Co-Listening is Back! In a post-boombox and pro-headphone world, sharing music with others has gotten tougher. But if you ever used a headphone splitter to listen to music together with a friend, there’s a chance you can do that again! Apple’s new iOS 13 allows “Audio Sharing” by pairing two sets of headphones to the same iPhone so you and another person can listen to the same tune or watch a movie together. Facebook is also testing a new app in Canada called “Aux” that integrates with Spotify and Apple Music to let people listen to the same music with their friends.
Pinterest Lens Updates: Ever walk down the street and see something you love but don’t have the words to describe it? Enter: Pinterest visual search. You can use Lens camera search to snap a photo offline and Pinterest will tell you what it is and where to find something just like it. To use this: open your Pinterest mobile app, click the search icon, then click the camera icon. More information here!
ImageNet Roulette: How would an AI classify you based on your selfie? A researcher and an artist created an AI tool to showcase the engrained bias of AI that “regularly classifies people in dubious and cruel ways.” Per Business Insider, it was trained on ImageNet’s labeled images of people – for example, a photo of an elderly man labeled as “grandfather.” When a user uploads a photo, the system detects faces and labels it with various words. The site’s disclaimer says that ImageNet “contains a number of problematic, offensive and bizarre categories — all drawn from WordNet. Some use misogynistic or racist terminology.” Try it here – but fair warning, the results aren’t always good.
Snap adds 3D Camera Modes: If you have an iPhone X or above, you can now access Snapchat’s new 3D Camera Mode and filters. Here’s how you find them: Update your phone’s iOS. Update your Snapchat app. Open to the Snapchat camera. Select the dropdown menu on the right. Select “3D” and take a selfie. From there, swipe to add 3D Lenses and Filters for another layer of interactivity. And you don’t have to have an iPhone X or greater to see them!
Chatty People Like Chatty AI Assistants: A new research paper called “Mirroring to Build Trust in Digital Assistants suggests that we prefer our conversational assistants to be more like us in mannerisms and responses. They found that people’s opinions of the assistant’s likability and trustworthiness improved when it mirrored their degree of chattiness, and that the features necessary to perform the mirroring could be extracted from those people’s speech patterns.
Facebook Updates: Social Media Today has a great round-up of all of the Facebook updates this week, including Live Rehearsal, Watch Party updates, Loyalty Insights, the ability to schedule Instagram 6 months in advance, and a new guide to Creator’s Studio.
Binge of the Week: For the 50th anniversary of the legendary Woodstock festival, organizers and attendees reminisce about one of the defining moments of the 1960s in a documentary currently on Netflix called Woodstock: Three Days that Defined a Generation. The film offers a compelling perspective into the cultural tensions of the time, the enormity of the event, and the lasting impact Woodstock had on generations to come. Of note, this doc focuses less on the music and performances. I recommend revisiting the director’s cut of the 1970 Woodstock documentary for the live performances.
Insta of the Week: @UnnecessaryInnovations showcases “products for the world’s problems that don’t exist,” like The Baguette Pack™️, CookieMitts™️, and Lego Socks™️.
GREG SWAN 