- Camelot Newsletter
- Posts
- Camelot Newsletter
Camelot Newsletter
Who's winning the battle against ai deepfakes
Perspectives on tech, culture and wellness from a techno optimist 😀
👑 Hello you marvelous kings and queens! I hope this email finds you luxuriously lounging, sipping a warm cup of coffee this morning. If you’re already up and at ‘em good for you! You are the hero we need in this world. Here is a quick rundown of tech, culture and wellness with a sprinkle of giggles to help get those neurons firing and that serotonin flowing upstream.
The score in the battle against ai deepfakes:
Swifies - 1 Musk - 0
X, formerly known as Twitter, temporarily blocked searches for Taylor Swift after sexually explicit deepfake images of the singer went viral. The deepfake images, which portrayed Swift in nude and sexual scenarios, circulated on various social media sites, including X, Reddit, and Facebook. In response to the deepfakes, Swift's fans mass-reported the images and flooded the hashtag "Taylor Swift AI" with positive messages. Go Swifties!
How does this kind of thing happen? And why was the response to simply block searches for Taylor Swift? Doesn’t X have a team to better handle these types of incidents? Short answer: they did, but now they don’t. After Elon took the helm of X in 2022 he promptly removed their Trust and Safety team.
Interesting that when someone speaks out against Musk or gives unflattering coverage to one of his companies he is quick to pull a verification badge like he did with the New York Times, or in a fit of childlike rage cancel their Tesla order or ban journalists from the platform but when a woman is the target of large scale sexual harassment it’s the person not the perpetrators who are punished.
The incident has renewed calls to strengthen legislation around the misuse of artificial intelligence for sexual harassment. It also highlights the challenge of stopping the spread of deepfake porn and AI-generated images of public figures and the need to establish and expand the scope of trust and safety teams.
How to use AI for search- Perplexity
Hundreds of AI products have popped up this past year and I have tried most of them so you don’t have to. I have and will continue to pick out the best of the best and drop them here for you.
Perplexity is my favorite and has replaced Google for 90% of my searches. It simplifies search queries by giving you a complete answer, rather than a flood of paid ad links to wade through for the information you want. It also includes source notations so that you know where the information came from. Here is an example:
It’s like if you sat down to have a friendly chat with an encyclopedia over coffee. Try it out in your browser; Perplexity.ai and if you like it download the app! Oh and it’s totally free.
In other news…
Zuck had a way worse day than you - but his hair looked good
When life is stranger than fiction - Scientists find new form of life in human digestive system. “It’s insane. The more we look the more crazy things we see.”
Turkeys and Angels
Every week brings new and exciting antics! Here I nominate one Turkey; a squawky or nefarious critter deserving of the “You are a Turkey” moniker. Because we must always bring balance to the force, an Angel will additionally be recognized for bringing laughter, love or all around goodness to the world.
This week’s Turkey: Senator Lindsey Graham for delivering a very dramatic performative public flogging of Mark Zuckerberg, while he and his buddies in congress have done absolutely nothing to enact any meaningful legislation or oversight to make social media safer. What is it that mom always says? “When you point the finger, you’ve got three pointing back at you.”
This week’s Angel: The National Park Service’s social media for providing us with this magnificent content:
That’s all for now folks! Until next week; keep your standards high and your caffeine intake higher ☕️
