🧑🤝🧑 When Your AI Clone Sells Out
Your pretty face is going to sell
🤜 Welcome to Dog Jail Tech Beat, where we pummel fresh, dripping insights out of the week’s biggest tech news.
In today’s edition: deepfakes for Domino’s, the pleasures of the panopticon, and the MAGA movement’s reluctant crypto bro.
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In the future, the internet’s feed spammers and boner pill peddlers might finally have a face you can trust: your own. As first reported by 404 Media, signing up to use Snapchat’s new AI image generator grants the company permission to use your likeness in “personalized sponsored content and ads.” Which is kind of like being model! Without all of that pesky compensation, of course.
Snapchat — the social media app that became famous for offering video filters that can turn you into a puppy dog or, uh, black guy with dreadlocks — opened the door to this uncanny new form of advertising with a feature called “My Selfie.” Released this week, My Selfie scans users’ faces, enabling them “to see themselves in AI-generated images, or even in Snaps with friends who have also opted-in.” While not mentioned in Snapchat’s announcement blog post, the terms and conditions of My Selfie reveal the full extent of the company’s plans for your digital doppelganger:
You also acknowledge and agree that by using My Selfie, you (or your likeness) may also appear in personalized sponsored content and ads that will be visible only to you and that includes branding or other advertising content of Snap or its business partners without compensation to you. […] By using My Selfie, you grant Snap, our affiliates, other users of the Services, and our business partners an unrestricted, worldwide, royalty-free, irrevocable and perpetual right and license to use, create derivative works from, promote, exhibit, broadcast, syndicate, reproduce, distribute, synchronize, overlay graphics on, overlay auditory effects on, publicly perform, and publicly display all or any portion of generated images of you and your likeness derived from your My Selfie, in any form and in any and all media or distribution methods, now known or later developed, for commercial and non-commercial purposes.
After agreeing to these conditions, users can turn off these “personalized ads” in the app’s settings, but there’s no clear way to opt out of Snapchat using your face to “develop and improve” its machine learning models. Additionally, Snapchat told CNET that while the company isn’t currently using My Selfies in personalized ads, it reserves the right to do so in the future.
A promotional video released by Snapchat on Tuesday depicts two friends using My Selfie to imagine themselves as a tennis pro and a Victorian debutante. One thing it doesn’t show is their dark doubles extolling the benefits of service in the United States Air Force. But thanks to the magic of AI, such things aren’t just possible, they’re practically inevitable.
Deep Thoughts
“Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.”
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, the third-richest man in the world, on how AI-powered surveillance will usher in a brighter (and less annoyingly free-willed) future. Bloomberg reports that AI-related growth has driven shares of Oracle up almost 60% this year.
“I think crypto is one of those things we have to do. Whether we like it or not, we have to do it.”
Former President Donald Trump on his family’s latest venture: a confusing crypto project called “World Liberty Financial.” According to Bloomberg, a key partner in this endeavor is Chase Herro, who previously said of cryptocurrency: “You can literally sell shit in a can, wrapped in piss, covered in human skin, for a billion dollars if the story's right, because people will buy it.”
“Our front-line [workers] are a big part in bringing the magic of Prime to customers, and starting early next year, Prime will become part of their benefits package.”
Amazon executive Udit Madan on an exciting new perk of working in the company’s warehouses. The free Amazon Prime memberships, announced alongside a $1.50/hour pay raise, come amid an ongoing push by workers for a $25/hour minimum wage.
Action Center
🔔 Alert 🔔
“Instagram makes all teen accounts private, in a highly scrutinized push for child safety”
“Amazon kills remote working, tells workers to be in office 5 days a week”
“New York Times’ tech staff threatens strike during Election Day crunch”
“Eight Notable Themes from US Court of Appeals Oral Arguments In Challenge to TikTok Law”
⚠️ Warning ⚠️
“California Passes Election ‘Deepfake’ Laws, Forcing Social Media Companies to Take Action”
“Patents for software and genetic code could be revived by two bills in Congress”
“Google to use digital driver’s licenses to verify the age of website users”
‼️ Jesus Christ ‼️
“Salesforce’s New AI Strategy Acknowledges That AI Will Take Jobs”
“Black teenagers twice as likely to be falsely accused of using AI tools in homework”
“Lebanon rocked by 2nd wave of exploding devices as Israel declares ‘new phase’ of war”
The Turing Test
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