Month: February 2023

That TikTok is part of our lives is already a fact, but the meaning of this expression is becoming more and more literal. In just a few days, the short video app has launched a new shopping feature, a trivia contest with $500,000 at stake (U.S. only) and a program to incentivize the creation of long-form videos on its platform. But TikTok’s latest will catch everyone by surprise.

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The company has announced a new collaboration with the Mercedes-Benz car brand in order to directly integrate TikTok videos in the screens that will be included in the new E-Class. The vehicle has an integrated entertainment system known as MBUX in which you can run different types of apps, including games like Angry Birds or YouTube itself.

“From passing the time waiting while stationary in your vehicle to simply enjoying a moment to yourself while your car is idling, before heading to your destination, TikTok will be your new favorite activity when you’re parked, offering a stream of videos tailored just for you. Passengers can have fun, too. The two screens in the vehicle work independently, so both driver and passenger can connect to their own ‘For You’ accounts and feeds,” TikTok explains on its blog.

Now, TikTok will be part of the Mercedes-Benz E-Class app catalog, and you will be able to watch short TikTok videos while parked, or allow your companions to log into their accounts and have a good time while making that long trip from Seville to Madrid (watch out for carsickness).

A utility that is fine, yes, but with a very large elephant in the room: many drivers will use it while driving. This is something we already take for granted, even more so in countries like Spain, where offenses for using cell phones at the wheel have been punished more severely since last year due to the large number of people who fiddle with their cell phones while driving or while waiting at a red light.

The fact that now it is not a cell phone, but a screen inserted in the car does not make it any less dangerous. So, if you decide to buy a Mercedes-Benz E-Class and want to watch some videos on TikTok to have a few laughs, park for a moment and watch as many as you want, but always keep your eyes on the road when driving.

AIs are here to stay. From the famous chatbots with which you can have conversations, such as the popular ChatGPT, its recent integration in Bing and Bard, Google’s new AI; to AIs that generate images, such as DALL-E 2, Midjourney or Dream, and others that help us in other aspects of our lives, such as when cooking, there are already many possibilities for AI, and its progress is increasingly promising, although it also involves risks.

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One of the most recurrent fears in the AI world is the possibility that AIs can be “hacked”, just like a normal program. Zdnet has looked into this issue and interviewed several professionals who give their views on what AI could bring in the future, including its potential risks, as well as how to prevent potential problems.

In this regard, Bruce Draper, the program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the U.S. Department of Defense’s research and development agency, is one of the most qualified people to have a good understanding of all the threats we could be subjected to if evildoers had access to the AIs around us.

“The benefits are real, but we have to do it with our eyes open: there are risks and we have to defend our AI systems,” says Draper. “As artificial intelligence becomes more pervasive, it’s being used in all kinds of industries and environments, and they all become potential attack surfaces. So we want to give everyone the opportunity to defend themselves.”

By means of a tactic known as “adversarial attack“, a user who knows what he is doing could trick an AI by introducing a small change as input so that later, after performing several “contaminated” logical reasonings, a large change is provoked as output. In this way, we could make an AI believe that the image of a cat is really a dog, although this type of manipulation could be more serious when we think of more serious aspects, such as security.

In view of this, programs such as DARPA’s GARD (Guaranteeing AI Robustness Against Deception) aim to develop tools that can protect AIs from attacks, as well as evaluate their defense against any attempt at manipulation or hacking.

GARD uses different types of resources to assess the robustness of AI models and their defenses against current and future adversarial attacks. Key components of the project include Armory, a virtual platform on Github that serves as a testbed, and the Adversarial Robustness Toolbox (ART), a set of tools also on Github that developers can use to defend their AIs against such threats.

The advancement of this type of defense and prevention technologies is of vital importance, since, in a world where AIs are and will be even more present in our day-to-day lives, including our homes, our cars and even the establishments we visit, any attack could result in an entire city being paralyzed or our most intimate data, including banking data, being at the service of malefactors.

The Kings League continues to spring surprises. As regular spectators of the competition will know, each team can count on a number 12 player, that is, someone who comes from outside and does not belong to the day-to-day squad. We have had all kinds of surprises in recent weeks, and the one coming this Sunday is incredible: Ronaldinho will participate in the league in the Porcinos Football Club team, owned by Ibai Llanos.

It is not a joke or anything like that. Yesterday, the popular streamer commented during the broadcast that he had a surprise in store for the day. It was a long wait (more than an hour of countdown, literally), but this was nothing less than the former player of FC Barcelona will play for Porcinos FC as player number 12, who introduced himself with the following phrase: “If you want me to play”. That’s how terse, direct and clear his message was, which can be seen below.

During the corresponding broadcast, Ibai said that “Ronaldinho is a very busy person, but he is delighted to come”. “He has even canceled an event to come and record content with us,” the Basque content creator pointed out.

From here, the rest is just waiting for this coming Sunday, when Porcinos, current leader of the competition, will face Pio FC, second to last in the league. The match will close the day at 21:00 hours in Spain, so we will have to wait until the end of the day to see Ronaldinho working his magic again.

HBO Max has greenlit Welcome to Derry, a prequel series to the hit horror film It directed by Andy Muschietti (director of The Flash). The fiction will focus on the origin of the sinister character Pennywise, as well as the events that took place in Derry before the arrival of the protagonists of Stephen King’s original story.

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The news has generated great excitement among fans of Muschietti’s two-part film, which became huge box office hits. The story was critically acclaimed for its combination of horror, drama and comedy elements, so well spun into a teenage story. The prequel will be a great opportunity to further explore the It universe and delve deeper into the characters and story.

What will Welcome to Derry be about?

The plot of Welcome to Derry will take place in the same location as the original film, but with a different perspective. It will focus on the history of the city before the main characters of It arrive in Derry. In this way, the series will explore the origins of the Pennywise character and how he came to be the terrifying monster we end up seeing in the movies.

The series will be produced by Andy Muschietti and his sister, Barbara Muschietti, who also produced It. In addition, Muschietti will direct several episodes. Bill Skarsgård is also expected to return as Pennywise, although there has been no confirmation yet.

According to the producers, the series will be “a terrifying and thrilling experience for fans of the film, but also an opportunity to explore new stories and characters.”

Production on Welcome to Derry will begin soon, and the series is expected to be available on HBO Max in the near future. In the meantime, It fans can continue to enjoy both the original film and its sequel, It: Chapter 2.

Ariana Grande is back. The singer has not released a new album for 3 years, and although she has been seen in different fields, such as in the Netflix movie Don’t Look Up, it is now that she has returned with a collaboration with The Weeknd.

The Canadian artist has released the remix of Die for You alongside Ariana Grande. The original song was released in 2016 as part of the Starboy album and has since become a The Weeknd classic. As he did with Rosalia on Blinding Lights, the singer has re-released his classic with a female voice by his side, and the result is spectacular.

How is the remix of Die for You by The Weeknd and Ariana Grande?

In the new version of Die for You, The Weeknd’s signature smooth and seductive voice is combined with Ariana Grande‘s unique vocal talent. The remix retains the essence of the original song, but with an added touch of romance and emotion that Grande’s voice brings to the track.

The release of the remix was announced on the social networks of both artists, generating great expectation among their followers. And, although the song has just been released, it has already been listened to by millions of people around the world.

In a recent interview, The Weeknd spoke about his collaboration with Ariana Grande, saying that he had always wanted to work with her and that he was very excited about the way the remix turned out. For her part, Grande said that she was very grateful for the opportunity to work with one of her favorite artists and that it had been an incredible experience.

The release of the Die for You remix is just the latest hit from The Weeknd, who has been one of the most popular artists in recent years thanks to songs like Blinding Lights and Can’t Feel My Face. For her part, Ariana Grande has been one of the biggest pop stars of the last decade, with hits like Thank U, Next and 7 Rings.

While we wait for more music from both artists, we can taste this remix delight that has undoubtedly fascinated fans of both singers.

After having launched several functions thinking only about making money, Twitter has launched a new feature that will serve everyone. After having been boosting the benefits of the Twitter Blue subscription (including the famous blue check) and even removing a safety feature, the social network led by Elon Musk wants to prevent people from falling into the clutches of misinformation.

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A few days ago, Twitter released an update to its Community Notes feature that will allow users to be notified when the community adds an informative note to a tweet they have previously interacted with (liked, retweeted, commented or quoted).

The Community Notes feature allows selected users to create informative notes about misleading or uninformative tweets, in order to provide context and prevent (or reduce) the spread of hoaxes/fake news. Any Twitter user can view these notes, but, at least for the time being, only users in the United States can join the program.

This latest update could be very useful, for example, for people who have retweeted misleading tweets without their knowledge, allowing them to realize it, remove the interaction or even spread the word to their followers that the tweet they RTed was a flight.

Community Notes are an essential part of Elon Musk’s restructuring plan after his arrival. Through these notes, Twitter users could provide relevant information about tweets or comments that add contextual data. In this way, the platform’s users themselves would be in charge of “moderating” many of the contents, something that Musk will be grateful for after having already fired a large part of his staff (and continues to do so).

Obviously, knowing who runs the social network, it is likely that the tweets of Elon Musk, Twitter, Tesla or any other account related to the billionaire will have the possibility of receiving informative notes disabled, or that these will be automatically deleted. Even so, it is a very useful feature that, once it makes the leap to the rest of the world, could bring enormous value if used correctly.

Since the generation of images with artificial intelligence made its way to the general public, there have been numerous debates about the ethics of these tools and the recognition of artists. Now, the U.S. Copyright Office has just partially withdrawn Kristina Kashtanova’s copyright on Zarya of the Dawn, a comic created with Midjourney.

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In a precedent-setting decision, the federal agency issued a certificate last year granting 100% authorship of Zarya of the Dawn to Kristina Kashtanova, the New York-based artist behind the comic. However, the office has drafted a letter to the artist’s attorney explaining that there will be several important changes.

This revision was the result of a lack of information in the application issued by Kashtanova. One of the key aspects was the failure to correctly break down the role that Midjourney had in the comic. According to the documentation issued, Kashtanova would have only used the AI to generate the cover, but the reality turned out to be very different.

Thanks to the virality of the comic in social networks, it was corroborated that the artist used artificial intelligence to create all the images that make up Zarya of the Dawn. Even so, the agency will keep the authorship of the written text, the plot and other aspects, since that would come entirely from Kashtanova.

For the U.S. Copyright Office, images generated by artificial intelligence could not be covered by intellectual property laws since there is no trace of “human authorship”. In addition, the Office considers that the fact that “users cannot predict the specific output of Midjourney makes it different” to recognize the “creator”.

Midjourney, one of many AIs that “generate images from scratch”

Midjourney is an independent laboratory dedicated to artificial intelligence research and is also the name of its generative image model. Its operation is very similar to that of other famous programs such as DALL-E 2 (from OpenAI) or Stable Diffusion (from Stability AI).

To use it, all you have to do is access its official Discord channel, where you can create images that resemble artistic works. Managed by David Holz, co-founder of Leap Motion, Midjourney is based on a freemium model that offers different payment plans to access better features.