Amazon plans to shut down its standalone Freevee app in August, according to an in-app notice to users. From a report: The free, ad-supported streaming service is directing viewers to continue watching Freevee content on Prime Video.

"Prime Video is the new exclusive home for Freevee Tv show, movies, and Live TV," the notice to readers states. "The Freevee app will be accessible until August 2025. Continue watching your favorite Free Originals and our library of hit movies, shows, and live TV on Prime Video for free, no subscription needed. Download Prime Video to get started and sign-in with your Amazon account."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Lorde [a popular New Zealand singer and songwriter] fans are clearly struggling to play the CD version of her new album. Customers who purchased the special edition of Virgin released on a transparent plastic disc are reporting on Reddit and TikTok that many CD players, car stereos, and other sound systems they've tried are unable to play it.

AMC Theatres now warns customers that movies start 25-30 minutes after the listed showtime to account for ads and trailers, "making it easier for moviegoers to know the actual start time of their film screening," reports The Verge. From the report: Starting today, AMC will also show more ads than before, meaning its preshow lineup may have to be reconfigured to avoid exceeding the 30-minute mark. The company made an agreement with the National CineMedia ad network that includes as much as five minutes of commercials shown "after a movie's official start time," according to The Hollywood Reporter, and an additional 30-to-60-second "Platinum Spot" that plays before the last one or two trailers.

AMC was the only major theater chain to reject the National CineMedia ad spot when it was pitched in 2019, telling Bloomberg at the time that it believed "US moviegoers would react quite negatively." Now struggling financially amid an overall decline in movie theater attendance and box-office grosses, AMC has reversed course, telling The Hollywood Reporter that its competitors "have fully participated for more than five years without any direct impact to their attendance."

BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: NASA is coming to Netflix. No, not a drama or sci-fi reboot. The space agency is actually bringing real rocket launches, astronaut spacewalks, and even views of Earth from space directly to your favorite streaming service. Starting this summer, NASA+ will be available on Netflix, giving the space-curious a front-row seat to live mission coverage and other programming.

The space agency is hoping this move helps it connect with a much bigger audience, and considering Netflix reaches over 700 million people, that's not a stretch. This partnership is about accessibility. NASA already offers NASA+ for free, without ads, through its app and website. But now it's going where the eyeballs are. If people won't come to the space agency, the space agency will come to them.

Aaron Sorkin is officially working on a sequel to The Social Network. From a report: Last year, the Oscar-winning writer revealed he was working on a film that would revisit the subject of Facebook, and Deadline has now reported that The Social Network Part II is in development at Sony Pictures yet isn't a "straight sequel."

The original film, which traced the early days of Facebook and its creator Mark Zuckerberg, was directed by David Fincher. Sorkin is rumoured to be directing the follow-up. "I blame Facebook for January 6," he said in 2024 on a special edition of The Town podcast, live from Washington DC. When asked to explain why, he responded: "You're gonna need to buy a movie ticket."

The Social Network was an adaptation of Ben Mezrich's book The Accidental Billionaires, and the sequel will be based on the Wall Street Journal series The Facebook Files. The 2021 investigation examined the damage caused by the social networking site and how internal findings had been buried. Subjects included the influence on the January 6 riot and the mental health of teenage users.

The goal isn't to stop generative music, but to make it traceable, reports the Verge — "to identify it early, tag it with metadata, and govern how it moves through the system...."

"Detection systems are being embedded across the entire music pipeline: in the tools used to train models, the platforms where songs are uploaded, the databases that license rights, and the algorithms that shape discovery." Platforms like YouTube and [French music streaming service] Deezer have developed internal systems to flag synthetic audio as it's uploaded and shape how it surfaces in search and recommendations. Other music companies — including Audible Magic, Pex, Rightsify, and SoundCloud — are expanding detection, moderation, and attribution features across everything from training datasets to distribution... Vermillio and Musical AI are developing systems to scan finished tracks for synthetic elements and automatically tag them in the metadata. Vermillio's TraceID framework goes deeper by breaking songs into stems — like vocal tone, melodic phrasing, and lyrical patterns — and flagging the specific AI-generated segments, allowing rights holders to detect mimicry at the stem level, even if a new track only borrows parts of an original. The company says its focus isn't takedowns, but proactive licensing and authenticated release... A rights holder or platform can run a finished track through [Vermillo's] TraceID to see if it contains protected elements — and if it does, have the system flag it for licensing before release.

Some companies are going even further upstream to the training data itself. By analyzing what goes into a model, their aim is to estimate how much a generated track borrows from specific artists or songs. That kind of attribution could enable more precise licensing, with royalties based on creative influence instead of post-release disputes...

Deezer has developed internal tools to flag fully AI-generated tracks at upload and reduce their visibility in both algorithmic and editorial recommendations, especially when the content appears spammy. Chief Innovation Officer Aurélien Hérault says that, as of April, those tools were detecting roughly 20 percent of new uploads each day as fully AI-generated — more than double what they saw in January. Tracks identified by the system remain accessible on the platform but are not promoted... Spawning AI's DNTP (Do Not Train Protocol) is pushing detection even earlier — at the dataset level. The opt-out protocol lets artists and rights holders label their work as off-limits for model training.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike for sharing the article.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Hollywood Reporter: Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Jet Li and a legion of the all-time greats of martial cinema are about to get an AI makeover. In a sign-of-the-times announcement at the Shanghai International Film Festival on Thursday, a collection of Chinese studios revealed that they are turning to AI to re-imagine around 100 classics of the genre. Lee's classic Fist of Fury (1972), Chan's breakthrough Drunken Master (1978) and the Tsui Hark-directed epic Once Upon a Time in China (1991), which turned Li into a bone fide movie star, are among the features poised for the treatment, as part of the "Kung Fu Movie Heritage Project 100 Classics AI Revitalization Project."

There will also be a digital reworking of the John Woo classic A Better Tomorrow (1986) that, by the looks of the trailer, turns the money-burning anti-hero originally played by Chow Yun-fat into a cyberpunk, and is being claimed as "the world's first full-process, AI-produced animated feature film." The big guns of the Chinese industry were out in force on the sidelines of the 27th Shanghai International Film Festival to make the announcements, too. They were led by Zhang Pimin, chairman of the China Film Foundation, who said AI work on these "aesthetic historical treasures" would give them a new look that "conforms to contemporary film viewing." "It is not only film heritage, but also a brave exploration of the innovative development of film art," Zhang said.

Tian Ming, chairman of project partners Shanghai Canxing Culture and Media, meanwhile, promised the work -- expected to include upgrades in image and sound as well as overall production levels -- while preserving the storytelling and aesthetic of the originals -- would both "pay tribute to the original work" and "reshape the visual aesthetics." "We sincerely invite the world's top AI animation companies to jointly start a film revolution that subverts tradition," said Tian, who announced a fund of 100 million yuan ($13.9 million) would be implemented to kick-start the work.

Starting in summer 2026, Netflix subscribers in France will be able to watch commercially broadcast TV content "without ever having to leave the service." The Verge adds: The streaming giant has announced a distribution deal with French media company TF1 Group to make TF1's free-to-air live TV channels and on-demand TF1 Plus streaming content available to French Netflix users as part of their existing subscription plan.

DC Studios co-head James Gunn argues that the movie industry is "dying" primarily because productions begin before screenplays are complete, while also delivering a sharp critique of his former employer Marvel Studios, which he claims Disney has "killed" through output mandates.

Gunn dismissed common explanations for Hollywood's struggles like declining theater attendance or improved home viewing experiences, telling Rolling Stone that "the number one reason is because people are making movies without a finished screenplay." The filmmaker has implemented a strict rule at DC Studios requiring finished scripts before production starts, recently scrapping a project because its screenplay wasn't ready.

The director, who previously helmed three "Guardians of the Galaxy" films for Marvel, said Disney's corporate directive to increase output destroyed the studio's creative process. "They were under a corporate mandate, yeah. That wasn't fair. It wasn't right. And it killed them," Gunn said, referring to Marvel's mandated production quotas for movies and television shows. By contrast, Gunn said DC Studios operates without numerical mandates. "We don't have the mandate to have a certain amount of movies and TV shows every year. So we're going to put out everything that we think is of the highest quality," he explained.

Longtime Slashdot reader UnknowingFool writes: A new documentary released last week on Netflix goes into detail about events leading up to the destruction of OceanGate's submersible, Titan that imploded on June 18, 2023 while attempting to visit the wreckage of the RMS Titanic off the coast of Newfoundland. The Titan used a carbon-fiber hull instead of more traditional materials like steel or titanium. "Through exclusive access to whistleblower testimony, pivotal audio recordings, and footage from the company's early days, the film provides an unprecedented look at the technical challenges, moral dilemmas, and shockingly poor decisions that culminated in the catastrophic expedition," explains Netflix in an article.

Some highlights:
- Titan's original carbon-fiber hull had been replaced with a second carbon-fiber one after the first one developed noticeable cracks.
- Three scale models of the second hull failed tests. OceanGate decided to manufacture the second hull regardless of these failures.
- Loud pops were heard in many dives; CEO Stockton Rush dismissed these as "seasoning".
- Many employees raised numerous safety concerns. They were fired like lead pilot and head of marine operations, David Lochridge. Or they quit.
- Some employees like Emily Hammermeister wanted to quit earlier, but external conditions like the COVID pandemic made it difficult. After the scale models failed, she refused to bolt anyone in the future submersible. She was given the two options of being fired or quit; she quit in the middle of the pandemic.
- Rush's blindness to inconvenient facts: After the crack was discovered, Rush questioned Director of Engineering, Tony Nissen, about why Nissen did not anticipate the possibility of a crack. Nissen: "I wrote you a report that showed you it was there." Nissen had warned repeatedly that the hull's fibers were breaking (the pops) with each dive. Rush: "Well, one of us has to go."
- Poor decisions by Rush extended beyond engineering decisions. After Rush fired Lochridge for raising safety concerns , Rush wanted Bonnie Carl, the company's accountant, to be his replacement pilot. While Carl was an experienced scuba diver, she quit as she was extremely uncomfortable being a pilot. Her explanation: "Are you nuts? I'm an accountant."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Social media and video networks have become the main source of news in the US, overtaking traditional TV channels and news websites, research suggests. More than half (54%) of people get news from networks like Facebook, X and YouTube -- overtaking TV (50%) and news sites and apps (48%), according to the Reuters Institute. "The rise of social media and personality-based news is not unique to the United States, but changes seem to be happening faster -- and with more impact -- than in other countries," a report found. Podcaster Joe Rogan was the most widely-seen personality, with almost a quarter (22%) of the population saying they had come across news or commentary from him in the previous week. The report's author Nic Newman said the rise of social video and personality-driven news "represents another significant challenge for traditional publishers." Other key findings from the report include:
- TikTok is the fastest-growing social and video platform, now used for news by 17% globally (up 4% from last year).
- AI chatbot use for news is increasing, especially among under-25s, where it's twice as popular as in the general population.
- Most people believe AI will reduce transparency, accuracy, and trust in news.
- Across all age groups, trusted news brands with proven accuracy remain valued, even if used less frequently.

Spain's newspaper El Pais found an entire fake album on YouTube titled Rumba Congo (1973). And they cite a study from France's International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers that estimated revenue from AI-generated music will rise to $4 billion in 2028, generating 20% of all streaming platforms' revenue: One of the major problems with this trend is the lack of transparency. María Teresa Llano, an associate professor at the University of Sussex who studies the intersection of creativity, art and AI, emphasizes this aspect: "There's no way for people to know if something is AI or not...." On Spotify Community — a forum for the service's users — a petition is circulating that calls for clear labeling of AI-generated music, as well as an option for users to block these types of songs from appearing on their feeds. In some of these forums, the rejection of AI-generated music is palpable.

Llano mentions the feelings of deception or betrayal that listeners may experience, but asserts that this is a personal matter. There will be those who feel this way, as well as those who admire what the technology is capable of... One of the keys to tackling the problem is to include a warning on AI-generated songs. YouTube states that content creators must "disclose to viewers when realistic content [...] is made with altered or synthetic media, including generative AI." Users will see this if they glance at the description. But this is only when using the app, because on a computer, they will have to scroll down to the very end of the description to get the warning....

The professor from the University of Sussex explains one of the intangibles that justifies the labeling of content: "In the arts, we can establish a connection with the artist; we can learn about their life and what influenced them to better understand their career. With artificial intelligence, that connection no longer exists."
YouTube says they may label AI-generated content if they become aware of it, and may also remove it altogether, according to the article. But Spotify "hasn't shared any policy for labeling AI-powered content..." In an interview with Gustav Söderström, Spotify's co-president and chief product & technology officer, he emphasized that AI "increases people's creativity" because more people can be creative, thanks to the fact that "you don't need to have fine motor skills on the piano." He also made a distinction between music generated entirely with AI and music in which the technology is only partially used. But the only limit he mentioned for moderating artificial music was copyright infringement... something that has been a red line for any streaming service for many years now. And such a violation is very difficult to legally prove when artificial intelligence is involved.

"Spaceballs 2" is officially in development nearly 40 years after the original parody hit theaters. The sequel, produced by Amazon MGM Studios and set for a 2027 release, will see Rick Moranis returning as Dark Helmet, Mel Brooks reprising his role as Yogurt, and Bill Pullman returning as Lone Starr. You can watch the teaser trailer on YouTube. IGN reports: A trailer for the sequel to the classic '80s sci-fi Star Wars parody arrived today. Although it mostly comes with a special message from Brooks himself and a familiar text crawl that pokes fun at the long, long list of sequels that have come to theaters in the last 38 years, this is the most official look at Spaceballs 2 we've seen yet.

"After 40 years, we asked, 'What do the fans want?' Brooks says in the Spaceballs 2 trailer. "But instead, we're making this movie." He added one final send-off: "May the Schwartz be with you."

Amazon has quietly doubled the ad load on Prime Video to 4-6 minutes per hour, up from the 2-3.5 minutes initially discussed when ads launched in 2024. AdWeek reports: According to six ad buyers and documents reviewed by ADWEEK, the current ad load on Prime Video now ranges from four to six minutes per hour. And while that could bring down CPMs, buyers will be watching whether this impacts user experience. "Prime Video ad load has gradually increased to four to six minutes per hour," an Amazon representative wrote to an ad buyer in an email obtained by ADWEEK. The exchange occurred earlier this month.

The increase, which Amazon had telegraphed to investors but has not publicly acknowledged to consumers, gives the company significantly more inventory to sell across its rapidly expanding streaming business. "They told us the ad load would be increasing," said Kendra Tang, programmatic supervisor at Rain the Growth Agency. "That's been confirmed recently when we noticed more avails in the system."

A mathematician on Reddit calculated that if all 8.2 billion humans were blended into a uniform goo, the resulting meatball would form a sphere just under 1 kilometer wide -- small enough to fit inside Central Park. ScienceAlert reports: "If you blended all 7.88 billion people on Earth into a fine goo (density of a human = 985 kg/m3, average human body mass = 62 kg), you would end up with a sphere of human goo just under 1 km wide," Reddit contributor kiki2703 wrote in a post ... Reasoning the density of a minced human to be 985 kilograms per cubic meter (62 pounds per cubic foot) is a fair estimate, given past efforts have judged our jiggling sack of grade-A giblets to average out in the ballpark of 1 gram per cubic centimeter, or roughly the same as water. And in mid-2021, the global population was just around 7.9 billion, give or take.