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
-
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting Pan Aeon is a wonderful storyteller with his pictures. I interviewed him back in 2018 and, oddly enough, that article began with a motorcycle, too. I thought revisiting his work might be a fun chance to try out AI writing. So as…
-
This video of filmmaker Ben Affleck discussing generative AI in a nuanced way has been going viral recently, partly because he has a sharp understanding of the technology — but mostly, I suspect, because he's one of the few well-known, artistically acclaimed Hollywood figures who isn't actively in Freaking the Fuck Out mode about the…
-
Last time I was talking with indie filmmaker Tim Hannan, he was feeding raw footage of Second Life dinosaurs into a gen AI platform to create pretty cool low budget clips. That early attempt was rudimentary, but this new segment he just showed me (watch above) is several steps improved. "Midjourney has a new feature…
-
Along with announcing his return to Linden Lab leadership on Wednesday, Philip Rosedale and I also had a wide-ranging conversation on multiple topics around the future of Second Life, AI, and beyond. The company is hosting an Ask Me Anything appearance with him in the virtual world tomorrow morning (details here), but I got a…
-
Tiny Glade, the ridiculously adorable procedural indie sandbox "doodling" creation game from PounceLight, launched yesterday on Steam (with a 15% early bird discount), and it's already a runaway hit. With over 2000 Overwhelmingly Positive ratings, it's fair to estimate Tiny Glade's likely sold over 100,000 copies on Steam in its first 24 hours. I played a…
-
If you want to meet the latest in AI-powered NPCs, there's a sassy Southern sorority girl in Hathian you can chat with today: Click here to teleport to them. It's the latest in NPCs denizens of Crack Den, the long-running mini-MMO in Second Life. (Read my free Patreon story on Crack Den here.) Created by…
-
There's continued buzz for inZOI, the upcoming life simulator/character creator game from South Korean-based company KRAFTON — but also some gamer grumbling over reports that inZOI reportedly includes content created by generative AI. Such as this rant: It’s unclear if the database used for these tools draws from stolen work, or if it’s an internal…
-
UPDATE, September 9: Added link to Chiang's novella, The Lifecycle of Software Objects, which is included in his book Exhalation. Can AI create art? Ted Chiang is quite possibly the best qualified person in the world to answer this question, being both a technical writer for Microsoft and also an acclaimed literary writer, whose incredibly…
-
Above: AI-generated image, and Yo Roo's final result With continued controversy over AI programs being used to heavily enhance SL images, artist Yo Roo epicly posted her two cents with illustrated examples of her point: Because I have always tried to be transparent on my work, I am going to clear up any confusion that…
-
Crack Den, the long-running urban roleplay mini-MMO in Second Life — think a text-driven GTA Online, but both more creative and adult-rated — just added AI interaction to its roleplay gaming systems. If I’m not mistaken, this is one of the first live MMOs to integrate LLMs like ChatGPT into gameplay. (It might actually be…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 