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Amazon releases a video generator — but only for ads

Like its rival, Google, Amazon has launched an AI-powered video generator — but it’s only for advertisers at the moment, and somewhat limited in what it can do. Today at its Accelerate conference, Amazon unveiled Video generator, which turns a single product image into video showcases of that product after some amount of processing. The […]

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Robert Pattinson gets the crappiest immortality in trailer for Mickey 17

Robert Pattinson's character didn't read his contract's fine print in Mickey 17, director Bong Joon-ho's latest film.

It has been five long years since director Bong Joon-ho's film Parasite topped Ars' list for best films of the year, whose prior work on Snowpiercer and Okja are also staff favorites. We're finally getting a new film from this gifted director: the sci-fi comedy Mickey 17, based on the 2022 novel Mickey7 by Edward Ashton. Judging by the trailer that recently dropped, it feels a bit like a darkly comic version of Duncan Jones' 2009 film Moon, with a bit of the surreal absurdity of Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985) thrown in for good measure. And the visuals are terrific.

Ashton's inspiration for the novel was the teletransportation paradox—a thought experiment pondering the philosophy of identity that challenges certain notions of the self and consciousness. It started as a short story about what Ashton called "a crappy immortality" and expanded from there into a full-length novel.

Ashton told Nerdist last year that Bong's adaptation would "change a lot of the book," but he considered the director a "genius" and wasn't concerned about those changes. The basic premise remains the same. Robert Pattinson plays the space colonist named Mickey Barnes, who is so eager to escape Earth that he signs up to be an "expendable" without reading the fine print.

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YouTube unveils ‘Hype,’ a new way for fans to help smaller creators grow their reach

YouTube creators no longer have to rely solely on the recommendation algorithm, search results, or collabs to help them grow their audience. At the company’s Made On YouTube event on Wednesday, YouTube announced a new feature that will allow a creator’s existing viewers to help “hype” a video with a click of a button, allowing […]

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Generative AI startup Runway inks deal with a major Hollywood studio

Runway, a startup developing AI video tools, including video-generating models, has partnered with Lionsgate — the studio behind the “John Wick” and “Twilight” franchises — to train a custom video model on Lionsgate’s movie catalog. Lionsgate vice chair Michael Burns said in a statement that the studio’s “filmmakers, directors and other creative talent” will get […]

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AWS shuts down DeepComposer, its MIDI keyboard for AI music

AWS’ weird AI-powered keyboard experiment, DeepComposer, is no more. In a blog post today, the company announced it’s shutting down the 5-year-old DeepComposer, a physical MIDI piano and AWS service that let users compose songs with the help of generative AI. “After careful consideration, we have made the decision to end support for AWS DeepComposer,” […]

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Snapchat tests ‘simple’ version of the app without Snap Map or Stories tab

Snapchat is rolling out a simplified version of the app to some users, the company announced on Tuesday during its Snap Partner Summit, as part of a test to make the disappearing photo app easier to use. “Simple Snapchat” declutters the app’s home screen, removing the Snap Map and Stories tabs, and consolidates its navigation […]

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Google will begin flagging AI-generated images in Search later this year

Google says that it plans to roll out changes to Google Search to make clearer which images in results were AI generated — or edited by AI tools. In the next few months, Google will begin to flag AI-generated and -edited images in the “About this image” window on Search, Google Lens, and the Circle […]

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Generative AI startup Typeface acquires two companies, Treat and Narrato, to bolster its portfolio

Typeface, a generative AI startup focused on enterprise use cases, has acquired a pair of companies just over a year after raising $165 million at a $1 billion valuation. Typeface revealed on Monday that it has purchased Treat, a company using AI to create personalized photo products, and Narrato, an AI-powered content creation and management […]

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Runway announces an API for its video-generating AI models

Runway, one of several AI startups developing video-generating tech, today announced an API to allow devs and organizations to build the company’s generative AI models into third-party platforms, apps, and services. Currently in limited access (there’s a waitlist), the Runway API only offers a single model to choose from — Gen-3 Alpha Turbo, a faster […]

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Cohere co-founder Nick Frosst’s indie band, Good Kid, is almost as successful as his AI company

Nick Frosst, the co-founder of $5.5 billion Canadian AI startup Cohere, has been a musician his whole life. He told TechCrunch that once he started singing, he never shut up. That’s still true today. In addition to his full-time job at Cohere, Frosst is also the front man of Good Kid, an indie rock band […]

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‘Hot Ones’ could add some heat to Netflix’s live lineup

Netflix has never quite cracked the talk show formula, but maybe it can borrow an existing hit from YouTube. According to Bloomberg, the streamer is in talks with BuzzFeed to create live episodes of the popular YouTube talk show “Hot Ones.” Netflix did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment; BuzzFeed declined to comment. The […]

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Final trailer for Venom: The Last Dance introduces Knull, god of symbiotes

Tom Hardy returns for one more round as host of an alien symbiote, in Venom: The Last Dance.

Tom Hardy is back for one last hurrah as investigative journalist Eddie Brock, host of an alien symbiote that imparts superhuman powers to its host, in the final trailer for Venom: The Last Dance. The trailer has all the wise-cracking "buddy cop" vibes and fast-paced action we've come to expect from the franchise, including a trip to Vegas where Venom discovers the addictive allure of slot machines. But there are also hints of an inevitable bittersweet farewell—because this time they'll face off against Knull, god-creator of the symbiotes.

(Spoilers for Venom and Venom: There Will Be Carnage below.)

As previously reported, the first film in the franchise served as an origin story for our antihero. A bioengineering firm called the Life Foundation discovered a comet covered with symbiotic lifeforms and brought four samples back to Earth. Brock's then-fiancée, Anne Weying (Michelle Williams), showed him classified documents revealing that the foundation was conducting human/symbiote experiments. The symbiotes needed oxygen-breathing hosts to survive, but they invariably ended up killing those hosts.

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Spotify begins piloting parent-managed accounts for kids on family plans

Following the moves of other tech giants, Spotify announced on Friday it’s introducing in-app parental controls in the form of “managed accounts” for listeners under the age of 13. The new feature will initially be offered as a pilot program for parents or guardians on a Family plan in select markets, including Denmark, New Zealand, […]

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