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Inaugural Saudi Festival of Creativity to be held in Riyadh

Inaugural Saudi Festival of Creativity to be held in Riyadh
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Updated 01 June 2023
Arab News
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Inaugural Saudi Festival of Creativity to be held in Riyadh

Inaugural Saudi Festival of Creativity to be held in Riyadh
  • Event to be hosted by Motivate Media Group, TRACCS
Updated 01 June 2023
Arab News
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DUBAI: UAE-based Motivate Media Group, and communications consultancy TRACCS — which started in and is headquartered in Saudi Arabia — have announced the launch of the inaugural Athar — Saudi Festival of Creativity, in Riyadh in November.

The festival aims to bring together the creative and marketing industries in Saudi Arabia to recognize and celebrate them.

Mohamed Al-Ayed, vice chairman of Athar Festival and CEO of TRACCS, said that the event would “enable and empower a new generation of creative-first Saudi marketers and inspire the sustainable development of the country.” 

The festival — which is being held over four days — will include a variety of training courses, roundtables, C-suite sessions, young talent competitions, and an awards ceremony.

It will also boast exclusive programs for women and executive marketers.

The awards will be presented to agencies, networks, and brands, and will be verified by Cannes Lions and Dubai Lynx.

Ian Fairservice, chairman of Athar Festival and managing partner and group editor-in-chief of Motivate Media Group, said: “The festival will be a dynamic and vibrant meeting place in Saudi Arabia where culture, creativity, talent, and technology will collide.

“It is a celebration of the power of creativity in an environment that inspires cultural exchange, collaborative innovation, tangible learning, and training and development.”
 

Topics: Saudi Festival of Creativity

French-Lebanese author Amin Maalouf appointed head of Académie Française language watchdog

French-Lebanese author Amin Maalouf appointed head of Académie Française language watchdog
Updated 29 September 2023
AFP
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French-Lebanese author Amin Maalouf appointed head of Académie Française language watchdog

French-Lebanese author Amin Maalouf appointed head of Académie Française language watchdog
  • Maalouf becomes the 33rd person to occupy the prestigious post of “perpetual secretary”
Updated 29 September 2023
AFP

PARIS: “The Immortals” have spoken: the 388-year-old Academie Francaise, custodian and promoter of the French language, has a new leader in the form of author Amin Maalouf.
The French-Lebanese writer, 74, becomes only the 33rd person to occupy the post of “perpetual secretary” since the body’s founding under King Louis XIII in 1635.
He takes over from Helene Carrere d’Encausse, who died last month having held the post since 1999.
She did not designate a clear successor but Maalouf, who won France’s most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, in 1993 for “The Rock of Tanios,” was considered the obvious choice due to his highly active engagement in the institution since being elected in 2011.
There was one other candidate, his close friend Jean-Christophe Rufin, though he only threw his hat in the ring at the last minute, fearing there was not enough of a democratic process, joking to one magazine this weekend that it was “like North Korea.”
The academy is charged with setting the rules of the language to ensure it remains “pure, eloquent and capable of dealing with the arts and sciences.”
Lately, it most often gains notice as the bulwark against the entry of English words into French usage.
Last year it railed against the common practice of using English-sounding terms in French ads and branding — such as train operator SNCF’s low-cost “Ouigo” (pronounced “we go“) service — or simple imports from English like “big data” and “drive-in.”
It became more assertive under Carrere d’Encausse, even threatening legal action against the government for including English translations on national identity cards.
There are currently 35 members of the Academy — known as “Immortals” in reference to their motto “A l’immortalite” (“To immortality“).
Past members include such luminaries as Montesquieu, Voltaire and Victor Hugo.
One of Maalouf’s priorities will be to complete its ninth dictionary, which the academy has been working on since 1986, and is reportedly close to completion.
After centuries of opposition, it agreed in 2019 to allow feminine versions of certain professions, including railway worker, member of parliament and doctor.
The first female member of the Academie, Marguerite Yourcenar, was only admitted in 1980 and there are currently six.
Novelist and essayist Maalouf started his career as a journalist, working as a foreign correspondent.
As well as “The Rock of Tanios,” his novels include “Leo Africanus” and “Samarkand.” Among his best known non-fiction is “The Crusades Through Arab Eyes.”

Topics: Amin Maalouf Academie Francaise France Lebanon

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Meta’s new AI assistant trained on public Facebook and Instagram posts

Meta’s new AI assistant trained on public Facebook and Instagram posts
Updated 29 September 2023
Reuters
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Meta’s new AI assistant trained on public Facebook and Instagram posts

Meta’s new AI assistant trained on public Facebook and Instagram posts
  • Meta said it did not use users’ private posts or messages in respect of privacy policy
  • Tech giants rely on large dataset which are often taken from the internet to train AI models
Updated 29 September 2023
Reuters

MENLO PARK: Meta Platforms used public Facebook and Instagram posts to train parts of its new Meta AI virtual assistant, but excluded private posts shared only with family and friends in an effort to respect consumers’ privacy, the company’s top policy executive told Reuters in an interview.
Meta also did not use private chats on its messaging services as training data for the model and took steps to filter private details from public datasets used for training, said Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg, speaking on the sidelines of the company’s annual Connect conference this week.
“We’ve tried to exclude datasets that have a heavy preponderance of personal information,” Clegg said, adding that the “vast majority” of the data used by Meta for training was publicly available.
He cited LinkedIn as an example of a website whose content Meta deliberately chose not to use because of privacy concerns.
Clegg’s comments come as tech companies including Meta, OpenAI and Alphabet’s Google have been criticized for using information scraped from the Internet without permission to train their AI models, which ingest massive amounts of data in order to summarize information and generate imagery.
The companies are weighing how to handle the private or copyrighted materials vacuumed up in that process that their AI systems may reproduce, while facing lawsuits from authors accusing them of infringing copyrights.
Meta AI was the most significant product among the company’s first consumer-facing AI tools unveiled by CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday at Meta’s annual products conference, Connect. This year’s event was dominated by talk of artificial intelligence, unlike past conferences which focused on augmented and virtual reality.
Meta made the assistant using a custom model based on the powerful Llama 2 large language model that the company released for public commercial use in July, as well as a new model called Emu that generates images in response to text prompts, it said.
The product will be able to generate text, audio and imagery and will have access to real-time information via a partnership with Microsoft’s Bing search engine.
The public Facebook and Instagram posts that were used to train Meta AI included both text and photos, Clegg said.
Those posts were used to train Emu for the image generation elements of the product, while the chat functions were based on Llama 2 with some publicly available and annotated datasets added, a Meta spokesperson told Reuters.
Interactions with Meta AI may also be used to improve the features going forward, the spokesperson said.
Clegg said Meta imposed safety restrictions on what content the Meta AI tool could generate, like a ban on the creation of photo-realistic images of public figures.
On copyrighted materials, Clegg said he was expecting a “fair amount of litigation” over the matter of “whether creative content is covered or not by existing fair use doctrine,” which permits the limited use of protected works for purposes such as commentary, research and parody.
“We think it is, but I strongly suspect that’s going to play out in litigation,” Clegg said.
Some companies with image-generation tools facilitate the reproduction of iconic characters like Mickey Mouse, while others have paid for the materials or deliberately avoided including them in training data.
OpenAI, for instance, signed a six-year deal with content provider Shutterstock this summer to use the company’s image, video and music libraries for training.
Asked whether Meta had taken any such steps to avoid the reproduction of copyrighted imagery, a Meta spokesperson pointed to new terms of service barring users from generating content that violates privacy and intellectual property rights.

Topics: Meta Facebook Instagram artificial intelligence (AI)

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Dubai’s Arab Media Forum wraps up with insights into AI-led future

Dubai’s Arab Media Forum wraps up with insights into AI-led future
Updated 27 September 2023
Arab News
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Dubai’s Arab Media Forum wraps up with insights into AI-led future

Dubai’s Arab Media Forum wraps up with insights into AI-led future
  • Forum had two key themes: impact of artificial intelligence and influence of film and drama
Updated 27 September 2023
Arab News

DUBAI: The 21st edition of the Arab Media Forum wrapped up in Dubai on Wednesday, with leading media figures, ministers, heads of local Arab and international media organizations, as well as intellectuals and writers coming together to discuss the future of the industry.  

The two-day forum had two key themes: the impact of artificial intelligence on the media, and the influence of film and drama as sources of soft power.  

Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammad Al-Maktoum highlighted the importance of culture in society, saying it is intertwined with creative economy, the basis for countries’ development.  

Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the UAE president, spoke of the importance of finding common ground in the region in order to coexist peacefully.  

”This pillar is stability. This stability is not just for the UAE but for the entire region as this cannot be achieved in isolation. There is a need to calm the region and not focus on disagreements. Confrontation leads to a high price for all parties. So, the first pillar is stability, and this is an established fact. The second pillar is geo-economic more than a geo-strategic. Economic growth is important,” he said.

Most of the attendees and panelists shared the view that AI can be beneficial in terms of solving problems in a cost-effective and timely manner. However, some journalists warned of its dangers in terms of spreading fake, unverified news, as well as its possible impact on job losses in the media sector.  

Bahraini Minister of Information, Ramzan Abdulla Al-Nuaimi, and H.E. Karam Gabr, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council for Media Regulation, discussed the differences between Arab media operations and their counterparts in West.

“Each country has a different set of laws, morals and culture; we Arabs have been stereotyped on how we handle our journalists and our media, but what the West fails to understand is that we live according to our values and not theirs,” Al-Nuaimi said.  

Both agreed there should be economic opportunities for the youth to express their creativity, and channel their opinions and frustrations in positive ways.  

Topics: Arab Media Forum

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Egyptian journalist warns of threat posed by AI to media sector

Egyptian journalist warns of threat posed by AI to media sector
Updated 27 September 2023
Nadia Al-Faour
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Egyptian journalist warns of threat posed by AI to media sector

Egyptian journalist warns of threat posed by AI to media sector
  • 'We now live in a fake news era; times have changed, so did copyright laws,' said Adib at the Arab media Forum
Updated 27 September 2023
Nadia Al-Faour

DUBAI: Egyptian businessman and journalist Imad Eddine Adib has issued an ominous warning about the potential threat posed by artificial intelligence to the media industry.

Speaking at the Arab Media Forum in Dubai, the self-confessed “crazy pessimist” predicted that the future for the sector looked neither promising nor safe.

The veteran writer told delegates at a session, titled “The Truth in the AI Era,” that his opinions were based on facts and data.

He said: “We can use technology to serve humanity, but we need to note that humanity also has a good and bad side.”

Reiterating the views of many speakers at the annual media industry gathering, Adib pointed out how AI could have major technological benefits for businesses, saving time and money. But he noted how tech had infiltrated the lives of most people.

“All those walking with smart phones in their pockets must be aware that they are being supervised, their privacies invaded, and there is no program or software you can get to defend or fight against this supervision.

“We now live in a fake news era; times have changed, so did copyright laws. You can now hear (Egyptian singer) Umm Kulthum singing a carnival song,” he added.

Adib highlighted an example of a deepfake video sent to him by friends that falsely claimed former US President Donald Trump had been given a new heart belonging to a Muslim man and had converted to Islam.

Addressing the session, Dr. Maitha Buhumaid, director of the Dubai Press Club, said: “There will be coordination and relationship between robots; given each serves a purpose they will be exchanging data to complete their missions. We need a ceiling on this.

“Imagine the disastrous outcome if let’s say mobsters or ISIS (Daesh) got their hands on robots. Imagine the infiltration of trade, numbers on the stock market, and economic well-being of countries. That’ll have disastrous implications. These are all possible scenarios for the future.”

Topics: Arab Media Forum Imad Eddine Adib

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Dubai Media launches new corporate identity at 21st Arab Media Forum

Dubai Media launches new corporate identity at 21st Arab Media Forum
Updated 27 September 2023
Arab News
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Dubai Media launches new corporate identity at 21st Arab Media Forum

Dubai Media launches new corporate identity at 21st Arab Media Forum
  • DMI aims to become the No. 1 media destination in the Middle East, says CEO Al-Mulla
Updated 27 September 2023
Arab News

LONDON: Dubai Media Inc. announced on Tuesday from Dubai the launch of its new corporate identity and strategy.

The announcement came on the sidelines of the 21st Arab Media Forum, during a dinner party held by DMI at Mina A’Salam Hotel to celebrate the strategy’s approval by Ahmed bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, second deputy ruler of Dubai and chairman of the Dubai Media Council.

DMI CEO Mohammed Al-Mulla said his company aimed to become the No. 1 media destination in the Middle East in the next few years, stressing the importance of the media economy.

DMI’s new vision aims to revolutionize the press sector, enhance Dubai’s role as a global economic hub and major gateway to world trade, promote Emirati culture, focus on local affairs, and cover developments in all sectors.

The new strategy includes the launch of several initiatives that will improve DMI’s position as a prominent Arab media brand and contribute to the development of Arab media.

These initiatives include the launch of the Dubai Media Academy; the Dubai Media Studios, a modern production company operating on a commercial basis; the Media Services Initiative, which will service other production companies; and the Arts Events Company.

DMI, the government of Dubai’s official media organization, signed on Monday an agreement with the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority to collaborate ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference, COP28, in accelerating sustainable development and contributing to achieving net zero.

Topics: Dubai Media Inc Arab Media Forum

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