The dark secret behind those cute AI-generated animal images

Universities seem to be embracing the technology because it ensures that every student has the opportunity to clarify the pronunciation of their name. West Chester University in Pennsylvania opted for Tassel’s more expensive human voice recordings after a student petition to make the change received over 1,000 signatures. At the University of North Georgia, a similar petition received twice as many signatures. Northeastern is far from the only university to partner with Tassel — hundreds of other schools have, including at least 10 in the Boston metropolitan area, according to a Tassel spokesperson. Sure enough, other universities who have introduced the tool have been hit with backlash of their own.

The professors are using ChatGPT, and some students aren’t happy about it

• Most of the images that OpenAI and Google make public are cherry-picked.
• “It would just seem so out of character to have an AI bot read someone’s name.”
• Lumiere generates five-second videos that “portray realistic, diverse and coherent motion.”
• Read the full story—and see more pictures created by Imagen—here.

Designed to repel cheap Chinese rivals, it chalked up another victory for the sector’s mystifying inability to think up coherent names. But these firms are pushing the boundaries of what AI can do and their work shapes the kind of AI that all of us live with. They are creating new marvels, but also new horrors—and moving on with a shrug. When Google’s in-house ethics team raised problems with the large language models, in 2020 it sparked a fight that ended with two of its leading researchers being fired.

Artificial intelligence

Is your TikTok FYP inexplicably filling up with short clips of AI baby videos? If so, you’re not alone, the AI baby videos are going viral across TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. At the tail-end of January, artificial intelligence (AI) start-up OpenAI released its latest model – a cute-sounding version called o3-mini.

“It basically reduces the recognition of your students who just graduated to a task that you think should be done by computers instead of by your administrators who oversaw that and oversaw all the work that the students put in,” Bova said. Even if the university had good intentions, Bova said the automation’s inauthenticity diminished the importance of the moment.

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“Your family is there and this is your moment,” Mills told The Dispatch, sitting in his Towers Hall office. As The Post previously reported, nearly half of Gen Z job seekers now believe their degrees are already obsolete, thanks to AI tools like ChatGPT. I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Furthermore, recent graduates who are already concerned about the current job market are worried about AI’s looming presence and the impact it will have on their futures. “There really seems to be a fascination with AI and really trying to push it on students as much as possible,” Bova said.

That means that if the AI tool can’t get a graduate’s name right, a real person will eventually get involved, but some students say that wasn’t clear from the get-go. During registration, students can enter a phonetic spelling of their name and listen to a recording of the AI repeating it. They can either approve the pronunciation or try again, but after three incorrect pronunciations, the website will prompt students to record their name for a professional voice artist to re-record. Tom Glitter and Sparky Buttons owe their cute names to a neural network. One year, he accidentally mispronounced a student’s last name on graduation day.

The following year, that former student found him before the ceremony started and said her younger sister was graduating that day, so she wasn’t going to have him repeat his mistake from the previous year. Though it might seem self-explanatory to practice running through his list of names, Mills said an experience he had early on as the commencement reader solidified his routine. Incidents like what happened at Thomas Jefferson last year are worst-case scenario, but many students at institutions experimenting with AI solutions say they are willing to risk mistakes to have a human touch. Pace isn’t alone in swapping live talent for machine precision, but for many students, the experience felt more “Black Mirror” than commencement celebration.

As mentioned earlier, the trend has even reached the highest level of world government. Incoherent nomenclature is a tradition in the tech sector, where titles are often designed to amuse teams, not users. Some people believe chatbots like ChatGPT can provide an affordable alternative to in-person psychedelic-assisted therapy.

At Northeastern University, as students walked across the stage to receive recognition for years of hard work, their names were called out not by faculty or administrators. Instead, the university used Tassel, an AI tool, to call out the names for them. Then $75 per month.Complete digital access to quality FT journalism on any device. These adoptable kittens, along with their friends Tom Glitter, Pompompur and Whiskeridoo, were all named by an artificial intelligence neural network. When he returns all of the cards the morning of graduation, students are told to find Mills if they have a marked card so he can double- and triple-check the pronunciation. The university did give students a heads-up, directing them to a website where they could phonetically spell their names and confirm the pronunciation.

“It just felt so alien and weird, and I felt really pulled from the moment in a lot of ways,” said Henry Bova, who recently graduated from Northeastern with a degree in journalism. Complete digital access to quality FT journalism with expert analysis from industry leaders. Essential digital access to quality FT journalism on any device.

Check whether you already have access via your university or organisation. And it’s not the first time Gen Z grads have felt overshadowed by AI. Tim studied print journalism at the University of Southern California. He currently splits his time between Brooklyn, NY and Charleston, SC.

Google’s latest AI video generator can render cute animals in implausible situations

“Otterbein is all about having personal connections in a student’s college experience, so to have that sort of personal connection and personal touch at graduation seems perfectly fitting, right?” he said. “It would just seem so out of character to have an AI bot read someone’s name.” The task of reading graduates’ names at commencement ceremonies has been one marked by joy and dread for years. Some universities, in an attempt to avoid errors and speed things up, are employing third-party AI technology to read the names. Students’ grievances with the AI-ified graduation ceremonies stem from the mixed messages on AI that Northeastern sends. Per the university’s academic integrity policy, students are prohibited from using AI to complete assignments, yet it seems administrators are free to use it as they see fit.