Lead story for Thursday, March 27. OpenAI's new image generator has gone viral with studio style memes featuring public figures like Elon Musk and Donald Trump. The tool part of the g p t four o allows users to recreate existing images and artistic styles sparkling copyright concerns about training on copyrighted works. Legal exports point out that while style itself isn't protected, how models are trained remains legally unclear. As lawsuits mount, the text popularity continues to rise highlighting both innovation and ongoing intellectual property tensions. Everyone, welcome. Now OpenAI's update to chat g p t four is really incredible. And this new AI image January went live and you can see from the last couple of shows, what I've used has really improved, the outputs from episode art to stuff that I put on YouTube. And this, this meme maker from is is really pretty incredible in Studio Gibby. And I guess that's how you pronounce it, Gibby, if I pronounce it wrong. In in the theme of studio Gibby has got people all freaked out. You can have even kind of see it in today's episode art. So I think this is just gonna be an ongoing ongoing issue and we'll see if more people sue. But, you know, the cult favorite Japanese animation studio behind blockbuster films such as, My Neighbor Tortoro and Spirited Away, This is way this those are the folks who are saying, hey, this thing makes images, in that in that theme. I I've been thrilled with the new outputs. I I really really have and, I think you will as well. So, let me know. Let me know what you're thinking about the new chat at GPT four point o. Let's go and get into the rest of stuff. I wanna welcome you to episode 1,810. I'm your host, of course, Todd Cochran. A shout out to our incredible sponsor at GoDaddy. Score exclusive deals and discounts at geekinesscentral.com/godaddy. And to all of our listeners, you are the real MVPs. You you should support us at geekinesscentral.com/insider. Of course, we're lit and live. Don't list, listen, experience the show live by grabbing a modern podcast app at podcastapps.com. And, of course, you can check out the full geek new full Geek News Central lineup at GeekNewsCentral,.com. Get over there and do that. And we want you to stay in the loop. We want you to subscribe to the podcast, be your favorite podcast app. Don't forget to sign up for our newsletter at geeknewcentral.com and even more insider scoops. Of course, you can join the conversation, very simply. You can email me geeknews@gmail.com, geek news at g mail dot com, or, of course, you can follow me on x at geek news. You can even catch me on Facebook. A new background today, playing around with that a little bit. So, just having fun with, with all the fun tools here. And, I've been very, very happy with, with the studio minus, whatever happened with the audio a little earlier ago. But, of course, Geek News Central listeners, are you ready? Are you ready? 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So just letting you know that, just impossible with the, with the time difference to be able to do a podcast. So, we'll be back with you, a week from today, for the next episode. Alright? Just wanted to keep you informed of that. And if you got any questions, feel free again to email the show. Drop me a note. Let me know what's happening. Appreciate again all of your ongoing support. So let's go ahead and get into the, the full text stack of everything that I've got today and it's a lot. We had a lot of interesting news articles. Not a lot of huge stories, but just a lot of ongoing news. Now one thing about the AI, update to the image generator, image generate. Those of you on a free account are not going to, get the new image generator right away. And also your GPTs that you have tied, have created. Any GPTs you've created are not using the new image generator as well. I found that out today and I was a little bit, confused about it. So as we move through the tech, few Americans are now supporting TikTok ban. And public supported TikTok now stands at 34% among US adults according to a new research study from, from the Pew Research Center. And that's down from 50% in March of twenty twenty three. I think maybe the PR campaign that TikTok's been doing. Have you guys been seeing, the TikTok ads that they've been running on digital and on TV? Have you been seeing those? I think that's helping them, to be honest with you. We'll see. We'll see what happens here but the clock is still TikTok ing on this. One thing that is, curious is how some websites' tone has completely changed and how they become so anti Elon, how they become, it's almost like everything that sites stood for before are now completely the opposite. It's like they've they have completely changed their tune. And, it's it's it's ironic. Ars Technica never would talk about the, the funding levels of government but they have a good article today talking about the US Space Force and how they're getting less money in the budget. I think what we're gonna see is most government agencies are gonna get less money. They have to get less money. It just it just doesn't work, you know. And and I think the cuts need to be bigger but, time will tell how this all works out. I unless we make a lot more money and pay a lot more taxes, something has got to give. Of course, a lot of controversy over my last, episode talking about signal and talking about the administration. There's been some legal actions, of course, and, of course, signal has seen a huge spike in downloads. That should not be unexpected. But what's interesting is is the full endorsement of them having used the app and having being up an approved platform, or is it just a matter if they got caught? I I don't know. But it appears the previous administration was using this as well. So it makes me go, And I think my position still applies. It's very very hard to use a, DOD system on a mobile phone. It's just very very difficult. It's very antiquated. It shouldn't be that way but it's it's very, very true. How many of you are Garmin users? Garmin Connect is adding a plus subscription, which adds active intelligence giving you new workouts and coaching. $6.99 a month for Garmin Connect Plus. So I didn't really think Garmin was a exercise app, but apparently that's what they have apparently morphed into. Now if you are a Qatar Airways flyer, you can speak, book, and fly with their with the industry's first AI travel agent. It's called SAMA. Sama is already figuring the Qatar Airways immersive virtual reality platform Qverse, now breaking new ground with the first of its kind conversational flight booking system seamlessly replacing traditional online forms. So, you can talk to an AI agent now in booking on on on Qatar, Qatar. Amazon is testing renaming AQUIS smart display to Alexa. Images seen, of Amazon's testing changed the name again of its echo some smart speaker to Alexa. I don't know why it wasn't called that to begin with. It just seems to me like this is the case. Now I'm having some huge challenges here. I used to talk about The Verge a lot. I and they have just completely made it nearly impossible to, to to look at articles now without signing up and subscribing. Even when I have, have ads allow allowed on the website, I can no longer read. They must have a limit set to the number of articles that can be read on The Verge, without getting his continue reading command line with The Verge subscription. So, I'll have the link in the show notes, but, you know, it's not gonna be able to cover this article about Reddit talking to Elon Musk about, users blocking x links. So, Reddit gets the love here, largely because they blocked my ability to be able to, to cover their site without me paying them money and, providing links back to their website. I guess there's no value in that anymore. Tech suppliers await final grade as the administration prepares to to, de establish the education department or size it down dramatically. A very, very, very big country contract contractors like Essential, General Dynamics, T Rex Solutions, and Peraton, which are getting billions of dollars, up to $268,000,000,000 of tech contracts, in the Department of Education. They're they're ready to learn their fate. A lot of these companies have had to send in a report card of what they provide to the government in Layman's terms. Time will tell. But I think there's gonna be a lot of pain in a lot of sectors, due to the cutoff of money. Money makes the world go around but, you know, how much of it do we actually have? So, tough times ahead for many industries. The same time, Robinhood is moving into banking services with luxury perks and same day cash delivery. So they're gonna become a private bank. So those of you with a gold subscription or access to Robinhood banking built as a private bank and offering with individual joint checking savings as well as luxury benefits on offer. There'll be options to send money to others in more than 100 countries and handily for those who are tired of tray going to the ATM. You're gonna cash delivered to your door, same day you request depending on your location. Now that would be cool. It's a pain in the butt here for me, because of ATM limits and everything else I'll be honest we have a Charles Schwab card, best investment a international customer can use. But the the limits are just like at home. So if I want to pay for something this is a cash country, largely cash. Credit cards are not used in very many places like the malls. Few others play but some place in the malls don't take credit card, which is amazing to me. Restaurants are largely cash. Everything that you again, almost everything you pay for groceries are cash. So it's just a cash a cash society. And when you're used to operating in a credit card society where you just boop and you swipe your card, having cash is key and sometimes you hit the ATM on a Friday and it's empty. And they're not gonna fill it until Monday. So it's it's an interesting thing. I've never had to worry about getting cash. ATMs have always been readily available. They're readily available here, but they just are you can get to one say I can't do this transaction today. I can't give you money. Your ATM cards work fine, but it's just, so Robinhood being able to deliver me cash? Interesting. I like that. I like someone showing up you to your door just like a, like a Brink's truck would and and and you'll bring you a couple hundred dollars or whatever the minimums are gonna be. But at the same time, because it is a cash country, I don't like to hold a lot of cash. So it's a double edged sword. It really is. And you just have to you have to be careful. ISS resupply and trash pickup craft postponed indefinitely after the Cygnus container crunch. Northrop Grumman's Cygnus cargo freighter, the n g 22 is being delayed indefinitely, because engineers confirmed the pressurized cargo module, which comes out of Italy, sustained damage in its shipping case. The damage was caused by heavy equipment striking the container during shipment. So when the container was opened, the module was was inspected, and the engineers confirmed it did not survive the trip unscathed. So, they're adjusting their plans and but North and Grumman's commercial resupply service 23, will now be the company's next flight. So, payload and, concerns at the International Space Station, they're having to make adjustments on SpaceX based upon what's going on here. They're not in danger, but, critical supplies are delivered on a timely basis and, this is gonna impact things in a big, big way. OnlyFans has been fined over age check information failings. So we can probably all agree. We may agree or disagree on OnlyFans, but the platform which is known for hosting adult materials says people must be 18 years old, of course. And it's only using facial facial age estimation technology and it's not been accurate. The platform said it was to set to flag anyone appeared to be under the age of 23 then would be, asked to, provide an ID. Albert later disclosed the tech's target age had in fact been set to 20. Dun dun dun. But they've been, sued, or fined a million pounds after giving inaccurate information about the measures that taken place to check the age of its users. I remember when I was twenty three twenty five, I don't look at now, but when I was 23, 20 five, I still look like I was 18 or younger and I got carded for years and years and years and years. And some people have the opposite. I had friends that were young that looked older so it kinda goes both ways. Could it be the end of modeling? H and m is gonna use digital clones of models in ads and social media. So, an instant loss of revenue for folks that have inspiring modeling careers. Fashion retailers gonna use AI to create digital twins of 30 models. It says it will use the AI doppelgangers in some social media posts and marketing in place of humans if given permission. Oh, this is interesting. So they're gonna make digital twins. Are they so this is kind of a step in between. Said we're curious to explore how to showcase our fashion in new creative ways. Despite each day's claim it would not change its human centric approach, some fear the move could impact other models, photographers, and makeup artists. So, we will see, where this leads, and I would suspect what's gonna happen based on some of the stuff we're seeing with this image generation capability. I would fully, fully expect that, this could be, something that's gonna just sweep the entire industry. So Windows 11 has an update for USB printers spitting out nonsense. We know that in back in January, they had an update that caused many of you trouble. So Microsoft released KB five zero five five three six five seven, an update for Windows 11 is an optional one. But But if you've been having printers issues, go get it. And then when I saw this title, this next article, I was just a little surprised. Nintendo is launching a news app. I'm like, what? A news app? How far could they fall from the from the web? But it really what it is is they're gonna be sharing Nintendo news. So they they close out today's direct with surprise announcement and news app. They'll keep players up to date on everything Nintendo. It's called Nintendo Today. Apple continues to do some reshifting of its team. They have named a new person to lead their retail stores. That individual is, Dedra O'Brien. And, so she's been moved to global head of stores and meant to move to streamline managements of its retail arm. So, Apple continues to do, tiny shifts here and there, on leadership within the company. SpaceX, at the same time, is preparing to launch four individuals on a on the on the first polar orbital polar orbit mission. So, this was not going the International Space Station, but a polar orbit mission. So what are they gonna be doing? The four person mission known as FRAM two will launch on a four day mission. Space is targeting liftoff on March 31. The international crew is made up of mission commander Chung Wang of Malta, Vehicle Commander Janiki Mikkelsen of Norway, Mission Pilot Ravi Rogue of Germany, and mission medical officer Eric Phillips of Australia. I think this is the first ever all foreign team too. So now what are they gonna do? Like, they aim to connect 22 different research experiments. One of those research projects is a solar max mission, the film Aurora Borealis for research and citizen scientists. What else? They will attempt to grow oyster mushrooms in orbit as part of the mush v room study, which could help will be helpful for, Mars missions and plant agriculture on Earth. They're gonna conduct several biomedical research studies including taking the first x-ray in space using a mobile MRI device and studying how space input packs female reproductive hormones. So big move here and, we'll see how this mission, mission goes. You know, I knew this is gonna happen and we we've had some of this tech before, but a new tiny magnetic robot is will roll around inside of your gut to look for signs of cancer. So now they're starting to put probes and into more tiny devices. And this actually uses a external magnet to move, move the device around in your stomach to take high, high end photography. They say that the the other way was quite invasive. Cut a hole in your side of your stomach and put a camera through in a tube or go the other way. So they feel that this is less invasive, obviously, and they can get just as quality images. So in testing, maybe coming to a hospital near you in the near future. T Mobile's copped up 33,000,000 in the SIM swap lawsuit. So they paid 33,000,000 of private arbitration process over the SIM swap attack leading to cryptocurrency theft. Given the phone number certificate associated with various online accounts, control over phone number can allow a third actor to change the log information for those accounts to take them over. You know, losing your phone number is a big big big deal. It's one of those things I go what happens if I ever lose my phone, you know, and lose my number? I never ever go out in town with my US based telephone here. I've got a burner phone that I use because of just that worry of, you know, leaving in a bar or restaurant or wherever. Even though the phone would be locked, you know, recovering it until I got back to The United States would be near impossible. Waze is ditching Google Assistant for Gemini on iOS, and and, everyone says it's great. So, again, Gemini is replacing Google Assistant across multiple apps and multiple devices. And if you're on Waze on your phone, you'll soon notice the mapping app swapping the the older AI bot for the new one. And supposedly, everything will be more better. Time will tell. After 50,000,000 miles, Waymo's crashed a lot less than a human driver. We know the first ever fatal crash involving a fully driver's vehicle occurred in San Francisco on January 19. The driver's vehicle belong to Waymo, but the crash was not Waymo's fault. A Waymo with no driver passed or stopped for a red light. Another car stopped behind the Waymo. Then according to Waymo, human driven SUV rear ended the other vehicle high speed at high speed causing a six car pileup that killed one person injured five others. Again, the vehicle was stopped at a light. Another major Waymo crash occurred in October. Once again, a driver's Waymo stopped at a red light. A vehicle traveling in the opposite direction crossed the double yellow line and crashed into an SUV that was stopped to the Waymo's left. The force to impact shoved the SUV into Waymo. When person was seriously injured. These two incidents provide worst injuries than any other Waymo crash in the last nine months. But in other respects, they were typical Waymo crashes. Most Waymo crashes involve a Waymo vehicle scrupulously following the rules when a human runs into them. So this is interesting. Waymo's reported 60 crashes serious enough to trigger an airbag, but those crashes occurred over 50,000,000 miles. And if you randomly if you randomly selected 50,000,000 miles of human drying, that's roughly 70 lifetimes behind the wheel. So you would see far less far more serious crashes than Waymo has experienced to date. So according to Waymo, I don't know if this has been verified or not, but, that's what they're saying. The astronauts that have returned from the NASA space station, I often wonder what happens when they come back. It's not like they just I I guess they go home, but according to this article on wgbh.org, they spend about forty five days in physical therapy. They go, they go every day for physical therapy for the first forty five days. And, they do medical testing and daily sessions with trainers, but they say there's some things that just test that training cannot, overcome. It's to be they say skin I mean, clothes on your skin feels like sandpaper because in weightlessness, your your clothes, I guess, are loosey goosey. And, there's a lot of sensitivity when you come back. Kind of interesting. It really is on on how the body, changes. Defense contractor Morse to pay 4,600,000.0 to settle cybersecurity failure allegations. So, it's nice to see the companies that are required to have cybersecurity are being held accountable. You know, if you're not doing what you've been contracted to do, it's it's what you should it's what should happen. An interesting protest is going on. New NYU website has been defaced as hacker leaks info on millions of students and this is an attempt to expose racism. Now the hacking group called itself computer nidgy oh my gosh. You can make a big mistake with that word. Exploitation has struck the website of NYU and attempt to expose the university's alleged racism, but it also exposed sensitive information on millions of NYU applicants. The group reminded that the Supreme Court killed the firm of action back in 2023, but the NYU can is continued in its admittance policy of, Asian and Caucasian applicants compared to Hispanic and black applicants. So, again, this is a protest and they've done it by hacking, the website. Netflix is firing up the mystery machine with a live action Scooby Doo series. After all these years, Scooby Doo still prevails. It's kinda funny. It really, really is. And, again, a Scooby Doo live action series. The first season will have eight episodes. The story will follow the haunting case that started it all. So, are you a Scooby Doo fan? I can't say even as a kid was a Scooby Dooby Doo fan. But I think we've all done the Scooby Dooby Doo sound. GMC Sierra electric truck now starts at $64,495 with the new elevation a t r 84 trims. Now I'm not a big GM fan, but $64,000, for electric is actually cheaper than a lot of their diesel or gas powered vehicles. You know, pickup trucks have just they're out of control. But I'm sure this is just a plain Jane truck model, probably no trim. You're lucky if you have an AMFM radio. I you know, I'm sure this is as base as it gets. But if you're a GM fan and you like electric vehicles, this is an option. There's a warning from PC world. Malware can lurk in file conversion tools, the FBI warns. Try these applications instead. Now I've never used a file conversion tool. That's one thing I well, I'll take that back. I've done media file conversions but not document conversions. Because most software today, even if you're using Google Docs, will read a PDF and you can sign it as a as a doc. And Microsoft Word supports a lot of that as well. What docs are people using an external tool for? I I don't understand that one. Dell has been in the cost cutting, realm again. They've shed another 10% of staff for the second year in a row confirmed 12,000 people were let go over twelve months. So, that was filed at a 10 k. So again, Dell continues to to downsize and, we're seeing this everywhere. Vivaldi and I'm not familiar with this browser. The Vivaldi, v I v a l d I. Vivaldi has baked ProtonVPN into its browser to boost privacy. Now I'm a I'm a I'm a ProtonVPN fan. And again, they become the latest browser and include a VPN with its product working with ProtonVPN to up user privacy. Users will need to log in with a Vivaldi account or a Proton account to access the feature. Does it cost anything? It doesn't say, but I'm not familiar with the Vivaldi browser. Are any of you? I'd love to hear your your feedback. Geeknews@gmail.com. Geek news at g mail dot com. Uber, if you find the JFK, Uber's adding a new shuttle ride between JFK Airports in Manhattan. It follows the LaGuardia routes the company introduced last fall. So it's been definitely, expensive in New York to take Uber. If they have a shuttle, this is this is much I'm sure gonna be much cheaper. What is the cost? The JFK shutters will typically cost up to $25 for one way, but Uber is launching new rides with a $10 pricing one way. That's at least $25 cheaper from going from JFK to Downtown Manhattan. It's at least a $50 Uber ride. The $25 on a shuttle, if you have time, sounds like a steal. UK's First permanent facial recognition camera installed in South London. I thought UK was already camera central, but I guess these are the first facial recognition cameras. So the two cameras will be installed in the city center in an effort to combat crime. It'll be attached to buildings and lampposts on the North End and London Road. According to police, they only be turned on when officers are in the area and in a position to make an arrest if a criminal is spotted. The installation follows a two year trial in area where police vans fitted with cameras have been patrolling the streets, matching passerbys to its database of suspects or criminals, leading to hundreds of arrests. The MET claims the systems can alert them in seconds if it wanted wrong and is spotted. And if the person gets the all clear, the image of the face will be deleted. So this is very, very interesting. According to MET's figures, for LFR using VAN deployments, the error rate identifying a suspect is less than one percent and police typically have around 16,000 suspects on their watch list. Why are they watching people? Are these people out on parole? Why are people on a watch list? Now I I have really no information on this, but Samsung is now it's available in twenty twenty five Neo QLED TVs with Vision AI and expanded screen size. I don't under I don't this Vision AI apparently and, again, this is released at CES twenty twenty five, which I was not at. It basically has AI driven features and user allows a user interaction. Does it actually improve the image quality? The key highlight is integration of Samsung Vision Eye, which combines advanced AI processing with adaptive features that enhance both pictures and sound. Vision Eye introduced several new capabilities such as eight k AI upscaling pro, real time language translation with subtitles through live translate feature, and click to search which provides additional information about on screen content. So there you go. That's the update. Again, a ton of news today on just stuff being announced. Instacart, I don't know if you use Instacart at all, but Instacart will pay shoppers to take videos of store shelves. Store view is supposed to help Instacart determine which products are out of stock and when they may become available. I've had that happen a lot of, you know, go in a store, you're looking for something specific, you go to the shelf, it's empty, and you're like, I wish I knew when this was gonna be back in stock. But this is specifically for those of you that use Instacart. I I don't use the app, to be honest with you. I don't even fully know what the app does. I guess it must help you with your shopping. And Google is rolling out new vacation planning features to search maps and Gemini. So, you know, they're updating everything. Everything is getting AI at this point. So I don't think we should be surprised. We'll see how these product updates help us in, the months and years ahead. It's definitely gonna be an interesting role for sure. As always, you can email me here geeknews@gmail.com. I'm at x I'm at @geeknewsonx. Of course, feel free to support me at, on GoDaddy. If you pick up a product or service over there, geekdecentral.com/GoDaddy, and we want to also encourage you to become an insider. 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