'Like a billionaire on acid': Star Wars director Gareth Edwards comes out in favour of AI Speaking at Amazon's AI on the Lot event, the Rogue One film-maker Gareth Edwards said'it'll do anything you ask' and'it's going to be better than CGI' Jurassic World Rebirth and Rogue One director Gareth Edwards has enthusiastically endorsed the use of generative AI in film-making, saying "it is a fucking genius at helping you" and "it's going to be better than CGI". Edwards was speaking at AI on the Lot, an event in Culver City, California, organised by Amazon, and in remarks reported by the Hollywood Reporter said: "I can't see a reason why you wouldn't become interested in this stuff as a film-maker. It's so clearly a tool that might be up there with the camera. It's going to be better than CGI." Edwards said that AI is most useful in the preparatory stages of film-making, saying: "It's only good for iteration and discovering what the movie should be, and then once you know what it is, go in and start making it your movie." He added: "It has no taste whatsoever. It is a fucking genius at helping you. I view it like having a second-unit director who is a billionaire on acid. Like, it'll do anything you ask, not a problem. And you'll give it notes, and it'll be like, 'I don't do notes. I'll just do something totally different.' Edwards' positive view of AI was echoed by veteran writer and director Paul Schrader, who was also speaking at the event. In remarks reported by Deadline, Schrader said: "I don't think the real future of AI commercially is in all this flash, all these monsters - that's just jacked-up special effects on steroids," he said. "The real tip of the spear is when we can create an AI protagonist, not a hybrid, and that movie makes money.

The Commonwealth Foundation said all entrants to the prize had avowed that their submissions were their own work. The Commonwealth Foundation said all entrants to the prize had avowed that their submissions were their own work. 'Obvious markers of AI': doubts raised over winner of short story prize Granta publisher says'perhaps we never will know' true authorship of work that won Commonwealth prize A few syntactical tics - and the verdict of an AI detection platform - have sparked a furore over the possibility that a short story given a prestigious literary award was written by AI. The foundation that awarded the prize and Granta, the magazine that published the winning story, said they had considered the allegations but had not reached a conclusion as to whether they were true. "It may be that the judges have now awarded a prize to an instance of AI plagiarism - we don't yet know, and perhaps we never will know," the publisher of Granta, Sigrid Rausing, said.

'According to Kurz, technological moguls have long seen themselves as superior beings whose natural role is to shape society - so they have no problem disrupting the institution of democracy.' 'According to Kurz, technological moguls have long seen themselves as superior beings whose natural role is to shape society - so they have no problem disrupting the institution of democracy.' 'Capitalism has to become more humane': a Stanford economist on big tech, power hoarding and democracy T he billionaires of today are unusually aggressive in their hoarding of cultural and technological influence, according to Mordecai Kurz, a Stanford economist whose research connects monopoly power with political and economic inequality. In his new book, Private Power and Democracy's Decline, publishing 19 May, he argues the US is living through an extreme version of a pattern that has repeated itself since industrialization: technological power concentrating in the hands of a few, which is eroding democracy. According to Kurz, technological moguls have long seen themselves as superior beings whose natural role is to shape society - so they have no problem disrupting the institution of democracy.

Gotta catch an MP! Players'debate' UK politicians in Pokémon-style game Creator of Politidex hopes free online app will help humanise politics and act as a way of'flipping the narrative' The year is 2016 and Pokémon Go has taken over the world. People are wandering for miles on end, disrupting concerts, and even slamming into poles in their attempts to capture fantastical cartoon creatures. Ten years later, a new generation are flocking to another Pokémon-inspired game. Instead of Pikachu, Charizard and Blastoise, however, players are catching and training up their local politicians in order to build their own political parties. Some MPs are even catching themselves.

Why are Nintendo releasing a straight-up remake of the space-flight shooter - with many of its original limitations - rather than a fresh new take? T he Nintendo 64 was not my first video game console, but it was my formative one. Getting to grips with 3D movement in Super Mario 64 with that weird three-pronged controller is one of my most visceral childhood memories; the long, wait for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was the background noise to a huge chunk of my youth. But back in the 1990s (in the UK at least), it felt as if had an N64. When everybody had a PlayStation instead, I felt I was the only kid in my whole city who cared more about Banjo-Kazooie than Crash Bandicoot. If even Zelda seemed comparatively niche in Europe in the 90s, Lylat Wars (known elsewhere as Star Fox 64) was a real deep cut.

Delivering much information about the scale of what's coming, documentary also follows Gawdat's campaign to get the programs with empathy A nother day, another warning about AI; vis-a-vis the reality we all know, this has roughly the same reassuring effect as a plane fuselage ripping off mid-flight. Starting off with familiar criticisms, such as putting the world out of work and handing over power to tech barons, Alex Holmes and Lina Zilinskaite's film blasts an concentrated stream of AI concerns in its 83-minute runtime. By the time it is talking about current efforts to create computers out of human brain cells, potentially integrable into our own craniums, and implying this might be a good thing, it is (ironically) hard to know how to process all of this. The Cassandra at the film's centre is Mo Gawdat, former chief business officer at Google X, now a touring cautionary voice trying to get the world to listen about the perils of AI. Once overseeing advanced projects for the tech giants, his biggest moonshot lies ahead: to introduce a moral dimension into a tech race that looks increasingly like the frenzied season finale of late capitalism. He talks about feeling parental pride in watching Google's AI-driven robotic arms learn to grasp objects, as children do.

Across Mixtape's four-hour runtime, you'skateboard, mash tongues together during a kiss, TP a house, ride a dinosaur and learn to fly' Across Mixtape's four-hour runtime, you'skateboard, mash tongues together during a kiss, TP a house, ride a dinosaur and learn to fly' W hen Johnny Galvatron was 14, his cousin gave him a copy of the Smashing Pumpkins' seminal 1995 album, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. For Galvatron, a rambunctious teenager in Geelong who defined himself by his musical taste, it was love at first spin. "I don't think there's a track like Tonight, Tonight from any other band," he reminisces. A song from the album plays at a critical moment in Mixtape, the second game from Galvatron's Melbourne-based studio, Beethoven and Dinosaur. Mixtape is set over a single day; tomorrow, Stacy will be leaving her best friends, Slater and Cassandra, and flying to New York as part of a reckless plan to shove a mixtape into the hands of a superstar music supervisor who will, she believes, be so convinced of Stacy's genius that she'll offer her a job.

Detail from Holbein's sketch of an unidentified woman, which it is claimed may depict Anne Boleyn. Detail from Holbein's sketch of an unidentified woman, which it is claimed may depict Anne Boleyn. They are two small sketches by the Renaissance master Hans Holbein: one has long been considered to be a portrait of Henry VIII's doomed second wife, Anne Boleyn, and the other is of an unknown woman whose name was lost to time. Now researchers using AI have discovered that the unnamed woman might be the tragic queen after all, while the other figure could in fact be Boleyn's mother. The works, which belong to the royal collection and are known as the Windsor sketch and the Unidentified Woman respectively, were analysed by a team at the University of Bradford, who found that they might have been incorrectly inscribed in the 1700s, leading to a misunderstanding that has lasted centuries.

'She had big googly eyes and was wearing a red hat knitted by one of the careworkers' Emma the Social Robot by Paula Hornickel. 'She had big googly eyes and was wearing a red hat knitted by one of the careworkers' Emma the Social Robot by Paula Hornickel. 'The first resident that Emma - a social robot - was introduced to was called Peter. After that, Emma assumed they were all called Peter, which everyone found hilarious. O ne morning in July 2025, I arrived in the small, quiet town of Albershausen in south-west Germany.

Steven Soderbergh, who has voiced interest in using AI in his films. Steven Soderbergh, who has voiced interest in using AI in his films. Why are respected film-makers suddenly embracing AI? I n Steven Soderbergh's beguiling new movie The Christophers, a reclusive artist (Ian McKellen) tangles with the quiet art forger (Michaela Coel) who his greedy children have hired to secretly finish further entries in a well-known painting series. The movie is smart and provocative about the nature of artistry and authorship, exploring what it means to create - and to stop creating.