Hi! Welcome to Augmented Rarity, the newsletter for creatives in AI and XR 👽

Since last week it was mainly about XR, today I want to make sure it’s more balanced. But be warned: as Halloween approaches, the news are getting spookier 👻. Let’s begin!

Artificial Intelligence

Microsoft announced “Designer” 🎨, its brand new graphic designer app so non designers design like a pro:

"Designer” is a direct competitor to Canva and to all of us, so I’ll keep using the ““ because I’m upset at the name. Designer 👀. I mean, don’t worry because in 2021 they launched “Create”, a tool to create websites 💻 and nobody heard 🫣.
In the same way Canva or even DALLE·2 aren't a treat to us, we won't be replaced by Microsoft anytime soon either because yes, Microsoft will be powering its “Designer” app with AI, but so are we* 😎. More on Microsoft’s AI text-to-image approach here.
Disclaimer: they are targeting creators and small business, so it’s only a competitor if that’s your niche. Big big red flag to Microsoft for the intentions though 🚩🚩🚩.

If you are curious about this “Creator” tool, here’s the link to join the waitlist.

*by using AI tools to enhance our creative process 🦾

I also want to point out to podcast.ai, a podcast that is entirely generated by an Artificial Intelligence:

Their first episode is an interview to Steve Jobs (who died in 2011) using Joe Rogan’s voice as interviewer. A 20 minutes interview in which yes, an AI impersonates Steve Jobs based on all the material it has found online about him.
This means that we can get interviews of literally anyone, dead or alive. As if this wasn't creepy enough, Buddha and Einstein are next.
🚩 🚩 🚩: This of course is a big big red flag because it makes us reflect on how all the information that can be found about us online, could one day be used for impersonating us.

Between this and deep fakes we know that our data can be put to very shady use 😟

Extended Reality

Last week was all about being enthusiastic about those new announcements that Meta made 🥳, today we are a bit more realistic and critical:

The $1500 Meta Quest pro Mixed Reality headset will make you feel more present in the Metaverse by tracking your facial expressions and body movement with its 16 cameras.

🚩🚩: The inner cameras will be constantly tracking your facial expressions, a new feature is not cheap and on top of that, big corps will be able to benefit even more from our data 💰, specifically from something as intimate as our emotions 🙃. Very Black Mirror.
🚩: the outer cameras will be tracking your movement in order to be able to reproduce the movement of your arms and legs🦵. Hence those "innovative" avatars with legs that were unveiled at the event... Which it seems they were just a “simulation” as Meta still doesn’t have that functionality active and the team used external motion capture tech instead of its own real-time headset solution 🤥.

Mark Zuckerberg Teases Meta Wristband for Controlling Smart Glasses | PCMag

Controllers and keyboards are out, here’s Meta proposal of a wristband that can sense your intentions. It will be ready by 2028 🤯.

Quoting the lab that made it possible: “It could be the key to unlock for the 21st century what the QWERTY keyboard layout did in the 19th century and the graphical user interface (GUI) did in the 20th century”.
How would our jobs as designers and creatives evolve into that new user experience? Quoting Zuck: “If you wanna start typing something on your phone, you have to go through this whole activation of take out your phone, unlock it… and then you can get going. And on this, it’s gonna be extremely quick. So the activation is one”.

🚩: We are somehow speaking of creating another sense here, one that lets you control interfaces. Can we consider this a big step into Transhumanism? We are not speaking of getting chips in our brains yet, but we are about to train our brain to send the right impulses to control a wristband to control our AR glasses 🤖.
🚩🚩🚩: A bigger red flag here is the detailed information we would be giving to those big corps. We worried about them knowing about our emotions by face tracking us, but we should also worry about them getting literally into our brain 🧠.

And that’s it for today!

Ok random thought: I want to start a podcast 🎙 and talk about all these red flags in future tech 🚩🚩🚩 because this newsletter is getting small sometimes.

Thanks again for reading, remember to share it so we can reach more people and see you next Wednesday! 💚

Augmented Rarity 👽

Microsoft to replace designers 😵, AIs that…