After more than a year in development, Lore Machine is now available to the public for the first time. For 10 a month, you can upload 100,000 words of text (up to 30,000 words at a time) and generate 80 images for short stories, scripts, podcast transcripts, and more. There are price points for power users too, including an enterprise plan costing 160 a month that covers 2.24 million words and 1,792 images. The illustrations come in a range of preset styles, from manga to watercolor to pulp '80s TV show. Zac Ryder, founder of creative agency Modern Arts, has been using an early-access version of the tool since Lore Machine founder Thobey Campion first showed him what it could do.

CBS Interactive and VICE Media have good news for us: The future we've all been waiting for – the one we've been increasingly impatient for – has already arrived. The increasingly powerful promises of artificial intelligence, bots, and virtual and augmented reality have been whipping technophiles and pundits alike into something akin to a frenzy, if all those thinkpieces that link current innovations to the magic or sci-fi blockbusters are any indication. And now these companies have paired up to capture that zeitgeist, creating and producing "Dear Future," a long-form journalism series that promises to bring readers dispatches from the cutting edge. In an effort to marry Motherboard's voice with CNET's tech focus, "Dear Future" will tackle the big, science-fiction-becomes-fact stuff. The pledge is a series of stories that demonstrate how today's technology is already impacting our present.