Tech News – Page 55 – by Arlin Schaffel

Instagram is lowering video quality for unpopular videos

image via techcrunch.com

The popularity of an Instagram video can affect its actual video quality: According to Adam Mosseri (the Meta executive who leads Instagram and Threads), videos that are more popular get shown in higher quality, while less popular videos get shown in lower quality. In a video (via The Verge), Mosseri said Instagram tries to show “the highest-quality video that we can,” but he said, “if something isn’t watched for a long time — because the vast majority of views are in the beginning — we will move to a lower quality video.”
https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/27/instagram-is-lowering-video-quality-for-unpopular-videos/

LinkedIn says it has verified 55 million users in effort to combat AI’s spread of scams, misinformation

“You now see things like deep-fake videos, photos that are increasingly harder with the naked eye to understand if they’re real or fake,” Oscar Rodriguez, LinkedIn’s vice president of trust and safety, told CNBC in an interview. “That line-blurring is what we believe poses a significant challenge in combating things like misinformation, faking expertise and so forth.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/25/linkedin-has-verified-55-million-users-to-combat-ai-misinformation.html

Canva has a shiny new text-to-image generator

Canva has added a bunch of new AI features to its web-based design platform, including updates for generating text and video effects and a more powerful text-to-image app. The latter is called “Dream Lab” — a new image generator tool born from Canva’s acquisition of generative AI startup Leonardo.ai earlier this year.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/22/24276662/canva-ai-update-new-text-to-image-generator-leonardo

Adobe shows off 3D rotation tool for flat drawings

At this point, we're used to AI-powered image tools that instantly pull off previously high-effort edits, like filling in the missing bits of a scene or erasing unwanted parts of a photo without affecting the background. But a new Adobe Illustrator tool demonstrated at this week's Adobe MAX conference takes 2D image editing things in a literal different direction, letting artists instantly transform 2D vector images into 3D models that can be rotated around the axis of the screen itself.
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/10/adobe-shows-off-3d-rotation-tool-for-flat-drawings/

Bluesky Boom: X Alternative Sees Surge Of Signups

Twitter’s experiment in decentralized social networking, Bluesky now ranks 4th overall in the iOS App Store, while X itself is 29th. Bluesky also has one feature that X can’t add: It’s not subject to Elon Musk’s chaotic rule, which in recent weeks has seen him turn part of the platform into a Donald Trump infomercial, hide people’s likes, and declare that the block function “makes no sense” and will no longer hide your posts from people you block.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/bluesky-boom-x-alternative-sees-surge-of-signups

Tesla’s Robots Were Just Remotely Controlled Dummies, Analyst Confirms

But despite Tesla CEO Elon Musk making a big deal out of artificial intelligence at the event, the robots were teleoperated by humans, a smoke-and-mirrors tech demo that had investors shaking their heads, and raising plenty of questions over Tesla's ability to bring the tech to the masses.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-robots-remotely-controlled-analyst