Weekly Rewind: April 28
The week's best creativity-related news from across the web, including sex robots, Amazon Alexa updates and more.
Putting together the Weekly Rewind is a cursed task. So many times this week coworkers have walked past my desk as I look as sex robots, news about hiding dick pics, and the hashtag #LoveDP. "It's for the weekly rewind," I cry. "Sure" they say, as they back slowly away whilst looking up the number for HR on their phones.
Until that inevitable disciplinary happens, however, here are the 10 best creativity-related news stories of the week.
1. Scientists Create Artificial Womb
This from The Verge: though the above image looks like a particularly ghoulish molecular gastronomy experiment in sous video cooking, it is actually an artificial womb, which managed to maintain an lamb embryo for four weeks, with the animal growing organs and wool, and even starting to move around, in the so-called 'biobag'.
2. PornHub Turn Dick Pics SFW Using AI
Fans of sending images of their genitals to their nearest and dearest who still want to remain mysterious rejoice! Pornhub have created TrickPics, an app that uses Snapchat-style filters to turn your John Thomas into a snake, box or what is disturbingly called a 'dicktator'. NewNowNext have more on this story.
3. Amazon Alexa Update Brings Human-Style Speech
People looking to recreate that scene from Her will be pleased to know that the new Amazon Alexa update gives the voice bot a 'more human voice' according to TechCrunch, including the ability to 'whisper...pause for emphasis' and 'adjust the rate, pitch and volume of her speech. We'll have what she's having.
4. World's Most Advanced Sex Robot Released
Welcome to Uncanny Valley, population one: Harmony, the new $15,000 sex robot of the worryingly named Abyss Creations. She hold a conversation with you, has facial expressions, and...well does the sort of things not even PornHub's TrickPics can filter out, according to a Guardian feature.
5. Facebook Takes on Fake News
When shots was younger, all 'fake news' was was that time your Mum said the family dog went to 'a farm'. Now though, it is slightly more nefarious, with AV Club reporting that Facebook is promising to target those who try to influence people using lies, mistruths and exaggerations.
6. Pencil It In; We'll All Be Dead by 2050
Throw those pension plans away and cancel those tickets for the One Direction 40th anniversary tour; we all will be dead by 2050, as per Indy100. A former director of the National Science Foundation has looked at the think about AI and predicts that we'll either be extinct by then, or immortal.
7. "Are You Snapchattin' to Me?"
Dirty Grandpa and The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle (apparently he also did some films about taxis and deers a few years ago?!) star Robert de Niro had his first taste of Snapchat this week at the Tribeca Film Festival, with the results (as shown on HuffPo) being no more embarrassing than his involvement with Little Fockers or Last Vegas. Better not introduce him to TrickPics just yet though...
8. Dorothy Perkins' Hashtag Cock-Up
Alongside the new internet holidays of Ed Balls Day (which is today, by the way), and the anniversary of #susanalbumparty (mark it in in your calendars), Metro offer us a new social media mishap to commemorate as Dorothy Perkins chose the hashtag #LoveDP for their new campaign. If you're not sure why that's funny, look it up right now.
9. Apple to Offer Wi-fi Charging?
TechRadar are speculating this week about whether Apple are to offer charging over wi-fi, as a patent was discovered that could do exactly that. With the upcoming iPhone 8 already starting to create a little moistening in the trouser area for our techier friends, will the feature we implemented in time?
10. BBC Kids Get Cartoon
Remember those kids that went viral for storming into the room during their father's live to-camera piece for the BBC? The creators of The Adventures of Mina & Jack hope so, as they launch the first short episode for a cartoon that stars the precocious pair.
