Why did Grok say he's better than Jesus? Listen to more stories on the Noa app. We cannot say for sure if Elon Musk dialed up the flattery quotient on his chatbot, Grok, after the author Joyce Carol Oates publicly humiliated him this month. What we can say is that, yesterday, Grok did assert, in response to a question from an X user, that "Musk edges out" Jesus Christ, son of God, as a role model for society; the bot cited Musk's "relentless innovation, risk-taking, and a commitment to preserving our species through space exploration and AI safeguards." Musk triumphed in many such hypotheticals.

From to: TIFF's Films on Power, Creation, and Survival Are a Warning These are WIRED's picks for some of the most urgent and unsettling films from the 50th annual Toronto International Film Festival. Some of the most urgent films at this year's Toronto International Film Festival aren't here to soothe. Together,,, and play like sizzle reels of caution, and at their best, they're award-worthy symbols of alarm. These films, the first two of which are documentaries, don't just entertain--they confront fractured humanity, closeness and distance under Israel's siege of Gaza, and a creation we've set loose, growing beyond our control. That's the one muscle of film--to interrogate rather than facilitate.

Back in May, just a week into the the Writers Guild of America's strike, John August, a member of the union's negotiating committee and writer of Charlie's Angels, described his personal dystopia: "the Nora Ephron problem"--a world in which artificial intelligence evolves to become a writer so profound it can mimic the style of a surefire hitmaker. The synthetic Nora Ephron may yet come to pass, but the deal struck this week between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) will go some way toward protecting writers against its impact. In short, the contract stipulates that AI can't be used to write or rewrite any scripts or treatments, ensures that studios will disclose if any material given to writers is AI-generated, and protects writers from having their scripts used to train AI without their say-so. Provisions in the contract also stipulate that script scribes can use AI for themselves. At a time when people in many professions fear that generative AI is coming for their jobs, the WGA's new contract has the potential to be precedent-setting, not just in Hollywood, where the actors' strike continues, but in industries across the US and the world.

In an age of very little institutional trust, without a firm historical context that future historians and the public can rely on to authenticate digital media events of the past, we may be looking at the dawn of a new era of civilization: post-history. We need to act now to ensure the continuity of history without stifling the creative potential of these new AI tools. Imagine that it's the year 2030. You load Facebook on your smartphone, and you're confronted with a video that shows you drunk and deranged, sitting in your living room saying racist things while waving a gun. Typical AI-assisted character attack, you think. There's a 1970s interview video of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on The Dick Cavett Show declaring, "We never made it to the moon.