Kory Mathewson

how to spend 10 minutes laughing with friends tonight: 1. open Talk Generator (freshly rebuilt and back alive thanks to @thomas_wint) 2. type the dumbest topic combo you can think of 3. hand someone the laptop and make them present all 7 slides with a straight face I just tested it on three prompts and got: - "Feudal Fiefs: Raccoon Economics, Parallel Parking, and Cheese" by Dr. Arthur Procyon (Slide 2 compares the medieval manor system to urban raccoon trash-can territories in rainbow 1997 WordArt) - "Sourdough, Mars, and Geese: My Life in Three Bites" by Rye Sourdough, Chief Fermentation Philosopher & Goose Whisperer - "Why I Joined a Penguin Cult" on a classroom chalkboard ("Slide 5: Two Truths and a Waddle") Shoutout to @thomas_wint for keeping this weird corner of creative AI alive for 8 years and making it funnier than ever.

10 years ago computer vision was "can this convnet tell a chihuahua from a blueberry muffin at 64x64" now we get mad if a video model can't render a raccoon in a tuxedo parallel parking a 1997 Honda Civic in the rain while its reflection in the puddle obeys Snell's law and honestly we're right to be mad

I'm looking for a Student Researcher (BS/MS or PhD) to join me at @GoogleDeepMind Montreal! We're working to get the best generative AI into the hands of the best creative people and pushing models past current frontiers for media & entertainment. Links & how to apply 👇

I live in @Montreal and work on artificial intelligence. So, this story sits right in my backyard on Mount Royal. Get this --- at the bottom of the mountain in 1949, @mcgillu psychologist Donald Hebb proposed a learning rule behind modern neural networks ("cells that fire together, wire together"), then ran secret sensory-deprivation studies for Canada's military... Four hundred meters up Peel Street, inside a Victorian stone mansion called Ravenscrag, Dr. Ewen Cameron read Hebb's results and tried to wipe psychiatric patients' minds clean and rebuild them with under-pillow tape loops, funded by both the CIA (MKUltra Subproject 68... yea, for real) and Ottawa. I've been writing lately about why artists and Canadian stories need to be part of how we build with AI, and I wanted to see if I could make a short piece of local history .... So, here's my first attempt at directing a ~5-min historical microdrama using @GoogleDeepMind Gemini 4 Argon and agentic tools in @antigravity ... Over 12 versions, - I ran subagent film and sound critics - generated dozens of archival motion shots with Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash - cast a weathered narrator and 1949 sleep-record voices on Gemini 3.8 TTS - wrote a Python 48 kHz stereo foley mixer so Peel Street church bells, Ampex tape splices, and under-pillow ghost loops landed cleanly ducked under the narrator's breath pauses... Twelve iterations and 300 seconds of generated video later, the total Gemini API spend was about $35... I present... RAVENSCRAG

generating real human laughter remains AGI-hard when 80% comes from spontaneous conversation? why does most AI humor research focus on written jokes? it was an honour and privilege to publish alongside long time creative collaborators @Boydbranch, Gunter Lösel ( at @zhdk), @PiotrImprov, and @thomas_wint!

I’m still amazed at what Google's Gemini 4 Argon can do... ive not done much game dev, but it's been so fun and easy to build a simple, low-key game Pop The Balloon 🎈 and shaping it around real player feedback. Link to play + join the Android beta below 👇