The Morning After: Crosswalks are being hacked to imitate tech billionaires

Welcome to your Friday edition of TMA. It’s a public holiday where I’m from, so it’s a shorter briefing than usual. Barring a barrage of new cars (tariffs? shh!) revealed at the New York International Auto Show, it’s been a relatively quiet week, but not without a bit of drama.

TMA
Engadget

“You know, they say money can’t buy happiness. And… yeah, OK… I guess that’s true. God knows I’ve tried. But it can buy a Cybertruck, and that’s pretty sick, right? …Right?? Fuck, I’m so alone.” That’s what a pretty realistic AI voice clone of Elon Musk was saying to pedestrians at crosswalks in Palo Alto. An AI Mark Zuckerberg joined him, with both billionaires’ voices mimicked to say, well, the things a lot of us are thinking, whether it’s the invasive AI push, billionaires wielding power over government or other bleak, beige real-world versions of Black Mirror premises.

They were in operation at downtown intersections in Redwood City, Menlo Park and Palo Alto but were gone, sadly, by Saturday.

No one’s staked a claim to the prank — but there are probably many people in Silicon Valley capable of pulling it off. More recently, an AI clone of Jeff Bezos was talking on Seattle crosswalks.

— Mat Smith

Get Engadget's newsletter delivered direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!


Music streaming service Deezer said 20,000 completely AI-generated tracks are added to its music service daily, making up “over 18% of all uploaded content” the platform receives every day. At the start of the year, Deezer introduced a tool for detecting and tagging AI-generated content, which at the time accounted for only 10 percent of uploads.

Continue reading.


The S1R II is Panasonic’s first camera that can both shoot up to 8K video and capture 44-megapixel (MP) photos in rapid bursts. And unlike its rivals, the new model is available at a more reasonable $3,300 — half the price of Sony’s A1 II. At the same time, it’s a massive upgrade over the original S1R. We have some issues with the rolling shutter, but it’s a minor problem on an otherwise excellent hybrid camera.

Continue reading.


TMA
Doom

Physical editions of the iconic shooters Doom and Doom II are on their way, and the highlight is something called the Will It Run Edition. This comes with a game box that actually runs the original Doom itself. All you have to do is connect a controller as the box also has a port. It’s an expensive gimmick: The copies cost $666 and are being kept to a limited run of 666. Because hell. There’s also the usual special edition content inside, including a soundtrack (on cassette), trading cards and a handheld cacodemon handheld console that also plays Doom.

Continue reading.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-morning-after-engadget-newsletter-111621557.html?src=rss https://www.engadget.com/general/the-morning-after-engadget-newsletter-111621557.html?src=rss
Erstellt 8d | 18.04.2025, 12:20:17


Melden Sie sich an, um einen Kommentar hinzuzufügen

Andere Beiträge in dieser Gruppe

Engadget review recap: Panasonic S1R II, NVIDIA RTX 5060 Ti and more

New devices are still hitting our desks at Engadget at a rapid pace. Over the last two weeks, we've offered up in-depth analysis

26.04.2025, 15:10:23 | Engadget
How to watch LlamaCon 2025, Meta's first generative AI developer conference

After a couple years of having its open-source Llama AI model be just a part of its Connect conferences, Meta is breaking things out and hosting an entirely generative AI-focused developer conferen

25.04.2025, 22:50:14 | Engadget
Boox's new Go 7 E Ink tablets support handwriting with a $46 stylus

Boox, a company that makes E Ink gear ranging from

25.04.2025, 20:30:23 | Engadget
“It feels alive”: The Legend of Ochi director on the power of puppets

The Legend of Ochi feels like a film that shouldn't exist today. It's an original story, not an adaptation of an already popular book or comic. It's filled with complex puppetry and practi

25.04.2025, 20:30:22 | Engadget
Infinity Nikki is coming to Steam and getting a co-op mode

The fashion-forward adventure Infinity Nikki is finally coming to Steam on April 29, compl

25.04.2025, 20:30:21 | Engadget