Author: Geek Planet

Leading up to Christmas, Coca Cola and McDonald’s, two of America’s biggest and most iconic brands, put out AI-generated commercials. When I first saw the Coca Cola one, I had to do a “double take,” but it soon became clear that those semi-trucks and that happy golden retriever had an unreal gloss added on. The McDonald’s ad got so much pushback that the fast-food giant opted to pull it from YouTube. Enter Porsche, the car company, and it’s contrasting advertisement showing the time-tested beauties of hand-drawn and CGI animation. It’s a beautiful ad, replete with vivid colors and crisp images,…

The European Union has published its Digital Omnibus proposal — a bundle of updates meant to simplify Europe’s digital rulebook and remove some of the complexity that has built up since the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and other tech laws came into force.The Nov. 19 update has been dubbed a “simplification package,” and includes fundamental changes that will affect how data can be used, how AI is trained, and how companies across advertising, media, and tech operate. “The Commission set a course to simplify EU rules to make the EU economy more competitive and more prosperous by making business in the…

The first two acts of 2001:  A Space Odyssey which we have been covering on recent Saturdays, function more as preludes. Act 3 is really where the story begins. In the opening, Dr. David Bowman and his partner, Dr. Frank Poole are flying to Jupiter on their ship, Discovery One. It is piloted by humanity’s newest AI, the HAL 9000. There are also three other scientists on the ship — in hibernation. The plan is to wake them up once the crew reaches Jupiter. So far, things seem to be going well, although HAL immediately comes off as arrogant, declaring…

Google’s NotebookLM is experimenting with a feature that could make studying feel a lot more like attending an actual class. A new Lecture mode can turn your uploaded notes, documents, and sources into long, spoken lectures (via Testing Catalog). It lets NotebookLM teach the material out loud instead of just summarizing it on screen. Instead of the shorter Audio Overviews users are already familiar with, this new mode is designed to produce a single, continuous lecture delivered by one AI narrator. When paired with the Long length option, the lecture can run for close to 30 minutes, mimicking the flow…

After months of speculation, Apple finally confirmed that it is partnering with Google for the much-awaited Siri overhaul. However, the announcement offered few details, only noting that the upgraded Siri will rely on Gemini as its foundation and that the AI features “will continue to run on Apple devices and Private Cloud Compute, while maintaining Apple’s industry-leading privacy standards.” A new report has now revealed additional details about what this partnership might entail. According to The Information (via 9to5Mac), Apple will use Google’s Gemini models to train the next-gen Apple Foundation Models and will have the option to tailor the…

Are you sharp enough to solve clever puzzles? To interpret clues beyond their apparent meaning? Doing so shows you have a high IQ on the nerd scale and might be a good computer programmer, mathematician or engineer. We offer puzzles each Monday here at MindMatters.ai. Good ones are often surrounded by obfuscations meant to derail thought trails and otherwise distract. Sharp minds can see through these distractions, focus on the problem and offer solutions. We call these puzzles Micro Softies after the ones Microsoft used to use to select programmers. Last Monday’s Micro Softy was inspired by an old CBS…

The holiday shopping season is the Super Bowl for most consumer brands. But in order to succeed, brands need to be training all year long, according to Traackr CEO Pierre-Loïc Assayag. “This is a year-long effort. There’s no such thing as succeeding during a period of time without having done the legwork beforehand,” he said. “For a creator post to resonate with their audience, there needs to be a sense of authenticity.” For its 2025 Holiday Shopping Report, the influencer marketing platform tracked the top brands according to VIT, Traackr’s proprietary metric for visibility, impact and trust, for the 2024…

Samsung is pushing lock screen customization a step further on Galaxy phones. A fresh LockStar update expands Samsung unlock animations, giving you a quick way to make your phone feel different every time you unlock it. It’s simple, and it’s instantly noticeable. The Galaxy Store notes for LockStar 8.5.00.8 highlight added “Unlock Animation” effects and One UI 8.5 support, alongside a few quality of life tweaks. There’s one catch, Samsung doesn’t spell out which models get every feature, or when it lands everywhere. Unlock animations take center stage The headline change is the new unlock effects menu inside LockStar, with…

The public unveiling of OpenAI’s ChatGPT on November 30, 2022, was met with justified astonishment along with unjustified hopes and fears that computers might be on the verge of artificial general intelligence (AGI), the ability to perform cognitive tasks as well as or better than humans. It is now apparent that AGI is not imminent and is not going to be achieved by scaling up ChatGPT or other large language models (LLMs). The core problem is that LLMs are stochastic text predictors—nothing more—and using more data, more parameters, and more compute is not going to give LLMs an understanding of…

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