5 things about AI you may have missed today: UK spies using AI, Johnny Cash sings Barbie Girl via AI, more

Today was another eventful day in the artificial intelligence space as thousands of authors have written an open letter requesting tech companies working with AI to pay them for their copyrighted material that is allegedly being used to train AI models. In other news, British spies are reportedly using AI to disrupt the weapons supply to Russia, amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict. And for those interested in country music, the long-dead iconic American singer-songwriter, Johnny Cash was just brought to life by AI. This and more in today’s AI roundup. Let us take a closer look.

Authors demand money from AI tech companies

According to a report by CNN, thousands of authors have written to companies such as OpenAI, Google, Meta, Microsoft, IBM, and more, requesting payments for their copyrighted work, that is allegedly being used to train AI models.

A total of 8000 authors have signed the open letter including some of the most influential and famous personalities such as Margaret Atwood, Dan Brown, Michael Chabon, Jonathan Franzen, James Patterson, and more.

“Generative AI technologies built on large language models owe their existence to our writings. These technologies mimic and regurgitate our language, stories, style, and ideas. Millions of copyrighted books, articles, essays, and poetry provide the “food” for AI systems, endless meals for which there has been no bill. You’re spending billions of dollars to develop AI technology. It is only fair that you compensate us for using our writings, without which AI would be banal and extremely limited,” the letter stated.

British spies use AI to hit Russian weapon supply

British spies are taking the help of AI to cut down the critical weapons supply chain to Russia, Richard Moore, the chief of the UK’s MI6 spy agency, said, as per a Business Insider report. Giving a speech at the British Embassy in Prague, Moore praised the efforts of his organization to hinder Russia’s war efforts.

“My teams are now using AI to augment — but not replace — their own judgments about how people might act in various situations…They are combining their skills with AI and bulk data to identify and disrupt the flow of weapons to Russia for use against Ukraine,” he said.

AI voice generator reimagines Johnny Cash singing ‘Barbie Girl’

A YouTube channel called ‘There I Ruined It’ has posted a video where Johnny Cash’ voice can be heard singing the famous song ‘Barbie Girl’ by Aqua. The creator recorded his own vocals and then had it processed by an AI model to mimic the voice of Cash, a report by The Sun revealed.

The video has received more than 640,000 views, 34,000 likes, and over 1,800 comments. Reacting to the video, one comment said, “As a Cash fan, this is blasphemous but as a fan of the absurd, this is perfect”.

British political candidate uses AI to write election manifesto

An independent candidate named Andrew Gray has taken the help of AI to write his campaign promises for the upcoming special election for the UK Parliament, reports ABC News. Gray claims that he has no policies of his own and has crowdsourced the information around what people want and used AI to turn it into his election manifesto.

“We can interact with our constituents in a whole new way. It doesn’t change necessarily the role of the representative. It just means that we kind of know what’s going on much more quickly and we can represent them more fairly,” Gray said.

Sberbank CEO tells Putin about huge returns on AI

As per a report by Reuters, Russian majority state-owned banking and financial services company, has been leveraging AI to make huge returns on their investments. The CEO of the company, German Gref told Russian President Vladimir Putin that the bank is making $3 billion a year, a 200 percent return on investment.

“Every year we invest a sum of around $1 billion in artificial intelligence technology. And we get about $3 billion back from artificial intelligence,” he told Putin in a televised event.

Putin responded, “The scale is serious. This is absolutely the future. If we talk about the importance for the country, for any country, it is on par with atomic or missile projects of the Soviet Union in the mid-1940s and 1950s”.