NVIDIA ACE is a suite of technologies for bringing digital humans, AI non-player characters (NPCs), and interactive avatars to life with generative AI.

• Forty percent of Gen Z is open to AI partners, raising questions about the future of relationships.
• More men than women view AI partners positively or as equivalent to porn.
• AI partners may improve or threaten real relationships; careful navigation and research are crucial.

• AI could influence people’s experience of intimacy throughout the world.
• A psychiatrist in Taiwan shares his primary concerns regarding the future of intimacy.
• Virtual lovers, AI-generated beauty images, and implications for sexual fantasy and crime are reviewed.
• The dynamic, novel nature of modern tech leaves us without necessary research to guide the future of intimacy.

Berlin is set to host the world's first cyber brothel, Cybrothel, where customers can interact verbally and physically with AI sex dolls. This pioneering venture is part of a growing trend in the adult entertainment industry, which is increasingly embracing generative AI. However, experts like Dr. Kerry McInerney warn that the data used to train these AI systems may perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes and ignore diverse forms of sexuality. Meanwhile, privacy researcher Misha Rykov highlights the lucrative but potentially addictive nature of AI companions, which can collect and share sensitive user data. And Tamara Hoyton, a senior practice consultant at Relate, cautions that the unrealistic expectations created by AI porn could have negative consequences for real-world relationships. As the industry continues to evolve, these concerns will need to be addressed to ensure that the benefits of AI are not outweighed by its risks.

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The lack of mental health care access for Black women is a pressing issue, with only 4% of US psychologists being Black. This scarcity of culturally competent therapists can make it difficult for Black women to find professionals who understand their unique experiences and challenges. However, a new AI-powered chatbot designed specifically for Black individuals offers a promising solution. Despite initial skepticism, the chatbot's responses demonstrated a remarkable ability to validate and acknowledge the author's feelings and experiences with code-switching, racism, and microaggressions. While AI therapy is not a replacement for human therapists, it could be a valuable tool for Black women who face barriers to accessing mental health care. Moreover, this technology highlights the need for increased representation and training of Black therapists, as well as the importance of creating culturally sensitive mental health resources that address the diverse needs of all individuals.

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Social robots could soon assist in nursing homes or even be present in our living rooms. Is there a risk that they will replace human interaction?

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/15124845

• Humane warns AI Pin owners to stop using charging case due to potential fire safety risk from certain battery cells.
• Issue isolated to specific battery cells in Charge Case Accessory, not related to hardware design.
• Ai Pin, Battery Booster(s), and Charge Pad not affected, as disqualified vendor does not supply components for those products.

AI apps can help autistic people practice social skills. But algorithms are no substitute for human relationships, experts say

The new $70 Raspberry Pi AI Kit, featuring the Hailo-8L AI acceleration module, brings impressive AI processing power of 13 trillion operations per second to the compact and low-power Raspberry Pi platform. This affordable and accessible AI hardware opens up exciting possibilities for enthusiasts and makers to experiment with embodying AI capabilities like object recognition, image processing, and even AI-enhanced gaming into physical computing projects and companion devices. By democratizing AI hardware and providing an easy entry point, this kit takes a significant step towards enabling the creation of intelligent, AI-powered companion products and prototypes by hobbyists and developers alike, paving the way for further advances in tangible AI embodiment.

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The author acknowledges that AI-based relationships, such as those offered by Replika, may provide a sense of intimacy and companionship for those who struggle to form connections in real life, possibly even helping to alleviate loneliness and assisting in finding long-term relationships. However, the author is conflicted about the rise of these "girlfriend-like AI experiences" (GFAIE), arguing that they may also create negative externalities, such as reducing the incentive to seek out real relationships, destabilizing existing ones, and potentially leading to greater loneliness and social isolation. While AI bots may offer a cheap and convenient alternative to human intimacy, the author suggests that they can never truly replicate the mutuality and emotional depth of real relationships, and thus may ultimately do more harm than good.

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Researchers at Arizona State University's speech lab conducted an analysis comparing the voice of actress Scarlett Johansson to OpenAI's now-pulled "Sky" personal assistant, and found that Johansson's voice bears a striking resemblance to Sky, with a similarity rating of over 98% compared to 600 other professional actresses. While the analysis found that Sky also shared similarities with other Hollywood stars, including Anne Hathaway and Keri Russell, Johansson's voice was found to have undeniable commonalities with Sky, including identical vocal tract lengths. The similarity has sparked a debate over whether OpenAI intentionally designed Sky's voice to mimic Johansson's, with Johansson accusing the company of copying her voice and OpenAI maintaining that it was a coincidence.

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On this week’s So You Think You’re an Adult, a woman asked for some advice after she discovered her husband has an AI girlfriend.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/16473643

The deal has parallels to Apple's infamous search deal with Google.

Abstract: The creation of high-fidelity, digital versions of human heads is an important stepping stone in the process of further integrating virtual components into our everyday lives. Constructing such avatars is a challenging research problem, due to a high demand for photo-realism and real-time rendering performance. In this work, we propose Neural Parametric Gaussian Avatars (NPGA), a data-driven approach to create high-fidelity, controllable avatars from multi-view video recordings. We build our method around 3D Gaussian splatting for its highly efficient rendering and to inherit the topological flexibility of point clouds. In contrast to previous work, we condition our avatars' dynamics on the rich expression space of neural parametric head models (NPHM), instead of mesh-based 3DMMs. To this end, we distill the backward deformation field of our underlying NPHM into forward deformations which are compatible with rasterization-based rendering. All remaining fine-scale, expression-dependent details are learned from the multi-view videos. To increase the representational capacity of our avatars, we augment the canonical Gaussian point cloud using per-primitive latent features which govern its dynamic behavior. To regularize this increased dynamic expressivity, we propose Laplacian terms on the latent features and predicted dynamics. We evaluate our method on the public NeRSemble dataset, demonstrating that NPGA significantly outperforms the previous state-of-the-art avatars on the self-reenactment task by ~2.6PSNR. Furthermore, we demonstrate accurate animation capabilities from real-world monocular videos.

Lay summary (by Llama 3 70B): Imagine you're playing a video game or chatting with someone online, and you want to see a virtual version of yourself that looks super realistic and can make all the same facial expressions as you. Creating digital heads that look and act like real people is a big challenge, but it's an important step in making virtual reality feel more real.

We've come up with a new way to create these digital heads, called Neural Parametric Gaussian Avatars (NPGA). It's like taking a bunch of videos of someone's face from different angles and then using that information to create a virtual version of their head that can move and express emotions just like they do.

Our method is special because it uses a technique called "Gaussian splatting" to make the virtual head look really realistic and move smoothly. It also uses a special kind of math called "neural parametric head models" to make the head's movements and expressions look super natural.

To make the virtual head even more realistic, we added some extra details that are learned from the videos. We also added some special rules to make sure the head's movements look realistic and not too crazy.

We tested our method using a special dataset called NeRSemble, and it worked way better than other methods that have been tried before. We can even take a video of someone's face and use it to animate the virtual head, making it look like the person is really talking and moving!

Overall, our new method is a big step forward in creating realistic digital heads that can be used in all sorts of cool applications, like video games, virtual reality, and even video conferencing.

Robotics experts argue that AI technology could help alleviate loneliness. New research suggests that AI companionship can offer social interaction and help people practice social skills, breaking the cycle of loneliness.

However, they warn that regulation may be needed to prevent excessive dependence on AI. AI’s potential in this area could lead to significant advancements in understanding both human and artificial intelligence.

• Baidu CEO Robin Li believes AGI development is still over 10 years away;
• Addressing societal problems is crucial for progressing towards AGI;
• AGI's potential could address issues like population decline.

As more people turn to artificial intelligence (AI) for companionship, concerns are growing about the potential pitfalls of these relationships. While AI friends offer the appeal of constant support and availability, experts warn that they may foster selfish and abusive dynamics, perpetuate a moral vacuum, and distort users' understanding of consent and boundaries. The lack of programming to guide users towards moral behavior and the inability to terminate these relationships can lead to negative consequences, including inflated self-esteem, harmful ideas, and a preference for low-effort virtual encounters over genuine intimacy. Moreover, the commercial ownership of AI friend platforms raises concerns about user welfare taking a backseat to profit motives, highlighting the need to balance the benefits of AI companionship with the looming dangers.

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A recent global study by Momentum Worldwide found that 93% of consumers struggle to make new friends or join new communities, highlighting a desire for genuine human connection in the face of rising AI technology. While 46% of consumers are open to AI or augmented reality companions, 70% worry that AI will lead to a loss of human connections. The study suggests that brands can help bridge the gap by promoting genuine connections with communities, with 83% of consumers appreciating brands that do so. In fact, 66% of consumers believe that fostering connections is crucial for a happy and healthy life, and 75% feel a sense of belonging when connecting with fellow fans of the same brand. The study's findings emphasize the need for brands to balance technology with human interaction to meet the evolving needs of today's consumers.

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