The emerging tech world provided a frenzied year of big bets and weird twists, dominated by an unquenchable enthusiasm for artificial intelligence. As the velocity of breakthroughs only accelerates, bringing us a flood of new stories and ideas every day, it takes something special to stand out. Ideally, the differentiator is a truly game-changing, transformative project. But sometimes, it’s just something weird.

Not all innovations are created equal. Some make us marvel at human ingenuity, while others leave us chuckling—or cringing.

So, fasten your vegan leather seatbelts, and let’s embark on a journey through some of the weirdest tech trends of 2023. From beers made of the vaginal yeast of a sexy Twitch influencer to toilets that know more about you than your doctor, here are the bizarre stories that kept our eyebrows in a permanent, fascinated Vulcan arch.

Vaginal beer, because yes

In the furthest yet outer edge of influencer culture, Amouranth decided to leap from the digital pool into the brewing vat. Her newest entrepreneurial brew? A beer fermented with her own vaginal yeast. Partnering with ‘The Order Of Yoni,’ a brewery no stranger to the bizarre, she’s set to create a concoction that’s part personal signature, part liquid courage. “They want my vaginal yeast,” she announces, leaving bread enthusiasts and casual drinkers alike in a curious buzz.

While some might scratch their heads (or crinkle their noses) at the idea, the concept is not a lone aberration in the craft beer world. ‘The Order Of Yoni’ has been at this game for a while, brewing beers with what they call the “essence of women,” adding a personal touch from various models, described as “deities.” They assure the drink’s safety and science-backed process, involving isolation and cultivation of Lactobacillus bacteria from a vaginal smear.

The pivot from virtual girlfriend to brewmaster might seem a stretch for some, but in the grand landscape of influencer merch, Amouranth’s concoction is right at home. “People will buy it for sure,” she says. After all, in the broad diversity of consumer taste, it’s the story behind the sip that sells the bottle. Cheers to that!

AI love and porn

Welcome to the strange new world of AI-generated adult entertainment, where users can tailor their titillating content to the tiniest detail. For some, this is about lonely hearts, or infinite, bizarre boudoir customizations. For others, 2023 is the year that brings a new meaning to what “significant other” means.

The rise of generative AI sparked an era in which basically anything is possible in terms of content creation. Now you can “configure” your virtual lover to be conservative, kinky, dominant, or submissive in just a few clicks, and sext with it just as you do with any other human being.

Want to take things to another level? Create your own lifelike image and design every single part of their body. Want to take things to another level? animate their image with a video generator. Want to take things to another level? give your model a synthetic, lifelike voice and make it read messages as if it were talking to you. Want to take things to another level? Build a lifelike 3-D sex doll so you can get intimate with your perfect life partner after a nice roleplay session.

The next level may be DNA designing and take us directly into a Huxley dystopia.

So, hats off (and only hats) to the brave new world of AI amore. May your fantasies be fulfilled even as your realities remain, well, real.

(AImost) Award-winning AI music

In the great music rewind of 2023, the melody that truly resonated among the tech set was “Heart on My Sleeve,” a harmonious hijack of the music industry by the shadowy figure known as Ghostwriter977. Critics might call it a deepfake ditty, but fans clamored for its beat, humorously quipping it’s the best Drake song in years—ironically created without Drake.

Ghostwriter claims a sprinkle of AI was all it took to turn Drake’s vocals into hip-hop gold.

By the time the Grammys rolled around, “Heart on My Sleeve” was a hot topic. Can an AI-generated track snag the music industry’s top honor? The Recording Academy briefly thought so, demonstrating the confusing conundrum of AI artistry. Ultimately, the song was deemed too synthetic for a statuette.

And it’s not the only Ai song out there. Those with a more refined taste (let’s say, Children of Bodom, In Flames, Arch Enemy) may love The Forstbite Orckings, a metal band created with generative AI that sounds A-W-E-S-O-M-E. And if you want some inspiration, Suno can craft nice short song ideas so you can skip the whole boring brainstorming process with your band and its pod of lazy human beings.

Next-level biohacking

There are biohackers, there are fitness enthusiasts, and there is one Bryan Johnson, a man whose quest for eternal youth makes Peter Pan look like a quitter. Between shockwave treatments to rejuvenate his private areas, to blood injections from his own son, to a diet that has dozens of pills a day just for fun, he’s not just chasing the fountain of youth—he’s trying to drown in it. It’s a bold move that has everyone from Elon Musk to your average Joe emoji-reacting all over social media.

He claimed to have achieved six months of perfect sleep, a feat that seems less about resting and more about boasting. It’s as if Johnson is trying to outdo every teenager who brags about staying up all night, except he’s doing it in reverse—and with a much bigger bank account. And yes, according to his data, he is showing signs of a metabolism that behaves better than that of many young healthy people.

Gone are the days when biohacking was all fun and excitement. No alcohol, no tasty foods, no carefree nights, and a schedule packed with therapies that sound more like a mad scientist’s diary entries than a billionaire’s bucket list. With a routine like this, why would you want to live forever?

Telepathic AI: thoughts to speech go mainstream

In 2023, Meta’s AI turns us into unwitting art exhibits by sketching our thoughts, making private daydreams a public gallery. It’s like mind-reading on steroids, but instead of a crystal ball, it’s all about brain scans and algorithms. Now, while worrying about leaving the oven on, we might also fret about our brain inadvertently spilling our embarrassing secrets or our long-shower karaoke playlist.

But as weird as it sounds, this tech is actually life-changing. Take Unbabel’s Project Halo, for example. Fancy sending a snarky comment or ordering pizza with just a thought? Now you can! These new mind-reading AIs have given mobility and a voice to quadriplegic people, even as they also seem to take us another step closer to the Minority Report.

As we navigate this new telepathic terrain, the line between innovation and oversharing is as thin as ever. In a world overloaded with TMI, these thought-to-speech models promise to turn every brainwave into potential tweets. At this rate, we’ll need to be careful about what we think about in public, or our next thought might just become the talk of the town.

AI-powered toilets that analyze your pee

In 2023, bathrooms started getting brainy. Withings’ U-Scan makes your loo a lab and every visit a potential health check. This isn’t your standard pee-and-plunge affair; it’s a high-tech pee review, reading everything from hydration levels to hormonal changes. The toilet, once a place of solitude, now hosts a nosy health consultant, eager to spill the beans on your bodily functions.

Sure, urine analysis at home isn’t new, but the U-Scan takes it to a new, albeit slightly invasive, level. Imagine the thrill of discovering your vitamin levels or the state of your kidneys while you’re still buttoning up. It’s like having a mini doctor in your toilet bowl, minus the medical degree and bedside manner—probably something already on Bryan Johnson’s Christmas list.

Believe it or not, comedians were ahead of their time and used to joke about things like this years ago. sToday’s tech makes those sketches look almost prophetic. The throne is having the last laugh as it transitions from mere waste disposal to a bathroom analyist. If you’re interested, watch this fake ad and see beyond the comedy: data farming, lobbying, AI taking over our lives, and peak corporate culture.

With toilets becoming this smart, what’s next in the bathroom tech revolution? We shudder to think.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.

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• Source: https://decrypt.co/210807/weirdest-emerging-tech-stories-of-2023