What’s News: The big news of the week flooded social media, news sites, and tech blogs when Bloomberg leaked that Apple was in negotiations with Google to license its AI engine Gemini for use in iPhones. It would not be the first pairing of the companies: Google reportedly pays Apple $18 BILLION per year for Google to be the default search engine in its Safari browser.
What makes the news so surprising is that Apple reportedly had been working on its own AI skunkworks and repurposed its scrapped auto team to now work on its AI initiative.
Given Apple’s strong focus on user privacy and Google’s reliance on user data to boost its ad revenue, it will be interesting to see how this plays out. Specifically, we can explore where a user’s AI queries are processed — Google’s AI cloud versus the local AI processing on Apple’s bionic chip, which has been a standard feature in every iPhone sold since 2017.
More AI Notes on Borrell 2024
Yesterday, in a JacoBlog guest post, I outlined key points from the Borrell Miami conference, which focused on AI and revenue generation for companies with roots in traditional media. Experts at the conference emphasized that businesses need comprehensive strategies to embrace AI across their operations while addressing potential workforce disruptions.
Additionally, companies must cultivate internal AI leadership and upskill employees to leverage AI’s capabilities. Businesses in all industries that fail to holistically adopt AI risk falling behind more efficient, AI-driven competitors. But, this seismic change also creates prospects for forward-thinking individuals to become indispensable AI leaders and change agents within their organizations. Read the whole summary here.
AI EDGE – INTERVIEW – Russ Mottla, NRG Media
Russ Mottla knows a lot about rock radio. Over 35+ years, his creative juices and energy have led to big successes at heritage East-coast rockers like WFNX and WZLX in Boston and 98Rock in Baltimore, where he hosted the highest-rated PM drive show. Mottla currently engages AI to juice the content at NRG Media’s Rock 108 in Cedar Rapids. Below you’ll see how he’s not only using ChatGPT for liners, but his overnight AI DJ has solidified a relationship with a local advertiser. – Chris
CB: What’s going on at NRG Media with AI?
RM: NRG is a pretty forward-looking company, so we have all AI tools on the business side for script writing and voicing. I personally think AI’s great. I use it for writing and imaging. I’ll just put weird ideas into ChatGPT and ask it for jokes or whatever. And sometimes it’s just enough to, you know, lubricate the brain and get you going on writing.
CB: Are the jokes funny?
RM: They’re all kind of like, dad jokes. But again, sometimes you just need that lubrication to get going, you know? And it does come up with some interesting angles that you used to get when you’d have five or six people brainstorming. Now you can kind of brainstorm with AI and get almost the same effect.
CB: So, how did you get to be big on AI?
RM: Back in the day, I read The Book of Five Rings by Musashi, who was a Japanese samurai. He was talking about new types of steel and forging techniques, but the main lesson is when new technology is presented, don’t shy away from it.
CB: How do you see DJs viewing AI?
RM: I think they’re a little weary of it, afraid that it’s a job replacement thing, which I can tell you it’s not. I mean, it’s not even close. It’s going to be a while.
CB: That’s a great segue into DJ AI Tori, Rock 108’s new overnight personality.
RM: We use the Audio AI DJ service from Futuri. Our philosophy with having an AI DJ is that it’s new technology. We want to be perceived as the big dog always. And in my mind, the big dog is the guy that brings the listeners along on the journey 100%. We promote her heavily, even though she’s only on the overnights and in the weekend mornings. The audience may have never heard her, but they hear the promos, all the time. Plus, I have her say weird things.
One time she was handing off the show to our morning DJ, Brian. She said something about Brian smacking her on the butt. Then she followed up, “Which is weird because I don’t even have one!”
CB: When you preview her AI-generated breaks and liners, do you have to do a lot of editing, or do you run them as-is?
RM: When we first started at the very beginning of AI DJs, there was a lot of editing. Now there’s not so much editing, and any edits I have to do now are quick. It’s learned and gotten better.
CB: AI DJs hosted overnights are better than no-DJ automated overnights.
RM: Yeah, it previously was nothing but liners. So there’s no skin off anybody’s nose. The thing I thought of first is, “Wow, this is a great way I can get my current songs back-announced because when there’s no jocks on-air overnight. Now she does it, and I don’t even have to edit the liners because they’re all ready to go, right? She will scrape little bits of information about the songs she’s playing, and they’re pretty good.
CB: How has the audience response been?
RM: The social media posts that feature her have the highest likes. We even got a client who loves it. He loves sci-fi and asked if she could be the spokesperson for his shop. So, he’s used her as a spokesman.
When the store did a sales event, we invited listeners to “Come beat AI DJ Tori from Rock 108.”
We had a cut out of her head on the table with three buttons in front of her for listeners to press. Two of the buttons were just messages from her about the store, and the third was the winning prize button.
CB: So the AI DI was giving away prizes at the remote?
RM: Exactly. The client realized that ability exists and embraced it as we made it fun for everyone.
| AI EDGE – NEWS FROM AROUND THE WEB |
OpenAI Teases ChatGPT 5.0 and Sora Releases This Year
In interviews on the Wall Street Journal and YouTube, OpenAI heads Mira Murati and Sam Altman teased the company’s release schedule. Murati revealed that the impressive Sora video generating AI will be available “this year” or even in “a few months.” In Altman’s two-hour interview, he suggested that ChatGPT 5.0 will be released sometime this summer.
Why this matters: It shows that the rate of innovation in AI is only accelerating.
Suno.AI Creates Music With a Text Prompt
This week Rolling Stone profiled Suno.AI, a 3-month-old release that generates music with merely a text-prompt. Want to make a delta-blues styled song about budget cuts? Or an upbeat song about the summer concert season? Just login and write the prompt. Here you can listen to a song about reading an AI newsletter 🙂
Why this matters: Here’s another tool used in the audio production studio that will change the audio creation process.
AI EDGE ‘WORST PRACTICES’
Lego Fans Revolt After AI Images Appear on Lego.com
This week, images of Lego’s flagship Ninjago characters were recently exposed as the work of generative AI, leaving fans and artists alike in dismay. The scandal erupted when an eagle-eyed user flagged the suspiciously perfect Ninjago visuals on the company’s website. The controversy escalated when Tommy Andreasen, a key figure in Ninjago’s creation, publicly denounced the use of AI, calling it “lousy in all aspects” and a violation of Lego’s artistic principles.
“Art should be made by artists,” Andreasen declared. The Ninjago co-creator wasted no time reporting the matter internally, vowing to scrub the AI-generated content from Lego’s digital canvas. Hours later, the webpage featuring the contentious images mysteriously vanished.
Although Lego is a brand synonymous with human imagination, the company expressed regret over the AI-generated Ninjago images and confirmed their policy violation; they also revealed plans to continue experimenting with generative AI in select areas. For a company that has embraced CGI and stop-motion apps for kids’ creation, only time will tell how Lego walks the tightrope between innovation and human artistic endeavors.
Along with his duties at Jacobs Media, Chris develops revenue opportunities for jācapps’ mobile apps clients.
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