LVMH’s new web3 ties with Epic Games and Apple

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🤝 LVMH bares new web3 ties with Epic Games and Apple

📈 ChatGPT and AI-led, computing power rises 10-fold by 2030: Huawei chair

🤖 Samsung adopts AI in product design

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LVMH bares new web3 ties with Epic Games and Apple [Link]

LVMH, the luxury conglomerate behind fashion house Louis Vuitton, unveils new partnerships and initiatives in the web3 space: a tie-up with Epic Games for new customer experiences and another with Apple to incorporate its Tap to Pay system in its US stores.

The finer details:

• LVMH seeks to use Epic Games’ suite of 3D creation tools, from the popular Unreal Engine to Reality Capture and Twinmotion, to accelerate its digital growth via new experiences such as virtual fitting rooms, 360 product carousels, AR, and product digital twins.

• It will integrate Apple’s Tap to Pay into its physical retail stores, piloting in the US, to bring forth “an exciting new in-store experience.”

• It will host new metaverse experiences through the virtual world The Journey, which prompts visitors to select from a variety of portals leading them to interactive elements containing AI artwork, information on design, and more.

Not long ago, Louis Vuitton revealed the VIA Treasure Trunk, the first time the Maison offered its iconic luxury trunks in a digital or NFT form.

ChatGPT and AI-led, computing power rises 10-fold by 2030: Huawei chair [Link]

Huawei’s Rotating Chairman Hu Houkun (Ken Hu) discloses his bold prediction on the future of AI as spearheaded by ChatGPT: General computing power would undergo a 10-fold increase by 2030, while AI computing power would skyrocket by a 500-fold within the same period.

By 2030, the tech executive expects the total number of connections worldwide to reach a staggering 20B, helping meet the low-latency requirements of intelligent devices.

Hu also emphasizes the emergence of business in novel forms, including the metaverse and holographic imaging. Along with the rise of these new technologies is the surge - a hundredfold as predicted - in bandwidth demands to cater to the unprecedented growth.

Meta announces ML text-to-speech model Voicebox [Link]

Meta Platforms' AI research arm introduces Voicebox, an ML model capable of generating speech from text.

Some key features of Voicebox:

• Can perform tasks beyond its training, such as editing, noise removal, and style transfer

• Can synthesize speech across 6 languages, namely English, French, Spanish, German, Polish, and Portuguese

• Trained with Flow Matching technique to learn from diverse speech data without the need for meticulous labeling

Voicebox, however, does have limitations. Its training on audiobook data means it may not perform optimally with a casual conversational speech containing non-verbal sounds. It also currently lacks fine-grained control over attributes such as voice style, tone, emotion, and acoustic conditions.

Samsung adopts AI in product design [Link]

Samsung embraces AI and machine learning to transform its design process, seeking to “empower designers to fully unleash their creativity.”

Samsung has established Computational Design Labs in San Francisco, USA, and Paris, France. These labs serve as hubs for exploring and integrating advanced tech such as AI, machine learning, and computation into traditional design processes.

Samsung will use computational design, incorporating AI, to create digital twins of products and experiences to simulate and refine actual products in virtual environments.

Its expectations: AI to drive collaboration between designers and machines, saying the designers will remain in "the driver's seat” of creation.

Quick Hits

🎮 Gaming

• Harnessing its huge developer base for industry-standard GPU hardware and software apps, Nvidia unveils the Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) for game development. (Link)

• Nike teases its .Swoosh NFT platform coming to Fortnite. (Link)

• Upland and Nowhere unite to forge a new era of digital community interactions for the metaverse. (Link)

• NFT-based gaming ushers in the gamification of trading, changing things up in web3. (Link)

• As healthcare providers and parents continue to fight growing video game addiction among kids, the next big threat is already here in the form of AR/VR games, multi-gaming platforms, and e-sports competitions. (Link)

🕶 Fashion

• British designer Charles Jeffrey proposes a joyful Loverboy collection for a new Carolean era in Britain - with a little help from AI. (Link)

• In fashion, Vogue delves on how the “doubleness of stage managed and retouched images, plus advancements in AI and deep fake technology continue to splinter reality.” (Link)

• Fast-fashion retailers are after a bigger slice of digital fashion-savvy India's online market. (Link)

• Discover Swedish-American fashion brand BLK DNM’s connected fashion offering digital garment ID microchips to help eliminate counterfeits. (Link)

• London-based Kimbe Fashion House opens its virtual boutique doors in September, giving shoppers a virtual-only shopping experience. (Link)

🏀 Sports

• Tennis games and pro tournaments to match your online excitement. (Link)

• Immersive and AI innovations will debut at the Asian Games 2023 in Hangzhou, China, involving shiny new things like 5G, 8K, XR, and metaverse platforms. (Link)

• Uh-oh: AI tracks social media abuse aimed at players at the 2022 World Cup, identifying 300+ people whose details are being handed to law enforcement. (Link)

• In the same vein, FIFA aims to tailor social media protection for the Women’s World Cup. (Link)

• A brave new world: The way consumers watch and interact with their favorite sports is set to change radically, thanks to the metaverse. (Link)

• Jiangning in China’s Nanjing City bares its metaverse roadmap rife with plans for virtualized sports, entertainment, and more. (Link)

🎥 Media & Entertainment

• Binance partners with The Weeknd to introduce metaverse experience. (Link)

• XR startup Sensorium bets on Apple’s Vision Pro for immersive web3 entertainment, announcing integration plans using the new device. (Link)

• TikTok becomes the 1st app to surpass $1B consumer spend in a single quarter. (Link)

• Grammy Awards drops a new rule on AI: Only human creators allowed. (Link)

• Meta wants pre-teens to step into virtual reality with its Quest headset. (Link)

• Amazon updates Fire TVs/streaming devices with generative AI: Create art with voice commands and turn your TV into a digital photo frame. (Link)

🖼 Art

• Three Arrows’ NFT collection has sold for $11M. (Link)

• A group of Bitcoiners purchases an Ethereum NFT for 55 ETH ($95K) - then burns it. Here’s why. (Link)

• Art of Code, a month-long exhibition in India, showcases a collection of digital art created using creative coding. (Link)

• This Saudi Arabia woman is transforming Arabic literature into wearable art. (Link)

• Quantum_X_Theory 2.0, Human Nature, and more exciting upcoming NFT drops. (Link)

• A look at the winners at the Metaverse Architecture and Design Awards 2023. (Link)

🤖 AI

• AI-generated narrators threaten voice actors hoping for audiobook gigs. (Link)

• Meta has lost a third of its AI researchers over the last year and now struggles to keep up. (Link)

• The British government taps tech entrepreneur Ian Hogarth to head its new task force looking at AI safety risks. (Link)

• Mercedes is adding ChatGPT to its infotainment system - here’s why. (Link)

• Made in Shanghai 2025: The Chinese city unveils ambitious targets to grow high-end manufacturing and tech sectors via AI. (Link)

• In South-west England, AI predicts pollution before it happens. (Link)

💸 Funding & Partnerships

• Lenovo announces a $1B AI investment to accelerate the deployment of the tech for businesses worldwide. (Link)

• Tomorrow.io raises $87M and launches a second weather satellite into space. (Link)

• Animoca signs a strategic partnership with Mitsui & Co., Ltd. for a strategic investment. (Link)

• Accelerator program Foresight X commits $2.5M to its first cohort. (Link)

• Financial services group Fexco partners with AI-driven entertainment tech startup Xavatar to provide payment tech in the metaverse. (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.

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