BuzzFeed News: Why Are AI-Generated Hands So Messed Up?. “why do these programs mess up hands (not to mention bare feet) so badly? It’s a question that many people have asked. To find out, I emailed Midjourney; Stability AI, which makes Stable Diffusion; and OpenAI, which created DALL-E 2. Only Stability AI responded to my questions.”
University of Oxford: Researchers develop new breath-driven concept set to transform access to hand prosthetics. “By regulating their breathing, users power a small purpose-built Tesla turbine that can accurately control the prosthetic finger movements. The volume of air needed to power the unit can be achieved by young children and the gearing in the unit determines the speed of the grasping action. Cable and harness free, the device is lightweight and suitable for children and adolescents who are still growing. Minimal maintenance and training are needed for ease of use in comparison to other prosthetic options.”
The Next Web: This AI needs your help to identify child abusers by their hands. “The research team has appealed to the public for help with the project. They want anyone over the age of 18 to upload photos of their hands through a new smartphone app. The images will then be added to a database that’s used to develop the hand comparison algorithms. The researchers say they need more than 5,000 images to prove beyond a reasonable doubt whether our hands are truly unique. They promise that everyone who participates will remain anonymous. The images will never shared with external agencies, and will be destroyed at the end of the project.”
BBC News: Lancaster University’s hand database ‘could catch paedophiles’. “Researchers in Lancaster and Dundee want 5,000 ‘citizen scientists’ to help create a database of images to train machines to identify child abusers by analysing videos of their hands. They would analyse unique features such as vein patterns, scars and freckles. Prof Dame Sue Black, who is leading the project, said one day the database could be as valuable as fingerprinting.”
The Local (Spain): A Spanish quest to hand down prehistoric secrets. “In a bid to unlock some of these mysteries, [Hipolito] Collado, head of archaeology for the government of the Extremadura region where Caceres is located, has set out to catalogue all of Europe’s prehistoric painted hands…. They then post them in detailed, 3D format in a free-to-use online database, as part of an EU-funded project called Handpas.”
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