UNCANNY VALLEY

Self portrait with LightWave 3D (Eki Halkka, 1999)

Eki has used AI in the LMP blog for approx. two years. It's been fun to watch the  leaps. Then he told me about Uncanny Valley - the creeps people can get when they're up close to a humanoid like AI-DA.  The AI that painted Alan Turing's portrait.*

In the article she was striking. Large eyes, a short black bob. I was okay until AI-DA cautioned US to be careful of AI. Her wide-open eyes, that  blank stare. She looked right through you. It was getting dark. I turned on all the  lights. Put on some music. Had  a drink. And tried to forget that blank stare.

In a poll I took nobody knew what "Uncanny Valley" was. But it's been round since the 1970s, coined by  Masahiro Mori, a professor at Tokyo University, when  AI was in its first throes. They may not know UV now, but they will. And it ain't fun.

*Alan Turing's portrait sold at Sotheby's for 1.8m

Sources: Economist, Guardian

Next week: CULT BRANDING:  big buck and loyalty

Animatronic Arnold (Orion Pictures, 1984)

Note: Uncanny valley has been the curse of my line of work, visual effects, for a long time. First, the animatronic puppets that were almost life-like, but not quite - see e.g. puppet Arnold Schwarzenegger the original Teminator. Then 3D animation, that was the same. Remember Polar Express, or the scorpion king from The Mummy returns? Firmly in the valley. 

At the highest level, the valley has been long crossed. The computer generated humans in big budget Hollywood productions have been convincing enough to go unnoticed for at least a decade. It's only when we know there must be shenanigans going on (resurrecting dead actors, or making old ones look young again) that we look carefully enough to tell something may be off.

Personally, I never put in the work (or perhaps just didn't have the talent) to create fully realistic close-up ready humans from scratch. Perhaps I never even made it into the valley - an early attempt from the last millennium (above) may serve as an example. Anyway, it still is not an easy task. At all. 

This said, there are tools like Epic Metahumans, and of course the AI tools we get to play with nowadays, that can pass the valley with flying colours, without needing a team of artists specializing on just this one thing full time for months on end to get results.

PS: Masahiro Mori is a roboticist, and Uncanny Valley was (and arguably still is) more about appearance and motion than artificial intelligence. Not to say that AI can't be spooky too ;-)

CU

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Eki

TIK TOK ROCKS

PigTok!!

TIK TOK's no-brainer short video format is a world-wide blockbuster. In the US it has170m TTers - more than half the country's pop. But unless ByteDance, the Chinese co. that owns it sells out to an American company it's curtains in the US.  Or so they say. To top it off, t3 states have sued TT for being addictive to kids.

With 2bn users worldwide, it's addictive period. Kamala Harris' two videos got 50mn hits. A big chunk for one site. To rake in more doe TT has an online store,  is publishing digital books and the old-fashioned kind.

Eki advised me to stay off the app. But I got hooked on  two TT trends in the Washington Post and New York Times: castor oil for wrinkles and apple cider vinegar for eczema.* They work. I think.

*10% of the world's pop. has eczema 

 Economist, Washington Post, New York Times, internet

Next week: UNCANNY VALLEY: creepy eerie feelings when humans up close to an  AI person

Note: What to say... of all the time-sinking ratholes of the world, TikTok is **not** the one i will dive into. Making the viral miss maggypiggy was fun though ;-)

-- Eki

AI & Eki make a boffo music video for LMP

Michael "Melting Mike" Dalisalvadoré: Heel Over Heads For You

‘Michael "Melting Mike" Dalisalvadoré: Heel Over Heads For You’ in B&W, echoes Hollywood’s golden age. An art deco fashion show:  elegant models in bizarre costumes, snobby viewers,  a goofy, appealing singer, who looks like he’s been on a slap-happy bender.   Inspired  by art deco designer, Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dali who designed  a joint collection in the late 30s.

It’s fun to be in on it. I write short plots for Eki to write his AI prompts. One of the most famous designs of Schiaparelli and Dali was their shoe hat.  Michael gives nutty nod to them.

So far Eki has made four videos for the album. In each one you can see the progress - Michael’s Head Over Heels is a giant leap. Altogether we've planned eight.  Can't wait for AI and Eki to finish number 5. 

Sources: Eki. wikipedia, personal experience

Next week:  TIK TOK: trends and influencers world-wide

Note: This project has, again, been an interesting dive into AI and new techniques. The pace of development in AI has been so fast that when the project started, the tools were in many ways different, even though it was just like three months ago. We have maybe two or three months more to go until we've done all the eight films. 

During this time, the AI video tools and all sorts of AI generation tools have improved so much that there's a clear difference in quality. It will be more when we come to the last films. 

It's also been a learning journey for me, a good reason to take time to explore the new tools available. It's always better to have a project where you test new tools instead of just trying to sit on your bum and work your way through stuff without actually getting any viable result from it. 

So, yeah, halfway through, and I'm also interested to see what comes next.

PS: I tried a new method of "writing" this time - I dictated the text to ChatGPT, which kindly not only turned my voice to text, but also cleaned out all the filler words etc., making the result 90% to what I wanted - I just manually trimmed a few sloppy parts here and there, tightened it, and - done. The future is now.

CU

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Eki

2024 Election: HARRIS &WALZ road show

Kamala at oval office, by Flux1-dev AI

"It’s time for us to do what we have been been doing.  And that time is every day." 

Kamala  Harris (1964-)

When Kamala Harris, a so-so VP got bumped up to pres. candidate she chose Tim Walz, gov. of Minn. for VP.  The most progressive, probably the least known of the candidates.  Rousing rally crowds seem to go for their message. Her poll numbers are up.  And in a recent Financial Times poll she jumped ahead of Trump managing the economy.

It’s no secret that big-wig Dems were pissed when Biden crowned Harris. Terrific candidates were in the wings ready to jump in. Josh Shapiro, gov. Pa., Gretchen Whitener, gov. Mich., Andy Beshear, gov. KY.  But when Harris was a fait accompli, they quickly organised the Harris/ Walz road show: a happy-go-lucky tour of battleground states with Beyonce music.

Poor Trump. The last couple of weeks has left him limp: the maladroit choice of J.D. Vance for VP, shot at a rally, Biden dumped. A lot for an old guy, past his sell-by date. If the stakes weren’t so high, US Election 2024 would be the most ’must watch’ soap opera of the year.

Sources: New York Times, Economist, Financial Times

Next week: TIK TOK TRENDS shoot the MOON

“There’s no company and no country in the world – no country in the world has ever ripped off the United States like the incredible job that they did on this country and the people that ran it.”

"Covfefe"

Donald Trump (1946-)

 

Note: I think Harris has done a fine job as VP of Biden, on the perhaps most effective Democrat presidency in modern history. Yes, despite considerable differences of opinion in some issues, and his age, I do think Biden has been a good president. Appearances are irrelevant, policies matter.

I also do think Harris will make a good president, and Walz will do fine as VP. When it comes to coherence and substance, she is on a completely different planet from her opponent. She may have made a gaffe or two, that's only human. Trump (and Vance) make more of them in the first minute of any given speech than she has done in her whole career. We've just grown numb for it.

As far as the VP nominations go, I'm happy she chose a somewhat progressive candidate instead of a lukewarm centrist. Despite "progressive" being often used as an insult, the actual progressive policy ideas are widely liked, even among ground-level republicans (as long as you do not call them progressive).

CU
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Eki

PS: Choosing that Kamala quote doesn't do much else than show how easy it is to become an useful idiot, an echo chamber for hollow right-wing talking points. Oh well ;-)

NIGHTWISH has a new clueless FAN

Behind the scenes of "Perfume of the Timeless" video shoot.

When the new NIGHTWISH music video, ‘Perfume of the Timeless’ was posted  Eki sent me the link. The first thing that grabbed my attention was the 12,500+ hits it got in the first hour - a north later it has 1,3 m. I watched it, the I listened. It was way out of the 30s deco, i.e. Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, etc, I’m hooked on.  But I went online to check them out.

A symphonic-metal band sounded like a contradiction. I called Eki. He said metal music is close to classical. If you played the notes on a piano it would be a tune. In the top 20 NW recordings "The Greatest Show on Earth" was number one. I listened. For me POTT was more symphonic and less metal.

I probably won’t buy headphones, or give up Billie, Louis. Ella. But will check out new recording. NIGHTWISH congrats. And ‘thanks a million'’ for clueing me in.

Sources:  Eki, internet

Next week: little margie doc blog  will be back in August

Iron Maiden medley with a symphony orchestra

Note: I have become a fan of the Nightwish songs I have worked on (the videos for "The Islander", "Noise" and POTT). But for some reason, I've never taken the time to listen to their full catalogue. Perhaps making a video and listening to a song hundreds if not thousands of times while working on it is so high a dosage that it deters from diving into the band more generally. Dunno.

As an example of this, I hadn't heard to "The Greatest Show on Earth" yet - and it's a song from a decade ago. So i took the time to listen to it now. I'm not sure what version Maggy listened to, but at least on the album version, the band does not even kick in before the six minute mark.

Until then, i's certainly not metal, but rather what could be called a cinematic composition in the vein of Hollywood adventures, played by classical instruments. And that's not all, the symphony orchestra returns many times during the 23 minute piece, alternating with the rock segments. And the passages read by the great Richard Dawkins. I actually liked it quite a lot. Perhaps I indeed should do that dive into Nightwish ;-)

Talking about the symphonic metal thing, Nightwish actually uses a real symphony orchestra instead of synthesizers in their records. But the connection between classical music and metal goes deeper. The musical language is actually often rather similar, different from pop and rock, which are usually more based on blues and jazz vocabulary. As Maggy said, i think many metal compositions would pass as classical music, if arranged for an orchestra. This has not escaped classical musicians, there are many examples of doing just that - the Iron Maiden medley above is just the first example i came across.

Apocalyptica plays Metallica (2015)

Finnish group Apocalyptica was started on this premise in 1993, perhaps originally as a joke. They played Metallica on cellos. Now, Metallica is in the genre of trash metal, which is from the not-so-complex end of the metal pool, but even that worked surprisingly well - so well in fact that it resulted in a 30-year, still ongoing international career with 10 albums and counting for Apocalyptica.

In the opposite end, another Finnish metal band, Stone, started their first album with Jean Sibelius' Finlandia, played with electric guitars. The album is a good example of the virtuosity and complexity often at display with metal musicians with their instruments - don't let the form fool you, they can give any classical players a run for their money.

PS: The Perfume of the Timeless video just crossed the 2 million view mark today. Cheers!


CU
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Eki

Little margie has the AI blues

Nightwish - Perfume of the Timeless

Eki and I got the idea to do an AI song. He had a recording of my voice, all we needed was a title and a prompt. A piece of cake. Ten minutes later he sent the link to ‘little margie sings the blues’. My head went into high gear. ’Why don’t we do an album?’ He said, ‘why not’.

Love 20’s, 30’s deco: tangos, rumbas, Harlem jazz, Josephine Baker. We decided on eight titles: Tom Dick & Mary’ - a tango. Prompt: ’Tom loves, Dick loves Mary, Mary loves Tom'. ‘Love on a Binge’, ‘Uncanny Valley’ waltz. Five more to go. Thought this ain’t easy. And plugged on.

Finally sent them off to Eki. He had just got off 15 hour days working on a Nightwish music video - ‘Perfume of the Timeless’. He sent me a link. After one hour online, it got 12,500+ hits. When I didn’t hear from him, began to think maybe I was way over my head. What the hell, We’ll always have ‘Little margie sings the blues’. ‘Play it again....'

Little Margie sings the blues:
https://www.udio.com/songs/vQEt7pcwVdqareg6Eohvtm

Source: personal experience. internet

Next week: TIK TOK takes over: 1 billion active monthly users worldwide, approx. 130 million in the US


Note: With the current tech, with the tools i use, I can make AI Maggy talk with her voice sample, but not sing (just yet). The song i sent back had a female singer, but that was not Maggy's voice, but rather something the AI tool (Udio AI) chose by itself based on the genre.

I'm yet to feed all the prompts into the AI, as getting good results takes a bit of time - it's curating using the shotgun method, with a twist of evolution thrown in. What you do, is to first generate multiple songs (or more specifically, 30 second snippets of a song), and listen to them. If you're not happy, generate more snippets. Once you find one that sounds good and fits the prompt, you add another 30 seconds to it, again multiple times, then choose the best addition, add the next 30 seconds to that... rinse and repeat until you have a full song.

I got lucky with the first example we did, and got a decent song with just a dozen or so tries. But it can take longer - much longer. So, the actual songs will come sometime later.

PS: Now, about a week later, the Nightwish video has 1.3 million views and counting.

CU

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Eki

All PLAY, no WORK when AI takes our jobs

Uncanny Valley, by Ideogram AI

Eki nailed it: AI is a new species.  It will  grow up and go to work. Even now, in its teenage stage, it has made a big splash. ChatGPT can record audio books in 95 languages.  A friend was texting.  Up popped :‘I can write this message for you’.  It writes articles, creates illustrations, incl. for the LMP blog.  Eki made an AI copy of my voice to narrate a short video.  Smarter, faster, cheaper than us,  AI doesn’t take time off or get a salary. 

It has made a huge impact in Health Care. AI is more accurate at diagnosing illnesses than human doctors. It discovered two types of testicular cancer: benign (no op  necessary) and the other invasive. In China ‘AskBob’ beat six doctors with more accurate, quicker diagnoses. It assists 1.32m doctors.  A New Zealand company has developed an AI ’doctor’ that looks and acts human. But  humans get an eerie, creepy feeling*  when they’re up-close to an AI bot that looks like us.

A big  stumbling block for AI is the humongous amounts of electricity it uses.  But still, AI will have the biggest impact, good and bad, on our lives since the 19C Industrial revolution - when Luddites wrecked the electric weaving machines. Welcome to the new world.

*"Uncanny Valley":  UUV AI post photography, Palmer gallery, London

Next week: TikTok on the   LOCK

Sources: Economist, BBC, Financial Times, Eki

Note to EKI re. third  party candidates:  in 2020 Ralph Nader got 97,488 votes in Florida.  Al Gore lost in that state to George Bush by 543 votes - the Supreme court wouldn’t allow a re-count. It cost him  the election. In 1996, Ross Perot got 19,743,921 votes.  Bob Dole lost to Bill Clinton. Neither Nader or Perot had a star-power name of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who doesn’t care if he dumps Trump on the US.

Uncanny Valley, by Ideogram AI

Note: I didn't coin the "AI is a new species" thing, got it from a TED talk - by whom, I do not remember right now. And it's not ChatGPT that reads audio books, but rather some other AI.

Which reminds me, the logical follow-up for AI images, videos and voices is AI music. And of course AI nails that too, the likes of Suno and Udio (and soon Elevenlabs Music, by the same company I used to clone Maggy's voice) can create custom songs in any style from heavy rock to classical opera in mere minutes for essentially no money or effort, and the results are rather stunning: like other art generating AI:s, though they still fall short from the crème de la crème, they are better than *most* musicians.

Little Margie's Blues by Udio

When it comes to AI generated art (except perhaps AI video), we are past the uncanny valley - the AI generated humans look real, they sound real. But in robotics we're still on the other side of the valley - sure, the robots are deliberately made to look somewhat like humans or animals, but also still clearly machines. So far there have not been any robots that cross the uncanny valley to the other side, looking and behaving so realistically that they would pass for real humans or animals - all attempts so far look repulsive.

About the elections: Yea, wormbrain may get some votes, but I think more from the Trump conspiracy theorist pool than from Biden's side. 

CU

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Eki