4: Video

The Most Amazing — and Dangerous — Technology in the World The historian Chris Miller explains how semiconductors touch every corner of modern life — and the geopolitics of manufacturing them. .

Instant Videos Could Represent the Next Leap in A.I. Technology A start-up in New York is among a group of companies working on systems that can produce short videos based on a few words typed into a computer. ....... to create new kinds of artificial intelligence systems that some believe could be the next big thing in technology, as important as web browsers or the iPhone. ........ Google and Meta, Facebook’s parent company, unveiled the first video-generation systems last year, but did not share them with the public because they were worried that the systems could eventually be used to spread disinformation with newfound speed and efficiency. ........ The ability to edit and manipulate film and video is nothing new, of course. Filmmakers have been doing it for more than a century. .......... Soon, experts believe, they will generate professional-looking mini-movies, complete with music and dialogue. ...... what the system creates currently. It’s not a photo. It’s not a cartoon. It’s a collection of a lot of pixels blended together to create a realistic video......... Dr. Isola has spent years building and testing this kind of technology, first as a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and at OpenAI, and then as a professor at M.I.T. Still, he was fooled by the sharp, high-resolution but completely fake images of Pope Francis. .......... Companies like Runway, which has roughly 40 employees and has raised $95.5 million, are using this technique to generate moving images. ......... They believe the technology will ultimately make video-creation as easy as writing a sentence. ....... “In the old days, to do anything remotely like this, you had to have a camera. You had to have props. You had to have a location. You had to have permission. You had to have money” .... “You don’t have to have any of that now. You can just sit down and imagine it.” .

We Spoke To The Guy Who Created The Viral AI Image Of The Pope That Fooled The World Over the weekend, a photo of Pope Francis looking dapper in a white puffer jacket went mega-viral on social media. The 86-year-old sitting pontiff, it appeared, has some serious drip. But there was just one problem: The image is not real. It was made using the AI art tool Midjourney. ...... Pablo Xavier, a 31-year-old construction worker from the Chicago area ....... ‘The Pope in Balenciaga puffy coat, Moncler, walking the streets of Rome, Paris’ ......... When Pablo Xavier first saw the Pope images, he said, “I thought they were perfect." So he posted them to a Facebook group called AI Art Universe, and then on Reddit. He was shocked when the images quickly went viral. “I was just blown away,” he said. “I didn’t want it to blow up like that.” ......... He said he was banned from Reddit hours after posting the image there. “I figured I was going to get backlash,” he said. “I just didn’t think it was going to be to this magnitude.” ........ He said he’s already seen posts in which his images have been co-opted by those looking to criticize the Catholic Church for lavish spending. “I feel like shit,” he said of his images being used in such ways. “It’s crazy.”