Countering AI’s overbearing influence and Indians are buying more tablets too

This week, the world of tech got reminded that there can be two different ways of doing the same thing. Timely too, and I’d gladly accept this, having seen tech hardware and software become a massive sea of sameness. Can you really tell anything apart these days, such are the similarities between the visual and experiential cues. Artificial intelligence was proving to be the same thing. In what is undeniably an era of AI infused photo editing and digital art, the suites too have adopted a similarly elaborate generative intelligence toolset. Good then, that Procreate has made it clear (and as loudly as possible; without be seen shouting) they’re absolutely staying away from AI. The purists amongst us would love that idea. And secretly hope more digital art and editing platforms take such a stand. After all, choice.
“I really f****** hate generative AI,” the words of Procreate’s CEO James Cuda (those * are to mask some colourful language; and ours is a family-oriented newsletter). But behind those * sit the thoughts of many a creator, who have seen their favourite evolve rapidly into AI platforms. Yes, there is no taking away from the fact that generative AI in editing apps for instance, is really a time-saver – removing background elements or changing the colour theme in a click, super cool. And convenient. Canva’s Magic Studio is an example. Firefly in Adobe’s suite, very impressive (Lightroom in particular, I’ll admit that app is one of my few favourites). However, there is a line that’s needs to be drawn at some point. It’s something we’ve wondered in the past as well (our regular readers would remember we’ve often asked this), that when do we start worrying about the blurring between real photos and generated images.
By promising to stay away from generative AI (at least for the time being, we can hope it lasts), Procreate’s solved another problem too – the potential fear about user data being collected to train AI. By taking a very different approach to a digital art suite, Procreate is creating an outlet of choice. If you want an AI infused app, there are choices. Equally, if you don’t, now Procreate is making that choice cool too. Hopefully, more in the tech space will follow through. It is a risky bet, as I point out. But high risk, high reward?
There may not be as much enthusiasm in many other markets worldwide, but India’s tablet adoption is picking pace, and keeping it. As I was writing this newsletter, CyberMedia Research (CMR) shared their latest Tablet PC India Market Report Review for Q2 2024. Here are some highlights you must know.
CMR is forecasting a steady growth for India’s tablet market through to the end of 2024 and should be in the range of 5-10% year on year improvement. That would be some serious momentum, considering these latest numbers already signify a 15% year-on-year growth for the quarter.
Speaking of photos and social media work…Instagram is now testing a new profile layout that puts in place rectangle images in the grid, instead of the squares we’ve become used to over the years. This may be a change that’s been long overdue, and yet not many of us realised it – the square grid is a remanent of the era when Instagram uploads were square images. That’s no longer the case. The videos tab is a vertical rectangle anyway. Let’s see how this update pans out.
This week, I wrote about how true wireless earbuds continue to be so popular in India. The context being that Indian companies are dominating the budget price points as Indians buy their first wireless earbuds or upgrade from an older one. I have observed over the past year, that the likes of Noise and Boat have not only given users a rather elaborate budget price point portfolio to choose from, but also made subtle inroads into more expensive price bands in a pursuit for premiumisation. Noise’s Buds Xero earbuds (and indeed the Luna Ring health tracking ring) a rather successful example of that.
At a time when the overall wearables shipments dipped, wireless earbuds remained as strong as the same period the year before, and therefore propped up the overall numbers – else they’d have looked a lot worse.
This space is important, because not only are the volumes there, but this price band is the priceless stepping stone. Brands hope to make inroads and hope a new customer now remains within the fold when they inevitably look to spend money on an upgrade a few months or years down the line. More so for brands such as Xiaomi and OnePlus, which have much more at stake including smartphones and tablets to sell – they’d want to deliver a good experience here, and then try building on that. At this point, I gave my assessment of their new wireless earbuds (albeit at slightly different price points), and both seem to be working on a similar template – trickle down more and more features, thereby adding value to the proposition. Automatic noise cancellation is one of those things, a change that became clear in the last few years, and now the focus is on improved performance.
AI and politics are at a point where separating them is nigh impossible. As I wrote in my column this week, “there’s nothing we can do”. That not being defeatist or downbeat, it is just pure pragmatism. This year is perhaps the most packed globally in terms of elections than at any other point in human memory. Quite a timing too, because AI players are making their mark (mostly in a negative sense; you may have seen some rather distasteful generated images of the US presidential candidates floating around X, in the past few days). That’s barely the tip of that iceberg, as I’ve tried to argue, with some of AI’s unwanted interventions already clear in some countries’ elections in the past few months.
AI generated robocalls in US President Joe Biden’s voice seemingly attempting to dissuade voters in New Hampshire from voting in the primary; a deepfake in the Slovakian elections seemed to help the pro-Russian opponent, as it was designed to do, and a deepfake of a newsreader alleging that then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promoted a scam investment platform. Such nefarious tactics are designed to (and they almost always, with considerable accuracy) catch momentum on social media. Condition the minds of the voter, who may either not realise this is fake content, or miss the memo that clarifies such instances later. We’ve all seen WhatsApp mass messaging in India, laced with political tones, develop the way they have in the past few years. That’s the power of social media and mass messaging.
Now, generative AI is producing fodder. Danielle Allen, who is James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University, and director of the Democratic Knowledge Project and the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation, pointed to at a workshop, its simply making the general public more anxious. That’s never good for the functioning of democracies.
Validation: I’d barely written this, and Donald Trump posted a AI-generated (and as yet fake; the pop star hasn’t said anything as such) image of an apparent endorsement from Taylor Swift. He’s been at it, just recently sharing AI generated images and claiming them to be from rival Kamala Harris’ election rallies. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the person who wants to be at the helm of the United States once again. Either he cannot identify a fake, AI generated image or is no better than a typical rumour monger.