sci-fi - CybAI news

26 Oct

What to read this weekend: Jeff VanderMeer returns to Area X

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One thing I did not foresee happening this year was us getting a new entry in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach series. But the author announced exactly that back in April, and I’ve pretty much been counting down the days until the book’s release ever since. Absolution, the fourth novel in what previously stood as a trilogy, hit the shelves this week and it takes us back to the beginning of Area X and the ill-fated first expeditions to explore it. For the uninitiated, the series deals with a strange coastal region in the US that’s inexplicably been shut off behind…

17 Oct

A new trailer for the Dune: Prophecy series just dropped

stp2y0 CommentsNewsdune, dune prophecy, emily watson, entertainment, frank herbert, HBO, jodhi may, mark strong, max, new york comic con, news, olivia williams, sci-fi, science fiction, streaming, television, trailer, travis fimmel, tv

A new trailer dropped on the opening day of the New York Comic Con for the new six-episode spinoff series Dune: Prophecy, a prequel to the recent films directed by Denis Villeneuve.The new series will premiere November 17 at 9PM on HBO. Each episode will be available to stream on Max on Sundays following its TV broadcast.The Dune prequel is based on the novel Sisterhood of Dune by Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert, the son of Dune creator and science fiction writer Frank Herbert. The new HBO series takes place 10,000 years before the rise of Paul Atreides when…

28 Sep

What to read this weekend: The history of overhyped tech, and a new graphic novel from Charles Burns

stp2y0 CommentsNewsbooks, comics, entertainment, news, sci-fi

New releases in fiction, nonfiction and comics that caught our attention.W. W. Norton & CompanyRichard Powers’ Playground is a novel of contrasts: the vast unknown of Earth’s oceans, a place of constant discovery and marvelous creatures that seem always to be at play, versus technological advancement and the rise of AI; the unlikely friendship between a young poet and a boy whose life revolves around coding; a remote island with a tiny population still feeling the effects of a history of exploitation, and the tech elites who envision it as the stepping stone to their own utopia. Through the perspectives…

19 Sep

Black Mirror season 7 cast revealed in a cryptic computer message

stp2y0 CommentsNewsanthology, billy magnussen, black mirror, charlie brooker, Cristin Milioti, entertainment, horror, issa rae, jimmi simpson, Milanka Brooks, netflix, news, Osy Ikhile, Paul Giamatti, peter capaldi, rashida jones, sci-fi, teaser, television, tracee ellis ross, trailer, tv, uss callister, X

Get ready to question humanity’s control over the technology that surrounds us because another season of Netflix’s Black Mirror is in the works. Earlier today, the official Black Mirror X page revealed the cast of the new season coming next year along with some other interesting clues and Easter eggs.The video features an old, flickering computer screen that appears to unload a complete data dump of the entire cast for season 7. Some of the names that jumped out at us includes Oscar nominee Paul Giamatti, Doctor Who star and Oscar winner Peter Capaldi (he won in 1995 with his…

10 Sep

James Earl Jones’ Darth Vader Has Already Been Immortalized With AI

stp2y0 CommentsAIartificial intelligence, movies, sci-fi, star wars

If anyone could make the Dark Side sound good, it was James Earl Jones. The actor, who died Monday at the age of 93, provided the voice for Darth Vader in more than a dozen Star Wars properties, from A New Hope to Star Tours. He made the Force sound ominous in a way that made it appealing. With his passing, it feels as though all the power and gravitas and respect he brought to the character is gone.It’s not. It’s in the hands of AI.A few years ago, when Jones provided a few lines of dialog as Vader for…

31 Aug

What to read this weekend: Rural horror infused with Chinese mythology, and the lush alien world of Convert

stp2y0 CommentsNewsbooks, comics, entertainment, horror, news, sci-fi

New releases in fiction, nonfiction and comics that caught our attention.Sacrificial Animals by Kailee PedersenThere’s something about the idea of coming home and reawakening dormant familial trauma that just makes for great horror stories, and Sacrificial Animals is no exception. In the novel, brothers Nick and Joshua Morrow return to their family’s farm in Nebraska after many years estranged from their abusive father, reopening old wounds and allowing supernatural forces to take root. Sacrificial Animals bounces between “Then” and “Now” perspectives, painting a picture of the boys’ childhoods under the violent and racist man, and the gravity of returning once they learn…

13 Aug

The pixelated cyberpunk platformer Replaced has been pushed back to 2025

stp2y0 CommentsNewsdelay, gaming, news, Pixel, replaced, sad cat studios, sci-fi, Video Games, xbox

that it is delaying its highly anticipated cyberpunk action game Replaced to next year.The studio says in its online statement that its expectations for the Xbox and PC exclusive are high since in 2021. It wants to make sure it meets those expectations and doesn’t want to rush the production process.“Our initial release was optimistic, and we apologize for that,” the statement reads. “Developing Replaced is quite a unique challenge, and we’re proud to be creating something that special. We need more time to ensure we meet the high standards we’ve set for ourselves and to meet the expectations of…

27 Jul

What to read this weekend: Keanu Reeves wrote a book with ‘weird fiction’ author China Miéville

stp2y0 CommentsNewsai, books, entertainment, Keanu Reeves, news, sci-fi, teenage mutant ninja turtles

New releases in fiction, nonfiction and comics that caught our attention.The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves and China MiévilleA few years ago, Keanu Reeves took a dive into the world of comics with a series called BRZRKR, which he wrote with longtime comic creator Matt Kindt. The limited series, which played out over 12 issues, follows a half-mortal, half-God warrior known as B who lives a violent existence but cannot die. And after 80,000 years of being alive, he really wants to. Eventually, he ends up working as a killing machine for the US government.Netflix has plans for a…

11 Jun

The Tech World’s Greatest Living Novelist, Robin Sloan, Goes Meta

stp2y0 CommentsAIartificial intelligence, author, books, fantasy, metaverse, san francisco, sci-fi

So, inevitably, we talk a lot more, and meta-ly, about language, words, meaning—though Sloan doesn’t think it was inevitable that language would be the breakthrough AI technology. Could’ve been vision, he says; could’ve been something else. But now that it is language, and now that it can write, he’s excited to be the kind of writer the machines are not. Just take a look at Moonbound, which comes out today and is Sloan’s first proper work of science fiction. He thinks it’s his best-written, most human-sounding book so far—by far. It’s certainly his most ambitious: thematically, characterologically, even punctuationally. I…

23 May

What ScarJo v. ChatGPT Could Look Like in Court

stp2y0 CommentsGenAIartificial intelligence, chatgpt, hollywood, lawsuit, machine learning, movies, openai, sci-fi

It doesn’t matter whether a person’s actual voice is used in an imitation or not, Rothman says, only whether that audio confuses listeners. In the legal system, there is a big difference between imitation and simply recording something “in the style” of someone else. “No one owns a style,” she says.Other legal experts don’t see what OpenAI did as a clear-cut impersonation. “I think that any potential ‘right of publicity’ claim from Scarlett Johansson against OpenAI would be fairly weak given the only superficial similarity between the ‘Sky’ actress' voice and Johansson, under the relevant case law,” Colorado law professor…