Big week for sexy cartoons

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We interviewed “live forever guy” Bryan Johnson on the pod and things took an unexpected turn!

It’s been a wild ass year in AI, thanks for hanging with us each week. See you in the new year. ❤️ 

Love,

The Boys

Writer: ted
Editor: Deana

AI romance, reimagined. The idea of an AI romantic companion is nothing new, but digi.ai is taking it to a whole new level of cringe. The team worked with Pixar and Disney animators to create avatars that feel “real, human, and sexy” and can be customized to match the user’s type. The team promises smooth, natural dialogue and lifelike interactions. While some are googly-eyed over it, others are giving it the side eye for exploiting and monetizing loneliness. If we had to guess, it is only a matter of time before someone pairs this software with hardware. We know how this show ends!

TikTok in Trouble. ByteDance (yes, the TikTok parent company) has been accused of secretly using OpenAI’s GPT model to build and train their own AI model in China, codenamed Project Seed. As you would imagine, this is a big no-no according to OpenAI's terms of service. While ByteDance refuted the claim, OpenAI suspended ByteDance's access to its API, pending an investigation that could result in the Chinese company losing its account altogether. ByteDance is the first major company to make news for a potential OpenAI suspension, heightening concerns and raising additional scrutiny given the ongoing geopolitical and regulatory concerns surrounding Chinese tech companies and their operations in other countries. Will ByteDance be grounded by OpenAI for a week or for eternity?

AI-powered toys have entered the arena. And no, this is not an episode of Black Mirror. Curio, an innovative technology toy brand, has unveiled a new line of AI-generated plush toys. Launched with Grimes, the initial line includes three $99 cute characters that will utilize OpenAI technology: Grok (voiced by Grimes, and not to be confused with Elon’s GrokAI), Gabbo, and Grem. Designed to cut down on screen time and enhance creative play, the toys promise to offer an interactive, dialog-driven experience that can improve a child’s cognitive development and communication skills. Sounds great, right? Not so fast. Concerns hover around privacy, the ethical implications of introducing AI to children so young, and some panic that Curio’s toys are the next M3GAN.

Nah. That’s how Sam Altman replied when asked if OpenAI released the next version of GPT: GPT-4.5. And if you’re confused about GPT-4.5, you are not alone. All of AI Twitter and the OpenAI Developer Forum seem to be confused, too. Rumors about GPT-4.5 started based on X posts claiming to have found leaked images and pricing information, including potential new features, such as support for audio, video, and 3D in addition to text and images, and an ability to solve multimodal, complex logic problems. After users felt ChatGPT was performing significantly better, they even asked ChatGPT what model it was running. Its answer? GPT-4.5 Turbo. Will DePute, an OpenAI employee, was quick to say that answer is “a very weird and oddly consistent hallucination.” With both him and Sam denying GPT-4.5 rumors, we probably won’t get a new version of ChatGPT for Christmas, but it is almost definitely coming soon. Brace yourself for an accelerated AI race in 2024.