The AI-Listers 👗🍿

⚡️⚡️NEWSFLASH: 🎙️ OUR NEW PODCAST JUST DROPPED! 🎉 🥳 

👀 TLDR:

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover the rise of AI deepfakes in popular culture. The Met Gala has always been noted for its weird and wonderful couture, but the 2024 event was notable for faked AI images of Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, and others. AI deepfakes also played a central role in the rap battle between Drake and Kendrick Lamar. And one artist is taking things into her own hands, creating an AI version of herself to interact with fans and pesky reporters. Most of this seems like harmless fun, but there are deeper, ethical questions to ask, not least about regulation. We also have news on Jack Dorsey’s departure from the Bluesky board, the email that Microsoft didn’t want you to see, and an emulator app hitting No.1 in the App Store after 10 years of trying. Our Stat shows that there is room for even more revenue growth in cloud services, What’s dAppening says ‘so long’ to CZ, and our GPT of the Week is essential for academics and college students. While we’re on the topic of GPTs, today is the day we announce the release of the debut episode of our new What’s Appening podcast - starting with a series on GPT Creators. More in Meanwhile below…

What's Appening is brought to you by 3Advance, the product development team that eats, sleeps and breathes apps. Not diggin' the apps? You can opt-out below. Forwarding to a friend? Please do 🙏. They can subscribe here or just listen on Spotify. Our monthly video series can be found on YouTube 📺.

Our Top Take 🎬

📸👗 AI – Deepfakes Show the Technology’s Growing Influence on Pop Culture

Most of us agree that AI deepfakes can be dangerous, especially in an election year. But we also got to see the technology – for good or for ill – through the lens of celebrity this week. Let’s start with the Met Gala, the annual ball for the fashion-conscious (and seemingly unconscious). The Gala is known for its fabulous habiliments, but the 2024 event was notable for the number of AI deepfake images of attendees that appeared online. One of the most viral photos of the event, showing Katy Perry in a floral dress, was an AI-generated fake, for example. Rihanna and Lady Gaga also went viral with fake AI-generated images. That wasn’t the only deepfake controversy this week, as AI played a central role in the rap battle between Drake and Kendrick Lamar, with the former seemingly resurrecting Tupac to ‘diss’ the latter. Drake was criticized for using AI to recreate Tupac’s vocals and may face legal action from the late rapper’s estate. Finally, musician FKA Twigs has used AI to create a deepfake of herself to interact with fans and journalists. On the surface, this looks like another tale of artistic hubris, but we’d suggest you read the full story here, as it says a lot about digital identity, fandom, ownership of art, and the need to regulate going forward. #DeepFakes Read more here.

🦾 GPT of the Week: SciSpace GPT

This week’s Custom GPT is SciSpace GPT. Founded in 2015, SciSpace was quick to recognize that AI would be invaluable to academic research, building a platform to offer access to millions of papers, a specialized search engine curated for science, and AI-powered conversational tools. SciSpace GPT works as a kind of fusion of SciSpace’s scientific catalog with ChatGPT’s conversational ability. Analyze PDFs, extract data, pose questions and get citation-backed answers from over 280 million academic papers, or as SciSpace puts it, “Do Hours’ Worth of Reading in Minutes.”. A must-use for students, academics, and scientific researchers.

Other Stories 🗞️

👋 Jack Dorsey Leaves Bluesky Board, Endorses X. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey has left the board of Bluesky and seemingly endorsed Elon Musk’s tenure as boss of X, calling the platform “freedom technology”.  The full story is here.

🍏 “Impressively Thin” iPads Announced at Apple Let Loose Event. Tim Cook stressed that today’s iPad event was the most important since the tablet’s introduction in 2010. Hyperbole? Probably, but there was much to like as Apple showed off ultra-thin iPads and new accessories, including the next-gen iPad Pro, which will be powered by an M4 chip. Get a full breakdown here.

📧 The Email Microsoft Didn’t Want You to See. Curious about how Microsoft jumped head-first into OpenAI? It all rested on a pivotal 2019 email from CTO Kevin Scott, which Microsoft hoped to keep hidden from public view. Read about it here.

📈 AI Turbocharges Samsung Profits. Samsung’s operating profit soared by 930% (not a typo!) as demand for servers, chips, and storage for AI applications rose in Q1 2024. Get the details here.

🎮 Delta Emulator App Hits No.1 After 10 Long Years. Retro gaming emulator apps are all the rage now, thanks in part to changes in Apple’s App Store rules. For the developer of Delta, topping the App Store charts comes after ten years of hard work and battles against Apple. Find the fascinating story here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 85%

↗️🌥️ AWS – Bumper Revenues Yet Room for More Growth

Amazon Web Services released its sales figures for Q1 2024, with plenty of positives for CEO Andy Jassy. AWS sales jumped 17% YoY, putting the company on track to earn $100 billion in 2024. Now, sales growth among the cloud services giants is nothing new – Google (28%) and Microsoft (31%) both had huge growth in the same period. Yet, peering into the numbers, we noticed that Jassy was keen to point out that 85% of business IT spend still goes to “on-prem” (in-house) technology, meaning there is still huge room for revenue growth in cloud services. #AWYes Read more here.

🕸️ What’s dAppening?

🧑‍⚖️🚓 Crypto – Binance Founder “CZ” Sentenced to 4 Months in Prison

The founder of Binance, and perhaps the person more responsible than any other for building the modern crypto trading sector, is now in a federal prison. Changpeng “CZ” Zhao was sentenced to four months after pleading guilty to money laundering charges. It’s worth noting that CZ retains a lot of support from the sector – this was no Sam Bankman-Fried case – yet it feels remarkable that the founders of both Binance and FTX are now languishing in prison. That said, it’s also remarkable that crypto seems to have shrugged off what would once have been viewed as a nuclear moment. A sign of maturity in the sector? Hmmm, perhaps. However, there is still work to do to eliminate other bad actors and scam projects and seek legal clarity to help the web3 sector thrive in the US and beyond. #ByeCZ Read more here.

Meanwhile at 3Advance...

We are excited to announce the official launch of our new Podcast. 🎉 🙌 We’ve been running this newsletter for the past three years, and it’s been an incredible success and a source of pride for everyone involved. 🙏 Thank you for reading, and sharing!! This newsletter is tailored for all who have a passion for tech and a desire to be in the know – with app startups, technology innovations, and, of course, the past 18 months, all things AI. So, on to the podcast: The first season of our What’s Appening podcast is all about AI entrepreneurs. More specifically, GPT Creators, many of whom we believe to be part of the next generation of startup founders. We are fascinated and endlessly supportive of the little guy/girl: The unexpected entrepreneur; the non-technical founder taking on the world through a technology startup, be it mobile or AI-first. GPT Creators embody this spirit, and over the next few months, Rafael (Product Manager and GPT founder himself) and Paul (you know this guy already) will be interviewing creators of the most interesting, popular, and sometimes just our personal favorite GPTs. We’ll be bridging the link between GPT and Product, and vice-versa. But enough reading; it’s time to listen. Check out our very first episode where Paul and Raf talk all about why this podcast is important, with sprinklings of real stories behind 3Advance and what we believe in.

You can find - and subscribe - to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and more… Or just click the YouTube video above in all its glory. 😁 If you have any thoughts, or you want to recommend anyone we should interview (including you!) don’t hesitate to reach out. Apply to be a guest, or just reply to this email. We so appreciate you following along, and all the support you’ve given… Onwards. 🚀

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