This week in AI.

All AI news is bad news. That pretty much sums it up. I won’t even get into the video aspect yet, that will need it’s own post.

Instacart is using AI art. It's incredibly unappetizing.

“The text for the ingredients and instructions for the above recipes, meanwhile, is also generated by AI, as disclosed by Instacart itself: "This recipe is powered by the magic of AI, so that means it may not be perfect. Check temperatures, taste, and season as you go. Or totally switch things up — you're the head chef now. Consult product packaging to confirm any dietary or nutritional information which is provided here for convenience only. Make sure to follow recommended food safety guidelines."“

'Rat Dck' Among Gibberish AI Images Published in Science Journal

“The open-access paper explores the relationship between stem cells in mammalian testes and a signaling pathway responsible for mediating inflammation and cancer in cells. The paper’s written content does not appear to be bogus, but its most eye-popping aspects are not in the research itself. Rather, they are the inaccurate and grotesque depictions of rat testes, signaling pathways, and stem cells.

The AI-generated rat diagram depicts a rat (helpfully and correctly labeled) whose upper body is labeled as “senctolic stem cells.” What appears to be a very large rat penis is labeled “Dissilced,” with insets at right to highlight the “iollotte sserotgomar cell,” “dck,” and “Retat.” Hmm.”

Microsoft and OpenAI warn state-backed threat actors are using generative AI en masse to wage cyber attacks

Russian, North Korean, Iranian, and Chinese-backed threat actors are attempting to use generative AI to inform, enhance, and refine their attacks, according to a new threat report from Microsoft and OpenAI.

The group’s use of LLMs reflects the broader behaviors being used by cyber criminals according to analysts at Microsoft, and overlaps with threat actors tracked in other research such as Tortoiseshell, Imperial Kitten, and Yellow Liderc.

As well as using LLMs to enhance their phishing emails and scripting techniques, Crimson Sandstorm was observed using LLMs to assist in producing code to disable antivirus systems and delete files in a directory after exiting an application, all with the aim of evading anomaly detection.

DAX NORMAN's Online Museum of Curios

Just found Dax Norman’s god damn awesome art on tumblr and this stuff is freakin awesome. He is on Giphy as well, which happens to be where I make my stupid music show gifs.

Quit Taking It Personally

Here is some pretty good advice from Adam Savage when do you creative work for a job / living. I’ve been in these situations in visual art, commercial art and music. It’s all pretty relatable and good advice for the new comers out there.

Neal Stephenson Interview on the Atlantic

Author Neal Stephenson did a recent interview on The Atlantic that is interesting.

Wong: About a year ago, in an interview with the Financial Times, you called the outputs of generative AI “hollow and uninteresting.” Why was that, and has your assessment changed?

Stephenson: I suspect that what I had in mind when I was making those remarks was the current state of image-generating technology. There were a few things about that rubbing me the wrong way, the biggest being that they are benefiting from the uncredited work of thousands of real human artists. I’m going to exaggerate slightly, but it seems like one of the first applications of any new technology is making things even shittier for artists. That’s certainly happened with music. These image-generation systems just seemed like that was mechanized and weaponized on an inconceivable scale.

…

Wong: Do you think we’re seeing some of that naivete today in people looking at how generative AI can be used?

Stephenson: For sure. It’s based on an understandable misconception as to what these things are doing. A chatbot is not an oracle; it’s a statistics engine that creates sentences that sound accurate. Right now my sense is that it’s like we’ve just invented transistors. We’ve got a couple of consumer products that people are starting to adopt, like the transistor radio, but we don’t yet know how the transistor will transform society. We’re in the transistor-radio stage of AI.

AI song mastering is a thing now.

Arstechnica does a write comparing Apple, OZone, LANDR and Bandlabs AI Mastering Assistants.

I liked most of the results I got. Mastering Assistant, Ozone, and LANDR were each clearly capable of pro-sounding results; the web-based services I tried, including Bandlab and Waves, were somewhat more variable.

Apple's Mastering Assistant offered a less compressed and more open sound on my demo track, which sounded very nice. (Indeed, on another track of mine, I preferred Apple's approach for precisely this reason.) LANDR was also great, though it offered a much more controlled sound. For this demo track, however, Ozone's compressed-but-not-completely-crushed sound and its excellent handling of the overall EQ (the highs were present but never sizzling, for instance, and it dealt with one or two moments of sibilance better) won me over.

Funky Tuesday.

Some good old Meters, though not quiet fat Tuesday. Close enough.

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Music Monday: Rock and Roll Animal

How I have never heard this version before? This is a crazy ass take on Sweet Jane. INterview with Steve Hunter who plays guitar on it.

Ryan: You get asked a lot about the seminal intro on the live version of “Sweet Jane” on Lou Reed’s Rock ‘n Roll Animal album. My understanding is that you had previously worked up something similar during your time with Detroit and also The Chambers Brothers, is that right?

Steve: That’s exactly right. I started writing it when I was with Mitch Ryder in Detroit in around ’71

Final note on 'Intro'

Before the album was released Steve was 'persuaded' to sign away all his rights as the composer in the USA, his choice was simple, sign or 'Intro' would be cut out. Despite his name being on the album as composer from the release date, he did not begin to get any royalties as the writer until 2011. The statute of rights only goes back seven years, so 38 years of income was lost. 


Painter Amy Bennett

Interview with painter Amy Bennett on Juxtapoz. Enjoy this work. It’s a mix between Gregory Crewdson and also has elements of macro / tilt shift photos some how. More paintings at Richard Heller Gallery.

“About a quarter of the paintings in Open Season were begun before the pandemic. I made a substantial model inspired by attending a 4H fair, and noting with curiosity that it seemed to attract both extreme ends of the political spectrum. I wanted to challenge myself to make images outside of the domestic realm. Painting crowds in the open air seemed like a counterbalance to the isolated interiors I had been immersed in. But it wasn’t long into lockdown that the theme felt too disconnected from our alarming new reality. We could finally see what a paradise we’d lost. In the very limited studio time I had then, with two kids suddenly needing to attend school at home, I returned to scenes in the home of marriage and family, that in hindsight, reflected a lot of grief, anxiety, and exhaustion.”

VIA Metafilter.

Oregon coast webcam morning check in

I check these webcams waaaay to much. But this mornings were quite nice.