In one of the iconic scenes in the beloved 1989 baseball movie ‘Field of Dreams’, the ghost of legendary ballplayer Shoeless Joe Jackson (played by the late Ray Liotta) jogs off the cornfield-turned baseball diamond created by farmer Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner), pauses, turns back to Ray and calls out: "Hey, is this Heaven?" to which Ray responds, "No, it's Iowa."
That line is certainly familiar to Joan Motsinger, who grew up the youngest of six children on a family farm in Iowa. It was there she developed her strong work ethic which has served her well in her four-decade career at mass data storage solutions giant Seagate. During her Seagate tenure she has served in a variety of diverse leadership roles including Senior Vice President of Sustainability & Transformation, a position she has held for the past five years. Well-traveled, Motsinger has lived in Minnesota, Singapore and now calls Colorado home, but this week marked her first ever visit to Israel.
Welcome to Israel. What are your first impressions of ‘the startup nation’?
“Well, my first impression is ‘wow’! We should have been here a long time ago. I know that Seagate came to Israel about three years ago, but now that I see it for myself and I see the startup community and the innovative thinkers, it’s very inspiring. As far as those I have been able to meet with so far, I have seen that their commitment, specifically to sustainability, has been super impressive. We can put problems in front of them and they are not above saying ‘let me go think about that’. In Israel, they are bringing chemistry, biochemistry, logistics, and software solutions to bear. So, I’d say what’s going on in Israel now is pretty darn exciting.”
Although Israel is known as ‘the startup nation’, farming and agriculture have always played a key role in its identity, especially now with its booming agtech industry. Can you, as someone who personally grew up on a farm and now deals in sustainability, identify with that?
“I certainly do connect with it. I was really surprised though as I think of Israel as a relatively small country, yet I see all these fresh, clean vegetables. But the second surprise was how many innovative agrotech companies I have met in my short time here. So I am a little bit blown away. I grew up in the Midwest of the U.S. in an environment where there was a lot of space, so we used a lot of space to farm, but in Israel it’s different. So clearly Israel is bringing a lot of new technology and serving the needs of the local community and the country, and the wider world, and it’s all very impressive. As I said, I have already met several agrotech startups and also Israeli VCs investing in agrotech companies and I must admit that it surprised me, in a good way, but also humbled me as well as I really wasn’t aware of its vast scope. For Seagate, it’s just another opportunity to harvest the immense talent here in Israel.”
Tell us more about Seagate and your role as VP of Sustainability & Transformation? What does that entail?
“Seagate is a multinational company which was established in 1979 in the U.S. and has grown to become a global leader in data management and storage. We employ over 40,000 people around the globe, including over 40 in Israel. At Seagate, we all take different jobs. Some are more functional (finance, HR, R&D, etc.) and others are more enterprisal or global roles. The reason my title includes the words ‘sustainability’ and ‘transformation’ is because we really are committed at Seagate to crafting a sustainable data sphere, and when I say ‘sustainable’ I am talking about The Three P’s -we balance People, Planet, and Profit. We seek to do no harm to people or our planet, but of course we need to profit too. And if you get to visit Seagate, which I hope you will, you’ll see that our core values are ‘The Three I’s: Integrity, Inclusion’ and Innovation. That’s why we care so much about sustainability. At Seagate we’ve been here for 43 years and want to be here for the long run because data is growing and we believe there is a need to handle it responsibly and to do ‘good’ while doing ‘well’ for the world."
One of the purposes of your current visit to Israel is that Seagate is actively seeking new technologies and startups in the field of cloud and data that also provide an aspect of sustainability. Can you elaborate on what you are looking for in Israel and why specifically here?
“Well, sustainability is in our DNA, so we really want to make sure we are looking for any technologies that enable us to be sustainable, if that’s addressing water, waste, energy, recycling, reusing finite resources, etc. We really care about harnessing the technology and the ideas that are coming from the Israeli intellectual crew.
“The other thing that’s in our blood as Seagate is security. Because you want to know that you can trust me as a partner if I am going to be storing your data. You want that both as a consumer and as a business, whether it’s data on the cloud or on-prem. So while I am in Israel I am also talking to some security companies. I want to make sure we have the right product security so that you can trust that our products are secure, the data is secure, and the life cycle is secure.”
When you hear the terms “sustainability”, “environmental”, and “circular economy" the first thing that comes to mind is not information storage. Why is that so important?
“That’s a great question. The demand for exabytes (which is equal to one billion gigabytes) and the demand for data, is only growing and we are going to need electricity to fuel those. Right now, about 4% of the world’s energy fuels data centers alone (infrastructure, computer storage, etc.), but by 2030 that figure will rise to 10%. So we have the ability to have a huge impact on the earth. We must do right by this fact. That’s just one example of why I want you to think about circularity and think about the environment when you think about this industry of data.
“Another issue is that we are using finite resources. We use 61 elements from the periodic table when we design and manufacture our products, but we can’t be stripping the earth of that. We’ve got to come up with ways to use higher recycled content and replace nauseous chemicals. We have got to decarbonize and drive more circularity because that’s how ultimately we will contribute to the earth's sustainability and keep global warming down to minimums.
“Renewable energy is also something we embrace, which is called Scope 2 in environmental terms. At Seagate we have about 60% of our sites around the world fueled by renewable energy.
“But, most importantly we have to work in a collective. I am here in Israel now because we all have the same global mission, we have to drive ourselves towards net zero, and carbon neutrality is part of that. And the innovation here to drive that reduction, either through energy, decarbonization, or circularity is quite symbiotic. We must cooperate for the greater sustainable datasphere and sustainable world. This must be done in a collective - together.”
Seagate already has a presence in Israel in the form of Lyve Labs. Tell us about it and why it’s important.
“Lyve Labsin Israel was established nearly three years ago in early 2020 and is one of Seagate’s platforms, it’s almost one of our ‘brands’, you might say. As Seagate's innovation center it’s a collaborative platform through which Seagate partners with innovators, startups, and enterprises to create solutions that harness the flow of data. Lyve Labs is really a place where we can bring innovators together for the good of the “datasphere”, as we call it here at Seagate. There is a lot of data in the world and we want to enable that.
“This week I felt privileged to serve as a judge for the third annual Lyve Innovator of the Year competition in Tel Aviv, which focused on sustainability. There were some 50 entrants in total all bringing environmentally stable options to the table in fields such as water, plastics, cooling, and more and we narrowed them down to 8 finalists that are excellent in this arena. This year’s winner is plastic alternative startupSolutum, which develops plastic-like bags that are capable of fully dissolving and biodegrading in water.
"And our ultimate goal is to introduce these innovative and sustainably-focused Israeli startups to our Seagate network. Yes, we will give them some funding, but we also want to help them take their good idea, their startup, and scale it for impact. We are excited to discover great talents here in Israel and help them help make the world a better, and more sustainable place.”
You delivered a keynote address this week at the Climate Solutions Festival in Israel entitled “How Green is Your Tech?”. What should Israeli tech leaders be focused on when it comes to making their technology greener?
"First of all, I hope they are not ‘greenwashing’ with that title. For me, the question, “How green is your tech?” is asking ourselves are we moving beyond compliance to be transparent, measure, and get serious about decarbonization in our factories in our use of energy and in our value stream and how do you drive more circularity into our data centers.
“Look, we probably all grew up with the ‘take, make use, dispose’ mentality and we’ve got to stop that both in our personal lives and our work. You might say there’s a new economy emerging, and it’s not U.S. dollars or Israeli shekels, it’s a carbon credit. We want to be accountable to our carbon impact. When we ask ‘how green is your tech?’ we need to start thinking about it in terms of our global carbon footprint, but in terms of a new currency, the carbon currency."
Any final thoughts?
“Ultimately, we want to gather with like-minded companies in Israel and we want to move the needle in supply chains and to do that you have to address both sustainability and security.
“One more aspect that we are working on at Seagate, with two whole floors of experts here in Israel dedicated to it, is a service that can move our customers’ data to and from the cloud without fees. It’s called Lyve Cloud and we believe it’s the future of data storage without friction.
“But not only that, with Seagate you can be sure that we will take control of the hardware so you are not burdened by those carbon credits, the impact we mentioned before. We’ll keep that hard drive, refurbish it, reuse it, or recover the parts from it - it won’t end up in a landfill. That’s pretty critical. We want to put our arms around that hardware, it’s good for the planet. All this will keep the tech green.
“The bottom line is that if we want to leave a green world for future generations, the high-tech industry must work in cooperation and set clear goals to reduce the environmental impact in the field of data storage and in general."
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As we wrapped up the interview, Motsinger marveled at the array of companies she spotted from her view at Seagate’s Lyve Labs offices. “It’s humbling to look out the window and see all our customers and our peers in the data industry have a presence here in Tel Aviv. So we’ve got to get started and fuel this innovation area.”
In Field of Dreams, the mysterious voice told Ray Kinsella, “If you build it (a baseball diamond in your cornfield), he will come.” Perhaps what brought Seagate’s Joan Motsinger to Israel was a similar voice, “If you build it, (a sustainable startup) she will come.”
Well, this is strange. There's a new online AI generator that roasts you mercilessly when you upload a selfie. It's called CLIP Interrogator and it was created by @pharmapsychotic, an AI generative artist. The purpose of CLIP Interrogator is unclear—is this digital performance art? Is it a tool to help AI generators create more accurate images? Screenshot Media explains how it could be used for that second purpose:
Dubbed CLIP Interrogator and created by AI generative artist @pharmapsychotic, the tool essentially aids in figuring out "what a good prompt might be to create new images like an existing one." For instance, let's take the case of the AI thief who ripped off a Genshin Impact fan artist by taking a screenshot of their work-in-progress livestreamed on Twitch, feeding it into an online image generator to "complete" it first, and uploading the AI version of the art on Twitter six hours before the original artist. The swindler then had the audacity to accuse the artist of theft and proceeded to demand credit for their creation.
With CLIP Interrogator, the thief could essentially upload the ripped screenshot and get a series of text prompts that will help accurately generate similar art using other text-to-image generators like DALL·E mini. The process is a bit cumbersome but it opens up a whole new realm of possibilities for AI-powered tools.
Whatever it was created for, people are mostly just using it to roast their selfies. And according to Screenshot Media, a lot of that roasting is pretty lame:
On Twitter, however, people are using CLIP Interrogator to upload their own selfies and get verbally destroyed by a bot. The tool called one user a "beta weak male," a second "extremely gendered with haunted eyes" and went on to dub a third "Joe Biden as a transgender woman." It also seemed to reference porn websites specifically when hit up with images of females with tank tops. Are we surprised? Not in the least. Disappointed? As usual.
To me, the roasts sound way too much like they're generated by some kind of 4chan-soaked incel. I agree with Screenshot Media, who concludes, "All we know for sure is that the roast bot has a long way to go when it comes to biases, especially when used by netizens to comment on their own selfies."
A recent update on Steam seems to have changed the recommended price point for different currencies, some of which have seen an increase of over 500%.
As shared by SteamDB, Steamworks documentation was updated on October 18, stating that Valve plans to refresh Steam's price suggestions more frequently, which the company officially announced yesterday (October 25). The effect is a potentially major price increase in some regions, including Turkey and Argentina.
The post noted that when developers price something at $19.99 USD, they might not know what it should be in Qatari riyals or Norwegian krone.
SteamDB shared the increase in the price differences for all the affected territories, with the biggest difference for the Turkish Lira being at the $17.99 price point. Where before Steam recommended to charge ₺28.00 at that price point, it now recommends ₺175.00 a dramatic increase of 525%.
Argentina is also seeing a huge increase across its various recommended price points too, its biggest increase being at the $29.99 price point, which sees the Argentine Peso cost going from ARS$ 329.99 to ARS$ 2100.00, an increase of 536%.
Other currencies are also seeing some differences, but most sit somewhere between a very marginal increase of 3% to a more notable 98%, but the Turkish Lira and the Argentine Peso both have increases of at least 400%.
The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors. GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.
These days everyone seems to be getting out of gaming, but TikTok wants in.
According to a new report by the Financial Times, TikTok is about to launch a gaming tab on its app, allowing users to play mobile games. These games will feature ads, and users will be able to pay for additional content, the report claims.
TikTok first started testing games in Vietnam in May. The service's moderators in Europe were tasked with testing games ahead of launch, says the Financial Times, citing two people with inside knowledge.
All of this could be announced on November 2, when TikTok is hosting its "first global gaming event," with the tagline "TikTok Made Me Play It."
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"The future of gaming is here—and it's happening on TikTok. Leading publishers are launching games on our platform as culturally relevant entertainment properties, building communities, and inspiring broader entertainment audiences to discover and play their games," reads a description on the event's website.
Some of TikTok's competitors haven't had much luck with gaming, though. Snapchat launched playable games in 2019 only to announce it would shut down gaming in August, and Facebook is shutting down its gaming platform on Friday, Oct. 28. Netflix, which launched its gaming product last year, recently said it would double down and push into cloud gaming as well as launch more games.
With the Pixel 6 now just over a week old for most owners, the under-display fingerprint sensor has emerged as one of the bigger points of contention. Some are having issues with screen protectors, and Google now offers a list of brands that make accessories certified for the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro.
Update 10/26: Google’s support document has been updated to reflect the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro by switching to “Pixel 6 and later phones” phrasing. The list of brands is unchanged:
Update 7/29: With the Pixel 6a launch, Google has updated its list of screen protector “brands that are Made for Google certified.”
Update 1/17/22: The Google Support article has been updated again with some much needed brand/naming clarifications. Zagg is referred to as InvisibleShield — though the Pixel 6 version remains out of stock and the 6 Pro’s is currently unlisted, but ImpactShield is now Tech21. Meanwhile, Case-Mate has been added.
Update 11/15/21: Google has added “ImpactShield” to the list. We believe that this is in reference to RhinoShield’s Impact Flex Screen Protector rather than Tech21, which does not sell any Pixel 6 screen protectors yet.
Original 11/6/21: As of last Thursday, the Google Support page on how to “Unlock your Pixel phone with your fingerprint” only had the following to say about what screen protectors are “compatible” with the Pixel 6:
Check the Made for Google manufacturers websites for compatible screen protectors.
Google just linked to the main list of brands that have “accessories designed and tested to work seamlessly with your Pixel phone,” thus requiring manual browsing.
Fortunately, that section was updated in the past week with specifics:
Brands that are Made for Google certified for Pixel 6 Pro and Pixel 6 are Zagg, Otterbox, and Panzerglass.
That said, models from all three brands are mostly sold out, while the Google Store does not currently sell any – Zagg’s is listed as “out of stock.”
Of course, many other brands, including well-known ones, offer screen protectors that have yet to be listed by Google. For its part, the company’s official guidance is:
If your fingerprint won’t scan, it might be because of your screen protector. Make sure you’re using a screen protector that is Made for Google certified.
Our advice is that it takes some time to adjust to under-display fingerprint sensors compared to past Pixel’s rear-mounted sensor. Mainly, you have to keep your finger on the reader rather than being able to quickly tap and lift.
It’s an optical under-display fingerprint sensor that’s a bit slower than the likes of what OnePlus uses, but I don’t have much of an issue with it after nearly two weeks of using it between the Pro and standard models. It’s a bit slower and slightly picky about your placement, but it gets the job done. Once muscle memory kicks in, I don’t think you’ll have any problems.
Column Until recently, personal computer hardware seemed to have leapt past any demands software could possibly place upon it. Even high-end games – traditionally the leading edge of user demands on performance – barely taxed the massively overpowered, top-end silicon available. Then AI art came along.
Apple's M1 Ultra microprocessor sports a transistor count north of 100 billion. Nvidia just released its flagship RTX 4090 GPU, with 76 billion transistors – a three-fold increase to the previous generation, the product of the latest process node, and a devil-may-care attitude toward power consumption. Nearly 500W TDP? Crank it up and heat your home this winter.
But to what purpose? A 300fps Fortnite battle royale? In April I wrote: "These monsters need to be tamed, trained, and put to work." Technology abhors a vacuum – four decades in the field has taught me that. Where there's capacity, something will come along to employ it.
That other shoe dropped at the beginning of September, when HuggingFace AI – a private firm creating software tools that exploit cutting-edge artificial intelligence techniques – released Stable Diffusion.
Similar to systems such as DALL•E and Midjourney, Stable Diffusion hoovers up then reduces billions of images to symbolically weighted tokens that can be conjured back into visibility with an appropriately crafted text prompt. The whole thing sits just on this side of witchcraft – yet it works remarkably well.
Unlike DALL•E or Midjourney, Stable Diffusion is both entirely self-contained – able to run on any powerful-enough machine – and pure FOSS. This meant that although the initial release required some of Nvidia's highest-end GPUs, within a week project contributors had stripped back its code and reduced its hardware requirements. The current version can run quite comfortably on the beefy PC I bought six years ago to explore the newly reborn world of virtual reality – as well as on pretty much any M1-based Mac. Many gaming PCs and laptops can run Stable Diffusion well enough to use it for project-based creative needs – or just for fun.
Then a group of researchers published a paper on something they called Dreamfusion – capable of conjuring an infinite series of fully realized 3D models from text prompts. Type in pineapple, and the computer will have a think, then generate its best approximation of what that model should look like. Although that group hasn't yet released its code, the paper provided enough of a blueprint for an ambitious coder to adapt the Stable Diffusion codebase to create Stable Dreamfusion – which, again, requires fairly powerful hardware.
An image produced by Stable Diffusion from the text prompt 'A robot painting a picture while running on a treadmill' ... Click to enlarge
Not to be outdone, another group at Tel Aviv University astounded the world with the Human Motion Diffusion Model. This paper showed how researchers had used Diffusion-based AI techniques to convert a prompt such as "the person walks forward two steps and does a cartwheel" into a humaniform animation. A week later, the researchers themselves released their code as FOSS.
We're still a bit early into this exponential growth in AI capabilities to know where any of it will lead. Already, both Canva and Microsoft have integrated prompt-based image generators within their creative tools. Meta, Google, and others have demonstrated proprietary prompt-to-video generators. On current trend, we won't have to wait long until we have FOSS equivalents to play with.
The visual arts have powerful new tools that aren't the exclusive domain of giants like Google or OpenAI – the latter a firm that promised to democratize AI at its foundation, but perversely seems to have focused on creating its own proprietary empire with Microsoft as its unofficial owner.
In one of my first columns for The Register I pointed to the end of the endless upgrade cycle for PCs. No more treadmill: good enough, they would only be replaced when they wore out. With the exception of a flurry of upgrades to accommodate pandemic-driven videoconferencing that prediction has proven correct.
But the personal computer has shed its skin, revealing its slick new form as a creative supercomputer: Diffusion-powered, and creatively capable in ways the PC of old couldn't begin to approach. Rather than offering another new stylus or paintbrush, these qualitatively different tools forge a new kind of creative partnership.
In June I made a purchase of a high-spec PC laptop – and immediately felt guilty for it, thinking I'd never really put it to work. Today, I make full use of a machine that can do both the quotidian and the incredible. In retrospect, that purchase looks like a clever bargain – a harbinger of a true renaissance – as the PC, reborn, gets to work. ®
Yoom, a volumetric capture and immersive content company, has closed a $15 million funding round with participation from Jimmy Iovine and Maverick Carter.
Why it matters: Yoom's funding is the latest example of investor dollars flowing into companies that are trying to stake early claims to their piece of the metaverse.
"We have way more brand engagement and sports and entertainment going into gamified environments and becoming more and more closer to the real world," Yoom's CEO Gilad Talmon tells Axios. "That's the field that we're playing at."
Details: The round also included investment from Finneas O'Connell, Darkroom CEO Justin Lubliner, Main Street Advisors CEO Paul Wachter and previous investors Insight Partners, Marc Rowan and Aaron Stone.
Stone will be Yoom's first non-founder chairman.
The company is rebranding from its former name, Tetavi, when it was more of a research-driven deep tech company. The company started to seek commercial partnerships following a $20 million investment led by Insight Partners last summer.
The current funding round will go toward expanding head count and partnerships. It will also go toward production, R&D and mobile app development.
The big picture: Yoom is focused on creating metaverse content for entertainment, gaming, sports and pop culture. But its biggest push will be in music, Gilad says, adding that the company is in talks with brands and festivals.
Yoom has worked with DJ Paul Oakenfold on his metaverse project "Perfectoverse."
It also struck a metaverse partnership with the Los Angeles Kings and is in talks about a broader NHL partnership.
What's next: Gilad said he wants to do what Epic did for gaming developers with its Unreal Engine.
The bottom line: "Across industries, we will see more brands and audiences turn to the metaverse and usher in the next era of brand and talent engagement," Iovine said in an emailed statement to Axios.
Motorola appears to be working hard on many new devices, expected to arrive in 2023. One of those devices reportedly has a codename of “Geneva”, which will supposedly be a US-only device, feature the Edge branding, and come with a stylus. The phone will supposedly be a midranger, and offer a new way for users to access the stylus at a more affordable price point.
The news comes from Evan Blass (via 91mobiles), who shared new information about the upcoming Motorola device. The phone will reportedly come in two different model, one with 5G, and another with 4G connectivity, suggesting that it will be a midranger and not a premium model. The 5G variant will have the XT2315 model number, which is exactly 100 more than Milan’s XT2215.
Motorola G Stylus (2022)
The new Motorola Geneva will feature the Edge branding, and it will be a midranger smartphone with “at most 6GB of RAM and 256GB” of storage. Blass also mentions that it will not be the first Edge-branded device in the series to support a stylus, as the Motorola Edge Plus 2022 had that option with the optional first-party Folio bundle.
Motorola Edge Plus 2022
As a quick reminder, the Motorola Edge Plus 2022 was equipped with flagships specs, such as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, a 6.7-inch QHD, P OLED, 144Hz display, three cameras on the back, and a 4,800 mAh battery. The phone also retailed from $899.99 from carriers, and it was far from a budget-oriented device, in terms of price.
Motorola Geneva is said to be available in either Black Beauty or Crystal Grey colors. It may be exclusive to the North American market at carriers such as T-Mobile, US Cellular, Verizon, AT&T, Cricket, and many more. At the time of writing this, we don’t have any information about the pricing, or the release date.
Do we need another midranger with a stylus?
TCL Stylus 5G
Motorola thinks so, at least, if we base that on the leaks. Motorola is one of the few companies that still goes the extra mile to include a dedicated slot and support stylus input on a few selected devices, making it available at various price ranges.
In the US, users only have a few options if they want a smartphone with a stylus. Users can select the Motorola G Stylus (2022) or the TCL Stylus 5G. We have made a list of the best smartphones with a stylus in 2022, and the only other options are either the Galaxy S22 Ultra, which costs at least four times more than the G Stylus, or older Samsung Galaxy handsets such as the Galaxy S21, or the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra.
Neither the Moto G Stylus (2022) nor the TCL Stylus 5G devices were a game changer in the market, but they offered – seemingly – flagship features at affordable prices for the more conscious and those who don’t need all of the features and high-end functionality of the likes of the Galaxy S22 Ultra. The midrangers can offer the support of a stylus input, allowing users to draw, sketch, take notes, do maths, and various other things, without needing to spend $800 or more on a device. Of course, these devices lack the pressure sensitivity, Bluetooth, and many other features that flagships often pack inside, but they’re not necessary or a must-have by any means.
We look forward to seeing another midranger with a stylus input on the market. The more diversity there is, the more options users will have when picking up devices. We also like to see companies competing against one another, as it helps consumers gain more features, and receive better hardware for their hard-earned money.
Motorola Moto G Stylus 2022
The Motorola Moto G Stylus 2022 is one of the best mid-rangers on the market that support and come with a built-in stylus. It lets you take notes, draw, and do sketches. It's perfect for signing documents, and noting down all of the important information at school or work. It also costs less than half of the Galaxy S22 Ultra, making it an easy recommendation.
TCL Stylus 5G
The TCL Stylus is an excellent affordable smartphone with stylus support. It has a great camera setup, a large display, and it even includes 18W fast wired charging. At this price, it's hard to nit-pick about missing functionality. If all you need is a cheap and reliable smartphone with stylus support, TCL has you covered.
The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra is one of the best Android devices available on the market. It features top-of-the-line specs, tons of power, an extraordinary camera, stylus support, and other great features.
Would you be interested in a Motorola Edge-branded smartphone with a stylus? Let us know in the comments!
The image library Shutterstock Inc. is looking to get in on artificial intelligence-generated artwork with a new partnership with OpenAI Inc., the company behind the popular AI image creation tool DALL-E 2.
As part of the collaboration, Shutterstock will be offering OpenAI’s AI-powered image generation tools to its customers. They allow users to enter text into a field and then an artificial intelligence generates lifelike or surreal artwork.
Shutterstock and OpenAI originally began their partnership in 2021 when the photo and artwork library began by offering its images to train DALL-E’s machine learning models. Now, it will integrate the tools directly into Shutterstock’s platform, enabling customers to use them directly onsite as a tool to generate their own artwork.
Creators whose images were used to train the model originally will also be compensated from a new Contributor Fund launched as part of the expanded partnership. The company intends to pay royalties to creators whose images are used when the artwork is created by the AI uses their work when generating new graphics.
“The mediums to express creativity are constantly evolving and expanding. We recognize that it is our great responsibility to embrace this evolution and to ensure that the generative technology that drives innovation is grounded in ethical practices,” said Shutterstock Chief Executive Paul Hennessy. “We have a long history of integrating AI into every part of our business. This expert-level competency makes OpenAI the ideal partner to help our creative community navigate this new technology.”
Both Shutterstock and Getty Images have banned AI-generated images from being uploaded to their websites and Shutterstock still bans images generated by AI from its website, except those created using its own tools. Getty banned AI art, citing copyright concerns.
The rise of text-to-image AI generators has become increasingly popular, with numerous people flocking to different generators to use them to create a variety of artwork. DALL-E 2 itself came out of beta recently and removed its waitlist, opening its platform to millions of users.
That has continued to raise questions about copyright, such as who owns the copyright of AI-generated images and the sources of training images. One artist discovered private medical photos had been added to the data set of a popular AI training model, which in turn would have been used by AI image generators such as Stable Diffusion and Google Imagen.
This is the first example of a definitive solution where artists and photographers whose training images are getting some sort of compensation for their work being used in the training of AI-generated art will be compensated. Although the details of that compensation are still not fully known, it’s a first step in harmonizing the gap between the people who produce the training data and the use of that data.
The new AI-generative art capability will be launched in the coming months. For now, users can learn more and join a waitlist by visiting Shutterstock’s AI art website.
Image: OpenAI
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The holiday season is fast approaching. With the celebration, you likely think of food, drink, presents, and of course, watching Christmas movies and classic films in the living room with friends and family.
If you are looking to upgrade your TV in the next few months, check out this deal we've found on the Hisense 65-inch Quantum ULED 4K UHD Smart Google TV. Right now, you can enjoy a $400 discount -- or 33% off -- on the TV at Best Buy for a limited time.
The 2022 Hisense Quantum ULED 4K UHD Smart Google TV has a 65-inch display, which is ample screen space for most homes. The bezel-less display offers 4K resolution for quality depth, clarity, and color, as well as a 120Hz variable refresh rate -- making it suitable for streaming, movies, and gaming. Hisense says that the TV is capable of reaching up to 1000 nits.
Plus, Hisense has included Dolby Vision Gaming settings, FreeSync Premium, and a low-latency game mode, bolstering the gaming experience when you decide to fire up your console.
When it comes to sound, the TV offers built-in Dolby Atmos audio, which you can also improve with a dedicated soundbar via Bluetooth or cables. The model's Google operating system has the option of voice control as well as typical remotes. In addition, Hisense's Smart TV is compatible with the Amazon Alexa voice assistant.
You can save $400 with this Hisense deal over at Best Buy. But hurry -- we don't know how long the deal will last.
Apple today announced pricing increases for several of its services, including Apple Music, Apple TV+, and the Apple One bundles that include those services.
Apple Music is increasing in price by $1 for individual users and $2 for the family plan, while Apple TV is increasing in price by $2. All Apple One prices will also rise accordingly, according to information obtained by 9to5Mac. Full pricing is as follows:
Apple Music
Individual plan - $10.99/month, a $1 increase
Family plan - $16.99/month, a $2 increase
Annual plan for individuals - $109/year, a $10 increase
Apple TV+
Monthly plan - $6.99/month, a $2 increase
Annual plan - $69/year, a $20 increase
Apple One
Individual plan - $16.95/month, a $2 increase
Family plan - $22.95/month, a $3 increase
Premium plan - $32.95/month, a $3 increase
Apple says that prices are going up as of today due to increased licensing costs. For Apple Music, the increase will provide artists and songwriters with additional money for their music. The price of Apple TV+ is rising now that it has more content, according to Apple.
The pricing increases listed pertain to the United States, but prices will be going up in most countries. Subscribers will get a heads up about the pricing changes when their subscriptions renew.
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Monday, October 24: Apple confirmed that iOS 16.1, iPadOS 16.1, and macOS Ventura will be released on October 24, and it's very likely that tvOS 16.1 and watchOS 9.1 will also be released on the same day. iOS 16.1 includes at least eight new features, while iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura feature Stage Manager and more. The updates should be available around 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time.
Thursday, October 27: Apple will announce its earnings results for the fourth quarter of its 2022 fiscal year on October 27 at 1:30 p.m. Pacific Time. Apple CEO Tim Cook and Apple CFO Luca Maestri will discuss the results on a conference call starting at 2:00 p.m. Pacific Time on the same day.
Friday, November 4: The new Apple TV 4K with the A15 Bionic chip, HDR10+ support, and more will begin arriving to customers and become available for purchase at Apple Stores and select resellers on November 4.
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