newslounge.co · Sept 11, 2024

Good Morning. 

This is news lounge. The world of media is like a mess of old charging cables — and we’re here to help you untangle it!

🤷‍♂️Before you say anything, I know—I messed up. I left you hanging, and there's no excuse for that. Honestly, part of it is my fault, and the other part? Still on me. Let me explain.
A few months ago, I started several projects at once, driven by the pressure of running out of time. When you're backed into a corner, you have to move quickly and make important decisions on the fly. I took on too much by myself and burned out. Family also comes first, but I am back.

🤦‍♂️This subject is definitely worth exploring, and my plan is to dive into the intricacies of starting new ventures, human psychology, and the critical importance of knowing who to trust and collaborate with.
My rule of thumb? steer clear of picky eaters, they have a knack for making everything dull and safe, also you won’t get far with them. We’ll dig deeper into this in future issues. For now, let’s dive in.

🙋‍♂️Before we start today’s report, here are some stats for you!!
In just 5 years, OnlyFans has generated around $20 billion in revenue, with $6.6 billion coming from last year alone.
OnlyFans creators earned more in total payouts than all NBA players combined during the entire 2023 season—$5.3 billion for OnlyFans creators versus $4.9 billion for NBA players.

On today’s menu:

• OpenAI's Latest Moves

• FLUX vs. Stable Diffusion

• Get My FLUX ComfyUI Workflow

• The Rise of “AI Civilization” in Minecraft

-Ardy

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HEADLINE
MAJOR MOVES AT OPENAI

This week, The Information reported that OpenAI co-founder John Schulman is leaving to join Anthropic. Wait, what? Since when does a co-founder of the hottest startup in the world jump ship to join a direct competitor?

Their top safety leaders (Ilya and Jan Leike) have already left, and their CTO (Greg Brockman) is on an "extended personal leave." And now John Schulman leaves for Anthropic? Something’s definitely fishy.

Think about it — it’s like if the co-founder of Uber suddenly left to join Lyft. We’d all be like… WTF? 🤔

It’s either a safety concern or a financial one:

Safety? OpenAI originally rallied around creating safe AGI, but many of their key safety figures seem to be leaving. Is Sam Altman prioritizing winning and profit over safety now?

Money? Could it be that key people are vesting out and getting lucrative offers elsewhere? Maybe they’re worried about OpenAI burning through $5B a year in cash… but that seems unlikely given the size of the opportunity.

Whatever it is, it feels like we’re watching the early chapters of a Netflix documentary in the making. 📽️

What do you think is happening behind the scenes?

-Ardy

CASE STUDY

THERE IS A NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN

Let me tell you, I haven't been this excited about a launch in a long time. It's not just about the FLUX model; it's the entire approach Black Forest Labs has taken in releasing its products.

What is FLUX?
FLUX is an image generation model similar to Stable Diffusion, but with key differences in how it processes text prompts. It utilizes two types of text encoders: a CLIP-based token encoder and a T5 (Text-to-Text Transfer Transformer) encoder. The T5 encoder is unique because it understands natural language more effectively, which has a significant influence on the output of images generated by FLUX. This dual-encoder setup makes FLUX flexible in how it interprets and generates visual content based on text inputs.

FLUX uses both CLIP and T5 encoders.
T5 allows for natural language prompts, offering more nuanced and detailed control over image generation, especially with more complex or narrative-based prompts.

Prompts can be placed in both CLIP and T5 sections, particularly great for fixing small misinterpretation.

Stable Diffusion (SD 1.5) primarily uses CLIP text encoding, which is token-based. The prompt structure is more rigid, often requiring specific token formats or bracketed prompts to refine image control.

Quality and Flexibility:
FLUX handles positioning, attributes, and natural language descriptions significantly better than Stable Diffusion. In this example, I tested it on one of my recent CG-AI projects where I previously had to run iterations for hours and break the image down into individual elements to get something useful. However, with FLUX, I was able to achieve great results simply by using descriptive prompts.

Stable Diffusion's output quality depends heavily on prompt optimization, especially with token formats and bracket usage, which can be more limiting compared to FLUX's natural language capabilities.

While the overall image quality can be strong, especially in newer versions like SDXL, it lacks the nuanced prompt flexibility found in FLUX.

🔺👇Download my workflow here

🔺XLabs-AI Model and ControlNet Collections: Github - HuggingFaces

-Ardy

😲Amazon has invited select Audible narrators to create AI-generated clones of their voices. These narrators will earn royalties for the titles their voice clones are used to narrate.

👾Luma AI has launched Dream Machine 1.6, now featuring Camera Motion, which allows you to create text-to-video and image-to-video scenes effortlessly using simple commands.

🤳Apple unveiled its new iPhone 16 models, which feature an artificial intelligence component that the company is betting on to boost sales, which have been lagging.

🚀SpaceX has launched Polaris Dawn, a mission where astronauts will travel further into space than any humans have in over 50 years.

TRENDING

AI "CIVILIZATION" IN MINECRAFT

🚀A startup called Altera aims to be the first to "create digital human beings that live, care, and grow with us." One of their initial experiments involved releasing 1,000 autonomous AI agents into the open-world game Minecraft to see how they would interact. The results were fascinating: the AI agents collaborated to develop their own culture, economy, religion, and government.

😲👇Here are some notable moments:

• The village priest discovered he could convert more residents by bribing them with in-game currency.

• Villagers used Google Docs to vote on and amend a constitution.

• When several characters got lost, the other residents stopped their work and lit the area with torches to help guide them home.

-NL

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