From million dollar slide shows to Steve Jobs’ introduction of the iPhone, a bit of showbusiness never hurt plain old business. //

To celebrate the launch of the 1987 Saab 9000 CD sedan, an audience of 2,500 was treated to an hourlong operetta involving 26-foot-tall projection screens, a massive chorus, the entire Stockholm Philharmonic, and some 50 performers.
DOUGLAS MESNEY/INCREDIBLE SLIDEMAKERS //

To call the Seagram-Vitarama a slideshow is an understatement. It’s an experience: hundreds of images of the distilling process, set to music, projected across five 40-by-15-foot screens. “It is composed of pictures, yet it is not static,” comments one awed witness. “The overall effect is one of magnificence.” Inspired by an Eastman Kodak exhibit at the 1939 World’s Fair, the Seagram-Vitarama is the first A/V presentation ever given at a sales meeting. It will not be the last.

AI image synthesis goes open source, with big implications. //

Realistic image synthesis models are potentially dangerous for reasons already mentioned, such as the creation of propaganda or misinformation, tampering with history, accelerating political division, enabling character attacks and impersonation, and destroying the legal value of photo or video evidence. In the AI-powered future, how will we know if any remotely produced piece of media came from an actual camera, or if we are actually communicating with a real human? On these questions, Mostaque is broadly hopeful. "There will be new verification systems in place, and open releases like this will shift the public debate and development of these tools," he said.

That's easier said than done, of course. But it's also easy to be scared of new things. Despite our best efforts, it's difficult to know exactly how image synthesis and other AI-powered technologies will affect us on a societal scale without seeing them in wide use. Ultimately, humanity will adapt, even if our cultural frameworks end up changing radically in the process. It's happened before, which is why the Ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus reportedly said, "the only constant is change."

In fact, there's a photo of him saying that now, thanks to Stable Diffusion.

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