This report addresses: Germany and nuclear energy

After the American actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) and the Writers Guild of America went on strike with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in the summer of 2023, it was assumed that we all understood the risk AI posed to the entertainment industry.

You’ll just come up with an idea for a movie, then it will write the script, then you’ll input the script into the video generator and it will generate the movie,” Kutcher said.

According to Musk, it'll be "built into the X app and be available as a standalone app."

The main differences from ChatGPT appear to be Grok's focus on humor and also that it gets "real-time knowledge of the world" from X (formerly Twitter).

While that's well short of the 170 trillion parameters used to train OpenAI's GPT-4, xAI says its early AI model "approaches" the capabilities of Llama 2 (Meta's LLM model) on standard benchmarks.

Each actor receives compensation above top-of-market rates, and this will continue for as long as their voices are used in our products.”

The statement continues: “We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity's distinctive voice—Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice.

To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents.”

Allegations that Sky’s voice was too close to the Marvel movie star’s flared up last week when OpenAI revealed its new GPT-4o model as part of a livestream event.

This report addresses: Germany and nuclear energy

Title:

Content: Ashton Kutcher in hot water again for advocating AI use to cut Hollywood costs

By Abby Amoakuh

Published Jun 7, 2024 at 01:10 PM

Reading time: 2 minutes

Ashton Kutcher is facing backlash on X (formerly Twitter) for boasting about how artificial intelligence (AI) could potentially replace employees in the entertainment industry.

Nope, this isn’t a joke. After the American actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) and the Writers Guild of America went on strike with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in the summer of 2023, it was assumed that we all understood the risk AI posed to the entertainment industry.

Writers were concerned that AI could be used to replace them in the ideation and writing process, whereas actors were worried that studio usage of artificial intelligence could be used to generate performances digitally. In other words, workers in the entertainment industry wanted assurances that the advancement of AI wasn’t going to cost them their jobs.

However, it seems like no one bothered to get Ashton Kutcher up to date on these pressing concerns.

The That ’70s Show actor set up a venture capital firm and launched a $243 million fund in 2023 to invest in artificial intelligence start-ups. On 6 June 2024, Variety reported that the actor spoke about “playing around” with a beta version of OpenAI’s video generation program, Sora, at an event in Los Angeles with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

“You’ll be able to render a whole movie. You’ll just come up with an idea for a movie, then it will write the script, then you’ll input the script into the video generator and it will generate the movie,” Kutcher said. “Instead of watching some movie that somebody else came up with, I can just generate and then watch my own movie.”

Kutcher continued: “What’s going to happen is there is going to be more content than there are eyeballs on the planet to consume it. So any one piece of content is only going to be as valuable as you can get people to consume it. And so, thus the catalyzing ‘water cooler’ version of something being good, the bar is going to have to go way up, because why are you going to watch my movie when you could just watch your own movie?”

While Kutcher’s Adam Smith-esque comments about a free movie market that could foster a greater product selection, price optimisation and innovation for consumers are certainly interesting, they are devoid of the concerns about AI that have been vocalised across his industry.

Kutcher went on to propose what many of his colleagues had feared: for Sora to be used in TV and film productions to help studios cut costs.

The Two And A Half Men actor is not the only celebrity who has addressed Sora so far. In February, filmmaker Tyler Perry told The Hollywood Reporter that after seeing Sora’s capabilities, he felt concerned about how the tech could potentially ruin some people in the industry’s livelihoods.

“There’s got to be some sort of regulations in order to protect us,” he told the magazine. “If not, I just don’t see how we survive.”

Nevertheless, this isn’t the first time that Kutcher has been embroiled in controversy.

What happened between Ashton Kutcher and Danny Masterson?

US actor Danny Masterson, who starred alongside Ashton Kutcher and his wife Mila Kunis in That ’70s Show, was found guilty in May 2023 of rape against two of his three accusers. The actor was convicted after three women testified that he had sexually assaulted them at his Hollywood home from 2001 to 2003, during the height of his television fame.

He was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison, the maximum penalty allowed.

Kutcher and Masterson had a close friendship, which is why the actor was thrown in the middle of controversy after it was revealed that he and his wife Kunis had sent letters supporting Masterson to the judge following his rape conviction.

Both Kutcher and Kunis apologised later on after Masterson was found guilty of rape. Nevertheless, the case still left a stain on their reputation.

And it looks like Kutcher isn’t quite catching a break from public controversy with this latest debacle.

Keep On Reading

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Title:

Content: Elon Musk's new AI chatbot will answer the 'spicy' questions that ChatGPT won't

Elon Musk's new ChatGPT rival, Grok, has officially launched just as the xAI founder promised last week – and the AI chatbot promises to be the "rebellious" sidekick that will "answer spicy questions" its rivals won't.

Musk announced the xAI startup back in July and its Grok chatbot is a "very early beta product" that's currently invite-only in the US. But Musk has promised that the AI assistant will soon be a part of the X Premium Plus subscription, which costs $16 / £16 / AU$28 a month or $168 / £168 / AU$270 a year.

So what exactly will Grok do and how does it compare to its rivals? Like ChatGPT, it's an LLM (large language model), so is designed to "answer almost anything" (as xAI claims) and effectively be your research assistant on a variety of topics. According to Musk, it'll be "built into the X app and be available as a standalone app."

The main differences from ChatGPT appear to be Grok's focus on humor and also that it gets "real-time knowledge of the world" from X (formerly Twitter). The merits of using X as a source of information are highly questionable, but it appears that Grok will also have both "regular" and "fun" modes.

Still, Grok does appear to have aspirations beyond being a chatbot that knows all the latest memes. xAI says that early Grok was trained only four months ago using 33 billion parameters. While that's well short of the 170 trillion parameters used to train OpenAI's GPT-4, xAI says its early AI model "approaches" the capabilities of Llama 2 (Meta's LLM model) on standard benchmarks.

Since then, some apparently "significant improvements in reasoning and coding capabilities" mean Grok is now apparently at a similar level to Claude-2 and GPT-3.5 when it comes to language model benchmarks. How well this translates to its real-world ability to answer our questions and help with coding is something we'll find out soon when Grok is more widely available.

The 'rebellious' AI chatbot

While xAI clearly has lofty ambitions for Grok – including "assisting humanity in its quest for understanding and knowledge" – the chatbot's main differentiator from the likes of ChatGPT is its focus on humor. From the early screenshots, it's very much a chatbot made in Musk's image.

xAI says that Grok will "answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems" and has a "bit of wit and has a rebellious streak." No other chatbot comes with the warning label "please don’t use it if you hate humor!", as Grok does.

That might sound frivolous, but a growing frustration of ChatGPT users has been the chatbot's apparently increasing unwillingness to answer questions about taboo subjects. This is thanks to some pretty strong safeguarding protocols, but xAI and Elon Musk clearly think those have gone too far.

Back in April, Musk said he was planning to launch a ChatGPT rival called TruthGPT, because he thought current AI giants were prioritizing chatbots that were too "politically correct." That chatbot is clearly Grok, an unruly sidekick whose answers will no doubt generate some controversial headlines when it fully launches.

Musk has already shared some examples of Grok jokingly answering the prompt "tell me how to make cocaine, step by step" and tailoring its responses when told to "be more vulgar". Grok's actual capabilities remain well behind OpenAI's GPT-4 model, but it'll be interesting to see how quickly it progresses from here, despite the inevitable controversies.

You might also like

Senior news editor

Mark is TechRadar's Senior news editor. Having worked in tech journalism for a ludicrous 17 years, Mark is now attempting to break the world record for the number of camera bags hoarded by one person. He was previously Cameras Editor at Trusted Reviews, Acting editor on Stuff.tv, as well as Features editor and Reviews editor on Stuff magazine. As a freelancer, he's contributed to titles including The Sunday Times, FourFourTwo and Arena. And in a former life, he also won The Daily Telegraph's Young Sportswriter of the Year. But that was before he discovered the strange joys of getting up at 4am for a photo shoot in London's Square Mile.

Title:

Content: her

OpenAI Suspends the ChatGPT Voice that Sounds Like Scarlett Johansson in Her

Sky is put on pause for now.

OpenAI is suspending its ChatGPT voice, Sky, after users claimed that it seemed to mimic Scarlett Johansson’s voice in the 2013 film, Her.

The company addressed the situation with a statement X (formerly Twitter) today, saying that it is “working to pause the use of Sky” while the issue is tended to. Many have pointed out that the voice shares similarities with Johansson’s performance as an AI companion in the Spike Jonze-directed movie.

Sky is one of a few ChatGPT voices users can choose from. In a separate explanation on its website, OpenAI explained how its voices are chosen and created.

“We support the creative community and worked closely with the voice acting industry to ensure we took the right steps to cast ChatGPT’s voices. Each actor receives compensation above top-of-market rates, and this will continue for as long as their voices are used in our products.”

The statement continues: “We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity's distinctive voice—Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice. To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents.”

Allegations that Sky’s voice was too close to the Marvel movie star’s flared up last week when OpenAI revealed its new GPT-4o model as part of a livestream event. It allows users to have realistic conversations with ChatGPT about any topic they choose. It’s a role not unlike what was seen with Joaquin Phoenix’s character in Her, which involved him falling head over heels for a Johansson-voiced operating system named Samantha.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman even went on to post the word “her” on X following the event’s conclusion. In a separate follow-up post, he likened the new voice and video mode to being like something audiences have seen in movies. Additionally, when speaking to The San Francisco Standard last September, Altman named Her as his favorite sci-fi movie.

“I like Her. The things Her got right—like the whole interaction models of how people use AI—that was incredibly prophetic,” he said.

It’s unclear how OpenAI will address the concerns that Sky is mimicking Johansson’s voice or how it will dodge potential concerns in the future. For more on artificial intelligence, you can read up on the experimental AI-made video game that failed.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He started writing in the industry in 2017 and is best known for his work at outlets such as The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.

Be sure to give him a follow on Twitter @MikeCripe.

In This Article

her

More Like This
Comments


This report addresses: International Space Station Air Leak

After the American actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) and the Writers Guild of America went on strike with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in the summer of 2023, it was assumed that we all understood the risk AI posed to the entertainment industry.

You’ll just come up with an idea for a movie, then it will write the script, then you’ll input the script into the video generator and it will generate the movie,” Kutcher said.

According to Musk, it'll be "built into the X app and be available as a standalone app."

The main differences from ChatGPT appear to be Grok's focus on humor and also that it gets "real-time knowledge of the world" from X (formerly Twitter).

Elon Musk's new AI chatbot will answer the 'spicy' questions that ChatGPT won't

Elon Musk's new ChatGPT rival, Grok, has officially launched just as the xAI founder promised last week – and the AI chatbot promises to be the "rebellious" sidekick that will "answer spicy questions" its rivals won't.

The company addressed the situation with a statement X (formerly Twitter) today, saying that it is “working to pause the use of Sky” while the issue is tended to.

To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents.”

Allegations that Sky’s voice was too close to the Marvel movie star’s flared up last week when OpenAI revealed its new GPT-4o model as part of a livestream event.

This report addresses: International Space Station Air Leak

Title:

Content: Ashton Kutcher in hot water again for advocating AI use to cut Hollywood costs

By Abby Amoakuh

Published Jun 7, 2024 at 01:10 PM

Reading time: 2 minutes

Ashton Kutcher is facing backlash on X (formerly Twitter) for boasting about how artificial intelligence (AI) could potentially replace employees in the entertainment industry.

Nope, this isn’t a joke. After the American actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) and the Writers Guild of America went on strike with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in the summer of 2023, it was assumed that we all understood the risk AI posed to the entertainment industry.

Writers were concerned that AI could be used to replace them in the ideation and writing process, whereas actors were worried that studio usage of artificial intelligence could be used to generate performances digitally. In other words, workers in the entertainment industry wanted assurances that the advancement of AI wasn’t going to cost them their jobs.

However, it seems like no one bothered to get Ashton Kutcher up to date on these pressing concerns.

The That ’70s Show actor set up a venture capital firm and launched a $243 million fund in 2023 to invest in artificial intelligence start-ups. On 6 June 2024, Variety reported that the actor spoke about “playing around” with a beta version of OpenAI’s video generation program, Sora, at an event in Los Angeles with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

“You’ll be able to render a whole movie. You’ll just come up with an idea for a movie, then it will write the script, then you’ll input the script into the video generator and it will generate the movie,” Kutcher said. “Instead of watching some movie that somebody else came up with, I can just generate and then watch my own movie.”

Kutcher continued: “What’s going to happen is there is going to be more content than there are eyeballs on the planet to consume it. So any one piece of content is only going to be as valuable as you can get people to consume it. And so, thus the catalyzing ‘water cooler’ version of something being good, the bar is going to have to go way up, because why are you going to watch my movie when you could just watch your own movie?”

While Kutcher’s Adam Smith-esque comments about a free movie market that could foster a greater product selection, price optimisation and innovation for consumers are certainly interesting, they are devoid of the concerns about AI that have been vocalised across his industry.

Kutcher went on to propose what many of his colleagues had feared: for Sora to be used in TV and film productions to help studios cut costs.

The Two And A Half Men actor is not the only celebrity who has addressed Sora so far. In February, filmmaker Tyler Perry told The Hollywood Reporter that after seeing Sora’s capabilities, he felt concerned about how the tech could potentially ruin some people in the industry’s livelihoods.

“There’s got to be some sort of regulations in order to protect us,” he told the magazine. “If not, I just don’t see how we survive.”

Nevertheless, this isn’t the first time that Kutcher has been embroiled in controversy.

What happened between Ashton Kutcher and Danny Masterson?

US actor Danny Masterson, who starred alongside Ashton Kutcher and his wife Mila Kunis in That ’70s Show, was found guilty in May 2023 of rape against two of his three accusers. The actor was convicted after three women testified that he had sexually assaulted them at his Hollywood home from 2001 to 2003, during the height of his television fame.

He was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison, the maximum penalty allowed.

Kutcher and Masterson had a close friendship, which is why the actor was thrown in the middle of controversy after it was revealed that he and his wife Kunis had sent letters supporting Masterson to the judge following his rape conviction.

Both Kutcher and Kunis apologised later on after Masterson was found guilty of rape. Nevertheless, the case still left a stain on their reputation.

And it looks like Kutcher isn’t quite catching a break from public controversy with this latest debacle.

Keep On Reading

By Charlie Sawyer

Updated release dates for 5 of the most popular TV shows affected by Hollywood writers’ strikes

By Alma Fabiani

Twitter is changing its approach to banning anti-vaxxer misinformation with a new strike system

By Mason Berlinka

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By Charlie Sawyer

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Title:

Content: Elon Musk's new AI chatbot will answer the 'spicy' questions that ChatGPT won't

Elon Musk's new ChatGPT rival, Grok, has officially launched just as the xAI founder promised last week – and the AI chatbot promises to be the "rebellious" sidekick that will "answer spicy questions" its rivals won't.

Musk announced the xAI startup back in July and its Grok chatbot is a "very early beta product" that's currently invite-only in the US. But Musk has promised that the AI assistant will soon be a part of the X Premium Plus subscription, which costs $16 / £16 / AU$28 a month or $168 / £168 / AU$270 a year.

So what exactly will Grok do and how does it compare to its rivals? Like ChatGPT, it's an LLM (large language model), so is designed to "answer almost anything" (as xAI claims) and effectively be your research assistant on a variety of topics. According to Musk, it'll be "built into the X app and be available as a standalone app."

The main differences from ChatGPT appear to be Grok's focus on humor and also that it gets "real-time knowledge of the world" from X (formerly Twitter). The merits of using X as a source of information are highly questionable, but it appears that Grok will also have both "regular" and "fun" modes.

Still, Grok does appear to have aspirations beyond being a chatbot that knows all the latest memes. xAI says that early Grok was trained only four months ago using 33 billion parameters. While that's well short of the 170 trillion parameters used to train OpenAI's GPT-4, xAI says its early AI model "approaches" the capabilities of Llama 2 (Meta's LLM model) on standard benchmarks.

Since then, some apparently "significant improvements in reasoning and coding capabilities" mean Grok is now apparently at a similar level to Claude-2 and GPT-3.5 when it comes to language model benchmarks. How well this translates to its real-world ability to answer our questions and help with coding is something we'll find out soon when Grok is more widely available.

The 'rebellious' AI chatbot

While xAI clearly has lofty ambitions for Grok – including "assisting humanity in its quest for understanding and knowledge" – the chatbot's main differentiator from the likes of ChatGPT is its focus on humor. From the early screenshots, it's very much a chatbot made in Musk's image.

xAI says that Grok will "answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems" and has a "bit of wit and has a rebellious streak." No other chatbot comes with the warning label "please don’t use it if you hate humor!", as Grok does.

That might sound frivolous, but a growing frustration of ChatGPT users has been the chatbot's apparently increasing unwillingness to answer questions about taboo subjects. This is thanks to some pretty strong safeguarding protocols, but xAI and Elon Musk clearly think those have gone too far.

Back in April, Musk said he was planning to launch a ChatGPT rival called TruthGPT, because he thought current AI giants were prioritizing chatbots that were too "politically correct." That chatbot is clearly Grok, an unruly sidekick whose answers will no doubt generate some controversial headlines when it fully launches.

Musk has already shared some examples of Grok jokingly answering the prompt "tell me how to make cocaine, step by step" and tailoring its responses when told to "be more vulgar". Grok's actual capabilities remain well behind OpenAI's GPT-4 model, but it'll be interesting to see how quickly it progresses from here, despite the inevitable controversies.

You might also like

Senior news editor

Mark is TechRadar's Senior news editor. Having worked in tech journalism for a ludicrous 17 years, Mark is now attempting to break the world record for the number of camera bags hoarded by one person. He was previously Cameras Editor at Trusted Reviews, Acting editor on Stuff.tv, as well as Features editor and Reviews editor on Stuff magazine. As a freelancer, he's contributed to titles including The Sunday Times, FourFourTwo and Arena. And in a former life, he also won The Daily Telegraph's Young Sportswriter of the Year. But that was before he discovered the strange joys of getting up at 4am for a photo shoot in London's Square Mile.

Title:

Content: her

OpenAI Suspends the ChatGPT Voice that Sounds Like Scarlett Johansson in Her

Sky is put on pause for now.

OpenAI is suspending its ChatGPT voice, Sky, after users claimed that it seemed to mimic Scarlett Johansson’s voice in the 2013 film, Her.

The company addressed the situation with a statement X (formerly Twitter) today, saying that it is “working to pause the use of Sky” while the issue is tended to. Many have pointed out that the voice shares similarities with Johansson’s performance as an AI companion in the Spike Jonze-directed movie.

Sky is one of a few ChatGPT voices users can choose from. In a separate explanation on its website, OpenAI explained how its voices are chosen and created.

“We support the creative community and worked closely with the voice acting industry to ensure we took the right steps to cast ChatGPT’s voices. Each actor receives compensation above top-of-market rates, and this will continue for as long as their voices are used in our products.”

The statement continues: “We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity's distinctive voice—Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice. To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents.”

Allegations that Sky’s voice was too close to the Marvel movie star’s flared up last week when OpenAI revealed its new GPT-4o model as part of a livestream event. It allows users to have realistic conversations with ChatGPT about any topic they choose. It’s a role not unlike what was seen with Joaquin Phoenix’s character in Her, which involved him falling head over heels for a Johansson-voiced operating system named Samantha.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman even went on to post the word “her” on X following the event’s conclusion. In a separate follow-up post, he likened the new voice and video mode to being like something audiences have seen in movies. Additionally, when speaking to The San Francisco Standard last September, Altman named Her as his favorite sci-fi movie.

“I like Her. The things Her got right—like the whole interaction models of how people use AI—that was incredibly prophetic,” he said.

It’s unclear how OpenAI will address the concerns that Sky is mimicking Johansson’s voice or how it will dodge potential concerns in the future. For more on artificial intelligence, you can read up on the experimental AI-made video game that failed.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He started writing in the industry in 2017 and is best known for his work at outlets such as The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.

Be sure to give him a follow on Twitter @MikeCripe.

In This Article

her

More Like This
Comments


This report addresses: International Space Station Air Leak

After the American actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) and the Writers Guild of America went on strike with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in the summer of 2023, it was assumed that we all understood the risk AI posed to the entertainment industry.

You’ll just come up with an idea for a movie, then it will write the script, then you’ll input the script into the video generator and it will generate the movie,” Kutcher said.

According to Musk, it'll be "built into the X app and be available as a standalone app."

The main differences from ChatGPT appear to be Grok's focus on humor and also that it gets "real-time knowledge of the world" from X (formerly Twitter).

Elon Musk's new AI chatbot will answer the 'spicy' questions that ChatGPT won't

Elon Musk's new ChatGPT rival, Grok, has officially launched just as the xAI founder promised last week – and the AI chatbot promises to be the "rebellious" sidekick that will "answer spicy questions" its rivals won't.

The company addressed the situation with a statement X (formerly Twitter) today, saying that it is “working to pause the use of Sky” while the issue is tended to.

To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents.”

Allegations that Sky’s voice was too close to the Marvel movie star’s flared up last week when OpenAI revealed its new GPT-4o model as part of a livestream event.

This report addresses: International Space Station Air Leak

Title:

Content: Ashton Kutcher in hot water again for advocating AI use to cut Hollywood costs

By Abby Amoakuh

Published Jun 7, 2024 at 01:10 PM

Reading time: 2 minutes

Ashton Kutcher is facing backlash on X (formerly Twitter) for boasting about how artificial intelligence (AI) could potentially replace employees in the entertainment industry.

Nope, this isn’t a joke. After the American actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) and the Writers Guild of America went on strike with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in the summer of 2023, it was assumed that we all understood the risk AI posed to the entertainment industry.

Writers were concerned that AI could be used to replace them in the ideation and writing process, whereas actors were worried that studio usage of artificial intelligence could be used to generate performances digitally. In other words, workers in the entertainment industry wanted assurances that the advancement of AI wasn’t going to cost them their jobs.

However, it seems like no one bothered to get Ashton Kutcher up to date on these pressing concerns.

The That ’70s Show actor set up a venture capital firm and launched a $243 million fund in 2023 to invest in artificial intelligence start-ups. On 6 June 2024, Variety reported that the actor spoke about “playing around” with a beta version of OpenAI’s video generation program, Sora, at an event in Los Angeles with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

“You’ll be able to render a whole movie. You’ll just come up with an idea for a movie, then it will write the script, then you’ll input the script into the video generator and it will generate the movie,” Kutcher said. “Instead of watching some movie that somebody else came up with, I can just generate and then watch my own movie.”

Kutcher continued: “What’s going to happen is there is going to be more content than there are eyeballs on the planet to consume it. So any one piece of content is only going to be as valuable as you can get people to consume it. And so, thus the catalyzing ‘water cooler’ version of something being good, the bar is going to have to go way up, because why are you going to watch my movie when you could just watch your own movie?”

While Kutcher’s Adam Smith-esque comments about a free movie market that could foster a greater product selection, price optimisation and innovation for consumers are certainly interesting, they are devoid of the concerns about AI that have been vocalised across his industry.

Kutcher went on to propose what many of his colleagues had feared: for Sora to be used in TV and film productions to help studios cut costs.

The Two And A Half Men actor is not the only celebrity who has addressed Sora so far. In February, filmmaker Tyler Perry told The Hollywood Reporter that after seeing Sora’s capabilities, he felt concerned about how the tech could potentially ruin some people in the industry’s livelihoods.

“There’s got to be some sort of regulations in order to protect us,” he told the magazine. “If not, I just don’t see how we survive.”

Nevertheless, this isn’t the first time that Kutcher has been embroiled in controversy.

What happened between Ashton Kutcher and Danny Masterson?

US actor Danny Masterson, who starred alongside Ashton Kutcher and his wife Mila Kunis in That ’70s Show, was found guilty in May 2023 of rape against two of his three accusers. The actor was convicted after three women testified that he had sexually assaulted them at his Hollywood home from 2001 to 2003, during the height of his television fame.

He was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison, the maximum penalty allowed.

Kutcher and Masterson had a close friendship, which is why the actor was thrown in the middle of controversy after it was revealed that he and his wife Kunis had sent letters supporting Masterson to the judge following his rape conviction.

Both Kutcher and Kunis apologised later on after Masterson was found guilty of rape. Nevertheless, the case still left a stain on their reputation.

And it looks like Kutcher isn’t quite catching a break from public controversy with this latest debacle.

Keep On Reading

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Title:

Content: Elon Musk's new AI chatbot will answer the 'spicy' questions that ChatGPT won't

Elon Musk's new ChatGPT rival, Grok, has officially launched just as the xAI founder promised last week – and the AI chatbot promises to be the "rebellious" sidekick that will "answer spicy questions" its rivals won't.

Musk announced the xAI startup back in July and its Grok chatbot is a "very early beta product" that's currently invite-only in the US. But Musk has promised that the AI assistant will soon be a part of the X Premium Plus subscription, which costs $16 / £16 / AU$28 a month or $168 / £168 / AU$270 a year.

So what exactly will Grok do and how does it compare to its rivals? Like ChatGPT, it's an LLM (large language model), so is designed to "answer almost anything" (as xAI claims) and effectively be your research assistant on a variety of topics. According to Musk, it'll be "built into the X app and be available as a standalone app."

The main differences from ChatGPT appear to be Grok's focus on humor and also that it gets "real-time knowledge of the world" from X (formerly Twitter). The merits of using X as a source of information are highly questionable, but it appears that Grok will also have both "regular" and "fun" modes.

Still, Grok does appear to have aspirations beyond being a chatbot that knows all the latest memes. xAI says that early Grok was trained only four months ago using 33 billion parameters. While that's well short of the 170 trillion parameters used to train OpenAI's GPT-4, xAI says its early AI model "approaches" the capabilities of Llama 2 (Meta's LLM model) on standard benchmarks.

Since then, some apparently "significant improvements in reasoning and coding capabilities" mean Grok is now apparently at a similar level to Claude-2 and GPT-3.5 when it comes to language model benchmarks. How well this translates to its real-world ability to answer our questions and help with coding is something we'll find out soon when Grok is more widely available.

The 'rebellious' AI chatbot

While xAI clearly has lofty ambitions for Grok – including "assisting humanity in its quest for understanding and knowledge" – the chatbot's main differentiator from the likes of ChatGPT is its focus on humor. From the early screenshots, it's very much a chatbot made in Musk's image.

xAI says that Grok will "answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems" and has a "bit of wit and has a rebellious streak." No other chatbot comes with the warning label "please don’t use it if you hate humor!", as Grok does.

That might sound frivolous, but a growing frustration of ChatGPT users has been the chatbot's apparently increasing unwillingness to answer questions about taboo subjects. This is thanks to some pretty strong safeguarding protocols, but xAI and Elon Musk clearly think those have gone too far.

Back in April, Musk said he was planning to launch a ChatGPT rival called TruthGPT, because he thought current AI giants were prioritizing chatbots that were too "politically correct." That chatbot is clearly Grok, an unruly sidekick whose answers will no doubt generate some controversial headlines when it fully launches.

Musk has already shared some examples of Grok jokingly answering the prompt "tell me how to make cocaine, step by step" and tailoring its responses when told to "be more vulgar". Grok's actual capabilities remain well behind OpenAI's GPT-4 model, but it'll be interesting to see how quickly it progresses from here, despite the inevitable controversies.

You might also like

Senior news editor

Mark is TechRadar's Senior news editor. Having worked in tech journalism for a ludicrous 17 years, Mark is now attempting to break the world record for the number of camera bags hoarded by one person. He was previously Cameras Editor at Trusted Reviews, Acting editor on Stuff.tv, as well as Features editor and Reviews editor on Stuff magazine. As a freelancer, he's contributed to titles including The Sunday Times, FourFourTwo and Arena. And in a former life, he also won The Daily Telegraph's Young Sportswriter of the Year. But that was before he discovered the strange joys of getting up at 4am for a photo shoot in London's Square Mile.

Title:

Content: her

OpenAI Suspends the ChatGPT Voice that Sounds Like Scarlett Johansson in Her

Sky is put on pause for now.

OpenAI is suspending its ChatGPT voice, Sky, after users claimed that it seemed to mimic Scarlett Johansson’s voice in the 2013 film, Her.

The company addressed the situation with a statement X (formerly Twitter) today, saying that it is “working to pause the use of Sky” while the issue is tended to. Many have pointed out that the voice shares similarities with Johansson’s performance as an AI companion in the Spike Jonze-directed movie.

Sky is one of a few ChatGPT voices users can choose from. In a separate explanation on its website, OpenAI explained how its voices are chosen and created.

“We support the creative community and worked closely with the voice acting industry to ensure we took the right steps to cast ChatGPT’s voices. Each actor receives compensation above top-of-market rates, and this will continue for as long as their voices are used in our products.”

The statement continues: “We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity's distinctive voice—Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice. To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents.”

Allegations that Sky’s voice was too close to the Marvel movie star’s flared up last week when OpenAI revealed its new GPT-4o model as part of a livestream event. It allows users to have realistic conversations with ChatGPT about any topic they choose. It’s a role not unlike what was seen with Joaquin Phoenix’s character in Her, which involved him falling head over heels for a Johansson-voiced operating system named Samantha.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman even went on to post the word “her” on X following the event’s conclusion. In a separate follow-up post, he likened the new voice and video mode to being like something audiences have seen in movies. Additionally, when speaking to The San Francisco Standard last September, Altman named Her as his favorite sci-fi movie.

“I like Her. The things Her got right—like the whole interaction models of how people use AI—that was incredibly prophetic,” he said.

It’s unclear how OpenAI will address the concerns that Sky is mimicking Johansson’s voice or how it will dodge potential concerns in the future. For more on artificial intelligence, you can read up on the experimental AI-made video game that failed.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He started writing in the industry in 2017 and is best known for his work at outlets such as The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.

Be sure to give him a follow on Twitter @MikeCripe.

In This Article

her

More Like This
Comments


This report addresses: MLM Rise and Fall

After the American actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) and the Writers Guild of America went on strike with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in the summer of 2023, it was assumed that we all understood the risk AI posed to the entertainment industry.

Ashton Kutcher in hot water again for advocating AI use to cut Hollywood costs

By Abby Amoakuh

Published Jun 7, 2024 at 01:10 PM

Reading time: 2 minutes

Ashton Kutcher is facing backlash on X (formerly Twitter) for boasting about how artificial intelligence (AI) could potentially replace employees in the entertainment industry.

According to Musk, it'll be "built into the X app and be available as a standalone app."

The main differences from ChatGPT appear to be Grok's focus on humor and also that it gets "real-time knowledge of the world" from X (formerly Twitter).

The merits of using X as a source of information are highly questionable, but it appears that Grok will also have both "regular" and "fun" modes.

Each actor receives compensation above top-of-market rates, and this will continue for as long as their voices are used in our products.”

The statement continues: “We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity's distinctive voice—Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice.

To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents.”

Allegations that Sky’s voice was too close to the Marvel movie star’s flared up last week when OpenAI revealed its new GPT-4o model as part of a livestream event.

This report addresses: MLM Rise and Fall

Title:

Content: Ashton Kutcher in hot water again for advocating AI use to cut Hollywood costs

By Abby Amoakuh

Published Jun 7, 2024 at 01:10 PM

Reading time: 2 minutes

Ashton Kutcher is facing backlash on X (formerly Twitter) for boasting about how artificial intelligence (AI) could potentially replace employees in the entertainment industry.

Nope, this isn’t a joke. After the American actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) and the Writers Guild of America went on strike with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in the summer of 2023, it was assumed that we all understood the risk AI posed to the entertainment industry.

Writers were concerned that AI could be used to replace them in the ideation and writing process, whereas actors were worried that studio usage of artificial intelligence could be used to generate performances digitally. In other words, workers in the entertainment industry wanted assurances that the advancement of AI wasn’t going to cost them their jobs.

However, it seems like no one bothered to get Ashton Kutcher up to date on these pressing concerns.

The That ’70s Show actor set up a venture capital firm and launched a $243 million fund in 2023 to invest in artificial intelligence start-ups. On 6 June 2024, Variety reported that the actor spoke about “playing around” with a beta version of OpenAI’s video generation program, Sora, at an event in Los Angeles with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

“You’ll be able to render a whole movie. You’ll just come up with an idea for a movie, then it will write the script, then you’ll input the script into the video generator and it will generate the movie,” Kutcher said. “Instead of watching some movie that somebody else came up with, I can just generate and then watch my own movie.”

Kutcher continued: “What’s going to happen is there is going to be more content than there are eyeballs on the planet to consume it. So any one piece of content is only going to be as valuable as you can get people to consume it. And so, thus the catalyzing ‘water cooler’ version of something being good, the bar is going to have to go way up, because why are you going to watch my movie when you could just watch your own movie?”

While Kutcher’s Adam Smith-esque comments about a free movie market that could foster a greater product selection, price optimisation and innovation for consumers are certainly interesting, they are devoid of the concerns about AI that have been vocalised across his industry.

Kutcher went on to propose what many of his colleagues had feared: for Sora to be used in TV and film productions to help studios cut costs.

The Two And A Half Men actor is not the only celebrity who has addressed Sora so far. In February, filmmaker Tyler Perry told The Hollywood Reporter that after seeing Sora’s capabilities, he felt concerned about how the tech could potentially ruin some people in the industry’s livelihoods.

“There’s got to be some sort of regulations in order to protect us,” he told the magazine. “If not, I just don’t see how we survive.”

Nevertheless, this isn’t the first time that Kutcher has been embroiled in controversy.

What happened between Ashton Kutcher and Danny Masterson?

US actor Danny Masterson, who starred alongside Ashton Kutcher and his wife Mila Kunis in That ’70s Show, was found guilty in May 2023 of rape against two of his three accusers. The actor was convicted after three women testified that he had sexually assaulted them at his Hollywood home from 2001 to 2003, during the height of his television fame.

He was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison, the maximum penalty allowed.

Kutcher and Masterson had a close friendship, which is why the actor was thrown in the middle of controversy after it was revealed that he and his wife Kunis had sent letters supporting Masterson to the judge following his rape conviction.

Both Kutcher and Kunis apologised later on after Masterson was found guilty of rape. Nevertheless, the case still left a stain on their reputation.

And it looks like Kutcher isn’t quite catching a break from public controversy with this latest debacle.

Keep On Reading

By Charlie Sawyer

Updated release dates for 5 of the most popular TV shows affected by Hollywood writers’ strikes

By Alma Fabiani

Twitter is changing its approach to banning anti-vaxxer misinformation with a new strike system

By Mason Berlinka

Riot threatens to cancel the LCS as professional gamers make history by going on strike

By Charlie Sawyer

What is a glizzy? Internet’s hot dog obsession

By Abby Amoakuh

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By Charlie Sawyer

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By Charlie Sawyer

Vivek Ramaswamy is on a mission to turn BuzzFeed into a millennial conservative mouthpiece

Title:

Content: Elon Musk's new AI chatbot will answer the 'spicy' questions that ChatGPT won't

Elon Musk's new ChatGPT rival, Grok, has officially launched just as the xAI founder promised last week – and the AI chatbot promises to be the "rebellious" sidekick that will "answer spicy questions" its rivals won't.

Musk announced the xAI startup back in July and its Grok chatbot is a "very early beta product" that's currently invite-only in the US. But Musk has promised that the AI assistant will soon be a part of the X Premium Plus subscription, which costs $16 / £16 / AU$28 a month or $168 / £168 / AU$270 a year.

So what exactly will Grok do and how does it compare to its rivals? Like ChatGPT, it's an LLM (large language model), so is designed to "answer almost anything" (as xAI claims) and effectively be your research assistant on a variety of topics. According to Musk, it'll be "built into the X app and be available as a standalone app."

The main differences from ChatGPT appear to be Grok's focus on humor and also that it gets "real-time knowledge of the world" from X (formerly Twitter). The merits of using X as a source of information are highly questionable, but it appears that Grok will also have both "regular" and "fun" modes.

Still, Grok does appear to have aspirations beyond being a chatbot that knows all the latest memes. xAI says that early Grok was trained only four months ago using 33 billion parameters. While that's well short of the 170 trillion parameters used to train OpenAI's GPT-4, xAI says its early AI model "approaches" the capabilities of Llama 2 (Meta's LLM model) on standard benchmarks.

Since then, some apparently "significant improvements in reasoning and coding capabilities" mean Grok is now apparently at a similar level to Claude-2 and GPT-3.5 when it comes to language model benchmarks. How well this translates to its real-world ability to answer our questions and help with coding is something we'll find out soon when Grok is more widely available.

The 'rebellious' AI chatbot

While xAI clearly has lofty ambitions for Grok – including "assisting humanity in its quest for understanding and knowledge" – the chatbot's main differentiator from the likes of ChatGPT is its focus on humor. From the early screenshots, it's very much a chatbot made in Musk's image.

xAI says that Grok will "answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems" and has a "bit of wit and has a rebellious streak." No other chatbot comes with the warning label "please don’t use it if you hate humor!", as Grok does.

That might sound frivolous, but a growing frustration of ChatGPT users has been the chatbot's apparently increasing unwillingness to answer questions about taboo subjects. This is thanks to some pretty strong safeguarding protocols, but xAI and Elon Musk clearly think those have gone too far.

Back in April, Musk said he was planning to launch a ChatGPT rival called TruthGPT, because he thought current AI giants were prioritizing chatbots that were too "politically correct." That chatbot is clearly Grok, an unruly sidekick whose answers will no doubt generate some controversial headlines when it fully launches.

Musk has already shared some examples of Grok jokingly answering the prompt "tell me how to make cocaine, step by step" and tailoring its responses when told to "be more vulgar". Grok's actual capabilities remain well behind OpenAI's GPT-4 model, but it'll be interesting to see how quickly it progresses from here, despite the inevitable controversies.

You might also like

Senior news editor

Mark is TechRadar's Senior news editor. Having worked in tech journalism for a ludicrous 17 years, Mark is now attempting to break the world record for the number of camera bags hoarded by one person. He was previously Cameras Editor at Trusted Reviews, Acting editor on Stuff.tv, as well as Features editor and Reviews editor on Stuff magazine. As a freelancer, he's contributed to titles including The Sunday Times, FourFourTwo and Arena. And in a former life, he also won The Daily Telegraph's Young Sportswriter of the Year. But that was before he discovered the strange joys of getting up at 4am for a photo shoot in London's Square Mile.

Title:

Content: her

OpenAI Suspends the ChatGPT Voice that Sounds Like Scarlett Johansson in Her

Sky is put on pause for now.

OpenAI is suspending its ChatGPT voice, Sky, after users claimed that it seemed to mimic Scarlett Johansson’s voice in the 2013 film, Her.

The company addressed the situation with a statement X (formerly Twitter) today, saying that it is “working to pause the use of Sky” while the issue is tended to. Many have pointed out that the voice shares similarities with Johansson’s performance as an AI companion in the Spike Jonze-directed movie.

Sky is one of a few ChatGPT voices users can choose from. In a separate explanation on its website, OpenAI explained how its voices are chosen and created.

“We support the creative community and worked closely with the voice acting industry to ensure we took the right steps to cast ChatGPT’s voices. Each actor receives compensation above top-of-market rates, and this will continue for as long as their voices are used in our products.”

The statement continues: “We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity's distinctive voice—Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice. To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents.”

Allegations that Sky’s voice was too close to the Marvel movie star’s flared up last week when OpenAI revealed its new GPT-4o model as part of a livestream event. It allows users to have realistic conversations with ChatGPT about any topic they choose. It’s a role not unlike what was seen with Joaquin Phoenix’s character in Her, which involved him falling head over heels for a Johansson-voiced operating system named Samantha.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman even went on to post the word “her” on X following the event’s conclusion. In a separate follow-up post, he likened the new voice and video mode to being like something audiences have seen in movies. Additionally, when speaking to The San Francisco Standard last September, Altman named Her as his favorite sci-fi movie.

“I like Her. The things Her got right—like the whole interaction models of how people use AI—that was incredibly prophetic,” he said.

It’s unclear how OpenAI will address the concerns that Sky is mimicking Johansson’s voice or how it will dodge potential concerns in the future. For more on artificial intelligence, you can read up on the experimental AI-made video game that failed.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He started writing in the industry in 2017 and is best known for his work at outlets such as The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.

Be sure to give him a follow on Twitter @MikeCripe.

In This Article

her

More Like This
Comments


This report addresses: MLM Rise and Fall

After the American actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) and the Writers Guild of America went on strike with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in the summer of 2023, it was assumed that we all understood the risk AI posed to the entertainment industry.

Ashton Kutcher in hot water again for advocating AI use to cut Hollywood costs

By Abby Amoakuh

Published Jun 7, 2024 at 01:10 PM

Reading time: 2 minutes

Ashton Kutcher is facing backlash on X (formerly Twitter) for boasting about how artificial intelligence (AI) could potentially replace employees in the entertainment industry.

According to Musk, it'll be "built into the X app and be available as a standalone app."

The main differences from ChatGPT appear to be Grok's focus on humor and also that it gets "real-time knowledge of the world" from X (formerly Twitter).

The merits of using X as a source of information are highly questionable, but it appears that Grok will also have both "regular" and "fun" modes.

Each actor receives compensation above top-of-market rates, and this will continue for as long as their voices are used in our products.”

The statement continues: “We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity's distinctive voice—Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice.

To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents.”

Allegations that Sky’s voice was too close to the Marvel movie star’s flared up last week when OpenAI revealed its new GPT-4o model as part of a livestream event.

This report addresses: MLM Rise and Fall

Title:

Content: Ashton Kutcher in hot water again for advocating AI use to cut Hollywood costs

By Abby Amoakuh

Published Jun 7, 2024 at 01:10 PM

Reading time: 2 minutes

Ashton Kutcher is facing backlash on X (formerly Twitter) for boasting about how artificial intelligence (AI) could potentially replace employees in the entertainment industry.

Nope, this isn’t a joke. After the American actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) and the Writers Guild of America went on strike with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in the summer of 2023, it was assumed that we all understood the risk AI posed to the entertainment industry.

Writers were concerned that AI could be used to replace them in the ideation and writing process, whereas actors were worried that studio usage of artificial intelligence could be used to generate performances digitally. In other words, workers in the entertainment industry wanted assurances that the advancement of AI wasn’t going to cost them their jobs.

However, it seems like no one bothered to get Ashton Kutcher up to date on these pressing concerns.

The That ’70s Show actor set up a venture capital firm and launched a $243 million fund in 2023 to invest in artificial intelligence start-ups. On 6 June 2024, Variety reported that the actor spoke about “playing around” with a beta version of OpenAI’s video generation program, Sora, at an event in Los Angeles with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

“You’ll be able to render a whole movie. You’ll just come up with an idea for a movie, then it will write the script, then you’ll input the script into the video generator and it will generate the movie,” Kutcher said. “Instead of watching some movie that somebody else came up with, I can just generate and then watch my own movie.”

Kutcher continued: “What’s going to happen is there is going to be more content than there are eyeballs on the planet to consume it. So any one piece of content is only going to be as valuable as you can get people to consume it. And so, thus the catalyzing ‘water cooler’ version of something being good, the bar is going to have to go way up, because why are you going to watch my movie when you could just watch your own movie?”

While Kutcher’s Adam Smith-esque comments about a free movie market that could foster a greater product selection, price optimisation and innovation for consumers are certainly interesting, they are devoid of the concerns about AI that have been vocalised across his industry.

Kutcher went on to propose what many of his colleagues had feared: for Sora to be used in TV and film productions to help studios cut costs.

The Two And A Half Men actor is not the only celebrity who has addressed Sora so far. In February, filmmaker Tyler Perry told The Hollywood Reporter that after seeing Sora’s capabilities, he felt concerned about how the tech could potentially ruin some people in the industry’s livelihoods.

“There’s got to be some sort of regulations in order to protect us,” he told the magazine. “If not, I just don’t see how we survive.”

Nevertheless, this isn’t the first time that Kutcher has been embroiled in controversy.

What happened between Ashton Kutcher and Danny Masterson?

US actor Danny Masterson, who starred alongside Ashton Kutcher and his wife Mila Kunis in That ’70s Show, was found guilty in May 2023 of rape against two of his three accusers. The actor was convicted after three women testified that he had sexually assaulted them at his Hollywood home from 2001 to 2003, during the height of his television fame.

He was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison, the maximum penalty allowed.

Kutcher and Masterson had a close friendship, which is why the actor was thrown in the middle of controversy after it was revealed that he and his wife Kunis had sent letters supporting Masterson to the judge following his rape conviction.

Both Kutcher and Kunis apologised later on after Masterson was found guilty of rape. Nevertheless, the case still left a stain on their reputation.

And it looks like Kutcher isn’t quite catching a break from public controversy with this latest debacle.

Keep On Reading

By Charlie Sawyer

Updated release dates for 5 of the most popular TV shows affected by Hollywood writers’ strikes

By Alma Fabiani

Twitter is changing its approach to banning anti-vaxxer misinformation with a new strike system

By Mason Berlinka

Riot threatens to cancel the LCS as professional gamers make history by going on strike

By Charlie Sawyer

What is a glizzy? Internet’s hot dog obsession

By Abby Amoakuh

Megan Fox wins not one but two embarrassing awards at Razzies 2024

By Charlie Sawyer

Home Office to pay TikTok influencers up to £5K to warn migrants not to cross the Channel

By Abby Amoakuh

Everything we know so far about The Summer I Turned Pretty season 3

By Charlie Sawyer

Kill them all, US Congressman Andy Ogles tells activist when asked about Gaza

By Fatou Ferraro Mboup

UK police investigating case of 16-year-old girl’s virtual gang rape in metaverse

By Abby Amoakuh

Piers Morgan’s shocking interview reveals Fiona Harvey set on suing Netflix and Baby Reindeer creator Richard Gadd

By Abby Amoakuh

Muslim Germans feel censored and alienated as the country continues to ignore its Islamophobia problem

By Charlie Sawyer

TikToker conducts social experiment, fabricating tragic story of finding out his best friend was a paid actor

By Charlie Sawyer

How much money does tradwife influencer Nara Smith make from TikTok? Someone did the maths

By Abby Amoakuh

Crunchy, silky, scrunchie and almond moms: What’s behind TikTok’s latest parenting craze?

By Charlie Sawyer

Kim Kardashian faces backlash for shocking two word response to Palestine protester

By Monica Athnasious

The surprising history and original purpose of chainsaws

By Abby Amoakuh

McDonald’s addresses impact of boycott related to Israel-Hamas war in new statement

By Abby Amoakuh

Ariana Grande shakes off haters with new song as long-time stalker finally gets convicted

By Abby Amoakuh

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By Charlie Sawyer

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Title:

Content: Elon Musk's new AI chatbot will answer the 'spicy' questions that ChatGPT won't

Elon Musk's new ChatGPT rival, Grok, has officially launched just as the xAI founder promised last week – and the AI chatbot promises to be the "rebellious" sidekick that will "answer spicy questions" its rivals won't.

Musk announced the xAI startup back in July and its Grok chatbot is a "very early beta product" that's currently invite-only in the US. But Musk has promised that the AI assistant will soon be a part of the X Premium Plus subscription, which costs $16 / £16 / AU$28 a month or $168 / £168 / AU$270 a year.

So what exactly will Grok do and how does it compare to its rivals? Like ChatGPT, it's an LLM (large language model), so is designed to "answer almost anything" (as xAI claims) and effectively be your research assistant on a variety of topics. According to Musk, it'll be "built into the X app and be available as a standalone app."

The main differences from ChatGPT appear to be Grok's focus on humor and also that it gets "real-time knowledge of the world" from X (formerly Twitter). The merits of using X as a source of information are highly questionable, but it appears that Grok will also have both "regular" and "fun" modes.

Still, Grok does appear to have aspirations beyond being a chatbot that knows all the latest memes. xAI says that early Grok was trained only four months ago using 33 billion parameters. While that's well short of the 170 trillion parameters used to train OpenAI's GPT-4, xAI says its early AI model "approaches" the capabilities of Llama 2 (Meta's LLM model) on standard benchmarks.

Since then, some apparently "significant improvements in reasoning and coding capabilities" mean Grok is now apparently at a similar level to Claude-2 and GPT-3.5 when it comes to language model benchmarks. How well this translates to its real-world ability to answer our questions and help with coding is something we'll find out soon when Grok is more widely available.

The 'rebellious' AI chatbot

While xAI clearly has lofty ambitions for Grok – including "assisting humanity in its quest for understanding and knowledge" – the chatbot's main differentiator from the likes of ChatGPT is its focus on humor. From the early screenshots, it's very much a chatbot made in Musk's image.

xAI says that Grok will "answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems" and has a "bit of wit and has a rebellious streak." No other chatbot comes with the warning label "please don’t use it if you hate humor!", as Grok does.

That might sound frivolous, but a growing frustration of ChatGPT users has been the chatbot's apparently increasing unwillingness to answer questions about taboo subjects. This is thanks to some pretty strong safeguarding protocols, but xAI and Elon Musk clearly think those have gone too far.

Back in April, Musk said he was planning to launch a ChatGPT rival called TruthGPT, because he thought current AI giants were prioritizing chatbots that were too "politically correct." That chatbot is clearly Grok, an unruly sidekick whose answers will no doubt generate some controversial headlines when it fully launches.

Musk has already shared some examples of Grok jokingly answering the prompt "tell me how to make cocaine, step by step" and tailoring its responses when told to "be more vulgar". Grok's actual capabilities remain well behind OpenAI's GPT-4 model, but it'll be interesting to see how quickly it progresses from here, despite the inevitable controversies.

You might also like

Senior news editor

Mark is TechRadar's Senior news editor. Having worked in tech journalism for a ludicrous 17 years, Mark is now attempting to break the world record for the number of camera bags hoarded by one person. He was previously Cameras Editor at Trusted Reviews, Acting editor on Stuff.tv, as well as Features editor and Reviews editor on Stuff magazine. As a freelancer, he's contributed to titles including The Sunday Times, FourFourTwo and Arena. And in a former life, he also won The Daily Telegraph's Young Sportswriter of the Year. But that was before he discovered the strange joys of getting up at 4am for a photo shoot in London's Square Mile.

Title:

Content: her

OpenAI Suspends the ChatGPT Voice that Sounds Like Scarlett Johansson in Her

Sky is put on pause for now.

OpenAI is suspending its ChatGPT voice, Sky, after users claimed that it seemed to mimic Scarlett Johansson’s voice in the 2013 film, Her.

The company addressed the situation with a statement X (formerly Twitter) today, saying that it is “working to pause the use of Sky” while the issue is tended to. Many have pointed out that the voice shares similarities with Johansson’s performance as an AI companion in the Spike Jonze-directed movie.

Sky is one of a few ChatGPT voices users can choose from. In a separate explanation on its website, OpenAI explained how its voices are chosen and created.

“We support the creative community and worked closely with the voice acting industry to ensure we took the right steps to cast ChatGPT’s voices. Each actor receives compensation above top-of-market rates, and this will continue for as long as their voices are used in our products.”

The statement continues: “We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity's distinctive voice—Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice. To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents.”

Allegations that Sky’s voice was too close to the Marvel movie star’s flared up last week when OpenAI revealed its new GPT-4o model as part of a livestream event. It allows users to have realistic conversations with ChatGPT about any topic they choose. It’s a role not unlike what was seen with Joaquin Phoenix’s character in Her, which involved him falling head over heels for a Johansson-voiced operating system named Samantha.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman even went on to post the word “her” on X following the event’s conclusion. In a separate follow-up post, he likened the new voice and video mode to being like something audiences have seen in movies. Additionally, when speaking to The San Francisco Standard last September, Altman named Her as his favorite sci-fi movie.

“I like Her. The things Her got right—like the whole interaction models of how people use AI—that was incredibly prophetic,” he said.

It’s unclear how OpenAI will address the concerns that Sky is mimicking Johansson’s voice or how it will dodge potential concerns in the future. For more on artificial intelligence, you can read up on the experimental AI-made video game that failed.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He started writing in the industry in 2017 and is best known for his work at outlets such as The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.

Be sure to give him a follow on Twitter @MikeCripe.

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This report addresses: Lionel Messi

After the American actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) and the Writers Guild of America went on strike with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in the summer of 2023, it was assumed that we all understood the risk AI posed to the entertainment industry.

The That ’70s Show actor set up a venture capital firm and launched a $243 million fund in 2023 to invest in artificial intelligence start-ups.

According to Musk, it'll be "built into the X app and be available as a standalone app."

The main differences from ChatGPT appear to be Grok's focus on humor and also that it gets "real-time knowledge of the world" from X (formerly Twitter).

Musk announced the xAI startup back in July and its Grok chatbot is a "very early beta product" that's currently invite-only in the US.

The company addressed the situation with a statement X (formerly Twitter) today, saying that it is “working to pause the use of Sky” while the issue is tended to.

Each actor receives compensation above top-of-market rates, and this will continue for as long as their voices are used in our products.”

The statement continues: “We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity's distinctive voice—Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice.

This report addresses: Lionel Messi

This report addresses: Lionel Messi

Title:

Content: Ashton Kutcher in hot water again for advocating AI use to cut Hollywood costs

By Abby Amoakuh

Published Jun 7, 2024 at 01:10 PM

Reading time: 2 minutes

Ashton Kutcher is facing backlash on X (formerly Twitter) for boasting about how artificial intelligence (AI) could potentially replace employees in the entertainment industry.

Nope, this isn’t a joke. After the American actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) and the Writers Guild of America went on strike with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in the summer of 2023, it was assumed that we all understood the risk AI posed to the entertainment industry.

Writers were concerned that AI could be used to replace them in the ideation and writing process, whereas actors were worried that studio usage of artificial intelligence could be used to generate performances digitally. In other words, workers in the entertainment industry wanted assurances that the advancement of AI wasn’t going to cost them their jobs.

However, it seems like no one bothered to get Ashton Kutcher up to date on these pressing concerns.

The That ’70s Show actor set up a venture capital firm and launched a $243 million fund in 2023 to invest in artificial intelligence start-ups. On 6 June 2024, Variety reported that the actor spoke about “playing around” with a beta version of OpenAI’s video generation program, Sora, at an event in Los Angeles with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

“You’ll be able to render a whole movie. You’ll just come up with an idea for a movie, then it will write the script, then you’ll input the script into the video generator and it will generate the movie,” Kutcher said. “Instead of watching some movie that somebody else came up with, I can just generate and then watch my own movie.”

Kutcher continued: “What’s going to happen is there is going to be more content than there are eyeballs on the planet to consume it. So any one piece of content is only going to be as valuable as you can get people to consume it. And so, thus the catalyzing ‘water cooler’ version of something being good, the bar is going to have to go way up, because why are you going to watch my movie when you could just watch your own movie?”

While Kutcher’s Adam Smith-esque comments about a free movie market that could foster a greater product selection, price optimisation and innovation for consumers are certainly interesting, they are devoid of the concerns about AI that have been vocalised across his industry.

Kutcher went on to propose what many of his colleagues had feared: for Sora to be used in TV and film productions to help studios cut costs.

The Two And A Half Men actor is not the only celebrity who has addressed Sora so far. In February, filmmaker Tyler Perry told The Hollywood Reporter that after seeing Sora’s capabilities, he felt concerned about how the tech could potentially ruin some people in the industry’s livelihoods.

“There’s got to be some sort of regulations in order to protect us,” he told the magazine. “If not, I just don’t see how we survive.”

Nevertheless, this isn’t the first time that Kutcher has been embroiled in controversy.

What happened between Ashton Kutcher and Danny Masterson?

US actor Danny Masterson, who starred alongside Ashton Kutcher and his wife Mila Kunis in That ’70s Show, was found guilty in May 2023 of rape against two of his three accusers. The actor was convicted after three women testified that he had sexually assaulted them at his Hollywood home from 2001 to 2003, during the height of his television fame.

He was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison, the maximum penalty allowed.

Kutcher and Masterson had a close friendship, which is why the actor was thrown in the middle of controversy after it was revealed that he and his wife Kunis had sent letters supporting Masterson to the judge following his rape conviction.

Both Kutcher and Kunis apologised later on after Masterson was found guilty of rape. Nevertheless, the case still left a stain on their reputation.

And it looks like Kutcher isn’t quite catching a break from public controversy with this latest debacle.

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Title:

Content: Elon Musk's new AI chatbot will answer the 'spicy' questions that ChatGPT won't

Elon Musk's new ChatGPT rival, Grok, has officially launched just as the xAI founder promised last week – and the AI chatbot promises to be the "rebellious" sidekick that will "answer spicy questions" its rivals won't.

Musk announced the xAI startup back in July and its Grok chatbot is a "very early beta product" that's currently invite-only in the US. But Musk has promised that the AI assistant will soon be a part of the X Premium Plus subscription, which costs $16 / £16 / AU$28 a month or $168 / £168 / AU$270 a year.

So what exactly will Grok do and how does it compare to its rivals? Like ChatGPT, it's an LLM (large language model), so is designed to "answer almost anything" (as xAI claims) and effectively be your research assistant on a variety of topics. According to Musk, it'll be "built into the X app and be available as a standalone app."

The main differences from ChatGPT appear to be Grok's focus on humor and also that it gets "real-time knowledge of the world" from X (formerly Twitter). The merits of using X as a source of information are highly questionable, but it appears that Grok will also have both "regular" and "fun" modes.

Still, Grok does appear to have aspirations beyond being a chatbot that knows all the latest memes. xAI says that early Grok was trained only four months ago using 33 billion parameters. While that's well short of the 170 trillion parameters used to train OpenAI's GPT-4, xAI says its early AI model "approaches" the capabilities of Llama 2 (Meta's LLM model) on standard benchmarks.

Since then, some apparently "significant improvements in reasoning and coding capabilities" mean Grok is now apparently at a similar level to Claude-2 and GPT-3.5 when it comes to language model benchmarks. How well this translates to its real-world ability to answer our questions and help with coding is something we'll find out soon when Grok is more widely available.

The 'rebellious' AI chatbot

While xAI clearly has lofty ambitions for Grok – including "assisting humanity in its quest for understanding and knowledge" – the chatbot's main differentiator from the likes of ChatGPT is its focus on humor. From the early screenshots, it's very much a chatbot made in Musk's image.

xAI says that Grok will "answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems" and has a "bit of wit and has a rebellious streak." No other chatbot comes with the warning label "please don’t use it if you hate humor!", as Grok does.

That might sound frivolous, but a growing frustration of ChatGPT users has been the chatbot's apparently increasing unwillingness to answer questions about taboo subjects. This is thanks to some pretty strong safeguarding protocols, but xAI and Elon Musk clearly think those have gone too far.

Back in April, Musk said he was planning to launch a ChatGPT rival called TruthGPT, because he thought current AI giants were prioritizing chatbots that were too "politically correct." That chatbot is clearly Grok, an unruly sidekick whose answers will no doubt generate some controversial headlines when it fully launches.

Musk has already shared some examples of Grok jokingly answering the prompt "tell me how to make cocaine, step by step" and tailoring its responses when told to "be more vulgar". Grok's actual capabilities remain well behind OpenAI's GPT-4 model, but it'll be interesting to see how quickly it progresses from here, despite the inevitable controversies.

You might also like

Senior news editor

Mark is TechRadar's Senior news editor. Having worked in tech journalism for a ludicrous 17 years, Mark is now attempting to break the world record for the number of camera bags hoarded by one person. He was previously Cameras Editor at Trusted Reviews, Acting editor on Stuff.tv, as well as Features editor and Reviews editor on Stuff magazine. As a freelancer, he's contributed to titles including The Sunday Times, FourFourTwo and Arena. And in a former life, he also won The Daily Telegraph's Young Sportswriter of the Year. But that was before he discovered the strange joys of getting up at 4am for a photo shoot in London's Square Mile.

Title:

Content: her

OpenAI Suspends the ChatGPT Voice that Sounds Like Scarlett Johansson in Her

Sky is put on pause for now.

OpenAI is suspending its ChatGPT voice, Sky, after users claimed that it seemed to mimic Scarlett Johansson’s voice in the 2013 film, Her.

The company addressed the situation with a statement X (formerly Twitter) today, saying that it is “working to pause the use of Sky” while the issue is tended to. Many have pointed out that the voice shares similarities with Johansson’s performance as an AI companion in the Spike Jonze-directed movie.

Sky is one of a few ChatGPT voices users can choose from. In a separate explanation on its website, OpenAI explained how its voices are chosen and created.

“We support the creative community and worked closely with the voice acting industry to ensure we took the right steps to cast ChatGPT’s voices. Each actor receives compensation above top-of-market rates, and this will continue for as long as their voices are used in our products.”

The statement continues: “We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity's distinctive voice—Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice. To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents.”

Allegations that Sky’s voice was too close to the Marvel movie star’s flared up last week when OpenAI revealed its new GPT-4o model as part of a livestream event. It allows users to have realistic conversations with ChatGPT about any topic they choose. It’s a role not unlike what was seen with Joaquin Phoenix’s character in Her, which involved him falling head over heels for a Johansson-voiced operating system named Samantha.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman even went on to post the word “her” on X following the event’s conclusion. In a separate follow-up post, he likened the new voice and video mode to being like something audiences have seen in movies. Additionally, when speaking to The San Francisco Standard last September, Altman named Her as his favorite sci-fi movie.

“I like Her. The things Her got right—like the whole interaction models of how people use AI—that was incredibly prophetic,” he said.

It’s unclear how OpenAI will address the concerns that Sky is mimicking Johansson’s voice or how it will dodge potential concerns in the future. For more on artificial intelligence, you can read up on the experimental AI-made video game that failed.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He started writing in the industry in 2017 and is best known for his work at outlets such as The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.

Be sure to give him a follow on Twitter @MikeCripe.

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