Nearly half the world’s population is at risk of malaria. The World Health Organization estimates that the disease killed more than 400,000 people in 2019.

A startup called ZzappMalaria hopes to shrink these numbers by targetting the mosquitoes that transmit the infection.

The company’s tech focuses on larviciding, a method of treating the water bodies in which the insects breed.

In conventional operations, fieldworkers can easily miss some of the vast quantities of water they need to larvicide.

ZzappMalaria’s mobile app uses AI to make their work easier.

The system uses a neural network to extract locations of houses from satellite images, pinpointing where the affected populations live.

It then analyzes topography, radar data , and multispectral satellite imagery to create a heatmap of water body probabilities.

The app then allocates areas to workers and guides them in the field. It also uploads the data to a dashboard so managers can monitor operations in real-time.

ZzappMalaria CEO Arnon Houri-Yafin told TNW how it works in practice:

He said that even inexperienced workers who use the app can find over 90% of the water that they need to treat to eliminate the disease:

The company has worked with experts on the ground to develop the tech.

Dr Abebe Asale from ICIPE (the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology) said the solution has simplified the work:

ZzappMalaria is currently conducting an operation in Ghana that covers over 200,000 people. It’s also collaborating on an upcoming larviciding task in Zanzibar involving drones.

The company was recently picked as one of three finalists for the IBM Watson XPRIZE “AI for Good” challenge.

IfZzappMalaria wins the $2.5 million grand prize, it will use the funds to extend its operations worldwide.

This AI jacked Eminem’s flow to make a Zuckerberg diss track

Eminem has written plenty of diss tracks aimed at celebrities ranging from Donald Trump to Machine Gun Kelly . But what happens when an AI tries to write a song in the famous rapper‘s style.

Well, you can watch it in the video below. Creators at channel Calamity AI used a GPT-3 powered tool to write the lyrics to a Mark Zuckerberg diss song and spit it out as if it was Eminem himself . The lyrics don’t really feel like a rap song, rather a set of gibberish sentences spewed out by an AI, but we’ll let you judge that for yourself.

For instance, “ When you wake up, you’re like the man who invented toast. Yeah, you’re the computer, weeaboo!” and “I’ll call you Mark by the River, cause you’re a phony.” They make no sense at all, and that makes the song unintentionally funny at best.

To make this song, creators set “Mark Zuckerberg diss in the style of Eminem” as input into the Shortly Read tool. Then used Tactron 2 to emulate Eminem’s vocals. YouTube channel 30Hz made the synthesized video of the track .

While the AI certainly nails some aspects of an Eminem diss track, it’s writing kinda falls short. Personally, I wouldn’t bet on this AI winning any rap battles, but that’s just me.

This AI lets you generate new verses from your favorite rappers

If you’ve ever dreamed of making songs with Tupac or Jay-Z, an AI tool called Uberduck can take you close to fulfilling your fantasies.

Uberduck is one of a range of tools that lets you choose a celebrity voice and then enter text for them to speak. What sets it apart from the others is it can do a pretty impressive job of replicating a rapper’s flow.

You can synthesize speech into a “calm” or “intense” Tupac verse, for example, or try an Eminem “freestyle” verse or “pre- Eminem Show ” flow.

Uberduck’s creator says they started working on the system with the goal of creating an open-ended dialog agent:

The tool blew up on TikTok after a lawsuit forced the app to swap its text-to-speech voice for a different version. Many users were unimpressed by the replacement and made the switch to Uberduck.

They’ve gone on to use the tool in a range of creative ways, from adding Biggie verses to their own tracks to making Kanye West rap the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody .

Even Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda has tried it out:

If you’d rather have a conversation with your favorite MC — or force them to give you a shout-out — that’s also possible.

The synthesized voices are far from perfect, but with tweaks to the text — adding extra vowels, for instance, to extend a syllable — you can generate some pretty accurate imitations of your favorite rappers. I’m pretty proud of these Tupac bars I created:

To my ears, the voice is more convincing than the Faux-Pac from this classic Dave Chappelle skit:

The tool does, however, have some potential to be used for disinformation and defamation.

Uberduck’s terms attempt to allay these concerns. Users are prohibited from using the outputs for commercial purposes or the production of defamatory material. They must also clearly identify that their creations were generated by AI, and will be banned if they violate the rules. In addition, the tool’s inventor says they’ll remove voices from the site upon request.

Putting words into a replica of someone’s voice without their permission could also be viewed as disrespectful, but these feel more like impersonations than recreations.

HT — mrcomposition09

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