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Brian McCullough
Welcome to the Tech Meme Ride home for Wednesday, November 27, 2024. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, OpenAI has suspended access to Sora after an activist stunt. Anyone can train AI on your Blue sky post, but that is by design. In a way. Elon is readying a straight chat GPT competitor and of course the weekend long Read Suggestions here's what you missed today in the world of Tech Sora, that AI video generating tool is down. Nobody can use it. Why? Because OpenAI has taken it down. Why? Apparently it is in response to a group of artists leaking access to the tool in protest of the company's treatment of creative professionals. In other words, a protest has taken it down. First, here's the details on the protest from TechCrunch. On Tuesday, the group published a project on the AI dev platform hugging face, seemingly connected to OpenAI's Sora API, which isn't yet publicly available. Using their authentication tokens, presumably from an early access system, the group created a front end that lets users generate videos with Sora. Through the group's front end, any user can generate 10 second videos of up to 1080p resolution by typing a short text description. When TechCrunch tried, the queue was quite long, but several users on X managed to upload samples, most of which bore OpenAI's distinctive visual watermark. As of 12:01pm Eastern, the front end was no longer working. We'd venture to guess that OpenAI and or hugging Face revoked access. The group claims that after three hours, OpenAI shut down Sora's early access temporarily for all artists. So why did the group do this? It claims that OpenAI is pressuring Sora's early testers, including Red Teamers and creative partners, to spin a positive narrative around Sora and failing to fairly compensate them for their work. Hundreds of artists provide unpaid labor through bug testing, feedback and experimental work for the Sora early access program for a $150 billion valued company, the group, which calls itself Sora PR Puppets, wrote in a post attached to the front end. This early access program appears to be less about creative expression and critique and more about PR and advertisement. The group didn't originally identify its members, but over the course of the day it began to list out a few in the attachment on Hugging Face and a separate petition. The group also claims that OpenAI is being misleading about Sora's capabilities by keeping Early Access users on a tight leash. Every Sora output needs to be approved by OpenAI before it's shared widely. The group says, and only a few creators in the program will be selected to have their SORA created works screened. We are not against the use of AI technology as a tool for the arts. If we were, we probably wouldn't have been invited to this program, the group wrote. What we don't agree with is how this artist program has been rolled out and how the tool is shaping up ahead of a possible public release. We are sharing this to the world in the hopes that OpenAI becomes more open, more artist friendly, and supports the arts beyond PR stunts and from the post the fallout OpenAI spokesperson Nico Felix said the company is temporarily pausing all user access to Sora while it looks into the situation. Hundreds of artists in our alpha have shaped sora's development, helping prioritize new features and safeguards, felix wrote in a statement from OpenAI. Participation is voluntary, with no obligation to provide feedback or use the tool. So more of a creative protest than a hack, almost an art world style stunt. Rather than breaching OpenAI system systems or exposing confidential data, they simply shared their authorized testing capabilities more broadly than intended. Typically, AI companies maintain tight control over external testing, carefully selecting their early access partners and often requiring NDAs or content approval processes before any generated outputs can be shared publicly. It's an approach that keeps feedback channels highly curated and criticism largely behind closed doors. While this controlled testing methodology, known in cybersecurity circles as red teaming, has become an industry standard, even adopted by government agencies, there's growing pushback from both security experts and creative professionals. The critique centers on how these restrictive practices may actually hinder genuine oversight, limit independent analysis, and shield companies from meaningful public accountability. In many ways, this incident highlights the tension between controlled development and transparent innovation in AI, at least for policing the content produced on the topic of AI ethics, did you know that anyone can scrape anything posted on bluesky and use it to train AI? That's because their API is open by default. Bluesky was forced to address this after a Hugging Face employee posted a Data set of 1 million posts from its API for machine learning research, quoting 404 Media. The data isn't anonymous. In the dataset, each post is listed alongside the user's decentralized identifier or did. Vanstren also made a search tool for finding users based on their DID and published it on Hugging Face. A quick skim through the first few hundred of the million posts shows people doing normal types of blue sky posting, arguing about politics, talking about concerts, saying stuff like the cat is gay and When's the last time y'all had Boston baked beans. But the dataset has also swept up a lot of adult content too. It's also noteworthy that it's a snapshot of time on bluesky, meaning it could and probably does include since deleted posts. This data set could be used for training and testing language models on social media content, analyzing social media posting patterns, studying conversation structures and reply networks, research on social media content moderation and natural language processing tasks using social media data. The project page says out of scope use includes building automated posting systems for Blue sky, creating fake or impersonated content, extracting personal information about users, and any purpose that violates bluesky's terms of service. The dataset is already popular as of writing, it's one of the top trending hugging face projects. End Quote BlueSky sent this statement to 404quote BlueSky is an open and public social network, much like websites on the Internet itself. Just as robots Txt files don't always prevent outside companies from crawling those sites, the same applies here. We'd like to find a way for bluesky users to communicate to outside org's developers whether they'd consent to this and that. Outside orgs respect user consent, and we're actively discussing how to achieve this. End quote that's the thing. Some people were mad at X for explicitly training on user posts. But the whole thing about being at least in part open source and decentralized, as BlueSkype purports to be, is that means all of your content is just out there. Sources are telling the Journal that XAI plans to launch a consumer app as soon as next month. The Elon Musk Run startup built its Colossus Data center, which houses 100,000 GPUs in just 122 days, which again is blowing people's minds. Quoting the Journal, Investors have bought into Musk's vision for xai, or at least his record of success. The startup has raised at least $11 billion and increased its valuation to $50 billion in a new funding round this month, making it the second most valuable private AI developer behind OpenAI as a money making venture. Though XAI barely registers, the startup told investors its revenue is on pace to surpass $100 million annually. OpenAI expects to bring in nearly $4 billion of revenue this year. Most of XAI's revenue has come from Musk's own web of companies. XAI's main product, its Grok Chatbot, is available only to the subscribers of his social network, X. The startup is powering customer support features for SpaceX's Starlink Internet service. People with knowledge of the it is also expected to help create new AI features for X's search engine, one of the people said. The startup has discussed a deal with Tesla whereby XAI would get some Tesla revenue in exchange for providing the carmaker with access to its technology and resources. Now XAI is trying to stand on its own. Earlier this month, it released a paid tool developers can use to build products using Grok, offering discounts as an incentive. As soon as next month, it plans to launch a standalone consumer app like ChatGPT, according to people familiar with the matter. In pitches to potential employees and investors, Musk's team has touted two advantages in the race to build the most powerful AI. One is exclusive data from X and Tesla being used to train xai's models. Second is an obsessive focus on building bigger data centers faster than his competitors. The One in Memphis, Tennessee, dubbed Colossus, was constructed in 122 days and uses 100,000 graphic processing units, or GPUs, from Nvidia, making it one of the largest clusters of chips to develop and run AI technology in the world. XAI has told investors that it will use some of the 5 billion it raised in this month's funding round to double the number of chips in Colossus, and that it plans to raise more money next year, according to people familiar with the matter. End quote an analysis suggests that over 54% of longer English language posts on LinkedIn are likely AI generated. LinkedIn says it doesn't track how many posts are created by AI, quoting Wired. The Microsoft owned social media site for business professionals has embraced AI, even offering LinkedIn Premium subscribers access to its own in house AI writing tools that can rewrite posts, profiles and direct messages. The initiative appears to be working. Over 54% of longer English language posts on LinkedIn are likely AI generated, according to a new analysis shared exclusively with Wired by the AI detection startup Originality AI it's just that the corporate speak style of AI writing on the platform can be tricky to distinguish from genuine human penned thought leader blogging. Originality scanned A sample of 8,795 public LinkedIn posts over 100 words long that were published from January 2018 to October 2024. For the first few years, the use of AI writing tools on LinkedIn was negligible. A major increase then occurred at the beginning of 2023. The uptick happened when ChatGPT came out, says Originality CEO John Gillum. At that point, Originality found the number of likely AI generated posts had spiked 189%. It has since leveled off LinkedIn users who spoke to Wired. They rely more on general purpose large language models to cobble their LinkedIn posts together rather than bothering with specialty AI tools. Content writer Aletano Sebastian says she uses Anthropic's Claude to spin off rough drafts of posts she creates on behalf of clients in the tech industry. Of course, there's a lot of editing done after, she says, but the chatbot still helps me save a lot of time. Something something I refer you to my question yesterday about my AI avatar experiment. This episode is brought to you by Incogni. Incogni is a service that helps protect your personal data from data brokers who collect, aggregate and sell it. Incogni reaches out to data brokers on your behalf and requests your personal data removal with the Family and Friends plan. You can also add up to four members to your subscription. And since many data brokers continue collection of your personal information even after after they've removed it, Incogni makes sure your data stays off the market by conducting repeated removal requests. Incogni will handle any objections from data brokers and keep you updated on their progress every step of the way. Take control of your data Privacy today. Visit incogni.com, sign up and enjoy a 30 day money back guarantee to ensure you're completely satisfied with their service. Take your personal data back with Incogni. Use Ride Home at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan incog.com ride home that's incogni I n c o g n I.com ride home and use code ride home to get 60% off their annual plan. Today's episode is sponsored by the Washington Post, but you don't really need me to tell you about the Washington Post when it comes to their tech coverage because I quote from them all the time. Back of the envelope. I think they're easily in the top three of sources we quote from on this show. But it's not just tech that they're good at, they're one of my personal go tos for things beyond tech too. I even signed up to get the Posts for you newsletter, which sends me my very own personalized roundup of stories every evening based on my interest in reading history. Their app makes it easy for me to stay up to date on the latest news, save and share stories, and follow my favorite authors. The Post even offers a cool feature for audio lovers like you. You can actually listen to articles in addition to reading them so you can tackle your to do list and catch up on the news at the same time. Now more than ever, it's important to stay up to date on the world. So go to washingtonpost.com ride to subscribe for just 50 cents per week for your first year. That's 80% off their typical offer, so this is truly a steal. Once again, that's washingtonpost.com ride to subscribe for just 50 cents per week for your first year. Time for the week on long read suggestions first up according to the New York Times, US coding boot camp graduates are facing a tough job market due to AI coding tools and recent mass layoffs. According to Comptia, developer job listings are down 56% since 2019. Quote between the time Mr. Rendon applied for the coding boot camp and the time he graduated, what Mr. Rendon imagined as a golden ticket to a better life had expired. About 135,000 startup and tech industry workers were laid off from their jobs, according to one count. At the same time, new artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT and online chatbot from OpenAI, which could be used as coding assistance, were quickly becoming mainstream and the outlook for coding jobs was shifting. Mr. Rennan says he didn't land a single interview. Coding boot camp graduates across the country are facing a similarly tough job market. In Philadelphia, Mal Durham, a lawyer who wanted to change careers, was about halfway through a part time coding boot camp late last year when its organizers with the nonprofit Launch Code, delivered disappointing news. They said, here is what the hiring metrics look like. Things are down, the number of opportunities is down, she said. It was really disconcerting. In Boston, Dan Pickett, the founder of a bootcamp called Launch Academy, decided in May to pause his courses indefinitely because his job placement rates, once as high as 90%, had dwindled to below 60%. I loved what we're doing, he said. We served the market. We changed a lot of lives. The team didn't want that to turn sour. Compared with five years ago, the number of active job postings for software developers has dropped 56%, according to data compiled by Comptia. For inexperienced developers, the plunge is an even worse 67%. I would say this is the worst environment for entry level jobs in tech, period, that I've seen in 25 years, said Venki Gnason, a partner at the venture capital firm Menlo Ventures. And from the Verge, a look at a lawsuit that has the potential to completely upend the influencer industry. She runs what is essentially a one woman marketing operation making product recommendations, trying on outfits and convincing people to buy things they often don't really need. Every time someone purchases something using her affiliate link, she gets a kickback shopping Influencers like her have figured out how to build a career off of someone else's impulse buys. But all of this the videos, the big house her earnings could come crashing down. SHIELD is currently embroiled in a court case centered on the very content that is her livelihood, a Texas lawsuit in which she is being sued for damages that could reach into the millions. In her lawsuit, Gifford alleges that Scheele copied her down to the specific frames and videos. She claims that repeated pattern and Scheele's uncannily similar content ultimately cut into Gifford's own earnings. The similarities extend in Gifford telling beyond just video content to eerie real life aspects like her manner of speaking, appearance and even tattoos. Schiel and Gifford are but two among the many influencers making money through Amazon's program, but their case could have paradigm shifting consequences for everyone else. Gifford is suing Scheele for a litany of offenses stemming from what she sees as the two women's strikingly similar videos and photos on social media. The case has potentially wide reaching implications for influencers and creators, but it stems from a familiar, even ordinary complaint. Gifford says Scheele won't stop stop copying her. In a complaint filed in the Western District of Texas this spring, Gifford accuses Scheele of willful, intentional and purposeful copyright infringement. In dozens of posts across platforms like TikTok and Instagram, Gifford says there's been a pattern of copying days or weeks after she would share photos or videos promoting an Amazon product, she'll shared her own content doing the same thing. In dozens of cases, Gifford says the angle, tone or the text on Scheele's post ripped off hers. Exhibits submitted in the court include nearly 70 pages of side by side screenshots collected by Gifford compared comparing her social media posts, personal website and other platforms where she says she'll copied her. In one instance, Gifford promoted gold earrings in the shape of a bow, modeling them by gently swooping her hair back to show them off. Just a few days later, Schiel posted her own photos of the same earrings, similarly photographed. In another example submitted to the court, Gifford unboxes and then tries on a white two piece top and short set. A few weeks later, Schiel did the same. The pattern continued for around a year, Gifford alleges. If Gifford's legal argument is successful, it could mean any influencer making content in an established genre could be liable, even though in general copyright law limits liability for use of genre tropes. The really hard part for the plaintiffs in this case is to prove that in these photos and videos there is something protectable by copyright, that there is creativity going on here that was copied, says Blake Reid, associate professor of law at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The photos in question are relatively banal images of a figure wearing generic clothing, a shot of a desk with a chair tucked in halfway. Shield's lawyers argue that the imagery Gifford claims was ripped off is actually just standard fare for influencer content that reappears again and again and which nobody can lay claim to. It's the Amazon hall equivalent of swinging saloon doors in a country western film, reid explains. Reed says the outcome of Gifford's lawsuit will depend on whether a judge or jury takes influencer content seriously as a creative endeavor. On one hand, it could be framed as low value commercial content that all looks the same. In which case Gifford's lawsuit could be seen as an attempt to lay claim a template of mass produced marketing, something that copyright law isn't really for. But a judge might see influencer content as having enough creative weight to merit bringing copyright law into the picture. It depends a lot on what judge lands this and how they perceive it and how it gets framed in the litigation, he says. End quote. All right, as mentioned, it's Thanksgiving tomorrow here in the US So I won't talk to you again until Monday. I will leave you with two bonus episodes though, from RAD History. I tried to pick two that had a tech or business angle. So tomorrow listen for the history of the answering machine. There's tons of stuff about tech, regulation and monopolies and stuff. It's deeper than just did you leave a joke on your outgoing message? Believe me. And the one on Friday will be the one Farhad Manju and I did last week on the Challenger Disaster. Again, lots of tech and science there, so enjoy those. And if you check out the RAD History feed, the episode that dropped today is on the TV show America's Funniest Home Videos. Why? Well, think of the content that was on that show. User generated content, I argue. It was the first reality show, but also YouTube before YouTube, TikTok before TikTok. In a world of social media, is it all America's funniest home videos? All the way down. Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate. Talk to you on Monday.
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AT&T Business
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