More Twitter Features to Go Behind Blue Paywall; Google, Visa & Mastercard Fuel Deepfake Porn; Apple Music Classical is Live; Microsoft Teams Rebuild-Faster & Less Hogging

More changes to Twitter, as Elon Musk tries to monetize the platform more to make up for all the advertising revenue he has chased away. According to androidcentral.com, starting on April 15, only verified users will be able to participate in polls or appear in the For You tab as recommendations. Musk claims this is to combat AI bots on the platform, but is smacks more of an additional cash grab as he pushes people to pay up $8 a month to use the service. Although Musk has said that bots were a big factor in his buying the platform, apparently with this move, he is fine with having AI bots, as long as someone is paying him $8 a month to have them on Twitter. Twitter is also phasing out the legacy Blue checkmarks as of April 1st, so going forward the only thing that will actually be verified will be that an account is paying Elon $8. Several celebrities have already posted screen grabs of their real verified account and several pretenders who have paid the money and have the checkmark just like the actual famous person. 

We’ve covered deepfakes here a fair amount, and warned about how porn has been at the vanguard of them. Now, NBC reports that digitally edited porn videos with the faces of hundreds of unconsenting women bubble up to the top of Google search results. The people making these dastardly videos charge as little as $5 to download thousands of clips featuring the faces of celebrities…and you can pay with Visa, Mastercard, and crypto. Deepfakes have been pretty crude up to now, but with the advances in AI, creepy editors have seamlessly replaced a famous face on another person’s body, and the AI even allows for mirroring the original facial expressions of the previous un-famous face on the writhing body. Oh, and it gets even creepier. Not to minimize the impact on celebrities, but apparently a creator on Discord is offering to make a 5 minute deepfake of a ‘personal girl’, for $65. Stalkers will have a field day with this. Google has said people who are the subject of deepfakes can request removal, but honestly, Google, Visa, and Mastercard ought to clean up their acts and take a more proactive stance at preventing the spread of this. I’m no prude, and feel if someone wants to make porn and post it…whether pros or amateur, fine. But stealing someone’s likeness and pasting it on some other person’s body is a different story all together.

Ok, culture vultures…the day you’ve been waiting for is finally here. Apple Music Classical is available for download. Although the app is a free download for everyone, you need an Apple Music subscription. It’s also notable that the app isn’t available in China, Japan, Korea, Russia, Taiwan, and Turkey. Apple says there are 5 million tracks available right now. Most of the music is classical music of the Western world. The service is based on Primephonic, a Dutch based company that Apple picked up in 2021. It focuses more on discovery by composer instead of tracks, but does let you browse using filters for periods, genres, conductors, orchestras, ensembles, as well as composers. A caveat— you can add tracks to the library or your own playlist, but can’t download them…BUT you can download them by using Apple Music…a rather clumsy setup. As you might expect, the audio is 192kHz/24-bit Hi-Res Lossless. Also, a lot of tracks have spatial audio and Dolby Atmos support. Also notable…right now, the app is only available on iPhones, not Macs or iPads. 

Microsoft has rebuilt Teams from the ground up, with noticeable improvements. TechCrunch.com reports that Redmond has previewed the new version, which is said to be twice as fast at joining meetings and will use half the memory. In January, Microsoft claimed 280 million active monthly users, up from 250 million in January of 2021. The updated Teams is rolling out now via their Public Preview, but should be available to everyone by later this year. Mac support is also coming later this year. 

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