Business of Media
OpenAI plans to up the ante in tech’s A.I. race
Four months ago, a small San Francisco company became the talk of the technology industry when it introduced a new online chatbot that could answer complex questions, write poetry and even mimic human emotions, reports the New York Times’ Cade Metz.
Now the company is back with a new version of the technology that powers its chatbots. The system will up the ante in Silicon Valley’s race to embrace artificial intelligence and decide who will be the next generation of leaders in the technology industry.
OpenAI, which has around 375 employees but has been backed with billions of dollars of investment from Microsoft and industry celebrities, said on Tuesday that it had released a technology that it calls GPT-4. It was designed to be the underlying engine that powers chatbots and all sorts of other systems, from search engines to personal online tutors.
Most people will use this technology through a new version of the company’s ChatGPT chatbot, while businesses will incorporate it into a wide variety of systems, including business software and e-commerce websites. The technology already drives the chatbot available to a limited number of people using Microsoft’s Bing search engine.
Alphabet-backed Anthropic releases OpenAI competitor named Claude
Anthropic, an artificial intelligence company backed by Alphabet Inc, on Tuesday released a large language model that competes directly with offerings from Microsoft Corp-backed OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, reports Reuters’ Stephen Nellis.
Large language models are algorithms that are taught to generate text by feeding them human-written training text. In recent years, researchers have obtained much more human-like results with such models by drastically increasing the amount of data fed to them and the amount of computing power used to train them.
Claude, as Anthropic’s model is known, is built to carry out similar tasks to ChatGPT by responding to prompts with human-like text output, whether that is in the form of editing legal contracts or writing computer code.
But Anthropic, which was co-founded by siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, both of whom are former OpenAI executives, has put a focus on producing AI systems that are less likely to generate offensive or dangerous content, such as instructions for computer hacking or making weapons, than other systems.
Mirror and Express publisher warns that up to 420 staff are at risk of redundancy
The publisher of the Mirror and the Express newspapers has warned that up to 420 staff could face redundancy, as part of a continued cost-cutting drive, reports The Guardian’s Joanna Partridge.
Reach, which also owns hundreds of regional UK newspapers including the Birmingham Mail, Liverpool Echo and Manchester Evening News, has been battling higher costs resulting from inflation, as well as a slump in print advertising as the UK economy falters.
The move comes just weeks after the publisher, which owns hundreds of regional newspapers, said it would cut 200 jobs as part of a £30m cost-cutting drive, after disappointing sales of print and web advertising during last year’s World Cup and festive season.
The newspaper group, which also owns the Daily Star and a network of regionally-focused news websites including Glasgow Live and Hampshire Live, said it is reviewing spending across the whole business because of higher costs resulting from inflation.
It said the 420 affected staff – including 192 journalists – had been informed on Tuesday that they were at risk of redundancy. Reach added that resignations, job moves and redeployments among this group of workers would reduce the number of redundancies.
Yes, networks are now more open to LGBTQIA+ content -but it still needs broad appeal
Trailblazing producer / director / writer Tony Ayres, whose queer work dates back to 1992, was last week asked at the Australian International Documentary Conference whether network commissioners were now more open to LGBTQIA+ content, reports TV Tonight.
Ayres extensive credits include The Slap, Nowhere Boys, Clickbait, Glitch, Stateless, Fires, Barracuda, The Devil’s Playground, Underground: The Julian Assange Story, and The Family Law.
Speaking on a ‘Getting Queer-ious’ panel, he confirmed real change in the way people are open to queer pitches.
“Yeah, absolutely. I’ve been working in this business for over 30 years, and I would have said in the first 25, nothing really changed. It was all lip service to diversity,” he said.
“But I just think that there’s been such a big paradigm shift in the last five, six years, and this is the perfect opportunity to make the work, and make the approaches.
“The twist in it is that we, as makers, be challenged to make the work play to the broadest possible audience – because otherwise the economics don’t add up.”
Radio
Doubts over future of The National Indigenous Radio Service as funding dries up
An Indigenous footy radio broadcast station may be forced to hang up the microphone just days out from round one after a call for help to the AFL was left unanswered, reports News Corp’s Regan Hodge.
The National Indigenous Radio Service broadcasts AFL matches into remote Indigenous communities around the country, with the station made up of almost entirely Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander commentators.
The station, who have hosted talent such as Gilbert McAdam, Andrew Krakouer, Nathan Lovett-Murray, and Peter Keenan may not go to air this season after over 25 years of broadcasting after a lack of sponsorship and funding made it almost impossible to operate this season.
On Tuesday evening, the AFL said they were still expecting the station to be calling Thursday’s Richmond v Carlton clash, claiming to be finalising funding for the station at the 11th-hour.
The broadcaster had found it difficult attracting sponsors and funding, resorting to asking the AFL for financial support or advice for obtaining sponsors.
Television
US TV Ratings: Oscars rise to three-year high
The Oscars grew their TV audience for the second consecutive year, scoring the highest ratings for the show since 2020, reports the Hollywood Reporter’s Rick Porter.
Sunday’s broadcast of the 95th Oscars averaged 18.76 million viewers and a 4.03 rating among adults 18-49 on ABC, according to time zone-adjusted fast national ratings from Nielsen (the numbers include out-of-home viewing).
That’s a 13 percent improvement in viewers and a 7 percent bump in adults 18-49 from last year’s awards, which delivered 16.62 million viewers and a 3.76 rating in the 18-49 demographic. Sunday’s broadcast drew the largest audience for any awards show since the 2020 Oscars — held a few weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic led to widespread lockdowns — averaged 23.64 million viewers. It’s also the most watched entertainment program in primetime this season, passing the 15.66 million viewers for the post-Super Bowl premiere of Next Level Chef on Fox.
Despite the jump in viewers, the Oscars still turned in their third smallest viewer total since Nielsen began tracking that statistic, ahead of only the past two years. (The 2021 awards, delayed and heavily scaled back by the pandemic, set the all-time low of 10.4 million viewers.) Still, the year-to-year rise in viewers bucks a trend that has generally seen lower ratings across the board for awards shows in recent years.
See Also: Oscars 2023: Full list of winners
Who did Oscars In Memoriam snub this year?
Every year the Oscars comes under scrutiny for omitting famed faces from its In Memoriam segment, reports TV Tonight.
This year Mira Sorvino took to social media to criticise the Academy for leaving out her father, Paul Sorvino.
Also absent were Anne Heche, Tom Sizemore, Charlbi Dean, Gilbert Gottfried, Stella Stevens, Sacheen Littlefeather, and Robert Blake -although host Jimmy Kimmel did refer to him in a gag about whether or not he should be included.
Others such as Leslie Jordan, John Aniston, Barbara Walters, Kevin Conroy, and Lisa Marie Presley were also not included. but arguaby are not especially known for cinema work.