Countless flowing green wigs risked spontaneous combustion on a 36-degree Melbourne evening as thousands of J-pop fans queued outside John Cain Arena on Friday night. But the heat was irrelevant to the night's headline pop attraction, Hatsune Miku. Miku, as she's known to fans, is a 157cm-tall avatar of a teenage girl with green pigtails. She represents a digital bank of vocal samples created by the ominous-sounding Crypton Future Media using Yamaha's Vocaloid voice synthesiser technology. Users input lyrics and melodies which are "sung" by the bank's sampled voice (Hatsune Miku is voiced by the actor Saki Fujita); some Vocaloid producers "tune" the software to be especially convincing, while others embrace its artificiality.

Back in 2022, when ChatGPT arrived, I was part of the first wave of users. Delighted but also a little uncertain what to do with it, I asked the system to generate all kinds of random things. The quality of what it produced was variable, but it made clear something that is even more apparent now than it was then. Instead its arrival is an inflection point in human history. Over coming years and decades, AI will transform every aspect of our lives.

The past is a big deal in the video games industry right now. Hardly a month goes by when we're not being tempted by a new retro mini console, whether that's a cutesy Nintendo or a demure ZX Spectrum (a new version of which is arriving in November, complete with rubbery keys and 48 legendary games). And this year's release schedule is absolutely crammed with remasters of classic titles. In April, the video game news site Kotaku listed 30 old timers being exhumed and revived for 2024, including The Last of Us Part II, Tomb Raider 1-3 and Star Wars: Dark Forces. And the article missed a few! October alone will see updated versions of horror adventures Until Dawn, Silent Hill 2 and Clock Tower, as well as Lego Harry Potter.

Cate Blanchett – beloved thespian, film star and refugee advocate – is standing at a lectern, addressing the European Union parliament. "The future is now," she says, authoritatively. So far, so normal, until: "But where the fuck are the sex robots?" The footage is from a 2023 address that Blanchett actually gave – but the rest has been made up. Her voice was generated by Australian artist Xanthe Dobbie using the text-to-speech platform PlayHT, for Dobbie's 2024 video work Future Sex/Love Sounds – an imagining of a sex robot-induced feminist utopia, voiced by celebrity clones.

At first glance, if you squint, you might think it was a photograph: a couple nuzzling together in the front row of a concert hall, in a Facebook advertisement for the Queensland Symphony Orchestra (QSO). But look again and you'll see why it's caused a stir among creative workers and the union representing them. The couple's tangled fingers are both too large and too many; there's a strange sheen making them look more like wax dolls; and then there's the clothes: she in a tulle gown encrusted with jewels, he in a tuxedo – and, simultaneously, a tulle gown encrusted with jewels. Also: she has a large cube on her lap. "Want to do something different this Saturday? Come see an orchestra play," reads the ad.

Last month, a YouTube user named demonflyingfox uploaded a video titled "Harry Potter by Balenciaga." It showed characters from the Harry Potter films--Hagrid, Ron, Hermione, Snape, McGonagall, Dobby--as gaunt models with aggressive cheekbones (slightly yassified), dressed in gothic capes and leather jackets. Set against a catwalk-worthy electronica beat, the actors blink, nod, and speak lines from the books which have been remixed with fashion references. "You are Balenciaga, Harry," Hagrid says, instead of breaking the news that Harry is a wizard. The video is strange and hilariously sinister.

You don't need to look far to see that gaming is everywhere with film versions of Tetris, Super Mario Bros and Dungeons & Dragons in cinemas this week. Chanté talks to Rhianna Pratchett, video game writer on Tomb Raider, Timi and Joey from The Nerd Council podcast and the Guardian's video games editor Keza MacDonald about why it is dominating

Tech experts are sold on the benefits of leveraging artificial intelligence to help humans handle cumbersome and sometimes complex tasks in applications ranging from business to healthcare to education and entertainment--and beyond. And while they're optimistic about the future capabilities of artificial intelligence, their projections pale in comparison to the sentient robots and super technologies often depicted on TV and movie screens and predicted in science fiction. In truth, AI is a far more practical tool than a glamorous one--and whether we know it or not, most of us use it or are impacted by it every day. Conversely, there are also many things AI is credited with that it can't do (at least, not yet). Below, 16 members of Forbes Technology Council discuss some of the things popular culture and the public at large often get wrong about AI and what the truth of the matter actually is.

For decades, pop culture has promised us a future where artificial intelligence (AI) is evolved enough to form relationships with humans. But in every take, that future predicted by authors, film directors and actors has missed the mark. Pop culture's first AI-human relationship was the brainchild of Mary Shelley, who created Frankenstein in 1818. In doing so, she set readers dreaming of a day in which robots imbued with empathy could meet humans' desire for real connection. Today, thanks to incredible innovations in the realm of artificial intelligence, that day has come.

For decades, pop culture has promised us a future where artificial intelligence (AI) is evolved enough to form relationships with humans.