Happy Hump Day! I spent my morning drinking hot cocoa and surfing the web for news. 

Here it is:

🚀 Blue Origin launched a rocket yesterday for the first time since 2022.

🧠 An AI made from human brain cells now exists. 

🚲 VanMoof is back with a new leadership team and new plans. 

📸 GoPro released a montage of some of the best clips shot in 2023. 

✍️ Bill Gates published his annual “Year Ahead” letter. AI makes an appearance.

‘Tis the season to take selfies. As the year comes to a close, you might be spending more time with family and friends. Holidays, dinner parties, and general get-togethers always lead to one thing: lots of selfies. 

Filters have been a staple of selfies for a while now. Over time, what started as simple color adjustments became detailed effects that use tech like Augmented Reality to change you from a regular old human into a Giraffe. 

Now you can make your own. Meet Shader, a new app that lets you create AR/AI lenses and filters, instantly. The “instantly” part might hint at how it works. 

Users can generate the filters of their dreams with prompts, which can be crafted with either your voice or text. From there, Shader uses AI to parse those prompts and generate your filter. The best part is this all takes place on your phone. No need for complex, stand-alone desktop apps. 

The founder, Darya Sesitskaya, is no stranger to the AI/AR world either, having launched Wanna Kicks and Wanna Nails, which both won Golden Kitty Awards in 2019 and 2019, respectively. 

So if you want to liven up the holiday selfies, try out..

• Location is a map based social network launched by amo.
• DaDa is an AI platform built to help creatives share visual stories. 
• Discovertsy just launched an update to help you plan and explore cities.

• LogoFast lets you instantly generate logos by using AI.
• Snowball uses AI to help you grow on X by generating content. 
• Findly uses AI to let you chat to and understand your analytics.