OpenAI gives artists access to unreleased tools like Sora for New York gallery exhibit

Published

11 months ago

September 6, 2024

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OpenAI announced Friday a New York City art gallery collaboration that gives artists access to unreleased artificial intelligence tools.

The exhibit, a series called “Strada Nuova: New Road” on view at Strada Gallery will run for three weeks and centers on a “diverse group of artists [that] is curated to consist of brilliant researchers, academics, and creators working between physical and digital artwork,” according to Strada founder Paul Hill.

Hill told CNBC he reached out to OpenAI to suggest the project. Talks began about six months ago and the plan came together with OpenAI offering artists access to tools including its Sora video generator, its Voice Engine voice generator, its DALL-E 3 image generator and ChatGPT, its viral chatbot, as well as educational resources and artist stipends.

Minne Atairu, an interdisciplinary artist who has specialized in using AI in art for the past four years — before ChatGPT even launched — uses image generation, both 2D and 3D, as well as video generation in her art to highlight “understudied gaps” in Black historical archives. For this exhibit, she said she used Sora to create an AI-generated video, “Regina Gloriana,” inspired by supernatural horror films produced in Nigeria in the 1990s.

The use of AI in art, in many forms, is part of a wide-ranging debate that has generated heaps of controversy — and an increasing number of lawsuits over alleged copyright infringement and training data.

Anthropic, the Amazon-backed AI startup, was recently hit with a class-action lawsuit in California federal court by three authors over alleged copyright infringement. Last year, a group of prominent U.S. authors, including Jonathan Franzen, John Grisham, George R.R. Martin and Jodi Picoult, sued OpenAI over alleged copyright infringement in using their work to train ChatGPT. And last January, a group of artists filed a class-action lawsuit against Stability AI, Midjourney and DeviantArt over alleged copyright infringement by their AI image-generation tools.

When asked about the use of AI in art, Strada’s Hill told CNBC, “I think on the controversy level, all good artworks are controversial. I’ve never seen a good artwork that isn’t. Only the bad ones that lack importance or significance are the ones that nobody talks about.”

Hill added that across different industries, he views AI development as an industrial revolution of sorts.

“Historically speaking, the communities and networks that are the last to receive these tools are typically Black folks,” Hill said, adding, “This next industrial revolution, we can kind of be like the pioneers, making sure that marginalized communities are not the last to receive them. This exhibition, six of the artists are black; one is from Kyoto, Japan.”

Some of Hill’s artists echoed the sentiment about not being left behind, regarding access to AI tools or representation within them.

Curry Hackett, a transdisciplinary designer and public artist, told CNBC he uses AI to rethink how images can be created and sourced. His project for the exhibit builds on one of his public art projects, “Ugly Beauties,” in which he used Midjourney to manually collage images together for a 50-foot-long scene suspended in a Brooklyn plaza, “to speculate on Black relationships with nature and plants,” he said. For the Strada exhibit, that same work is suspended in the gallery, and Hackett used Sora to animate the still canvas scenes.

“I realize that there are environmental concerns and political concerns, there are ethical concerns, but I also think that there’s something real about opening pathways to create creative media,” Hackett said of AI. “And as a black artist, it’s not a given that our forms of media will show up in these models. So there’s a case to be made that underprioritized groups should actually be actively using these tools in imaginative ways.”

Hackett also said, “I could definitely understand, however, a lot of the concerns that a lot of folks in creative fields are feeling right now, because there are concerns that the models are being trained on data without consent… I think we’re just in a moment where we need to develop norms and best practices so that people are actually comfortable using these tools.”

Sophia Wilson, a photographer and visual artist, works primarily with film photography hand-printed in a color darkroom. She told CNBC she was already adept at Photoshop and other retouching software, and that’s how she thinks of AI tools like Sora.

“Nothing’s perfect and there are downsides to everything, but if I’m able to use it for my own gain as an artist… I look at it as more of a retouching tool or an editing tool that enhances my work, rather than something that I should be afraid of, because I just don’t want to be part of the crowd that gets left behind in history,” Wilson said.

For the Strada exhibit, Wilson documented Black women bodybuilders in New York, and she used Sora to animate some of her still images, such as a chandelier shifting in the wind. She also used OpenAI’s Voice Engine to read some of the transcribed interviews with the subjects.

“AI is reading the story as an audio part accompaniment,” Wilson said. “It sets everyone on an even playing ground. Black women get judged a lot for — women in general, but especially Black women — for their voices and different inflections… I wanted it to come from a uniform voice, where you can’t judge people based on their voices.”

Technology

Clout wars: Jensen Huang eclipses Elon Musk and Tim Cook in Washington

Published

3 hours ago

July 22, 2025

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Clout wars: Jensen Huang eclipses Elon Musk and Tim Cook in Washington

U.S. President Donald Trump (L) listens as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang speaks in the Cross Hall of the White House during an event on “Investing in America” on April 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Andrew Harnik | Getty Images

The China-U.S. trade war in the first Donald Trump administration saw Apple CEO Tim Cook go on a charm offensive with the president while maintaining strong relations with Beijing.

Apple avoided U.S. tariffs and continued to grow in China, while Cook earned the reputation as a skilled policy navigator and prominent American business envoy to Beijing.

But, in Trump 2.0, not only has Apple lost its crown to Nvidia as America’s most valuable company, several tech pundits say the AI darling’s charismatic leader, Jensen Huang, has left Cook far behind in political influence.

“Huang has become a global figure and taken on a new role politically due to his success in the AI revolution,” said Wedbush’s Dan Ives, adding that the importance of Nvidia’s AI chips has “vaulted him ahead of Cook.”

“He has found himself in a very strong position to navigate the political landscape … [as] there is only one chip in the world fueling the AI revolution, and that’s Nvidia’s,” Ives said.

The optics of Huang’s political ascendancy have never been stronger, as Nvidia last week announced during its CEO’s latest visit to Beijing that it expected to soon resume sales of its H20 AI chips to China.

Huang’s ‘historic’ week

The exports of the H20 chip to China had been restricted earlier this year — a move that Huang openly lobbied against.

“It was a historic win for Nvidia and Jensen … and I think it shows the increasing political influence that Huang’s having within the Trump administration,” Ives said. Huang had met with Trump in DC right before his China visit.

The H20 reversal has been linked to trade negotiations between the U.S. and China. However, several experts told CNBC that Huang’s lobbying played a large role in it.

The Nvidia CEO has met with Trump many times this year, including joining him on a trip to the Middle East in May, which resulted in a massive AI deal that will see the delivery of hundreds of thousands of Nvidia’s advanced AI chips to the United Arab Emirates.

The Emirates deal had been seen as a way for America to push its global tech leadership, solidifying its technology stack in a new market over potential rivals like China’s Huawei.

After the trip, Huang increasingly began making a case against U.S. chip restrictions, arguing that they would erode America’s tech leadership to the benefit of domestic Chinese players.

According to a report from the New York Times, this had also been a narrative Huang had been pushing to Trump and his officials behind the scenes.

Paul Triolo, senior vice president for China, and technology policy lead at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group, told CNBC that Huang’s arguments aligned with the thinking of influential White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks, further swaying the administration to lift restrictions on H20 chip exports.

“Sacks and Huang both argue that limiting exports of U.S. technology such as select and non-cutting-edge GPUs to China risks pushing Chinese companies to use domestic alternatives … At the end of the day, this argument likely carried the day on the H20 issue,” he said.

It’s unclear when or if Nvidia will restart production lines of the H20, but if Nvidia is simply able to sell existing stocks of H20s, it will still be a “significant revenue boost and beneficial to Nvidia in terms of retaining clients’ goodwill in China,” Triolo added. Nvidia said it took a $4.5 billion writedown on its unsold H20 inventory in May.

Huang said last week that every civil AI model should run on the U.S. technology stack, “encouraging nations worldwide to choose America,” as Nvidia announced resuming H20 sales soon.

Not Musk, not Cook

When Trump won his second presidential election in November, many had expected a different tech CEO to hold the most influence on the administration and to act as a bridge between the U.S. and China. But Tesla’s Elon Musk had a rather public break-up with Trump.

In November, experts told CNBC that Musk’s close ties to Trump and his business interests in China could help soften the president’s aggressive trade stance toward Beijing, while cautioning against putting too much stock into the Tesla CEO.

Meanwhile, under Trump’s second presidency, Apple’s Cook has seen some strong pushback from the administration.

In May, Trump expressed a “little problem with Tim Cook” over Apple manufacturing products in India, despite the iPhone maker’s commitment of a $500 billion investment in the U.S., announced in February.

In response to the latest trade tensions between China and the U.S., Apple has accelerated efforts to de-risk supply chains from China by moving more iPhone production to India.

Earlier this month, Trump adviser Peter Navarro also criticized Cook, saying he was not moving production out of China fast enough.

Apple and Cook were seen as the most influential company and CEO, respectively, in the first Trump administration, but now its Huang and Nvidia, said Ray Wang, CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. “Almost everything rides on Nvidia’s chips.”

Risks remain

According Triolo, while Huang has so far been able to “fairly deftly straddle both the U.S. government and China market” and “President Trump appears to be a big fan,” it remains unclear exactly where the administration will draw the line on chip restrictions.

“The goalposts here have been changed several times, causing significant and costly forced redesigns and booking capacity,” he said.

Despite Huang’s growing influence in the tech world and in the Trump administration, there is no guarantee it will remain that way, other experts said.

“For the moment, NVIDIA has gone from being the chief target of chip controls to chief influencer. The question is, how long will that moment last?” said Reva Goujon, director at Rhodium Group.

The U.S. is also currently carrying out an investigation on the semiconductor industry that could result in sector-wide tariffs, and once again put the Trump administration’s aims at odds with Nvidia’s business. While Nvidia has been moving more manufacturing to the U.S., most of it remains in Taiwan.

Cook may offer a lesson on how tricky it can be to operate a major technology business that views both China and the U.S. as key markets.

Technology

YouTube wipes out thousands of propaganda channels linked to China, Russia, others

Published

15 hours ago

July 21, 2025

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YouTube wipes out thousands of propaganda channels linked to China, Russia, others

Beata Zawrzel | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Google announced Monday the removal of nearly 11,000 YouTube channels and other accounts tied to state-linked propaganda campaigns from China, Russia and more in the second quarter.

The takedown included more than 7,700 YouTube channels linked to China.

These campaigns primarily shared content in Chinese and English that promoted the People’s Republic of China, supported President Xi Jinping and commented on U.S. foreign affairs.

Over 2,000 removed channels were linked to Russia. The content was in multiple languages that supported Russia and criticized Ukraine, NATO and the West.

Google, in May, removed 20 YouTube channels, 4 Ads accounts, and 1 Blogger blog linked to RT, the Russian state-controlled media outlet accused of paying prominent conservative influencers for social media content ahead of the 2024 election.

Tim Pool, Dave Rubin and Benny Johnson — all staunch supporters of President Donald Trump — made content for Tenent Media, the Tennessee company described in the indictment, according to NBC News.

New Astronomer CEO gives first statement since Coldplay kiss-cam scandal

Published

18 hours ago

July 21, 2025

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New Astronomer CEO gives first statement since Coldplay kiss-cam scandal

Chris Martin of Coldplay performs live at San Siro Stadium, Milan, Italy, in July 2017.

Mairo Cinquetti | NurPhoto | Getty Images

Astronomer‘s interim CEO said in his first public comment since unexpectedly taking over the role on Saturday that he hopes to move the tech startup past the viral moment that captured national attention last week.

Pete DeJoy was appointed to the top job due to the resignation of CEO Andy Byron, days after he was caught on video in an intimate moment with the company’s head of human resources at a Coldplay concert. Astronomer said over the weekend that it would begin a search for a new CEO.

“The events of the past few days have received a level of media attention that few companies — let alone startups in our small corner of the data and AI world — ever encounter,” DeJoy wrote in a LinkedIn post on Monday. “The spotlight has been unusual and surreal for our team and, while I would never have wished for it to happen like this, Astronomer is now a household name.”

Byron was shown on a big screen at the concert in Boston on Wednesday with his arms around Chief People Officer Kristin Cabot. Byron, who is married with children, immediately hid when the couple was shown on screen. Lead singer Chris Martin said, “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy.” A concert attendee’s video of the affair went viral.