Media magic, in just 279 lines of code
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Welcome to a midweek edition of Unmade.
Today: The technical story behind TimBot, our attempt to turn AI to publishers’ advantage.
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(Re)exploring TimBot
Tim Burrowes writes:
Nearly four months on from launching him, I’m starting to realise that TimBot is going to be a career milestone.
How we introduced TimBot:
We launched TimBot back in June, ahead of our first HumAIn conference on the impact of AI on the media and marketing industry.
Yesterday, our technical partner in creating TimBot, Nic Hodges, published a detailed piece on LinkedIn explaining how he brought TimBot to life.
The word “partner” doesn’t really do justice to what Nic and his generative AI consultancy Move37 brought to the party.
They took on a basic brief - an idea from myself and our HumAIn curator Cat McGinn to use the knowledge and insights published on Unmade and in my book Media Unmade to create an authoritative source of recent media history.
Given that the project was part of the learning process for curating HumAIn, the roadblocks and limitations were as important as the outcome.
So today, I recommend following the link through to Nic’s piece on LinkedIn.
It’s a wonderful explanation of not just the wonders and limitations of what OpenAI can do, but the human factor of the coding and prompt hacks needed to tame the system.
Most bizarrely, the need to reinforce to TimBot that I am not, in fact adman and author Nigel Marsh.
Nigel has been a guest on Unmade’s podcast, and I’ve been a guest on his. We’ve both published books and have relatively similar accents, so maybe the confusion is understandable.
This week’s piece from Nic, is a wonderful explanation of how to use the AI tools that are already available to create useful stuff.
But he also tackles the shortcomings - while TimBot is, basically, magical, he’s an unreliable wizard.
When the US is awake, the ChatGPT servers can slow down, which leaves TimBot apologising for being unable to help.
And hearing TimBot give his answer in my voice requires, as Nic says, the patience of being on a really laggy zoom call, and then some. The latency is such that I find myself reading the text, going to another tab, and then coming back a minute later to hear the audio version. That’s the nature of prototypes.
And the most extraordinary thing I learned reading Nic’s piece? It all took just 279 lines of code.
The Unmade Index continues its recovery
Seja Al Zaidi writes:
The Unmade Index’s trip below the 600-point floor has proved to be brief, with its recovery strengthening yesterday.
The Index rose another 2.14% yesterday, taking it back up to 616.5 points.
IVE Group, Southern Cross Austereo and Enero Group had a particularly good day, rising a respective 5.29%, 3.50% and 4.52% in share price. Ooh Media saw a rise of 3.37%. Nine lifted 2.55%, and Domain 2.08%.
The three stocks to fall were The Market Herald, ARN Media and Seven West Media - they dropped 1.89%, 1.73% and 1.67% respectively.
Time to leave you to your Wednesday.
The Unmade team is is Sydney today for this afternoon’s REmade - Retail Media Unmade conference. Hopefully we’ll see you there.
Unmade will be back tomorrow with an audio-led edition. I chatted last week to Russel Howcroft in the 3AW studio, as the results of the sixth ratings survey of the year arrived.
Have a great day.
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher - Unmade
tim@unmade.media