Disney CEO Bob Iger said the company will add Hulu content to its Disney+ streaming app, adding that it will also raise the price of its ad-free streaming service later this year. CNBC reports: CEO Bob Iger said the company would soon begin offering a "one app experience" in the U.S. that incorporates Hulu content into its flagship streaming service, Disney+. Standalone options for all of Disney's platforms, including ESPN+, will remain. "This is a logical progression of our DTC offerings that will provide greater opportunities for advertisers, while giving bundle subscribers access to more robust and streamlined content resulting in greater audience engagement and ultimately leading to a more unified streaming experience," Iger said during Wednesday's earnings call.

Iger attributed the move toward a one-app location for both Disney+ and Hulu content to the "advertising potential for the combined platform." While Hulu has long offered an ad-supported option for subscribers, Disney+ launched the cheaper tier last year. Disney will begin to roll out the one-app offering by the end of the calendar year, and Iger said the company would share further details at a later time. In the company's fiscal second quarter earnings, the company reported $21.82 billion in revenue, up 13% from the same period last year and beating estimates. It did, however, shed 4 million Disney+ subscribers.

Amazon has launched a new unit, Amazon MGM Studios Distribution, that will allow the company to license Amazon Originals and other titles to third-party media companies, including streaming services and cable TV. TechCrunch reports: For the first time, titles such as âoeThe Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm," "Coming 2 America," "Goliath," "Hunters," "The Tender Bar," "The Tomorrow War," "The Voyeurs" and "Without Remorse," among others, will be sold to other media outlets following their initial run on Prime Video. While the company has distributed shows before, this new venture will be on a much larger scale. Plus, Amazon Originals are mainly exclusive to Prime Video, making it an enticing sale for companies looking to have popular titles on their platforms.

The launch of Amazon MGM Studios Distribution will also allow the company to handle sales of MGM-owned franchises James Bond, Rocky and Creed, as well as "The Handmaid's Tale," "Fargo" and "Vikings." Last year, Amazon acquired MGM for $8.5 billion, giving the company access to more than 4,000 films and 17,000 TV series. [...] According to Chris Ottinger, who will lead Amazon MGM Studios Distribution, the unit will offer flexible bundles, reported Deadline, so sellers can create bundled content packages that work for them. This strategy will likely allow the company to stand out from competitors.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: In an effort to peel back the layers of LLMs, OpenAI is developing a tool to automatically identify which parts of an LLM are responsible for which of its behaviors. The engineers behind it stress that it's in the early stages, but the code to run it is available in open source on GitHub as of this morning. "We're trying to [develop ways to] anticipate what the problems with an AI system will be," William Saunders, the interpretability team manager at OpenAI, told TechCrunch in a phone interview. "We want to really be able to know that we can trust what the model is doing and the answer that it produces."

To that end, OpenAI's tool uses a language model (ironically) to figure out the functions of the components of other, architecturally simpler LLMs -- specifically OpenAI's own GPT-2. How? First, a quick explainer on LLMs for background. Like the brain, they're made up of "neurons," which observe some specific pattern in text to influence what the overall model "says" next. For example, given a prompt about superheros (e.g. "Which superheros have the most useful superpowers?"), a "Marvel superhero neuron" might boost the probability the model names specific superheroes from Marvel movies. OpenAI's tool exploits this setup to break models down into their individual pieces. First, the tool runs text sequences through the model being evaluated and waits for cases where a particular neuron "activates" frequently. Next, it "shows" GPT-4, OpenAI's latest text-generating AI model, these highly active neurons and has GPT-4 generate an explanation. To determine how accurate the explanation is, the tool provides GPT-4 with text sequences and has it predict, or simulate, how the neuron would behave. In then compares the behavior of the simulated neuron with the behavior of the actual neuron.

"Using this methodology, we can basically, for every single neuron, come up with some kind of preliminary natural language explanation for what it's doing and also have a score for how how well that explanation matches the actual behavior," Jeff Wu, who leads the scalable alignment team at OpenAI, said. "We're using GPT-4 as part of the process to produce explanations of what a neuron is looking for and then score how well those explanations match the reality of what it's doing." The researchers were able to generate explanations for all 307,200 neurons in GPT-2, which they compiled in a dataset that's been released alongside the tool code. "Most of the explanations score quite poorly or don't explain that much of the behavior of the actual neuron," Wu said. "A lot of the neurons, for example, are active in a way where it's very hard to tell what's going on -- like they activate on five or six different things, but there's no discernible pattern. Sometimes there is a discernible pattern, but GPT-4 is unable to find it."

"We hope that this will open up a promising avenue to address interpretability in an automated way that others can build on and contribute to," Wu said. "The hope is that we really actually have good explanations of not just what neurons are responding to but overall, the behavior of these models -- what kinds of circuits they're computing and how certain neurons affect other neurons."

All across North America today, over 2,000 comic book stores are celebrating Free Comic Book Day. As it enters its third decade — the event started in 2001, according to Wikipedia — there'll be over two dozen free comic books to choose from this, and enthusiastic stores trying to dial up the fun even more.

16 stores are also giving away Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania in special "ant-sized" boxes — the size of penny — with tiny versions of the cover art from the full-sized Blu-Ray disc boxes (along with a code for a digital version of the movie). The Bleeding Cool site has a running list of stores doing additional special "cool stuff," including cookie giveaways, discounts on paperbacks and comic books, and personal appearances by comic book writers and artists.

Geek-friendly free comic books this year:

• Dark Horse Comics' Star Wars/ Avatar: The Last Airbender
• D.C. Comics is offering Dawn of DC — Knight Terrors
• Marvel is offering several multi-character books, including Spider-Man/Venom, the Avengers/X-Men, and a sampler of the upcoming graphic novel biography of Stan Lee
• IDW's free comics include the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• There's also the official prequel to the new Street Fighter 6 video game
• Also available: Runescape: Untold Tales/God Wars
• Fantagraphics even has a preview of its upcoming Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers book.
• Archie Horror Presents: The Cursed Library

Bleeding Cool also has previews the artwork from Star Trek: Prelude to Day of Blood, a teaser for a coming "comic book crossover event between IDW's main Star Trek comic and the Star Trek: Defiant series" (that's also accompanied by a Lower Decks comic book story).

Just remember, in 2017 NPR had this advice for visiting comics fans. "While you're there, buy something... The comics shops still have to pay for the 'free' FCBD books they stock, and they're counting on the increased foot traffic to lift sales."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: When you think of digital entertainment, your mind might turn first to online video-streaming services, such as Sling TV or YouTube TV, and video-on-demand services, including Netflix or Acorn TV. However, consultant Deloitte's 17th annual "Digital Media Trends" survey suggests traditional television shows and movies are no longer the only forms of entertainment. Younger generations, often called Gen Zs and Millennials, are increasingly turning to user-generated content (UGC) -- which relies on unpaid contributors rather than traditional media professionals -- and video games to find personal fulfillment, value, and meaning. These younger users are creating a vibrant, immersive, and social tapestry of experiences with UGC, video games, music, and social media all playing significant roles. And that move towards UGC and gaming could have big implications for everyone.

Deloitte's survey found that about a third (32%) of consumers view online experiences as meaningful substitutes for in-person interactions, with that proportion increasing to 50% among Gen Zs and Millennials. Almost half (48%) of these younger generations engage more with others on social media than in the physical world, and 40% of them socialize more in video games than offline. Of course, it's not only younger people who view online experiences as meaningful substitutes for in-person interactions. [...] Yet those born after 1981, the usual dividing line between Generation X and Millennials, are much more inclined to live their lives online.

Reddit doesn't have to identify eight anonymous users who wrote comments in piracy-related threads, a judge in the US District Court for the Northern District of California ruled on Friday. From a report: US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler quashed a subpoena issued by film studios in an order that agrees with Reddit that the First Amendment protects the users' right to speak anonymously online. The First Amendment right to anonymous speech is not absolute, but the precedent followed by US district courts only forces disclosure of anonymous users' identities "in the exceptional case where the compelling need for the discovery sought outweighs the First Amendment rights of the anonymous speaker," Beeler noted. After reviewing the facts and arguments, she found that the Reddit users' comments were irrelevant to the film studios' underlying case and that the studios could obtain relevant information from other sources.

Reddit has no involvement in the underlying case, which is a copyright lawsuit in a different federal court against cable Internet service provider RCN. Bodyguard Productions, Millennium Media, and other film companies sued RCN in the US District Court in New Jersey over RCN customers' alleged downloads of 34 movies such as Hellboy, Rambo: Last Blood, Tesla, and The Hitman's Bodyguard. In an attempt to prove that RCN (now known as Astound Broadband) turned a blind eye to customers illegally downloading copyrighted movies, the studios subpoenaed Reddit seeking identifying information for specific users who commented in piracy-related threads. While some of the comments were posted in 2022, other comments were made in 2009 and 2014.

"The Super Mario Bros. Movie" is officially the first film of the year to cross the coveted $1 billion milestone at the global box office. From a report: As of Sunday, after 26 days of release, the animated video game adaptation, from Universal, Illumination and Nintendo, has grossed $490 million in North America and $532 million internationallly. It's only the fifth movie of pandemic times to join the $1 billion club, following "Spider-Man: No Way Home," "Top Gun: Maverick," "Jurassic World Dominion" and "Avatar: The Way of Water."

"The Super Mario Bros. Movie" opened in theaters on April 5 and generated a towering $204 million in its first five days of release, notching the biggest opening weekend of the year and the second-biggest debut ever for an animated movie. Since then, it has become the highest grossing movie domestically and globally of 2023, as well as the highest-grosser ever for a film based on a video game. Those records are especially encouraging because the last time that Mario and Luigi graced the big screen, in 1993's disastrous live-action "Super Mario Bros," became a legendary example of Hollywood's inability to adapt video games.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A young Harrison Ford will grace cinema screens for 25 minutes this summer -- aided by some new Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) software. The news that LucasFilm's Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny would feature a de-aged Ford came at the end of last year, but an interview with director James Mangold in Total Film just revealed it will be for almost a fifth of the film's running time.

The fifth Indiana Jones iteration starts with an opening scene from 1944 -- about eight years after Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark took place. "My hope is that, although it will be talked about in terms of technology, you just watch it and go, 'Oh my God, they just found footage. This was a thing they shot 40 years ago," Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm and a producer, told Empire. The rest of the movie shoots forward to 1969, with Indy on a mission to prevent a comeback of Nazism.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Joshua Bergen is a very productive person. His secret is the workspace app Notion. Bergen, a product manager living in Vancouver, uses it to plan trips abroad in meticulous detail, with notes and timelines. He uses it to curate lists of the movies and TV shows he's watched, and records what he thought of them. It's also a handy way to keep tabs on his 3D-printing projects, map snowboarding runs, and quickly update his cute list of the funny things his kid has said. It might sound strange, but Bergen is one of a growing number of people using Notion, software intended for work, to organize their personal lives. They're using it in a myriad of different ways, from tracking their meditation habits and weekly schedules to logging their water intake and sharing grocery lists.

So why has a platform built to accommodate "better, faster work" struck such a chord when there are countless other planning apps out there? Part of the reason Notion has such a devoted fan base is its flexibility. At its heart, Notion is designed to combine the various programs a business might use for functions like HR, sales, and product planning in a single hub. It uses simple templates that let users add or remove features, and remote workers can easily collaborate on notes, databases, calendars, and project boards. This high level of customizability sets Notion apart from other work apps. It's also what's made it so popular among people looking to map out their free time. It started to gain traction around 2018 in YouTube's thriving productivity subculture, where videos of fans swapping time management tips and guides to organizing their lives regularly rack up millions of views.

Since then, its following has snowballed. More than 275,000 people have joined a dedicated subreddit, tens of thousands of users share free page templates in private Facebook groups, and TikTok videos advising viewers on how to make their Notion pages look pretty have been watched hundreds of millions of times. "You don't have to change your habits to how rigid software is. The software will change how your mind works," says Akshay Kothari, Notion's cofounder and chief operating officer. "I think that's actually been a big reason why you see so much love in the community: because people feel like the things they build are theirs." While platforms like Notion are great for people who enjoy feeling organized, spending too much time optimizing and organizing our lives can be counterproductive when we prioritize creating to-do lists over completing the actual tasks on them, says Gabriele Oettingen, a psychology professor at New York University. It's a phenomenon known as the planning fallacy.

Using Notion to track whether you're drinking enough water or going jogging, or using it to plan assignments, doesn't necessarily mean you're actually getting those things done. "In a way, Notion might help me to get structure, but it might not work to get me going," she says.

Joe Russo, the co-director of Avengers: Endgame, in an interview on the impact he thinks AI is going to play out in the world of video games, movies and television. He said: This is like a mind-bending question, right? I mean, we've had conversations about how it can be used, and look, Gen Z is very unique because it's a generation that has -- If there were incremental movements in technology over the last, say, 100 years, 150 years, they were the first generation with an exponential movement, right? So there's a real possibility now for technology to become a really important factor in our lives because it's been embraced by Gen Z, and they grew up with it, they understand it, they know how to use it. That's important, right? We're not in a world where, you know, your uncle doesn't know how to send emails anymore. We're in a world where the entire generation has a facile expertise in it, and is also not afraid of it.

So potentially, what you could do with it is obviously use it to engineer storytelling and change storytelling. So you have a constantly evolving story, either in a game or in a movie, or a TV show. You could walk into your house and save the AI on your streaming platform. âoeHey, I want a movie starring my photoreal avatar and Marilyn Monroe's photoreal avatar. I want it to be a rom-com because I've had a rough day," and it renders a very competent story with dialogue that mimics your voice. It mimics your voice, and suddenly now you have a rom-com starring you that's 90 minutes long. So you can curate your story specifically to you.

That's one thing that it can do, but it can also, on a communal level, populate the world of the game, have intelligence behind character choice, you know, the computer-run characters in the game that can make decisions learn your play style, make it a little harder for you, make it a little easier for you, curate the story. Say you want Fortnite to be more of a horror game, right? Then you could ask the AI to ramp up the horror elements of it. So again, you could curate your experience.I think that's where it's going. How quickly we get there, I don't know, but that's where it's going.

Redbox CEO Bill Rouhana told The Hollywood Reporter that he'd like to buy the business, saying: "I wish Netflix would sell me that business instead of shutting it down." From the report: Redbox is already the biggest DVD rental company in the U.S., with a network of some 32,000 red DVD kiosks across the country. Just this week, it announced plans to add another 1,500 kiosks at Dollar General stores (Rouhana says the Dollar General kiosks are some of the company's most profitable). While the DVD business kickstarted Netflix's meteoric rise, in recent years it has been on the decline. In 2022, it had $146 million in revenue, down $40 million from the year prior. Q1 had revenue of $32 million, suggesting a further decline this year.

And Rouhana says he has reached out to Netflix over the years expressing a desire to acquire the DVD business, to no avail. "I have tried like three or four times to reach out to the corporate development people about it but just got rebuffed each time," Rouhana says. "So when I saw it being closed, I thought, 'Well, maybe they'll do it now.'" A Netflix source tells THR that the company is winding down the business, and not selling it. (As for what happens to those warehouses full of DVDs that fueled Netflix's red envelope business, they seem to be in limbo for now.)

Even if that is the case, Rouhana says he believes Netflix's decision to shutter the service will benefit his company. "This could be a great boon to us because now there are a whole bunch of people who are going to look for a new place to get their DVDs, and we're close to 90 percent of them based on where our kiosks are located," he says. And, he notes, he does not expect the DVD business to go away anytime soon. "We believe in it, and we believe it's going to be around for a while. Like most legacy things, it's a lot harder to kill them than people say, I believe," he adds.

In fact, he believes the DVD business is in a position for growth over the next few years, thanks to a larger slate of movies hitting theaters and a desire from studios to reengage with windowing strategies. "We programmed our business plan for us to get back to about 30 percent of the 2019 level," Rouhana says. "I feel that's pretty conservative, I think we'll be better than that. But, you know, that's how we built the business plan that we've articulated. So people can decide for themselves whether they think that's overly optimistic or overly pessimistic."

Amazon has introduced a new feature to Prime Video called Dialogue Boost. It's intended to isolate dialogue and make it louder relative to other sounds in streaming videos on the service. Ars Technica reports: Amazon describes how it works in a blog post: "Dialogue Boost analyzes the original audio in a movie or series and intelligently identifies points where dialogue may be hard to hear above background music and effects. Then, speech patterns are isolated and audio is enhanced to make the dialogue clearer. This AI-based approach delivers a targeted enhancement to portions of spoken dialogue, instead of a general amplification at the center channel in a home theater system."

Not all content will be eligible for the dialogue boost feature, though -- at least not yet. Amazon says it "has initially launched on select Amazon Originals worldwide" like The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and The Big Sick. While this is partly an accessibility feature for people who are hard of hearing, Amazon is also responding to a widespread complaint among viewers. A 2022 survey found that 50 percent of 1,260 American viewers "watch content with subtitles most of the time," many of them citing "muddled audio" and saying that it's more difficult to understand dialogue in movies and TV shows than it used to be. [...] The company hasn't announced when the feature will expand to more content. But we wouldn't be surprised to see rapid expansion -- not just from Amazon, but from other streamers offering similar features, too.

Netflix is planning a "broad rollout" of the password sharing crackdown that it began implementing in 2022, the company said today in its Q1 2023 earnings report (PDF). MacRumors reports: The "paid sharing" plan that Netflix has been testing in a limited number of countries will expand to additional countries in the second quarter, including the United States. Netflix said that it was "pleased with the results" of the password sharing restrictions that it implemented in Canada, New Zealand, Spain, and Portugal earlier this year. Netflix initially planned to start eliminating password sharing in the United States in the first quarter of the year, but the company said that it had learned from its tests and "found opportunities to improve the experience for members." There is a "cancel reaction" expected in each market where paid sharing is implemented, but increased revenue comes later as borrowers activate their own Netflix accounts and existing members add "extra member" accounts.

In Canada, paid sharing resulted in a larger Netflix membership base and an acceleration in revenue growth, which has given Netflix the confidence to expand it to the United States. When Netflix brings its paid sharing rules to the United States, multi-household account use will no longer be permitted. Netflix subscribers who share an account with those who do not live with them will need to pay for an additional member. In Canada, Netflix charges $7.99 CAD for an extra member, which is around $6. [...] Netflix claims that more than 100 million households are sharing accounts, which is impacting its ability to "invest in and improve Netflix" for paying members.

Slashdot reader mpercy shares an email they received from Netflix announcing the shut down of its original business of delivering DVDs by mail: Just received an email from Netflix: "For 25 years, it's been our extraordinary privilege to mail movie nights to our members all across America. On September 29th, 2023, we will ship our final iconic red envelope. While times have changed since our first shipment in March 1998, our goal has remained the same: to provide you with access to the broadest collection of movies and shows possible, delivered directly to your door, with no due dates or late fees. As the DVD business continues to shrink, it's going to become increasingly difficult to achieve that goal. In our final season, we'll continue providing you the best service possible, all the way to the very last shipment." Here's an infographic the company shared in its post:

It's not HBO Max -- soon it's just going to be Max. From a report: Warner Bros. Discovery officially announced Max as the new name of its flagship streamer, lopping off the HBO part of the name as it mixes in a big bucket of new content from Discovery+ and other new original series. The company announced the name change at a press event Wednesday, where it also revealed a slate of upcoming projects. The rebuilt Max (on the web at max.com) is set to launch first in the U.S. on May 23, featuring what the company promises will be an average of more than 40 new titles and TV show seasons every month. "Max is the one to watch," WBD CEO David Zaslav said on stage at the event, featuring thousands of shows and movies on the service for every member of the household.

According to the service's website, Max will be available in three different versions. The first two plans align with the existing HBO Max pricing, and WBD said current HBO Max customers will not see their pricing change (for now) when the new service debuts. The third tier, "Max Ultimate," expands to up to four streams and includes 4K content. The trio of options are:
Max Ad-Lite ($9.99/month or $99.99/year): Two concurrent streams, 1080p HD resolution, no offline downloads, 5.1 surround sound quality
Max Ad Free ($15.99/month or $149.99/year): Two concurrent streams, 1080p HD, up to 30 offline downloads, 5.1 surround sound quality
Max Ultimate Ad Free ($19.99/month or $199.99/year): Four concurrent streams, up to 4K Ultra HD resolution, 100 offline downloads, Dolby Atmos sound quality

A filmmaker walks us through the reasons behind the 'dark cinematography' that's causing so many complaints. From a report: Take, for instance, Wes Craven's 1996 horror classic Scream -- a film often remarked on for just how lit everything in it is at all times. An early scene depicts protagonist Sidney Prescott embracing her boyfriend Billy Loomis in the wake of a terrifying home invasion and her near-death at the hands of a masked killer. After Sidney throws her arms around Billy, Craven cuts to a tight close-up on Billy's face, which is illuminated by a harsh, ominous, icy-cool light that telegraphs his sinister intentions. But where is that light coming from? The bedroom they're in has no lamps switched on. Could it be the moon? Hard to justify, as the only windows in the space are behind Billy, and the light we're staring at is so much brighter and closer than the moon could ever be. So what on Earth is that light?

The answer is, simply enough, nothing. Craven often didn't feel any real need to rationalize why a bright light would suddenly appear one second before disappearing again in the following shot. It's a purely stylistic choice, employed for that one moment to cast doubt on Billy's trustworthiness in the audience's mind. Itâ(TM)s an extremely stagey choice that fits neatly within the larger series' heightened, melodramatic style. Scream wouldn't really be Scream without it. The hyper-lit style was a staple of cinematography in American films during the '90s, and like all trends, it eventually fell out of fashion -- in this case, a few years after Scream hit theaters. The 2000s saw filmmakers embracing more directional, shadowy lighting styles, evoking a grittier, more "grounded" aesthetic while retaining a sense of classic Hollywood polish. The 2010s featured another huge shift in style, this time toward hyper-naturalism. Even broad, big-budget blockbusters like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part 1 embraced a look torn straight from indie cinema. Not only are the lights in that film always motivated, they're realistic. Where earlier films might have used the presence of the moon or a table lamp to justify much brighter lighting, movies like Deathly Hallows, Interstellar, and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes let the light of a lamp simply look like a lamp.

For the first time, you can now buy or rent every single Star Trek movie in the latest 4K and HDR standards. That includes all six movies based on the original series cast, all four featuring The Next Generation's cast, and the more recent J.J. Abrams films. Ars Technica reports: On April 4, Paramount released an UltraHD Blu-ray set that included Star Trek: Generations, Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection, and Star Trek: Nemesis along with several special features. The set marks the first time these films have been available in a 4K and HDR home video release. Alongside the Blu-rays, the films also became available on on-demand storefronts like Apple's TV app.

Last year, the original series films (Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country) received the same treatment. The reboot films (Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Star Trek Beyond) have long been available in modern formats. So as of this week, all 13 theatrically released Star Trek films are finally available in 4K and HDR. The latest releases also support the Dolby Atmos audio standard in addition to Dolby Vision HDR.

An anonymous reader shares a report: If you've ever researched anything online, you've probably used the Internet Archive (IA). The IA, founded in 1996 by librarian and engineer Brewster Kahle, describes itself as "a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more." Their annals include 37 million books, many of which are old tomes that aren't commercially available. It has classic films, plenty of podcasts and -- via its Wayback Machine -- just about every deleted webpage ever. Four corporate publishers have a big problem with this, so they've sued the Internet Archive. In Hachette v. Internet Archive, the Hachette Publishing Group, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins and Wiley have alleged that the IA is committing copyright infringement. Now a federal judge has ruled in the publishers' favor. The IA is appealing the decision.

[...] Not only is this concern-trolling disingenuous, but the ruling itself, grounded in copyright, is a smack against fair use. It brings us one step closer to perpetual copyright -- the idea that individuals should own their work forever. The IA argued that their project was covered by fair use, as the Emergency Library provides texts for educational and scholarly purposes. Even writers objected to the court's ruling. More than 300 writers signed a petition against the lawsuit, including Neil Gaiman, Naomi Klein and -- get this -- Chuck Wendig. Writers lost nothing from the Emergency Library and gained everything from it. For my part, I've acquired research materials from the IA that I wouldn't have found anywhere else. The archive has scads of primary sources which otherwise might require researchers to fly across the country for access. The Internet Archive is good for literacy. It's good for the public. It's good for readers, writers and anyone who's invested in literary education. It does not harm authors, whose income is no more dented by it than any library programs. Even the Emergency Library's initial opponents have conceded this. The federal court's decision is a victory for corporations and a disaster for everyone else. If this decision isn't reversed, human beings will lose more knowledge than the Library of Alexandra ever contained. If IA's appeal fails, it will be a tragedy of historical proportions.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie "has now earned the largest global animated opening weekend in box office history," reports the Wrap, with a worldwide five-day launch of $377 million, passing the $358 million record set by Disney's Frozen II on Thanksgiving weekend in 2019." Domestically, "Mario" was projected when it opened in theaters on Wednesday to earn a five-day opening of at least $125 million from 4,343 theaters, and it has shattered that figure with $204.6 million grossed. Both that and its three-day total of $143 million are a studio record for Illumination, with the three-day total being the third highest seen on Easter weekend and second only to the $182 million earned by Pixar's "Incredibles 2" among all animated films. It is also the new animation record holder for Imax with $21.6 million grossed worldwide.

And of course, the film has blasted past every box office opening record for video game adaptations, nearly doubling the three-day domestic record of $72.1 million set by "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" last year and shattering the $210 million global record set by "Warcraft" in 2016. "This weekend's record-breaking debut proves audiences of all ages and demographics will pour into theaters for a hysterically funny and authentic universe expansion of an already iconic franchise," said Universal's domestic distribution president Jim Orr. "Nintendo and Illumination's creative synergy along with Shigeru Miyamoto and Chris Meledandri's extraordinary leadership created an entertaining juggernaut that will be sure to power up the box office for weeks to come...."

Thanks in large part to "Super Mario Bros.," overall weekend estimates have risen to $194 million, 76% above the same weekend in 2019.

AI now "automates creative impulses," writes New Yorker staff writer Kyle Chayka — then wonders where that will lead. Chayka's first example is a Berlin-based photographer using AI tools to create a viral video showing Harry Potter characters as fashion models for the upscale French label Balenciaga: A.I. tools were involved in each step of Alexander Niklass's process, and in each element of the video. He created the basic static images with Midjourney, evoking the Harry Potter actors and outfits through text prompts such as "male model, grotesque, balenciaga commercial." Then he used ElevenLabs — a "voice-cloning" tool — to create models of the actors' voices based on previously recorded audio. Finally, he fed the images into a service called D-ID, which is used to make "avatar videos" — subtly animated portraits, not so far off from those that appear in the newspapers of the Potter world. D-ID added the signature lip synchs and head nods, which Niklass explained were a reference to fashion models tilting their chins for the cameras.

The combination of child-friendly film and adult luxury fashion held no particular symbolism nor expressed an artistic intent. It's "entertainment," Niklass said. Yet the video's most compelling aspect might be its vacuity, a meaningless collision of cultural symbols. The nonsense is the point.
The article also cites a song where the French group AllttA performs with an AI-generated simulation of Jay-Z. Chayka marvels at a world where "The A.I. content has the appearance of realism, without actual reality — reality solely as a style.... it seems that a Rubicon has been crossed: It doesn't matter that these artifacts are generated by A.I.; we can just enjoy them for what they are. It happened faster than I thought possible, but now that A.I.-generated pop culture has entered the mainstream, it seems unlikely that we'll ever get rid of it."

Chayka asked ChatGPT how AI-generated imagery is changing our perceptions, and "It responded that there has been a 'blurring of the lines between real and artificial.'"

The article ultimately ponders the possible implications of "a world in which every style, every idea, and every possible remix is generated as fast and frictionlessly as possible, and the successful ones stick and get attention." But at the same time, Chayka believes the final output's quality still depends on the humans involved (arguing that the Harry Potter fashion video was still more "appealingly odd" than later AI-generated videos copying the idea, like "Matrix by Gucci," "Star Wars by Balenciaga," and "The Office by Balenciaga".) A.I. tools may have been able to replicate actors' faces and generate fashionable outfits, but only Niklass could have come up with the concept, which required keen observation of both high fashion and the wizarding world — and also a very specific, extremely online sense of humor. With tools like Midjourney publicly available to anyone online, "everybody can create something visually appealing now," he said. "But A.I. can't generate taste yet," he continued....

To put it another way, execution may have been democratized by generative A.I., but ideas have not. The human is still the originator, editor, and curator of A.I.'s effects.