Voice replacing passwords 🔒, AI replacing background actors 🎬, a cheaper version of the Vision Pro 🥽, and much more! ✨
#51
Hey there! Welcome back to Augmented Rarity 👽, your weekly newsletter on emerging tech and future trends.
🖼️ Today's cover: an abandoned Hollywood recording set, since at some point it won’t be needed anymore due to AI replicas
🍴 On the menu: Enjoy a generous AI appetisers, followed by a light XR main course, and prepare for a resource-intensive dessert.
Let’s begin! 👇
🤖 Artificial Intelligence
What if we didn't need passwords, just our voice to identify us? 🗣️ Okta is working on a multi-factor authentication system that uses AI to analyse your voice and verify your identity. Their model can identify your voice even if you use a different tone, pronunciation and acoustics.
Speaking of security and AI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI have just partnered with the White House on an AI Cyber Challenge 🏴☠️ that will run for two years and will pair experts with AI models to develop systems to identify and fix software vulnerabilities. Prizes will total up to $20 million by 2025 to incentivise participants, which seems pretty low considering that AI investment is expected to reach $200 billion globally by 2025 🤑.
After the recent trend of tiktokers acting like NPCs, we'll soon have proper AI-driven NPCs that act less like NPCs and more like regular characters 🎮. Well, is that or the body scans that Hollywood has already done on many background actors without their consent 😅, as they didn't even know they were being scanned and got their body replicas, and as a result they won't even be needed for their jobs.
Image: inworld Something similar is happening in the music industry, where songwriters can now use AI to create realistic demos that sound like their target artist 🎤. One artist embracing AI is Grimes, who is open-sourcing her identity 🌐 by recently allowing fans to use an AI system trained on her voice to create their own Grimes songs. Read the full interview here.
Image: Sam Cannon And soon even government employees will be assisted by AI, at least Japan is testing it in Yokosuka 🇯🇵. I don’t know in your country, but in Spain the government employees have a great work schedule so it became one of those jobs that many people prepare and apply to, wondering if AI will improve their conditions or if it will be more difficult to get a job because they will be more limited as fewer public employees will be needed.
Chatbots are coming to social media, Meta is preparing to launch them on Facebook and Instagram 🤖, and to adapt to the extremely diverse audiences, they will have different personas so it might be less cringe than it sounds.
🥽 Extended Reality
Is a cheaper Vision Pro on the way? 🥽 Apple has patented a simple VR device that uses your phone as the main screen. They have also patented an "Augmented Reality Interface For Facilitating Identification Of Arriving Vehicle" because apparently "it is a common mistake for a passenger to get into the wrong car". Is it that common? I only ask before getting into a stranger's car 😅, but it could be related to the launch of the Apple Car, their fully autonomous, extremely expensive first car 🚙
Image: Apple The thing I hated most about the Vision Pro was the external battery, but Apple knows us and knows how a catchy name can make a product more appealing. Introducing: Magic Battery. Now we all want it? not really, it's just an external battery connected via a Magsafe. And we'll have to carry it in our pockets or in little bags that I'm sure people are working on. I don't like sewing, so I'm missing a small business opportunity here.
Speaking of marketing, I thought NFTs were dead, but NARS (the makeup brand) is bringing them back with AR for an 'Orgasm Activated Campaign', where Insta users can use their filter and share it on stories for a chance to win their products during Orgasm Month (yes, Orgasm Month is a thing, apparently).
Image: Nars One more thing, speaking of feeling 🪶, one of the thousand reasons why VR still doesn't feel like VR is that we can't feel virtual worlds as almost real, but as completely virtual, so we're not immersed, so Apple is working on some haptics to let us feel vibrations, virtual textures, motion, and any other tactile sensation, so that we can interact with virtual worlds in a more natural way.
🗃 Resources
Read, watch, listen
📑 Security Through Behavioral Biometrics and Artificial Intelligence
📼 Why Meta’s Ray-Ban Smart Glasses Are Struggling | WSJ Tech News Briefing
And that’s it for today!
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