product

How the South Korean aesthetic industry turned its beauty model into a global product

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In The era of filters, Collagen capsules and “glass” promisesbeauty has ceased to be local. It is no longer enough to go to the trusted aestheticist or continue A ten steps routine in front of the mirror. Today, to reach the ideal of globalized aesthetic perfection, many take a flight. And the most wanted destiny is not Paris or Beverly Hills, but Seoul. A booming industry. South Korea has become the epicenter of beauty tourism, a global trend that not only transforms faces, but also cultural imaginary and economic figures. In a report for The Timesmore than one million medical tourists traveled to South Korea in 2024, according to data from the Ministry of Health and Welfare. 68 % did so specifically to undergo aesthetic procedures, whether plastic surgery or dermatological treatments. And the sector does not stop growing. According to Grand View Researchthe South Korean aesthetic industry – valued at 2.4 billion dollars in 2024 – could exceed 6,300 million in 2030, promoted by international demand and advances in aesthetic technology. An experience “everything in one”. As They have detailed in The TimesGangnam district clinics-yes, the same PSY’s global hit-offer these types of experiences with packages that include 3D facial scanners, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, intravenous sera, microwave treatments to sculpt the face and even functional desserts such as pumpkin purés for post-treatment recovery. The British influencer and doctor Ewoma Ukeleghe shared in The Times Your experience: six treatments in one day, among them they rejure (An injection of salmon DNA) and Lifting wave. The promise of perfection. This boom is not accidental. As We already wrote in Xatakathe phenomenon feeds on multiple factors: the global impact of K-Pop and K-Drams, the Tiktok virality of products such as the Sheet Masks or the Korean tonic, and the rise of star ingredients such as collagen. Korean beauty not only offers visible results, but also an aspirational aesthetic wrapped in ritual, pop and science culture. However, there is also a dark side. As Dr. Christine Hall warns In The TimesIn South Korea there is an intense social pressure to maintain an impeccable image. “Presenting the best version of oneself is a sign of respect for others,” he explains. This logic, which may seem positive on the surface, encourages an extreme culture of perfectionism that, over time, can generate significant psychological impacts: from anxiety related to appearance to dependence on aesthetic treatments to sustain self -esteem. Unequal attention. Despite its international success, the system is not fully adapted to the foreign tourist. Although many clinics have personnel who speak English, others still depend on automatic translators such as Google Translate. In the Times report They tell the story of Ukeleghe, who reported how a nurse approached with an injection without explaining what it was; She, being a medical one, understood that it was a corticosteroid. But a patient without knowledge could have panicked. In addition, there is a real lack of attention to ethnic diversity. As experts in Byrdie point outNot all clinics have experience in working with skin tones other than Asia. This can lead to unexpected results, especially in laser or pigmentation treatments. The new Türkiye? The phenomenon reminds the boom of aesthetic surgeries in Türkiye or Colombia. In 2022, the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Armegoons reported a 35% increase in complications among British patients who traveled to Türkiye for procedures such as liposuctions or implants, According to The Times. On the other hand, in Colombia, procedures such as the “360 liposculpture” or the increase in buttocks achieved such popularity that they attracted tourism from whole countries, although they were also subject to research for deaths and bad praxis, As The New York Times reported. And South Korea is not exempt from risks. During his visit, Ukeleghe rejected sedation precisely for not being clear about the presence of an anesthetist in case of emergency. In social networks, a viral video circulated – then eliminated – in which an American woman denounced having lost vision in an eye after a complication with Juvenlook, one of the most popular treatments in Korea. Although the case was not officially verified, the event generated concern and debate. In addition, Dr. Hall warns of “factory” clinics that apply treatments with just minutes of previous evaluation, reducing costs at the expense of security. The pressure of not aging. The rise of collagen as a magical solution for youth is no stranger to this ecosystem. As we wrote in Xatakahas become a symbol of self -care, but also of aesthetic anxiety. Although some studies point to mild benefits in elasticity or joint health, many are funded by the brands themselves. Even so, marketing insists: hydrolyzed, vegetable collagen, peptides, exosomes … Everything is sold as the new elixir. But perhaps the problem is not in the ingredients, but in a society that penalizes any trace of the passage of time, especially in women. The female social and professional invisibility when aging is not a myth: it is documented. More, less scalpel. The next border of Korean beauty tourism is marked by artificial intelligence and extreme customization. According to Byrdietreatments created from genetic analysis, facial scans and aging prediction algorithms are expected. Beauty becomes not only attainable, but calculable. A symptom that goes further. In this context, it may be worth asking if the real challenge is not in technology, but in ideal. In other words, perhaps the collagen is not the elixir of youth, but the reflection of a society that seeks to stop the clock at all costs. Dr. Hall emphasizes that the aesthetic innovation in Korea advances at such a speed that some treatments that promise to be revolutionaries end up disappearing before consolidating or even arriving in Europe. What today is a trend, tomorrow can be obsolete. Meanwhile, the clinics are still full, the flights to Seoul are sold as an investment in oneself and the hashtags like #kbeeautytrip do not stop accumulating millions of visualizations. Perhaps the real challenge is not to soften … Read more

The Xiaomi CEO came out in a video showing a new product and sold out in minutes. It was a cat carrier

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To exhaust products in minutes is something that Xiaomi has enough experience. More than a decade ago already They got it with their mobiles And currently your star product are cars; They recently sold 200,000 units of Xiaomi Yu7 in three minutes. The last product that have exhausted just put it on sale has not been technological, but something much simpler: a cat carrier. Exhausted. They tell it in Following The Yuan. After the publication of A video in which we see Lei Jun showing the cat bagThe brand had to hang the exhausted poster in just a few minutes. The bag-transport cost only 199 yuan, which to the current exchange is about 23 euros, and was put on sale as an accessory for the company’s SUV, the company, the Xiaomi Yu7. Designed by cat owners. In the video, Lei Jun tells that the transport has been designed in collaboration with brand employees who have cats. It emphasizes that it has a spacious interior, ventilation grilles on both sides and a transparent window at the top. It also has a pocket on the side. The truth is that, although the design seems very careful, it has nothing super -revolutionary, it is a fairly normal cloth transport. It doesn’t matter, that has not prevented them from running out. For the car. As we said, Xiaomi has promoted this new cat bag as an accessory for Xiaomi Yu7. The car has the possibility of activating a “pet mode” which consists in the installation of a camera in the rearview mirror that allows us to control pets and also has a speaker so that we can talk to them. In addition, by activating this mode the air conditioning continues to work so that they do not pass heat (or cold, it depends). It is not the only brand that offers something like that, others like Tesla either Mercedes They also have it. Pets like target. We have more and more pets and also They occupy a more privileged position in families. China does not get rid. To the current rhythm, it is expected that by the end of the decade Pets exceed children under 4 years. Given this, more and more technological companies that enter the growing segment of pets. Xiaomi launched The connected feeder and source that we already analyzed in Xataka And we have seen other connected products such as this curious Cat quantifying bracelet. Image | Douyin / Amparo Babyloni In Xataka | Communicating with our cats has always been a complex task. A study has discovered the key: flashing

A garbage cube of 2,000 ago in Mallorca exposes the star product of Roman fast food: Zorzal’s skewer

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The concept of “fast food“It is currently strongly associated with that of”junk food”. It usually involves a not very healthy dish due to the presence of processed foods. But fast food really exists For centuries And the Romans, of course, have something to say there. And a recent study puts on the table an important fast food industry in Roman times to northern Mallorca. The star dish? Singing birds. “Popina”Alejandro Valenzuela is a researcher at the Mediterranean Institute of Advanced Studies in Mallorca and the author of a Published article in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology in which he details how in the Roman city of Pollentiahe Zorzal He was the protagonist of street food. Founded in the 123 AC to the north of Mallorca, Pollentia was an imperial city for the empire due to its location in the Mediterranean and its ports that They favored trade With the island. Today is an archaeological site in which we have a curious and small theater, but in its day it must have been a very busy city, a bustling shopping center in which food played an essential role. Inside the shops, were the ‘Popinae‘. These are small establishments where you could eat something fast and have a wine before following the way. They were focused on the lowest classes of Roman society. Searching in the garbage. This was something common in Roman cities due to their rhythm of life. In Herculano and Pompeii you can see some ruins in good condition of Themopoliumwhich are more like taverns for somewhat more wealthy people, but basically, in both cases there was a bar with amphorae to get some hot food, serve the client and that it followed on their way. An example of Thermopolium Valenzuela, what interested him was to know what was in those mud vessels, but to discover what the inhabitants who were walking for Pollentia had to look in their garbage. Near one of those popinas there was a septic tank of a few meters deep in which everything was thrown. Part of the garbage was ceramic, which has allowed to date the date of use of the well between 10 AC and 30 AD What else was there? A large number of mammalian bones, birds and fish. And the bones of the birds are the ones that caught their attention. Pollentia location in Mallorca in image A. in B, the location of the well. In C, the meters at which a greater concentration of bones were found Fast Food Bird. Although there were several species, such as chicken, the bones were mostly slut. They are small singing birds associated with the diet of the upper classes of the Roman empirebut here we are in a very different context: popular food at street level. The remains highlighted the skulls and sternons of those birds, which indicated one thing: the most juicy parts should be the ones that served in the popina. As with other birds, the extremities and the upper part of the chest are the most juicy, and Valenzuela estimates that removing that juicy meat allowed the food seller to cook those parts quickly to the grill or in oil to serve it quickly. It is a meat that hardly takes a few seconds to cook. The darker, the more presence of parts they found in the black well. Within the red perimeter, the most fleshy parts and their associated bones, little present in the well Seasonal. There is also the possibility that customers sit down and consume the zorzal in dishes, since ceramic remains could indicate that there was a dishes, but due to the size of the bite, Alejandro Comment In Live Science that, within the “context of street food, it is also plausible to serve in skewer to facilitate consumption.” In the end, except exceptions, food in ancient times was linked to seasons and the foal is a seasonal product that would have integrated well into a diet like that of Roman cities with others like domestic chicken either European rabbittwo species whose remains would also have served in this restaurant Fast food of Pollentia. But the most important thing is that this finding makes the belief that the Zorzal was a luxury bite for the Romans staggers because the Popinae They were not precisely the premises that most frequented the High classes. Images | Daniele Florio From Rome, Dion art In Xataka | The world ranking of ultraprocess food: the countries that most and less consume it worldwide

The Spaniards eat less and less fish. So the fishmongers are recycling their product … for pets

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In Spain we eat less fish. Much less. And we have more pets. Many more. Life fishmongers are not alien to one or another trend, so they have decided to do A movement quite logical: to make a place in the lucrative, promising and above all growing business of food for pets. After all, if they have already done the large supermarket chains, why can’t your neighborhood fish do? The logic is simple: that the place where you buy fish for you, for your children, couple and other family is also the place where you buy it for your hairy. What happened? That Fedepescathe Spanish Federation that represents businesses dedicated to the sale of fishing products, has just released an original campaign. Original and expected. Monday, during an act held in MadridThe organization presented a campaign to encourage its clients not to take home food for them or their family. He wants them to do it also for their pets. In fact, slogan cannot be clearer: “In the fish market there is also food for your hairy compi!” Fedepesca campaign poster. “For the whole family”. The strategy is well cooked. If the fishmongers are reliable businesses in which to acquire fresh, seafood and frozen fish, why were they also going to be to buy pet packaged foods that fish has as “protagonist ingredient”? Fedepesca itself remember which is something that supermarkets have been doing and would allow traditional fishmongers to become points of sale for “the whole family.” “The initiative aims emphasize. According to EFEAGROthe Federation has begun to introduce packaging food for pets in Madrid by the hand of a wholesaler and there are associations of Seville and Catalonia interested in following their steps. In total Fedepesca brings together near 6.2000 businesses. Reinvent or die. The movement is curious, but not surprising. Although Spain is a country with thousands of kilometers Of coast and a gastronomy linked to the sea, the fishmongers are finding that we eat less and less fish. The Last data The government shows that between April 2024 and last March the consumption of marine products fell 2.7%, a percentage that rises to 4.3% if we speak only of fish. And it is not a timely drop. In 2003 the annual per capita consumption of products related to fishing touched the 27.8 kilosfact that in 2009 even reached touch the 30 kg. In 2023 that indicator had descended until 18.9 And last year he got off 18a negative trend that has no signs of changing in view of the balance of recent months. Given this scenario, fishmongers have opted for new business roads, such as home shipments and Sale of algae… or pet food. More pets. The panorama is very different if we talk about company animals. In fact there are calculations that show your census overcomes to children. Although The data They must be handled cautiously are demolving: a few months ago The country He made a survey Between veterinary schools and concluded that in Spain there are 9.3 million dogs and 1.6 million censored cats. In total 10.8 registered pets. Leaving aside that there are many other species that are used as company animals, the data far exceeds the number of minors registered by the INE. ANFAC, the association that brings together pet food manufacturers, assures That in Spain there are more than 30 million pets, of which about 9.3 are dogs and 5.8 felines. Differences can be explained because not all animals have chip. And an appetizing business. These figures translate into something else: business. More more pets is the market focused on its food and care. ANFAC calculates that the sales volume went from 561,305 tons in 2023 to 573,210 in 2024. And that reflects only the weight. The rise is greater if we talk about billing. Fortune Business INSGIGHT esteem That the world market for pet care reached 259,370 million dollars in 2024 and its forecasts are of clear growth. Their estimates pass through that this year the 273,420 million are already in the beginning of the next decade, the 428,000 million are rubbed. Images | Anusha Barwa (UNSPLASH), Grupo Eroski S.Coop (Flickr) and Fedepesca In Xataka | In Spain there are less and fewer children, so the ice cream industry has launched for a more buoyant market: dogs

Before panic for US tariffs there are technological ones doing something uncommon: product collection

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The scenario of Commercial War between the United States and China is generating an uncomfortable emotion in some of the technological giants: absolute panic by what may happen in the coming months. The supply chain is intended to change, and manufacturers live an uncertainty that increases for weeks. Some of them have begun to move, from Apple to Nintendo, with a clear objective. The collection of as many product units is possible to avoid a greater impact. Standby, not a real pause. The current status of tariffs is that of a ninety -day pause. With the numbers that are right now on the table, the products imported from China to the United States suffer a 145%tariff. The global is set at 10%. They are numbers that are of little use since, since the beginning of the month, they have suffered a practically weekly dance. The situation at the time we write this piece is from standby, but could change completely in a matter of time. Apple, the first to move file. According to sources of Reuters, Apple fought 600 tons of iPhones in airplanes from India to the United States. A total of six commercial flights with a million and a half devices in total. A decision that would be accompanied by An increase in India production of 20%in order to mitigate the impact of tariffs. They are still ridiculous figures compared to the bulk global sales of the iPhone, which exceeds 100 million annually. Nintendo and Switch 2. The Gaming Estrella product in this first half of the year was the new Nintendo Switch 2a device that started from 469.99 euros, but for which price increases are not ruled out. Just a few days after its launch, Nintendo announced The postponement of reservations in the United States. According to sources of Bloombergthe Japanese company is sending thousands of consoles From Vietnam to the United States. The objective is simple: introduce in American territory as many consoles made of China as possible. Consumers begin to answer. The fear of future price increases is not affecting only manufacturers, consumers too They begin to answer. Sources of Bloomberg They ensure that in just a weekend the influx to the American app store has been similar to that of the Christmas campaign, one of the most powerful for Apple. “Sales of networks in North America grew very strong when benefiting from the awarded contracts and the accelerated investment of customers, partly reflecting the uncertainty of tariffs” Manufacturers such as Ericsson have triggered their sales in the first quarter in American territory by 64%, to some extent due to an acceleration in investments in networks infrastructure caused by uncertainty. It is not enough. The world is beginning to respond to the possible stage of a 145%tariff, but neither charting airplanes nor increase production in other countries will be sufficient. The industry is condemned to raise prices to survive, as well as to look for alternative routes for a production chain that has been optimizing for more than two decades. Image | Xataka and Pixabay In Xataka | If the question is “who will win if prices for tariffs up” the answer is: “Second -hand mobiles”

The startup of ia of one of Openai’s co -founders has no product. Even so it is valued at 32,000 million dollars

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Promises and expectations can use a fortune. It is the only thing that justifies that a startup of which nothing is known It is worth good 32,000 million dollars. That is more than eBay, Endesa or Hyundai, but with the difference that these companies have been working for years and even decades to achieve that figure. But we are in the AI ​​era, and here, we insist, promises and expectations are worth a lot. There is not much more than right now it seems to offer Safe Superintelligence (SSI), the startup of Ia co -founded by Ilya Sutskever, who was already confused of OpenAi and abandoned his ranks less than a year ago. According to Financial TimesSutskever has managed to lift a financing round of 2,000 million dollars for its startup, which makes the assessment of the same ascend to those mentioned 32,000 million dollars. The figure is also surprising because the economic moment we live, with tariffs threatening everything, precisely raises an important brake on investment. In September SSI He already lifted $ 1 billion and that made its valuation out of 5,000 million. That figure has multiplied by six, which seems to make it clear that they have something striking in hand. In An interview Last year Sutksver raised an AI with “nuclear safety”clarifying that “no matter how safe we ​​mean as when we talk about nuclear safety, as opposed to safe when we talk about” trust and security “”. In a later interview in September this engineer and entrepreneur indicated that he and his team had “identified a new mountain to climb and that it is something different from what I previously worked on.” Sources close to SSI have indicated that the company works in very special ways to develop and climb AI models. If true The milestone would certainly be intriguingespecially now that it is criticized that climbing – more gpus and more data to train AI models— It no longer provides such striking improvements. Be that as it may, the former OpenAi employees are apparently very well after having left the company. We have another example in Look Muratiwhich has also launched a call startup Thinking Machines Lab. He is also working to raise an important investment round … and also does it without having any product to show. So are these times. Image | OpenAI In Xataka | There are too many AI models. That raises a true death sentence for Anthropic and Claude

In the war cameras vs lidar, Tesla has a lot to learn from an unexpected product: the Chinese aspiring robot

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Light detection and ranging. Or, what is the same, detection and measurement of light. These are the words behind Lidar. This technology uses light pulses to map the environment and discover each and every corner of a stay or an open space almost in real time, as well as to recreate 3D environments with enormous precision. To understand how a lidar radar works, I recommend watching Mark Rober’s video in which it tells the differences between a car equipped with this system and its tesla, which exclusively uses cameras to detect the obstacles that you can find along its path. Beyond the controversy arising in relation to the tests that Rober does, the video explains well Why Lidar is such a complete system. In a simple way, the system takes advantage of the speed of light to emit infrared pulses. These bounce in the object in question and the system calculates how far that object is using the time that the pulse of light has taken to go and return. As light pulses have a very small size and, as we said, it takes advantage of that very high speed of light transmission, can map the objects almost in real time. In recent days, after Mark Rober’s video, the controversy of whether it is better to use an LIDAR or one system that exclusively use cameras and recreations by software is better or worse to guarantee the best behavior in terms of autonomous driving. A controversy that has left people trying launch your tesla against a wall With a road painted in the purest shyesty style. And it is a long time since it made it clear that I would bet everything on the use of cameras for manage your driving aid systems Or, in the future, completely autonomous driving with the robotaxis that wants to put in the streets. At the time, home vacuum robots also lived this moment of indecision. And along the way, Irobot who was the leading market leader has ended up giving millionaire losses and has seen how Chinese manufacturers have eaten much of the market. The secret of the latter: they use lidar instead of trusting everything to the cameras. What can you learn from a vacuum cleaner “We have substantial doubts”, with these words Irobot owners responded to the question of whether they could move forward with their operations. My partner Javier Pastor explained A few months ago when Amazon raised the purchase of Irobot in 2022 (which fell into regulatory terms) The company had a value of 1.2 billion dollars. In the third quarter of 2024, the calculation was about 200 million dollars. Shortly after, The situation has not improved a lot. In 2024, Irobot lost more than 145 million dollars. However, they had reduced their losses by 52%. The company faced a perfect storm. After spending the worst of pandemic, spending on home robots and other products (such as computers) They collapsed. That coincided with the launch of new Chinese products that were faster and faster than Irobot’s: they used the lidar sensor. This system is ideal for improving the capacities of a vacuum robot. It detects better obstacles, mapping the house more precisely and that translates into faster and more effective work. The result is especially good if it is combined with the cameras and artificial intelligence systems to discover smaller obstacles that can go unnoticed or create confusion. In recent years, that has been the trend of the market in cleaning the home. The combination of this system with a more attractive price He has triggered the sales of Chinese aspiring robots, to the detriment of an Irobot that accumulated more than 60% market share. The comparison with Tesla and the electricity car market is evident. The latter are using Lidar sensors in their cars and offer a product equal to or better than Europeans and Elon Musk’s for a fraction of their price. He Xiaomi Su7 and its wide reception He is being a good example of this. Tesla has long since defends that Lidar are not necessary to improve autonomous driving systems but studies say that, as in the case of vacuum robots, the best performance is signed When both technologies are combinedLidar and cameras. In the case of Xiaomi, the videos shown from How your total autonomous driving system operates They are impressive, with very human behavior and managing the smallest spaces very well. This is possible because, among other things, A lidar is better when calculating distances And suffer less when the light falls. Neither does the risk of the camera be dazzled, At least not intentionallygenerating Ghostly brakes. So far, everything indicates that Tesla does not seem willing to return to anything other than the “All Chamber” To save costs. At the moment it has worked but you have to demonstrate that it is as effective as more advanced systems. And there is also the largest electric car market in the world. In China, where foreigners are suffering from the local product, Tesla is hitting a good batacazo in 2025. Photo | Tesla and Irobot In Xataka | “It’s like living millions of lives”: Tesla trusts their own drivers to advance Waymo and Cruise and shoot their value

Taking product photos is an odyssey. Dreamshot has an AI to make it much easier

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I don’t know if anyone has, has had or knows someone who Have an online storebut if so, a big hug. Mounting a store is not precisely easy and much less when your products have to look. If you sell, say, sweatshirts, the only way to teach how they look is photographing a model that has been put. And each model is a world: they have an eye color, a hair, skin color, etc. You have to take into account locations, make content for networks, in short. It is a really complex and, of course, an issue that can solve. That is what he proposes Dreamshota generative artificial intelligence tool Made in Spain who won the hackaton of AI2030 (event that Xataka was Media Partner) And that we will know today better. And attention, because perhaps it can be useful to some Xatakero who wants to undertake with his own fashion brand and does not know where to start. Fashion AI Image | Tamara Bellis How does a generative artificial intelligence work? Grosso (Very Grosso) Modeif we want an AI to learn to generate images of a horse you have to give a lot of images of a horse. Thousands, tens of thousands. If we do that with fashion images with different styles, funds, contexts, postures and models we will obtain an AI capable of generating images of models that integrate the elements we want. That is exactly what they did in Dreamshot, train a personalized model (Dreamshot v2) with More than 10,000 fashion images. Javier Jiménez, founder and CEO of the company, explains in conversation with Xataka that Dreamshot is based on Flux. Dreamshot is not a founding model as such, but a Fine Tunning Flux for which fashion images have been used both licensed and own. The first model, Dreamshot V1 Aka Lookbook is Open Source and can be used from Prompthero. Behind each product photo there are hours and hours of work and a huge investment | Image: Khaled Ghareeb Javier states that the photos are both own and ceded by the brands, ergo with permission. “We have not scrape anything from the Internet (…) It is an ethical training, we have all the rights of the photos we have trained with,” he says. How does it work? Although it does not completely eliminate the need to make a photo shoot, it does significantly reduce the amount of photos we have to do and the work and time invested. Because? Because if we want to squeeze the tool to the maximum we will have to upload photos of our productsideally varied photos, from different angles, with different perspectives and in different places. Minimum five. The thing is that once these photos have been made, the possibilities are huge. Dreamshot interface | Image: Xataka On the left the reference image of the green jacket. To the right, the result generated by the AI ​​using the prompt “60 Years Old Man Wearing Bottle Green Overshirt. He is in A Forest Full of Trees During Sunny Day” | Image: Xataka Great here to better appreciate the detail | Image: Xataka Once we have the photos, we can upload them to Dreamshot and ask the AI ​​to generate images of said product in other contexts or in models that do not exist. Or take stock photos that in another context would require mounting a complete set. It is a way to reuse photos to infinity. You don’t have to take photos of the product again, but ask the AI ​​to generate them for us. On the left the original image, on the right the one generated with the changing the model for a person with dark skin, with beard and dark green eyes | Image: Xataka Another option that works surprisingly well is that of change models. If we have a photo of a light skin model and light eyes and we want one of a model with dark skin and dark eyes, in another context two models should be counted. With Dreamshot we just have to upload the photo and ask the AI ​​to change it by entering a prompt. The result is quite striking, although a trained eye will quickly distinguish that the image is generated with AI. However, things as they are, the substitution of faces is spectacular. On the left the original image, on the right the generated with the changing the model for a blonde woman with blue eyes | Image: Xataka So is the Background changesomething that in normal conditions would mean displacements and time. This, more than for the store, it is interesting to use it to generate content for social networks. If we have a timeless garment or accessory, we may be interested that the networks in networks go in tune with the season of the year, for example. Well, it will be enough for us to select the photo of our model in the mountain and ask you to put it in the city, on the beach, in a forest or in front of the Roman Colosseum. On the left the original image, on the right the generated with the bottom of the Roman Colosseum | Image: Xataka It should be noted that Dreamshot divides the photo into three parts: model, clothing and background. We can change any of all three, but not alter the image itself. It is not possible to take the photo of a person and undress her. We could change the shirt or change the model, but not wear a photo of a dress dressed and undress or put it in swimsuit or interior. It is a dangerous matter, but Dreamshot has covered himself well and with success in this sense. Why Dreamshot? How does this idea arise? Javier Jiménez tells us that his first company It was a jewelry ecommerce“I was 10 years and every month we had photo sessions and there were thousands of euros, a month of preparation for each photo shoot … Then … Read more

The most viral success of AI is at the same time a symptom of its problems as a daily product

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The AI ​​had ceased to surprise us. And then the “ghiblation” of images and the Internet arrived He went crazy. In recent days we have lived a fever for converting all kinds of images –And even videos– To imitate the style of Miyazaki teacher and the mythical creations of his Studio Ghibli. The phenomenon has served to make AI at least for a few days again. And that is precisely the problem. Saturated from AI. The appearance of Chatgpt in November 2022 has unleashed an explosion of AI, but after the initial earthquake things have relaxed. Although there have been notable advances, we have “accustomed” to AI, and technology seems relegated to the background for most users. As my partner Javier Lacort said in his reflection of a few days ago, we have seen ourselves immersed in “an universe of impenetrable jargon that was moving the conversation about AI from the initial astonishment to arid technicism.” AI lives from “magical” moments. We saw it with Deepseek A few months ago, and we see it again with the Studio Ghibli style images. Until those “magical” moments occur, the AI ​​does not just set among the general public. There is certainly a moderate use among the population and there are also niches that use it intensively –The program of programmersfor example – but people lack something crucial: an App. What do you use AI? The current options are undoubtedly striking in the creative field and also as assistance for professional tasks, but for now the chatbots have not infiltrated our lives as they did for example internet search engines. They solved a more pressing problem – finding what one was looking for on the Internet – but for the moment AI does not have just replaced them and is not used massively. Looking for an AI that is a google for daily use. The search engine revolution is probably one of the inevitable conquests of the future for AI. We are seeing it with perplexity And the search engines that OpenAi so much Like Google itself They are offering users. These platforms will not totally move to the traditional search engine, but one thing is evident: every time we look more with Chatgpt ” – or any other chatbot – and the growth of that trend seems unstoppable. At the moment Gartner’s cycle of expectations is very well reflected the AI ​​phenomenon. It seems that we have reached the peak of oversized expectations, and we now fall into disappointment avism. Source: Wikimedia. Beware of disappointment abyss. The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) published these days these days A study conducted by 24 researchers from AI. It included a section entitled “Perception of the AI ​​VS reality”, and in it there was talk of the well -known cycle of expectations of Gartner. The consultant itself estimated that expectations and Hype For the generative AI had already exceeded its highest peak. AI is not so much (for the moment). 79% of the experts surveyed in that study indicated that the current public perception of AI capacities do not correspond to the Reality of research and development in this field. In fact, 90% claimed that this is conditioning the investigation, and of that figure 74% revealed that the areas in which they are being investigated are areas where there are still many expectations. So we are not going to get to the AGI. The most important companies in this area have a common goal: to achieve a AGIthe Holy Grail of Artificial Intelligence. However, these same experts do not have too much hope that we will develop it. 76% of the 475 respondents indicated how to climb (more data, more GPUS to train models) will not be enough to reach an AGI. We need a different approach, and those experts advocate prioritizing issues such as security, ethical governance and a gradual and more responsible innovation instead of this apparent frantic career that does not think about the consequences. Waiting for the next Bombazo of the AI. The fever for “ghibliization” seems to have relaxed significantly and surely in a few days or weeks it is blurred as a striking option more than one AI that excites us to pull – before the Grok 3 censorship imagesfor example – but do not conquer permanently. At the moment it seems that this will continue to be the norm, and now we are waiting for that next pull and perhaps that Killer App that can mark a turning point in the adoption of AI. OpenAI and his rivals need Hype. Meanwhile one thing is evident: what companies sell us (“we are close to the AGI” or “with AI you can do everything Better and faster“) is away from reality. They sell expectations and Hype. TOI remove the best example is OpenAi, which needs that message to continue raising Gigantic investment rounds that allow you to continue burning money As if there were no tomorrow. In Xataka | “In a year or two code editors will not exist”: four programmers explain the Vibe Coding revolution

How to scan a product and check with these apps if it is European and what country comes from

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Let’s tell you How to scan a product to know if it is European or what concrete country is coming. You can also know the relations that this country has with Spain, the description of the product, and if it is a foreigner you can even know the European alternatives. Due to the geopolitical context, many initiatives of this nature are emerging. In this case it is Several mobile applications They analyze the barcode or the product logo, and they tell you if they are European. We will tell you both the main apps to do this and the way to use them. Apps to know if a product is European Let’s start with a small list with Some applications for scanning products and know if they are European or not. At the moment, there is no multiplatform unified app, but we have several independent apps available for Android or iOS. BUY European for Android: A quite new app that analyzes the products for its barcode, and tells you the company to which they belong and the country they are. Is on Google Play. BUY European for iOS: It is not the same app as for Android, but does the same. You analyze the product barcode and tell you if they are European. It is in the App Store. Buyfromeu for Android and iOS: It allows you to know if a product is really made in Europe, and gives you alternatives. It also allows you to look for alternative for online services. Do not escape anything, you only use a search engine, and this is multiplatform. Is on Google Playand In the App Store. Buyeuropean for iOS: An app that does not analyze the barcode, but the face or cover of the product. Then look for that product and tells you its origin, and it is not European even gives you alternatives. It is in the App Store. How these apps are used In most cases, all you have to do is install the app and give permission to access the camera of your mobile. This permit is necessary to take photos of the barcode or the front of the product you want to analyze. Once you have done this, simply take a picture of the product or bar code, it depends on the app. Sometimes it is not even necessary to take the picture, you just have to point towards it. In any case, When reading the application, it will show you the product data And he will tell you if it is European or not. What this app does when detecting if the product is not European depends on each one, in some cases an alternative can be offered. What you can know with certainty is when one of these products is from some country on the continent. In Xataka Basics | 61 European alternatives to Google, X, Gmail, Chrome, Maps, Dropbox, Google Drive, WhatsApp and other popular services

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