AMT Lab @ CMU

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News Roundup: AI Everywhere, New Social Media Features, and Projection Mapping

The worlds of art and tech were all about AI, social media, and projection the first few weeks of September.

A number of artificial intelligence powered experiences garnered worldwide attention this week. In London’s Trafalger Square an AI powered lion sculpture is now on display as part of the London Design Festival. The lion, trained on 19th century poetry, creates an original poem when it is fed a word via pixel book. In the music world, Amadeus Code progressed from beta to public with their AI powered songwriting app. Finally, developers in China are preparing to use AI to give new life to the popular panda Basi.

In the social sphere, major platforms announced updates and new features. Instagram is preparing a standalone app designed specifically for shopping, and Twitter added a feature that allows the user to tweet out audio only tweets on both its iOS platform and Periscope. From a user perspective, a new study from Common Sense Media reports that most teens prefer to to chat online.

Finally, projection art is lighting up the art and tech scene. The Luma Project Art Festival ran from Sept. 7-9 in Binghamton, NY. It featured a combination of 3D animation and live music. The upcoming projection show at Walt Disney Concert Hall debuts on September 28 and features a machine learning powered light show. Over 45 terabytes of data from the Philharmonic’s digital archives were processed to create the show.