While we absolutely support the right of everyone to express their opinions, it seems to us that it’s rarely wise to turn your vehicle into a mobile billboard for your positions. Aside from potentially messing up the finish on your car, what’s popular and acceptable at home might attract unwanted attention while traveling abroad, leading to confrontations that might make your trip a little more eventful than it needs to be.
So why not let technology help you speak your mind in a locally sensitive manner? That’s the idea behind [Pegor]’s “smahtSticker”, an AI-powered bumper sticker that provides the ultimate in context-sensitive urban camouflage. The business end of smahtSticker — we’re going to go out on a limb here and predict that [Pegor] hails from the Boston area — is an 8.8″ (22-cm) wide HDMI display capable of 1920×480 resolution. That goes on the back of your car and is driven by a Raspberry Pi Zero with a GPS module. The Pi grabs a geolocation every second, and if you’ve moved more than 25 feet (7.6 m) — political divisions are at least that granular in the US right now, trust us — it grabs your current ZIP code using GeoPy. That initiates a query to the OpenAI API to determine the current political attitudes in your location, which is used to select the right slogan to display. You’ll fit in no matter where you wander — wicked smaht!
Now, of course, this is all in good fun, and with tongue planted firmly in cheek. The display isn’t weatherized at all, so that would need to be addressed if one felt like fielding this. Also, ZIP codes may be good for a lot of things, but it’s not the best proxy for political alignment, so you might want to touch that part up.
Shure, AI Powered… :D
Love this…
Yet another way for me sate the urge to be politicly incorrect at every possible chance…..
Once I suborn the aiGenie to my wishes…..
Yeah, there should a way to flip the logic upside down :)
That will be fun!
Ooooooooooh hackable!
Reminds me of that film clip – Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995) – I Hate – in YouTube. Bruce Willis and Samuel Jackson in Harlem.
I am reminded of the Top Gear crew in Alabama with all these slogans painted on their cars.
what about Argentina… that didn’t go well.
This needs speech recognition adding, then I can give driving advice to the person I’ve just overtaken.
Or, just a button for “please don’t camp in the left lane” (or something spicier depending on your style) which would handle 90% of cases.
Interesting gizmo but where I am this could be construed as a visual display device. If the vehicle is moving it can distract other drivers, leading to a potential fine
http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/qld/consol_reg/toumrr2009629/s299.html
It would be worth checking your local road rules as I would be surprised if this wasn’t a similar situation elsewhere.
Hack it, insult the driver behind the vehicle. Watch the drama
This is how the AI will kill you. Not with nukes.
Hmm… Makes me think of a time I got lost and ended up in a neighborhood I didn’t intend on. There were all these guys who looked like extras from American History X staring at me. I don’t think I want the symbols that would make me fit in there coming up on my car.
A while back I tried to peel off an old, faded bumper sticker. The entire printed layer came off, leaving a featureless white rectangle. I’ve left it like that. I call it an un-opinion sticker.
I just have a “Go local sports team and/or college” sticker. No problems from that.
I’m fascinated by how stickers are still in use in the US. Here in Europe we stopped adorning our cars with stickers back in the ’80.
Mostly true here.
But you get the occasional nut. A car covered in stickers is natures warning. Best not to read them, if you agreed with one, it might throw off your initial impression.
Stickers only serve to get your car keyed. True believes are obnoxious. Zip code won’t help.
But cameras! They caught a state senator keying a car for a bumper sticker, cops arrested the dumbass.
Guess the party? Your guess will reflect your political alignment.
It’s mostly the painted bumpers though. You could cleanly remove stickers from chrome. People are stupid on both sides of the pond.
Lol is this street legal, or potentially a problem depending on what the aI comes up with?
Some colors of lights are banned from appearing on the back of cars (blue, red) due to confusion with brake lights or cop cars. As someone with a misspent youth i am sure this is just fine for someone in the burbs sticking this on a minivan but not great for the young buck pulling on a vape with a flipper zero in his front seat that is a “troublemaker”.
Just a thought to put out there, worth thinking about maybe if you are gonna try something like this.