?
http://textboard.org/static/userscripts/wordfilter.user.js
The responsibility to filter anything is left to the user.
Yay, Nipper.
The responsibility to filter anything is left to the user
How all things should be, really.
If you're gonna say nigger, then type all the letters.
NO!
>>6
Way to bump a 5-year-old thread, nigger.
Everyone loves licking *nipples.*
>>8
I prefer to have my own nipples licked.
>>9 I sure don't.
I don't thinks it's right to use the n bomb, even for totally worthless racist black people, of which I've met a few.
Nevermore.
censor "nigger"
censor "n word"
be racist
no one can talk about it
>>12
linus torvalds
>>1
Nay is the n-word?
Netflix?
Pink-haired Aitana Lopez is followed by more than 200,000 people on social media. She posts selfies from concerts and her bedroom, while tagging brands such as hair care line Olaplex and lingerie giant Victoria’s Secret.
Brands have paid about $1,000 a post for her to promote their products on social media—despite the fact that she is entirely fictional.
Aitana is a “virtual influencer” created using artificial intelligence tools, one of the hundreds of digital avatars that have broken into the growing $21 billion content creator economy.
Their emergence has led to worry from human influencers their income is being cannibalized and under threat from digital rivals. That concern is shared by people in more established professions that their livelihoods are under threat from generative AI—technology that can spew out humanlike text, images and code in seconds.
But those behind the hyper-realistic AI creations argue they are merely disrupting an overinflated market.
“We were taken aback by the skyrocketing rates influencers charge nowadays. That got us thinking, ‘What if we just create our own influencer?’” said Diana Núñez, co-founder of the Barcelona-based agency The Clueless, which created Aitana. “The rest is history. We unintentionally created a monster. A beautiful one, though.”
Over the past few years, there have been high-profile partnerships between luxury brands and virtual influencers, including Kim Kardashian’s make-up line KKW Beauty with Noonoouri, and Louis Vuitton with Ayayi.
Instagram analysis of an H&M advert featuring virtual influencer Kuki found that it reached 11 times more people and resulted in a 91 percent decrease in cost per person remembering the advert, compared with a traditional ad.
“It is not influencing purchase like a human influencer would, but it is driving awareness, favourability and recall for the brand,” said Becky Owen, global chief marketing and innovation officer at Billion Dollar Boy, and former head of Meta’s creator innovations team.
Brands have been quick to engage with virtual influencers as a new way to attract attention while reducing costs.
“Influencers themselves have a lot of negative associations related to being fake or superficial, which makes people feel less concerned about the concept of that being replaced with AI or virtual influencers,” said Rebecca McGrath, associate director for media and technology at Mintel.
“For a brand, they have total control versus a real person who comes with potential controversy, their own demands, their own opinions,” McGrath added.
Human influencers contend that their virtual counterparts should have to disclose that they are not real, however. “What freaks me out about these influencers is how hard it is to tell they’re fake,” said Danae Mercer, a content creator with more than 2 million followers.
The UK’s Advertising Standards Agency said it was “keenly aware of the rise of virtual influencers within this space” but said there was no rule where they must declare they are generated by AI.
Many other markets are contending with the problem, with India being one country that forces virtual influencers to reveal their AI origins.
Although The Clueless discloses Aitana is fake through the hashtag #aimodel in her profile on Instagram, many others do not do so or use vague terms such as #digitalinfluencer.
“Even though we made it clear she was an AI-generated model . . . initially, most of her followers didn’t question her authenticity, they genuinely believed in her existence,” said Núñez, who added that Aitana has received multiple requests to meet followers in person.
One of the first virtual influencers, Lil Miquela, charges up to hundreds of thousands of dollars for any given deal and has worked with Burberry, Prada and Givenchy.
Although AI is used to generate content for Lil Miquela, the team behind the creation “strongly believe [the storytelling behind virtual creators] cannot be fully replicated by generative AI,” said Ridhima Kahn, vice-president of business development at Dapper Labs, who oversees Lil Miquela’s partnerships.
“A lot of companies are coming out with virtual influencers they have generated in a day, and they are not really putting that human element [into the messaging] . . . and I don’t think that is going to be the long-term strategy,” she added.
Lil Miquela is considered by many to be mixed race, and her audience of nearly 3 million followers ranges from the US to Asia and Latin America. Meanwhile, The Clueless now has another creation in development, which it calls a “curvy Mexican” named Laila.
Francesca Sobande, a senior lecturer in digital media studies at Cardiff University, has researched virtual influencers with racially ambiguous features and suggests that the motivations behind giving some of these characteristics are “simply another form of marketing” in order to target a broader audience, when “something has been created with a focus on profit.”
“[This] can be very convenient for brands wanting to identify global marketing strategies and trying to project a hollow image that might be perceived as progressive,” said Sobande, who added that “seldom does it seem to be black people” creating the virtual avatars.
Dapper Labs emphasized that the team behind Lil Miquela is diverse and reflects her audience. The Clueless said its creations were designed to “foster inclusivity and provide opportunities to collectives that have faced exclusion for an extended period.”
The Clueless’s creations, among other virtual influencers, have also been criticized for being overly sexualised, with Aitana regularly appearing in underwear. The agency said sexualisation is “prevalent with real models and influencers” and that its creations “merely mirror these established practices without deviating from the current norms in the industry.”
Mercer, the human influencer, argued: “It feels like women in recent years have been able to take back some agency, through OnlyFans, through social media, they have been able to take control of their bodies and say ‘for so long men have made money off me, I am going to make money for myself’.”
But she said AI-generated creations, often made by men, were once again profiting from female sexuality. “That is the reason behind growing these accounts. It is to make money.”
© 2023 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved.
The world’s largest traditional entertainment companies face a reckoning in 2024 after losing more than $5 billion in the past year from the streaming services they built to compete with Netflix.
Disney, Warner Bros Discovery, Comcast and Paramount—US entertainment conglomerates that have been growing ever larger for decades—are facing pressure to shrink or sell legacy businesses, scale back production and slash costs following billions in losses from their digital platforms.
Shari Redstone, Paramount’s billionaire controlling shareholder, has effectively put the company on the block in recent weeks. She has held talks about selling the Hollywood studio to Skydance, the production company behind Top Gun: Maverick, people familiar with the matter say.
Paramount chief executive Bob Bakish also discussed a possible combination over lunch with Warner CEO David Zaslav in mid-December. In both cases the discussions were said to be at an early stage and people familiar with the talks cautioned that a deal might not materialize.
Beyond their streaming losses, the traditional media groups are facing a weak advertising market, declining television revenues and higher production costs following the Hollywood strikes.
Rich Greenfield, an analyst at LightShed Partners, said Paramount’s deal discussions were a reflection of the “complete and utter panic” in the industry.
“TV advertising is falling far short, cord-cutting is continuing to accelerate, sports costs are going up and the movie business is not performing,” he said. “Everything is going wrong that can go wrong. The only thing [the companies] know how to do to survive is try to merge and cut costs.”
But as the traditional media owners struggle, Netflix, the tech group that pioneered the streaming model over a decade ago, has emerged as the winner of the battle to reshape video distribution.
“For much of the past four years, the entertainment industry spent money like drunken sailors to fight the first salvos of the streaming wars,” analyst Michael Nathanson wrote in November. “Now, we are finally starting to feel the hangover and the weight of the unpaid bar bill.”
For companies that have been trying to compete with Netflix, Nathanson added, “the shakeout has begun.”
After a bumpy 2022, Netflix has set itself apart from rivals—most notably by being profitable. Earnings for its most recent quarter soared past Wall Street’s expectations as it added 9 million new subscribers—the strongest rise since early 2020, when Covid-19 lockdowns led to a jump.
“Netflix has pulled away,” says John Martin, co-founder of Pugilist Capital and former chief executive of Turner Broadcasting. For its rivals, he said, the question is “how do you create a viable streaming service with a viable business model? Because they’re not working.”
The leading streaming services aggressively raised prices in 2023. Now, analysts, investors and executives predict that consolidation could be ahead next year as some of the smaller services combine or bow out of the streaming wars.
Warner, home to HBO and the Warner Bros movie studio, has made a small profit at its US streaming services this year, in part by raising prices, aggressively culling some series and licensing others to Netflix. However, this has come at a price: Warner lost more than 2 million streaming subscribers in its two most recent quarters.
The company, which merged with rival Discovery last year, has long been rumored as a potential takeover candidate, with Comcast seen as the most likely buyer. But Zaslav in November hinted that his group wanted to be an acquirer instead of a target.
“There are a lot of . . . excess players in the market. So, this will give us a chance not only to fight to grow in the next year, but to have the kind of balance sheet and the kind of stability . . . that we could be really opportunistic over the next 12 to 24 months,” he said on an earnings call.
The terms of the Warner-Discovery merger barred the group from dealmaking for two years. That period expires on April 8.
Disney, the largest traditional media company, is in the midst of a gutting restructuring that has featured 7,000 job cuts and attacks from activist investors. It lost more than $1.6 billion from its streaming businesses in the first nine months of 2023, during which its Disney+ service gained 8 million subscribers. The company says it will turn a profit in streaming in late 2024.
Bob Iger, Disney chief executive, this year openly pondered whether some of its assets still fit within the company, prompting speculation that he was considering disposals. But no deals emerged, leading some investors to conclude there is little appetite among private equity or tech companies for acquiring legacy businesses.
Paramount’s shares have risen almost 40 percent since early November as sale speculation mounted. The stock rose sharply after the Skydance talks were reported, but both Paramount and Warner shares fell after news of their discussions came to light.
Analysts said the two companies’ high debt levels were an immediate concern for investors. “We suspect investors will focus on pro forma leverage above all else,” Citi analysts wrote in a note last week. They estimated that an all-stock combination of Warner and Paramount could yield at least $1 billion of synergies.
But Greenfield said merging two companies with lossmaking streaming services and large portfolios of declining television assets was not the answer to their problems.
“The right answer should be, let’s stop trying to be in the streaming business,” he said. “The answer is, let’s get smaller and focused and stop trying to be a huge company. Let’s dramatically shrink.”
© 2023 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved.