In 1995 Bill Watterson walked away from "the madness that had consumed him for practically his entire adulthood," writes the American Conservative.

Though everyone loved his Calvin & Hobbes comic strip, "I had virtually no life beyond the drawing board," he said of the years leading up to the decision... So it came as some surprise earlier this year when Watterson's publisher announced his first new book in nearly thirty years. The Mysteries is a "modern fable"... ["For the book's illustrations, Watterson and caricaturist John Kascht worked together for several years in unusually close collaboration," explains the upcoming book's web page. "Both artists abandoned their past ways of working, inventing images together that neither could anticipate — a mysterious process in its own right."] At seventy-two pages, the book itself is a slight thing, in no way a return to the daily grind of the funny pages. It is being sold exclusively in print. And, typical of Watterson, press access is limited. [Publisher] Andrews McMeel is not sending review copies until the week of its publication in early October...

In the years since the strip's end, Watterson has indicated that there was something false inherent to Calvin and Hobbes, some impurity either in his approach or encoded in the strip itself that made it impossible to continue in good faith. That, combined with the fight over licensing with his syndicate, crushed him. "I lost the conviction that I wanted to spend my life cartooning," he remembers realizing in 1991, four years before he ended the strip. Beyond stray comments such as this one, he has never forthrightly explained where exactly he went wrong. But I think I have an explanation...

"Work and home were so intermingled that I had no refuge from the strip when I needed a break," Watterson recalls. "Day or night, the work was always right there, and the book-publishing schedule was as relentless as the newspaper deadlines. Having certain perfectionist and maniacal tendencies, I was consumed by Calvin and Hobbes." By Watterson's own admission, he cannot accurately recall a whole decade of his life because of his "Ahab-like obsession" with his work. "The intensity of pushing the writing and drawing as far as my skills allowed was the whole point of doing it," he says. "I eliminated pretty much everything from my life that wasn't the strip." While Watterson's wife, Melissa Richmond, organized everything around him, he furthered his isolation, burrowing ever more deeply into the strip's world. There was no other way, he believed, to keep its integrity absolute. "My approach was probably too crazy to sustain for a lifetime," he says, "but it let me draw the exact strip I wanted while it lasted...."

But Watterson had designed a world for himself so self-contained that any disruption could mean its destruction: "I just knew it was time to go." This much became clear in the middle of the licensing fight. It took up so much of his energy that he lost his lead time on the strip and found himself in a situation where he was drawing practically every single comic on press night. After a few weeks of this, he broke down. "I was in a black despair," he says. "I was absolutely frantic. I had to publish everything I thought of, no matter what it was, and I found that idea almost unbearable." His wife saw him spiraling out of control and drew up a schedule that helped him slowly, over the course of six months, rebuild his lead time. Not long after, Watterson crashed his bike, bruised a rib, and broke a finger. He was so afraid of losing his lead again that he propped his drawing board on his knees in his sickbed and drew anyway. That freaked him out, too, and so gradually he scaled his life down to the point where nothing unpredictable could happen...

Watterson compares ending Calvin and Hobbes to reaching the summit of a high mountain... He had no desire to return whence he came. And he couldn't go any higher; no one can ascend into the air itself. So he took his next best option. He jumped.

Long-time Slashdot reader bshell shared this announcement from the Internet Archive: Some of the world's largest record labels, including Sony and Universal Music Group, filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive and others for the Great 78 Project, a community effort for the preservation, research and discovery of 78 rpm records that are 70 to 120 years old.

The project has been in operation since 2006 to bring free public access to a largely forgotten but culturally important medium. Through the efforts of dedicated librarians, archivists and sound engineers, we have preserved hundreds of thousands of recordings that are stored on shellac resin, an obsolete and brittle medium. The resulting preserved recordings retain the scratch and pop sounds that are present in the analog artifacts; noise that modern remastering techniques remove.
"The labels' lawsuit said the project includes thousands of their copyright-protected recordings," reports Reuters, including Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" and Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven."

"The lawsuit said the recordings are all available on authorized streaming services and 'face no danger of being lost, forgotten, or destroyed.'" The labels' lawsuit filed in a federal court in Manhattan said the Archive's "Great 78 Project" functions as an "illegal record store" for songs by musicians including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis and Billie Holiday. They named 2,749 sound-recording copyrights that the Archive allegedly infringed. The labels said their damages in the case could be as high as $412 million.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Late last week, MSN.com's Microsoft Travel section posted an AI-generated article about the "cannot miss" attractions of Ottawa that includes the Ottawa Food Bank, a real charitable organization that feeds struggling families. In its recommendation text, Microsoft's AI model wrote, "Consider going into it on an empty stomach." Titled, "Headed to Ottawa? Here's what you shouldn't miss!," (archive here) the article extols the virtues of the Canadian city and recommends attending the Winterlude festival (which only takes place in February), visiting an Ottawa Senators game, and skating in "The World's Largest Naturallyfrozen Ice Rink" (sic).

As the No. 3 destination on the list, Microsoft Travel suggests visiting the Ottawa Food Bank, likely drawn from a summary found online but capped with an unfortunate turn of phrase: "The organization has been collecting, purchasing, producing, and delivering food to needy people and families in the Ottawa area since 1984. We observe how hunger impacts men, women, and children on a daily basis, and how it may be a barrier to achievement. People who come to us have jobs and families to support, as well as expenses to pay. Life is already difficult enough. Consider going into it on an empty stomach."

That last line is an example of the kind of empty platitude (or embarrassing mistaken summary) one can easily find in AI-generated writing, inserted thoughtlessly because the AI model behind the article cannot understand the context of what it is doing. The article is credited to "Microsoft Travel," and it is likely the product of a large language model (LLM), a type of AI model trained on a vast scrape of text found on the Internet.

Powered by shows like "Suits" on Netflix, streaming's share of U.S. viewing time grew to a new high in July, while television viewing fell below 50% for the first time, according to new Nielsen data. From a report: The milestone is the latest sign of the rapid erosion of the cable-TV bundle, which has lost about a quarter of its subscribers over the past decade, as more Americans cut the cord in favor of streaming services like Netflix, Google's YouTube and Disney's Hulu. Cable television accounted for 29.6% of total U.S. viewing time in July, while broadcast attracted 20%, Nielsen said in a release published Tuesday.

Streaming services, meanwhile, captured 38.7% of Americans' viewing time, while a category labeled "Other" -- which Nielsen says includes usage such as DVD playback and gaming -- accounted for the remaining 11.6%. The growth of streaming platforms at the expense of cable and broadcast TV networks has accelerated in recent years, as most entertainment conglomerates introduced their own direct-to-consumer services to take on industry leader Netflix. As they sought to rapidly grow their subscriber bases, many of them chose to make their highest-profile and costliest content available exclusively on streaming. While original content helps reel in subscribers and build streaming brands, the most-watched programs are sometimes older TV shows. Last month, the show Americans spent the most time watching was "Suits," a legal drama starring Meghan Markle made for cable TV that made its debut more than a decade ago.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The mysterious attacks began on July 11. "Strange beings," locals said, visiting an isolated Indigenous community in rural Peru at night, harassing its inhabitants and attempting to kidnap a 15-year-old girl. [...] News of the alleged extraterrestrial attackers quickly spread online as believers, skeptics, and internet sleuths around the world analyzed grainy videos posted by members of the Ikitu community. The reported sightings came on the heels of U.S. congressional hearings about unidentified aerial phenomenon that ignited a global conversation about the possibility of extraterrestrial life visiting Earth.

Members of the Peruvian Navy and Police traveled to the isolated community, which is located 10 hours by boat from the Maynas provincial capital of Iquitos, to investigate the strange disturbances in early August. Last week, authorities announced that they believed the perpetrators were members of illegal gold mining gangs from Colombia and Brazil using advanced flying technology to terrorize the community, according to RPP Noticias. Carlos Castro Quintanilla, the lead investigator in the case, said that 80 percent of illegal gold dredging in the region is located in the Nanay river basin, where the Ikitu community is located.

One of the key pieces to the investigation was related to the attempted kidnapping of a 15-year-old girl on July 29. Cristian Caleb Pacaya, a local teacher who witnessed the attack, said that they "were using state of the art technology, like thrusters that allow people to fly." He said that after looking the devices up on Google, he believed that they were "jetpacks." Authorities have not made any arrests related to the attacks, nor named the alleged assailants or their organization directly. However, the prosecutors office claimed that they had destroyed 110 dredging operations and 10 illegal mining camps in the area already in 2023.

Netflix is officially bringing its games to more devices. So far, the company's impressive library of games has only been available on iOS and Android. Now, though, Netflix is starting to use its streaming tech to publicly test its titles on TVs and computers. From a report: "Our goal has always been to have a game for everyone, and we are working hard to meet members where they are with an accessible, smooth and ubiquitous service," Mike Verdu, Netflix's vice-president of games, wrote in a blog post. "Today, we're taking the first step in making games playable on every device where our members enjoy Netflix." The test appears to be very limited for now. Just two games will be available at the outset: Oxenfree. The beta is only open to a small number of Netflix subscribers in the UK and Canada on Amazon Fire TV streaming media players, Chromecast with Google TV, LG TVs, NVIDIA Shield TV, Roku devices and TVs, Samsung smart TVs and Walmart ONN. The company will add support for more devices later.

In the unfortunate event that Amazon cancels Good Omens, a British fantasy comedy series created by Neil Gaiman, the New York Times bestselling author says a novel would be written to continue where the show left off. For those unaware, Good Omens recently launched season two on Amazon Prime and follows various characters all trying to either encourage or prevent an imminent Armageddon, seen through the eyes of the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley. According to Gizmodo's Linda Codega, it "ends on an absolutely devastating cliffhanger. Emotionally speaking." From the report: Neil Gaiman, the co-author of Good Omens (the book) alongside Terry Pratchett and the lead writer on Good Omens (the show), has always been active on Tumblr. Naturally, people have been asking him about that ending -- mostly because Good Omens, for all the hype, hasn't yet been renewed for a third season, and I will reiterate, the ending of season two is heart-wrenching. Gaiman had a lovely answer for one fan [poohbear0915] who asked: "In the unfortunate event that Good Omens is not renewed for a season three, would you consider releasing a script book of what would have happened for the fans to read?" Neil Gaiman responded: "No, I'd write a novel."

You're either a subtitles person or you're not. But increasingly, people are. From a report: Preply followed up on its subtitle-use survey of Americans from 2022 and found a 5% rise, to 58%, in how many people use captioning more than they used to. Now, just over half (51%) of those surveyed say they use subtitles most of the time. If you're thinking this habit could be the purview of older folks who are having a hard time hearing -- well, 96% of Gen Z survey respondents said they impose words over what they're watching.

Netflix watchers are using captioning the most; 52% of survey respondents say they turn the feature on while they're watching. Subtitles help 81% of people better comprehend what they're watching. A significant part of the time (70%), people use subtitles to understand foreign accents, particularly if a speaker is Scottish, which poses a problem for Outlander fans. Preply found that Americans have a hard time understanding their own language when someone has a Scottish accent (47%), an Irish accent (20%), a British accent (13%), a South African accent (12%), an Australian accent (5%), and even a Southern US accent (3%). So those who watching Derry Girls, Downton Abbey, and Ozark are adjusting their settings to follow along.

According to the Financial Times, Universal Music Group and Google are considering developing a tool that people can use to create AI-generated music using popular artists' voices and melodies. Gizmodo reports: Under the licensing deal, the relevant copyright owners would be paid for the use of their likeness and would have the option to opt in to give UMG and Google permission to license AI-generated music using their voice, per the FT. Google and UMG are in the early stages of negotiations over creating the deepfake tool, and there aren't currently any plans to immediately launch it.

Robert Kyncl, the CEO of Warner Music Group, voiced his opposition to deepfake technology in a conference earnings call on Tuesday, saying artists should always have a choice if they'll allow their likeness to be used. "There's nothing more precious to an artist than their voice," Kyncl said in the call, "and protecting their voice is protecting their livelihood and protecting their persona."

Disney is raising prices on almost all of its streaming offerings as it looks to accelerate profitability for the business. CNBC reports: Commercial-free Disney+ will cost $13.99 per month, a 27% increase, beginning Oct. 12. Disney+ with ads will remain $7.99 per month. Disney will also expand its ad-tier offering to select markets in Europe and in Canada beginning Nov. 1. Disney is increasing the price of Hulu without ads to $17.99 per month, a 20% price hike. Hulu with ads will also stay the same price, at $7.99 per month. The decision to price Disney+ nearly as high as commercial-free Netflix and Max, and charge even more for Hulu, signals Disney believes its content library can compete with both of those services.

Disney is now betting consumers will pay more for its streaming services even as the Hollywood writers and actors strikes threaten its content pipeline in the coming months. For consumers who want both Disney+ and Hulu without commercials, they can pay $19.99 per month in a new "premium duo" offering -- a $12 per month savings. The Disney+ and Hulu bundle with ads will not change from its $9.99 per month price. Disney also increased the price of its bundle of Disney+ (no ads), Hulu (no ads) and ESPN+ (with ads) to $24.99 per month from $19.99 per month. The bundle of all three products with commercials will be $14.99 per month, an increase of $2 per month. Disney is also increasing the price of Hulu + Live TV with ads to $76.99 from $69.99 per month. The commercial-free Hulu + Live TV will jump to $89.99 per month from $82.99 per month.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Gizmodo editor-in-chief Daniel Ackerman has sued Apple and other parties over the 2023 Apple TV Plus film Tetris, alleging it rips off his 2016 book The Tetris Effect. Ackerman claims Apple, Tetris rightsholder the Tetris Company, the Tetris film's producers, and screenwriter Noah Pink copied "the exact same feel, tone, approach, and scenes" from The Tetris Effect -- particularly its framing of the game's release as a "Cold War spy thriller." Initially reported by Reuters, Ackerman's lawsuit (PDF) outlines a yearslong correspondence with the Tetris Company as he wrote The Tetris Effect. He claims that the Tetris Company was aware of his work and threatened him with legal action for trying to pursue film and TV adaptations of his own book, only to draw heavily from his framing of the Tetris story. "The film liberally borrowed numerous specific sections and events of the book," claims Ackerman.

Apple and the Tetris Company did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Verge. But Ackerman's case may be difficult given the fact that Tetris and The Tetris Effect both draw on real historical facts, which are not generally protected by copyright law. As a result, the suit relies heavily on arguing that Tetris copies the feel of The Tetris Effect. (He also argues that some potential inventions of the film -- like a guide who turns out to be a secret KGB agent -- are based on speculations in his narrative.) "Ackerman's book took a unique approach to writing about the real history of Tetris, as it not only applied the historical record, but also layered his own original research and ingenuity to create a compelling narrative non-fiction book in the style of a Cold War spy thriller," the suit says. "Mr. Ackerman's literary masterpiece, unlike other articles and writings, dispelled of the emphasis on the actual gameplay and fans, and instead concentrated on the surrounding narrative, action sequences, and adversarial relationship between the players ... This was the identical approach Defendants adopted for the Tetris Film, without notable material distinction."

Ackerman says that he reached out after the Tetris trailer's release and unsuccessfully requested Apple and the other defendants address legal issues before the film's release. His suit alleges copyright infringement and unfair competition, among other offenses.

The Original High-C writes: Dear Commander Taco,

I hope you are well, as the world is increasingly 'mid', as the kids say. I am the guy whose story you published 17 years ago about a nerd rap compilation. We had a wild ride, as documented in this, um, documentary on Amazon Prime.

Long after anyone stopped caring, I finally released my first free-as-in-beer album. This song tells the story of the ultimate demise of the scene, and I felt it was a fitting bookend for our first chapter. Maybe 2.0 will be better? Thanks for all you did for us, if no one ever told you before.

Sincerely,

The Original High-C

Treasure hunters are aiming to prove there were tons of loot in the ground in Pennsylvania -- and that the government took it. WSJ: Dennis Parada points to a weedy spot where he believes the Federal Bureau of Investigation dug up nine tons of Civil War-era gold, worth more than $500 million, and made off with it in the middle of the night. The patch of ground halfway up a mountain in western Pennsylvania lies at the heart of the treasure hunter's quest to recover the trove and prove it was snatched from under his nose. The matter is now playing out in federal court.

At 70, he has been chasing the Dents Run gold for more than 40 years. "It's definitely a major coverup," says Parada, who has the mustache of a 19th-century gambler and smokes his cigarettes down to a stub. Tales of lost Civil War-era gold have stirred imaginations for generations though few fortunes have been made. One exception was a pile of more than 700 gold coins minted in the mid-1800s that a farmer unearthed in a Kentucky cornfield earlier this year.

In April 1865, Confederate President Jefferson Davis fled Richmond, Va., with gold that would be worth millions today. Union troops later seized a large portion in Georgia, but that was then stolen at gunpoint. Other stories of lost Confederate gold abound in the South. People across the U.S. have hunted for lost rebel treasure in Virginia, Georgia, Arkansas, Missouri -- and the bottom of Lake Michigan. The searches have inspired novels and films, including "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly," starring Clint Eastwood. Far less attention has been paid to tales of Union gold.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Production companies are scanning the faces and bodies of actors and actresses, who fear their likeness will be used to create fake AI doubles for TV shows and films in the future. Some workers spoke to NPR last week about being subjected to the scans, and feeling like they couldn't say no. Alexandria Rubalcaba, who was working as a background actor, described being called into a trailer and asked to stand in front of cameras.

"Have your hands out. Have your hands in. Look this way. Look that way. Let us see your scared face. Let us see your surprised face," she said. What was most concerning, however, was that she didn't know what or how her images were going to be used. "My first thought leaving the trailer was, 'Oh this might just be the future," Lubsey said. "We might just lose our jobs," Dom Lubsey, an actor from Los Angeles, added. Studios already use computational techniques to create synthetic images of people to create fake crowds for backgrounds in films.

It's not too far-fetched to think that extras can also be generated too. Andrew Susskind, an associate professor at Drexel University's film and TV department, explained how AI-made background actors would slash production budgets. "Imagine ballroom scenes, party scenes, any scenes that need tons of extras," Susskind said. "Imagine the amounts of money they would be saving. Not paying $180 a day. Plus meals. Plus costuming," he said.

The Excel World Championship is coming back to ESPN this week. On Friday morning at 7AM ET, as part of ESPN's annual "The Ocho" event, a few of the world's foremost Excel experts will battle to solve puzzles on the biggest stage in sports. From a report: The Ocho is an ESPN event designed to show off otherwise un-televised sports -- Excel is on the docket alongside "2023 Slippery Stairs," the "Pillow Fight Championship," and competitions in everything from belt-sanding to sign spinning -- but it's still a big deal. When competitive Excel showed up on the network last year, the sport found a whole new audience. More than 800,000 people have since watched the full 2.5-hour competition on YouTube (ESPN showed a 30-minute edit of the battle), and the folks who started the World Championship say it changed the event's trajectory forever.

Meta on Wednesday introduced its open-source AI tool called AudioCraft that will help users to create music and audio based on text prompts. Reuters reports: The AI tool is bundled with three models, AudioGen, EnCodec and MusicGen, and works for music, sound, compression and generation, Meta said. MusicGen is trained using company-owned and specifically licensed music, it added. From Meta's press release: The AudioCraft family of models are capable of producing high-quality audio with long-term consistency, and they're easy to use. With AudioCraft, we simplify the overall design of generative models for audio compared to prior work in the field -- giving people the full recipe to play with the existing models that Meta has been developing over the past several years while also empowering them to push the limits and develop their own models.

AudioCraft works for music, sound, compression, and generation -- all in the same place. Because it's easy to build on and reuse, people who want to build better sound generators, compression algorithms, or music generators can do it all in the same code base and build on top of what others have done. Having a solid open source foundation will foster innovation and complement the way we produce and listen to audio and music in the future. With even more controls, we think MusicGen can turn into a new type of instrument -- just like synthesizers when they first appeared.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Film companies lost another attempt to force Reddit to identify anonymous users who discussed piracy. A federal court on Saturday quashed a subpoena (PDF) demanding users' names and other identifying details, agreeing with Reddit's argument that the film companies' demands violate the First Amendment. The plaintiffs are 20 producers of popular movies who are trying to prove that Internet service provider Grande is liable for its subscribers' copyright infringement because the ISP allegedly ignores piracy on its network. Reddit isn't directly involved in the copyright case. But the film companies filed a motion to compel Reddit to respond to a subpoena demanding "basic account information including IP address registration and logs from 1/1/2016 to present, name, email address and other account registration information" for six users who wrote comments on Reddit threads in 2011 and 2018.

"The issue is whether that discovery is permissible despite the users' right to speak anonymously under the First Amendment," US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler wrote in her ruling against the film copyright holders. "The court denies the motion because the plaintiffs have not demonstrated a compelling need for the discovery that outweighs the users' First Amendment right to anonymous speech." The film companies seeking Reddit users' identities include After II Movie LLC, Bodyguard Productions, Hitman 2 Productions, Millennium Funding, Nikola Productions, Rambo V Productions, and Dallas Buyers Club LLC. As Beeler's ruling on Saturday noted, they sought the identities of two users who wrote about torrenting on Grande's network in 2018 [...]. The companies also sought identities of four users who commented in a 2011 thread. "I have grande. No issues with torrent or bandwidth caps," one user comment said. Another Reddit user wrote, "I have torrented like a motherfucker all over grande and have never seen anything." Reddit's filing (PDF) pointed out that the statute of limitations for copyright infringement is three years. The film companies said (PDF) the statute of limitations is irrelevant to whether the comments can provide evidence in the case against Grande.

A proposed state tax in Massachusetts on streaming video services could increase prices for popular platforms like Netflix and Hulu, as the 5 percent fee would support approximately 200 community access cable channels struggling due to declining cable subscriptions. The Boston Globe reports: In July, the Joint Committee on Advanced Information Technology held hearings on legislation filed by Democratic State Representative Joan Meschino and Republican Representative Mathew J. Muratore, both of Plymouth. Their bill would require streaming video companies to pay a 5 percent fee on the gross revenues generated in the state. The estimated $65 million a year raised by the fee would support roughly 200 community access channels, the most in any state. The community channels are run by nonprofit organizations or town governments, and funded by cable TV companies, which are assessed a fee by local governments for the right to run their cables through city property. The cable companies pass the cost on to subscribers.

But subscriptions are plummeting as US consumers abandon pay TV for streaming services. Cable and satellite subscribers now number about 70 million, down more than 25 percent from 95.5 million a decade ago, according to Leichtman Research Group, a New Hampshire research and analysis company specializing in media, entertainment, and broadband industries. "The next three to five years it's really going to dry up even more so," said Muratore. Meschino said citizens can't afford to lose access to community media channels, because so many local newspapers have shut down. "There's literally no other way to consume that sort of hyperlocal programming," Meschino said.

About a dozen US states levy sales taxes on consumers' streaming video bills. But Meschino said that sales tax money goes into each state's general fund. Instead, she wants the streaming fee to be dedicated entirely to support for community media services, just like the fee paid by traditional cable TV companies. Some or all of the fees would likely be passed on to consumers. Gauthier estimates that a typical household's costs could rise about $2.40 a month, spread among several streaming networks. "Maybe it'll be 75 cents for your Amazon," he said. "Maybe it'll be 80 cents for your Disney."

Amazon will soon require international app developers who offer ad-supported streaming video services available to Fire TV users to opt into their in-house ad publishing service or, where unavailable, offer up a cut of their ad revenue. From a report: Starting September 1, Amazon will enforce a new developer policy that requires domestic and foreign streaming services to allocate 30% of their in-country advertising impressions to Amazon. Developers who offer up ad-supported Fire TV apps in the United States and whose apps see 50,000 hours or more usage in a given month will be required to enroll in Amazon Publishing Services (APS). The same applies for ad-supported Fire TV apps developed and distributed outside the United States, except the threshold is lowered to 30,000 hours of use per month.

In countries where APS isn't available, Amazon will require ad-supported streaming video services to provide 30% of their ad revenue to the company, starting September 30. Amazon will contact app developers in those countries to notify them of the requirement, the developer's note said.

"Oscar-winning Canadian filmmaker James Cameron says he agrees with experts in the AI field that advancements in the technology pose a serious risk to humanity," reports CTV: Many of the so-called godfathers of AI have recently issued warnings about the need to regulate the rapidly advancing technology before it poses a larger threat to humanity. "I absolutely share their concern," Cameron told CTV News Chief Political Correspondent Vassy Kapelos in a Canadian exclusive interview... "I warned you guys in 1984, and you didn't listen," he said...

"I think the weaponization of AI is the biggest danger," he said. "I think that we will get into the equivalent of a nuclear arms race with AI, and if we don't build it, the other guys are for sure going to build it, and so then it'll escalate... You could imagine an AI in a combat theatre, the whole thing just being fought by the computers at a speed humans can no longer intercede, and you have no ability to deescalate..."

Cameron said Tuesday he doesn't believe the technology is or will soon be at a level of replacing writers, especially because "it's never an issue of who wrote it, it's a question of, is it a good story...? I just don't personally believe that a disembodied mind that's just regurgitating what other embodied minds have said — about the life that they've had, about love, about lying, about fear, about mortality — and just put it all together into a word salad and then regurgitate it ... I don't believe that have something that's going to move an audience," he said.
But the article notes about 160,000 actors and other media professionals are on strike, partly over "the use of AI and its need for regulation."

SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher has told reporters that if actors don't "stand tall right now... We are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines."