Hi, welcome to your Weekend!
First, some good news: This week’s issue is 100% Elon free. If you’re dying to read more about the Birdman who shall not be named, may we suggest The Information’s coverage of yesterday’s Twitter takeover here, here, here and here. (Also an interesting Forum post here.)
Instead, we bring you a special themed issue about a technology generating as much excitement (and panic) as the aforementioned, but with greater creative upside: generative AI. It’s been almost a year since I profiled OpenAI’s wunderkind CEO Sam Altman for the debut issue of Weekend, and little did I know then that he’d soon be leading an aesthetic revolution around the world.
At the time, Altman was still several months away from pulling back the curtain on Dall-E 2, the jaw-dropping text-to-image generator that has made AI both accessible and understandable to the masses. Now, we are drowning in Dall-E discourse, as well as a constellation of gobsmacking audio-, video-, text- and code-generating rivals that grow smarter and more useful by the day.
These services are shaking up countless professions—in media, marketing, communications, education, architecture, fashion, the visual arts and more—all while hoovering up some of that vast mountain of dry powder that The Information has reported is sitting in VC coffers. Plus, unlike tech’s previous hype magnet (Web3), these services are unlikely to scam, rob or defraud you.
In the stories below, we cover the waterfront of generative AI, testing out the coolest new applications, identifying the brightest stars in the bourgeoning AInfluencer universe, and teasing out some of the ethical quandaries—for students, academics, artists and others—that are emerging right alongside the tech.
Nevermind the Chief Twit. This stuff has earned our undivided attention.
The current thing in tech no longer involves crypto. Suddenly, all the hype is filtering toward generative AI, broadly defined as artificial intelligence that doesn’t just process preexisting data sets, but creates wholly original text, images, audio, videos and code. In this week’s cover story, Margaux assessed the emerging leaders of the text- image-, video-, audio- and data-generating pack, some of which are already worth billions.
Meet the AI Influencers: 14 Creators Using Generative AI to Gain Big Followings
We’re living through the palace revolution of artificial intelligence. Creatives, once thought immune to the looming threat of AI, are suddenly competing with software like Open AI’s Dall-E and Jasper’s text-generation platform, which use neural networks to generate original images and text. Annie and Arielle identified 14 creators who are among the first to experiment with the new generative AI tools—often with dazzling results.
Where there’s a will there’s a way—and where there’s a looming science paper, there’s a high schooler trying to figure out how to get out of it. In his first story for Weekend, tech journalist and author Chris Stokel-Walker takes us inside the world of AI essays and asks—is using AI for homework a justifiable work-around for stretched-thin students? Or an act of sabotage against their own education?
Artists both digital and analog are caught up in one of the internet’s hottest debates: What is the value and purpose of AI art? Believers in the craft insist their work requires skill and effort. Detractors claim that AI art is more akin to art forgery, with some artists saying it threatens their livelihood, and questioning whether the art world can coexist with AI in the future. Jessica Lucas talks to the combatants.
Reading: The better-late-than-never guide to crypto
At this stage in the life cycle of crypto, nobody needs a 40,000-world primer on the topic. But then again, no one can write quite like Bloomberg’s Matt Levine, a former Goldman Sachs banker and securities attorney who’s become one of the sharpest chroniclers of finance and tech. In a new magnum opus for Bloomberg Businessweek, Levine shines in his ability to simplify the complex, demystifying topics like DeFi and DAOs, and using humor to puncture the hype that still surrounds the space. In one instance, he explains how Web3 tokens purportedly offer greater fractionalized ownership of commercial projects to everyday investors. “Just kidding,” Levine writes. “They’ll be owned by venture capitalists.” Levine calls it as he sees it, and he sees it clearer than most. —Abe
Listening: A maddening, probing Ye interview
If you have roughly 150 minutes to spare this weekend, set aside some of it for Lex Fridman’s long, blood-pressure-testing interview with the artist formerly known as Kanye West. Fridman, an A.I. researcher at MIT turned longer-than-longform podcaster, invited Ye on to talk about his new role of technologist, as he prepares to acquire the right-wing social media platform Parler. As with most matters involving the antisemitic bipolar polymath, the conversation quickly goes off the rails, morphing from a discussion of class, race, and religion, into a tense exchange about the Holocaust. (The chat was recorded weeks after Ye’s “Death con 3 on Jewish people” remarks. Fridman himself is Jewish.) The podcast episode shows Fridman at his empathetic best, pushing back on many of Ye’s beliefs but never interrupting, even when the artist crosses the line. The result is a candid, if uncomfortable, conversation that will should lose Ye some fans, and gain Fridman many more. —Arielle
Noticing: MrBeast is becoming the Beatles
“Kind of funny how easy it is lol.” That was Jimmy Donaldson’s tweeted reaction to his alter ego MrBeast hitting 50 million TikTok followers. For the average user? Nothing easy about it. But for MrBeast? Just another day. It seems only yesterday we had to google his name to know what the teens were going on about. Now the YouTuber has hit a level of fame reserved for European footballers and Kardashians, with an empire now extending beyond social media and into restaurants, food delivery and so…much…merch. Then there’s this week’s news, broken by Axios, that MrBeast is looking to raise upwards of $150 million for his business at a roughly $1.5 billion valuation. Say what you want about his burgers: the creator is transcending what we’ve thought online fame could be. —Annie
Overheard
“The future. I don’t want it.”
— A passerby in New York’s Flatiron neighborhood, upon seeing “Spot,” Boston Dynamics’ robot dog
Makes You Think
The year’s spookiest Halloween costume, from The Information’s own Paris Martineau.
Until next Weekend, thanks for reading.
—Jon
Weekend Editor, The Information
