Media
Bayesian Optimization for Controlled Image Editing via LLMs
Cai, Chengkun, Liu, Haoliang, Zhao, Xu, Jiang, Zhongyu, Zhang, Tianfang, Wu, Zongkai, Hwang, Jenq-Neng, Belongie, Serge, Li, Lei
In the rapidly evolving field of image generation, achieving precise control over generated content and maintaining semantic consistency remain significant limitations, particularly concerning grounding techniques and the necessity for model fine-tuning. To address these challenges, we propose BayesGenie, an off-the-shelf approach that integrates Large Language Models (LLMs) with Bayesian Optimization to facilitate precise and user-friendly image editing. Our method enables users to modify images through natural language descriptions without manual area marking, while preserving the original image's semantic integrity. Unlike existing techniques that require extensive pre-training or fine-tuning, our approach demonstrates remarkable adaptability across various LLMs through its model-agnostic design. BayesGenie employs an adapted Bayesian optimization strategy to automatically refine the inference process parameters, achieving high-precision image editing with minimal user intervention. Through extensive experiments across diverse scenarios, we demonstrate that our framework significantly outperforms existing methods in both editing accuracy and semantic preservation, as validated using different LLMs including Claude3 and GPT-4.
What Is That Talk About? A Video-to-Text Summarization Dataset for Scientific Presentations
Liu, Dongqi, Whitehouse, Chenxi, Yu, Xi, Mahon, Louis, Saxena, Rohit, Zhao, Zheng, Qiu, Yifu, Lapata, Mirella, Demberg, Vera
Transforming recorded videos into concise and accurate textual summaries is a growing challenge in multimodal learning. This paper introduces VISTA, a dataset specifically designed for video-to-text summarization in scientific domains. VISTA contains 18,599 recorded AI conference presentations paired with their corresponding paper abstracts. We benchmark the performance of state-of-the-art large models and apply a plan-based framework to better capture the structured nature of abstracts. Both human and automated evaluations confirm that explicit planning enhances summary quality and factual consistency. However, a considerable gap remains between models and human performance, highlighting the challenges of scientific video summarization.
FSPO: Few-Shot Preference Optimization of Synthetic Preference Data in LLMs Elicits Effective Personalization to Real Users
Singh, Anikait, Hsu, Sheryl, Hsu, Kyle, Mitchell, Eric, Ermon, Stefano, Hashimoto, Tatsunori, Sharma, Archit, Finn, Chelsea
Effective personalization of LLMs is critical for a broad range of user-interfacing applications such as virtual assistants and content curation. Inspired by the strong in-context learning capabilities of LLMs, we propose Few-Shot Preference Optimization (FSPO), which reframes reward modeling as a meta-learning problem. Under this framework, an LLM learns to quickly adapt to a user via a few labeled preferences from that user, constructing a personalized reward function for them. Additionally, since real-world preference data is scarce and challenging to collect at scale, we propose careful design choices to construct synthetic preference datasets for personalization, generating over 1M synthetic personalized preferences using publicly available LLMs. In particular, to successfully transfer from synthetic data to real users, we find it crucial for the data to exhibit both high diversity and coherent, self-consistent structure. We evaluate FSPO on personalized open-ended generation for up to 1,500 synthetic users across across three domains: movie reviews, pedagogical adaptation based on educational background, and general question answering, along with a controlled human study. Overall, FSPO achieves an 87% Alpaca Eval winrate on average in generating responses that are personalized to synthetic users and a 72% winrate with real human users in open-ended question answering.
British musicians release silent album to protest plans to let AI use their work
Gladstone A.I. co-founders and CEOs Edouard Harris and Jeremie Harris explain the major role that A.I will play in national security and warfare on'The Will Cain Show.' A new album called "Is This What We Want?" features a stellar list of more than 1,000 musicians -- and the sound of silence. With contributions from British artists including Kate Bush, Annie Lennox, Cat Stevens and Damon Albarn, the album was released Tuesday to protest proposed British changes to artificial intelligence laws that artists fear will erode their creative control. Critics of the idea fear that it will make it harder for artists to retain control of their work and will undermine Britain's creative industries. Elton John and Paul McCartney are among those who have spoken out against the plan.
UK creatives protest AI copyright law changes with silent album and campaign
Take Kate Bush, Annie Lennox and Ben Howard, who join over 1,000 musicians in releasing a protest album called Is This What We Want?. Tuesday, February 25 is the government's last day seeking views on the change. "The musicians on this album came together to protest this," reads the release statement. "The album consists of recordings of empty studios and performance spaces, representing the impact we expect the government's proposals would have on musicians' livelihoods." The album consists of 12 songs with their titles spelling out, "The British government must not legalise music theft to benefit AI companies." The record's profits go toward UK-based charity Help Musicians.
Kate Bush and Damon Albarn among 1,000 artists on silent AI protest album
Paul McCartney, Elton John, Abba's Björn Ulvaeus, the actor Julianne Moore and the authors Val McDermid and Richard Osman are among the celebrities who have called for protection of their work from unlicensed use by tech companies in recent months. The music-free album represents the impact on artists' livelihoods if the government pushes ahead with its plans, according to Ed Newton-Rex, the British composer and former AI executive behind the idea. "The government's proposal would hand the life's work of the country's musicians to AI companies, for free, letting those companies exploit musicians' work to outcompete them," he said. "It is a plan that would not only be disastrous for musicians, but that is totally unnecessary: the UK can be leaders in AI without throwing our world-leading creative industries under the bus." The plan includes "an opt-out" option – where creatives and companies can block their work from being used – that has been dismissed by critics as unfair and unworkable.
Which Contributions Deserve Credit? Perceptions of Attribution in Human-AI Co-Creation
He, Jessica, Houde, Stephanie, Weisz, Justin D.
AI systems powered by large language models can act as capable assistants for writing and editing. In these tasks, the AI system acts as a co-creative partner, making novel contributions to an artifact-under-creation alongside its human partner(s). One question that arises in these scenarios is the extent to which AI should be credited for its contributions. We examined knowledge workers' views of attribution through a survey study (N=155) and found that they assigned different levels of credit across different contribution types, amounts, and initiative. Compared to a human partner, we observed a consistent pattern in which AI was assigned less credit for equivalent contributions. Participants felt that disclosing AI involvement was important and used a variety of criteria to make attribution judgments, including the quality of contributions, personal values, and technology considerations. Our results motivate and inform new approaches for crediting AI contributions to co-created work.
Can Large Language Models Extract Customer Needs as well as Professional Analysts?
Timoshenko, Artem, Mao, Chengfeng, Hauser, John R.
Identifying customer needs (CNs) is important for product management, product development, and marketing. Applications rely on professional analysts interpreting textual data (e.g., interview transcripts, online reviews) to understand the nuances of customer experience and concisely formulate "jobs to be done." The task is cognitively complex and time-consuming. Current practice facilitates the process with keyword search and machine learning but relies on human judgment to formulate CNs. We examine whether Large Language Models (LLMs) can automatically extract CNs. Because evaluating CNs requires professional judgment, we partnered with a marketing consulting firm to conduct a blind study of CNs extracted by: (1) a foundational LLM with prompt engineering only (Base LLM), (2) an LLM fine-tuned with professionally identified CNs (SFT LLM), and (3) professional analysts. The SFT LLM performs as well as or better than professional analysts when extracting CNs. The extracted CNs are well-formulated, sufficiently specific to identify opportunities, and justified by source content (no hallucinations). The SFT LLM is efficient and provides more complete coverage of CNs. The Base LLM was not sufficiently accurate or specific. Organizations can rely on SFT LLMs to reduce manual effort, enhance the precision of CN articulation, and provide improved insight for innovation and marketing strategy.
Intent Tagging: Exploring Micro-Prompting Interactions for Supporting Granular Human-GenAI Co-Creation Workflows
Gmeiner, Frederic, Marquardt, Nicolai, Bentley, Michael, Romat, Hugo, Pahud, Michel, Brown, David, Roseway, Asta, Martelaro, Nikolas, Holstein, Kenneth, Hinckley, Ken, Riche, Nathalie
Despite Generative AI (GenAI) systems' potential for enhancing content creation, users often struggle to effectively integrate GenAI into their creative workflows. Core challenges include misalignment of AI-generated content with user intentions (intent elicitation and alignment), user uncertainty around how to best communicate their intents to the AI system (prompt formulation), and insufficient flexibility of AI systems to support diverse creative workflows (workflow flexibility). Motivated by these challenges, we created IntentTagger: a system for slide creation based on the notion of Intent Tags - small, atomic conceptual units that encapsulate user intent - for exploring granular and non-linear micro-prompting interactions for Human-GenAI co-creation workflows. Our user study with 12 participants provides insights into the value of flexibly expressing intent across varying levels of ambiguity, meta-intent elicitation, and the benefits and challenges of intent tag-driven workflows. We conclude by discussing the broader implications of our findings and design considerations for GenAI-supported content creation workflows.
AI Mismatches: Identifying Potential Algorithmic Harms Before AI Development
Saxena, Devansh, Jung, Ji-Youn, Forlizzi, Jodi, Holstein, Kenneth, Zimmerman, John
AI systems are often introduced with high expectations, yet many fail to deliver, resulting in unintended harm and missed opportunities for benefit. We frequently observe significant "AI Mismatches", where the system's actual performance falls short of what is needed to ensure safety and co-create value. These mismatches are particularly difficult to address once development is underway, highlighting the need for early-stage intervention. Navigating complex, multi-dimensional risk factors that contribute to AI Mismatches is a persistent challenge. To address it, we propose an AI Mismatch approach to anticipate and mitigate risks early on, focusing on the gap between realistic model performance and required task performance. Through an analysis of 774 AI cases, we extracted a set of critical factors, which informed the development of seven matrices that map the relationships between these factors and highlight high-risk areas. Through case studies, we demonstrate how our approach can help reduce risks in AI development.