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Facebook is using AR to bring a massive mural to life
With all the controversy surrounding Facebook right now, it's easy to forget that the company actually does plenty of good for people across the world. At SXSW 2019, Facebook's Art House hopes to show that with a 2,200 square foot mural, which will be gifted to the community in Austin, Texas. To make this happen, Facebook teamed up with non-profit organizations HOPE (Helping Other People Everywhere), Out Youth, Yes Mentoring and Todos Juntos to commission 15 local artists and groups to create a large-scale piece that will live in downtown Austin for the next six months. They will be joined by members of Facebook Artists in Residence (AIR), a program Facebook founded to provide resources to artists and help them show off their work at the company's campuses.
I bled for 'Game of Thrones' for the right and wrong reasons
How could HBO outdo its massive Westworld role-playing experience from last year's SXSW? By asking Game of Thrones fans to prove their devotion by drawing blood. Bleed for the Throne, the network's massive blood drive in partnership with the Red Cross, is one of the most elaborate marketing stunts at this year's show. By taking part at SXSW, or other drive locations around the US, fans are also entered into a contest to attend the Game of Thrones premiere in New York City later this year.
After Math: Space Farce
It was a parabolic week for space nerds. The president teased the creation of a fourth military branch dubbed the "Space Force," world-renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking passed away at the age of 76, and NASA's acting chief retired without someone ready to succeed him. But hey, at least to listen to Elon Musk's Wonka-esque visions for the future of spaceflight during his sold out SXSW keynote. Numbers because the only thing harder than math is space.
VR escort film pulled from SXSW amid allegations of misconduct
Two days ago, director Michael Jacobs described his first VR short, GFE (an acronym of "girlfriend experience"), to Engadget on camera. The film is a "documentary fantasy," Jacobs said, with a focus on "demystifying escort work and bringing a sense of empowerment to escorts." According to the star of GFE, it does the exact opposite.
Facebook knows it must do more to fight bad actors
Not everything at SXSW 2018 was about films or gadgets. A few blocks away from the Austin Convention Center, where the event is being held, the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) hosted a number of panels for its Innovation Policy Day. In a session dubbed "Fighting Terror with Tech," Facebook's Lead Policy Manager of Counterterrorism, Brian Fishman, spoke at great length about what the company is doing to keep bad actors away from its platform. That doesn't only include terrorists who may be using the site to communicate, or to try to radicalize others, but also trolls, bots and the spreading of hate speech and fake news.
What we saw at SXSW Interactive
It's not every day you get to see Elon Musk, his brother and Westworld co-creator Jonathan Nolan host a sing-along in front of a sold-out audience at the Moody Theater, but this week, we did. SXSW Interactive is coming to a close, so we're packing up and looking back at all the wild things we experienced, saw and ate.
‘GFE’ follows a high-end escort through San Francisco
Update: Following allegations from the film's star, Liara Roux, director Michael Jacobs has voluntarily withdrawn GFE from SXSW's Virtual Cinema show. The original article follows. Much of the virtual reality film GFE takes place in luxury San Francisco hotel rooms -- softly lit, cozy spaces -- while soothing music lingers in the background. There's only one main character: a young woman who narrates her experience as a high-end escort, providing a "girlfriend experience" of dates, conversation and intimacy. She walks through Union Square in purple boots and a short skirt, sits across from the viewer at a cafe, applies lipstick in a hotel mirror. At times, the camera's point of view places you as a neutral observer; at other moments you're the implied client, locking eyes with the woman.
Sushi robots, AI pianos and jump jetpacks on SXSW's show floor
The SXSW show floor hosts a treasure trove of strange, innovative and ridiculous experiences from around the world. A vast array of industries are represented in the heart of the Austin Convention Center, including virtual reality, 3D audio, medical technology, sustainability, interplanetary rockets and rovers, and even bespoke, branded socks. This year, some of the most eye-catching installations are all about robotics and artificial intelligence.
Samsung's C-Lab adds character to AI at SXSW
Samsung's C-Lab has made a name for itself over recent years with a bunch of offbeat concepts . The in-house startup accelerator takes Samsung engineers' free-time projects and turns them into products. In the past we've seen speakers, wellness tech and AR experiments, but at SXSW the incubator's focus is on artificial intelligence.
YouTube CEO talks misinformation, creators and comments at SXSW
YouTube's presence at SXSW 2018 extended beyond its Story HQ, a space where it turned ads into videos that feel more like art. The company's CEO, Susan Wojcicki, was part of a panel at the event titled "Navigating the Video Revolution in the Digital Age." There, she talked about a wide range of topics, including experiments for YouTube's comments section and how much money creators are making. But the biggest news Wojcicki dropped on stage was about a new feature she called "information cues," which will help fight hoaxes by linking viewers to articles on Wikipedia that debunks those.
YouTube plans 'information cues' to combat hoaxes
During a talk at SXSW 2018, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki revealed one way her company will push back against the spread of misinformation. "Information cues" including a text box linking to a third party source like Wikipedia could appear under some videos that could debunk hoaxes around "widely accepted events" like the moon landing. While she said that YouTube is "not a news organization" she said that it wants to deliver the "right information." At least at first, however, the boxes will only appear around videos regarding conspiracies that have "significant debate."
London Mayor: Tech companies aren't above the law
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, kicked off his SXSW 2018 keynote with some jokes that sparked a deafening laugh and applause from the audience. He first talked about how he was shocked by the amount of hipsters here in Austin, Texas, followed by a comment that he's excited to be on almost the same time zone as President Donald Trump. Just in case Number 45 decides to feud with him on Twitter. But Khan didn't come to SXSW for his comedy, though his sense of humor was certainly appreciated by those in attendance. Once he got to his real message, London's mayor mainly focused on discussing the impact of social media and technology as a whole on the world.
Evernote will use AI to automate your workflow
As the official note-taker of SXSW 2018, Evernote has a massive job. It has to record and produce recaps of more than 50 sessions across four different convention verticals, while at the same time delivering its own news amid meetings with partners and press. Whew. But it's also looking to make that job easier for its users, with new tools it's adding to the Spaces feature it launched two weeks ago.
Eddy Cue said everything you'd expect about Apple's video strategy
For a session about "Curation in Media," there wasn't a whole lot of talk about Apple News at Eddy Cue's SXSW panel today. Instead, moderator and CNN senior reporter Dylan Byers steered Apple's senior vice president of internet software and services through a wide range of topics, from today's acquisition of magazine platform Texture through Apple Music (it now has 38 million subscribers), free speech, live TV, health care and the company's recent foray into video content.
YouTube makes art out of ads at SXSW
Unless it's during the Super Bowl, chances are not many people actively look forward to watching ads. But the main reason people do enjoy those is that brands design them to have a cultural effect, rather than just feel like a simple product-pitch video. At SXSW, YouTube is showing a form of that with "The Greatest Stories Retold," an installation inside its Story HQ space that had 13 creative agencies turn classic fairy tales like Snow White into interactive, short-form stories. What YouTube hopes to accomplish with this is to show the power of its six- and 15-second ads, as well as longer-form ones.
I built a vibrator at SXSW
Crave is trying to open up the conversation about female sexual pleasure. The company sells beautifully designed vibrators in a range of styles, from the $60 stainless-steel Bullet to the $150 Duet, a discreet and powerful vibe packed with a variety of pulsing combinations. There's even the Vesper, a slim, stainless-steel vibrator that dangles from a delicate chain and doubles as a necklace -- "designed for beautiful experiences in public and private," as Crave describes it.
Breaking down Elon Musk's surprise, sold-out talk at SXSW
An email sent in the dead of night on Saturday revealed that Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, would appear at SXSW for a surprise Q&A session. By 8:30 the following morning, the Moody Theater was sold out; by noon, when Musk was scheduled to take the stage, the arena was packed.
Witnessing the Church of Elon Musk
SXSW plays host to big-name speakers all the time. Mother! and Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky was on stage yesterday, Apple's Eddy Cue is on a panel tomorrow and Moonlight director Barry Jenkins had a keynote this morning. But something felt different at the Moody Theater in downtown Austin. The crowd was unusually excited, expectant. A thousand or so SXSW attendees, a large number of them press, had congregated, after getting only 12 hours' notice, to hear Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk speak. The panel was scheduled for noon, but at 12:15 PM people were still shuffling in. Either Musk was running late or officials were stalling to let the audience take their seats. A small group in the venue's upper tier began clapping, as though calling for an encore after a concert, and the rhythmic applause swiftly pulsed around the theater, to no avail.
Tennis legend Andre Agassi is building tech to help with dyslexia
Andre Agassi, the legendary American tennis player, made an appearance at SXSW 2018 to announce a partnership with Square Panda, a startup that makes educational apps for kids. Through his Early Childhood Neuroscience Foundation, Agassi and Square Panda are creating Readvolution, an initiative that aims to develop the "first-ever" free dyslexia-assessment game. To make this happen, the plan is to get help from scientists in a number of universities in the US, such as the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) and the Weill Institute of for Neurosciences.
Watch the best bits of Elon Musk's SXSW talk
Elon Musk took the stage about 30 minutes late at the Moody Theater in downtown Austin, Texas, and when he finally appeared, the soldout crowd cheered and jumped to their feet, smartphones glowing. His conversation at SXSW was a surprise, announced late the night before, and the talk itself was just as casual. Westworld co-creator Jonathan Nolan took prewritten questions from the audience and asked Musk for his thoughts on a vast array of topics, covering everything from colonizing Mars to the benefits of a carbon tax and the future of artificial intelligence.
