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.
“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
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18 percent of the new music uploaded to Deezer is AI-generated
20,000 tracks each day. 5 total listens.
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Panasonic S1R II camera review
Its video is great, it finally does stills well and it’s cheaper than its rivals.
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The $666 edition of Doom includes a game box that, itself, plays Doom
The true physical edition.
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.
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