Nvidia Reveals Its CEO Was Computer Generated in Keynote Speech (vice.com) 61
Graphics processor company Nvidia showcased its prowess at computer animation by sneaking a virtual replica of its CEO into a keynote speech. From a report: On Wednesday, Nvidia revealed in a blog post that its CEO Jensen Huang did not do the keynote presentation at the company's GTC conference in April. At least part of it was actually led by a virtual replica of Huang, created by digitizing Huang with a truck full of DSLR cameras, and then animating him with the help of an AI, according to the company.
Huang's kitchen, which has become Nvidia's venue for speaking to customers and investors since the beginning of the pandemic, was also entirely computer generated. It's not clear exactly which part of the keynote speech features CGI Huang (which is what makes the replica so impressive), but if you jump to this part of the presentation you can see Huang magically disappear and his kitchen explode into multiple different 3D models.
Huang's kitchen, which has become Nvidia's venue for speaking to customers and investors since the beginning of the pandemic, was also entirely computer generated. It's not clear exactly which part of the keynote speech features CGI Huang (which is what makes the replica so impressive), but if you jump to this part of the presentation you can see Huang magically disappear and his kitchen explode into multiple different 3D models.
scary (Score:1)
the potential for abuse of this technology is insane.
Re:scary (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, how long has Huang been dead one wonders!
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Yeah, how long has Huang been dead one wonders!
I wouldn't put it past a corporation to attempt something like that if it meant it could bolster their stock price.
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Heh, Kurosawa's "Kagemusha" comes up as a post-apocalyptic allegory. Who knew...
Maybe it's time for a remake where the "double" is an AI that becomes sentient in the process, does well initially, but then becomes greedy and crashes the stock market. I'd watch that.
But I guess I'll have to put up with another Marvel flick...
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And there goes my failed attempt at a limited hangout.. We thought we'd get away with it with the covid zoom meetings really.
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Did Zuckerberg ever exist? ... *clearly* ... ...
I mean
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Before or after his wakeboard performance?
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I wouldn't say it was pointless for a Computer Graphics Company to simulate its CEO in Computer Graphics.
It would be a proof of concept on what their technology can do.
I was going to watch the video in the article, then I realized it was 45 minutes long, and mostly about the complications on how hard it was to make a power-point presentation, for the event.... I was like, Making a good PP Presentation for a Tech Company that is suppose to advertise bringing in the next level of new technology was a real tur
Re:scary (Score:5, Funny)
Abuse? This is a tremendous step forward for ROI! Why hire a CEO, and pay them millions of dollars a year, plus millions in bonuses, and many more millions in stock options, when you can generate a CEO, who says what all other CEOs do, nothing but bs, and save the money for ROI.
Or maybe even raising the salaries and benefits of the employees.
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Deus EX: Mankind Divided showed what a computer generated news person could do. And so did Max Headroom before that.
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I remember when 'Return of the King' was released in theaters one of the editors of the sadly-defunct E-Week magazine went to see it with his son, and lamented after seeing the climactic battle scene, "We will never again be able do declare with complete certainty what is live action and what is CGI."
I used to say, "Give me $100,000 and three months and I'll give you a seamless video of Osama Binladdin taking credit for sinking the Titanic." Nowadays that would be, "Give me $10,000, an AWS account, and a w
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Or maybe even raising the salaries and benefits of the employees.
You must be new around here. VERY new.
Re: scary (Score:1)
In general, yes. But in this case Huang founded the company, so most would say he deserves the millions in salary and bonuses. A friend of mine was one of the first 30 employees at nvidia and has certainly done well for the startup hours he put in.
14 seconds were animated (Score:1, Troll)
Wow that's amazing.
Not.
Trust Issue Backfire? (Score:4, Interesting)
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I do think we need to stop the trend of every CEO trying to be the next Steve Jobs, as Key Marking Spokesperson. Jobs had a gift for the presentation, most other CEO do not, with the like of Musk Rambling on a train of though, or Steve Balmer going insane making the audience wondering if they should run away, or pay attention in case they need to be a material witness to a crime.
We should be good, with such events, having an actor or at least someone in sales and/or marketing do it. These events are just c
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AMD's CEO has been doing just fine during presentations.
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I do think we need to stop the trend of every CEO trying to be the next Steve Jobs, as Key Marking Spokesperson.
Not sure what you're talking about. Keynote presentations and conferences predated Jobs. Jobs did it well, but it was fairly common for CEOs to give presentations before Jobs made people soil themselves by saying "one more thing".
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Err no. This is called "marketing" and the CEO being involved directly in a marketing campaign is not that uncommon.
At no point did they come out and say "Hi, I'm the real CEO". In fact since it was NVIDIA themselves who came out and announced this, it's kind of like trusting a guy who returned something to you voluntarily which no one including you ever realised was stolen in the first place. That would give quite a boost in trustworthiness.
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Other than the original theft, sure.
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Unforced apology? Chances are none considering in my contrived example the only benefit to turning themselves in is a clean conscience. Trust is earned, not granted as a default. The having a thief return an item I never knew was stolen without any additional prompting certainly elevates them above some common random who may very well steal everything I own. Incidentally this is precisely why I lock my bicycle up when I leave it in the city, the unknown quantity.
But this is all beside the point since basica
Time to reread Bicycle Repairman by Sterling (Score:1)
It's a short story that seems apropos in light of this news.
Also, if you go to time index 1:32:22 and play the audio backwards, it says "Huang is dead".
That was a joke. Please don't go check or I'll cry. With laughter.
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He died waiting for a 3090 to become available.
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Dang I am still waiting for a 3080
Does this mean (Score:2)
the age of the CEO is over, they're replaced by computer graphics?
Re:Does this mean (Score:4, Funny)
Looker (Score:3)
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There is however a way to deal with them. While most people peddling this sh*t can control the software and get the graphics correctly they fail elsewhere - providing the software with correct input:
1. Direction, angle, intensity of sunlight as well as the direction of the shadows shadows generated. Easy way to check - Suncalc: https://www.suncalc.org/ [suncalc.org]
2. Insignia. State signs, regional signs, etc. Graphics specialists which make fantastic animation, f*
Up to about now on faces it's still doable. (Score:2)
All in all, outdoor videos can still be identified if fake. Indoor however, with human taking most of the screen and the rest out of focus - forget it.
In the future, perhaps. Up to a month or two ago, not so hard (though it takes some fancy analysis software).
It seems the blood pressure variations of the heartbeat cycle change the color of the skin just a little. Not enough to be noticeable to the naked eye. But quite enough to show up in video, and survive compression.
Deep fakes haven't been modeling th
Actual 14 seconds ... (Score:2)
Timestamp of the Connecting in the Metaverse: The Making of the GTC Keynote video @ 23:05 [youtu.be] whey they show how they created the digital Jensen and his kitchen.
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If I have figured this out correctly:
Note that in the couple minutes just before the "exploding diagram kitchen" event there are shots of him talking in front of the stove and cabinets, alternating with some block diagrams. Apparently some of those are real and some are synthetic, with the switch occurring when the block diagrams are up.
You can see the difference on the closeups: A few loose wisps of his hair show up against the background in the real shots but weren't modeled in the synthesis.
CG Jensen looks horrible (Score:3)
That CG Jensen [youtu.be] looks SO bad.
Why didn't they just green screen him?
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That CG Jensen [youtu.be] looks SO bad.
Why didn't they just green screen him?
The Jensen from the actual kitchen looks better [youtu.be] but does seem a bit off if you compare to the real thing [youtube.com].
The tech is definitely impressive and starting to get outside the uncanny valley. I can't definitively tell the apparently fake Jenson is fake, he just seems a bit odd. It might be more obvious to people who know him well, but it's certainly a deep-fake that would reliably mislead people.
GOOD and this is why: (Score:2)
The only reason to want to see a person vs. reading text (which is far more efficient) is a pathetic desire for (simulated) human interaction. When computers can supply that placebo without wasting "human presence" on the task the Luddite maudlin sensitives will get their desired experience at less cost and customized as minutely as the presenter chooses.
Note Youtube tech videos waste screen real estate presenting humans instead of hardware, and faces instead of information. That succeeds (note the standar
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Wow, I know we live in the age of declaring your illnesses* your set-in-stone personality because your insecurities are too extreme to be able to handle dealing with them and your society is too incompetent to treat them, but... how long have you been lonely to get to *that* level of thinking what it did to you is not a mental illness?
* And I'm not talking about actually being gay or something, just to be very clear. Illnesses are defined as something you're suffering from. No matter if one is aware of it o
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Conversational AI is nowhere close to near future.
My *real* friends are not "always" there and they would quickly become annoyances if they tried to be.
Great! (Score:2)
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Ah, the old "It's turtles all the way down" logical construct. The big question is, do either of them weigh the same as a duck?
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Ah, the old "It's turtles all the way down" logical construct. The big question is, do either of them weigh the same as a duck?
I imagine it depends on the duck [www.cbc.ca].
This duck is only
If one cannot tell you from a virtual replica... (Score:1)
... it's time to start integrating into human society or go back to your home planet, mate! ;)
(Alternative joke: They made that error of bringing out real Zuckerberg only once. :D)
That explains it. (Score:2)
NVIDIA Reveals interest in Keynote speech was fake (Score:2)
Turns out no one watches these things with their eyes open.
It's not clear exactly which part of the keynote (Score:2)
It's not clear exactly which part of the keynote speech features CGI Huang
Yes it is...and it's not the part just before the kitchen model breaks apart (which I think is the part they, or at least the writers of that article, would like to lead us to believe). It's the crappy part after that where you can CLEARLY tell it's "AI" simulated human motion that doesn't look at all like an actual human.
You can easily see the fake (Score:2)
If you watch the actual keynote you can see the guys jacket go from being textured in one scene to not textured in the next, happens several times.. Also his neck clips into the collar of his jacket.
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They really botched the kitchen CGI (Score:1)
Everything with Huang while in his kitchen was normal in-camera shots until that very last swoosh zoom at the very end after he's done speaking. Seems obvious on its own, but if you need proof, pay attention to the arrangement of the objects on his kitchen counter. After the zoom in, they are in completely different locations. The white box with the green label, the bowl, the coffee grinder, etc.
I can't comprehend how they didn't make sure to make those things were all relatively positioned to each other co
And I still don't know what "Omniverse" is (Score:2)
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In nVidia's case, it's pretty thin - "an application that enables you to remix, recreate, and redefine animated video game storytelling through the use of immersive visualization, collaborative design, and photorealistic rendering.".
Almost completely seamless (Score:2)
Seriously, it is almost impossible to tell the rendered Huang [youtu.be] apart from the real thing!
misleading title,1:02:40 to 1:02:54 and it's poor (Score:2)
I'm not impressed.
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For me it was the ear croping, bad eyesight typically means I miss the finer details anyways