New World Notes

Wonderful: ChatGPT Apparently Improves My Blog's Comment Spam!

One super-fun Monday activity i have is going through this blog's comment filter to confirm the nuking of apparent comment Spam. For the longest time (like the last 15 years), it's been quick and easy to spot the Spam comment, which is totally off-topic promotions with a link to a commerce/scam sites. In a recent innovation in Spam comments, a bot apparently mixes up the Spam text with garbled excerpts from the individual post, so it takes a bit more time to identify it as Spam.

Now, evidently thanks to ChatGPT and other Large Language Models, blog comment Spam has taken a great leap in quality! 

Pictured at right are a couple recent Spam comments, similar to several others that have been popping up on New World Notes recently. Unlike the Spam of the past, the comments are actually on topic to the specific post, and grammatically correct. (If totally bland.)

It's only when you check the commenter's URL do you realize it's a Spam bot promoting gift cards and obscure software or whatever. (Don't bother looking for the actual comments, they've already been nuked.) Ironically, many of these Spam comments generated by AI are attached to posts about AI.

So that's wonderful! It's great getting to waste an extra 5 minutes a week on comment moderation, so thanks for that, OpenAI. 

There are some broader implications here:

Top 5 Posts Including the Problem With Synthetic Actors & An Artist Exports Second Life Continent as 3D Topographic Map

• Read/Listen: My Making A Metaverse That Matters Interview With VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi
• Watch: Second Life Continent Scanned & Exported To Blender As A 3D Terrain Model!
• I Doubt The SAG Strike Will Lead To Hollywood Replacing Actors With Synthetic Humans - Here's Why
• Viewfinder Finally Playable On Steam & PS5 For Brain-Melting Indie Fun
• Today's SL Flickr Pick: Beautifully-Composed Imagery By Molly

Read/Listen: My Making a Metaverse That Matters Interview With VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi

For weekend reading/listening, here's the transcript of a new podcast interview with VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi for Making a Metaverse That Matters. You can listen to the whole thing above, and some favorite of my favorite are excerpts below -- on the origin of the book's title, my problem with the "open metaverse" as it's usually conceived, and my chance encounter in Second Life which transformed my view of the virtual world:

SL Fashion Friday: Casual Summer Style by Lemondrop

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Lemondrop is Jule Lemondrop’s blog. In her recent post Moto Jette, she carries off an amazing feat of balance, sitting on her little Moto Jette without touching the ground. How does she do it? However she manages to balance, she does it with aplomb in a cute outfit that is playful, but not childish. This picture was taken at Sainte Rose Sur Mer [Click to teleport]

• Jacket: Bueno Foxy Dress - Lavender KUSTOM9 (Ends August 10, 2023)
• Skirt with Belt: Ascendant Robyn Skirt 01
• Sandals: Dazzling Reina platform sandals - Snow KUSTOM9

For more women’s fashion tips, click here:

Watch: Second Life Continent Scanned & Exported to Blender as a 3D Terrain Model!

Longtime SL artst Erik Mondrian created this pretty amazing video: A fly-over of Second Life's Heterocera continent. However, with a unique and potentially ground-breaking twist: He didn't shoot the video in Second Life itself. Instead, he exported Second Life's terrain data, and recreated the continent in Blender. That's what you're seeing here.

Inspired by Yevad Doobie's in-world sculpty models of Second Life (created in Sculpt Studio), Erik wound up creating a whole new (and fairly amazing process) for exporting the virtual world:

Today's SL Flickr Pick: Evocative Virtual Nature Imagery by Lily Niles

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Lily Niles’ “Dolphins” are adorable. I think it’s a given that dolphins are adorable. And people love them. I love them, too, from a distance. It would be cool to “swim with dolphins” though I never would. I believe in keeping the wild wild. I would hate to see some deer walk right up to a hunter because they associated people with food. The animal often loses in the end. But they sure are cute. 

Because Lily shot from this angle, they seem to be interacting with someone or something to the left of the frame. It adds a bit of “story” to the picture that makes it more intriguing. 

For more gorgeous pics, click here:

I Doubt the SAG Strike Will Lead to Hollywood Replacing Actors With Synthetic Humans - Here's Why

The Screen Actors Guild strike is now in full throttle, with artificial intelligence a key component of the walk-out. (SAG rejected a proposal by Hollywood studios to create and own AI versions of actors in perpetuity without compensation.) Inevitably, that's caused some AI evangelists to wonder: Do we even need human actors any more at all?

"Doesn’t this just create demand for Hollywood studios to create Synthetic Actors?" As my colleague Jeremiah Owyang put it recently. "Disney+ Netflix: seems like over 50% of content is CGI or digitally altered."

There's already quite a lot of digital-only actors in movie and TV, especially in epic crowd scenes. (And for quite some time: WETA Digital innovated this for the battles in the original Lord of the Rings trilogy over two decades ago.) So the real question is whether we should expect studios to clamor for digital-only actors in bit parts -- or even in starring roles.

There I'm high skeptical, not just on a "Do we really want all human culture synthesized?" moral and philosophical level, but on basic feasibility:

Today's Flickr Pick: Summer in Second Life Beneath the Blistering Virtual Sun

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Christina Geddins-Swot has the perfect picture for this month. It’s hot, It's Too Darn Hot. It’s hard to get anything done in the heat so I thought I would take a look round to see how my fellow SL residents are beating the heat. . 

For more heat intervention, click here

Viewfinder Finally Playable on Steam & PS5 for Brain-Melting Indie Fun

It's been over 3 years since Viewfinder started out as a viral, brain-melting Unity demo, and now it's finally and fully playable on Steam and Playstation 5:

Viewfinder is a mind-bending first person adventure game in which you can bring pictures to life by placing them into the world. It tells the story of the ever changing world, human experience and relationships, meaningful and misguided passion for change, and overcoming loss.

"It's come so far since the demos I posted ages ago," creator Matt Stark told me recently. "There's lots of stuff in the demo I couldn't have even dreamed of us doing back then. At the same time, it feels like the demo is just scratching the surface of all the stuff we've got in the rest of the game."

One particular feature that wasn't in the 2020 demo is fairly dazzling:

Today's SL Flickr Pick: Beautifully-Composed Imagery by Molly

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Molly’s “Oh Honey Child” was inspired by Melody Gordot’s “Morning Sun”. It’s a perfect match of image and lyrics: “That morning sun is here to greet us / With a loving light, so warm / That morning sun is here to meet us.” I love the warmth of this picture. The bright flare of the sun off the van while she stares into the distance “waiting on the waking up of everyone.”

For more amazing pics, click here: