AI is making its presence felt on the high seas as Royal Caribbean’s latest vessel can attest (see News below). In addition we’ll look at how AI is using novel technology to track the progression of diseases like Alzheimers and Parkinsons and try to understand why a Spanish artist is marrying a hologram version of an AI! And if that’s not enough, we’ll be drawing some great cartoons to boot. Let’s dive in…

News

Spanish artist to marry AI hologram: is this the state of things to come? Spanish artist, Alicia Framis, is planning to marry a hologram in Rotterdam later this year. Not sure what to think about this, but you can read the story here.

Google lay off thousands more staff despite record profits: news just out that Google, despite earning a record $20 billion in the last quat=rter, is laying off thousands of staff as AI continues to reduce the need for human workers. Read all about it

.Royal Caribbean using AI to reduce food waste: The latest vessel in the Royal Caribbean fleet, Icon of the Seas, is using AI to combat food waste. Check out the video here.

Tech companies sign accord to prevent election trickery: at the Munich Security Conference this week, 20 tech companies, including Adobe, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and TikTok all volunatarily signed an agreement to make strides in preventing election interference using AI tools. Read all about it here.

AI assistant monitors neurodegenerative diseases progression: Tina, a new chatbot developed by Modality AI, can track the progression of diseases like Parkinsons and Alzheimers by chatting with the patient. Really interesting interview with Modality Ai’s CEO can be found here.

Tool

This week, I’ve gone all whimsical! I found a new GPT entitled “Cartoonize Yourself” which sets its stall out to create Pixar style cartoon images of any photo that you upload. It is super simple to use and provides hours of fun. In the interests of being fair to all those whose photos that I uploaded, i decided that the prompt that I would use would be a non descript shot of an elephant playing in the water in the jungle. The before and after are below.

Prompt

So, here is the image I found online:

and here is the output from Cartoonize Yourself:

Hours of fun to be had by making cartoon pics out of friends and family. A birthday card may never be the same again!