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OpenAI. Beating The Blacklist. With the tech news cycle on snooze the weekend before Thanksgiving and an impressive rainstorm hitting Northern California that confined me to home, I promised myself to binge-watch the endless twists and turns of The Blacklist.
But then, the excrements hit the fan on Friday and one fascinating turn of events followed the other in the OpenAI saga, featuring 3 CEOs in the course of 72 hours.
I won't even try to summarize the latest, because as soon as I hit the send button of this newsletter, the story will already have taken a new turn. So keep refreshing the pages of your favorite tech sites!
Insta360. Hello GoPro. But, snoozing season or not: hot off the press, past Visual 1st Best of Show Award winner Insta360 is pushing the action camera envelope by announcing Ace and Ace Pro, two new action cameras that were co-engineered with Leica and promise to bring impressive image quality powered by blending hardware with computational photography and other AI features.
Ace Pro houses what Insta360 calls an industry-first Type 1/1.3 image sensor capable of shooting video at up to 8K at 24 frames per second (fps), 4K at 120 fps, and can capture 48-megapixel photos. Nice touch: it also brings a “vlogging-friendly” 2.4-inch flip touchscreen to provide live preview and camera control. And all of that for $450.
MyHeritage. How old is that vintage photo? PhotoDater, a new AI photo tool from the family history website MyHeritage, helps you estimate when that photo was taken. PhotoDater is trained on tens of thousands of curated, definitively dated historical photos, according to the company.
Instagram. Oh yeah, we were a filter app. Remember 13 years ago when the smartphone’s picture quality was so-so, but your photos still looked cool and artistic thanks to trendy filter apps, such as Hipstamatic and Instagram?
Well, after its acquisition by Meta, Instagram has moved on, in fact moved so far beyond its original roots that the release of 25+ new filters came as a surprise. While some of the new filters have effects along the lines of the original ones, ranging from subtle color edits to options for expressive styles, others go beyond that (like “wide angle” and “wavy”) and make significant changes to your original images.
Meta. Combining generative AI with computer vision. Still in the research phase, but Meta announces Emu Edit, a tool that lets you select + edit objects in images through just text prompts, such as by saying “remove the dog” or “change the color of the background”.
While the generative AI features are reminiscent of Adobe’s Generative Fill or Google’s Magic Editor, it is the computer vision integration that makes Emu Edit unique.
Meta is planning to offer similar features for video editing: Emu Video.
Google Photos. Tweaking that visual reminiscing mission. As described in our last issue, Google Photos’ mission is to provide the optimal visual storytelling and reminiscing solution. That includes ways to conquer your photo clutter and the latest addition, called Photo Stacks, is another tool in your arsenal to accomplish just that.
Photo Stacks uses AI to identify the “best” photo from a group of photos taken together and select it as the top pick of the stack to reduce clutter in your Photos gallery. Similar photos are then hidden behind the top pick of the “stack,” making things tidier. Users can override the Photo Stacks’ choice or turn the feature off.
CYME. FindMySnap – in Apple Photos. FindMySnap, developed by CYME, the company behind the Peakto desktop photo organizer app, is a new AI-powered app for finding, organizing and sharing your Apple Photos on your iPhone.
You can search for any search term, sort by geo location or search by using one of the app-provided 1K topics, such “Adventure Photography” and “Fun Time.” FindMySnap also lets you share your collections through iOS’s native “Share” function.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Hans Hartman
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