YouTube is testing a feature that lets select creators remix songs using AI

Pivot 5: 5 stories. 5 minutes a day. 5 days a week.

1. YouTube is testing a feature that lets select creators remix songs using AI

YouTube is testing a feature that allows select creators to remix songs using AI. The platform is making select songs available to creators for the remix experiment, allowing them to select the "Retstyle a track" option for a song and describe how they want to change the style of the song. This will generate a 30-second snippet that creators can use in Shorts.

Google will credit the remixed snippets to the original song through the Shorts video itself and the Shorts audio pivot page. Remixes will also have an appropriate label to indicate that the track was modified with AI. YouTube's Dream Track toolset is powered by the Lyria music generation model developed by Deepmind.

Read the full story here

2. Perplexity brings ads to its platform

AI-powered search engine Perplexity is experimenting with ads on its platform, starting this week. The ads will be formatted as "sponsored follow-up questions" and will be positioned to the side of answers. Brands and agency partners participating in Perplexity's ad program include Indeed, Whole Foods, Universal McCann, and PMG.

Perplexity claims that answers to these "sponsored questions" will still be generated by its AI, and advertisers won't get access to users' personal info. Perplexity is marketing its ad products as a premium alternative to Google's.

Read the full story here

3. The Beatles’ AI-assisted track ‘Now and Then’ is nominated for two Grammy awards

The Beatles have been nominated for two Grammy awards this year, with their song "Now and Then" being up for Record of the Year and Best Rock Performance. The band, which has been broken up for 50 years, used AI to create "the last Beatles record" using archival footage from the 1970s.

The AI-based audio editing is similar to how video chat platforms filter out background noise from calls. The real question is whether the Beatles can win solely based on novelty, as "Now and Then" has the fewest Spotify streams at 78 million.

Read the full story here

4. AI-generated images threaten science — here’s how researchers hope to spot them

Generative AI is posing a threat to scientific integrity and publication ethics. The rapid development of AI tools has led to concerns about the creation of untrustworthy scientific literature filled with fake figures, manuscripts, and conclusions that are difficult for humans to spot.

An arms race is emerging as integrity specialists, publishers, and technology companies race to develop AI tools to quickly detect deceptive AI-generated elements of papers. While AI-generated text is already permitted by many journals, the use of AI tools for creating images or data is less likely to be viewed as acceptable.

Read the full story here

5. Now there’s an ‘anti-AI’ camera app for Android, too

Zerocam is an Android app that offers a solution to overprocessing photos in RAW, removing artificial effects and delivering soft, pleasant-to-eye images. It's similar to Halide's Process Zero feature but has a simple interface.

Launched in response to AI-powered editing tools, Zerocam is available for free on the Google Play Store but only allows five photos per day without a subscription. It's compatible with Android 14 or later and costs $0.99/month or $10.99 USD/year.

Read the full story here