|
Hi! Buckle up because today’s newsletter is a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. 🎢 First, in the Big Thing, how the voices of kids killed in shootings have been resurrected with AI. Then, in less depressing news: Mark Zuckerberg’s review of the Apple Vision Pro and OpenAI’s preview of a new AI video generator. Also: a tip on how to deal with the 100,000 tabs you have open in your web browser.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Watch my video from this week. PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: RYAN TREFES/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
|
|
|
|
|
|
Last week I got home from the airport, dropped my bags and immediately snuck into my sons’ rooms to watch them sleep.
I had just returned from visiting the home of Manny and Patricia Oliver, whose son Joaquin was killed in the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Fla.
Not my typical tech reporting trip. But when I heard that these parents had decided to bring back their dead son’s voice by using AI, I had a lot of questions. You’ll find the answers in my column and video.
To mark the sixth anniversary of the Valentine’s Day shooting, the couple’s nonprofit launched The Shotline. At this website, visitors can direct calls—made with the AI-recreated voices of kids killed by gun violence—to the phones of elected officials, to show support for stronger gun laws.
If you’re thinking CREEPY, I get it. It was one of the first things I asked the parents:
|
|
|
“Of course it’s creepy. Not worse than a 19-year-old holding an AR-15 inside a school, that’s way creepier. This is a United States problem and we have not been able to fix it. If we need to use creepy stuff to fix it, welcome to the creepy.”
|
|
— Manny Oliver, Joaquin’s father
|
|
|
|
|
The reactions to my video and column have been polarizing. I’ve had people tell me these parents are doing something so brave. I’ve had others say this is a horrible misuse of technology and there should be laws against it. (Just yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission proposed rules banning the use of AI tools for impersonating individuals.)
There are a lot of layers to this story. But one of them is clear: Humans are constantly looking to technology to remember the dead and honor their legacy. I produced a whole documentary on it back in 2020.
Letters, photos, videos—it’s evolved over the generations. Now, between chatbots and voice generators, AI can bring back aspects of the dead in ways that can make it seem like they’re still here. But as I ask in the column: Just because we can, does it mean we should?
One thing I do know we should do: Spend more time appreciating the humans around us while they’re still here.
|
|
|
|
|
MEMBER MESSAGE: Buy Side From WSJ
|
|
Shop Presidents Day Picks
Great deals on brands you love, expertly chosen. Start shopping today.
Shop
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Vision Bros: Zuck vs. Cook 🥊🥽
|
|
Hey, Mark Zuckerberg, if you’d like my job, you just have to ask. The Meta CEO posted a video review of the Vision Pro this week. In news that will surprise no one, he thinks Meta’s Quest 3 is the superior headset. He says it’s more comfortable to wear (I agree) and has better game selection (I agree). He prefers that there’s no battery hanging off it (I agree). But the Vision Pro’s passthrough—the ability to see the world around you—is far better than the Quest’s. And the Vision Pro’s tracking of eyes and hands is superior as well.
In other Vision Pro news: TikTok released an app for the Apple headset. Just what we needed, a nonstop feed of videos powered by an addicting algorithm, streaming directly into our eyeballs. Lord help us all.
|
|
|
OpenAI Video Creator and Memories 🤖🧠
|
|
Two big updates from OpenAI this week:
-
The company previewed Sora, its text-to-video model. It can create highly realistic 60-second videos based on a written prompt. The results look nuts! Given the power of this sort of tool, OpenAI says it’s testing this now with small groups and not releasing it to the public.
-
ChatGPT will soon remember who you are and what you like based on previous conversations. It’s rolling out the feature to a small number of free and paying users this week. You can explicitly tell the bot to remember something, or have it pick up details on its own. The bot’s memory improves over time, so you shouldn’t have to keep repeating yourself.
|
|
|
Meta Politics ❌🇺🇸
|
|
Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms are known for recommending content it thinks you might like from accounts you don’t follow. In a few weeks, on Threads and Instagram, those recs will no longer include posts the algorithms deem political. This shouldn’t affect posts from accounts you already follow, but others related to laws, elections and “social topics” may be harder to find in the next few weeks unless you opt into political suggestions in settings. Meta also rolled out “Today’s topics” on Threads, which shows users trending discussions on the
app. Political posts are included there.
|
|
|
|
|
|
The only thing more impressive than my son’s Pokémon card collection? My browser tab collection. At any given moment, I have about 40 tabs open in Microsoft Edge on my laptop. But OneTab, a free extension for Chrome, Edge, Safari and Firefox, has been a great solution.
Install it and add it to your extension bar. Now, every time your tab collection starts to multiply, click the little blue funnel icon. It will convert all your open tabs to a list of links on a dedicated page. Then you can click the links to open them in individual tabs again or even restore them all.
|
|
|
|
CREDIT: JOANNA STERN/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
|
|
|
|
I tend to have privacy concerns about browser extensions, but OneTab says your web history is never transmitted or disclosed to the company.
Thanks to my colleague Nicole Nguyen for this great tip. Check out her column on limiting distractions for more.
|
|
|
|
|
|
PHOTO: PETER HURVITZ
|
|
|
|
|
|
Peter Hurvitz from Greenwich, Conn.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I used this to scan documents when I was away from the office. You would slide the CapShare down the document in multiple columns, and the device would stitch it together as a single document. I could then transfer the document to my PC. It worked on just two AA batteries and did a fairly good job on non-color documents. It came with a drawstring bag to facilitate carrying it in my briefcase.
|
|
|
📷 Come on, you must have a throwback to submit! Reply to this email with a photo of your old tech and tell us why it holds a special place in your heart. ❤️
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hey! Any suggestions or feedback? Just reply and let us know.
Reader-submitted content has been edited for clarity and length. This week’s newsletter was curated and written by Joanna Stern and Cordilia James.
|
|
