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Big week for AI: Microsoft’s AI-powered assistant, UK’s £900M investment in BritGPT & more

Doodles ‘no longer an NFT project’ and more metaverse news today

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Let’s face it: Every new week one-ups the previous one when it comes to AI development and breakthroughs. This week, three fresh AI news reports - amid bank runs and metaverse hits and misses - catch our eye and fancy.

  • In its fast-moving race with Google, Microsoft trumpets the new AI Copilot for Microsoft 365, designed to assist users with generating documents, emails, presentations, and more. Powered by GPT-4 from OpenAI, it’s first open to some 20 enterprises for testing, speeding up content creation and freeing up workers' time as Microsoft proudly heralds.

    Amid general worries around AI, Microsoft Jamie Teevan assures that when the system gets things wrong, or has biases, or is misused, they have mitigations in place - yet remains candid that they’re “going to make mistakes, but when we do we’ll address them quickly.”

  • The UK government is set to invest £900M in a cutting-edge supercomputer as part of its AI strategy leading up to its own “BritGPT.” The exascale computer is said to be several times more powerful than the country’s biggest computers, coming in handy for training complex AI models and having a wealth of uses that include the discovery of new drugs, climate change, and functions across science, defense, and industry. The UK is also establishing a new AI research body.

  • OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman creates World ID, a new “privacy-first” digital identity protocol tackling the problem of verifiable identification on the web as well as elsewhere. World ID underscores the need in the age of AI, saying it’s “specifically to ensure democratic access and governance of these systems, fairly distribute the benefits generated and know who and what to trust online.”

    In a nutshell: World ID wants to be a self-sovereign and decentralized protocol, providing proof of personhood sans endangering the holder’s sensitive information.

Tension is building up between the holders of popular NFT project Doodles and its founders. Recently, Doodles co-founder Jordan “poopie” Castro shared a post to the project’s official Discord server, proclaiming: “We’re trying to go from a startup to a leading media franchise. We are no longer an ‘NFT project.’ The more time/money/resources we invest in following the latest ‘build in public’ trends that fuel speculation, the less we have to achieve our long-term vision.”

A quick sense-making around these developments:

  • Castro backs Doodles’ approach to building new features and products away from the spotlight, something seen as running counter to web3’s “open” ethos.

  • Doodles resolves to move away from “appeasing those with financial motivations” and focusing only on its “most loyal collectors.”

  • The comments have received mixed reactions, pinpointing either Doodles’ greater ambitions or a blatant rejection of web3 principles (or simply being disconnected from the web3 community).

Doodles has marked several important milestones, including raising $54M in 2022 at a $704M valuation, the original Doodles NFTs raising some $600M worth of trading volume to date, and adding musician Pharrell Williams as its chief brand officer last year.

Desperate measures for desperate situations? Following the collapse of major banks with ties to crypto firms, software engineer Molly White believes firms needing banking solutions may have to face “shadier” solutions.

At a South by Southwest (SXSW) panel in Texas, White said crypto firms’ options in the wake of banks’ collapse may drive them underground - metaphorically - comparable to 2017 and 2018 situations where crypto projects had “trouble accessing banking” when only a handful of US banks were willing to take crypto clients.

Now that Signature and Silvergate are out, the crypto industry and its ongoing need to access traditional finance may take a serious hit, and this remains to be worth watching in the heady financial world.

Hajime Tabata - director of Final Fantasy 15, former Square Enix employee, and current web3 advisor for the Japanese government's digital agency, has announced the Ryugukoku project, a new metaverse venture leveraging the power of games to expand the country's metaverse economic zone. Some key takeaways:

  • It is a metaverse structure for smaller metaverse platforms controlled by businesses to collaborate on information sharing, marketing, and more.

  • It will gamify business economics and incorporate elements of an online RPG, and users will have an "auto learning avatar" with which to explore the metaverse.

With the promise of safety and stability of identity, payments, and information, the Ryugukoku project is planned to be expanded globally by providing the infrastructure to companies outside Japan.

🏃‍♂️ Quick Hits

🎮 Gaming

  • Online poker could become one of the metaverse’s great pillars. (Link)

  • Blockchain game developer Kongregate’s Bitverse universe is coming soon on The Sandbox. (Link)

  • NVIDIA announces its expanded game roster and touts its AI-powered Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) tech is now supported in blockbuster games. (Link)

  • Can VR influencers revive the dead metaverse? (Link)

  • Mobile social network game Play Together presents CeREELs Studio, enabling visitors to watch short animations of films Ella Gator, Three Eyes, and Halley & the Comets. (Link)

🕶 Fashion

  • Experience Coach’s iconic Tabby bag in the metaverse. (Link)

  • H&M taps Dutch 3D designer Eva Cremers for a fun, cheeky spring collection for kids. (Link)

  • Rock fashion brand John Richmond connects with the 6+ million strong ShibArmy community as SHIB the Metaverse’s fashion partner. (Link)

  • Just as museums are rescuing NFTs, will luxury remain committed to web3? (Link)

  • Digital fashion network MUTANI weaves web3 into IRL apparel experience during MVFW23. (Link)

  • Metaverse company Eikonikos partners with Lebanese designer Aiisha Ramadanis for the AVRA Collection, a 3,248-piece wearable NFT collection. (Link)

🏀 Sports

  • A metaverse reimagining of the Spurs: What would they look like if they kept all the players they recently traded and combined them with their current core? (Link)

  • In sports, how can rights holders build genuinely engaging immersive experiences when their most valuable assets - live broadcast rights - have already been sold and rendered inaccessible to new initiatives? (Link)

  • Tennis talent raises $50K from sports fans to fund his career - thanks to this web3-backed platform. (Link)

  • As the Alfa Romeo F1 team ties up with Everdome, expect multiple VR activations showcasing a hyper-realistic metaverse adventure during the Saudi Arabian GP. (Link)

  • World of Web3 (WOW) Summit hits Hong Kong’s web3-savvy on March 29-30. (Link)

🎥 Media & Entertainment

  • Entertainment revolution: Warner Bros, Orange Comet, CyberBrokers and NFT Now at NFT Paris. (Link)

  • The “metaverse” of VR could be a whole new world of trouble for kids on the internet. (Link)

  • Meanwhile, Democrat-party senators are sending a strong message to Meta: Don't market your metaverse app to teens. (Link)

  • Teatro Real presents the world's first opera live in the metaverse. (Link)

  • Talent agency WME’s expansion into the crypto realm: when Hollywood meets blockchain. (Link)

  • Gemie wants to be the metaverse hub for Asia’s pop culture. (Link)

  • Teleperformance unveils its metaverse global HQ. (Link)

🖼 Art

  • Web3 community NounsDAO greenlights full-length NFT flick: lights, camera, blockchain! (Link)

  • Gwyneth Paltrow-backed NFT art platform Wild reveals its latest artists in residence. (Link)

  • Bored Ape NFTs get futuristic upgrades with robotic transformation. (Link)

  • Web3 company Orange Comet taps 13-year-old Doodle Boy for its latest NFT drop. (Link)

  • Korean NFT artist Mari Kim has gone from canvas to cyberspace as a metaverse producer. (Link)

  • Crypto payments firm MoonPay CEO sets its sights on passing the “mom test” for NFT mass adoption. How: through slick UX and partnerships with household brands. (Link)

  • Emmy-nominated photographerJohn Knopf on taking photos and minting NFTs. (Link)

🤖 AI

  • Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is “a little bit scared” of AI risks. (Link)

  • How freaked out should you be over AI? (Link)

  • AI makes plagiarism harder to detect, argue academics - in paper written by chatbot. (Link)

  • Even with AI around, customers still need to be vigilant and protect themselves against fraud (Link)

  • Predictive palate: AI can probably predict the next food crisis. (Link)

  • Here’s AI’s spot-on depiction of dog breeds as humans. (Link)

💸 Funding & Partnerships

  • Bandai Namco Entertainment invests in 2 tech startups to advance gaming. (Link)

  • 3D tech provider PixelMax and cloud tech firm Hadean join forces to power content streaming in the metaverse. (Link)

  • The Sandbox teams up with Havas Play to develop brand experiences in the metaverse and train thousands in the process. (Link)

  • Zetly and the Johan Cruyff Institute partner to provide contacts to the world of sports clubs and federations, educating Institute associates on web3 and NFTs. (Link)

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All content on this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not aim to serve as or replace expert investment advice.

📈 If you are a startup building in the metaverse / web3 ecosystem and are raising capital, please reach out to Sfermion. Sfermion is an investment firm focused on accelerating the emergence of the metaverse 📈

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