- Will We Pay For Art Mostly Created By AI? I Consider The Question With Analysts Robert Scoble & Jeremiah Owyang
- We Can't Stop Staring At These Screenshots Of Second Life In Silhouette
- Quest 2 Install Base STILL Likely Below 20 Million, Based On Meta Financials & Inside Info
- Did Meta Start Talking Less About "The Metaverse" Due To Wall Street / Madison Ave Pushback?
My Patreon Supporters
Hypnotic Romance, an SL sim with secluded spaces for couples. Click here to teleport.
“TV POWWW!” by Tom Boellstorff & Braxton Soderman. Read about the first televised videogame here.
The Fitting Room: Try out new SL fits in a secure, private space. Click here to teleport.
-
Sanny Yoshikawa が、New World Notesのなかから、毎月おすすめのバーチャルワールドニュースを日本語で紹介します
Sanny Yoshikawa covers the monthly virtual world highlights from New World Notes for virtual Japan.
-
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Second Life Fashion Blog may be a generic name for a fashion blog but there is nothing generic about Juliette M’s style. I love that she likes color and prints.
Here's look #498. I am not in love with the sheer over bra looks, but I think it looks great here. It suits the mood and the place. She is successful at providing a background context that really brings it all together. I always appreciate it when folks give me the ending date of events, so I know where to go, event or store.
- Top | .:Fio’s – Chloe Top (Tres Chic event apr 17 – may 10)
- Skirt | Ascendant – Sol Skirt Fatpack
- Drink | [ENAMOUR] – PINA COLADA COCKTAIL (Tres Chic event apr 17 – may 10)
- Backdrop | SYNNERGY.TAVIS – Ocean City Boardwalk Backdrop
For more colorful styling, click here:
-
So according to my super unscientific survey, nearly 75% of respondents say we will soon pay for premium entertainment created by generative AI — "soon" being within the next 10 years.
And this is no longer a theoretical question. Shortly after I launched my casual poll, the Writers Guild of America went on strike, with one of its stipulations to Hollywood studios being a curb on AI in content:
The guild also wants regulation of artificial intelligence. According to the guild’s document, it is proposing that AI “can’t write or rewrite literary material,” and can’t be “used as source material.” Variety previously reported that the guild’s proposal was that AI material would not be “considered” as either literary or source material. The AMPTP agreed only to study the issue, according to the guild.
Despite (or because?) of that, some Hollywood executives are actively wondering if screenwriters can be replaced by AI:
“The worry is that down the road you can see some producer or executive trying to use one of these tools to do a job that a writer really needs to be doing.” [says Big Fish and Aladdin writer John August]
That’s already happening, according to Amy Webb, founder and CEO of Future Today Institute, which does long-range scenario planning and consultation for Fortune 500 companies and Hollywood creatives. She notes, “I’ve had a couple of higher-level people ask, if a strike does happen, how quickly could they spin up an AI system to just write the scripts? And they’re serious.”
That's a seriously dumb idea unless you want ChatGPT to produce what is designed to be "the most mediocre web content you can imagine". Many Hollywood execs are probably fine with that, but I doubt many consumers would, say, keep buying movie tickets if "Screenplay by ChatGPT 5.0" was in the credits.
I say this because despite much buzz, we've yet to see any evidence of consumers spending actual money on content primarily created by AI.
Yes we all enjoy fun AI-produced memes like the video below, but that's free disposable content. Unless the AI is powered and curated by a well-known human artist, we probably won't. I would happily buy a print of Nettrice Gaskin's Deep Dream-driven portrait of Kendrick Lamar — but only because in the end, it's by Dr. Gaskins.
My own experience in games and metaverse platforms also make me think the human artist is not going away. Video games are completely digital artifacts, but gamers still know and celebrate leading developers like Hideo Kojima by name. Similarly, Bryn Oh's metaverse art would quickly become meaningless, if we didn't know that an anonymous but very human Canadian artist created it.
That's my own take at least. For a contrast, I contacted two of the biggest generative AI boosters in my social network — analysts Robert Scoble and Jeremiah Owyang — for their own perspective:
-
//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Aegean2 is an alternate stream from Aegean, which I featured yesterday. He adds work to both streams, so they are both in current use. The pictures in this stream all have a vintage feeling like this snapshot of a rusted and falling fence. I love that it’s black and white except for the rusting fence. It has the white frame of vintage photos as well as the handwritten note “remembering the forgotten.” This stream feels like a vintage travelog and he provides a SLURL for most pics. [To teleport to Iujela, click here]
For more vintage snapshots, click here:
-
Beverly Millson, an emerging tech consultant and cyberculture enthusiast, was recently playing around with ChatGPT 3.5 and she decided to ask the AI about her Second Life avatar, Bettina Tizzy. Through that avatar name, she edited Not Possible in Real Life, which up until 2009 was a must-read site covering the works of an emerging new art form: Immersive expression created in metaverse platforms like Second Life.
But in reply, ChatGPT gave Beverly's avatar a small if not exactly accurate promotion — the creator of the very term, metaverse:
As I've mentioned before, asking ChatGPT about a topic where you have some deep expertise exposes just how much the program is mostly a glorified, easier-to-read version of Google search — and equally prone to coughing up false-positives or extremely mediocre results. (ChatGPT's definition of the Metaverse is not very accurate to the source material either, but leave that to one side.)
I also know enough to infer how ChatGPT probably went so wrong, in Bettina's case — ChatGPT has likely been trained on blog posts like this one where she's been described as a "metaverse art maven", and it made the next illogical leap.
Amused, Beverly recently sent me this result for a chuckle. But it also makes me somewhat concerned how large language models like ChatGPT are training on important but somewhat obscure subjects: In this case, metaverse history.
For instance (also via Beverly), here's how ChatGPT describes the SL artist known as "AM Radio":
-
//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Aegean is a fascinating photographer with two distinct styles which he divided into two accounts. I will save the other for tomorrow, but for today, let’s look at his silhouette studies of Second Life.
I love this picture “Somewhere in Time”. The way it is shot, all cast into shadow, give it the quality of being out of space and time. It could be anywhere outdoors. I also love the laconic relaxation of their bodies. They are comfortable together, slouching and relaxed. Wonderful. He shares a song by a favorite singer of mine, Jill Scott. The picture was taken at Birdlings Flat. [Teleport to Birdlings Flat]
For more moody Aegean pics, click here:
-
Lost in all of last week's excitement over Meta's latest (and surprisingly good) first quarter 2023 financial report, followed by the controversy over whether it's given up on the Metaverse, is this pretty surprising revelation:
Meta's frontline VR device, the Quest 2, still has not reached an install base of 20 million. (From all available evidence.)
How do we know? Well:
Back in March, a leaked Meta presentation published by The Verge's Alex Heath put the total Quest install base (both Quest 1 and Quest 2) at "nearly 20 million Quest headsets to date".
Not counting the Quest 1 install base, and factoring in an earlier New York Times report plus Meta's Q4 2022 financial report, I put the post-2022 holiday install base of Quest 2 at around 18 million.
But surely the Quest 2 install base is 20 million+ by now, right?
Probably not:
-
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Have guitar, will travel. Busking is a long tradition, though not always legal, and often strictly limited. In my hometown Portland, street musicians are much loved. Portland’s Elvis has played at Saturday Market for forty years!
And what about in Second Life? Well here is 理衣 -りぃ- with “Street Live” playing her heart out at public transit stop, a favorite place for buskers as pedestrians stop and wait long enough to be captured by the music.
For more buskers, click here:
