Nike 3D-printed concept sneakers
NIKE unveils A.I.R, its 13 3D-printed sneakers designed using computational design, generative AI, rapid prototyping, and 3D printers.
Getting closer to synthetic people
Microsoft has released a fascinating new framework for generating lifelike talking faces called VASA-1.
Given a single static image and a speech audio clip, VASA-1 is capable of producing lip movements that are synchronized with the audio and capture a large spectrum of facial nuances and natural head motions.
See more here, read the paper here and here.
Getting worried you’ll be replaced by AI yet? If this gets perfected (it’s not perfect yet, but the results get better and better each year), then you can pretty much get rid of any ‘talking head’ jobs.
This could also be used to fool people on conference calls where video quality would totally render any minor glitches as unnoticeable or easily ignored as just streaming artifacts.
Just slap the CEO’s face into this, set up a conference call with finance via some very easy phishing, and approve that $1m transfer to your Swiss bank account.
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Teaching your robot to do chores
A household robot can learn how to do almost any chore in about 20 minutes when taught by a human using an iPhone camera and a grabber.
Mahi Shafiullah at New York University and his colleagues created a way to teach robots that involves using the grabber equipped with an iPhone to train the operation.
Luma AI Genie
Luma Labs Genie can take a text prompt and generate a 3D model for you. You can inspect and download it in a variety of standard formats.
They seem to do a much better job than some of the earlier generative AI methods I wrote about before (like DreamFusion).
LumaLabs AI also has an AI powered 3D scene capture technology that looks very good as well.
3D from 2D photographs
Emm used her iPhone 12 Pro + @Scenario3d iphone app to generate this 3D image of her daughter.
Scenario makes a number of products. Read more about Scenario3d here.
LumiLabs also has some of their own offerings to capture scenes.
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AI based fighter pilots – now for real
Back in 2016, I wrote about how a grad student created a fighter pilot AI that was able to defeat a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Gene “Geno” Lee. It was so good that it didn’t do it just once. It shot him down every time.
Fast forward just 8 years and now there is the real thing.
The US military has tested an AI-controlled F16 named X-62A in a dogfight with an actual test pilot. The Variable Stability In-flight Simulator Test Aircraft, or “VISTA” for short, is essentially a modified F16 fighter jet controlled by AI that has previously conducted multiple test flights to demonstrate the capabilities of its artificial pilot (via The Telegraph).
In a press release, the USAF Test Pilot School and DARPA revealed that they initially tested various defensive maneuvers with the AI controlled jet to establish initial in-flight safety, before engaging in air-to-air simulated combat with another F16 in the skies above Edwards air force base in California last year.
It’s not clear if the tested dogfights were limited purely to aerial combat maneuvers with simulated weapons fire or how it did against live pilots. However, a previous AI developed by Heron Systems as part of a DARPA tournament was able to defeat a human pilot in five out of five tested scenarios.
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NVIDIA Instant NeRF
nVidia released software that turns 2D photos Into 3D scenes using a AI augmented, CUDA powered NeRF generator (neural radiance fields).
Learn more about Instant NeRFs: https://nvda.ws/3AU5wgA
Tutorial on how to make a 3D render from 2D photos: https://nvda.ws/3ciMLJI
Find the code on GitHub: https://github.com/NVlabs/instant-ngp
More Instant NeRF creators: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2022/08...
AI generated short films using LTX Studio
AI video platform LTX Studio is now open for users to get stuck in and make short films, storyboards and other generative productions all from a simple text prompt. Simply type the film idea or a full synopsis of your desired creation and then set the visual aesthetic, aspect ratio, inspiration and your virtual casting for a selection of AI generated characters.
It utilizes dozens of AI models to generate the script, add voice narration, background music, sound effects, and generate the image and video elements.
Other AI video tools create more realistic video, speech tools with more realistic speech and lip sync available in both Pika Labs and Runway — but for each of those you still have to make a series of short clips and they have poor character consistency.
It has a lot of limitations; but it absolutely could be used for previsualization and concept pieces.
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Generating a music video from a text prompt
Sora is an artificial intelligence video generator that is capable of producing multi-shot clips of a minute or longer from nothing more than a text prompt — but so far only a select few have used it to create content. OpenAI is working on security issues and slowly rolling it out this year.
One of the artists given early access to Sora is August Kamp, a musician, researcher and creative activist. She described Sora as representing a “turning point” for artists as it means the only limitation on visuals is the human imagination.
“Taking these pictures that I’ve held onto [in my mind] for two years and saying ‘August – we can share these with folks’. that’s what I think is special about this tool,” she said.
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Google DeepMind Trained Robots Playing Soccer
Google developed a deep reinforcement learning–based framework for full-body control of humanoid robots, enabling a game of one-versus-one soccer. The robots exhibited emergent behaviors in the form of dynamic motor skills such as the ability to recover from falls and also tactics like defending the ball against an opponent.
Pretty cool. I wonder when we’ll finally replace athletes and replace them with robots.
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