Month: May 2022

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The ABBAtars in London

ABBA are currently performing in London – but the four band members are being represented by their avatars. The ABBAtars, as they are called, appear very perfect. They have the facial expressions, gestures, and movements of the originals. Knowing how they look today, you think they fell into the fountain of youth. They look like they did in the ’70s. You see every detail of the faces, bodies, and suits and dresses. And they appear three-dimensional. You could call them quasi- or pseudo-holograms. The band has been performing their songs for weeks. Systems captured their movements when they danced and their emotions when they sang. Most of all, motion capture was used. The four wore special full-body suits with markers attached to them. In addition, facial expressions were recorded, mainly to be able to show emotions. 160 cameras filmed Agnetha, Björn, Anni-Frid, and Benny from all sides. The faces were then digitally rejuvenated – and apparently also the bodies. ABBA is probably writing cultural history with this project. The avatars and their movements are unusually perfect. In addition, there are real people, a live band playing with the four ABBAtars. The show is very elaborate. It is a new business model – in principle, you can give several concerts a day, 365 days a year. At least if you leave out the live band. On Deutschlandfunk Kultur, early in the morning of May 27, 2022, moderator Dieter Kassel spoke with Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel about the ABBA show Voyage in London and the ABBAtars. Oliver Bendel published the chapter “Hologram Girl” in the 2019 Springer book “AI Love You“.

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Hold a Video Call Naked Without Trouble

A software developer has created a tool that retouches pants on lower body to protect from embarrassing situations. He presents his solution in his video channel Everything Is Hacked on YouTube, under the title “I made a Zoom filter to add pants when you forget to wear them”. Under the video the software developer writes: “Using Python, OpenCV, MediaPipe, and pyvirtualcam to create a Zoom (or Teams or Hangouts or whatever) video filter to blur out your lower half or add customizable pants. This should work on any platform + video call app, as well as on recordings.” (Everything Is Hacked, May 10, 2022) You can watch the video here. The code is available at https://github.com/everythingishacked/Pants …

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A Robot Among Penguins

British Filmmaker John Downer has created artificial monkeys, wolves, hippos, turtles, alligators, etc., to observe appropriate wildlife and obtain spectacular images. His well-known robots are very intricately designed and resemble the animals they mimic in almost every detail. It is not necessary to resort to such technically elaborate and artistically demanding means for all species. USA Today reports in a recent article about a robot called ECHO. “ECHO is a remote-controlled ground robot that silently spies on the emperor penguin colony in Atka Bay. The robot is being monitored by the Single Penguin Observation and Tracking observatory. Both the SPOT observatory, which is also remote-operated through a satellite link, and the ECHO robot capture photographs and videos of animal population in the Arctic.” (USA Today, May 6, 2022) ECHO does not resemble a penguin in any way. It is a yellow vehicle with four thick wheels. But as a video shows, the animals seem to have gotten used to it. It comes very close to them without scaring them. Wildlife monitoring using robots is becoming increasingly important, and obviously very different types are being considered.

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A New Language AI

“Meta’s AI lab has created a massive new language model that shares both the remarkable abilities and the harmful flaws of OpenAI’s pioneering neural network GPT-3. And in an unprecedented move for Big Tech, it is giving it away to researchers – together with details about how it was built and trained.” (MIT Technology Review, May 3, 2022) This was reported by MIT Technology Review on May 3, 2022. GPT-3 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3) is an autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to generate natural language. Not only web-based systems, but also voice assistants and social robots can be equipped with it. Amazing texts emerge, and long meaningful conversations are possible – almost like between two real people. “Meta’s move is the first time that a fully trained large language model will be made available to any researcher who wants to study it. The news has been welcomed by many concerned about the way this powerful technology is being built by small teams behind closed doors.” (MIT Technology Review, May 3, 2022)