🤖 AI surveillance at 2024 Paris Olympics

Greetings, fellow humans. 👋

This is Not A Bot - the newsletter about AI that was definitely not written by AI. I’m Haroon, founder of AI For Anyone, and I share the latest news, tools, and resources from the AI space.

Some personal news: Yesterday marked exactly one month since I became a Dad! Despite the sleepless nights, it’s been incredibly worth it, and I can’t wait for the journey ahead.

Oh, and if you have any advice for new parents, I’d love for you to reply to this email and share it with me. 😄

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In today's edition:

• 🇫🇷 France fast-tracking laws to use AI surveillance at Olympics

• 🤬 ElevenLabs under fire for celebrity voice cloning

• 🛠️ Fiverr launches AI services

🎉 We're giving away 10 Google AIY Kits! Each kit gives you all the tools you need to build an AI-powered camera or an AI-powered speaker.

You can find more details on how to enter at the end of this email. Winners announced on March 31st on my Twitter.

🇫🇷 France fast-tracking laws to use AI surveillance at Paris Olympics

The French government is fast-tracking special legislation for the 2024 Paris Olympics that would allow AI systems to monitor crowds and detect suspicious or “abnormal” activity from fixed CCTV cameras or drones.

The lower house will consider the bill in February, and rights groups are concerned that the measure could lead to a violation of the right to privacy and fundamental freedoms. They’re also worried that the Olympics could be used as a political moment to pass legislation that might otherwise be unacceptable.

We covered the use of AI surveillance tools at the FIFA World Cup in Qatar just a couple of months ago. With this technology becoming increasingly prevalent at sporting events, the question becomes:

Is it necessary? Or is a major sporting event the perfect cover for passing legislation that might otherwise be unacceptable?

Read more: The Guardian

🤬 ElevenLabs under fire for celebrity voice cloning

Just last week, we covered ElevenLabs’ $2M pre-seed round.

Yesterday, the startup, founded by ex-Google and Palantir staffers, came under fire for an increasing number of misuse cases of its technology. They addressed the controversy head-on by asking for thoughts and feedback on Twitter.

Several 4chan members appeared to use it to generate voices that sounded like celebrities spewing racist and inappropriate material.

ElevenLabs said it is exploring more safeguards around its technology, such as requiring payment information or manual verification of every voice cloning request.

Read more: VICE

🛠️ Fiverr launches AI services

Fiverr, an online freelancer marketplace, has launched new AI categories and skills to its catalog in response to an increase in searches for AI-related services on the platform, which has increased by over 1400% in the last six months. 📈

To announce this launch, shared a letter in the NY Times.

Fiverr has also released in-house AI tools to increase freelancer productivity and improve the customer experience, such as Fiverr Logo Maker and AI Auditions.

This news reflects both the new tools available for freelancers, as well as the increased demand for these services from businesses.

What I’m interested to see, however, is the impact this will have on the freelance market.

Will freelancers have more or less earning potential? Will this change the skills required to be a successful freelancer? Your guess is as good as mine.

Read more: BusinessWire

🗞️ Byte size: AI article summaries

Disclaimer: AI is (partially) used to summarize these articles.

AI predicts breach in climate change threshold in the next 10-12 years [The AP] - Two climate scientists using machine learning predicted that the world would likely breach the internationally agreed-upon climate change threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius in the next 10-12 years. The study, led by Stanford University climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh, is more pessimistic than previous predictions and suggests that even with large reductions in pollution, the world is unlikely to stay below the 2-degree Celsius mark.

The startup OpenAI wants to save the world, but without saying how. Silicon Valley is worried [Nzz.ch] - In 2019, CEO Sam Altman restructured OpenAI, introducing a "capped-for-profit" organization and licensing products commercially to companies. Microsoft has invested $1 billion in OpenAI and has pledged to incorporate its technology into all Microsoft products. OpenAI's ultimate goal is to create "artificial general intelligence," which would be indistinguishable from human intelligence. There is much debate over how far away this goal is and whether OpenAI has kept its promise to prioritize safety in AI development.

Gmail creator says ChatGPT will destroy Google's business in two years [Interesting Engineering] - Paul Buchheit, the creator of Gmail, has expressed his opinion that Google's business will be disrupted within two years because of ChatGPT. Google makes most of its money from the Search Engine Result Page, which could be eliminated by technology such as AI. Despite their efforts, Paul thinks Google may not be able to deploy their AI products without destroying the most valuable part of their business.

Why do people want to detect AI-generated content? [Reddit] - Curious to follow this Reddit thread and see what people think.

ChatGPT Forced To Take Bar Exam Even Though Dream Was To Be AI Art Bot [The Onion] - You know we’re in a hype cycle when the biggest satire news site on the Internet starts creating ChatGPT content. 😅

🔥 Trending tools & resources

• SingSong (link) - a system that can generate instrumental accompaniments to pair with input vocals. 🤯

• Kayyo (link) - The AI MMA trainer app to train and compete in MMA using computer vision & audio workouts.

• Google AI Test Kitchen (link) - Google's version of chat GPT named LaMBDA is ready for public access.

Have cool tools to share? Tweet me at @haroonchoudery if you'd like me to include it in a future issue of Not A Bot.

🐦️ Tweet of the day

True dat.

NVIDIA right now:

And that does it for today's issue.

As always, thanks for reading, and see you next time. ✌️

— Haroon: (definitely) Not A Robot and @haroonchoudery on Twitter

🥳 Google AIY Kit Giveaway

Win one of 10 Google AIY Kits! Each person you refer to Not A Bot using the below link equals one entry. I'll be announcing the winners on @haroonchoudery on March 31st.

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