New World Notes

New on Steam: First Class Trouble, Like a 3D Among Us, But Onboard a Cruise Ship Where You Can't Tell Fellow Players from Killer Androids

First Class Trouble is a new indie game in Early Access on Steam, and it's next on my list to play. (Soon as I master Fights in Tight Spaces, but that's another story.) To judge by early footage, First Class gameplay is a fairly clever combination of Among Us (but highly immersive) meets BioShock (bloody murder on an Art Deco ocean vessel) meets Blade Runner, in the sense that you're competing against other players and killer androids... but you can't tell right off the bat which is which. (Also reminds me a bit of Spy Party, but in a multiplayer setting.) NPC AI has become sophisticated enough that it's sometimes difficult to immediately tell an NPC from another player, so I suspect we'll see this kind of gameplay mechanic being used more often. 

The developers at Invisible Walls tell me that the live action party game Werewolves was an influence, along with another, more unlikely inspiration:

Intel Developing Process That Uses AI to Enhance 3D Graphics by Merging It With Real Life Video

This is a seriously impressive demonstration of Intel Labs' Enhancing Photorealism Enhancement project, which looks to me like a major advance in realistic 3D graphics. Very roughly summarized, it uses machine learning algorithms to merge 3D graphics with related footage taken from real life -- in this case, Grand Theft Auto Online, and video footage of a German city. (Notably not Los Angeles, even though GTA V is almost a direct mirror image of the LA cityscape.)

Or to put it more academic terms:

Watch Me Chat, Dance, and Flirt With Mr. Bones, an Animesh Skeleton Using Really Useful’s Chatbot Script for Highly Customizable NPCs in Second Life

Verbose, sassy, and surprisingly spry, Mr. Bones is an animesh skeleton on the Marketplace here from The Really Useful Scripts Corner (a proud sponsoring partner to this blog) powered by the Corner’s unique chatbot system.  (Click here to chat with Mr. Bones in SL -- touch the pumpkin to rezz him.)

As you can see from the video above and my dialog below, Mr. Bones himself makes for a friendly virtual companion in SL (he can even follow you on command!), but he’s also meant to show off Really Useful Script Corner’s feature set for customizable NPCs (Non-Player Characters). 

“My basic chatbot has two functions - Chat and Responses,” lead developer Grace7 Ling explains, “Chat includes the bot being able to greet visitors and greet its owner. The bot can also remember who it has met before as well.” Her chatbot can also spout random things as a way of encouraging nearby SLers to reply.

As for responses, Grace means more than simple text-based replies. Responses include “doing something in response to a keyword or key phrase it hears, like giving a landmark or SLurl, or playing a sound or animation.” 

Ms. Ling’s more advanced chatbot comes with a third feature: Chatter, which enables owners to specify multiple possible answers to a statement, with different probabilities for each. You can even expand your bot’s phrase recognition range by adding “brain-files” (i.e. notecards) to its database.

While Mr. Bones comes with the new Animesh Pro Edition chatbot script, Grace’s chatbot series includes a mesh human, a French bulldog, a parrot, and a mirror. 

Her customers, she tells me, are already using them for a wide variety of NPCs in their own projects:

Virtual Pet Rabbit Designed With Behavior-Based AI Born in Sinespace; New Addition to Growing Bestiary of Artificially Adorable Creatures

Just in time for Easter, you can buy a pet rabbit in Sinespace (a media partner to New World Notes), and unlike most virtual world pets, Buddy Rabbit is special, built on a complicated AI architecture. As seen above, Buddy can inquisitively explore an area, flee from trouble -- even doing flying spin-leaps to get away from pursuers -- and follow its owner.

Well, somewhat follow: “You see the rabbit is a wild animal and is difficult to control him exactly,” Buddy’s creator Kokostar warns me, grinning. (He's Kokostar #1902 on Discord.)

A leader in the Swiss Society of Virtual and Augmented Reality, Kokostar has been creating virtual pets in Sinespace for over a year: “I have always been interested in agents which simulate human or animal behaviors.” 

His first attempts at pets were rather mechanical, however, so he turned to a sophisticated back-end structure, to give them more life:

Why Afrofuturist Nettrice Gaskins Sells Her Deep Dream Art as NFTs on the Greener Tezos Blockchain

This beautiful portrait of Tupac was created by Afrofuturist Nettrice Gaskins using Deep Dream's neural network -- and now, a rare copy of it can be purchased as an NFT on the blockchain. Given the recent hype over NFT for artists, you're probably not surprised by that, but Dr. Gaskins' NFTs are more noteworthy for at least a couple reasons -- first, they're being sold on hic et nunc, a new NFT platform that operates on the Tezos blockchain.

"Tez is what I use because it's eco-friendly and proof-of-stake," she tells me. This is in comparison to the Ethereum blockchain, which is more commonly used for NFTs, but because it still functions via proof-of-work, is an environmental disaster in the making.  As Dr. Gaskins writes on her Medium blog, NFT opens up an opportunity to artists who can't typically sell auction their art at places like Christie's:

For BIPOC/LGBTQ/Womxn/Disabled artists who have been intersectionally shut out of the Official Art Market, NFTs have the potential to help them/us make a living or supplement our incomes. The blockchain market removes the middle person or gatekeeper and empowers artists to use emerging technologies and networks in new or culturally relevant ways.

On a related note, minority communities like those also tend to be the most impacted by the worst effects of climate change. 

As for Nettrice's Deep Dream art, more on how she creates it:

How to Buy NFTs of Virtual Art Made by AI Artists Created by AI With ETH

... is a title to a post I never guessed I'd write even 12 months ago. But here we are. As to what the F it all actually means:

• NFT, for non-fungible tokens, are virtual items of perceived value (art, keepsakes, etc) bought and sold on a blockchain.
• Virtual art made by AI artists, in this case, refers to art made by "Taylor" and "Alejandro", two AI artists created by August Rosedale for his Mirage Gallery.
• ETH, for Ethereum, is a blockchain-based cryptocurrency that's theoretically more environmentally friendly than Bitcoin, but still only in theory.

They're being sold on Mintable, a community-run NFT marketplace. And if that's still somewhat intimidating but you're interested in the fairly delirious buzz around NFT, here are step-by-step instructions for buying the art of Taylor and Alejandro -- or for that matter, any other item on Mintable -- from August Rosedale himself. 

First, however, please caveat the hell out of your emptor purchasing decision beforehand. For instance, read this tweet thread highly critical of NFT's long-term fortunes.

That to one side, here's young Rosedale:

How to Deep Fake Your SL Avatar Into an Expressive Popstar With Wombo AI

Well this is the most expressive I've ever seen my avatar or for that many any other avatar in the virtual world (don't hurt me, don't hurt me):

This thanks to Wombo.AI, a new smartphone app that's designed to convert a RL selfie photo into a lip-syncing popstar via some pretty impressive deep fake machine learning algorithms. But my first thought when seeing it, of course, was: What will it do to my avatar? (And frankly I might not recommend using this on photos of real life people, for security reasons.) 

After fiddling around with it last night and getting some bizarre results, this video above is my best version so far.

Tips to getting your own avatar properly Wombo-fied? So far, I'd suggest these:

Look: More Fun Turning Avatars Into "Real" People With Artbreeder AI

In case you missed it, here is Ugleh Ulrik's tutorial for using the AI-driven platform Artbreeder to transform avatars. If you have questions about his tutorial, clickthrough here to ask him on YouTube.

On Second Life Friends, a large Facebook group for SLers have been using this tutorial t0 turn their avatars into "real" people. With permission, here's some of my favorite before/after pics:

Tutorial: How to Turn Second Life Avatars Into "Real" People With Artbreeder

Want to turn a Second Life avatar pic into the "photo" of their real life analog? Watch this Artbreeder tutorial from Ugleh Ulrik, the SL creator who first started the whole buzz around using the AI-driven platform to transform avatars.

"I do a lot of experimenting with new AI tech," Ulrik tells me, "and once I saw Artbreeder my first thought went to Pixar characters but then after that I realized making Second Life avatars more real was a possibility and I tried it out on a few close friends and it worked well."

Here's his key tips to keep in mind when using Artbreeder on an avatar:

I'm Mesmerized by These Avatars Turned Into "Real" People Via ArtBreeder AI

My post last week on Artbreeder, which uses Generative Adversarial Networks to create "children" of an original image, generated a mini-burst of excitement among many in the SL community, who started experimenting with the process to turn pictures of their avatars into "real" people. And the results are pretty mesmerizing! Above is one by Devin Vaughn, whose avatar looks in real life, I guess, like the clone of Ronan Farrow blended with Anderson Cooper?

Some more below: