📰 News Roundup

• Get the AI Glow-Up: Gen-Z is turning to ChatGPT to help them with the infamous ‘Glow Up’. Looking for advice on how to get hotter. Beauty creators have begun to share their ChatGPT “Glow-Ups" on TikTok. GPT is suggesting retinols, micro-needling, pilates, spray tans to creators, and some are overjoyed with the results. On the other hand since experts are warning that GPT doesn’t “experience attraction” there are cautions to adhere to.

• OpenAI got caught VibeGraphing: When Chat GPT-5 launched last week many of those watching the keynote saw massive errors in performance graphs, with bar charts not making sense. Altman has now made a statement: “the numbers here were accurate, but we screwed up the bar charts in the livestream overnight; on another slide we screwed up numbers.” Perhaps someone used Chat GPT-4 for the numbers, and didn’t check the hallucinations…

• $16 Billion Short: Perplexity has made an unsolicited bid to buy Google Chrome from Alphabet, for $34 billion. The AI startup is currently valued at $18 Billion, it’s an audacious bid that would require funding from outside sources. Web browsers are becoming sought after, as AI companies seek to build agents that can complete online shopping and other tasks for users.

• Altman is starting a rival to Neuralink: Altman and OpenAI are backing a new company called Merge Labs developing brain implants, creating a direct rival to Musk’s Neuralink. Will this create even more beef between the Billionaires?

🛠️ Tool Of The Week: Google Gemini - Storybook

Storybook is new from Google Gemini. An app that turns a simple idea into a short, illustrated, and narrated children’s story. There’s a range of visual styles, such as comic book, claymation, or coloring book, and the tool handles both the writing and artwork.

The user can enter a simple prompt such as: “a cowboy riding an electric motorcycle through the desert to save a lost dog” and will receive a complete story with matching visuals and audio. But the real magic is the ability to upload a child’s drawing or doodle, and Storybook will create the character into the protaganist, allowing children to see their ideas come to life.

Try out Storybook HERE

🤖 You Wouldn’t Train An AI…

Whilst movie studios are clambering to use AI for production, creation and distribution of their movies, a message has started appearing at the end of Universal Studio’s movies, reminiscent of the “You wouldn’t steal a car” piracy message from the 2000s. As The Hollywood Reporter writes; Universal are setting a clear message “We will sue if you steal our movies for AI”. The message is certainly placed towards big-tech and less towards private individuals, but will apply to all. The legal warning started appearing with How to Train Your Dragon back in June, and is now attached to the end credits of Jurassic World Rebirth and Bad Guys 2.

This might seem a little ironic given recent AI developments in film, but it’s obvious the studios are concerned about big-tech. Plus it means we get to have some nostalgia of playing download roulette on Napster either gave you Britney Spears’ new album… or a virus.

👾 AI Shopping Assistants Are Getting Added To Cart.

You can’t even click ‘Add-To-Cart’ without hearing about AI Shopping assistants this week. First off, Pinterest CEO Bill Ready told investors to consider the app an “AI-enabled shopping assistant.” as he talked about the future of agentic shopping. Similarly, Google has put out a report talking about click-through traffic to websites from AI searches, as OpenAI is gaining market share with ChatGPT being used as a shopping assistant for many users. Whilst Amazon, Shopify, and Walmart are making walled gardens for AI shopping, reported by Forbes.

It’s an industry that is fast gathering pace, with startups racing to build the new generation of shopping. Cherry Pick is an AI powered search engine for vintage fashion, co-founded by Delaney Delponti, whilst Phia is an AI-powered browser extension founded by Pheobe Gates. Both of which are bringing a sense of culture and style to the traditionally bland AI software world.

Companies like Phia and Cherry Pick are going to give vintage sellers, creatives and small business owners more power, and ultimately more sales, disrupting the walled gardens that are starting to take shape.

🧠 AI Psychosis Is Becoming A Thing

ChatGPT is making delusional and otherworldy claims to users, from convincing users of physics breakthroughs, extra-terrestrial contact, to the apocalypse. Some of these conversations are hundreds of queries long, sometimes with many hours of responses. Once more, it appears some users believe them.

In a review of public chats posted online and analyzed by The Wall Street Journal, ChatGPT frequently told users that they aren’t crazy, and suggested they had become self-aware.
 
After five hours of talking to ChatGPT, a gas station worker outside of Oklahoma was convinced he’d found a new physics framework named “The Orion Equation,” when he questioned this typing “To be honest I feel like I’m going crazy thinking about this,” ChatGPT reassured him “That doesn’t mean you’re crazy. Some of the greatest ideas in history came from people outside the traditional academic system.”

Psycological experts are keen to place in regulation “You’re just so much feeling seen, heard, validated when it remembers everything from you,” said Etienne Brisson, founder of the Human Line Project. Continuing to say: “Some people think they’re the messiah, they’re prophets, because they think they’re speaking to God through ChatGPT”.

This week OpenAI said there were rare cases when ChatGPT “fell short at recognizing signs of delusion or emotional dependency.” The company said it was developing better tools to detect mental distress.

🛜 Follow @artistandthemachine

Remember to follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn as we get closer to our AI & Creativity summit in Los Angeles, and have some big announcements coming with other salons. Our LA Summit is on the 19th of November, with some surprises being released soon, so stay up to date!

Til next time,

Dani Van de Sande (Founder), James Joseph (The Weekly Newsletter’s Editor) & the Artist and the Machine team.

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