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The AI race is getting more heated, and more participants are joining in. But some seem to be joining forces, too, trying to rule the text-to-image kingdom.
During the 2023 I/O event, Google and Adobe announced a collaboration in this field. From now on, Google’s chatbot Bard will integrate the text-to-image generator Adobe Firefly. This way, users will be allowed to generate, edit and share images straight from Bard’s command line instead of using two tools separately.
The impact of wildfires on the Australian outback and wildlife was devasting. The 2019-2020 season was particularly bad, causing unprecedented harm and affecting over 3 billion animals. Of course, it takes time for the environment to recover from such an event, and conservationists are monitoring the recovery via AI technology and a network of cameras.
Seven million photos from around 1,100 sensor-activated cameras in eight bushfire-affected areas across Australia were collected and analysed. The project is a collaboration between the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Conservation International, and local land managers.
Google is rolling out a safer image search feature over the coming months that will blur any images that it deems explicit. It will apparently do this automatically using AI, even if the Safe Search feature is deactivated. Google has apparently initiated this to celebrate ‘Safe Internet Day’.
The news was announced yesterday in a blog post and is aimed at keeping families and young children safer when online. There will also be advances in privacy features in addition to the image-blurring tool.
As the conflict between China and the U.S. progresses, lawmakers have now turned their attention to TikTok. A China-based company stands behind the super-popular app, so there are growing concerns that user data might end up in the hands of the Chinese government. Therefore, a Democratic senator recently urged on Apple and Google CEOs to remove TikTok from their app stores immediately.
If you’ve used Google Lens, you know that it’s capable of solving lots of different tasks. And now, it has a superpower that only pharmacists have had so far – it can decode doctors’ handwriting.
At its annual conference in India last week, Google announced that it’s working to bring you a “doctors’ handwriting translator” in the app. And of course, it’s working closely with pharmacists to develop the tool.
After filing a lawsuit against Meta, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is now after Google. The AG has sued Google over the alleged unlawful use of biometric data scraped from photos and voice recordings. He claims that it’s hit millions of Texans, yet that Google failed to obtain their informed consent to collect their data.
Google has revealed its own text-to-video AI-generated program which is called Imagen video. Similar to Meta’s Make-a-video, the program allows users to generate a short video clip purely by entering descriptive text. It’s very similar to text-to-image apps such as Dall-E and Midjourney, however this time the end product is moving pictures.
Of course, this isn’t the first iteration of text-to-video, and neither was Meta’s for that matter. A few couple of months ago DIYP reported that it would be the next big AI visual progression, and in typical AI nature, that progress has reached us at an insanely rapid rate. But back to Google.
It appears that Google Photos is having a bit of a moment. It seems that it’s corrupting some older images stored on the service dating from 2013 to 2015, according to reports from users. The phenomenon shows up as what looks like digital tears (as in rips through the image, not liquid that comes from your eyes) across the image, as you can see in examples posted to the Google support forums.
Quite a few people have reported the issue. As well as post on Google support, there are also a number of Reddit threads with more examples. There is some good news, though. It looks like Google is already on the case and some users have had their images fixed without them having to do anything. But, if you’re facing this issue and it doesn’t get automatically fixed, there is a way to do it yourself.
Earlier this year, the state of Illinois filed a class action lawsuit against Google over Google Photos’ privacy concerns. The company settled, and it was to pay a total of $100 million to anyone who used the app. And if you lived in Illinois between 2015 and 2022, hurry up: you only have a few days left to apply for your cut of the payout.
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
Alex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe
Dave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.
John Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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