The Common Thread newsletter ✨ 

We are thrilled to have had you, a member of our invite-only group of innovators, join us at the Living Lab over the last few months. Our Living Lab is dedicated to advancing  AI-driven creativity, sparking conversation, spurring debate, and building relationships among so many talented individuals.

Each conversation and every snippet of feedback you've shared has been invaluable. We thank you for joining us on this journey and invite you to continue this exciting exploration with us.

Here at FBRC.ai, our team is tirelessly crafting the foundation for a community at the cutting edge of creativity and narrative art. It's a journey we are on together, and it's only with your collaboration we can pioneer new methods and establish guidelines for the ethical and practical use of groundbreaking AI technologies.

We look forward to many more shared moments of innovation!

The Living Lab 🔬

The Living Lab is a sandbox for experimentation. Soon, we will start regular hackathons and AI Jam Sessions for non-technical and technical members alike. 

If you want to get more involved as a member or a “brain trust sponsor,” please complete this survey.

Recap: Multimodal Gen AI Hackathon 🧑‍🔬

For example, last weekend, we hosted our first multimodal hackathon with Hugging Face, Blockade Labs, ElevenLabs, and Pika Labs. We had over 200 registrations, 80 people participated, and 22 teams presented their projects. Six teams walked away with prizes! 

You can view the projects here.

There is a lot of energy and interest from our growing community for FBRC.ai to host these hackathons with local startups – FBRC.ai is also working to help companies such as Google and other tech leaders tap into the boundless energy and innovation we are cultivating. 

On the academic side, we have had intense interest from both USC and UCLA students and faculty. Hackathons are one way we are working to empower, inspire, and generate top talent here in LA.

News 🗞️

Things are moving quickly in the AI world! The SAG strike is officially over--but, the next 2.5 years are going to be important, as we figure out the practical implementations of the negotiated policies, before the Guild heads back into the room again. Part of what needs to be figured out: what do the systems of tracking virtual identity and authorship look like, and how can we automate the auditing to ensure compliance (ie. in cases like ScarJo’s)? 

Meanwhile, Youtube is trying to head off similar challenges: the platform released a suite of generative AI features as a part of their core product back in September (and just today previewed a robust suite of AI music tooling), but earlier this week, they also released a set of guidelines to go along with it. Both of these pieces of news point to the fact that despite acceleration on the tech side, the devil's in the details.

COMING SOON:  M&E AI Policy Counsel 🏠

In the coming weeks, FBRC.ai is launching a working group to tackle the many thorny issues AI surfaces in a neutral safe space to think deeply about the uses of AI within media and entertainment. We believe that AI will enhance, not overshadow, the storytelling process. As AI becomes more prevalent, it's crucial to balance technological efficiency and human creativity, ensuring neither is compromised. The AI Policy Council will examine ways to ensure that technology serves the story, not the other way around.

To best guide recommendations for AI integration, we propose creating a forum for dialogue between different sectors of the storytelling industry. As the context of story creation and consumption changes, this means not only understanding the needs of studios and writers/actors, but also aligning the industry's evolution with evolving audience demands. 

Examples of forum topics we will tackle:

• Investigate current AI applications within film and TV production

• Analyze potential benefits and pitfalls of AI applications

• Understand current and future legal implications

• Prototype emerging workflows

See you at the lab!

❤️ Team FBRC.ai 🏄‍♂️