Exploration #115

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• If You Click Only One…

• Things to Think About…

• Things to Know About…

• And finally…

Hi all. This week we’ve got a host of announced gAI tools/features, the economics of video game development, and 100+ languages coming to Google Translate. But first...

Hope everyone had a safe holiday week(end). Being somewhat of a contrarian I spent most of the time in Canada, which had celebrated Canada Day earlier that week and so was perfectly content to let Thursday, July 4, just be a Thursday. Along the way I cashed in a make-good for a whale watching trip out of Seattle. Last year, it was the whales that took a holiday. This year more than made up for it (see pix at the top and tail).

As I was watching these younger whales frolic, I started to think about the universality of play. Of course, we can only speculate on why these calves wanted to escape the sea for that brief moment, but there does seem to be a body of research that indicates many mammals (if not other classes of animals as well) like to play.

I won’t belabor the point. Play is universal. And it is something public media needs to do more to embrace as a way of attracting new audiences and sustaining loyalty with existing audiences. You’ve seen me advocate for that here recently with a focus on general audience gaming, and that will become more of a focus in the coming year.

But while I'm a huge proponent of video games as a next-gen of public media, we need to go into that space with our eyes open. Before the holiday I published a POV piece here from Nebraska Public Media Labs game producer, Jacob Schwitzer, talking about the state of the game industry. This week, I’m surfacing an essay from January that dives deep into the state of the industry and economics of game development. I’ve been sitting on this one for a while, because it’s long and sobering. But it’s also ultimately hopeful. So, as you read it, think about the idea of play and about the ways in which public media can bring our values to this well-funded and well-established industry.

Okay, on to the links…

If You Click Only One…

The Tremendous Yet Troubled State of Gaming in 2024 (Matthew Ball) - We typically hear from Ball here on matters relating to the metaverse. But games are metaverse-adjacent (and some are probably proto-metaverse experiences) and Ball is a gamer. So this piece comes from the perspective of both an analyst and a fan. Packed with data, it is worth keeping as reference as you consider your organization’s own video gaming strategy. And even though the tone is ultimately optimistic, the set-up is sobering. I’d suggest reading the “Hope to Play” concluding section first. Then take in the data.

Things to Think About…

SimCity Isn’t a Model of Reality. It’s a Libertarian Toy Land (Kelly Clancy - Wired) - This excerpt from Clancy's new book, Playing With Reality: How Games Have Shaped Our World, is a good reminder that even a fun game may have an ideological agenda. As we think about games from the public media perspective, we should be thinking about our role in creating pro-social games for players across the demographic spectrum.

MIT robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks thinks people are vastly overestimating generative AI (Ron Miller - TechCrunch) - I'm open to this contrarian point of view, largely because I think people are expecting this tech will eventually be a cure all. And while it is cool, it's not on a path to solving everything that ails us today.
—Case in point, from Isabelle Bousquette at WSJ: AI Work Assistants Need a Lot of Handholding

Nick Bostrom Made the World Fear AI. Now He Asks: What if It Fixes Everything? (Will Knight - Wired) - It's become cliche for people talking about AI to name-drop Nick Bostrom and replicate his paperclip thought experiment when referring to the dangers of superintelligence. So, I was surprised to see him come back around with a more optimistic stance.

Things to Know About…

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Legislation (Multistate.ai) - Government relations firm Multistate has pulled together a list of AI legislation and laws for the 45 states crossing this bridge. If you aren't sure where your state stands on AI, check this out.
—Or jump straight to the State-by-State AI Policy Overviews.
—But if you'd like to zoom out to the international level, Tommaso Giardini and Johannes Fritz at Digital Policy Alert, have got you covered with The Anatomy of AI Rules.
—And keeping it at the wonkiest of levels, patents are a good way to assess the broader landscape in tech. So it's useful to have a report like the World Intellectual Property Organizations' Patent Landscape Report - Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) (jump straight to the PDF here).

The Center for Investigative Reporting is suing OpenAI and Microsoft (Jay Peters - The Verge) - As Peters reports: "CIR’s lawyers argue in the lawsuit that OpenAI and Microsoft copied its content, undermined relationships with readers and partners, and deprived it of revenue."
—Lost track of who is suing whom? Tech Policy Press and Bruce Barcott have you covered with AI Lawsuits Worth Watching: A Curated Guide.

The future belongs to the dreamers (Odyssey) - Normally I'm not about posting every single new product announcement in the AI space. But I'm a little more open to it with generative video and audio because it hits so close to our world. As will all things AI, advancements in these spaces are moving way faster than people expected for 2024.
—On the generative video front, now that it has been released, folks are also buzzing about Runway Gen-3 Alpha. But you will need a pro account to access it.

Suno launches iPhone app — now you can make AI music on the go (Lloyd Coombes - Tom's Guide) - Big news for iPhone fans of Suno, one of the two most effective generative music apps on the market (and the best one at cranking out fully fleshed songs with a single prompt).

Extract crystal-clear speech from any audio (ElevenLabs) - This one will be of interest to anyone passionate about good audio (which should be everyone reading this newsletter).

AI Firm ElevenLabs Sets Audio Reader Pact With Judy Garland, James Dean, Burt Reynolds and Laurence Olivier Estates (William Earl - Variety) - Though it's not without its bugs, I'm generally a fan of this app, and I tried a couple of the voices. Interestingly, given the story above about crystal clear audio, they've chosen to leave in some ambience from the original source recordings. So, it doesn't sound like Olivier or Garland are right in your ear as if they were alive today.
—You know who hasn't licensed his voice though? As Sara Keenan reports over at People of Color in Tech: Morgan Freeman Slams Viral Narration Video As AI “Scam”

Meta drops ‘3D Gen’ bomb: AI-powered 3D asset creation at lightning speed (Michael Nuñez - Venture Beat) - The next generative AI frontier, after video, appears to be 3D modeling. Here in Nebraska, we're working to task some of the team to experiment with this tool. Previous attempts at this by other companies have yielded cute but limited digital assets. We'll see if this one fairs better.
—See Meta’s announcement over on X.
—And if you really want to get nerdy with it, check out their paper over in the Meta publications library.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT for Mac is now available to all users (Samuel Axon - ArsTechnica) - A long time coming, Mac users can now access ChatGPT from a dedicated app. It's handy, buy my habit is to use ChatGPT in the Edge browser for Mac, and I don't see this changing my habit any time soon.

YouTube dominates streaming, forcing media companies to decide whether it’s friend or foe (Alex Sherman - CNBC) - Like me, maybe you intuitively understood the power of YouTube. But I had no idea it is now 10% of all TV viewing.

YouTube now lets you request removal of AI-generated content that simulates your face or voice (Sarah Perez - TechCrunch) - I'm not totally sure how they'd confirm voice, but a DMCA-style takedown for facial duplication makes a lot of sense.
—But in the same token, if you get a notice on YouTube because you've used some protected music, the platform is creating a generative music tool to help you swap out an offending track with something AI generated (and presumably not the target of a lawsuit itself).

Every World In Meta Horizon Worlds Can Now Be Joined On Web & Mobile (David Heaney - UploadVR) - Horizon Worlds is the platform that Meta hopes will one day compete with Fortnite and Roblox. Zuckerberg's pockets are deep enough, and the runway here is long enough, that I wouldn't count him out. The reality is that virtual reality hardware isn't ready for ubiquity quite yet. This step is key to wider adoption.
—In other META news Kyle Wiggers reports in TechCrunch that it's only a matter of time before Meta's AI and VR efforts meet.

The US intelligence community is embracing generative AI (Frank Konkel - NextGov/FCW) - Interesting to read this from the POV of computer systems security. Most of the major frontier models now have versions approved for US government use.

OpenAI's ChatGPT and Microsoft's Copilot repeated a false claim about the presidential debate (Ben Goggin - NBCNews) - This week's "garbage in, garbage out" story.

Meta changes its label from ‘Made with AI’ to ‘AI info’ to indicate use of AI in photos (Ivan Mehta - TechCrunch) - As you think about how to identify AI-generated content that your organization might use in its productions, it's worth tracking how the major platforms are handling it. Personally, I like the term "generative [media type]" that was suggested in May by our webinar guest Evo Heynig.

And finally…

110 new languages are coming to Google Translate (Isaac Caswell - Google) - Maybe you didn't know that Google has a project to translate 1000 most spoken languages in the world. Maybe you didn't know the world has 1,000 languages (it currently has over 7,100, depending on who's counting). Regardless, this modern ability to communicate across cultures is just plain cool.

Have a creative, productive week!