Is the future about one all-knowing AI or many? The new app Poe gets you ready to chat with them all
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Wednesday, February 8, 2023
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Is the future about one all-knowing AI or many? The new app Poe gets you ready to chat with them allPoe lets you use ChatGPT alongside a new rival named Claude — which seems to work better in important ways. By Joshua Benton. |
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Can journalism’s “reckoning” with racism progress to accountability — and redress?“The magic — because magic can be good or bad — of narrative is that it can counteract your lived experience.” By Tamar Sarai, Prism. |
What We’re Reading
Semafor / Max Tani
Media company Ozy is attempting a comeback →
“After walking out to Rick Ross' ‘Every Day I'm Hustlin,’ the CEO didn't touch on the federal investigation into his company or extremely public implosion.”
Boston Globe / Dana Gerber
A new bill in Massachusetts could subsidize local newspaper subscriptions →
“The bill, introduced by Representative Jeffrey Rosario Turco in mid-January, would institute a new tax credit reimbursing any Massachusetts resident up to $250 a year for the cost of subscribing to local newspapers.”
New York Times / Thomas B. Edsall
These researchers are working on getting Americans to hate each other less →
But is their quest futile? One researcher told the Times that the whole endeavor “to fix anti-democratic attitudes by changing levels of partisan animosity sounds promising, but it is like trying to heal a broken bone in a gangrenous leg when the real problem is the car accident that caused both injuries in the first place.”
Washington Post / Jeremy Barr
NBC and MSNBC employees plan to walk out in protest of layoffs →
"There was a general vibe of: If we're not going to walk out over illegal layoffs, what are we doing here?"
New York Times / Adam Satariano and Paul Mozur
The news anchors are fake. The disinformation is real. →
“The two broadcasters, purportedly anchors for a news outlet called Wolf News, are not real people. They are computer-generated avatars created by artificial intelligence software. And late last year, videos of them were distributed by pro-China bot accounts on Facebook and Twitter, in the first known instance of ‘deepfake’ video technology being used to create fictitious people as part of a state-aligned information campaign.”
POLITICO / Melissa Cooke
Politico plans a major expansion in California →
“Our expansion in California is among the most exciting and ambitious journalistic ventures POLITICO has embarked on since Brussels … It's time to increase our ranks in the nation's largest state – and in Sacramento in particular.”
Axios / Sara Fischer
Media braces for the generative AI era →
“It’s an undoing of the robotic behavior with which we were already committing journalism, because it’s questionable whether writing about National Donut Day really served anybody.”
The Cut / Angelina Chapin
Former employees say the Good Morning American affair is part of a pattern at ABC News →
“GMA seemed like it was staffed by high school students … who ‘learned how to do news in the '80s when people were still doing blow in the bathroom.'”
Vice / Joseph Cox
Voice actors are being asked to sign away rights to their voices so clients can generate AI versions →
"It’s disrespectful to the craft to suggest that generating a performance is equivalent to a real human being’s performance … Going down this road runs the risk of people thinking that voice-over can be replaced entirely by AI, which really makes my stomach turn."
TechCrunch / Sarah Perez
Report: Kids and teens spend an average of 82 minutes a day on TikTok →
“TikTok not only topped the average daily usage of other video apps, like YouTube (75 minutes), Netflix (48 mins.) and Disney+ (40 mins.), it also came out ahead of other social apps, including Snapchat (72 mins.), Instagram (45 mins.), Facebook (20 mins.), Pinterest (16 mins.) and Twitter (10 mins.) among the under-18 crowd.”
New York Times / Katie Robertson
The New York Times gained more than one million digital-only subscribers in 2022 →
The total number of subscribers is now 9.6 million. "It was our second-best year for net digital subscriber additions, behind only 2020," Meredith Kopit Levien, the chief executive of The Times, said in a statement.
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