Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news
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Meet 'Genies,' the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news | TechCrunch
"We plan on making Bitmoji obsolete," says Akash Nigam, CEO of Genies. Bragging about beating one of the world's top apps before his has even launched is emblematic of Nigam's and Genies' brash style. But with $15 million in funding at a valuation over $100 million, top investors like NEA and...
Did you think fidget spinners would be the most autistic thing to happen in 2017? Or maybe the great Szechuan sauce riots? Think again! A company that made an app with horrifying dead-eyed figures that reenact the news, lead by a 24 year old "CEO" who plans to "be the next Buzzfeed", is here to prove you wrong. No, I don't understand how this is supposed to make any sense, but anyway, gaze upon the glory of Genies, preferably with audio because it's horrible as well, and despair:
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@techcrunch said in the article:
“If, God forbid, Donald Trump bombs North Korea, you’ll see your Genie riding a nuke to North Korea,” says Nigam.
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@blek A poor imitation of these guys:
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@blek Fantastic. 10/10. A clone of Bitmoji, because somehow there's a market for that outside of Snapchat, except with all the cartoony charm replaced with Flash animation tier faces and the massive bloat of sending videos instead of images, after having downloaded them all in the first place. Can you say 'mobile data cap'?
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@pie_flavor said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
Can you say 'mobile data cap'?
After the Net Neutrality repeal your mobile service providers will have the freedom to offer you unlimited Genie data for only a small extra charge.
OH MY FUCKING GOD, THIS WAS THE PLAN ALL ALONG, WASN'T IT?! WTF I HATE TRUMP NOW
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@adynathos After watching that video I wish Kim would actually start a nuclear war that would cleanse this unholy planet with the fire of a thousand suns.
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@blek said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
@pie_flavor said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
Can you say 'mobile data cap'?
After the Net Neutrality repeal your mobile service providers will have the freedom to offer you unlimited Genie data for only a small extra charge.
OH MY FUCKING GOD, THIS WAS THE PLAN ALL ALONG, WASN'T IT?! WTF I HATE TRUMP NOW
No, for a small extra charge, they'll suppress Genie!
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He claims that Genies’ art team and AI have built millions of pre-designed creative assets, and that the AI can actually piece them together to automatically create the animated scenes.
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@adynathos Excuse me? Automatically create animated scenes?
Either:- this company has an incredible AI and its limitless potential is being wasted on animated emoji stupidity
or
2. this company is full of shit and whoever did the interview needs to be fired and sent to the loony bin
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@pie_flavor Most likely it selects a combination of pre-set elements.
If all the blogs are reporting Elon Musk’s plan to colonize mars, then it will cobble together space, stars and Elon himself to show your Genie rocketing to the Red Planet alongside the headline.
As seen in the example:
christmas -> christmas background decoration
beer -> a friend puking beer into a funnel for you to drink
kids -> sandcastleSo it is going to be in most cases boring, but with a few spectacular/hilarious disasters when the algorithm generates something very inappropriate.
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@adynathos said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
@pie_flavor Most likely it selects a combination of pre-set elements.
If all the blogs are reporting Elon Musk’s plan to colonize mars, then it will cobble together space, stars and Elon himself to show your Genie rocketing to the Red Planet alongside the headline.
As seen in the example:
christmas -> christmas background decoration
beer -> a friend puking beer into a funnel for you to drink
kids -> sandcastleSo it is going to be in most cases boring, but with a few spectacular/hilarious disasters when the algorithm generates something very inappropriate.
No. I call bullshit on the whole thing. There is no way an algorithm can generate animations for you based on headlines.
And hey, look at those screenshots. Yep, they're going after Snapchat. That's... ambitious, given Bitmoji's tight integration.
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@pie_flavor I dunno, have you seen the video? They were all extremely simplistic, and that was an ad where they were trying to show off. In reality the "animations" might be stuff like one of the giant-headed gremlins running in place while moving their mouths and staring deep into your soul.
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@pie_flavor said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
No. I call bullshit on the whole thing. There is no way an algorithm can generate animations for you based on headlines.
No animation is being generated, they only claim it is selecting a combination of pre-made assets:
He claims that Genies’ art team and AI have built millions of pre-designed creative assets, and that the AI can actually piece them together to automatically create the animated scenes.
Millions is a lot, they are probably lying.
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@blek What happened to the music? Was it ... was it recorded that way?
It sounds like Alvin and the Chipmunks doing hip-hop while trying to push out the world's largest BM.
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As a milennial, I think this website is more trustworthy than other news sites (snapchat, facebook, gawker) and the emoji aspect definitely makes it more compelling
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@blakeyrat Hey, at least it fits the video perfectly.
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I just realized the creepy animation reminds me of those "Elsagate" videos that are apparently being spammed on youtube to target little kids and make ad money off them. I've only ever seen a little bit of one of them because why the hell would I watch that shit, but it gave me a similar vibe. Some people seem to think those are also created out of tons of premade assets they just swap around in set scenarios with little changes... anyway it's unbelievably creepy.
Elsagate: The disturbing YouTube trend that might be terrifying your children | Newshub
Violent, sexual and disturbing videos starring Spider-Man, Peppa Pig and Elsa have flooded the site.
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@blek said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
“We plan on making Bitmoji obsolete,”
THE WORLD WILL NEVER BE THE SAME
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@blek said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
Some people seem to think those are also created out of tons of premade assets they just swap around in set scenarios with little changes...
Whatever would make you think that?
Spammers are crafty. They'll do anything to scrape a few dollars of ad revenue. Creepy elsa videos probably pay more than FAKE PASSPORT CVV posts on this forum.
(at least one of the videos in that playlist is NSFW. See if you can find it)
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@anonymous234 said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
FAKE PASSPORT CVV posts on this forum.
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@pie_flavor said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
@anonymous234 said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
FAKE PASSPORT CVV posts on this forum.
Similar to this, but older
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@cabrito Ohhhh. I've seen those elsewhere. They also invade the SpongePowered forums, somehow believing that their efforts are best expended in a forum for a community mod for a game for children.
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@adynathos said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
He claims that Genies’ art team and AI have built millions of pre-designed creative assets, and that the AI can actually piece them together to automatically create the animated scenes.
Millions is a lot, they are probably lying.
Hey, 0.01 millions is also millions ;)
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Ah, that old classic nursery rhyme!
And then I found something that's literally worse than Hitler:
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What the fuck is a bitmoji?
Actually, I don't want to know
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@jaloopa said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
What the fuck is a bitmoji?
Remember that stupid flash thing where you could play dress-up to make your own South Park character and make an avatar for the forums or something? It's a million dollar business now.
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@blek said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
A company that made an app with horrifying dead-eyed figures that reenact the news
Given what fills the news lately, this could be an idea so bad it wraps back to awesome. Bombings in the Middle East, terrorist attacks, mass shootings, sexual assaults, all brought to you by cutesy uncanny valley 3D characters.
It's as if Microsoft took that bot that users trained to act like Hitler and called it a feature.
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@maciejasjmj said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
Remember that stupid flash thing where you could play dress-up to make your own South Park character and make an avatar for the forums or something?
No.
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@jaloopa said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
What the fuck is a bitmoji?
Actually, I don't want to know
You design and dress up a character, and then get to pick all manner of image templates which the character is in. Like a non-animated version of Genies, except Genies is actually the animated version of Bitmoji. It also doesn't use this horrendous art style, it's much more drawing-y. Its main foothold is with Snapchat, who have highly integrated it, such that you can access all your bitmojis from the image menu, including ones that combine your character and the person who you're talking to's character, as well as showing it for typing notifications, the default avatar, and a marker for your location on the Snap Map.
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@pie_flavor said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
the Snap Map
What the fuck is...
No, sod it. I was happier when I thought snapchat was still purely a thing for people to send nudes to each other
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@jaloopa The Snap Map is a real-time map of each of your map-enabled (disabled by default) Snapchat friends' reasonably precise locations.
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@anonymous234 said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
(at least one of the videos in that playlist is NSFW. See if you can find it)
Tony Stark has a nice rack.
I know, I know, Guacamole thread is
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@maciejasjmj said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
Remember that stupid flash thing where you could play dress-up to make your own South Park character and make an avatar for the forums or something? It's a million dollar business now.
The fuck? How? Like...American dollars? It might make sense for Venezuelan dollars.
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@pie_flavor said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
You design and dress up a character, and then get to pick all manner of image templates which the character is in. Like a non-animated version of Genies, except Genies is actually the animated version of Bitmoji. It also doesn't use this horrendous art style, it's much more drawing-y. Its main foothold is with Snapchat, who have highly integrated it, such that you can access all your bitmojis from the image menu, including ones that combine your character and the person who you're talking to's character, as well as showing it for typing notifications, the default avatar, and a marker for your location on the Snap Map.
I understand all of those words but in that order they look like a Markov bot gone tragically wrong.
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@blakeyrat said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
@blek What happened to the music? Was it ... was it recorded that way?
It sounds like Alvin and the Chipmunks doing hip-hop while trying to push out the world's largest BM.
I agree with blakey 100% on this. The video and especially its music is total shit.
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@anonymous234 said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
@blek said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
Some people seem to think those are also created out of tons of premade assets they just swap around in set scenarios with little changes...
Whatever would make you think that?
Spammers are crafty. They'll do anything to scrape a few dollars of ad revenue. Creepy elsa videos probably pay more than FAKE PASSPORT CVV posts on this forum.
(at least one of the videos in that playlist is NSFW. See if you can find it)
I just realized the first eight videos are literally the same animation, but with assets swapped...
Also, that singing though...
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@tsaukpaetra said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
I just realized ALL the
first eightvideos are literally the same animation, but with assets swapped...
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@tsaukpaetra said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
I just realized the first eight videos are literally the same animation, but with assets swapped...
Yeah that was kinda the point
There are 435 videos in that playlist and they are all generated from 3 or 4 templates as far as I can tell.
The titles and assets seem grabbed from some kid's toy database... except for a few videos that are just absurd and seem to have been made as a sort of intentional self-parody to get "wtf" views. Like "5 little hitlers" or "5 Little BEDS Jumping On The Bed". And then there's the other playlists in the channel that follow the same pattern.
Here's the NSFW one btw. I assume it was unintentional because they wouldn't want to risk getting their channel deleted for that.
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@adynathos said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
@tsaukpaetra said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
I just realized ALL the
first eightvideos are literally the same animation, but with assets swapped...I didn't make it much further than that, and I tried to be as truthful as possible.
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@anonymous234 said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
Here's the NSFW one btw.
Oh that one is hilarious!
I mean, most things are anatomically incorrect, but this one....
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@maciejasjmj said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
It's as if Microsoft took that bot that users trained to act like Hitler and called it a feature.
No, what's missing here is a resurrection of Clippy. Though that could be in the works too.
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The fuck? How? Like...American dollars? It might make sense for Venezuelan dollars.
I think it's Zimbabwean dollars. So, about 2 cents.
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@tsaukpaetra said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
@anonymous234 said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
Here's the NSFW one btw.
Oh that one is hilarious!
I mean, most things are anatomically incorrect, but this one....
Edit: Comments on that vid:
Okayy, so it wasn't an oversight from the author...
Or maybe his reply was also automated.
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@pie_flavor said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
@cabrito Ohhhh. I've seen those elsewhere. They also invade the SpongePowered forums, somehow believing that their efforts are best expended in a forum for a community mod for a game for children.
We used to get a lot of the passport stuff back in the CS days.
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Just for shits and giggles, I'm going to try out the app. First notes: It's 3/5 on Play, which is impressive. If you search for 'Genies' on Google Play, it's the second result, after 'Genies & Gems - Jewel & Gem Matching Adventure'. It's also 745MB - holy shit, do they just bundle all of the content?
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Holy shit, this interface is awful. The ring picker is insanely hard to control, and literally everything vibrates (hey dipshit, you know that setting you're supposed to read? the one that controls whether menus and such vibrate on touch? I turned it OFF!) A color wheel is fine, but this? Pure ridiculousness.
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Excuse me?
Approved? What the fuck do you need to "approve" in a barely customizable avatar? And you required my phone number, you required my contacts, now you specifically require my IG? Piss off.
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Haha, an app that basically dangles enough carrots in front of your face to get you to give it ALL your social media, then you sell the data.
"Your avatar's face is ready, but to get his voice your friends need to vote on it. Enter your Twitter handle." "Your avatar's voice is picked, but what hat will he wear? Enter your Facebook ID to see." "Your avatar has a hat, but do you want him to own a surfboard or motorcycle? Enter your LinkedIn." "Your avatar is a cool surfer dude, what beach music will he play? Enter your ireport.cnn.com login" etc.
(There's no actual app.)
(Also I like making run of ireport, undoubtedly the dumbest attempt at a social media platform in history.)
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Nintendo had this solved 10 years ago. They should just license Miis to other companies.
https://aff5fa4925746bf9c161-fb36f18ca122a30f6899af8eef8fa39b.ssl.cf5.rackcdn.com/images/Miis.17345b15.9afde10b.pngOK, they're not very "lifelike", but why would you even care about that?
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@anonymous234 said in Meet ‘Genies,’ the lifelike personalized avatars that reenact news:
they're not very "lifelike"
Neither is the freakshow we're talking about...
