🧙🏼 Spectacles (AI glasses from Snap)

Howdy, wizards.

Did you have a chance to check out BotFlix, yet? It’s a curated collection I made of bots for character AI, but you can browse different series (TV, movies, games, etc.) instead of just bots.

Here’s what’s brewing in AI today:

Dario’s Picks

The most important news stories in AI this week

1. Spectacles, AR glasses powered by Snap OS, launched. Snap, the company behind Snapchat, launched AR glasses with a social twist. They’re taking the Snapchat experience and turning it into a 3D world – with immersive lenses, my AI and games. The glasses can also do things like browsing the web, watch spatially arranged video, and generate 3D assets.

    

   With the tagline “Get closer with friends”, the new glasses are somewhat reminiscent of Apple VisionPro but less immersive and polished, and more tailored to having fun with other people.

    

   It’s currently only available to developers in the US on a $99/month subscription. For now, the battery life is only about 45 minutes.

• ‎ Why it matters‎ ‎ Snap is betting that the social experience they’ve created on their app will translate into “real life”. While the idea of encouraging in-person meetups is trendier than ever, especially with people burned out from online dating, I’m not convinced that doing the same things you do on social apps while sitting next to each other would create a stronger bond than simply being on your phones together. It’s exciting to see new products like this, but I think there’s a high chance it’ll flop. Chess is great, but if you’re sitting next to each other, why not just play regular chess?

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2. Are AI products just pitch decks? Stumbled across this super interesting discussion. The argument goes that the big AI companies are making money (billions) at this point in time doesn’t actually concern them that much. What’s more important is showing off their future potential to investors in order to raise enough capital to build AGI. They don’t care too much about commercialisation at this stage because they know the potential of AGI, self-improving super intelligence, would dwarf any revenue they’re getting now anyways. The progress that really matters is coming from core algorithmic changes, like a brand new model, rather than products.

• ‎ Why it matters‎ ‎ Mind-boggling stuff! Do you think the products OpenAI puts out—like ChatGPT, GPTs, voice, etc.—are essentially just demos, paving the way for their next investment round? Is their real focus entirely on AGI? I think there’s some truth to that, but, given the competition (with several companies racing toward AGI), these products also play a crucial role in locking users—individuals, developers and businesses—into their ecosystem, ensuring they have distribution for whatever comes next.

3. @levelsio’s AI video of a night out in Berlin. This post details how he created a realistic-looking “night out reel” with AI in 3 hours. In a nutshell, he took an AI generated photo, animated it with Kling AI, narrated it with Eleven Labs, added music, and added English captions with CapCut.

• ‎ Why it matters‎ ‎ The author pointed out something important which is – “AI shoots” like this have a lot in common with real-life shoots. To make it good, you still have to think about and verbalise locations, camera settings, outfits and models. Also, he envisioned having this whole pipeline of work in the same product, like one-click generated movies with AI. Pretty cool!

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