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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In case you missed it, the latest version of ChatGPT (previously here) is now under fire from Scarlett Johansson: Johansson said Monday that OpenAI used an "eerily similar" voice to hers for their new GPT-4o chatbot despite having declined the company's request to provide her voice. Earlier in the day, OpenAI announced it would no longer be using…
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To go by social media froth, the rise of AI technology like Large Language Models is soon going to utterly Change Games Forever, leading to waves of roiling layoffs of game industry employees. Why pay game writers, one common argument goes, when we can just get ChatGPT to churn out reams of NPC game dialog?…
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Everyone in tech is seemingly psyched for the latest update of Chat GPT4o — mainly for its genuinely impressive version of the AI from the movie Her (watch below) — but for the record, it's still having trouble with at least one obvious question: What's my definition of the Metaverse? Ask GPT4o that, and you…
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Following up on a reader's comment to my rant about ChatGPT totally botching my writing, I went with their suggestion to try Microsoft's Copilot instead. I asked the same question, "What is Wagner James Au's definition of the Metaverse?" and got this output: Wagner James Au defines the Metaverse as a vast, immersive virtual world…
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As a Writer, I Don’t Feel Threatened by ChatGPT — It Can’t Even Accurately Summarize My Own Writing!
Now that ChatGPT is openly available online, I've been checking in on the system's knowledge of virtual worlds — and yep, it's still confused. And worse it's actively confusing what I've written about virtual worlds. Ask it, "How does Wagner James Au define the Metaverse?", and you get something like: [He] defines the Metaverse as…
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Representative Adam Schiff recently announced the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act, a bill that would require gen AI companies like Midjourney and OpenAI to disclose if any copyrighted works were used in its training data. As he put it in the announcement: We must balance the immense potential of AI with the crucial need for…
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Above: Untouched raw screenshot of Yo Roo's avatar In a virtual world dependent on highly-detailed, heavily customized avatar models, and images depicting them, what qualifies as "real"? In recent months I've noticed the social media feeds of Second Life users increasingly swamped by avatar images heavily enhanced by generative AI programs like Krea AI, Midjourney,…
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So much social activity around virtual worlds now takes place on Discord, since the messaging platform is much easier to use in various everyday contexts (i.e. on the train, in the bathroom, etc.) But here's one solution in a virtual dance club that offers the best of both mediums: A bridge connecting public chat in…
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Above: Real-life model/influencer Kate Purt, generated by Makery.AI creator vAIsual from a few hundred images of Kate — with her full and prior consent Makery.AI is an upcoming platform for anyone excited by the power of generative AI, but struggles with the ethical conundrum of creating images and videos trained from the work of human…
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After chatting with Convai's LLM-based NPCs in Second Life last week, some witty SLers amplified the genial trolling even further, going so far as to conduct live on-camera interviews (above, with on-scene reporter Ellie Llewellyn) and engage in some long, hilariously surreal conversations with them (below). The explosion of excitement/unsustainable hype around large language models…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 