Today in Generative Media

AI influencers in China; Shutterstock goes genAI; Game becomes hit after ditching AI

News and Opinion

• AI avatars in China just proved they are ace influencers. It only took a duo 7 hours to rake in more than $7 million (CNBC)

• Shutterstock rebrands as it goes all-in on generative AI (Fast Company)

• How The Roottrees are Dead ditched AI and became a hit (The Verge)

• Meta Teases AI Generation Of Entire Horizon Worlds Coming "Very Soon" (UploadVR)

• Adobe Is Developing AI-Powered Culling Tools for Lightroom (PetaPixel)

• Creators say they didn’t know Google uses YouTube to train AI (CNBC)

• Hollywood’s fight against alleged AI copyright infringement has only just begun (Los Angeles Times)

• AI residencies are trying to change the conversation around artificial art (The Verge)

• This AI Model Never Stops Learning (Wired)

• Can You Choose an A.I. Model That Harms the Planet Less? (New York Times)

• Engineer: With AI, "Anybody Whose Job Is Done on a Computer All Day Is Over... It’s Just a Matter of Time" (Futurism)

• Companies That Replaced Humans With AI Are Realizing Their Mistake (Futurism)

• Greetings from Shenyang, China, where workers sort AI data in 'Severance'-like ways (NPR)

• AI: Unpacking the Black Box - A series on the issues and impacts of AI on our society (PBS)

Software

• Adobe made a mobile app for its Firefly generative AI tools (The Verge)

• Adobe Project Indigo is a new photo app from former Pixel camera engineers (Engadget)

• Remote MCP support in Claude Code (Anthropic blog)

Research

• Exploring Diffusion Transformer Designs via Grafting (project page) [accompanying blog post]

• IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications Special Issue: Generative AI for Computer Graphics (IEEE)

• On the Closed-Form of Flow Matching: Generalization Does Not Arise from Target Stochasticity (arXiv)

Misc

• I’ve started joining every Google Meet 30 seconds early. … I spend the first few seconds screaming about how I’m on the Titanic, we’ve just hit an iceberg, the end is near, and I need immediate assistance. I then do the rest of the meeting normally. When the meeting ends, everyone gets an emailed transcript where the AI summary is: “Chris hit an iceberg, is trapped on a sinking ship, and general Q2 pricing updates” (X)

• The Wan 2.1 FusionX VACE model is an amazing version. I was very curious about how the previously trained LoRA file of myself would perform when mixed with reference images. It is extremely well controllable how much it adopts the reference and how much it retains the LoRA. (LinkedIn)

• Here’s the behind the scenes of using Luma Ai Video Modify to turn some plastic soldiers into an army. (X)

• Another AI short I made, showcasing the power of layers and letting AI handle VFX and video. (X)