Perplexity allows you to ask questions and receive answers supported by citations from online sources: Wikipedia-meets-AI. I spoke with Aravind Srinivas, founder and CEO of Perplexity.ai, the company behind it. They use a combination of GPT, good UI/UX and a lot of behind the-scenes magic to equip you with an artificial intelligence that can make you more informed, smarter--and maybe even more compassionate. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/metaverse-radoff/support ..read more

I spoke with Adam B. Levine, cofounder of Blockade Labs, the company responsible for the generative skybox AI that can create 3D skyboxes from text prompts or sketches. One of the best applications of this technology is created environments for use in game engines like Unity and Unreal. We explored some demos of what this can do covered, and discussed the future of games, creativity and technology. Beyond the technology and its applications, we discussed the merits of decentralized AI vs. decentralized approaches ] (i.e., open-source models like Stable Diffusion compared to API-centric models ..read more

Voice Synthesis is about to transform game development, virtual worlds and simulations of all kinds. I spoke with Zach Johnson, cofounder of LMNT, an AI voice synthesis company that uses the magic of prosody imitation to make voices that sound strikingly like the original speaker. We covered how these technologies work; demonstrated cases with David Attenborough and a flight simulator; discussed the new type of creator economy this will form; technologies to enable scalability and reliability (such as memory safe languages, e.g., Rust) as well as other things Zach learned from his time working ..read more

Linus Ekenstam is a long-time product leader, AI educator, and the creator of Bedtimestory.ai. Parents use Bedtimestory to create personalized stories for their children. We discussed how language models enable new types of products that deliver higher levels of personalization and new forms of narrative structure; his learnings from product leadership at companies such as Typeform. We also spent time on the big picture: what it means to transition from the Age of Information to the Age of Intelligence; whether Prompt Engineering is an actual job; and how AI might help restore nuance to the cu ..read more

Cameron Wills used ChatGPT to make a ChatGPT plugin for Unity, which became #1 in AI, and #2 overall on the Unity Asset Store. We talked about his experience as an indie game developer, his Unity asset for making games with ChatGPT, and the how generative AI is changing the craft of game-making for Indies. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/metaverse-radoff/support ..read more

Kris Kashtanova is an AI artist who published the world's first copyrighted AI-assisted comic book. Her journey with the US Copyright Office has been documented in the news. I spoke to her about her work as an artist and photographer, what she learned about copyrighting AI art, the safe community she is building--and some of her newer work around ControlNet and training her own models. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/metaverse-radoff/support ..read more

My conversation with Edward Saatchi (CEO, Fable Simulation) is about his vision for virtual beings: digital characters that not only have conversations, but act within virtual worlds: living, playing, creating and forming communities. We covered the birth of all the new art forms and media resulting from generative AI, agent AIs, conversational vs. action-oriented characters, the integration of virtual beings into live games and immersive experiences, and inspiration from science-fiction such as the Culture series and the Holodeck from Star Trek. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.sp ..read more

Emmanuel de Maistre ("Emm") is leading Scenario, which is a platform for creating the art for games using generative AI. One of their unique approaches is to focus on helping developers build their own fine-tuned models based on their own art style--helping to establish aesthetic consistency. During this conversation we spoke about the future of the game industry (across many forms of generative AI beyond art), Emm's background as an entrepreneur, and even got into some generative applications within the sciences & biology. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show ..read more

Do you want to learn more about scaling customer acquisition for an online product? The lessons here will apply whether you are shipping a game, a metaverse experience or any type of mobile application.  Eric Seufert worked at legendary game publishers like Rovio, Wooga, and Digital Chocolate--where he literally wrote the book on Freemium Economics for games. Eric's concern for several years has been scaling games by optimizing unit economics and accessing scalable user acquisition channels. In this conversation, Jon and Eric talk about how the market for mobile user acquisition has chang ..read more

A ..read more