Blurred lines: "Photoshopped" is about to get a whole new meaning

5/28/23 8:00PM

Wings and lassos‍

‍Adobe is the latest company to jump on the AI bandwagon, announcing last week that it's integrating the technology into its editing software Photoshop. The new tool will work similarly to other generative AI technologies, such as Midjourney and DALL-E, allowing users to quickly create, extend or edit images with simple prompts. Examples demonstrated included replacing a cowboy's lasso with strands of spaghetti, adding wings to a jumping dog, and more mundane edits like extending images or replacing backgrounds.

Integrating AI into its products makes a lot of sense for Adobe — the company’s share price is up 14% since the news — turning what could have been an existential threat into another feature of its flagship design software. Those tools will also have to stay fresh. Adobe’s business is now overwhelmingly subscriptions, rather than one-off sales, a shift that means more predictable revenue for Adobe, but also pressure to keep delivering product updates in a fast-moving industry. Last year the company splurged $20bn buying startup Figma (a deal that’s still being held up by UK regulators), this time the company seems more comfortable building its latest features in house.

‍Can’t trust your eyes

‍With Photoshop embracing AI, discussions will intensify about the risks posed by AI-generated fake images, like one of the Pentagon from last week. Interestingly, Adobe is including a free tool that will encode AI generated images with invisible digital signatures to separate the organic from the algorithmic. The company hasn't addressed concerns around job losses quite so convincingly, however — merely describing the tool as a “co-pilot” rather than a replacement for human designers.

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Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

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Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5