Advertisement
Image
Credit...
Beware of A.I. slop
I recently asked my daughter about the word “slop.” She gave me a giant eye roll and explained that slop was A.I.-generated content — like duh, Mom. That made me determined to know more about it than she does, so I contacted my colleague Kevin Roose.
Kevin co-hosts “Hard Fork,” a podcast that is part comedy, part cutting-edge tech chat. Tune in for the great banter with his co-host, Casey Newton! Kevin is also living proof that being a tech nerd presents serious romantic pitfalls.
Two years ago, the Microsoft/OpenAI chatbot Sydney fell hard for Kevin an…
Advertisement
Image
Credit...
Beware of A.I. slop
I recently asked my daughter about the word “slop.” She gave me a giant eye roll and explained that slop was A.I.-generated content — like duh, Mom. That made me determined to know more about it than she does, so I contacted my colleague Kevin Roose.
Kevin co-hosts “Hard Fork,” a podcast that is part comedy, part cutting-edge tech chat. Tune in for the great banter with his co-host, Casey Newton! Kevin is also living proof that being a tech nerd presents serious romantic pitfalls.
Two years ago, the Microsoft/OpenAI chatbot Sydney fell hard for Kevin and told him to leave his wife. Now Sora, a brand-new A.I. app from OpenAI, has generated a video (see above) showing Kevin flirting with a robot (“Your presence causes my circuits to overheat”). It was a full-circle moment that shows just how fast this stuff is moving.
So Kevin, let’s talk about slop. All the big tech companies are currently launching these A.I. video apps where you can generate synthetic video content on your phone. You showed me the video of you from Sora.
It looks so real — it’s insane! Tell me about Sora.
It is insane!
In order to use Sora, which is currently only available in the United States and Canada, you have to be invited by a friend. Once you sign up, it asks you to create what it calls a cameo of you. So you say a few words into the camera. You move your head around a little bit. And it uses this to create a digital likeness of you that you can then drop into any situation.
You can change your settings so that any of your friends on the app can do the same thing with your digital likeness. A Sora user created the video above by instructing the app: “An ’80s rom-com set in New York City. We see a young and preppy @kevinroose falling in love with a robot made of found parts and a CRT monitor. They are on a picnic date in Central Park.”
Love it. How does it work?
In a nutshell, these models work by predicting the next chunk of video in a sequence. They’re based on the same underlying technology that powers ChatGPT and other text-based models, and they’re trained on massive amounts of data scraped from the internet. Eventually, they learn patterns in how the world looks and moves, so when you give it a prompt, it can imagine how that scene would unfold over time.
How popular is this likely to become?
Judging by my social media feeds, I think A.I.-generated video is going to be a hit. I’m not sure whether an all-A.I. social media app like Sora will be big, or whether people are just going to use it to generate clips to post on TikTok, Instagram, and in their group chats. But people seem to be having a lot of fun putting their friends into silly clips.
What’s happening in this space around the world, in China and elsewhere?
ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, is building its own video-generation models, and you can see some of their A.I. effects in TikTok today. Black Forest Labs, a German start-up, is also working with Meta on its new video-generation app, Vibes.
My teenage kids are excited — they see this as an opportunity to create stuff, like a movie without the Hollywood budget. But the ways this can be abused seem endless. What are you worried about?
I’m worried about these apps being used to generate hyper-realistic A.I. deepfakes and further erode our information ecosystem. It’s trivially easy to generate, for example, a fake video of a politician accepting a bribe or saying something incriminating.
I’m also worried about the social and mental health effects of giving everyone on earth access to an infinite library of hyper-personalized, ultra-stimulating A.I.-generated media. (If you thought phone addiction was bad now, wait until everything on the phone is generated specifically for you!)
Are there ways to safeguard against the dark side of this?
Big A.I. companies can (and will) try to clamp down on some of the worst abuses of these systems with content filters, prohibitions on using copyrighted material and public figure likenesses without permission, watermarks, etc. But there will almost certainly be smaller outfits who don’t take those precautions, or open-source video models that can be used without restrictions.
Unfortunately, I think the A.I.-generated cat is out of the bag.
MORE TOP NEWS
Image
Credit...Saher Alghorra for The New York Times; David Guttenfelder/The New York Times
Israel approves first phase of Gaza deal
The Israeli government approved an agreement that paves the way for a halt in fighting in Gaza, the return of all remaining hostages held by Hamas and the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
That approval came hours after President Trump and the chief Hamas negotiator each declared that the war in Gaza was over. But whether the conflict is truly at an end is still unclear: Some of the most difficult issues appeared to have been left to a future phase of negotiations, including whether Hamas would lay down its weapons.
Trump said that he would travel to the Middle East this weekend to attend the signing of the agreement. The U.S. will also send 200 troops to Israel monitor the cease-fire, joining soldiers from Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
**Analysis: **Many expected Hamas to reject Trump’s plan. The group is taking a risk by agreeing to release the remaining hostages in Gaza.
OTHER NEWS
A powerful earthquake struck off the coast of a southern island in the Philippines this morning, triggering a tsunami warning.
A grand jury indicted Letitia James, New York’s attorney general and one of Trump’s most high-profile opponents, on bank fraud and false statement charges. Trump had pressured the Justice Department to seek charges against her.
James’s indictment comes two weeks after the Trump-directed indictment of James Comey, the former F.B.I. director. Here’s how the U.S. president is targeting his enemies.
Russia took responsibility for downing an Azerbaijani passenger plane last year, as it tries to heal a rift with its ally.
China announced that it was tightening export restrictions on rare earth metals, which are essential to the manufacture of smartphones and electric cars.
A judge in the U.S. temporarily blocked the deployment of National Guard troops in the Chicago area, calling the Trump administration’s justifications “simply unreliable.”
A French court rejected the appeal of one of the men convicted of raping Gisèle Pelicot, adding a year to his sentence.
Germany’s chancellor teamed up with carmakers to urge the E.U. to ease its vehicle emissions policy.
The American appetite for avocados has led to illegal deforestation in Mexico. A new satellite monitoring program will block violators from the U.S. market.
SPORTS
Football: The beautiful game is being drawn into Britain’s culture wars.
**Formula 1: **A prominent driver criticized the focus on “famous people and girlfriends.”
N.F.L.: When teams play in London, expect things to get uncomfortable.
SENTENCE OF THE DAY
“We must continue, then, to denounce the dictatorship of an economy that kills.”
— An excerpt from Pope Leo XIV’s first major policy document, released yesterday. Leo urged people to defend and protect the most vulnerable.
MORNING READ
Image
Credit...Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
The Hungarian novelist Laszlo Krasznahorkai won this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”
Hailed as a “master of the apocalypse,” Krasznahorkai has long been revered by fellow writers for dystopian narratives that are slyly humorous. Among his best-known works is “The Melancholy of Resistance,” which follows events in a small Hungarian town after a circus arrives with a huge stuffed whale. Read more.
AROUND THE WORLD
Image
Credit...Lauren DeCicca for The New York Times
How they’re styling hair in … Thailand
Can long hair be a sign of a healthy democracy? Many Thai students think so.
For decades, Thai schools have been policing uniforms and hair: Crew cuts were OK. Dyed hair or long bangs were definitely not. Breaking the rules could lead to a humiliating haircut in class.
The restrictions, which were introduced by a military government in 1972, were struck down by a court this year. But many schools still enforce them. “Those in power want to turn us into citizens who are easy to rule,” one student activist said. Read more.
RECIPE
Image
Credit...Tom Schierlitz for The New York Times
Some old recipes are relics. Others, like Evelyn Sharpe’s French chocolate cake from 1969, seem timeless.
Dense yet permeable. Rich but not ridiculously so. And a wonderful showcase for good chocolate. A reader in Scotland offered this tip: “Prepare it with a bit of whiskey and serve it with raspberry coulis and mint.”
WHERE IS THIS?
Image
Credit...Simbarashe Cha for The New York Times
BEFORE YOU GO …
One of the best things about writing a newsletter called The World is that I don’t have to say “soccer” when I mean football. And I don’t have to convert kilometers into miles or Celsius into Fahrenheit.
As a correspondent writing for a mostly American audience, I’ve spent the past two decades engaged in these little acts of translation, and it’s a relief to be back among my fellow metric system users.
All this makes me think of my favorite “Saturday Night Live” skit: George Washington, played by Nate Bargatze, gives a pep talk to American revolutionaries about what it means to be a free country. (“I dream that one day our proud nation will measure weights in pounds, and that 2,000 pounds shall be called a ton.”) Watch it if you want a wholesome lol.
Finally, another world-themed song for your Friday. This one is a feisty gem from Brazil: Di Melo’s “Se O Mundo Acabasse Em Mel” (“If the World Ended in Honey”). Thanks for the inspo (you know who you are). Please keep it coming. I’ll be listening to this with a cup of tea (or something stiffer) on this beautiful 16 degree Celsius day.
Have a great weekend. — Katrin
Katrin Bennhold is the host of The World, the flagship global newsletter of The New York Times.
Advertisement