List of All Articles with Tag 'science and tech'

With the rise of AI, we've all seen how powerful this new technology can be particularly when it comes to music. As a result, people have been using AI to perfectly replicate the singing voices of different artists such as Drake, Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift and Harry Styles in order to make AI covers of different songs. For example, there is a viral AI cover of Harry Styles singing in a duet with Taylor Swift on her track Style which fans have been going crazy about. While AI can also be used to create deep fakes of celebrities too - where the celeb's face is digitally imposed on someone else's body which is often used to spread misinformation or for malicious intent. But what do artists think about this issue? Here are the celebrities who have spoken out so far on the topic of AI: Drake An AI song called "Heart on My Sleeve" that used Drake's and the Weeknd's voices went viral before being taken down by music streaming services. While Drake himself hasn't commented on all the AI songs that have been created, he did express his disapproval of the practice after the rapper responded to an AI-generated cover of him rapping Ice Spice’s “Munch”, writing: “This is the final straw AI.” Grimes Grimes has expressed enthusiasm towards the new AI-generated songs - and has told her fans they can use her voice to create their own tracks. Taking to Twitter, she shared a New York Times article about the viral AI-generated song using Drake and The Weeknd's voice. She wrote: "I'll split 50 per cent royalties on any successful AI-generated song that uses my voice. Same deal as I would with any artist I collab with. Feel free to use my voice without penalty. I have no label and no legal bindings." "I think it's cool to be fused w a machine and I like the idea of open-sourcing all art and killing copyright," she added. Though, later she did add a clarification on the platform as to what circumstances would cause her to get certain AI songs taken down for copyright - where "rly rly toxic lyrics," are used with her voice. "Ok hate this part but we may do copyright takedowns ONLY for rly rly toxic lyrics w grimes voice: imo you'd rly have to push it for me to wanna take smthn down but I guess plz don't be *the worst*. as in, try not to exit the current Overton window of lyrical content w regards to sex/violence. Like no baby murder songs plz," she wrote. "I think I'm Streisand effecting this now but I don't wanna have to issue a takedown and be a hypocrite later. ***That's the only rule." Rly don't like to do a rule but don't wanna be responsible for a Nazi anthem unless it's somehow in jest a la producers I guess "- wud prefer avoiding political stuff but if it's a small meme with ur friends we prob won't penalize that. Probably just if smthn is viral and anti abortion or smthn like that. Grimes added: "Rly rly don't like adding rules so I apologize but this is the only thing." Most recently, the singer and producer has shared a guide on how to do this, and shared the link in a tweet: "HOW TO MAKE MUSIC FEAT GrimesAI - we can distribute it for you and you can earn royalties from your work." Billie Eilish During an appearance on The Late, Late Show with James Corden back in May this year, Billie Eilish shared her thoughts on AI. "I feel like my approach is not as optimistic, I'm a little bit scared of it," she admitted. "I'm a little scared of what someone could create of me doing something with it." Eilish added: "Scary, scary to me, it just looks so real," as she went on to note how it's "One of the most impressive things I've encountered in my life." The singer's comments come after deepfake porn' of singer Eilish was promoted on people's TikTok in December last year. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Astronomers are hoping to receive a message from aliens after a 40-year wait for a reply comes to an end. On 15 August 1983, a pair of hopeful astronomers at Stanford University beamed a message into space via an antenna. They believe that 22 August 2023 is the earliest time they can expect to receive a reply. The experiment was the brain-child of professors Masaki Morimoto and Hisashi Hirabayashi, who, around 40 years ago, beamed 13 drawings in radio waves to a star named Altair, approximately 16.7 light-years away from Earth. The 13 drawings sent into space by Morimoto and Hirabayashi were designed to tell the story of human evolution and how human beings came to exist on Earth. Drawings depicted how humans evolved from microscopic creatures that eventually moved from water onto land. It also explained our solar system and what DNA is. It was the hope that if there was any intelligent life on planets close to the star, they would interpret the messages and hopefully send a reply. In anticipation of a reply, a team at The University of Hyogo in Japan will monitor for a reply using the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) antenna. Led by Shinya Narusawa, the team will listen for around an hour for signs of unusual radio activity or signals that could suggest a reply. Narusawa explained: “A large number of exoplanets have been detected since the 1990s,” adding, “Altair may have a planet whose environment can sustain life.” Unfortunately, if a reply is received, it will be too late for Morimoto, one of the professors responsible for the original project, after he died in 2010. Dr Hirabayashi, the other pioneer, is currently a professor emeritus at JAXA. It is yet to be seen whether he will see his 40-year experiment gets the conclusion he was hoping for. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

As per Elon Musk's latest announcement, Twitter has started limiting the number of tweets a person can read. The tech mogul, who took over the platform in October in a $44 billion (£35 billion) sale, revealed on Sunday (2 July) that verified accounts can read up to 6,000 posts a day. Meanwhile, unverified users are limited to 600 a day, with newer Twitter accounts restricted to reading 300. "Rate limits increasing soon to 8,000 for verified, 800 for unverified & 400 for new unverified," he added later. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said Twitter had imposed the "temporary limit" to "address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation." The decision sparked a furious backlash from many users, with one writing: "Sooo what’s everyone’s Instagram? Where we movin’ to cause this Twitter limit is dumb AF." Another added: "Seriously fed up with twitter now. This ‘rate limit’ thing is ridiculous. You can’t read a thread or see replies. What is the point? Why is Elon doing this… and why didn’t he warn people weeks ago if he was going to change rules?" Musk did not say when the limits will increase, or how long the restrictions will be in place for. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Inevitably, many more Twitter users hit back at the move in the most Twitter way possible: Memes. To add salt to the wound, thousands of people complained of problems accessing the site on Saturday (1 July). #Twitterdown and RIP Twitter began trending as frustrated users were faced with a message saying "Rate limit exceeded. Please wait a few moments then try again." Last week, people trying to access Twitter were told they would need to log in to an account to view tweets, in what Musk called a "temporary emergency measure." It comes after another outage in February, when many users were not able to tweet, follow accounts or access their direct messages as the platform was plagued by widespread technical problems. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Public interest in the deep ocean went into a frenzy this week as the search for the doomed Titan submarine played out – and Oscar-winning film director has made no secret of the fact that he is obsessed with the subject. Since it emerged on 22 June that the Titan was destroyed in what US authorities called a “catastrophic implosion”, Cameron has been telling media outlets that he knew what the five-man crew’s fate was since Monday, four days earlier. After calling up his “contacts in the deep submersible community” Cameron said he had already ascertained that the vessel had been destroyed in an implosion. “I felt in my bones what had happened.” Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter But why does Cameron know so much about the ocean depths? Titanic, Avatar and The Abyss First of all, Cameron has made a lot of films about the bottom of the sea. His 1997 film, Titanic, won 11 Oscars and was the first movie to earn more than $1bn worldwide, and Cameron went deep on his research – literally. The filmmaker has visited the real-life wreck of the Titanic 33 times, making his first trip in 1995 to shoot footage for the film. One of those dives even involved getting trapped with the wreck for 16 hours, with currents of water holding the director’s submarine at the bottom of the ocean. He has even written a book about his experiences, Exploring The Deep, which includes details of his dive journey, photos and maps from his own explorations of the wreck. He told ABC News: “I actually calculated [that] I've spent more time on the ship than the captain did back in the day.” Long before Titanic, Cameron directed The Abyss in 1989. The premise of the film is that an American submarine sinks in the Caribbean – sound familiar? That prompts a search and recovery team to race against Soviet vessels to recover the boat. Meanwhile, the last movie in Cameron’s famous Avatar franchise, The Way of Water, is set on the aquatic ecosystems of a world 25 trillion miles from Earth. "Some people think of me as a Hollywood guy … (but) I make 'Avatar' to make money to do explorations," Cameron told The Telegraph. Going even deeper In 2012, Cameron went a step further, plunging nearly 11km down to the deepest place in the ocean, the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific. The filmmaker made the solo descent in a submarine called the Deepsea Challenger, and it took more than two hours to reach the bottom. The submarine he used was years in the making, designed by Cameron himself with a team of engineers. The trip was only the second manned expedition to the Mariana Trench. The first was in 1960, when US Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh and Swiss scientist Jacques Piccard descended to the ocean floor. “It was absolutely the most remote, isolated place on the planet,” Cameron said in a later interview. “I really feel like in one day I've been to another planet and come back.” He was even underwater when 9/11 happened His obsession with the ocean goes back to age 17, he told the New York Times, when he learned to scuba dive, when he said he felt like he had discovered the "keys to another world”. And between making Titanic in 1997 and Avatar in 2009 Cameron didn’t make a feature film. But he did make documentaries about sea exploration. One of those, 2003’s Ghosts of the Abyss, showed Cameron's travels to the Titanic, while the other, 2005’s Aliens of the Deep, saw Cameron team up with NASA scientists to explore the sea creatures of mid-ocean ridges. Cameron’s fascination even meant he was inside a submersible vessel exploring the Titanic on 11 September 2001, when terrorists flew two passenger jets into the World Trade Centre. It was only after the now-68-year-old director and his crew finished their expedition and returned to the main ship that Cameron learned what had happened. “What is this thing that’s going on?” Cameron asked the late actor Bill Paxton, who played treasure hunter Brock Lovett in the film. “The worst terrorist attack in history, Jim,” Paxton said. Cameron realised he “was presumably the last man in the Western Hemisphere to learn about what had happened,” he told Spiegel in 2012. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

By now we've seen what AI is capable of especially when its dealing with beloved cultural figures but a new take on The Simpsons might have gone too far according to some fans. Previously, AI has shown us what the likes of The Simpsons and The Avengers would have looked like if they were sitcoms in the 1980s. Well, thanks to Midjourney and one Reddit user we now know what the various Simpsons characters could look like if they were real people living in 2023. Over on the Midjourney subreddit @Crows_HeadIC shared what happened when they asked the AI image generator to reimagine the Simpsons as modern-day characters. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter The post has 20 different images and features all the main Simpsons family as well as other favourites such as Ned Flanders, Mr Burns, Patty and Selma, Apu, Smithers, Principal Skinner, Moe, Lenny and Carl. My take on the real life Simpsons by u/Crows_HeadIC in midjourney One of the biggest talking points on the thread was about the recreation of Marge who now has tattoos and a long blue hair, instead of a tall vertical bonnet. One person said: "Marge is the only one that doesn’t work. Everyone else is great." Another wrote: "I struggled a lot with Marge. But why not give her a modern edge." However, another person disagreed adding: "Marge is hot AF." Consensus was split on the other characters too with some loving the redesigns and others not being convinced. One user wrote: "Homer doesn't resemble anything like him except the baldness." Another said: "Flanders and Comic Book Guy are bang on." A third added: "Damn, Lenny Carl and Skinner got mad glow ups." Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Paul McCartney has revealed a 'final' song by The Beatles is set for release, all thanks to help from artificial intelligence. The tech has managed to replicate the voice of John Lennon, and although currently unnamed, it's like to be a 1978 song by the late artist, called 'Now And Then'. The group had previously attempted to finish the song without Lennon, and vowed it would be completed one day. "We just finished it up and it'll be released this year," McCartney said on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, much to the excitement of fans. Click here to sign up for our newsletters

A lot of things in the chaos that is life have sparked comparisons to Netflix’s dark anthology series Black Mirror over the years. Its very first episode back in 2011 - “The National Anthem” – resurfaced in 2015 amid ‘Piggate’ and David Cameron, Apple’s Animojis drew parallels with the titular animated bear in “The Waldo Moment”, and just this week people thought Apple’s first AR headset looked particularly dystopian. Now, as both tech experts and political advisers warn of the threat of artificial intelligence (AI), and the AI chatbot ChatGPT continues to generate memes and news stories online, Black Mirror’s creator Charlie Brooker has revealed he’s had a go with the software – albeit with underwhelming results. He told Empire: “I’ve toyed around with ChatGPT a bit. The first thing I did was type ‘generate Black Mirror episode’ and it comes up with something that, at first glance, reads plausibly, but on second glance, is s***. “Because all it’s done is look up all the synopses of Black Mirror episodes, and sort of mush them together. Then if you dig a bit more deeply you go, ‘oh, there’s not actually any real original thought here.’” Shame – that would have been suitably meta. Brooker did, however, note some learnings from his experience with the chatbot, adding: “I was aware that I had written lots of episodes where someone goes, ‘oh, I was inside a computer the whole time!’ So I thought, ‘I’m just going to chuck out any sense of what I think a Black Mirror episode is.’ Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter “There’s no point in having an anthology show if you can’t break your own rules. Just a sort of nice, cold glass of water in the face.” Although an AI-produced episode of Black Mirror is off the cards for now, fans of the show do have five new ones to look forward to when the hotly anticipated season six drops on Netflix on 15 June. Opening episode “Joan Is Awful” features a Netflix parody known as Streamberry in scenes akin to The Truman Show (and stars Scott Pilgrim actor Michael Cera and comedian Rob Delaney), episode two titled “Loch Henry” is reported to have elements of past episode “White Bear” in it, and Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul is up in space in “Beyond The Sea”. Meanwhile the penultimate episode “Mazey Day” appears to follow the scandal-hit celebrity in its title, and stage stars Anjana Vasan and Paapa Essiedu round off the series with “Demon 76” – a story which is reportedly about a sales assistant forced to do awful things. Yeah, that sounds about right. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Taylor Swift fans have shared feelings of forgetfulness after seeing the pop-star performing on her highly anticipated Eras Tour. Speaking to Time, Jenna Tocatlian, 25, spoke about her experience seeing Swift at Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts. Speaking about one of Swift’s nightly surprise songs At the concert that Tocatlian attended the song was 'Better Man', but she said: ‘If I didn’t have the 5-minute video that my friend kindly took of me jamming to it, I probably would have told every that it didn’t happen.’ She added that as she waited to leave the stadium, during an hour-long wait, she found it difficult to grasp the reality of a night she had waited so long to experience. ‘It’s hard to put together what you actually witness,’ she told Time. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter It seems Tocatlian isn’t the only one experiencing ‘post-concert amnesia’. Taking to social media, many users have shared their inability to recall the events of the show, from small details to even significant parts of the concert. Some described having feelings of guilt after waiting so long to attend the show and leaving without explicit memories. Ewan McNay, an associate professor in the psychology department at the State University of New York in Albany, told Time that the experience may be a result of too much excitement. He explained that ‘this is not a concert-specific phenomenon - it can happen any time you’re in a highly emotional state.’ This is because as a result of feelings of excitement, the body’s stress levels increase, which in turn causes neurons associated with memory to start firing indiscriminately. McNay shared that this makes forming new memories ‘really hard.’ The biological explanation for this occurrence is due to the body seeing excitement as a state of stress. The body then starts pumping out the brain’s favourite molecule for memory: glucose. Because the body thinks it’s stressed, it doesn’t want to waste energy on memory formation. Your vagal nerves, which regulate internal organ functions, also become stimulated as a result of the perceived stress. All this causes the part of your brain responsible for emotional processing - known as your amygdala - to release a neurotransmitter called norepinephrine. This helps to categorise memories as having high emotional content, increasing the likelihood that they’ll be stored vividly in your mind. However, McNay goes on to explain that too much of this chemical release can actually invest the process, especially if caffeine or alcohol are included. Which leads to your brain struggling to create and store new memories. For those who want to try and have a better memory of an important event, whether it’s seeing Taylor Swift, or getting married, McNay shared some helpful techniques. He says to try and achieve a ‘semi-meditative state’ and relaxing. He also adds that physical responses such as screaming at a concert tells the body that you must be scared. If you stand still in a more relaxed state, your brain will know not to get too excited, and aid the formation of new memories. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Taylor Swift fans have shared feelings of forgetfulness after seeing the pop-star performing on her highly anticipated Eras Tour. Speaking to Time, Jenna Tocatlian, 25, spoke about her experience seeing Swift at Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts. Speaking about one of Swift’s nightly surprise songs At the concert that Tocatlian attended the song was 'Better Man', but she said: ‘If I didn’t have the 5-minute video that my friend kindly took of me jamming to it, I probably would have told every that it didn’t happen.’ She added that as she waited to leave the stadium, during an hour-long wait, she found it difficult to grasp the reality of a night she had waited so long to experience. ‘It’s hard to put together what you actually witness,’ she told Time. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter It seems Tocatlian isn’t the only one experiencing ‘post-concert amnesia’. Taking to social media, many users have shared their inability to recall the events of the show, from small details to even significant parts of the concert. Some described having feelings of guilt after waiting so long to attend the show and leaving without explicit memories. Ewan McNay, an associate professor in the psychology department at the State University of New York in Albany, told Time that the experience may be a result of too much excitement. He explained that ‘this is not a concert-specific phenomenon - it can happen any time you’re in a highly emotional state.’ This is because as a result of feelings of excitement, the body’s stress levels increase, which in turn causes neurons associated with memory to start firing indiscriminately. McNay shared that this makes forming new memories ‘really hard.’ The biological explanation for this occurrence is due to the body seeing excitement as a state of stress. The body then starts pumping out the brain’s favourite molecule for memory: glucose. Because the body thinks it’s stressed, it doesn’t want to waste energy on memory formation. Your vagal nerves, which regulate internal organ functions, also become stimulated as a result of the perceived stress. All this causes the part of your brain responsible for emotional processing - known as your amygdala - to release a neurotransmitter called norepinephrine. This helps to categorise memories as having high emotional content, increasing the likelihood that they’ll be stored vividly in your mind. However, McNay goes on to explain that too much of this chemical release can actually invest the process, especially if caffeine or alcohol are included. Which leads to your brain struggling to create and store new memories. For those who want to try and have a better memory of an important event, whether it’s seeing Taylor Swift, or getting married, McNay shared some helpful techniques. He says to try and achieve a ‘semi-meditative state’ and relaxing. He also adds that physical responses such as screaming at a concert tells the body that you must be scared. If you stand still in a more relaxed state, your brain will know not to get too excited, and aid the formation of new memories. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Earth has received the first ever ‘alien message’ after a simulation of what extraterrestrial contact could look like was sent out by scientists. The SETI Institute produced the simulation of a radio wave from a Mars orbiter and gave hint of how alien contact would be received. The exercise was conducted to prepare experts for the “profoundly transformational experience for all humankind”. The signal was successfully decoded after taking just 16 minutes to travel through space and be picked up by telescopes on Earth. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter It all took place as part of the A Sign in Space project led by Daniela dePaulis, who said during the live-streamed event: “It was very real. This is not the first time we have received a signal from TGO [ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter], but this one is a real message.” The signal had to be decoded, as it couldn’t be heard on Earth without being altered. Victoria Catlett is the GBO software engineer and she explained: “A radio signal is not inherently sound, but a light wave. “When we receive it with something like a car radio, that light wave gets translated into the up and down movement in the speaker - and that is what you hear.” Of course, there’s no evidence that aliens exist at this point, but it’s good to know that we’re prepared. It comes after it was revealed that aliens could be mapping out the planet via the signals mobiles are emitting. It’s all to do with the radio transmission towers which are key to millions of people communicating around the world. These towers are constantly pumping out microwave signals as we call and message one another, and they’re found across a huge area of the Earth’s surface. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Rumble, a streaming platform created to ‘protect free and open internet’ in response to cancel culture, has grown exponentially in recent months, signing exclusive deals with creators and streamers such as Russell Brand and Andrew Tate. It's most recent deal to be reached is with Kai Cenat and IShowSpeed. The pair signed to Rumble to produce a handful of exclusive livestreams a month. Whilst the pair will still stream on YouTube and Twitch, the signing with Rumble comes after both streamers have faced numerous bans from YouTube and Twitch for content violations. Speed is currently facing a permanent ban on Twitch for ‘spam or deceptive practices’, despite Cenat trying to negotiate with Twitch to unban him. Cenat, who himself has faced bans from both Twitch and YouTube, has threatened to leave Twitch permanently if faced with another ban. The first exclusive live stream show will premiere on May 26, named The Kai ‘n Speed Show. The creators say they’re grateful to have full creative control on this new platform. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Cenat is the fourth most subscribed Twitch streamer, with 5.2 million followers. Speed boasts 16 million subscribers on YouTube. The pair recently collaborated on a song together titled Dogs. The exclusive show follows a string of deals made between Rumble and creators. In September 2022, Rumble announced an exclusive show with Russell Brand after Brand claimed he was being ‘censored’ on YouTube for spreading Covid misinformation. During the announcement, Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski told users “Russell is known for his unfiltered opinions, and we are proud to serve as the technology platform where he can grow his audience.” Similarly, in late 2022, Rumble signed a $9 million deal with Andrew Tate after he was banned on both TikTok and YouTube. As a result of this long line of deals with controversial creators, Rumble has subsequently been associated for being a place for outspoken creators to flock to when they get banned from mainstream platforms. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.