A recent trend on Twitter blew up, where users uploaded a picture of themselves to the ImageNet Roulette Website and AI would try to caption or guess the type of person they are. The captions or options are supposed to range from anything “computer-user” to “creep” to “enchantress”, but some people fear the technology had biases ingrained into its hardware.

ImageNet is the database in which the AI technology trained with, which was complied in 2009 of 14 million labeled images. The Roulette AI was trained on 2833 sub-categories of “person” to then be able to label the uploaded photos into these sub-categories.

The issues arises when most people of color are getting negative captions or labels to their uploads photos such as, “bad person”, “wrongdoer”, or “offender”. Stephen Bush, an editor for New Statesmen Political, uploaded a picture of him photoshopped in to Napoleon costume and was given the label “Igbo”, and ethnic group from Nigeria.

With this trend exploding across Twitterverse, the creators decide to use this as a way to highlight what could happen if the fundamental date that AI algorithms use is bad or biased. This is important because as we turn more to AI technology we cannot have biases of race, gender, or class ingrained into the system or the technology won’t work in society.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/viral-ai-selfie-classifier-imagenet-roulette-part-of-bias-project-2019-9-1028531095

https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/340795/nbcu-to-launch-streaming-service-peacock-in-april.html

NBC Universal has announced that they will be joining the streaming craze and launching a streaming service in April 2020. The platform will begin with 15,000 hours of content including new original dramas, comedies, movies, and unscripted TV shows. There will also be special coverage of the Olympics via the app, which is likely to draw subscribers in– at least around that time. They will also include all episodes of classic popular shows that aired on NBC like Parks and Rec and The Office. Peacock will be a premium streaming service that will be both ad and subscription supported. This leads me to believe there will be a tiered system for subscriptions, however NBC has not announced details of prices for the platform yet. Some new shows already confirmed are “Straight Talk,” with Rashida Jones and Jada Pinkett Smith and a new revamped version of “Saved by The Bell” featuring original cast members Elizabeth Berkeley and Mario Lopez. This is also likely to draw in some viewers.

Even though there is a huge market for it, I don’t think we need another streaming service. This fall alone, Apple’s AppleTV+, Disney’s Disney+ and Warner Media’s HBOMax will all launch.They all aren’t going to start to be able to survive and I predict that in the end there will only be about 3 in total. This is mainly because Americans are going to stop buying all these separate subscriptions. These companies/streaming services are going to have to consolidate. Some services offer channels and features others don’t have.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/cyberpunk-2077-character-creator-will-offer-non-bi/1100-6469446/

CD Projekt Red has endured pushback for gender representation in Cyberpunk 2077, but the developer is eager to respond to fan feedback and create a more traditional cyberpunk experience. The studio has begun with the character creator, adjusting it to allow for gender options beyond the binary male and female.

“You know, we really want to make a video game that’s really inclusive,” senior concept artist Marthe Jonkers said in an interview with Metro. “Of course, if you tackle certain subjects then you will expect people to have an opinion about it and we respect that. And it’s good that people give us feedback. And our character creation menu, for instance, compared to the last demo we now give you so many more options. For instance, you don’t choose your gender anymore. You don’t choose, ‘I want to be a female or male character,’ you now choose a body type. Because we want you to feel free to create any character you want.”

After selecting your preferred body type, you then have the option to give your character one of two different voices. “One that’s male-sounding, one is female sounding,” Jonkers said. “You can mix and match. You can just connect them anyway you want. And then we have a lot of extra skin tones and tattoos and hairstyles. So we really want to give people the freedom to make their own character and play the way they want to play.”

By providing more agency over your character’s preferred gender and skin tone, CD Projekt Red is hoping more players are able to create the type of protagonist they want in Cyberpunk 2077. Most NPCs you meet will have an established gender and sexual orientation as well in hopes of curating more believable in-game relationships. But the team is open to further changes and welcome feedback from their fans. “Our team is very international and very diverse but we have asked for a lot of feedback,” Jonkers said. “We always ask for feedback and even when we show these demos, we still ask people to tell us what they think. We just want to know what we can improve on because we want to make a really good game and we really want to make a game that everybody is comfortable playing. But at the same time, we’ll tackle difficult issues. It is a cyberpunk world after all.”

This was in response to a transgender person who addresses his concerns on Twitter and CD Project responded by going nonbinary genderless.  That demographic however only count a small percentage of the Cyberpunk Community but most are open to the idea of a nonbinary character.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/business/media/apple-tv-plus-price.html

On September 11th, Apple CEO Tim Cook recently debuted the lineup of the company’s most anticipated service, Apple TV Plus. The announcement comes in the middle of the sudden streaming wave where it seems as if every major studio or media entity is joining in on the most popular way to watch content. 

The headline of the story was when Cook publicized the price of the streaming service. For only $5 a month, Apple TV Plus will offer a variety of shows, movies, and more in order to compete with its competitors. 

So why such a low price? 

The main reason is it will have a lower supply of content. 

Services like Hulu, Netflix, or even the newly announced Disney+ contain massive libraries of original series, new releases, and decades of vintage programming. In effect, Apple TV Plus will offer roughly a dozen original shows at a low price to attract new viewers and subscribers. Cook claims that the service will have “the best movies, comedies, dramas and kids’ shows.” At the same time, Cook hopes that the quality of the content is a way to keep its viewership and compete with already established competitors. 

Over time, it will be interesting to see how Apple TV Plus’ content is critically received. The company has invested over one billion dollars in its newly established entertainment division, where Hollywood veterans such as Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, Reese Witherspoon and J. J. Abrams have been involved. However, the names attached are not guarantees to bring Apple long term success. In this case, I find Apple’s decision to set its price point so low to be a strong marketing tactic. This gives viewers a safe bet at trying something new with the hope of finding content they may enjoy. For competing services, perhaps if Apple TV Plus produces, companies with limited original content like Hulu or Amazon Prime may have to reconfigure their own creative division.  It is the level of intrigue that Apple has in its advantage at the moment, and it will certainly be interesting to see just how big the entity can grow.