Technology
At the AI Film Festival, humanity triumphed over technology
In the third episode of “Creative Dialogues,” an interview series produced by the film division of the generative AI startup Runway, multimedia artist Claire Hentschker expresses her fear that AI will commodify the artistic process to the point where art becomes homogenized, regressing to its sort of derivative identity.
“Are you getting a narrower and narrower average of existing things?” she asks. “And then – as you average it – everything will just be a blur?”
These are the questions I asked myself Wednesday during a screening of the top 10 finalists of the second annual AI Runway Film Festival who available on request on the Runway website as of this morning.
This 12 months, Runway had two premieres, one in Los Angeles and the other in New York. I attended a performance in New York that took place at the Metrograph, a theater known for its art theater and avant-garde performances.
I’m completely happy to report that AI shouldn’t be accelerating in the future… at the very least not yet. However, the director’s trained eye – the human touch – makes a transparent difference in the effectiveness of the “AI film”.
All movies submitted to the festival featured artificial intelligence in some form, including AI-generated backgrounds and animations, synthetic narratives, and bullet time-style computer graphics. None of the elements appeared to be at the level of what cutting-edge tools like OpenAI’s Sora could produce, but that was to be expected given that the majority submissions were finalized earlier in the 12 months.
Indeed, it was obvious – sometimes painfully so – which parts of the movies were the product of the artificial intelligence model, reasonably than the actor, cinematographer or animator. Even otherwise strong scripts were let down at times by unsatisfactory generative AI effects.
Take, for instance, “Dear Mom” by Johans Saldana Guadalupe and Katie Luo, which, in her own words, tells the story of a daughter’s loving relationship along with her mother. It’s a tearjerker. But the Los Angeles freeway scene, with all the trademark weirdness of AI-generated movies (e.g. warped cars, weird physics), broke my spell.
The limitations of recent artificial intelligence tools looked as if it would limit some movies.
As my colleague Devin Coldewey recently wrote, control through generative models – especially people who generate video – is elusive. Simple issues in traditional filmmaking, comparable to selecting the color of a personality’s clothing, require workarounds because each shot is created independently of the others. Sometimes even workarounds don’t help.
The resulting incoherence was on display at the festival, where several movies amounted to little greater than interconnected vignettes, connected by narrative and soundtrack. Carlo De Togni and Elena Sparacino’s “L’éveil à la création” showed how boring this formula could possibly be, with slideshow-like transitions that will make for a greater interactive storybook than a movie.
Léo Cannone “Where do grandmothers go when they get lost?” also falls into the vignette category – but it surely still triumphs because of its honest script (a baby describing what happens to their grandmothers after their deaths) and an exceptionally strong performance by its child star. The remainder of the audience looked as if it would agree; the film received one in all the more spirited ovations of the evening.
For me, this sums up the festival in a nutshell. Human input, reasonably than artificial intelligence, often makes the difference. Emotionality in a baby actor’s voice? It’s related to you. Artificial intelligence generated backgrounds? Less.
That was actually true of the festival’s Grand Prix winner “Get Me Out,” which documents one Japanese man’s struggle to get well from the psychological effects of immigration to the U.S. on him as a baby. Filmmaker Daniel Antebi depicts a person’s panic attacks using artificial intelligence-generated graphics – graphics that ultimately proved less effective than photos. The film ends with a shot of a person walking up the bridge as the streetlights on the boardwalk flash one after the other. It’s haunting – and delightful – and definitely took ages to capture.
It could be very possible that at some point generative artificial intelligence will have the ability to recreate such scenes. Perhaps cinematography will eventually get replaced by hints – a casualty of the ever-growing datasets (albeit with a troubling copyright status) on which startups like Runway and OpenAI train their video generation models.
But that day shouldn’t be today.
As the screening ended and the awardees marched to the front of the theater to take their photos, I could not help but notice the cameraman standing in the corner documenting the entire event. Perhaps, on the contrary, artificial intelligence won’t ever replace some things, comparable to the humanity that we humans deeply desire.
Technology
US medical device giant Artivion says hackers stole files during a cybersecurity incident
Artivion, a medical device company that produces implantable tissue for heart and vascular transplants, says its services have been “disrupted” resulting from a cybersecurity incident.
In 8-K filing In an interview with the SEC on Monday, Georgia-based Artivion, formerly CryoLife, said it became aware of a “cybersecurity incident” that involved the “compromise and encryption” of information on November 21. This suggests that the corporate was attacked by ransomware, but Artivion has not yet confirmed the character of the incident and didn’t immediately reply to TechCrunch’s questions. No major ransomware group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
Artivion said it took some systems offline in response to the cyberattack, which the corporate said caused “disruptions to certain ordering and shipping processes.”
Artivion, which reported third-quarter revenue of $95.8 million, said it didn’t expect the incident to have a material impact on the corporate’s funds.
Technology
It’s a Raspberry Pi 5 in a keyboard and it’s called Raspberry Pi 500
Manufacturer of single-board computers Raspberry Pi is updating its cute little computer keyboard device with higher specs. Named Raspberry Pi500This successor to the Raspberry Pi 400 is just as powerful as the present Raspberry Pi flagship, the Raspberry Pi 5. It is on the market for purchase now from Raspberry Pi resellers.
The Raspberry Pi 500 is the simplest method to start with the Raspberry Pi because it’s not as intimidating because the Raspberry Pi 5. When you take a look at the Raspberry Pi 500, you do not see any chipsets or PCBs (printed circuit boards). The Raspberry Pi is totally hidden in the familiar housing, the keyboard.
The idea with the Raspberry Pi 500 is you could connect a mouse and a display and you are able to go. If, for instance, you’ve got a relative who uses a very outdated computer with an outdated version of Windows, the Raspberry Pi 500 can easily replace the old PC tower for many computing tasks.
More importantly, this device brings us back to the roots of the Raspberry Pi. Raspberry Pi computers were originally intended for educational applications. Over time, technology enthusiasts and industrial customers began using single-board computers all over the place. (For example, when you’ve ever been to London Heathrow Airport, all of the departures and arrivals boards are there powered by Raspberry Pi.)
Raspberry Pi 500 draws inspiration from the roots of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a non-profit organization. It’s the right first computer for college. In some ways, it’s a lot better than a Chromebook or iPad because it’s low cost and highly customizable, which inspires creative pondering.
The Raspberry Pi 500 comes with a 32GB SD card that comes pre-installed with Raspberry Pi OS, a Debian-based Linux distribution. It costs $90, which is a slight ($20) price increase over the Raspberry Pi 400.
Only UK and US keyboard variants will probably be available at launch. But versions with French, German, Italian, Japanese, Nordic and Spanish keyboard layouts will probably be available soon. And when you’re in search of a bundle that features all the things you would like, Raspberry Pi also offers a $120 desktop kit that features the Raspberry Pi 500, a mouse, a 27W USB-C power adapter, and a micro-HDMI to HDMI cable.
In other news, Raspberry Pi has announced one other recent thing: the Raspberry Pi monitor. It is a 15.6-inch 1080p monitor that’s priced at $100. Since there are quite a few 1080p portable monitors available on the market, this launch is not as noteworthy because the Pi 500. However, for die-hard Pi fans, there’s now also a Raspberry Pi-branded monitor option available.
Technology
Apple Vision Pro may add support for PlayStation VR controllers
According to Apple, Apple desires to make its Vision Pro mixed reality device more attractive for gamers and game developers latest report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
The Vision Pro was presented more as a productivity and media consumption device than a tool geared toward gamers, due partly to its reliance on visual and hand controls moderately than a separate controller.
However, Apple may need gamers if it desires to expand the Vision Pro’s audience, especially since Gurman reports that lower than half one million units have been sold to this point. As such, the corporate has reportedly been in talks with Sony about adding support for PlayStation VR2 handheld controllers, and has also talked to developers about whether they may support the controllers of their games.
Offering more precise control, Apple may also make other forms of software available in Vision Pro, reminiscent of Final Cut Pro or Adobe Photoshop.
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