On May 18, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced an impressive new tool: an AI system called LaMDA that can chat to users about any subject. To start, Google plans to integrate LaMDA into its main search portal, its voice assistant, and Workplace, its collection of cloud-based work software that includes Gmail, Docs, and Drive. But the eventual goal, said Pichai, is to create a conversational interface that allows people to retrieve any kind of information--text, visual, audio--across all Google's products just by asking. LaMDA's rollout signals yet another way in which language technologies are becoming enmeshed in our day-to-day lives. But Google's flashy presentation belied the ethical debate that now surrounds such cutting-edge systems.

But once the rest of the team read the passages, they were immediately on board, including Sony and PlayStation PR. Representation is important to him, Druckmann said, recalling how excited he gets whenever he sees a character with a Jewish Israeli identity like himself portrayed in media. Naughty Dog's philosophy is about telling "more interesting, fresh stories," and that includes narratives about minorities, sexualities and religious beliefs that aren't widely shown in video games or other areas of pop-culture, Druckmann says. It's something that continues in "The Last of Us Part II."