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👁 Sneak Peek at Season 2 Guests on Creativity Squared!!
Discover the latest news at the intersection of creativity and artificial intelligence.
Helen Todd (Human)
January 25, 2024
Creativity Squared: On Season 2 Dropping 2/1/24“The future is not something that happens to us, but it's something that we create together.”
Dear Creativity Squared Member,
Hello again! I’m back from vacation and was in the studio yesterday cloning the third resident of Cincinnati with a hyper-realistic avatar!
With all of the deepfakes out there (especially in light of the Biden deepfake voice-cloned Robocall in the news), know that there are ethically created A.I. clones that exist and can work for you in this upcoming era of the human virtual economy…including my clone, Helen 2.ODD!
I couldn’t be more EXCITED for next week’s Creativity Squared Season 2 launch on Thursday, February 1, with A.I. Collaborative Artist Claire Silver. It was hard to pick out the opening quote for the podcast episode because it feels like everything Claire said is pure gold. She’s an American dream story of growing up in poverty only to later get a chronic illness, but that all changed with GenAI and her meteoric rise as an A.I. artist. You won’t want to miss her interview next week!
🥁 Anddd….drumroll….check out the trailer for season two today:
Guests featured in the trailer include: Claire Silver (A.I. Collaborative Artist), Dex Barton (Google Deepmind), Alejandro Lozano Robledo (UC Digital Futures), Marlies Wirth (MAK – Museum of Applied Arts), J. Thorn (A.I. Writer), Domnhaill Hernon (EY), Natalie Monbiot (Hour One), Andrew Cullison (UC Digital Futures), and Katie Trauth Taylor (Narratize).
You’re not going to want to miss these conversations! I love listening to them again through the editing process as I always learn so much from my guests who are incredibly talented and at the cutting edge of technology and creativity with artificial intelligence.
For today’s newsletter, we’re spotlighting Episode 21 with Karen Palmer who is the Storyteller from the Future. She’s an award-winning international artist and TED Speaker who is at the forefront of immersive storytelling, futurism, and tech.
In Episode 21, you’ll learn more about Karen and her latest project Consensus Gentium in addition to her social justice approach to her work that explores A.I. bias and unchecked surveillance. You’ll understand why she sees it necessary to democratize A.I., how you can experience the future today through her “reality simulators,” and how she uses immersive art to make you conscious of your subconscious behavior.
I’ll get to see Karen again at SXSW, and can’t wait to listen to her on stage. Are you going to SXSW? Let me know!
Last week I shared a recommendation to upgrade to ChatGPT for teams, even if you’re using it solo as the content put into it is kept private and won’t be used to train OpenAI’s models. Since then, OpenAI has offered to transfer your personal ChatGPT account to teams, which I also recommend. I did this last night and will only be using this team account personally, and if needed, I’ll create a new one for my team. Again, this is so that ALL of the content I put into ChatGPT will be kept private. The good news is that it’s one less payment of the $20/month for the ChatGPT Plus and OpenAI refunds you whatever prorated amount back almost immediately. (As a reminder: Teams has a minimum of two users at $25 per user/month billed annually or $30 per user / month billed monthly.)
If you’re also a holder of both ChatGPT Plus and Team workspaces like me, here’s more info on how to merge your Plus workspace data into your Team workspace and maintain only one subscription.
To proceed with merging workspaces, visit the “Settings” section in your ChatGPT Team workspace, navigate to “Data Controls,” and select “Merge data from your personal workspace.”
Note that merging workspaces is irreversible. You will lose access to your data if you are removed from the Team or if the workspace is deactivated.
The main thing I noticed that’s different is that the GPTs I built moved locations from the left-side dashboard to within the “Explore GPTs” interface. Otherwise, it’s fast, easy, and seamless.
Scroll on to discover:
👩💻 Featured Blog Post: Top 10 Black A.I. Creators You Need to Know
📆 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
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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How creatives are collaborating with A.I.
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📆 A.I. CONFERENCE RADAR
🤠 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!
😎 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.
📆 CALENDAR OF A.I. EVENTS: CINCY
For those local in Cincinnati, join these upcoming A.I. events. 🥳
✏️ 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.
🤝 FEB 6 CincyAI Meetup - Join me and others interested in all things A.I. at the CincyAI Meetup for Humans, cohosted by Creativity Squared, on Tuesday, February 6, at the UC Digital Futures building from 3-5pm ET. Sign up now!
Looking forward to meeting those who can make it in person and geeking out about all things A.I. and creativity!
Listen to the news from my ethically created A.I. clone, Helen 2.ODD!
With all of the A.I. news flooding our feeds and screens, we’ve got you covered. News to check out includes:
Meta just surprised the world of AI Marketing AI Institute — Mark Zuckerberg says Meta is going all-in on open-source artificial general intelligence. The company will have over 350,000 Nvidia H100 GPU chips to help build Llama 3, the next iteration of Meta’s open-source foundation model. Meta’s also doubling down on its Smart Glasses hardware partnership with Ray-Ban, saying that glasses are the “ideal form factor” for consumers to incorporate A.I. into their day-to-day lives.
Google shows off Lumiere, a space-time diffusion model for realistic AI videos VentureBeat — Google released a new research paper detailing a hyper-realistic generative video model to compete with popular models from Runway, Pika, and Stability AI. Trained on 30 million videos with text captions, the model can generate video from text or an image, and users can edit video with text commands. Google researchers say their model design can produce longer clips with more realistic motion than existing models. Google did not say if and when the model will be available for testing.
Microsoft Copilot Is Now Available to Everyone Marketing AI Institute — For $20 a month, individual creators can now access Microsoft Copilot Pro without a corporate sponsor. Businesses of all sizes are also now able to work with Copilot across Microsoft 365 apps. Previously, companies needed at least 300 license seats to access the all-in-one A.I. productivity assistant. Copilot can help in a variety of tasks, like generating powerpoint decks, manipulating data in Excel, or text editing in Word and Outlook.
Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin among thousands of British artists used to train AI software, Midjourney The Guardian — A piece of evidence in a class action copyright lawsuit against Midjourney shows that training data for the A.I. image generator included the work of over 16,000 international artists. Several British artists are now considering joining that class action, accusing Midjourney and similar tools of “copyright laundering.”
Pope Francis, victim of AI, warns against its 'perverse' dangers Reuters — Remember when an A.I. generated image of Pope Francis wearing a white puffer jacket went viral on social media? The Pope remembers. He alluded to the episode in an address commemorating World Communications Day, saying that A.I. can be useful but can also be “perverse” in how it affects our relationships with others and reality. He said he hopes that A.I. will reduce and not worsen inequality.
Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, and others partner with US government on AI research program Yahoo Finance — One of the major pieces of President Biden’s A.I. executive order is starting to take shape. Some of the biggest leaders in the space are teaming up with the federal government to bolster U.S. dominance in A.I, development. The National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) will enable academic, nonprofit and other less-capitalized institutions to access the hardware, models, and resources needed to advance the national A.I. ecosystem.
Microsoft Becomes Second Company Ever To Top $3 Trillion Valuation Forbes — Microsoft’s big bet on OpenAI is paying off, pushing the company’s valuation to an all-time high on a wave of A.I. euphoria in the stock market last year. Microsoft’s stock price is up more than 60% since ChatGPT’s release in late 2022, and Microsoft was briefly the most valuable company in the world earlier this month. The rivalry between Apple and Microsoft will be interesting to watch this year as A.I. hardware and powerful computing chips reach consumers.
Listen: E21. A Message About A.I. from the Future:
Unlock Awareness and Agency through Immersive Storytelling with SXSW 2023 XR Winner Karen Palmer
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“A.I. is just a really cool tool, and GenAI and ChatGPT, that’s all fun, but what are we really using it for? And how are we going to not just make our lives easier or more automated, but make us more conscious, or make us more fulfilled, or make us more empowered, or make us more spiritual. Or you know whatever is more humane is the the future that I'm focused on in terms of a movement.”
Today’s guest traveled from the future to deliver a message just for you!
Karen Palmer is the Storyteller from the Future. She’s an award-winning international artist and TED Speaker who is at the forefront of immersive storytelling, futurism, and tech.
She creates immersive film experiences that watch you back using artificial intelligence and facial recognition.
Karen has been the opening keynote speaker at AT&T Shape Conference, MIT, Wired for Wonder Festival Australia, and TEDx Australia at the Sydney Opera House. She’s exhibited around the world, including NYC Armoury Arts Week, Museum of Modern Art Peru, PHI Centre Montreal, and more. Her art has also been featured in publications like Wired, Fast Company, and The Guardian, where they hailed her work as "leapfrogging over VR."
Her latest project is Consensus Gentium which had its world debut at SXSW this past March where Karen also won the SXSW 2023 Film & TV Jury Award in the XR Experience Category.
Consensus Gentium is a powerful exploration of the implications of A.I. technology. Experienced on a mobile device, Consensus Gentium taps into the intimacy and authenticity of your smartphone features to create a realistic experience. Set in a near future, it is an emotionally responsive film that integrates cutting-edge facial detection and A.I. to transport audiences on a unique quest to discover what could happen if we succumb to unchecked surveillance.
Karen and I first met at SXSW this last March and then saw each other again at Ars Electronica in the fall of 2023, and I couldn’t be more excited to have her come from the future to speak to the Creativity Squared community.
While there’s plenty of dystopian nightmare fuel in our present timeline, Karen’s latest project, Consensus Gentium, transports participants to the near future, where A.I. surveillance is the norm and citizens are constantly monitored for compliance.
Consensus Gentium is Latin for “if everyone believes it, it must be true.” The narrative of the interactive experience challenges viewers to navigate a world in which multiple pandemics and advanced global warming became the catalysts for the government to curtail citizens’ mobility. While on a quest to help their sick grandma, an A.I.-enabled camera analyzes over 50 cues on the participant’s face to determine their emotional state, which determines the participant’s level of compliance and how much mobility they’re able to achieve.
Through her efforts to help audiences see the future today, Karen considers herself part of an “invisible movement” of artists and thought leaders trying to demystify the transformative technologies of our time through art. Instead of watching their civil liberties gradually erode away by the relentless march of technology and consolidation of power, Karen wants to empower people to understand the narratives unfolding in real time, understand their role in the narrative, and, ultimately, their role in the future.
Check out the full conversation with Karen and the accompanying blog post for Episode 21 today:
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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