Wagner James Au / New World Notes
Author, strategist, virtual world reporter
recent posts
- Welcome to New World Notes’ 2006-2025 Archive!
- Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
- Top Five Posts Including: Huge Rec Room Layoff & Meta Boots Neal Stephenson Off Facebook (Briefly)
- Four Glorious Second Life Sims to Explore — After Watching Sabina Valeska’s Machinima Tributes to Them!
- Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
about
Category: AI
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I've asked this before, but here I go again: What's the point of prompt-based world building, when we already have many multiple 3D building tools which are user-friendly, feature-rich, and, well, fun? This point must be repeated, since Meta is currently promising we can build faster and smarter with GenAI Tools in Meta Horizon Worlds:…
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Here's the results of last week's Gen AI survey, which I took in the run-up to Second Life's official "AI & the Future of Our Virtual Community" town hall happening this Friday. The results are pretty unambiguous: A massive majority of over 85% surveyed want some kind of regulation against gen AI-made content in the…
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Loading… As controversy over Generative AI content in Second Life continues, here's a survey on how Linden Lab should deal with the subject in the online Marketplace. Choose the option you support MOST (or disagree with the least). In one option, creators have a choice of tagging their content as having "no AI" and use…
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Since writing about Primfeed's survey on whether AI-enhanced images should be allowed on the social media site, the vote continues to lean heavily on No. One challenge, however, is that "AI" is still broadly or loosely defined. As SL creator Jennifer Fluffington comments: We need to define more what is considered 'AI' to be allowed…
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Primfeed recently became the most popular website focused on Second Life not owned by Linden Lab, and so inevitably, the "Flickr-for-SL" social platform is now a flashpoint for the key controversy among SLers: Whether AI programs like LLM-powered NPCs like those from Convai and Gen AI platforms like Midjourney should exist in the virtual world…
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The fact that these two reader comments on my post about Philip Rosedale's promised Town Hall on AI are right on top of each other is a good indication of how divisive the topic is. First up, from Tami, making the case that gen AI is something we can live with in Second Life: AI…
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I love when a classic science fiction concept becomes a practical reference point in current technology, and that happened during the most recent Town Hall in Second Life, when a user challenged Linden Lab CTO Philip Rosedale over his excitement around A.I., most recently seen with the company's partnership launch of AI-powered NPCs in SL.…
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Meta pirated millions of books to train its AI, the Atlantic recently reported, including mine. There's even a helpful look-up tool here to find if your favorite author is in Meta's training set, which is where I got the screenshot above. I'm not sure how I'll protest, but it does bring up a related topic…
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There's been a good discussion in last week's post about SL creators debating whether they should use gen AI in their content, with a pro-AI position from "SatanicPanic": 1.If someone prefers not to use a ConvAI bot, they are entirely free to make that decision. Forcing others to conform to this preference, however, infringes on…
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Originally published on my Patreon here Nyric is an upcoming game (on Steam here, watch the trailer above) that blends sandbox/virtual world creativity, survival/crafting gameplay, and generative AI in an ambitiously fresh way — so much so, it's almost a new subgenre. ("Minecraft meets Midjourney" might be a fair elevator pitch.) Kayla Comalli, CEO/co-founder of Nyric…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 