ET Invitation, AI Deepfakes, and Ghosts

Weekly News Roundup January 20, 2023

By Violet Wisdom

ALIEN INVITATION -  

LEXINGTON, KY According to ABC WAS11, the city of Lexington, Kentucky has an interstellar idea to increase tourism; invite ETs. Using an infrared laser beam, the Visit Lexington message includes everything you would see or hear in a promotional video or radio ad. Sharing a description of the area’s landscape, shopping and dining amenities and of course the sounds of Bluegrass, the message was sent in the form of an imagery bitmap. Unfortunately, the invitation has an RSVP of 80 years because it will take that long for those alien vacation planners to get it and send back their reservations. Still, the great-grandchildren of Lexington just might have one heck of a party in their future. 

ON YOUR OWN WITH AI- 

AI ABOUNDS IN SOCIAL MEDIA AI deepfakes are rising and social media companies aren’t doing much about it. Fake videos of politicians and celebrities are on the rise as AI has become adept at duplicating anyone’s voice and manipulating any video. While they are all aware of this issue, they are stating they don’t have the resources to keep up with spotting and removing the bogus content. Despite a recent policy implementation by META who owns Facebook and Instagram to require a watermark denoting AI was used in any video, there has been no known increase at this point in detection ability by the company. X, formally known as Twitter states that they will add a disclosure to any known deepfake post, as does META. All primarily rely on users to report faked posts. With a large part of content moderation being conducted by AI, it is not surprising that AI isn’t finding its own handiwork. Experts suggest looking for inconsistencies with sound and lip movement, background noises and visual oddities, odd tones in voice and glitches. Also focus on hands as AI is terrible at making them correctly even sometimes adding a few extra fingers.

SUZANNE SOMERS STILL HERE?  HUSBAND CLAIMS GHOST IS still here. Suzanne Somers’ husband and grandchildren went public this week with the news of her ghost living among them in their California home. Since her death in October, they have experienced her favorite music coming on by itself and a fireplace starting a fire on its own. All of the family members state they feel her in the home and have had experiences that can can only be explained by her still being there with them.