Open AI, the creator of the incredibly popular AI chatbot ChatGPT, has officially shut down the tool it had developed for detecting content created by AI and not humans. ‘AI Classifier’ has been scrapped just six months after its launch – apparently due to a ‘low rate of accuracy’, says OpenAI in a blog post.
ChatGPT has exploded in popularity this year, worming its way into every aspect of our digital lives, with a slew of rival services and copycats. Of course, the flood of AI-generated content does bring up concerns from multiple groups surrounding inaccurate, inhuman content pervading our social media and newsfeeds.
Educators in particular are troubled by the different ways ChatGPT has been used to write essays and assignments that are passed off as original work. OpenAI’s classifier tool was designed to address these fears not just within education but wider spheres like corporate workspaces, medical fields, and coding-intensive careers. The idea behind the tool was that it should be able to determine whether a piece of text was written by a human or an AI chatbot, in order to combat misinformation
Plagiarism detection service Turnitin, often used by universities, recently integrated an ‘AI Detection Tool’ that has demonstrated a very prominent fault of being wrong on either side. Students and faculty have gone to Reddit to protest the inaccurate results, with students stating their own original work is being flagged as AI-generated content, and faculty complaining about AI work passing through these detectors unflagged.
It is an incredibly troubling thought: the idea that the makers of ChatGPT can no longer differentiate between what is a product of their own tool and what is not. If OpenAI can’t tell the difference, then what chance do we have? Is this the beginning of a misinformation flood, in which no one will ever be certain if what they read online is true? I don’t like to doomsay, but it’s certainly worrying.
Microsoft has just made a pretty remarkable admission, essentially conceding that it doesn’t have a solution for some Windows 11 problems.
As Neowin reports, some people using Windows 11 and Windows 10 have found a bug which prevents the Start menu, Windows search bar and some Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps from starting or working correctly.
It appears that the bugs coincide with damaged registry keys and data related to Microsoft Office apps, and apps that are integrated with Office software, as well as Windows and Outlook.
The bugs don’t affect everyone, but those who are encountering them first noticed something wasn’t right back in January of this year. If you were hoping that during that time Microsoft had figured out how to fix the problem, then I have some bad news for you.
Giving up?
On Microsoft’s ‘Health’ webpage regarding the issue, Microsoft notes that the “Windows search, and Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps might not work as expected or might have issues opening,” and in a recent update it has provided a workaround for the problem.
Not only is the lack of a definitive fix disappointing, but the workaround isn’t great, with Microsoft stating that to “mitigate this issue, you can uninstall apps which integrate with Windows, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Calendar.”
Essentially, it seems like Microsoft is admitting that it’s as baffled as us by the problem, and that the only way to avoid the issue is to start uninstalling apps. That’s pretty poor, especially as Microsoft doesn’t list the apps that are causing the issue, just that they integrate with “Windows, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Calendar,” which doesn’t narrow it down at all.
It’s also not a great solution for people who depend on any of the apps causing the issue, as uninstalling them may not be a viable option.
Microsoft claims that it is working on a resolution, and I hope it's able to roll one out that fixes the issue without making users uninstall certain apps. It's concerning, though, that there seem to be areas where Windows 11 (and Windows 10, which is also suffering from this problem) is so broken that Microsoft simply can’t fix it.
Operating systems like Windows 11 are complicated pieces of software that have to work with myriad combinations of hardware and software, but this still doesn’t make it any less embarrassing for Microsoft. It also doesn’t give me a huge amount of confidence about Windows 12, which the company is rumored to be working on – I’d rather Microsoft concentrated on fixing the current versions of Windows first.
In Holopresence land you can be two places at once. One is sitting on a director’s chair in front of a green screen, sweating under a half dozen stage lights. The other is half a world away on a semi-translucent screen, addressing an audience who almost believes you’re sitting right there with them.
I walked across midtown Manhattan in the soaking rain to see ARHT Media’s Holopresence experience in person earlier this week. (And with water dripping off my hat and coat, I found myself wishing I’d done this meeting as a hologram.)
To be clear, what ARHT provides is not, technically, a hologram. It’s a canny projection system that employs mostly off-the-shelf technology, a proprietary screen, and special software to make people believe someone is sitting in front of you, as opposed to – in my case – Toronto.
He was never really there
ARHT Media is a Toronto, Canada, telepresence company that just opened its first Holopresence studio in a WeWork building in midtown Manhattan. They invited me for a look.
As I walked into the WeWork space, basically a vast, mostly unfurnished office floor, I was greeted by ARHT Media SVP Terry Davis and company CEO Larry O’Reilly, who was standing off to the side looking at his phone. O’Reilly looked a little odd, as though he was standing before a bright light that I couldn’t see. Suddenly he abruptly dematerialized and was gone — my first experience with this Holopresence technology.
I wanted to try this for myself, but before anyone could transform me into a Holopresence, Davis walked me through the technology's fundamentals.
“We’re a projection system,” Davis told me. Gesturing toward the cube-like set up in a semi-darkened space on the far side of a cavernous WeWork room, where O’Reilly had “stood” just moments ago, Davis explained that the entire system is portable and “breaks down into a couple of duffle bags. We go anywhere in the world.”
The cube that “virtual you” beam in and out from consists of poles, black curtains on the back and sides, and a special screen stretched across the front. Unlike a standard movie screen, this one is a nylon-like mesh with a high-gain reflective coating. “It’s transparent and reflective at the same time,” explained Davis.
Aside from ARHT’s matrixed software (handling multi-channel communication for various holopresences in real-time), the screen is the company’s only other piece of proprietary technology. Still, it is effective.
Behind the screen, I note a few props, including a pair of plants and some floor lighting. These and the distance to the back curtain create the illusion of a depth of field behind a Holopresence. “You have to have a certain degree of depth of field in order for your brain and eyes to perceive that parallax,” said Davis.
A world of Holograms
AHRT is by no means the only company creating virtual people for events, concerts, panels, exhibits, and families. There’s Epic HoloPortl, for example. It has white, booth-like boxes, called PORTLs, in which people appear to materialize. The effect is arresting. Davis, while not wanting to criticize Epic HoloPortls, called them “white coffins with no depth of field.”
He also noted that his product can accommodate multiple people from multiple locations on one screen, while PORTL fits one in a box.
Plus there’s the portability factor. A Holopresence system, which would include the screen, curtain, poles, an off-the-shelf projector (they were using a Panasonic DLP for my demonstration), and microphones and speakers, can fit in a large bag. It’s not clear how portable the PORTL boxes are.
Still, on the other side of a Holopresence presentation is someone sitting in front of a green, black, or white screen. They’re mic-ed-up, facing a camera, and, in my case, hunkered down under substantial lighting. Meaning that for a live Holopresence event, there are always two sides to the technology equation.
Davis told me that the technology they use to create these hologram-like presences is not much different than what we’ve seen with virtual Michael Jackson in Concert or Tupac Shakur at Coachella. In those instances, the projection was from the ground up to a reflective surface that bounces it off a giant screen. Holopresence’s projector is outside the curtained area, facing the screen.
Lance Ulanoff and ARHT CEO Larry O’Reilly (beaming in) (Image credit: Future)
Most of ARHT Media’s clients are businesses, enterprises, and billionaires (there was an Antarctic yacht cruise where people like Malcolm Gladwell beamed in to talk to a select audience). Davis described multiple panels where they beamed people in from around the world. Back at each of their studios, panelists are surrounded by screens that stand in place of other panelists. If someone is seated to the left of you, that’s where the screen will be. They even try to accommodate height differences. If the speaker on the left is much short than you or, say, on a different level on the stage, they adjust the screen height accordingly. A feed of the audience is usually placed in front of the speaker. What they see is holo-panelists looking back and forth at other holo-panelists.
To accommodate large panels or events with large audiences, ARHT offers a range of screen sizes that can be as small as 5 feet and as large as, well, a stage.
ARHT does have some consumer impact. During COVID travel restrictions, the company helped a bridesmaid in England virtually attend a wedding in America. In New Jersey’s Hall of Fame, the company has built a kiosk where visitors can “speak” to life-sized video versions of Bon Jovi and Little Steven.
Still, ARHT is not priced for your average consumer. A single-person Holopresence can run you $ 15,000. For more people on the screen, it could cost as much as $ 30,000.
Beaming in
Lance Ulanoff in ARHT studio becoming a Holopresence (Image credit: Future)
After a power outage at the Toronto headquarters (no amount of tech magic can overcome a lack of electricity), we finally got ARHT’s CEO back for a quick virtual chat. The roughly 6ft tall O’Reilly looked solid. As we talked and he reiterated many of the points Davis and I covered, I found myself focusing on the image quality. Dead-on, it was perfect. From O’Reilly’s white hair down to his shoes, he appeared to be standing before me (on a slightly raised stage). I shifted to the left and right and found the effect holding up pretty well. Davis claims the projection doesn’t flatten out until you hit between 120 -to-140-degree off-axis. I’d argue the viewport is a bit narrower.
As we conversed, though, I experience another key part of ARHT’s Holopresence secret sauce: latency. The conversation between the two of us was free-flowing. Even when we did a counting test (we counted to ten with each of us alternating numbers), there was, perhaps, a sub-second delay.
To achieve this effect, ARHT uses low packet bursting transmission to create a smooth, conversational experience between people in Hong Kong and Australia or a reporter in New York City and a CEO in Toronto.
(Image credit: Future)
One thing I noted throughout the demo were the references to Star Trek transporter technology. There was even a screen in the space showing a loop from the original Star Trek series where the team beams down to an alien planet. When you start a Holopresence experience, people “beam in” with a very Star Trek-like graphic flourish and sound effect. I asked O’Reilly if he's a Star Trek fan and what he thought about the connection. He didn’t answer directly and instead pointed out how the sound and graphics are completely customizable.
Finally, it was my turn. I sat in the green screen space and tried to look like I wasn’t about to experience a lifetime dream of mine. My beam-in moment was, initially, a little underwhelming. I couldn’t see myself; the Holopresence space was across the room.
When it was over, I walked over, and Davis replayed my big moment. Seeing myself teleport into the room like a bald Captain Kirk was everything I hoped it would be.
In Holopresence land you can be two places at once. One is sitting on a director’s chair in front of a green screen, sweating under a half dozen stage lights. The other is half a world away on a semi-translucent screen, addressing an audience who almost believes you’re sitting right there with them.
I walked across midtown Manhattan in the soaking rain to see ARHT Media’s Holopresence experience in person earlier this week. (And with water dripping off my hat and coat, I found myself wishing I’d done this meeting as a hologram.)
To be clear, what ARHT provides is not, technically, a hologram. It’s a canny projection system that employs mostly off-the-shelf technology, a proprietary screen, and special software to make people believe someone is sitting in front of you, as opposed to – in my case – Toronto.
He was never really there
ARHT Media is a Toronto, Canada, telepresence company that just opened its first Holopresence studio in a WeWork building in midtown Manhattan. They invited me for a look.
As I walked into the WeWork space, basically a vast, mostly unfurnished office floor, I was greeted by ARHT Media SVP Terry Davis and company CEO Larry O’Reilly, who was standing off to the side looking at his phone. O’Reilly looked a little odd, as though he was standing before a bright light that I couldn’t see. Suddenly he abruptly dematerialized and was gone — my first experience with this Holopresence technology.
I wanted to try this for myself, but before anyone could transform me into a Holopresence, Davis walked me through the technology's fundamentals.
“We’re a projection system,” Davis told me. Gesturing toward the cube-like set up in a semi-darkened space on the far side of a cavernous WeWork room, where O’Reilly had “stood” just moments ago, Davis explained that the entire system is portable and “breaks down into a couple of duffle bags. We go anywhere in the world.”
The cube that “virtual you” beam in and out from consists of poles, black curtains on the back and sides, and a special screen stretched across the front. Unlike a standard movie screen, this one is a nylon-like mesh with a high-gain reflective coating. “It’s transparent and reflective at the same time,” explained Davis.
Aside from ARHT’s matrixed software (handling multi-channel communication for various holopresences in real-time), the screen is the company’s only other piece of proprietary technology. Still, it is effective.
Behind the screen, I note a few props, including a pair of plants and some floor lighting. These and the distance to the back curtain create the illusion of a depth of field behind a Holopresence. “You have to have a certain degree of depth of field in order for your brain and eyes to perceive that parallax,” said Davis.
A world of Holograms
AHRT is by no means the only company creating virtual people for events, concerts, panels, exhibits, and families. There’s Epic HoloPortl, for example. It has white, booth-like boxes, called PORTLs, in which people appear to materialize. The effect is arresting. Davis, while not wanting to criticize Epic HoloPortls, called them “white coffins with no depth of field.”
He also noted that his product can accommodate multiple people from multiple locations on one screen, while PORTL fits one in a box.
Plus there’s the portability factor. A Holopresence system, which would include the screen, curtain, poles, an off-the-shelf projector (they were using a Panasonic DLP for my demonstration), and microphones and speakers, can fit in a large bag. It’s not clear how portable the PORTL boxes are.
Still, on the other side of a Holopresence presentation is someone sitting in front of a green, black, or white screen. They’re mic-ed-up, facing a camera, and, in my case, hunkered down under substantial lighting. Meaning that for a live Holopresence event, there are always two sides to the technology equation.
Davis told me that the technology they use to create these hologram-like presences is not much different than what we’ve seen with virtual Michael Jackson in Concert or Tupac Shakur at Coachella. In those instances, the projection was from the ground up to a reflective surface that bounces it off a giant screen. Holopresence’s projector is outside the curtained area, facing the screen.
Lance Ulanoff and ARHT CEO Larry O’Reilly (beaming in) (Image credit: Future)
Most of ARHT Media’s clients are businesses, enterprises, and billionaires (there was an Antarctic yacht cruise where people like Malcolm Gladwell beamed in to talk to a select audience). Davis described multiple panels where they beamed people in from around the world. Back at each of their studios, panelists are surrounded by screens that stand in place of other panelists. If someone is seated to the left of you, that’s where the screen will be. They even try to accommodate height differences. If the speaker on the left is much short than you or, say, on a different level on the stage, they adjust the screen height accordingly. A feed of the audience is usually placed in front of the speaker. What they see is holo-panelists looking back and forth at other holo-panelists.
To accommodate large panels or events with large audiences, ARHT offers a range of screen sizes that can be as small as 5 feet and as large as, well, a stage.
ARHT does have some consumer impact. During COVID travel restrictions, the company helped a bridesmaid in England virtually attend a wedding in America. In New Jersey’s Hall of Fame, the company has built a kiosk where visitors can “speak” to life-sized video versions of Bon Jovi and Little Steven.
Still, ARHT is not priced for your average consumer. A single-person Holopresence can run you $ 15,000. For more people on the screen, it could cost as much as $ 30,000.
Beaming in
Lance Ulanoff in ARHT studio becoming a Holopresence (Image credit: Future)
After a power outage at the Toronto headquarters (no amount of tech magic can overcome a lack of electricity), we finally got ARHT’s CEO back for a quick virtual chat. The roughly 6ft tall O’Reilly looked solid. As we talked and he reiterated many of the points Davis and I covered, I found myself focusing on the image quality. Dead-on, it was perfect. From O’Reilly’s white hair down to his shoes, he appeared to be standing before me (on a slightly raised stage). I shifted to the left and right and found the effect holding up pretty well. Davis claims the projection doesn’t flatten out until you hit between 120 -to-140-degree off-axis. I’d argue the viewport is a bit narrower.
As we conversed, though, I experience another key part of ARHT’s Holopresence secret sauce: latency. The conversation between the two of us was free-flowing. Even when we did a counting test (we counted to ten with each of us alternating numbers), there was, perhaps, a sub-second delay.
To achieve this effect, ARHT uses low packet bursting transmission to create a smooth, conversational experience between people in Hong Kong and Australia or a reporter in New York City and a CEO in Toronto.
(Image credit: Future)
One thing I noted throughout the demo were the references to Star Trek transporter technology. There was even a screen in the space showing a loop from the original Star Trek series where the team beams down to an alien planet. When you start a Holopresence experience, people “beam in” with a very Star Trek-like graphic flourish and sound effect. I asked O’Reilly if he's a Star Trek fan and what he thought about the connection. He didn’t answer directly and instead pointed out how the sound and graphics are completely customizable.
Finally, it was my turn. I sat in the green screen space and tried to look like I wasn’t about to experience a lifetime dream of mine. My beam-in moment was, initially, a little underwhelming. I couldn’t see myself; the Holopresence space was across the room.
When it was over, I walked over, and Davis replayed my big moment. Seeing myself teleport into the room like a bald Captain Kirk was everything I hoped it would be.
Microsoft is preparing an update for spreadsheet software Excel that rectifies an obvious shortcoming dating back a number of years.
According to a new entry in the company’s product roadmap, Excel will soon allow users to drop hyperlinks into comments added to spreadsheets. Currently, links can only be added to comments in plaintext, so must be pasted manually into a web browser.
The feature is currently under development, but should roll out to all Microsoft 365 users by the end of next month.
Hyperlinks in Excel comments
Given the simplicity and obvious utility of the new Excel feature, we found it difficult to believe it didn’t already exist. But lo and behold, a brief investigation revealed the current version will not allow the user to click through a link embedded in a comment thread, which adds unnecessary friction to the experience.
A quick search online reveals this is a problem Excel users have faced for years. Until now, people have had to rely on a rough-and-ready workaround to sidestep the issue.
(Image credit: Future)
As various online tutorials demonstrate, it is possible to add a hyperlink to a note (which is distinct from a comment) and pin that note to the sheet so it doesn’t disappear when the user mouses away from the associated cell. Microsoft Excel will then launch that URL in the default browser when someone clicks through via the note.
However, this method is neither particularly straightforward (it demands all existing formatting and any additional characters are removed from the note) nor particularly pretty, so the ability to simply drop a hyperlink into a comment thread will be welcome.
The update can be considered part of the wider campaign to optimize Microsoft 365 apps for live collaboration, in a world in which many people expect to either remain remote or adopt a hybrid working model.
In December, for example, Microsoft rolled out a series of improvements for the Excel web client, which can now support a wider range of files. Microsoft Outlook, meanwhile, received a feature that lets users specify whether they will attend a meeting in-person or through video conferencing software.
The company has even launched an entirely new collaboration app, called Loop, which allows users to create portable components that move freely and stay in-sync across all Microsoft apps.
The new hyperlink facility for Excel is yet another piece of this same puzzle.
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