Make music with text prompts 🎶, Microsoft's AI plans to detect cancer 🔬, foster care for robodogs 🐶, and more! ✨
#56
Hey there! Welcome back to Augmented Rarity 👽, your weekly news curation on emerging tech and future trends 📡.
🖼️ Today's cover: A RoboDJ that makes AI music, which doesn't make sense because it doesn't really need the mixer, but you get the point, it's a showman, that's it, let it be.
Let’s begin! 👇
🤖 Artificial Intelligence
If you want to create music but have no talent (like me), Stability AI has got your back. They have just released Stable Audio, an AI model that allows you to create audio clips from simple text prompts 🎶. There's a free trial, so go have fun! (if the servers work for you, I’ve been trying for hours but they are at full capacity 🥲).
Image: Stable Audio
Microsoft is fully invested in helping detect cancer 🔬, so they got together with Page to build the biggest AI model to make it simpler for pathologists to identify common and rare types of cancer. I just hope that those models are better than the ones writing their articles.
Sony just rolled out a program in Japan to give their robodogs a second chance 🐶. They'll be refurbished and used as emotional support pets in healthcare facilities. This is so random and wholesome that we'll be talking more about this in the Sunday article! You can upgrade if you're interested 🤝
Image: Sony If you're worried that Meta's new hyper-powerful AI, which could surpass GPT4 💪, will be able to do this by reading your Instagram comments on cat memes, you can avoid this by filling in a form that... oh wait, your Instagram comments are still owned by Meta 🚩, so you won't have full control over your personal data anyway.
Big AI changes coming to AirBnb next year? James Manyika, Google's AI ambassador, just joined their board. We'll be watching.
Amazon is now using AI to make it easier for sellers to create product descriptions and titles 🛍️. About 80% of their products come from Aliexpress, so we're just adding even less human touch.
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🥽 Extended Reality
The Meta Connect event is in about 2 weeks 🗓️, and tbh, I don't have any hype for it... The whole industry is still feeling a bit down, or at least the news I'm getting isn't that inspiring? Like, come on, Meta feels like it's trying to get rid of its stock by donating it, like it just did to 15 US universities and like it just did to the Roblox developers. I'm wondering if the Quest 3 will be any better, but that leaked unboxing video didn't show any incredible upgrade that would make me want to upgrade from my 2020 (Oculus) Quest 2 device.
Image: @vaIkenheim (Twitter/X) Is it just me, or does the new iPhone 15 lack many compelling features to justify its $1,000 starting price? I mean, it does offer the ability to record spatial videos 📹, which you could then enjoy with your fancy, expensive Vision Pro headset, which costs $3,500. That's a total cost of around $4,5000... so... it's a pass from me. Sorry for being a hater today 🫶.
On another Apple-related topic, I kinda like this new Apple Watch gesture, it gives off a 'what we expected technology to be able to do by 2023' vibe. If you don't know what I'm talking about, the new Apple Watch has a double tap gesture that lets you interact with the watch without even touching the display 🪄. Magic. This new Double Tap feature detects the unique signature of your movements and changes in your blood flow and acts as the primary button in whatever application you're in when you tap your fingers. Is this new or just good marketing? It's just good marketing because Apple already had this, it's called AssistiveTouch 👆. But I didn't know that either. I’m adding this as an XR update because we’ve already seen that gesture on the Vision Pro.
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🛸 Space
Small dogs can now breathe for 10 hours on Mars 🐶. Apparently Perseverance hasn't just been taking selfies and collecting rocks, it’s also been producing oxygen and it's now at its purest level ever, 98% or more. Good boy.
Image: NASA
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Anyway, that’s it for today! Hope you enjoyed the picks 🤓
Best,
Martina ✨