Welcome to The Satellite, your monthly newsletter for brand builders and creatives curious about the emerging technology.
This month, the new Bing can tell you how many bags of fertilizer will fit in the truck of your Subaru Outback, but it also lies a lot! And, I'm not quite myself, or maybe I'm more of myself than I've ever been.
A lot of people are saying that creatives are going to be replaced by AI. While I don't think that'll be the case, I decided to go ahead and replace myself with an AI generated digital clone (or three). I won't fool anyone into thinking these characters are actually human, but it was a lot of fun, and a bit scary, seeing just how it easy it is to approximate my essence with a few simple tools.
We have entered an era of technological breakthroughs that will likely have a greater impact on society (and brands) than the launch of the iPhone. It seems like every day brings a new jaw-dropping tool or concept into view. This can be whiplash inducing for anyone trying to keep up. I know my neck hurts a lot these days. But, while every new announcement pulls our attention in another direction, Cathy Hackl argues, it's important to remember all of these ideas have value. In other words, just because ChatGPT is in the headlines doesn't mean that web3 should be ignored.
As 2021 ushered in the dawn of the web3 era, it brought with it a tremendous speculative financial bubble, at least partially resting on the shoulders of 10,000 cartoon apes. Headlines around the possibilities of the technology lost out to headlines hyping multi-million dollar JPEG transactions. Now that the financial bubble has largely deflated, the question becomes, can next shiny news objects in web3 overcome the tarnish left behind.
VR not there yet: VR has been the next big acronym since long before NFT's and AI capitalized headlines. But, the tech has endured setback after setback in the drive towards mainstream acceptance. Although there are millions of headsets in homes today, there's no clear path to widespread adoption just yet. Could this year change the narrative or will it just reinforce the argument that people don't want to live in virtual worlds? Here's a breakdown of VR, XR, and metaverse news from February.
Meanwhile, Meta's current biggest competitor, Pico, has been increasing shipments of their headset models in a push for market share. This hasn't stopped the ByteDance owned hardware developer from announcing a round of layoffs. And crucially, Pico headsets aren't yet available in the US market.
Another Chinese tech giant, Tencent, has apparently scrapped plans for a VR/XR headset all together, citing a strategy shift that appears to be influenced largely by cost cutting measures across the company. Tencent has said its XR team will stay in tact, suggesting long term plans may still be brewing.
Imagine a world...: Generative AI proponents have suggested that, in the future, we'll be able to imagine the games we want to play and build them in real-time with simple prompts. It all sounds a bit fantastical. But, one of the biggest game platforms on the market is taking the first steps towards that future. Roblox already relies on an army of outside creators and developers to build game content for its virtual worlds. Now they're working to bring generative AI tools to those developers in an effort to make game building easier and more inclusive.
Is it "Prime" time for NFTs?: While still a rumor,Blockworks reports that Amazon may soon step into the web3 space with initiatives that could range from digital collectibles to blockchain gaming. The retail giant has no shortage of angles with which to jump into web3. The question may just come down to where to start.
Ubisoft goes hard into web3: When game companies began exploring NFTs last year, traditional gamers weren't on board. The backlash caused many developers to abandon the space altogether. But, Ubisoft isn't giving up yet. This week, they brought their popular Rabbids franchise to the blockchain based virtual world, The Sandbox. 2,066 NFT Rabbids avatars went on sale last week on the Polygon blockchain. Along with the digital collectibles, the Rabbids game world is set to open in The Sandbox, currently in alpha, next week.
Sounds like the future: The best use case for NFTs may turn out to be access, and Spotify is testing that premise with a limited pilot that unlocks exclusive playlists for NFT holders. If successful, the concept could lead to unique, token-gated content for music fans, as well as additional revenue streams for the 99% of artists who can't make a living on streaming royalties alone.
Web3 isn't the only new tech that Spotify is playing with. After buying the AI voice tech startup, Sonantic, last year, this week Spotify launched DJ, a new type of playlist feature that combines their personalization algorithms with generative text from OpenAI and realistic voice synthesis to make your feed sound like a personal radio station. The beta is launching on iOS and Android mobile devices first, but if successful, expect a wider rollout from the audio streaming giant.
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