Optical braille recognition is technology to capture and process images of braille characters into natural language characters. It is used to convert braille documents for people who cannot read them into text, and for preservation and reproduction of the documents. == History == In 1984, a group of researchers at the Delft University of Technology designed a braille reading tablet, in which a reading head with photosensitive cells was moved along set of rulers to capture braille text line-by-line. In 1988, a group of French researchers at the Lille University of Science and Technology developed an algorithm, called Lectobraille, which converted braille documents into plain text. The system photographed the braille text with a low-resolution CCD camera, and used spatial filtering techniques, median filtering, erosion, and dilation to extract the braille. The braille characters were then converted to natural language using adaptive recognition. The Lectobraille technique had an error rate of 1%, and took an average processing time of seven seconds per line. In 1993, a group of researchers from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven developed a system to recognize braille that had been scanned with a commercially available scanner. The system, however, was unable to handle deformities in the braille grid, so well-formed braille documents were required. In 1999, a group at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University implemented an optical braille recognition technique using edge detection to translate braille into English or Chinese text. In 2001, Murray and Dais created a handheld recognition system, that scanned small sections of a document at once. Because of the small area scanned at once, grid deformation was less of an issue, and a simpler, more efficient algorithm was employed. In 2003, Morgavi and Morando designed a system to recognize braille characters using artificial neural networks. This system was noted for its ability to handle image degradation more successfully than other approaches. == Challenges == Many of the challenges to successfully processing braille text arise from the nature of braille documents. Braille is generally printed on solid-color paper, with no ink to produce contrast between the raised characters and the background paper. However, imperfections in the page can appear in a scan or image of the page. Many documents are printed inter-point, meaning they are double-sided. As such, the depressions of the braille of one side appear interlaid with the protruding braille of the other side. == Techniques == Some optical braille recognition techniques attempt to use oblique lighting and a camera to reveal the shadows of the depressions and protrusions of the braille. Others make use of commercially available document scanners.
Percept (artificial intelligence)
A percept is the input that an intelligent agent is perceiving at any given moment. It is essentially the same concept as a percept in psychology, except that it is being perceived not by the brain but by the agent. A percept is detected by a sensor, often a camera, processed accordingly, and acted upon by an actuator. Each percept is added to a "percept sequence", which is a complete history of each percept ever detected. The agent's action at any instant point may depend on the entire percept sequence up to that particular instant point. An intelligent agent chooses how to act not only based on the current percept, but the percept sequence. The next action is chosen by the agent function, which maps every percept to an action. For example, if a camera were to record a gesture, the agent would process the percepts, calculate the corresponding spatial vectors, examine its percept history, and use the agent program (the application of the agent function) to act accordingly. == Examples == Examples of percepts include inputs from touch sensors, cameras, infrared sensors, sonar, microphones, mice, and keyboards. A percept can also be a higher-level feature of the data, such as lines, depth, objects, faces, or gestures.
History of RISC OS
RISC OS, the computer operating system developed by Acorn Computers for their ARM-based Acorn Archimedes range, was originally released in 1987 as Arthur 0.20, and soon followed by Arthur 0.30, and Arthur 1.20. The next version, Arthur 2, became RISC OS 2 and was completed in September 1988 and made available in April 1989. RISC OS 3 was released with the very earliest version of the A5000 in 1991 and contained a series of new features. By 1996 RISC OS had been shipped on over 500,000 systems. RISC OS 4 was released by RISCOS Ltd (ROL) in July 1999, based on the continued development of OS 3.8. ROL had in March 1999 licensed the rights to RISC OS from Element 14 (the renamed Acorn) and eventually from the new owner, Pace Micro Technology. According to the company, over 6,400 copies of OS 4.02 on ROM were sold up until production was ceased in mid-2005. RISC OS Select was launched in May 2001 by ROL. This is a subscription scheme allowing users access to the latest OS updates. These upgrades are released as soft-loadable ROM images, separate to the ROM where the boot OS is stored, and are loaded at boot time. Select 1 was shipped in May 2002, with Select 2 following in November 2002 and the final release of Select 3 in June 2004. ROL released the ROM based OS 4.39 the same month, dubbed RISC OS Adjust as a play on the RISC OS GUI convention of calling the three mouse buttons 'Select', 'Menu' and 'Adjust'. ROL sold its 500th Adjust ROM in early 2006. RISC OS 5 was released in October 2002 on Castle Technology's Acorn clone Iyonix PC. OS 5 is a separate evolution based upon the NCOS work done by Pace for set-top boxes. In October 2006, Castle announced a source sharing license plan for elements of OS 5. This Shared Source Initiative (SSI) is managed by RISC OS Open Ltd (ROOL). RISC OS 5 has since been released under a fully free and open source Apache 2.0 license, while the older no longer maintained RISC OS 6 has not. RISC OS Six was also announced in October 2006 by ROL. This is the next generation of their stream of the operating system. The first product to be launched under the name was the continuation of the Select scheme, Select 4. A beta-version of OS 6, Preview 1 (Select 4i1), was available in 2007 as a free download to all subscribers to the Select scheme, while in April 2009 the final release of Select 5 was shipped. The latest release of RISC OS from ROL is Select 6i1, shipped in December 2009. == Arthur == The OS was designed in the United Kingdom by Acorn for the 32-bit ARM based Acorn Archimedes, and released in its first version in 1987, as the Arthur operating system. The first public release of the OS was Arthur 1.20 in June 1987. It was bundled with a desktop graphical user interface (GUI), which mostly comprises assembly language software modules, and the Desktop module itself being written in BBC BASIC. It features a colour-scheme typically described as "technicolor". The graphical desktop runs on top of a command-line driven operating system which owes much to Acorn's earlier MOS operating system for its BBC Micro range of 8-bit microcomputers. Arthur, as originally conceived, was intended to deliver similar functionality to the operating system for the BBC Master series of computers, MOS, as a reaction to the fact that a more advanced operating system research project (ARX) would not be ready in time for the Archimedes. The Arthur project team, led by Paul Fellows, was given just five months to develop it entirely from the ground up—with the directive "just make it like the BBC micro". It was intended as a stop-gap until the operating system which Acorn had under development (ARX) could be completed. However, the latter was delayed time and again, and was eventually dropped when it became apparent that the Arthur development could be extended to have a window manager and full desktop environment. Also, it was small enough to run on the first 512K machines with only a floppy disc, whereas ARX required 4 megabytes and a hard drive. The OS development was carried out using a prototype ARM-based system connected to a BBC computer, before moving onto the prototype Acorn Archimedes the A500. Arthur was not a multitasking operating system, but offered support for adding application-level cooperative multitasking. No other version of the operating system was released externally, but internally the development of the desktop and window management continued, with the addition of a cooperative multitasking system, implemented by Neil Raine, which used the memory management hardware to swap-out one task, and bring in another between call-and-return from the Wimp_Poll call that applications were obliged to make to get messages under the desktop. Reminiscent of a similar technique employed by MultiFinder on the Apple Macintosh, this transformed a single-application-at-a-time system into one that could operate a full multi-tasking desktop. This transformation took place at version 1.6 though it was not made public until released, with the name change from Arthur to RISC OS, as version 2.0. Most software made for Arthur 1.2 can be run under RISC OS 2 and later because, underneath the desktop, the original Arthur OS core, API interfaces and modular structures remain as the heart of all versions. (A few titles will not work, however, because they used undocumented features, side effects or in a few cases APIs that became deprecated). In 2011, Business Insider listed Arthur as one of ten "operating systems that time forgot". == RISC OS 2 == RISC OS was a rapid development of Arthur 1.2 after the failure of the ARX project. Given growing dissatisfaction with various bugs and limitations with Arthur, testing of what was then known as Arthur 2 was apparently ongoing during 1988 with selected software houses. At this stage, Computer Concepts, who had been prolific developers for the BBC Micro and who had begun software development for the Archimedes, had already initiated a rival operating system project, Impulse, to support their own applications (including the desktop publishing application that would eventually become Impression), stating that Arthur did not meet the "hundreds of requirements" involved including "true multi-tasking". Such an operating system was to be offered free of charge with the planned application packages, but with the release of RISC OS and Computer Concepts acknowledging that RISC OS "overcomes the old problems with Arthur", the applications were to be able to run under either RISC OS or Impulse. Impression was eventually released as a RISC OS application. Ultimately, Arthur 2 was renamed to RISC OS, and was first sold as RISC OS 2.00 in April 1989. The operating system implements co-operative multitasking with some limitations but is not multi-threaded. It uses the ADFS file system for both floppy and hard disc access. It ran from a 512 KB set of ROMs. The WIMP interface offers all the standard features and fixes many of the bugs that had hindered Arthur. It lacks virtual memory and extensive memory protection (applications are protected from each other, but many functions have to be implemented as 'modules' which have full access to the memory). At the time of release, the main advantage of the OS was its ROM; it booted very quickly and while it was easy to crash, it was impossible to permanently break the OS from software. Its high performance was due to much of the system being written in ARM assembly language. The OS was designed with users in mind, rather than OS designers. It is organised as a relatively small kernel which defines a standard software interface to which extension modules are required to conform. Much of the system's functionality is implemented in modules coded in the ROM, though these can be supplanted by more evolved versions loaded into RAM. Among the kernel facilities are a general mechanism, named the callback handler, which allows a supervisor module to perform process multiplexing. This facility is used by a module forming part of the standard editor program to provide a terminal emulator window for console applications. The same approach made it possible for advanced users to implement modules giving RISC OS the ability to do pre-emptive multitasking. A slightly updated version, RISC OS 2.01, was released later to support the ARM3 processor, larger memory capacities, and the VGA and SVGA modes provided by the Acorn Archimedes 540 and Acorn R225/R260. == RISC OS 3 == RISC OS 3 introduced a number of new features, including multitasking Filer operations, applications and fonts in ROM, no limit on number of open windows, ability to move windows off screen, safe shutdown, the Pinboard, grouping of icon bar icons, up to 128 tasks, native ability to read MS-DOS format discs and use named hard discs. Improved configuration was also included, by way of multiple windows to change the settings. RISC OS 3.00 was released with the very earliest version of the A5000 in 1991; it is almo
Deplatforming
Deplatforming, also known as no-platforming, is a boycott on an individual or group by removing the platforms used to share their information or ideas. The term is commonly associated with social media. == History == === Deplatforming of invited speakers === In the United States, the banning of speakers on university campuses dates back to the 1940s. This was carried out by the policies of the universities themselves. The University of California had a policy known as the Speaker Ban, codified in university regulations under President Robert Gordon Sproul, that mostly, but not exclusively, targeted communists. One rule stated that "the University assumed the right to prevent exploitation of its prestige by unqualified persons or by those who would use it as a platform for propaganda." This rule was used in 1951 to block Max Shachtman, a socialist, from speaking at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1947, former U.S. Vice President Henry A. Wallace was banned from speaking at UCLA because of his views on U.S. Cold War policy, and in 1961, Malcolm X was prohibited from speaking at Berkeley as a religious leader. Controversial speakers invited to appear on college campuses have faced deplatforming attempts to disinvite them or to otherwise prevent them from speaking. The British National Union of Students established its No Platform policy as early as 1973. In the mid-1980s, visits by South African ambassador Glenn Babb to Canadian college campuses faced opposition from students opposed to apartheid. In the United States, recent examples include the March 2017 disruption by protestors of a public speech at Middlebury College by political scientist Charles Murray. In February 2018, students at the University of Central Oklahoma rescinded a speaking invitation to creationist Ken Ham, after pressure from an LGBT student group. In March 2018, a "small group of protesters" at Lewis & Clark Law School attempted to stop a speech by visiting lecturer Christina Hoff Sommers. In the 2019 film No Safe Spaces, Adam Carolla and Dennis Prager documented their own disinvitation along with others. As of February 2020, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a speech advocacy group, documented 469 disinvitation or disruption attempts at American campuses since 2000, including both "unsuccessful disinvitation attempts" and "successful disinvitations"; the group defines the latter category as including three subcategories: formal disinvitation by the sponsor of the speaking engagement; the speaker's withdrawal "in the face of disinvitation demands"; and "heckler's vetoes" (situations when "students or faculty persistently disrupt or entirely prevent the speakers' ability to speak"). === Deplatforming in social media === Beginning in 2015, Reddit banned several communities on the site ("subreddits") for violating the site's anti-harassment policy. A 2017 study published in the journal Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, examining "the causal effects of the ban on both participating users and affected communities," found that "the ban served a number of useful purposes for Reddit" and that "Users participating in the banned subreddits either left the site or (for those who remained) dramatically reduced their hate speech usage. Communities that inherited the displaced activity of these users did not suffer from an increase in hate speech." In June 2020 and January 2021, Reddit also issued bans to pro-Trump communities over violations of the website's content and harassment policies. On May 2, 2019, Facebook and the Facebook-owned platform Instagram announced a ban of "dangerous individuals and organizations" including Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, Alex Jones and his organization InfoWars, Paul Joseph Watson, Laura Loomer, and Paul Nehlen. In the wake of the 2021 storming of the US Capitol, Twitter banned then-president Donald Trump, as well as 70,000 other accounts linked to the event and the far-right movement QAnon. Some studies have found that the deplatforming of extremists reduced their audience, although other research has found that some content creators became more toxic following deplatforming and migration to alt-tech platform. ==== Twitter ==== On November 18, 2022, Elon Musk, as newly appointed CEO of Twitter, reopened previously banned Twitter accounts of high-profile users, including Kathy Griffin, Jordan Peterson, and The Babylon Bee as part of the new Twitter policy. As Musk exclaimed, "New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach". ==== Alex Jones ==== On August 6, 2018, Facebook, Apple, YouTube and Spotify removed all content by Jones and InfoWars for policy violations. YouTube removed channels associated with InfoWars, including The Alex Jones Channel. On Facebook, four pages associated with InfoWars and Alex Jones were removed over repeated policy violations. Apple removed all podcasts associated with Jones from iTunes. On August 13, 2018, Vimeo removed all of Jones's videos because of "prohibitions on discriminatory and hateful content". Facebook cited instances of dehumanizing immigrants, Muslims and transgender people, as well as glorification of violence, as examples of hate speech. After InfoWars was banned from Facebook, Jones used another of his websites, NewsWars, to circumvent the ban. Jones's accounts were also removed from Pinterest, Mailchimp and LinkedIn. As of early August 2018, Jones retained active accounts on Instagram, Google+ and Twitter. In September, Jones was permanently banned from Twitter and Periscope after berating CNN reporter Oliver Darcy. On September 7, 2018, the InfoWars app was removed from the Apple App Store for "objectionable content". He was banned from using PayPal for business transactions, having violated the company's policies by expressing "hate or discriminatory intolerance against certain communities and religions." After Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter several previously banned accounts were reinstated including Donald Trump, Andrew Tate and Ye resulting in questioning if Alex Jones will be unbanned as well. However Musk denied that Alex Jones will be unbanned criticizing Jones as a person that "would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame". InfoWars remained available on Roku devices in January 2019, a year after the channel's removal from multiple streaming services. Roku indicated that they do not "curate or censor based on viewpoint," and that it had policies against content that is "unlawful, incited illegal activities, or violates third-party rights," but that InfoWars was not in violation of these policies. Following a social media backlash, Roku removed InfoWars and stated "After the InfoWars channel became available, we heard from concerned parties and have determined that the channel should be removed from our platform." In March 2019, YouTube terminated the Resistance News channel due to its reuploading of live streams from InfoWars. On May 1, 2019, Jones was barred from using both Facebook and Instagram. Jones briefly moved to Dlive, but was suspended in April 2019 for violating community guidelines. In March 2020, the InfoWars app was removed from the Google Play store due to claims of Jones disseminating COVID-19 misinformation. A Google spokesperson stated that "combating misinformation on the Play Store is a top priority for the team" and apps that violate Play policy by "distributing misleading or harmful information" are removed from the store. ==== Donald Trump ==== On January 6, 2021, in a joint session of the United States Congress, the counting of the votes of the Electoral College was interrupted by a breach of the United States Capitol chambers. The rioters were supporters of President Donald Trump who hoped to delay and overturn the President's loss in the 2020 election. The event resulted in five deaths and at least 400 people being charged with crimes. The certification of the electoral votes was only completed in the early morning hours of January 7, 2021. In the wake of several Tweets by President Trump on January 7, 2021 Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter all deplatformed Trump to some extent. Twitter deactivated his personal account, which the company said could possibly be used to promote further violence. Trump subsequently tweeted similar messages from the President's official US Government account @POTUS, which resulted in him being permanently banned on January 8. Twitter then announced that Trump's ban from their platform would be permanent. Trump planned to rejoin on social media through the use of a new platform by May or June 2021, according to Jason Miller on a Fox News broadcast. The same week Musk announced Twitter's new freedom of speech policy, he tweeted a poll to ask whether to bring back Trump into the platform. The poll ended with 51.8% in favor of unbanning Trump's account. Twitter has since reinstated Trump's Twitter accou
Digital studio
A digital studio provides both a technology-equipped space and technological/rhetorical support to students (commonly at a university) working individually or in groups on a variety of digital projects, such as designing a website, developing an electronic portfolio for a class, creating a blog, making edits, selecting images for a visual essay, or writing a script for a podcast. == History/theory == === Overview === Digital Studios are places with different names but similar objectives. They have risen in response to the need for resources dedicated to improving students' interactions with digital technologies for rhetorical ends. Digital Studios have often been theoretically and administratively linked to writing centers, which are sites where students can seek assistance with their text-based projects. The academic term that has been used for this kind of site (i.e. a writing center with a focus on digital and new media) is multiliteracy center. Besides having a multimodal focus, Digital Studios also make a departure from writing center model in allowing students the freedom to work in the Studio without one-on-one interaction with a writing tutor. === The rise of technology === ==== Computer literacy in popular culture ==== As early as 1983, computer literacy was being hailed in The New York Times as the "new goal in schools." As computer technology became more ubiquitous, and the World Wide Web became more popular and accessible, and as the teaching of computer skills became official US policy with the enactment of the "Technology Literacy Challenge" by the Clinton Administration in 1996, educators across disciplines began to investigate with renewed vigor the role of computer technology in curriculum as both a means and an end. ==== Scholarly interest in 'multiliteracies' ==== The same year that President Clinton initiated the "Technology Literacy Challenge", the New London Group (NLG) issued a call for scholars of literacy pedagogy to account for the burgeoning variety of text forms associated with information and multimedia technologies. This includes understanding and competent control of representational forms that are becoming increasingly significant in the overall communications environment, such as visual images and their relationship to the written word – for instance, visual design in desktop publishing or the interface of visual and linguistic meaning in multimedia. This account for new text forms, combined with a similar account for "increasingly globalized societies," is called 'multiliteracies' by the NLG. ==== Technological literacy in rhetoric and composition ==== Two years later, during the 1998 CCCC Chair's Address, Cynthia Selfe (who founded the peer-reviewed journal Computers and Composition in 1983) addressed professionals in the field of Rhetoric and Composition with an objective similar to that of the NLG, arguing that as a field, composition scholars had "paid technology issues precious little focused attention over the years." She called this lack of attention "dangerously shortsighted." What was needed, Selfe claimed, was for teachers to "pay attention" to "how technology is now inextricably linked with literacy and literacy education in this country." In a way, Selfe's call marked the beginning of a new scholarly interest in what Selfe called "critical technological literacy": Composition teachers, language arts teachers, and other literacy specialists need to recognize that the relevance of technology in the English studies disciplines is not simply a matter of helping students work effectively with communication software and hardware, but, rather, also a matter of helping them to understand and to be able to assess – to pay attention to – the social, economic, and pedagogical implications of new communication technologies and technological initiatives that affect their lives. Scholars who took up this call included Barbara Blakely Duffelmeyer, who conducted studies involving the incorporation of "critical computer literacy" (an adaptation of Selfe's term) into first-year composition. ==== Communications across media, inside and outside school ==== The years following Selfe's address saw more rapid advancements in mobile technologies, social media, and Web 2.0, creating even more new venues of composing for teachers to pay attention to. In her own CCCC Chair's Address in 2004, Kathleen Blake Yancey cited these new venues in her argument as a "new curriculum for the 21st century," one that would bring "together the writing outside of school and that of inside." Such a curriculum, she said: is located in a new vocabulary, a new set of practices, and a new set of outcomes; it will focus our research in new and provocative ways; it has as its goal the creation of thoughtful, informed, technologically adept writing publics. A professor at Clemson at the time of her speech, Yancey also argued for the creation of an undergraduate major in composition and rhetoric. She soon moved to Florida State University, where she helped to establish a new major in line with the one she argued for at CCCC called Editing, Writing, and Media (EWM). As teachers and administrators across the country looked to incorporate more digital technology into their curriculum, the need for spaces for digital composition and for support with the innumerable digital composing platforms became apparent. A Digital Studio is one such space. === Link with writing centers === With the need for support for students who would engage with digital writing and multimedia projects, professionals involved with work in writing centers began to draw comparisons between their traditional work — assisting students with alphabetic texts on the page — and a new kind of work: assisting students with their multimedia projects on the screen. John Trimbur predicted in 2000: My guess is that writing centers will more and more define themselves as multiliteracy centers. Many are already doing so – tutoring oral presentations, adding online tutorials, offering workshops in evaluating web sources, and being more conscious of document design. To my mind, new digital literacies will increasingly be incorporated into writing centers not just as sources of information or delivery systems for tutoring but as productive arts in their own right, and writing center work will, if anything, become more rhetorical in paying attention to the practices and effects of design in written and visual communication — more product-oriented and perhaps less like the composing conferences of the process movement. Later, just months before Yancey delivered her CCCC Chair's Address, Michael Pemberton, writing in the Writing Center Journal, asked: As we enter an era when electronic publishing and computer-mediated discourse are the norm, an era when new literary genres and new forms of communication emerge on, seemingly, a weekly basis, we must ask ourselves whether writing centers should continue to dwell exclusively in the linear, non-linked world of the printed page or whether they should plan to redefine themselves – and retrain themselves – to take residence in the emerging world of multimedia, hyperlinked, digital documents. To put it plainly, should we be preparing tutors to conference with students about hypertexts? Pemberton also surveyed (by his account) the forty-year history of how "writing centers [have] viewed new technologies," observing that "the relationship between writing centers and computer technology has been, overall, only a cordial one." Pemberton's article is evidence of the continuing discussion among writing center professionals about the need for support for students' digital creations, support which they saw as analogous to work in writing centers. In 2010, a collection edited by David Sheridan and James Inman, Multiliteracy Centers: Writing Center Work, New Media, and Multimodal Rhetoric, was published. Many of the chapters therein cite the above Trimbur and Pemberton quotes as they work to explain the exigence for the collection, the instances in which multiliteracy centers have been established (the founding of the Clemson Class of 1941 Studio for Student Communication is the subject of two chapters), and both theoretical and practical analyses of potential futures of such work. === 'Studio' vs. 'Center:' A break from the model === The conflation of digital studios and writing centers into multiliteracy centers is helpful in some respects, for example, administratively the two may be managed in similar ways and staffed by the same people. In other respects, it has been said that it is better to separate them into two distinct kinds of facilities. The very choice of naming a "writing center" or "digital studio" by either (or another) title, for instance, ought (according to some) to be informed by what kinds of student-activities are expected to take place there. A writing center is a place for individual students to seek help from individual writing
LTX (text-to-video model)
LTX is a family of open source artificial intelligence video foundation models developed by Lightricks, and first released in November 2024. The latest models, LTX-2, create videos based on user prompts. They were preceded by LTX Video, which was released in 2024 as the company's first text-to-video model. LTX-2 is part of the LTX family of video generation models, which form the core technology, alongside LTX Studio, of the LTX ecosystem. == History == === Origins: LTX Video (2024–2025) === In November 2024 Lightricks publicly released its first text-to-video model, LTX Video. It was a 2-billion parameter model, available as open source. In May 2025 Lightricks launched LTXV-13b, a version with 13-billion parameters. Two months later, the model broke the 60 second barrier for generated video. === Release of LTX-2 (2025) === In October 2025 Lightricks announced its latest model, and renamed it LTX-2. The model was described as capable of generating synchronized audio and video at native 4K resolution and up to 50 frames per second (fps), using a variety of conditions and prompts, including text-to-video and image-to-video. Google highlighted the fact that LTX-2 was trained on its infrastructure, and saying it was "The first open source AI video generation model, powered by Google Cloud". Upon its release it was ranked in the top-3 models for image-to-video creation by Artificial Analysis, behind Kling 3.5 by Kling AI and Veo 3.1 by Google. Its text-to-image option was ranked 7th. In addition to its open-source release, Lightricks offers API access to LTX-2, allowing developers to generate videos from text and image prompts through a hosted service without running the model locally. === Open Source Release (2026) === In January 2026, Lightricks officially released the full open-source version of LTX-2, making the model’s complete codebase, weights, and associated tooling publicly available. In March 2026 the company released LTX-2.3, which was accompanied by a desktop video editor enabling the entire model to run locally on consumer hardware. == Technical features == === Advancements over LTX Video === LTX-2 builds upon the LTX Video architecture with several major improvements: Unified audio-video generation producing synchronized dialogue, ambience, and motion Native 4K rendering 50-fps output for cinematic motion Three operational modes (Fast, Pro, Ultra) More efficient diffusion pipelines enabling high fidelity on consumer GPUs === Core capabilities === Text-to-video generation Image-to-video generation Multimodal audiovisual synthesis High-resolution spatial and temporal coherence Configurable quality/performance settings Open-source distribution of weights and datasets == Reception == Initial reception to LTX-2 was broadly positive, with several technology and media outlets highlighting its open-source approach and multimodal capabilities. Open Source For You described LTX-2 as “one of the first AI video systems to combine 4K output, synchronized audio, and an open model release,” noting that it positioned Lightricks as a significant competitor to proprietary systems such as OpenAI's Sora and Google's Veo. IEA Green said that the model “could rewrite the AI filmmaking game,” emphasizing that its 50-fps rendering and unified audio-video generation made it suitable for professional studios and independent creators alike. AI News characterized LTX-2 as a “major step forward in the democratization of cinematic-quality video generation,” praising its consumer-grade hardware efficiency and multi-tier generation modes, while also noting ongoing challenges in long-form temporal stability. FinancialContent reported strong interest among creative agencies, attributing the attention to Lightricks’ decision to release model weights and datasets, which reviewers said enabled “a level of transparency not typically seen in commercial AI video models.” === Benchmarks and rankings === Upon release, LTX-2 ranked third for image-to-video creation in the Artificial Analysis benchmark, behind Kling 3.5 and Veo 3.1, while its text-to-video option ranked seventh. As of early 2026, it was the highest-ranked open-source model in the benchmark. === Limitations === Some early reviewers also pointed out quality limitations. The Ray3 technical review noted occasional inconsistencies in lip-sync and motion tracking during long scenes, though it stated these were “in line with the challenges faced by all current AI video diffusion models” and expected to improve with continued iteration. Like other diffusion-based video generators, LTX-2 can produce artifacts in complex multi-person scenes and may struggle with precise text rendering within generated video.
Groundswell (book)
Groundswell is a book by Forrester Research executives Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff that focuses on how companies can take advantage of emerging social technologies. It was published in 2008 by Harvard Business Press. A revised edition was published in 2011. The book attempts to explain a shift in the relationship between customers and companies, in which companies are no longer able to control customers' attitudes through market research, customer service, and advertising. Instead, customers are controlling the conversation by using new media to communicate about products and companies. == Synopsis == The groundswell is characterized by several tactics that guide companies into using social technologies strategically and effectively. Listening: Businesses should listen to their customers to understand what the market is looking for in their products. In order to do this, a company needs to find out if their customers are using social technologies and how they are using them. Talking: Instead of advertising to customers, marketing departments should find creative ways to connect with users about their experience with a product and their feelings about the brand. One common method is participation in social networks. Energizing: Enthusiastic customers are part of the groundswell, and companies can recognize and appreciate these customers by creating online communities and social platforms where they can connect with the brand and provide reviews. Supporting: Businesses can harness the support of their own employees by creating internal social applications for them to connect with the brand, also known as enterprise social software. == Groundswell in action == === Examples === Some companies distinguish their product through the use of social technologies. Tom Dickson successfully marketed his Blendtec line of blenders through the viral marketing campaign Will It Blend? The groundswell spread marketing messages through Digg and YouTube with a small budget and little marketing experience. Other companies have been able to listen to and talk with the groundswell by building their own online communities. Procter & Gamble created beinggirl.com Archived 2016-04-10 at the Wayback Machine to introduce girls to P&G feminine care products. The community approach worked because the company could reach girls with information that might seem embarrassing or sensitive in a traditional marketing campaign. === Risks === Features of particular industries or companies can make direct customer engagement more difficult. For instance, some companies must work within industry regulations, national or multinational corporations must balance corporate and local engagement, and other companies must find ways to engage with customers on time-sensitive issues. == Reception == Kevin Allison of the Financial Times praised the book for its focus on Web analytics: "[Groundswell] is not so much a manifesto or a dissection of online culture as it is a how-to manual for executives and mid-level managers trying to navigate this fast-changing and often confusing environment." The book won the American Marketing Association Foundation’s Berry-AMA Book Prize for best marketing book of 2009. It was also listed by: Amazon, as one of the Top 10 Business & Investing Books of 2008 CIO Insight, as one of the Top 10 Business-Tech Books of 2008 and one of 10 Insightful Web 2.0 Books Fortune as Magazine as one of the 3 best Web books of 2008 Advertising Age as number 3 of 10 Books You Should Have Read BusinessWeek as one of the Best Innovation & Design Books of 2008 "strategy+business" as one of the Best Business Books 2008 and “Top Shelf” in Marketing