avatar
Actress sues Avatar director for 'theft' of facial features
Film-maker James Cameron and Disney are being sued by an actress who has accused the director of using her likeness as the basis for one of the lead characters in his hit film series Avatar. German-born US actress Q'orianka Kilcher, who is of indigenous Peruvian descent, alleged that in 2005 - when she was 14 - Cameron extracted her facial features from a photograph of her portraying Pocahontas in another film, The New World. In court documents filed on Tuesday in California, her team claimed Cameron directed his design team to use it as the foundation for the character of Neytiri, depicted on screen by Zoe Saldaña. BBC News has contacted Cameron and Disney for a comment. The Avatar movies contain a hybrid of live-action performance mixed with computer-generated characters.
- Europe > United Kingdom (0.52)
- North America > United States > California (0.25)
- Media > Film (1.00)
- Leisure & Entertainment (1.00)
Tech CEOs Think AI Will Let Them Be Everywhere at Once
Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey have different visions for how to use AI for management purposes, but both imagine a system of heightened control. Silicon Valley moguls have lately complained that too many people are too negative about artificial intelligence. They're likewise frustrated by stalled AI adoption among major corporations that aren't seeing the lucrative efficiencies promised by Big Tech. But if consumers and corporations are proving resistant to AI's acceleration, it hasn't stopped billionaire CEOs from charging ahead with their personal fantasies of what the technology can do. On April 13, the Financial Times reported that Meta is working up a photorealistic, three-dimensional AI avatar of chief exec Mark Zuckerberg, according to several people at the company.
- North America > United States > California (0.36)
- Europe > Slovakia (0.05)
- Europe > Czechia (0.05)
- (2 more...)
Meta Is Shutting Down Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest
Meta's flailing virtual reality social experience is being discontinued in June. It's part of Meta's broader moves to slim down the business that became its namesake. Pour one out from your digital bottle, because Meta is shutting down the virtual reality experience of Horizon Worlds. Meta sent an email blast to Horizon Worlds users today stating that the social VR world will officially end on its Quest VR headsets; starting March 31, Horizon Worlds will no longer be in the Quest store. Some Horizon-specific perks, including Meta Credits, avatars, and some digital clothes and in-world purchases, will also be removed.
- Asia > Middle East > Iran (0.05)
- North America > United States > New York > New York County > New York City (0.05)
- North America > United States > California > San Francisco County > San Francisco (0.05)
- (3 more...)
- Information Technology (0.98)
- Leisure & Entertainment (0.70)
Digital blackface flourishes under Trump and AI: 'The state is bending reality'
Digital blackface flourishes under Trump and AI: 'The state is bending reality' Late last year, as a US government shutdown cut off the Snap benefits that low-income families rely on for groceries, videos on social media cast the fallout in frantic scenes. "Imma keep it real with you," a Black woman said in a viral TikTok post, "I get over $2,500 a month in stamps. I sell'em, $2,000 worth, for about $1,200-$1,500 cash." Another Black woman ranted about taxpayers' responsibility to her seven children with seven men, and yet another melted down after her food stamps were rejected at a corn-dog counter. Visible watermarks stamped some videos as AI-generated - apparently, too faintly for the racist commentators and hustlers more than happy to believe the frenzy was real.
- Europe > Ukraine (0.05)
- Oceania > Australia (0.04)
- North America > United States > Minnesota (0.04)
- North America > United States > Louisiana (0.04)
- Leisure & Entertainment (1.00)
- Government > Regional Government > North America Government > United States Government (1.00)
- Media > News (0.96)
- Law > Civil Rights & Constitutional Law (0.91)
- North America > United States > Pennsylvania > Allegheny County > Pittsburgh (0.04)
- Asia > Middle East > Israel (0.04)
- Information Technology > Artificial Intelligence > Vision (1.00)
- Information Technology > Artificial Intelligence > Natural Language (1.00)
- Information Technology > Artificial Intelligence > Representation & Reasoning (0.68)
- Information Technology > Artificial Intelligence > Machine Learning > Neural Networks (0.47)
- North America > United States > Ohio > Montgomery County > Dayton (0.04)
- Europe (0.04)
- Asia > Japan > Honshū > Chūbu > Ishikawa Prefecture > Kanazawa (0.04)
- Asia > Indonesia > Bali (0.04)
- Law (0.92)
- Information Technology (0.92)
- Government (0.67)
- Education > Educational Setting (0.46)
- Information Technology > Artificial Intelligence > Representation & Reasoning (1.00)
- Information Technology > Artificial Intelligence > Natural Language > Large Language Model (1.00)
- Information Technology > Artificial Intelligence > Machine Learning > Neural Networks > Deep Learning (0.96)
- (2 more...)
XAGen: 3D Expressive Human Avatars Generation
Recent advances in 3D-aware GAN models have enabled the generation of realistic and controllable human body images. However, existing methods focus on the control of major body joints, neglecting the manipulation of expressive attributes, such as facial expressions, jaw poses, hand poses, and so on.
AVATAR: OptimizingLLMAgentsforToolUsagevia ContrastiveReasoning
InIRsystems, theretrievermodule directly influences theperformance ofdownstream tasks, such as retrieval-augmented generation [20, 29, 30] and knowledge-intensive question answering [34, 52]. However, these methods do not explicitly consider targeted optimization for tool usage or the impact on complex multi-stage tasks.
- North America > United States > California > Santa Clara County > Palo Alto (0.04)
- Asia > Myanmar > Tanintharyi Region > Dawei (0.04)
- Asia > Middle East > Jordan (0.04)