A major new Harry Potter video game may be in development, after leaked footage appeared online. The 72 seconds of footage shows players casting spells, cavorting with magical beasts, fighting goblins and exploring what appears to be Hogwarts. Gaming journalists took to social media to speculate about the authenticity of the leak, with some suggesting that a big-budget Harry Potter game is long overdue. The leaked video was posted to YouTube by someone using the name RastaPasta, together with a description of the game. "Set in the 19th Century (1800's) Wizarding World, this 3rd person open-world action RPG game centers around your character with unique abilities who has eared a late acceptance to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. You are a newly arrived 5th year student to Hogwarts that demonstrates a latent gift for magic with a unique ability to track and identify remnants of a pottant ancient power," it states.

Most of us can position ourselves somewhere on The AI Fear Continuum. For nearly 100 years, science fiction writers have prepared us for the worst as they explored scenarios from Hollywood 1927's Metropolis to adaptations of Isaac Asimov's I, Robot and Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream Electric Sheep (famously the basis for Blade Runner). We're ready to be tricked (Alien), enslaved (The Matrix), killed (West World) or even have our whole species wiped out (Terminator). Conversely, news stories about AI feel overwhelmingly positive, informing us that AI is saving the day in sectors as diverse as health care, law and climate change. Marketing professionals have two key points to consider; claims that AI can help to make marketing more creative and effective, and claims that it will make many of our job roles surplus to requirements.

We may take the #hashtag for granted today, but it didn't emerge fully formed from Biz Stone's head. The Large Hadron Collider hasn't collapsed (or collapsed the space-time continuum), but that wasn't a given when scientists first turned the thing on. Nobody thought the sweaty geeks who sent their supposedly self-driving cars into concrete barriers instead of across the Mojave Desert would soon threaten to upend the way we move through the world. Oh, and remember the Microsoft trial? When we started planning our 25th birthday party more than a year ago, we knew that not all readers (okay, not even most readers) would have been following us since day one, and they certainly wouldn't recall every story we've told.

Asia-based accelerator program Zeroth is getting a major infusion of capital after digital media company Animoca Brands agreed to invest over $3 million into its businesses. Animoca is listed on the ASX with a market cap of around $40 million. It is best known for its range of mobile games which include the Doraemon and Garfield brands but it has been pushing to broaden its focus into artificial intelligence, blockchain and more. The relationship is not new. Animoca previously invested US$1 million (A$1.39 million) in Hong Kong-based Zeroth last December, and now it is following up to take a majority stake in Zeroth's operational business and also joining its fund as an LP. According to an announcement, Animoca is paying up to US$1.08 million (A$1.5 million) for a 67 percent share of Venture Classic Limited -- Zeroth's operational business -- in addition to a $2 million commitment to Zeroth's fund, which it will join as an LP.

CBS All Access is streaming the first of its Short Treks tidbits to hold Discovery fans over until season two, while Hulu premieres Into the Dark, Amazon Prime has a new season of The Man in the High Castle and Netflix leads off a slew of releases with Big Mouth season two and Dancing Queen. For gamers there's Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, Mega Man 11 and the wide release of Forza Horizon 4. Look after the break to check out each day's highlights, including trailers and let us know what you think (or what we missed). Richard's been tech-obsessed since first laying hands on an Atari joystick.

In this era of 24 hour news cycles where news breaks more often on social media than on the front page, newsrooms and journalists have been able to work more efficiently to stay on top of important stories by using Artificial Intelligence. AI has long been seen as away of relegating the more mundane, time-consuming tasks away from the man to the machine, allowing journalists more time to do the thing we rely on them for: reporting. But things are changing, and AI is developing with an aim of doing more to the newsroom than helping achieve maximum productivity. Some early adopters in the AI efficiency space were technologies like the BBC News' Juicer Project. Juicer launched in 2012 with the aim to "provide a source of tagged News content to power prototypes."

Project Stream promises to deliver the holy grail to video game fans around the globe -- the ability to play the latest AAA games on any laptop or PC via a stable, no-lag streaming service. Google is preparing to publicly test Project Stream with a "limited number of participants" on October 5th, letting them play Assassin's Creed Odyssey for free in the Chrome browser. That's the latest game in the Assassin's Creed series, and it's a massive open-world adventure packed with 4K-capable graphics. In a demo video, Google shows Assassin's Creed Odyssey streaming at 1080p and 60fps. If all goes to plan, the game should work on any laptop or PC, regardless of how recently you've updated the graphics card.

Gil Weinberg, Ph.D. is a professor in Georgia Tech's School of Music and the founding director of the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology, where he leads the Robotic Musicianship group. His research focuses on developing artificial creativity and musical expression for robots and augmented humans. Among his projects are a marimba-playing robotic musician called Shimon that uses machine learning for jazz improvisation, and a prosthetic robotic arm for amputees that restores and enhances human drumming abilities. Weinberg will discuss this and other robotics projects as an allegory to unlocking our own creative potential. If we can teach a robot to be creative – to improvise, to think on its feet, to draw cues from others for where to head next – surely we can unlock that same potential within ourselves.

Data science and machine learning are powerful technologies innovating the world in ways that sometimes seem straight out of a sci-fi film. Today's machines are not just capable of tedious tasks, but also using complex mathematics to figure out how to chart a path for a rocket to follow or making weather predictions based on historical data. What better platform to explore the magic of data science and machine learning than film? We've rounded up 10 of the best data movies: Ex Machina: The title comes from the Latin phrase "deus ex machina," translated as "god from the machine." In the film, Caleb, a programmer at one of the largest internet companies in the world, is selected to participate in the biggest experiment of the century.

The term "artificial intelligence" has been around since 1956, and yet many journalists are unfamiliar with its history and impact on the world today, even as its influence grows everywhere, including on how we gather and report the news. The next massive open online course (MOOC) in Spanish, and the Knight Center's first in partnership with Microsoft, will familiarize students with the foundations of artificial intelligence (AI) and how it impacts the news industry. "Artificial Intelligence: How to cover AI and understand its impact on journalism," will run from Oct. 22 to Nov. 25, 2018 and will be taught by Sandra Crucianelli, a veteran instructor for Knight Center MOOCs and a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). "The course will be a wonderful opportunity for those who have not yet become familiar with artificial intelligence technologies," Crucianelli said. "We will be sharing definitions, but also analyzing applications, examples and there also will be online discussions. For example, will robots replace journalists? This is a question that many of us ask and I believe the exchange of opinions will be very interesting."