS RADAR

🤝 APRIL 16 CincyAI Meetup, Cincinnati (Co-Host) — Join me and others interested in all things A.I. at the CincyAI Meetup for Humans, cohosted by Creativity Squared, on Tuesday, April 16, at the UC Digital Futures building from 3-5pm ET. Sign up now!

🥃 APRIL 16 Maker’s Mark ‘Makers + Mixers,’ Cincinnati — After our April 16 Meetup, there will be another Makers + Mixers happy hour taking place from 5:30pm - 7:30pm across the street at the iconic 1819 building. This happy hour is proudly sponsored by Maker’s Mark and is brought to you by CincyAI community partners MidwestCon and Disrupt Now with Rob Richardson at the helm. RSVP for this here! 

APRIL 18 MIT’s Imagination in Action, Boston (Attendee) 

APRIL 26-28 Future Frequences Retreat, Newburgh, NY (Attendee)

MAY 7 CincyAI Meetup, Cincinnati (Co-Host)

MAY 16 INERTIA: The AI Summit for Non-technical Leaders, Cincinnati (Speaker)

JULY 16-18 Black Tech Week, Cincinnati (Speaker)

JULY 18-19 Data 4 Public Good, Minneapolis (Attendee)

SEPTEMBER 5 & 6: MidwestCon, Cincinnati (Speaker)

SEPTEMBER 10-12: Marketing AI Conference (MAICON), Cleveland (Speaker)

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. updates flooding our feeds and screens, we’ve got you covered with the latest news at the intersection of A.I. and creativity.

How Tech Giants Cut Corners to Harvest Data for A.I. The New York Times — Google, Meta, and OpenAI have all engaged in or proposed ethically dubious solutions for acquiring more data to train their models. OpenAI quietly transcribed countless hours of YouTube audio when they ran out of text data. Leaders at Meta considered buying a publishing house to access long-form text and also discussed the cost/benefit of stealing copyrighted works versus negotiating for access. 

Hollywood Labor Backs AI Transparency Bill That Could Offer Firepower to Creators Hollywood Reporter — Creative professionals are hoping that an A.I. transparency bill in the U.S. House of Representatives becomes law so they can sue A.I. developers more easily. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), would require developers to disclose any copyrighted works included in their training data. The proposed fine for noncompliance is $5,000. 

New AI music generator Udio synthesizes realistic music on demand Ars Technica — Silicon Valley and recording artists are pouring money into the startup text-to-audio A.I. platform Udio after launching an impressive beta yesterday. Built by ex-DeepMind engineers, Udio is the first GenAI audio model that can produce full tracks in a single output. This review claims Suno still generates better-sounding music than the Udio beta, which is free to use right now. 

Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj, Jon Bon Jovi and over 200 artists call for protections against “predatory use of AI” CNBC — A who’s who list of pop culture musicians are calling for protection against A.I. undermining their livelihoods. Blasting the “predatory use of AI” in the music industry, the letter demands that tech companies, developers, and music companies pledge they won’t support technology that fuels a race to the bottom among musicians. 

Meta confirms that its Llama 3 open source LLM is coming in the next month TechCrunch — Llama’s next open source foundation model is just around the corner. Meta Executive Nick Clegg said on Tuesday that they’ll release multiple versions of the new chatbot, with the biggest one clocking in at 140 billion parameters, double the size of Llama 2. The upcoming version of Llama is specially designed to run generative A.I. assistants. 

Humane Ai Pin Review: Too Clunky, Too Limited WIRED — Billed as the world’s first A.I.-first consumer device, Humane’s new “Ai Pin” is now on sale for $699. Despite a lot of buzz around the product when it was first announced, reception for the pin hasn’t been as rosy since it hit shelves. WIRED scored the pin a 4/10, based on receiving incorrect answers to multiple questions and its limited applications in daily life. 

AI may eventually consume a quarter of America's power by 2030, warns Arm CEO Tom’s Hardware — A single output from ChatGPT costs nearly ten times as much electricity than a Google search. It’s one data point among countless pointing to the same conclusion: the A.I. infrastructure some of us dream about is impossible to build on our current electric grid. The tech community has seen a growing interest in nuclear power as a solution to our astronomical energy demands.

Listen: E44. A Conversation with Salvador Dalí
Expand Your Mind on Immortality, Art, and A.I. with The Dalí Museum’s OpenAI GPT-4 Ask Dalí Exhibit with Martin Pagh Ludvigsen, Director of Creative Technology & A.I. at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners

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“Who’s to say – doesn’t that mean that he’s alive right there with you at that moment? I think he is. And I think he would agree.”

-Martin Pagh Ludvigsen

The Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida is one of the most innovative museums in the world. Today, the museum is unveiling its latest project bringing Salvador Dalí back to life through artificial intelligence called “Ask Dalí”. This custom-built chatbot is trained on Dalí’s writings and voice so museumgoers can interact directly with the artist through one of his Surrealist lobster phone-inspired creations. 

To add color and context to this conversation, we also have GS&P’s Martin Pagh Ludvigsen, Director of Creative Technology and A.I., joining us in Episode 44. Martin was on a SXSW panel called, “Salvador Dalí, AI, and The Future of Creativity.” Ask Dalí was demoed on stage, where during audience questions, I asked if Dalí would be a guest on Creativity Squared — “He” said yes!

Martin Pagh Ludvigsen is a Creative Technologist, A.I. Director, and head of Labs at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. Originally from Denmark, Martin holds degrees in Computer Science and Theater Science, where his creative journey started by moving his body on stages and then by moving pixels on screens. Martin uses cutting-edge tech to tell stories for brands and has directed award-winning work globally. Like many others, Martin likes to tinker and break things. But unlike most, he also likes putting them back together in new and unexpected ways.

The Dalí Museum is a client of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, and Martin was instrumental in bringing “Ask Dalí” to life. You’ll learn more about this project and the museum’s other groundbreaking work using VR, synthetic media, and OpenAI’s DALL-E in their exhibitions. And yes, you’ll also get to hear Dalí answer questions at the intersection of A.I. and creativity on today’s show, including the one “he” recommended on stage at SXSW. 

Check out Episode 44 today!

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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!

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