Now that President Joe Biden’s voice is being cloned for President Trump’s robocalls, the smart companies that fool our lying eyes and ears are making money. Considering that things created to please us can so easily turn against us, we wonder if it is possible to create an antidote to the poison.
AI voice startup Eleven Labs raises $80 million in Series B. This brings total funding to $101 million, including the previous Series A round of $19 million. This recent investment increases the company’s valuation to $1.1 billion. The funding round was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz, Nat Friedman, and Daniel Gross, with participation from Sequoia Capital and SV Angel. His Eleven Lab, founded by former Google and his Palantir engineers, specializes in voice cloning and synthesis using machine learning. The company also plans to introduce new features such as a movie dubbing tool and a marketplace for users to sell their AI-reproduced audio.
AI photography app Artisse wins $6.7 million seed round. This app transforms your most unflattering selfies into supermodel-worthy snaps on exotic sets. The app is gaining attention from influencers, models, and marketers who can’t help but snap dreamy shots next to luxury cars in haute couture outfits. Artisse says he expects this year’s subscription revenue to reach his $2.5 million in two months. The company is considering virtual fitting room technology for online shopping, allowing people to model their own clothes in different fits and poses, as well as one day a group photo feature where they can “pose” with friends and celebrities. We plan to install it. Led the London Fund funding round.
$10 million pre-order for $200 Rabbit R1. Designed in collaboration with design firm Teenage Engineering, the handheld AI device looks more like a Tamagotchi than a smartphone. It’s about half the size of a smartphone and has a camera, scroll wheel, 2.8-inch touchscreen, and push-to-talk button. Powered by a 2.3 GHz MediaTek processor, Rabbit R1 has 4 GB of memory, 128 GB of storage, and a modem. Cuteness aside, there’s a big idea here called the Large Action Model, which you program through a web portal called the “Rabbit Hole” (rimshot) for use with apps and subscriptions. The only one similar to the Rabbit R1 is Humane’s AI Pin, but it costs $500 more, doesn’t have a screen, and requires a monthly subscription. That begs the question. Once Rabbit works and people start using it at scale, how will we pay for the huge amount of cloud computing that will be required? No one seems to know.
Microsoft Teams now supports 3D and VR meetings. And to be honest, it’s deserving of ridicule. After destroying all of VR, Microsoft stuffed the last legless remains of his AltspaceVR into Teams via Mesh. In this way, the user of the VR or AR device can conference with the user in a video call and appear to the user as an avatar in the Metaverse. Or something. Why would Microsoft do something like this? Is it what people want?
FOMO Introducing Apple Vision Pro. RoadtoVR’s Ben Lang says the video is an accurate depiction of the device, which he has had the opportunity to demo several times. Some have pointed out that only in movies is the demo going so perfectly. Clearly, Apple has planted a bug between my ears and he’s just trying to invade my subconscious with one thought. I have to mortgage my house and hearth to buy a $5,000 face computer.
Disney introduces Holotile for VR locomotion Disney imagineer Lanny Smoot will demonstrate locomotion in VR using a “holotile floor” that allows users to walk and run in place with minimal friction. This is a problem that continues to plague developers. How can you truly immerse yourself in another world if you have to teleport or hobble around inside a hard plastic tray wearing a harness and overshoes? Should all fully immersive simulations be run at warehouse scale? Disney has demonstrated a patented multiplayer system that moves players through space and prevents them from falling.
OpenAI announces pioneering partnership with Arizona State University (ASU). The university plans to create personalized AI tutors for students in various subjects, especially STEM, and to use ChatGPT for writing assistance in its largest course, freshman composition. The university also aims to develop AI avatars for creative educational purposes. ASU has unlimited access to ChatGPT Enterprise for a variety of applications including coursework, tutoring, and research. ChatGPT Enterprise, released in August, offers enhanced features such as unlimited access to his GPT-4, faster performance, and API credits.
Nice Aunties last week released GARLIC, this new mesmerizing and impossible piece of AI animation art set to the experimental music of Running A Fever. “Garlic acts as a sanctuary for Aunties to communicate with their higher selves, providing a safe place to sing, meditate, and confess to de-stress. Considering the cost of carbon. The interior is made from only the humblest fresh alliums sourced from local markets and later recycled for cooking.”
German Storybook Studios is developing this first-century tale of love, lust, war, and revenge as wild German tribes battled Roman occupation. An epic story set in the modern age of AI.
This week’s XR is also a podcast Hosted by this column’s authors, Paramount Global futurist Ted Shirowicz and Magic Leap founder Ronnie Abowitz. This week’s guest is David Weinstein, his head of XR at Nvidia.we can be found at spotify, iTunesand YouTube.
what we are reading
Why it’s not easy to make Face Computer cool (Brian X. Chen/New York Times)
Mark Zuckerberg’s new goal is to develop artificial general intelligence (Alex Heath/The Verge)
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