Social Signals by GREG SWAN

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What's up with those 9 box A.I. images all over social media feeds?
gregswan.substack.com

What's up with those 9 box A.I. images all over social media feeds?

Greg Swan
Jun 17
2
Share this post
What's up with those 9 box A.I. images all over social media feeds?
gregswan.substack.com

A.I. won't take our jobs, but it will continue to change them.

The latest A.I. trending topic is DALL-E 2, an Open A.I. technology that generates realistic images and art from a description you assign it. Some of the results are incredibly creative, unique, and often hard to distinguish between a human or computer creator.

There is ongoing research into this technology's opportunity, biases, abuse, and implications, but it's clear even in the early days that A.I. is going to affect content in our digital-first world sooner than any of us predicted. And it’s really exciting!!

Casey Newton summarized the social signals I’m picking up around this tool really well:

I remember the first time I Shazam’d a song, summoned an Uber, and streamed myself live using Meerkat. What makes these moments stand out, I think, is the sense that some unpredictable set of new possibilities had been unlocked. What would the web become when you could easily add video clips to it? When you could summon any file to your phone from the cloud? When you could broadcast yourself to the world?

It’s been a few years since I saw the sort of nascent technology that made me call my friends and say: you’ve got to see this. But this week I did, because I have a new one to add to the list. It’s an image generation tool called DALL-E, and while I have very little idea of how it will eventually be used, it’s one of the most compelling new products I’ve seen since I started writing this newsletter.

And of course, not only is it exciting technology, but it’s also unsurprisingly already being used to create deepfake scenarios that show how damaging and negatively impactful this tech could be (e.g., Obama secretly starting forest fires by tossing cigarette butts into dry grass). Lots to consider here.

Beyond the larger DALLE-2 research tool, there’s a also self-serve tool called DALLE-E Mini that anyone can use today to try some low-effort, low-quality results featuring 9 examples. When screenshotted and shared in social media, they can be GOLDEN.

Here’s a Twitter thread of almost 50 I’ve made so far, and I’ll include a few here…

Twitter avatar for @gregswanGreg Swan @gregswan
The dude from the big Lebowski in a delorean on mars, synthwave, digital art #dallemini
Image
Image

June 13th 2022

1 Like
Twitter avatar for @gregswanGreg Swan @gregswan
Shrek in the Oval Office #dallemini
Image

June 12th 2022

1 Like
Twitter avatar for @gregswanGreg Swan @gregswan
a lumberjack sitting at an office desk working on a computer while drinking coffee #dallemini
Image

June 8th 2022

2 Likes

Although A.I. for copywriting has gotten quite detailed and user-friendly, this is quite a shift for images. We’re already seeing this technology spread to pop culture via memes, which is the fastest way to spread awareness of a new creative tool in our current era. Also, you’ll note the tool is janky AF. It consistently times out, the outputs are terrible, and–just like any other tool–you have to really learn how to give it good inputs to get better outputs.

But this is an important signal and a new technology worth paying attention to, experimenting with, and thinking about short and long-term implications. It’s not going away, so this is a good time to jump in and get your hands dirty to learn something new. Click here and get to making!

🐦 Some Good Socials

Twitter avatar for @leyawnleon @leyawn
the ai art thing is fake. i’m the guy who has to draw all the requests like the chess player inside the mechanical turk. you’re torturing me. i spend every waking hour drawing shit like “joe biden asuka wedding” and “donkey kong nuremberg trials” please stop. i need to sleep

June 10th 2022

28,995 Retweets247,643 Likes
Twitter avatar for @ak92501AK @ak92501
dalle-mini web demo, made with <60 lines of python code using @Gradio, > 50 million images generated per day, thanks @borisdayma demo:
huggingface.co/spaces/dalle-m… code: github.com/borisdayma/dal…
Image
Image

June 14th 2022

49 Retweets352 Likes
Twitter avatar for @ijustineiJustine ✨ @ijustine
I was nervously awaiting the person sitting next to me on my flight when we got off to ask how I was able to scroll nonstop on tiktok for 3 hours.. thankfully he did not.

June 9th 2022

39 Retweets1,823 Likes
Twitter avatar for @harrymccrackenHarry McCracken 🇺🇦 @harrymccracken
I thought the metaverse was supposed to be better than real life.
businesswire.com/news/home/2022…®-Collaborate-on-First-Ever-Exclusive-Arena-Naming-Rights-in-the-Metaverse-with-iHeartLand

June 8th 2022

4 Likes
Twitter avatar for @jonstephens85Jonathan Stephens @jonstephens85
Follow along as I do a series of structured @Apple RoomPlan tests and share my findings/notes in this thread. First up, I tried tricking RoomPlan with a large mirror. Surprisingly it wasn't fooled! Also, it was way off on french doors height. #WWDC22 #AR #ARKit #AI @Scobleizer

June 7th 2022

148 Retweets787 Likes
Twitter avatar for @SadlyItsBradleyBrad Lynch @SadlyItsBradley
Apple showing off models of Full Body Tracking via Machine Learning Impressive since she is wearing a dress and you cannot see her legs!

June 7th 2022

99 Retweets620 Likes

🔥 Quick Hits

  • Engadget: TikTok adds new screen time controls to remind users to take breaks.

  • Mashable: The 27 best and funniest tweets of 2022, so far.

  • Slate: How fandom built (and broke) the internet.

  • Fortune: 50 stocks to watch now as a ‘new world order’ takes shape.

  • MIT Tech Review: Money is about to enter a new era of competition.

  • Fortnite Lookbook: Season 3 Battle 3 Outfits.

  • Retail Dive: Amazon launches virtual try-on for shoes.

  • The Verge: Facebook’s algorithm change will copy TikTok and focus on algorithm more than people you follow.

  • Popular Science: Apple’s passkeys could be better than passwords. Here’s how they’ll work.

  • Cointelegraph: Netscape creator says Web3 really is like the rise of the early internet.

  • Mac Rumours: Everything Apple announced at today’s WWDC 2022 Keynote in 13 minutes.

  • TikTok of the Week: 1971 VW Beetle prototype was one of the first functional car navigation systems, which was based on prerecorded cassette tapes.

See you on the internet!
Greg

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