[The Glass Room, which began as a touring exhibition and is now an online “public intervention that provides an interactive, fun, and challenging experience, bringing to life the most pressing challenges facing people and the tech industry today,” features a four-minute video about deepfakes and how they can create alternate versions of different aspects of each of us (including versions that remain after we die). The video could be a useful resource for those who teach students about presence. The text below accompanies the video. See also the Deepfake Lab website, where “researchers take you behind the scenes to reveal how deepfake technology works, the process of how a deepfake is created, and how you can identify one,” the larger Glass Room: Misinformation Edition website, and “Skin Deep: Deep Fakes and Misinformation” in Medium. –Matthew]

How deepfakes may shape the future

This visualisation explains how AI-generated synthetic images, text and video have the power to change what we say, what we do and how we look, and how they might shape our memories and even our after lives.… read more. “Presence resource: How deepfakes may shape the future – A Glass Room visualization”

[A new and improved tool from Meta called Voicebox AI that generates and modifies human-sounding voices could help those with vocal cord damage speak, produce natural sounding translations across many languages, make non-player gaming characters (NPCs) and digital assistants more convincing, and allow us to listen to written messages in the voice of the sender. Unfortunately, it also has significant potential for abuse (e.g., in deepfake scams). The story below from Engadget provides some of the details and for more information see the Meta AI blog (and go to the bottom for links to the research paper and additional demos). For more on the concerns about Voicebox AI see coverage from Decrypt and ExtrememTech. –Matthew]

Meta’s Voicebox AI is a Dall-E for text-to-speech

But the company won’t be sharing the app or its source code for the time being.

By Andrew Tarantola
June 16, 2023

Today, we are one step closer to the immortal celebrity future we have long been promised (since April).… read more. “Meta’s Voicebox AI increases potential benefits and dangers of artificial audio”

[Vice’s Motherboard reports on recent cases in which people used AI and other technologies to create “clones” of real people, in one prominent case their girlfriend and another themself. This seems likely to be an increasingly common phenomenon and raises lots of presence-related questions, some of which are explored in a new essay in The Conversation titled “AI clones made from user data pose uncanny risks”; here’s how that essay begins:

“Imagine, if you will, a digital doppelgänger. A clone that looks, talks and behaves just like you, created from the depths of artificial intelligence, reflecting your every mannerism with eerie precision. As thrilling as it might sound, how would you feel about it? Our research at the University of British Columbia turns the spotlight onto this very question. With advancements in deep-learning technologies such as interactive deepfake applications, voice conversion and virtual actors, it’s possible to digitally replicate an individual’s appearance and behaviour.… read more. “People are making AI clones of partners and themselves, raising questions and concerns”

[Below are some presence-related parts of a Wired interview with Charlie Brooker, the creator and writer of Black Mirror, the “darkly funny, scarily prescient, and hugely popular Netflix anthology series.” For more of his recent comments as the sixth season of the series launches, see interviews in Dazed, Esquire and Empire. –Matthew]

[Image: Credit: Michael Wharley/Netflix]

Black Mirror’s Charlie Brooker Wants to Break the Content Machine

After years of exploring society’s dark absurdities, the sixth season of Netflix’s wildly popular sci-fi show looks at its own reflection.

By Amit Katwala
June 14, 2023

[snip]

WIRED: It’s been four years since the last season of Black Mirror. What’s it been like writing a dystopian sci-fi show against an increasingly dystopian backdrop?

Charlie Brooker: I started writing the season during the pandemic, and I think when I started writing it—apart from Zoom, which suddenly everyone was using—it felt a bit like things had plateaued, but obviously the world was going through a tough old dystopian time of it.… read more. “Black Mirror’s Charlie Brooker on AI, deepfakes, VR/AR and what causes dystopia”

[Not an endorsement, but this looks relevant and interesting…  –Matthew]

New season of Kaspersky’s Webby awarded podcast explores the past and future of digital technologies

And women leading the way in IT

Press Release
June 11, 2023
https://www.zawya.com/en/press-release/companies-news/new-season-of-kasperskys-webby-awarded-podcast-explores-the-past-and-future-of-digital-technologies-i4f4mjgq

Progress led by technology means following the latest innovations without pausing, but due to the frantic pace one can stop learning from technology’s past. Kaspersky’s Fast Forward audio series examines trends shaping technology from the perspective of the recent past and explores women’s leadership in IT. It features guests from around the world working at the forefront of our newest technologies.

Fast Forward Season 1, which included episodes exploring supermarkets of the future and the new space race, was awarded in 2022 a prestigious Webby Honoree for Best Branded Podcast, and the silver award for Branded Podcast by the Content Marketing Association.

Season 2 is hosted by artist and director Ghislaine Boddington, a world-leading expert in digital identity, virtual presence and immersion experiences.… read more. “Fast Forward podcast explores the past and future of digital technologies”

[This link-filled story from Dealerscope describes a series of hardware and software innovations that are helping to improve the experience of presence in video collaboration. As the author says in the concluding summary, the “deep dive into video conferencing innovations past, current and future includes an all-seeing birdlike device, three-dimensional avatars, an expressive multi-screened humanoid head, and the holography that’s starting to peek over the not-too-distant horizon.” See the original version for four different images. –Matthew]

[Image: Source: Owl Labs]

How AI and Robotics Are Driving Next-Gen Collaboration

By  Scott Tharler
June 14, 2023

Depending on the generation in which you grew up, the topic of cutting-edge video collaboration might evoke such images as a hard-boiled detective talking to his watch, or a lazy sprocket maker being surprised by his tyrannical boss on a giant screen. And, though the portrayals of these technologies were way ahead of their time, they’re not that far off from what’s possible now.… read more. “How technology innovations are enhancing presence in video collaboration”