Uncovering ChatGPT Usage in Academic Papers Through Excess VocabularyFrequencies of PubMed abstracts containing certain words. Black lines show counterfactual extrapolationsfrom 2021–22 to 2023–24. The first six words are affected byChatGPT; the last three relate to major events that influencedscientific writing and are shown for comparison. (Credit: Kobak et al., 2024)
That students these days love to use ChatGPT for assistance with reports and other writing tasks is hardly a secret, but in academics it’s becoming ever more prevalent as well. This raises the question of whether ChatGPT-assisted academic writings can be distinguished somehow. According to [Dmitry Kobak] and colleagues this is the case, with a strong sign of ChatGPT use being the presence of a lot of flowery excess vocabulary in the text. As detailed in their prepublication paper, the frequency of certain style words is a remarkable change in the used vocabulary of the published works examined.
For their study they looked at over 14 million biomedical abstracts from 2010 to 2024 obtained via PubMed. These abstracts were then analyzed for word usage and frequency, which shows both natural increases in word frequency (e.g. from the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and Ebola outbreak), as well as massive spikes in excess vocabulary that coincide with the public availability of ChatGPT and similar LLM-based tools.
In total 774 unique excess words were annotated. Here ‘excess’ means ‘outside of the norm’, following the pattern of ‘excess mortality’ where mortality during one period noticeably deviates from patterns established during previous periods. In this regard the bump in words like respiratory are logical, but the surge in style words like intricate and notably would seem to be due to LLMs having a penchant for such flowery, overly dramatized language.
The researchers have made the analysis code available for those interested in giving it a try on another corpus. The main author also addressed the question of whether ChatGPT might be influencing people to write more like an LLM. At this point it’s still an open question of whether people would be more inclined to use ChatGPT-like vocabulary or actively seek to avoid sounding like an LLM.

2024 Business Card Challenge: NoiseCard Judges the Sound Around YouLet’s face it: even with the rise of the electric car, the world is a noisy place. And it seems like it has only gotten worse in recent years. But how can we easily quantify the noise around us and know whether it is considered an unhealthy decibel level?
That is where the NoiseCard comes in. This solar-powered solution can go anywhere from the regrettable open office plan to the busy street, thanks to a couple of 330 µF capacitors. It’s based on the low-power STM32G031J6 and uses a MEMS microphone to pick up sound from the back of the card, which the code is optimized for. Meanwhile, the LEDs on the front indicate the ambient noise level, ranging from a quiet 40 dB and under to an ear-splitting 105 dB or greater.
When it comes to building something the size of a business card, every component is under scrutiny for size and usefulness. So even the LEDs are optimized for brightness and low power consumption. Be sure to check it out in action after the break in various environments.

IK Multimedia Offers FREE Fender ’57 Custom Champ Amp Sim Combo
IK Multimedia is giving away the Fender ’57 Custom Champ amp sim combo to new AmpliTube 5 Custom Shop (CS) users until the end of June. AmpliTube 5 CS is a free virtual guitar rig platform for Mac and Windows. The Officially Certified ’57 Custom Champ sim is based on the 5-watt, single 8″ all-tube [...]
View post: IK Multimedia Offers FREE Fender ’57 Custom Champ Amp Sim Combo

Getting It Done: Last Week in D.I.Y. & Indie MusicLast week, our tips and advice for independent, do-it-yourselfers covered growing a fanbase, Marveille’s secret to millions of Spotify streams, top AI tools, and more.
The post Getting It Done: Last Week in D.I.Y. & Indie Music appeared first on Hypebot.

REWIND: New music industry’s week in reviewLast week was a busy week by any definition, and the music industry was no exception. Judges called out Live Nation, EDM was on the rise over rock, new names. Continue reading
The post REWIND: New music industry’s week in review appeared first on Hypebot.

Universal Music signs deal to train AI to make “ultra-high fidelity vocal models” of its artistsUniversal Music has inked a deal with artificial intelligence start-up SoundLabs to create “official ultra-high fidelity vocal models for artists using their own voice data for training while retaining control over ownership and giving them full artistic approval and control of the output”.

READ MORE: From Kraftwerk to AI – Berlin’s love affair with music technology

The deal means that singers on Universal’s roster can train AI models using their own voices and retain ownership of the results. They will also have full control over how they’re used. In theory, this could also mean they could record a new album without actually singing a single word themselves.
In a press release, Universal Music say: “It empowers artists and producers to explore bleeding-edge vocal transformations, including voice-to-voice, voice-to-instrument, speech-to-singing, language transposition, and a myriad of previously impossible vocal transformations. Together, UMG and SoundLabs are collaborating to allow UMG artists to create custom vocal models that will be available for their exclusive creative use cases, and not available to the general public.”
“It’s a tremendous honour to be working with the forward-thinking and creatively aligned Universal Music Group,” adds SoundLabs founder BT, who famously worked on the 1986 hit Blue Skies, featuring Tori Amos. “We believe the future of music creation is decidedly human.
“Artificial intelligence, when used ethically and trained consensually, has the Promethean ability to unlock unimaginable new creative insights, diminish friction in the creative process and democratise creativity for artists, fans, and creators of all stripes.
“We are designing tools not to replace human artists, but to amplify human creativity.”
Although the use of AI in music remains controversial, its use is accelerating fast; almost two-thirds of young creatives are embracing AI in their music making, according to a recent study.
The post Universal Music signs deal to train AI to make “ultra-high fidelity vocal models” of its artists appeared first on MusicTech.

UMG partners with SoundLabs to launch AI vocal plug-in MicDropUniversal Music Group and SoundLabs are launching MicDrop, a groundbreaking AI vocal plug-in. Find out how this new tool will change the way artists create music. via Celebrity Access SoundLabs,. Continue reading
The post UMG partners with SoundLabs to launch AI vocal plug-in MicDrop appeared first on Hypebot.

Omnisphere Specto from The Very Loud Indeed Co. The Very Loud Indeed Co.'s latest release comes loaded with 120 Omnisphere patches that offer a wealth of cinematic sounds.

The Very Loud Indeed Co. release Omnisphere Specto The Very Loud Indeed Co.'s latest release comes loaded with 120 Omnisphere patches that offer a wealth of cinematic sounds.

The Warped Tour of Summer Camps: Art-in-Action for KidsJoin Loyal to the Craft and Woodward for an unforgettable experience with their first-ever “Art-in-Action” Summer Camp from Sunday, July 28th to Saturday, August 3rd, 2024 at Woodward PA. This week-long experience offers campers vibrant programming with exclusive music performances, art and digital media workshops, and epic shred sessions.

For the first time ever, Woodward will host performances and meet-and-greets with rising bands in the pop-punk scene. The current lineup includes high-energy punk duo Raue and 13-year-old artist, drummer, and Emmy-nominated actor Recker, with more to be announced. 

Art-in-Action Camp, presented by Loyal to the Craft, is an experience designed for the bold and the creative that will spark limitless creativity with hands-on learning from legendary artists, musicians, and brands that define action sports. The goal is to help kids who are interested in the world of action sports find their passion. The camp will offer rich programming each day that is focused across four different genres: music, art, digital media, and sport.

Campers will have the chance to explore the brand new Artist Lounge, the ultimate hub for Art-in-Action campers and a chill zone for everyone to indulge in music, creative arts, and visual wonders. With a stage and state-of-the-art media lab, the Artist Lounge is the perfect hangout to unwind and dive into the creative essence of action sports.

"As a teenager, music, arts, and action sports were my greatest inspirations. I dedicated myself to the scene, following the Vans Warped Tour, setting up a booth to showcase my drum brand, and forging connections along the way. Now, being able to create an epic week bringing back that same type of community to the next generation of kids is truly a dream come true," says Mike Ciprari, Founder of Loyal to the Craft and SJC Drum. "My goal is for campers to build lifelong relationships and leave equipped with the tools, knowledge, and motivation to pursue their dreams relentlessly."

Booking for the “Art-in-Action” Camp is now open at: www.woodwardpa.com/art-in-action-camp The post The Warped Tour of Summer Camps: Art-in-Action for Kids first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Bitcoin price bouce will occur when ‘weak hands’ capitulate and hashrate recoversAnalysts say Bitcoin price will rally only after BTC miners capitulate and the network’s hashrate recovers.

The fight over Fisker’s assets is already heating upFisker is just a few days into its Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and the fight over its assets is already charged, with one lawyer claiming the startup has been liquidating assets “outside the court’s supervision.” At issue is the relationship between Fisker and its largest secured lender, Heights Capital Management, an affiliate of financial services company […]
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Tiny Tapeout 4: A PWM clone of Covox Speech ThingTiny Tapout is an interesting project, leveraging the power of cloud computing and collaborative purchasing to make the mysterious art of IC design more accessible for hardware hackers. [Yeo Kheng Meng] is one such hacker, and they have produced their very first custom IC for use with their retrocomputing efforts. As they lament, they left it a little late for the shuttle run submission deadline, so they came up with a very simple project with the equivalent behaviour of the Covox Speech Thing, which is just a basic R-2R ladder DAC hanging from a PC parallel port.
The computed gate-level routing of the ASIC layout
The plan was to capture an 8-bit input bus and compare it against a free-running counter. If the input value is larger than the counter, the output goes high; otherwise, it goes low. This produces a PWM waveform representing the input value. Following the digital output with an RC low-pass filter will generate an analogue representation. It’s all very simple stuff. A few details to contend with are specific to Tiny Tapout, such as taking note of the enable and global resets. These are passed down from the chip-level wrapper to indicate when your design has control of the physical IOs and is selected for operation. [Yeo] noticed that the GitHub post-synthesis simulation failed due to not taking note of the reset condition and initialising those pesky flip-flops.
After throwing the design down onto a Mimas A7 Artix 7 FPGA board for a quick test, data sent from a parallel port-connected PC popped out as a PWM waveform as expected, and some test audio could be played. Whilst it may be true that you don’t have to prototype on an FPGA, and some would argue that it’s a lot of extra effort for many cases, without a good quality graphical simulation and robust testbench, you’re practically working blind. And that’s not how working chips get made.
If you want to read into Tiny Tapeout some more, then we’ve a quick guide for that. Or, perhaps hear it direct from the team instead?

Ludacris Joined Urban One at Cannes on Influential Beach to Celebrate the Impact of Black Culture on JuneteenthIt was a full “Luda Day” hosted by Urban One on Juneteenth at Cannes, with 3x GRAMMY-winning global superstar Ludacris as he joined us for several events in celebration of Black culture. Urban One's CEO Alfred Liggins sat down with Ludacris for a special ONE-on-ONE conversation to discuss representation, Black excellence and history. As a key member of hip-hop that has uplifted the community for decades, Ludacris shared insights including that “we (Black consumers) have our ear to the streets. We ARE the culture…” Regarding being drivers of culture and its undeniable impact and influence even before the rest of the world catches on, he added, “we are the catalyst for change in our everyday lifestyles, and everything that we witness going on...”  Ludacris’ day with Urban One was a “full circle" one. During the conversation, he shared that he started his career as a DJ on Urban One-owned station 97.5 FM, now 107.9 FM. In reflecting, he said that “(Urban One) provided a platform for me to be authentically myself and from there I was able to evolve and grow and get signed and different things.” He added, “this is a full circle moment for me coming back and having a chat and being able to perform for the company that I started with.” 

That evening, Urban One hosted ONE VIP, an exclusive VIP reception, with Ludacris making a special appearance, followed by his pulling out all the stops to cap off the night with an extraordinary performance at our Urban One party on Influential Beach presented by Brand Innovators, where he took the stage for a one-hour set during the ONE Night happy hour which featured some of his chart-topping hits including “Yeah” and “All We Do Is Win,“ as well as a duet with Carmelo Anthony. DJ Trauma was the resident DJ for the evening, and Anthony Anderson, JB Smoove and other notable athletes, celebrities, and influencers stopped by to experience the fun! The post Ludacris Joined Urban One at Cannes on Influential Beach to Celebrate the Impact of Black Culture on Juneteenth first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

2024 Business Card Challenge: Integrated Game Card[Dan Schnur] has a simple strategy to ensure their business card stays on the client’s desk and doesn’t just get lobbed in a drawer: make it into a simple gaming platform. This entry into the 2024 Business Card Challenge is based around the tinyjoypad project, integrating an SSD1306 OLED display, joypad, and push button.
Powered by the superstar ATTiny85, the electronics are really not all that much, just a sprinkling of passives to support the display and the six switch inputs from the joystick and push button. Or at least, that’s how much we can glean from the PCB images, as the PCB design files are not provided in the project GitHub.
Leaving the heavy lifting of the software to the tinyjoypad project, the designer can concentrate on the actual job at hand and the reason the business card exists to stay at the forefront of the client’s mind. In the meantime, the card can be a useful distraction for those idle moments. A few such distractions include a tiny version of Missile Command (as shown above), tiny tris, and a very cut-down Q-bert.  Sadly, that last game isn’t quite the same without that distinctive sound.