Brilliantly Bad Weekend Edition
Marilyn Monroe chatbots, AI with personality, bullet-proof urban assault vehicles and more!
Mike’s List of Brilliantly Bad Ideas
1. They resurrected Marilyn Monroe in AI form
An AI company called Soul Machines introduced “Digital Marilyn,” an AI chatbot that looks, acts and talks like Marilyn Monroe. They did it in partnership with Authentic Brands Group, which markets “authentic brands” with fake people. Soul Machines used their “Biological AI technology,” which is a set of neural models for facial expressions based on human neurobiology. Digital Marilyn was presented at SXSW as an interactive chatbot, but she’ll no doubt be put to work selling stuff.
2. This AI talks just like a real person
A Silicon Valley-based startup called Inflection just announced that its Pi “personal AI assistant” got an upgraded LLM called Inflection-2.5, which the company claims is as good as OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google’s Gemini, but not as “woke” as Gemini. The company has given its AI a “personality” with “unique empathetic fine-tuning.” It’s actually pretty amazing. You can hear it take a breath before talking, and sometimes it even stumbles over words like a real person. It asks follow up questions. It can quiz you on trivia or give you step by step instructions on how to do things. You can set it to always be listening, and it uses your name sometimes in conversations. Pi is available on the web, and also via iOS, Android and desktop apps.
3. This bullet-proof super truck is perfect for the zombie apocalypse
It’s built on a Ford F-550 chassis, and it’s been customized to be bulletproof and bomb proof. The only downside: It starts at $400,000.
4. Honda wants to turn a Segway-like wheelchair into a VR accessory
Honda recently announced a new “Extended Reality Mobility Experience” at SXSW. They basically want to sell more UNI-ONE self-balancing wheelchairs by rebranding them as a VR experience. Just strap on a VR headset, then you roll around in meatspace just like you do in virtual reality. Try not to roll into traffic.
Mike’s List of Moments
Crime of the moment: “AI tax fraud”
Personality type of the moment: “Apple Vision Bro”
Unicorn variant of the moment: “ZIRPicorn”
Job title of the moment: “booty-shaking multi-hyphenate”
Medium of the moment: “AI-generated books”
Word of the moment “scrolletariat”
Phrase of the moment: “subtly supersonic”
Travel experience of the moment: “burglary tourism”
Mike’s List of Shameless Self-Promotions
AR got its ‘killer app’: GenAI
Wine is a journey. Literally!
The hidden high cost of return-to-office mandates
Meetings are about to get weird
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Mike’s Location: Mexico City, Mexico
(Why Mike is always traveling.)
Great post as usual Mike!