After raising $30 million from investors and generating $5.4 million selling NFTs on marketplace OpenSea, Los Angeles-based entertainment firm Impact Theory LLC has agreed to pay the Securities and Exchange Commission a $6 million settlement in what has been reported as the SEC’s first NFT enforcement action. Impact Theory was accused of selling “unregistered asset securities in the form of purported non-fungible tokens.” Purported, because the SEC claims the NFTs “sold to investors were investment contracts and therefore securities” and as such, are required by law to be registered. Continue reading SEC Treats NFTs as Unregistered Securities, Fines Company

The Biden administration has issued an implementation framework for its National Cybersecurity Strategy, detailing how the federal government plans to regulate digital security issues. The highly anticipated document lists more than 65 initiatives for executing the “five pillars” of the March 2023 U.S. National Cybersecurity Strategy, described as a “bold, affirmative vision for cyberspace.” The implementation takes a two-pronged approach: empowering capable actors who can bear more of the security responsibility, and the need for incentives that facilitate investment in long-term resilience. Continue reading White House Releases Plan for Cybersecurity Implementation

IATSE, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, has adopted what it is calling “Core Principles for Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Technology” in the entertainment industry. Unveiled last week, the document follows the May creation of the group’s Commission on Artificial Intelligence. The activity is meant to convey a proactive approach to the challenges and opportunities ahead. “With AI, the stakes for IATSE members in all crafts is high,” said IATSE International President Matthew Loeb. “There is much work to do, but I am pleased to report the union’s efforts are already well underway.” Continue reading IATSE Unveils Its Core Principles for AI and Machine Learning

While the tech conversation has most recently pivoted to artificial intelligence, Meta Platforms isn’t giving up on the metaverse, though it shifted the focus from fun and games to job training and education at the company’s Future of Work Summit. “When it comes to AR and VR, it’s very obvious to me that one of the most powerful applications is the ability to dramatically improve re-skilling,” Meta’s president of global affairs Nick Clegg said, citing opportunities in skilled trades, teaching and elder care, speaking Tuesday in Washington. Continue reading Meta Touts the Metaverse as Tool for Education, Job Training

For those worried about AI creep — the insidious influence of artificial intelligence over everything from school classwork to career aspirations — Princeton University undergrad Edward Tian has an app for that. Tian has received $3.5 million in funding for an invention called GPTZero, which analyzes text to identify the work of generative AI. The 10-person team claims the tool has a 99 percent accuracy rate for human text and can score at about 85 percent when it comes to text written by AI. The company is now talking to media leaders about partnerships for AI detection and analysis. Continue reading GPTZero Fights Online AI Disinformation, School Plagiarism

A new Goldman Sachs report suggests artificial intelligence could trigger “significant disruption” in the global labor market. In the U.S. and Europe, as many as two-thirds of jobs could become automated at least in part, and generative AI could substitute up to one-fourth of current work. Extrapolating the estimates globally indicates generative AI “could expose the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs to automation,” the report says. Among U.S. workers, of those occupations that present a natural opportunity for AI assistance, somewhere between 25-50 percent of existing duties can be replaced, the Goldman Sachs research team says. Continue reading Report: 300M Global Workers May See Jobs Impacted by AI

Well-funded software startups are springing up to target the enterprise market with generative artificial intelligence technology of the type popularized by ChatGPT. In 2022, global venture-capital investors parked $1.3 billion in more than 78 generative AI startup deals, according to PitchBook Data. That’s nearly as much as the combined capital investment in other tech startups over the past five years, and it came at a time when the broader investment sector was experiencing a slowdown, PitchBook found. Two of Q4’s biggest venture deals were for the generative AI startups Jasper, based in Austin, Texas, and Stability AI, headquartered in London. Continue reading Venture Capital Investors Are Drawn to Generative AI Startups

OpenAI is now allowing third-party developers integrate ChatGPT into their apps, a solution the company says will be a more cost-effective alternative. The language model can be used for more than chat, says OpenAI, which also has a new speech-to-text model called Whisper. The company is also touting gpt-3.5-turbo, calling it the “best model for many non-chat use cases.” With a major investment from Microsoft, and the eyes of the industry on it, OpenAI seems to be feeling some pressure to add earnings to the success it has as a thought leader. Continue reading OpenAI Targets Affordable AI with ChatGPT and Whisper APIs

ChatGPT came too late (end of November) to make a significant impact on CES this year, but the cacophony of opinions about the generative AI model definitely made its way to Vegas. The timing was perfect. Just as the crypto crash left the hype industry paralyzed, OpenAI launched ChatGPT in what now feels like a nerdy and frustrating tech version of the Rolling Stones’ Altamont concert in ’69 (with computer scientists as the Hells Angels). Make no mistake: this is a landmark achievement in machine learning — perhaps the single greatest since the 2006 paper by Hinton, Salakhutdinov, Osindero and Teh on backpropagation in deep neural networks. However, it’s critical that industries, including M&E, distinguish between hype and reality. Continue reading CES: Generative AI Is Having Its ‘War of the Worlds’ Moment

For the most part, exhibitors in the Gaming and Metaverse areas at CES 2023 didn’t touch on the latent problems with consumer adoption of the metaverse. While worlds like “Fortnite” and “Roblox” that draw consistently high MAUs do so because they offer fun mechanics, the many metaverse platforms on exhibit generally did not provide compelling reasons for why companies — much less consumers — should spend time in their worlds. Dimension X’s booth was a standout on the floor, however, as it showcased Bonfire, a soon-to-be-released tool to enable the seamless creation of narrative mechanics within virtual worlds. Continue reading CES: Dimension X Demos Bonfire Virtual Story Creation Tools

OpenAI’s new AI chatbot, ChatGPT, is taking the world by storm. “Quite simply, the best artificial intelligence chatbot ever released to the general public,” is how The New York Times describes ChatGPT, which more than a million people signed up for when it opened for testing last week. Screenshots of ChatGPT conversations blew up Twitter. “Something big is happening,” tweeted one fan. “I just had a 20-minute conversation with ChatGPT about the history of physics … OMG,” offered another. The acronym stands for “generative pre-trained transformer,” a language model that leverages deep learning to respond to text-based input with human-like responses. Continue reading ChatGPT: OpenAI’s New Chatbot Draws Praise and Criticism

On October 22, ETC@USC began a one-week student challenge on “The Future of Themed Experiences.” Leveraging the tools, techniques and resources of today and those that could emerge in the next few years, students were asked to come up with an original idea for an experience that: 1) has a specific location-based experience, and 2) extends the experience out into the real and virtual worlds before and after the person has the location-based experience. Eighteen 3-minute pitch videos were submitted and an esteemed panel of industry executives chose to reward five of them. All 18 videos with follow-up Q&A discussions are available online. Continue reading ETC@USC Student Challenge: Future of Themed Experiences

The White House has issued a “blueprint” for consumer protections with regard to artificial intelligence. Aimed at guiding federal agencies while setting the bar for future legislation, the voluntary directive offers five areas of focus — safety, algorithmic discrimination protection, data privacy, notice, human alternatives — and a section on applying the rules. “Among the great challenges posed to democracy today is the use of technology, data, and automated systems in ways that threaten the rights of the American public,” begins the bill, which says such tools are “too often used” to limit opportunities and prevent access to critical resources or services. Continue reading White House Creates a ‘Blueprint’ of AI Rights for Consumers

Despite speculation that Apple will debut a realityOS (rOS) headset next year, CEO Tim Cook says the metaverse is not yet ready for prime time, telling a European publication he’s “really not sure the average person can tell you what the metaverse is.” On a continental excursion that included a commencement address at the University of Naples Federico II in Italy, Cook appeared bullish on augmented reality, while downplaying virtual reality, the technology around which Meta Platforms is building its future. “I think AR is a profound technology that will affect everything,” Cook told the magazine Bright. Continue reading Cook Hints Apple’s First realityOS Glasses Will Be AR, not VR

Artificial intelligence company D-ID has launched a new presentation platform that can generate video from a single image and text. Creative Reality Studio offers from among 270 voices and 119 languages that users can pair with one of the company’s original avatar creations or an uploaded photo. The product is aimed at markets including education, the metaverse, advertising and sales. The company is offering a limited free 14-day trial, after which users would be required to switch to a $49 per month Pro subscription or higher-end Enterprise plan (pricing available on request). Continue reading D-ID Creative Reality Studio Helps Users Make DIY AI Videos