Actor Tori Thomas on set at the AI studio Promise in Los Angeles filming the studio's newly announced AI-enabled horror film, Touch Grass. Actor Tori Thomas on set at the AI studio Promise in Los Angeles filming the studio's newly announced AI-enabled horror film, Touch Grass. 'I see the incredible promise': on set of an AI film shoot as new studios embrace controversial tech N ear the collonaded entrance to Sony Pictures' historic Culver City film studio, a tech-powered rival has sprung up this summer. The artists at Promise, a new studio feeding off the potential of AI, can glimpse the lots where Singin' in the Rain and Men in Black were shot, but no longer do they need to get beyond the studio's high walls to make their visions come true. From far more modest premises, they are making movies with rapidly accelerating AI models that create backgrounds, special effects and even "synthetic performers" - using US models but also driven by market-leading Chinese AI.

And an awesome one,' says Pro Jank Footy developer David Ashby (left) with comedian Broden Kelly at the Great Northern Hotel in Carlton North. And an awesome one,' says Pro Jank Footy developer David Ashby (left) with comedian Broden Kelly at the Great Northern Hotel in Carlton North. 'People in Japan thought we made footy up': Pro Jank Footy, the video game taking Australian rules to the world T ry explaining Australian rules football to anyone outside Australia, and "it sounds like you're making it up," says David Ashby, the multi-hyphenate comedic mind behind deeply silly spoofs such as Italian Spider-Man and Danger 5. "Eighteen players a side, running around on a cricket oval with a rugby ball that has to be bounced every so often and gets kicked between posts - like, what the fuck is happening?" Two years ago at a fantasy footy barbecue, Ashby had a brainwave: why not make a video game where Australia's strange national sport becomes even stranger the more you play? Pro Jank Footy reimagines the sport as a high-octane fever dream, where every time your opponent kicks a goal, you get to change one rule so the game gets increasingly janky (and hilariously stupid). Your opponents turn into seagulls.

Sunset Visitor studio's founder tells us about their new, unnerving Captcha-filled world which prompts players to ask what it means to have a'meat body' S unset Visitor is a studio that has long engaged with the idea that video games are an effective vehicle for ruminating on societal problems. Its Peabody award-winning project, 1000XResist, incorporated the development team's complex feelings about the Covid pandemic. "We're pretty used to absorbing the world into the work," says studio founder Remy Siu. The outfit's latest game, Prove You're Human, continues this legacy of reflective game making, providing players with an AI-centric psychological horror experience where they must reason with a learning model convinced that it's alive. "We've tried to situate ourselves in [the question]: what is the effectual feeling of being a person inside of all of this?" Siu says.

Fearless, intelligent, devoted, determined Samus Aran in Metroid Prime 4. Fearless, intelligent, devoted, determined Samus Aran in Metroid Prime 4. Being a woman who loves video games has often felt lonely, like being on a hostile planet - but Metroid's female space hunter has been with me all the way Anyway, this new game has you in its grip. You are a lone astronaut exploring a hostile alien planet full of ancient, mysterious structures. This astronaut looks human enough - but this distinctly alien place is full of objects that power up their spacesuit's capabilities. Each new ability allows you to explore a new area, and as you do, you realise that the entirety of the planetary base you're exploring is one, massive, interconnected maze. Hours later, you finally defeat Mother Brain and set off a timed self-destruct sequence. Upon your escape, you're treated to an endgame screen: the little astronaut faces you as text on screen implores you to "pray for peace in space".

The games industry's obsession with visual fidelity is costing them money and talent Big developers are discovering that the technical progress of photorealism doesn't always translate into the creative spark that gives gamers joy - and keeps them playing Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. L ast week, Asha Sharma, the new head of Xbox, laid out her vision for the future of the console and interestingly, the two titles she picked out as potential areas of growth were Minecraft and Candy Crush Saga - games that don't exactly scream next-generation entertainment. Neither relies on hyper-realistic visuals, which is the north star that games consoles and gaming PCs have been aiming at for the past 40 years.

What is Fields of Mistria? F arming simulator games deliver on an escapist fantasy: going off-grid from the modern work grind, in exchange for charming small-town life and a farm to call your own. While these games have had dedicated fans since the days of Harvest Moon, the most popular today, Stardew Valley, contemporised the genre with a larger range of activities and lovable townspeople to befriend and romance. Created in 2016 by independent developer Eric Barone, it has now sold more than 50m copies and become the mould for so many other indie farming sims. Fields of Mistria is one of these farming sims in a post Stardew world - though it updates the core formula.

For the festival's 150th anniversary, the creative team have turned to AI to generate visuals reflecting Wagner's tetralogy's past, present - and future. U nveiled the same week in which tech company Anthropic admitted that its AI model Claude had gone rogue during testing, Bayreuth festival's new AI-generated staging of Wagner's four-part Ring of the Nibelungen is at least timely. But anyone who assumes that the cycle's obsession with knowledge, power and possession might make it an ideal forum for reflection on AI as a major contemporary frontier will be disappointed, as will anyone hopeful about AI's creative potential within opera. Commissioned to mark the festival's 150th anniversary, the production is "curated" - emphatically not "directed" - by a team led by German stage director Marcus Lobbes . He apparently spent weeks in dialogue with AI models about possible interpretations of the Ring.

'Our cast is representative of the world' (from left) Jimmy Gonzales, Matt Damon and Himesh Patel in The Odyssey. 'Our cast is representative of the world' (from left) Jimmy Gonzales, Matt Damon and Himesh Patel in The Odyssey. Elon Musk says Grok Imagine will make'historically accurate' AI adaptation of Homer's Odyssey The billionaire says the AI-generated film will stay true to Homer's original, after repeatedly criticising Christopher Nolan's blockbuster over its casting choices Elon Musk has said his AI platform Grok Imagine will make a "historically accurate" adaptation of Homer's Odyssey, after the success of Christopher Nolan's blockbusting treatment which the SpaceX founder has regularly criticised over its casting. In a post on X, Musk said: "Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer." Musk also linked to a post containing a three-minute clip of footage that the user said had been generated from Grok Imagine, showing a scene between Odysseus and the nymph Calypso.

Einstein's field equations, Newton's universal law and artificial intelligence are among the subjects of Laidlow's ambitious orchestral works R obert Laidlow is as at home in the realms of science and technology as he is in the world of classical music. As this NMC debut album demonstrates, his intricate, wildly imaginative work is eminently approachable, even if the core concepts are highly complex. Warp, a terse, 12-minute piano concerto, proposes a musical solution to Einstein's field equations as the intrepid Joseph Havlat boldly goes where no pianist has gone before amid the distorting fabric of orchestral space-time. Strident orchestral lines spiral ever upwards, stretching instruments to their limits, while the piano maintains its course towards a serene conclusion. Handsomely recorded, the BBC Philharmonic and Vimbayi Kaziboni offer vibrantly detailed support. The Piatti Quartet plays Gravity, a harmonically unstable if slightly verbose homage to Newton's universal law that at one point pitches the players into the musical equivalent of a black hole.

The Star Wars director has called AI technology'the future' of film-making and advised'there's nothing you can do about it' Star Wars director George Lucas has added his voice to the growing chorus of film-makers receptive to the rising use of AI tools in moviemaking. Speaking in an interview with A Rabbit's Foot, Lucas, 82, said: "Artificial intelligence means it's much easier for us to make movies." Resistance to the new technology, he continued, is "very much like sitting here saying, 'Well, I believe the horse and the buggy is really where it's at. These cars, they break down, they need gas, there's all kinds of problems with them and pretty soon they'll be making them into tanks, and then they'll be killing people. Adoption of such tools, continued Lucas, is an inevitability. "There's nothing you can do about it.