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

--

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