An Australian film that was digitally altered to change a same-sex couple to a heterosexual one has drawn backlash from moviegoers in China. Together, a horror film starring Dave Franco and Alison Brie, was shown in selected Chinese cinemas in advance screenings on 12 September. Cinemagoers later realised some scenes had been modified after screenshots showing the original scenes went viral online. The film was due to be publicly released on 19 September - but as of Thursday has yet to be aired in cinemas. The film's global distributor, Neon, later condemned the edit, saying they did not approve of [this] unauthorised edit... and demand they ceased distribution, according to reports.

In 1818, author Mary Shelley told the story of Victor Frankenstein and his "creature" -- a tale that explored humanity's fascination with animating the unliving. This Halloween, an AI-powered séance is doing much of the same: "resurrecting" Shelley, and others, from beyond the grave. It is just one of many ways horror is being explored in different disciplines, putting a new spin on the genre's traditionally grotesque, unnatural and psychological elements. Ahead of Halloween, Grid spoke with three artists -- known for their creepy creations in artificial intelligence, dance and photography -- about how horror is explored in the media they work in. Resurrection -- and the idea of the "undead" -- is a Halloween hallmark.

After I watched Men, I went to see what others had to say about it, and the first place I went to was a recorded conversion about the film on Diregentleman's channel. Toward the end of the conversation, Henry Galley says Men further diminished Garland's previous two films. Personally, I didn't get that in regards to Annihilation, but Ex Machina, on the other hand, I hadn't seen before. I did not watch Garland's directorial debut in 2014. And my reason is that I have been obsessed with pop culture about robotic A.I. ever since I was a kid from Astro Boy (circa.

When OpenAI's DALL.E 2 was released two weeks back, the AI tool's ability to create images using sparse natural language instructions caused an online frenzy. Whatever its predecessor DALL.E could do, DALL.E 2 could do better. After the announcement, OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman spoke about the potential upsides of DALL.E 2 and the general direction that AI was moving towards in his blog. According to Altman, the general idea that AI's contributions would affect physical labour first, followed by cognitive labour and then eventually reach creative work has been reversed in reality. "It now looks like it's going to go in the opposite order," he noted.

A horror film written by AI is about as confused and incongruous as you'd imagine it would be. However, it is highly entertaining in its own right, with ill-fitting and even nonsensical dialogue and misfiring concepts making for an oddly enjoyable – if odd – few minutes. The project, uploaded to the Netflix is a Joke YouTube channel, had a bot subjected to 400,000 hours of horror movie material before being tasked with producing its own horror movie script. The result is either a horrifically bad attempt at a horror film – or it is a superb attempt at satire. If it's the former, then we've nothing to worry about as far as AI being able to exercise genuine creativity or even display coherence.

Music is an indispensable element in film: it establishes atmosphere and mood, drives the viewer's emotional reactions, and significantly influences the audience's interpretation of the story. In a recent paper published in PLOS ONE, a research team at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, led by Professor Shrikanth Narayanan, sought to objectively examine the effect of music on cinematic genres. Their study aimed to determine if AI-based technology could predict the genre of a film based on the soundtrack alone. "By better understanding how music affects the viewer's perception of a film, we gain insights into how film creators can reach their audience in a more compelling way," said Narayanan, University Professor and Niki and Max Nikias Chair in Engineering, professor of electrical and computer engineering and computer science and the director of USC Viterbi's Signal Analysis and Interpretation Laboratory (SAIL). The notion that different film genres are more likely to use certain musical elements in their soundtrack is rather intuitive: a lighthearted romance might include rich string passages and lush, lyrical melodies, while a horror film might instead feature unsettling, piercing frequencies and eerily discordant notes.

Study authors include Professor Shrikanth Narayanan, Timothy Greer, Dillon Knox, and Benjamin Ma. (Images Courtesy of Narayanan, Greer, Knox, and Ma) Music is an indispensable element in film: it establishes atmosphere and mood, drives the viewer's emotional reactions, and significantly influences the audience's interpretation of the story. In a recent paper published in PLOS One, a research team at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, led by Professor Shrikanth Narayanan, sought to objectively examine the effect of music on cinematic genres. Their study aimed to determine if AI-based technology could predict the genre of a film based on the soundtrack alone. "By better understanding how music affects the viewer's perception of a film, we gain insights into how film creators can reach their audience in a more compelling way," said Narayanan, University Professor and Niki and Max Nikias Chair in Engineering, professor of electrical and computer engineering and computer science and the director of USC Viterbi's Signal Analysis and Interpretation Laboratory (SAIL). The notion that different film genres are more likely to use certain musical elements in their soundtrack is rather intuitive: a lighthearted romance might include rich string passages and lush, lyrical melodies, while a horror film might instead feature unsettling, piercing frequencies and eerily discordant notes.

Horror films were wildly popular on streaming platforms over the past year, and 2020 saw the horror genre take home its largest share of the box office in modern history.1 In a year where the world was stricken by real horrors, why were many people escaping to worlds full of fictional horrors? As odd as it may sound, the fact that people were more anxious in 2020 may be one reason why horror films were so popular. A look at typical horror fans may provide some clues about the nature of this peculiar phenomenon. For example, horror fans often mention their own anxiety and how horror helps them deal with it.

May 4 – Star Wars Day – has come and gone again, but as always, offered a chance to have some fun with data and analytics. Mary Osborne used text analytics to show Luke Skywalker's emotional journey across the movies, from young and idealistic to older and more jaded, but with rather more humility. Data engineering, advanced analytics, and artificial intelligence in particular, now offer new ways to examine subjects new and old to gain new insights. Artificial intelligence has long been a staple subject in science fiction, from Asimov's robot stories through to 2016's Morgan. But could AI move behind the camera, perhaps as screenplay writer?

Note: This post was written together with the awesome Julian Eisenschlos and was originally published on the TensorFlow blog. Throughout this post we will show you how to classify text using Estimators in TensorFlow. Welcome to Part 4 of a blog series that introduces TensorFlow Datasets and Estimators. You don't need to read all of the previous material, but take a look if you want to refresh any of the following concepts. Part 1 focused on pre-made Estimators, Part 2 discussed feature columns, and Part 3 how to create custom Estimators.