Amazon Launches New Fire TV Devices; Amazon Palm Reader to Panera Bread; AI Faked Images of Not-Real Trump Arrest; Gates-AI Breakthroughs Biggest Thing Since Graphical Interface

After announcing that they have sold over 200 million fire TV devices, Amazon has introduced new TVs at both the top and bottom of their lineup. Theverge.com reports that besides expanding the Fire TV Omni QLED line, they have introduced a new cheaper TV family called the 2-series. The sets are limited to HD resolution, but give the Fire TV experience in a built in set starting at just $199. Preorders are open now. As for the new models of the Omni series, those are open for preorder starting at $499, and available at Best Buy May 11th.

The long hand of Amazon tech is also reaching into Panera Bread. The tasty cafes have been road testing the Amazon One palm reader at a couple of stores in the company’s home town of St Louis, but according to techcrunch.com, they will now expand the payment system to other locations in the upcoming months. More stores in the St Louis area and also in Seattle will get the tech first. Panera expects to have the palm reading payment system in up to 20 locations by the end of 2023.

We’ve talked about deep fakes here a few times, but with the new AI generated images, things are hitting a whole new level. In fact, arstechnica.com says there are now a number of fake pictures of ex president Donald Trump being taken down by a group of police officers after resisting arrest. The images started showing up a couple days ago on Twitter, and the are very realistic-looking. An AI engine called Midjourney v5 is one that is known to have created some of the images. By yesterday, there were over two million views on Twitter. More and more, it’s getting hard to believe everything you see or hear!

OpenAI’s Chat GPT has been getting lots of buzz, and now with Google opening up their AI called BARD to a bigger group of users, none other than Bill Gates has weighed in on what he calls a revolution in artificial intelligence. According to geekwire.com, Gates wrote in a post yesterday that he believes the new AI chatbots and picture generators are as big a step forward as the graphical user interface was to the personal computer. Gates had challenged OpenAI to build the chatbot so that it could pass an Advanced Placement biology exam, thinking it might take them a couple years. Instead, the system was done in a few months…and scored 59 out of 60 on the multiple choice part of the AP biology exam and aced the open-ended questions. Welcome to the future!

I’m Clark Reid, and you’re ‘Technified’ for now!