They can be high-tech, but crucially, are "screen-free." Bondu is a stuffed dinosaur that speaks 27 languages. It--or, more precisely, the AI chatbot embedded inside it--can also play games, help with homework, and patiently answer a child's questions, even the really inane ones. Its "bedtime mode" includes breathing exercises and stories. Bondu, which costs $300 and comes in four colors, is marketed as a playmate, a confidant, a teacher, a quasi-caregiver.

How Saudi Arabia's spending spree reached the end of the line Autocratic monarchs once left an echo of their glory in the ruins of the megaprojects they commanded at the peak of their unchallenged power. Those monumental physical traces are to be found in the fertile plains, mountainsides and deserts of the Middle East. But one of their most prominent modern counterparts may only have a digital footprint to leave behind for some of his most ambitious concepts. A decade ago, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman - or MBS as he is widely known - decreed a revisioning of his country that leapt from the realm of science fiction. It was called Vision 2030. Extraordinary monolithic structures were to help bring forth new technological marvels not just for the Kingdom but for the world.

The danger is no longer just misinformation. Thanks to AI, it's now possible to manufacture fake realities at scale. Deepfake videos, cloned voices, and bogus news stories are dissolving the line between what's real and what's not faster than society can adapt.

The systems behind them--and the reasons we keep passing around war memes as entertainment--are more serious. As ceasefire announcements between the US and Iran --and separately between Israel and Lebanon --dominated headlines over the past two weeks, they also prompted a look back at how war spread online: through memes. There were jokes about conscription. Captions about getting drafted, but at least with a Bluetooth device. The song "Bazooka" went viral, with users lip-syncing to "Rest in peace my granny, she got hit by a bazooka."

Top-level human players perform about 350 actions per minute [1].

A quarter century ago, Wikipedia's decentralized, crowdsourced, and consensus-driven model replaced the centralized, expert-driven, and authority-based standard for encyclopedic knowledge curation. The emergence of generative AI encyclopedias, such as Grokipedia, possibly presents another potential shift in epistemic evolution. This study investigates whether AI- and human-curated encyclopedias rely on the same foundations of authority. We conducted a multi-scale comparative analysis of the citation networks from 72 matched article pairs, which cite a total of almost 60,000 sources. Using an 8-category epistemic classification, we mapped the "epistemic profiles" of the articles on each platform. Our findings reveal several quantitative and qualitative differences in how knowledge is sourced and encyclopedia claims are epistemologically justified. Grokipedia replaces Wikipedia's heavy reliance on peer-reviewed "Academic & Scholarly" work with a notable increase in "User-generated" and "Civic organization" sources. Comparative network analyses further show that Grokipedia employs very different epistemological profiles when sourcing leisure topics (such as Sports and Entertainment) and more societal sensitive civic topics (such as Politics & Conflicts, Geographical Entities, and General Knowledge & Society). Finally, we find a "scaling-law for AI-generated knowledge sourcing" that shows a linear relationship between article length and citation density, which is distinct from collective human reference sourcing. We conclude that this first implementation of an LLM-based encyclopedia does not merely automate knowledge production but restructures it. Given the notable changes and the important role of encyclopedias, we suggest the continuation and deepening of algorithm audits, such as the one presented here, in order to understand the ongoing epistemological shifts.

W hen the first ever stage adaptation of the global book and film franchise The Hunger Games opens its doors in London next week, fans paying up to £200 have been promised an "electrifying" and "immersive" experience. The show at the purpose-built 1,200 seat Troubadour in Canary Wharf, which features Hollywood A-lister John Malkovich appearing via screen as the evil President Snow who oversees the televised spectacle of teenagers fighting to the death, is the latest in an explosion of launches looking to cash in on a boom in consumer demand for experiential entertainment, often linked to bankable franchises. The boom in the market for experimental, unusual nights out and shows is well established, from escape rooms, axe throwing and slumber parties to Secret Cinema's Olympic Park takeover to recreate the setting for Back to the Future and the hugely successful Abba Voyage. Recent pop-ups include experiences linked to Minecraft, Jurassic World and Squid Game. As big money has rolled into the sector, so too has a desire from companies to rely on solid gold intellectual property to bring in the crowds - with mixed results.

Many will assume that OpenAI's Sora app represents a new era of social media. But that's wrong--all it does is reanimate our current one. As a purely creative instrument, Sora, the new AI video app from OpenAI, is a game changer. Dream up any scenario and it appears in an instant. Mr. Rogers teaching Tupac Shakur the lyrics to the legendary rap diss "Hit Em Up."

OpenAI's latest app encourages users to generate a personal digital avatar and scroll AI-generated videos of themselves and their friends. On Tuesday, OpenAI released an AI video app called Sora . The platform is powered by OpenAI's latest video generation model, Sora 2, and revolves around a TikTok-like For You page of user-generated clips. This is the first product release from OpenAI that adds AI-generated sounds to videos. For now, it's available only on iOS and requires an invite code to join.

Video Games The Buzziest Video Game of the Year Is Here. Sometimes, in our modern world where every Goliath wants to be seen as a David, where the middle class is evaporating and the working class is crushed and the wealthy play victim, the little guy still manages to win. Sometimes the little guy even wins big. And then sometimes the little guy wins, in a manner that destabilizes a flailing industry, upends media coverage, and incites multiple minor culture wars. That's how it went for Ari Gibson and William Pellen, a pair of Australian game developers known collectively as Team Cherry, who last week released the only video game that every gamer is talking about right now: .