What’s In This Issue?
This Week’s Main Stories
Story 01Artificial Intelligence Creates Celebrity Faces That Don't Exist
Story 02Audible Uses Machine Learning To Let Listeners Skip To "Good Parts"
Story 03Why Is There Often A Backlash Against Women-Centric Food Trends?
Story 04Ukraine Invites Google and Apple To Create A Borscht Emoji
Story 05NASA Releases Terrifying "Sounds Of Space" Soundtrack For HalloweenArtificial Intelligence Creates Celebrity Faces That Don't Exist
This week a group of scientists shared an example of AI creating fake faces of people who don't exist from headshots of celebrities. The video of this software is mesmerizing thanks to the strange face morphing. As biometric scanning, online dating and the widespread use of facial recognition for everything from payments to public transit in China continues to grow, the existence of these fake faces is likely to take on big new implications for security, media and who we trust (and who we don't) online.
Audible Uses Machine Learning To Let Listeners Skip To "Good Parts"
As part of their new Audible Romance service for lovers of romance novels, Audible introduced a new feature that lets listeners skip to the "best parts" of the books automatically. In time, Audible imagines the same technology might be used with less formulaic books in other genres to help readers more efficiently consume books. Along with speed reading technology and the idea that we are reinventing skimming - this is yet another sign that the way people expect to consume media is fundamentally changing.
Why Is There Often A Backlash Against Women-Centric Food Trends?
"When men enjoy something, they elevate it. But when women enjoy something, they ruin it." Citing the decline of Rosé or wine coolers, this article takes a look at why we treat so many products traditionally associated with men (like whiskey or cigars) with such reverence while we seem to devalue the food and beverages made popular by women. The point, argues writer Jaya Saxena, isn't really about women - but about our blind acceptance of this double standard, and the need for that to change.
Ukraine Invites Google and Apple To Create A Borscht Emoji
Being in the US, it is easy to forget just how often the things that seem like huge news are actually widely irrelevant for most of the world ... like the recent hamburger emoji scandal. This story is about a well timed tweet that pokes the perfect bit of fun at Google and Apple (along with the media) for being so focused on a food only important in the US. Americans in general could do with spending a bit more time learning about other places ... starting with the soupy delicious Eastern European dish Borscht and why it deserves its own emoji.
NASA Releases Terrifying "Sounds Of Space" Soundtrack For Halloween
If I needed any more proof that I'm not cut out to be an astronaut, I found it in listening to these sounds of radio waves recorded and released by NASA. Just in time for Halloween, it was a great example of an organization taking something that would be easy to discard (recordings of radio waves from distant planets) and turning it into something creepy, engaging, timely and worthy of discussion. For all the discussion about content marketing, this is what doing it creatively really looks like.
