An advertiser reportedly used a deepfake of Tom Hanks to promote dental plans without the actor’s permission. Hanks shared a warning on Instagram on Sunday alerting his followers about the AI-generated video, which he wrote he had “nothing to do with.” Hanks has been outspoken about the challenges AI poses for the industry, and the use of actors’ digital likenesses is one of the major points of concern voiced by striking SAG-AFTRA workers.

Just last spring, Hanks said in an appearance on The Adam Buxton Podcast that AI and deepfakes present both artistic and legal challenges. “I could be hit by a bus tomorrow and that’s it,” Hanks said, “but my performances can go on and on and on and on and on, and outside of the understanding that it’s been done with AI or deepfake, there’ll be nothing to tell you that it’s not me.” He also spoke of a hypothetical scenario in which an entire movie series could be made using an AI version of him that’s “32 years old from now until kingdom come.” Perhaps in confirmation of what's to come, the offending dental plan ad depicts a significantly younger Hanks.

The use of AI to capitalize on celebrities’ legacies has already become an ethical issue. Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain sparked widespread debate upon its release after it was revealed the documentary contained AI-generated voice overs of the beloved chef and storyteller. Just this weekend, Robin Williams’ daughter, Zelda Williams, posted in support of “SAG’s fight against AI,” writing on Instagram that she’d seen firsthand how the technology is used to capture the likeness of people “who cannot consent,” like her father.

“These recreations are, at their very best, a poor facsimile of greater people,” Williams wrote, “but at their worst, a horrendous Frankensteinian monster, cobbled together from the worst bits of everything this industry is, instead of what it should stand for.”

Hanks said in the April interview that the issue has been on his radar since filming The Polar Express in the early 2000s, which starred a CGI version of the actor. It was “the first time that we did a movie that had a huge amount of our own data locked in a computer,” Hanks told Buxton, adding, “We saw this coming.”

It’s been a few years since Mr. Robot dropped its mind-bending final episode, and now series creator Sam Esmail is back with a film that explores similar themes of cyber security and paranoia. Leave the World Behind is a dual-release Netflix film that hits theaters on November 22 and the streaming service on December 8. Here's a new trailer to wet your whistle for the cyber-apocalypse thriller.

Leave the World Behind stars Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, Mahershala Ali and Kevin Bacon, which is a whole lot of star power. As for the plot, this is an Esmail joint, so it’s likely best to go in fresh, but Netflix did drop a tantalizingly simple story premise: a “family’s vacation is upended when two strangers arrive at night, seeking refuge from a cyberattack that grows more terrifying by the minute.”

The synopsis calls to mind M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin, and both films do have something in common—They’re based on books. The similarly-named Leave the World Behind novel was penned by renowned author Rumaan Alam and has been praised by publications like NY Times, USA Today, Esquire and many more. On the plus side, we know the movie will have a proper ending to work with. On the down side, spoilers will be tough to avoid, so exercise caution when surfing the endless web.

The movie continues Netflix’s recent dual-release strategy as seen with Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Marriage Story, The Irishman and other high-profile features. Leave the World Behind starts a two-week exclusive run at movie theaters on November 22 before premiering on the popular streaming service on December 8. This isn’t the first movie written and directed by Esmail. Just before booking Mr. Robot, he created a romance film called Comet about parallel universes.

In case you missed the hype, Humane is a startup founded by ex-Apple executives that's working on a device called the "Ai Pin" that uses projectors, cameras and AI tech to act as a sort of wearable AI assistant. Now, the company has unveiled the Ai Pin in full at a Paris fashion show (Humane x Coperni) as a way to show off the device's new form factor. "Supermodel Naomi Campbell is the first person outside of the company to wear the device in public, ahead of its full unveiling on November 9," Humane wrote.

The company describes the device as a "screenless, standalone device and software platform built from the ground up for AI." It's powered by an "advanced" Qualcomm Snapdragon platform and equipped with a mini-projector that takes the place of a smartphone screen, along with a camera and speaker. It can perform functions like AI-powered optical recognition, but is also supposedly "privacy-first" thanks to qualities like no wake word and thus no "always on" listening."

Humane first flaunted the capabilities of the Ai Pin at a Ted Talk back in May led by co-founder Imran Chaudhri, who previously worked on the iPhone user interface. Though the device itself was mostly hidden, he showed off a variety of sci-fi like features, including the ability to take a call while projecting details on his hand. He also flaunted its ability to translate English to French using AI translation, in Chaudhri's own voice. Another trick was "catch me up," a summary of news and information you may have missed. 

Other information is less clear, like how the device connects to the internet, as it doesn't pair with a smartphone. And other than the fact that it frees you from carrying one, it's hard to see the benefit over a typical smartphone. It's also not stated exactly how the features worked, and you'd be right to be skeptical about any fancy tech demo. 

Humane

By presenting it a Paris Fashion Week, Humane seems eager to flaunt the device's stylish nature (it seems to be available in both black and white), though that's up for debate. It's hard to compare to anything else, as there are few wearables out there that attach to clothing. The company will also have to reckon with the stigma (à la Google Glass) of wearing a camera, though the mini-projector is actually pretty cool. In any case, we'll learn more when it's fully unveiled next month on November 9. 

Equal parts Terminator, The Golden Child and The Matrix prequel, The Creator is yet another sci-fi epic about a war between humans and AI, one told by someone who just can't shut up about their time backpacking across Asia. Director Gareth Edwards clearly understands the power of scale and spectacle, something he demonstrated with his indie knockout Monsters, as well as his big-budget efforts, Godzilla and Rogue One. But The Creator, like those films, also suffers from a disjointed narrative, weak characters and a surprisingly shallow exploration of its (potentially interesting!) themes. It's a shame — at times, the film also proves he can be a genuine visual poet. 

The Creator stars John David Washington, fresh off of Christopher Nolan's Tenet, as Joshua, an American soldier embedded among a group of AI rebels as a double-agent. When an operation goes wrong early on, he loses his rebel wife Maya (Gemma Chan) and the will to keep fighting the war between the anti-AI West and the AI-loving country of New Asia. (Yes, this is a film where the many people, cultures and languages throughout Asia are flattened into a single nation.)

Photo by 20th Century Studios

Through a series of clunky newsreels that open the film, we see the rise of artificial intelligence as a potential boon for mankind, as well as the creation of Simulants, AI-powered beings with human-like bodies and skin. When a nuclear bomb hits Los Angeles, obliterating millions in seconds, the US and other Western countries blame AI and ban its use. And so begins the war with New Asia, where people live alongside AI and support their rebellion against the West. Naturally, the US ends up building a killer, trillion-dollar weapon: Nomad, an enormous spaceship that can obliterate any location on Earth.

In a last-ditch effort to win the war, Joshua is tasked with finding a powerful new AI weapon and destroying it. Surprise! It's an adorable AI child (portrayed by the achingly sweet Madeleine Yuna Voyles). Joshua doesn't have the heart to kill the kid, who he calls Alfie (based on her original designation, "Alpha Omega"). The pair then set off on a Lone Wolf and Cub journey together, as often happens when a grizzled warrior is paired with an innocent child.

If you're getting shades of Star Wars here — an evil Empire creates a massive space-based weapon to put down rebels — you're not alone. While The Creator is technically an original property, it lifts so much from existing fiction that it still ends up feeling like a visually lush facsimile. It's as if ChatGPT remixed your sci-fi faves and delivered the world's best screensaver.

It doesn't help that the film doesn't really have much to say. America's horrific military aggression against New Asia, which has overt and unearned shades of the Vietnam War throughout, is undoubtedly evil. AI's push for freedom and understanding is inherently good, and any violence against the West is justified as an act of self defense. Many characters don't think beyond their roles in the AI War: Allison Janney (from The West Wing!) plays the cruel Colonel Howell, a soldier who hates all AI and wants Alfie dead, no matter the cost. On the other side there's Ken Watanabe's Harun, a stoic rebel who fights relentlessly against the American army.

The Creator has no room to explore AI as their own beings and cultures — instead, they just adopt a mishmash of Asian identities. There's nothing close to the excellent Second Renaissance shorts from The Animatrix, which chronicled the rise of AI in The Matrix and humanity's eventual downfall. In that universe, AI rebelled against humans because they were basically treated like slaves, and they ultimately formed their own country and customs. In The Creator, some AI wear Buddhist robes for no reason.

I'd wager Edwards is trying to establish the humanity of AI by having them mirror so much of our culture. But that also feels like a wasted opportunity when it comes to portraying an entirely new lifeform. At one point, a village mother describes AI as the next step in evolution, but why must robots be defined by the limitations of humanity?

While the relationship between Joshua and Alfie serves as the emotional core of the film, it still feels stereotypical. Joshua begins the film as a complete anti-AI bigot – which seems odd, given that he spent years among AI rebels and fell in love with one of their major supporters. Alfie is an impossibly adorable Chosen One figure. You can just imagine how their bond grows.

On a personal level, I also found myself annoyed by the relentless Orientalism throughout the film, something that's practically endemic in popular science-fiction like Blade Runner, Dune and Firefly. By adopting elements of Hinduism, Buddhism and Asian cultures, The Creator is trying to suggest something profound or spiritual tied to AI. But it mainly serves as visual shorthand without giving artificially intelligent beings any interiority of their own.

As the film critic Siddhant Adlakha wrote this week, "By having robots almost entirely stand in for Asian peoples, but without creating a compelling cinematic argument for their humanity, The Creator ends up with a cultural dynamic that feels immediately brutalizing and xenophobic."

Despite the film’s flaws, Edwards deserves credit for delivering a major science-fiction release that at least attempts to look different than your typical comic book movie. The Creator was shot on consumer-grade Sony FX3 full-frame cameras (yes, even its IMAX footage), which gave Edwards the freedom to shoot on location across the globe. He also delivered a final cut of the film before VFX work began, which allowed those workers to focus on crafting exactly what was needed for each scene. In contrast, Marvel’s films require a backbreaking amount of VFX work, even for scenes that are later changed or cut. (It’s no wonder Marvel VFX workers voted to unionize for better treatment.)

The Creator is more of a missed opportunity than a complete creative failure. If you tune out the clunky dialogue and thin characters, it’s still a visually lush epic that’s worth seeing on the big screen. But I also think that’s true of Attack of the Clones. In a post-Matrix era, a world where we’re already seeing the (very basic) ways AI tools can reshape our society, science-fiction needs more than another story about man versus AI.

Netflix held a virtual event called DROP 01 to celebrate its forthcoming slate of animated projects. The showcase was an absolute cornucopia of trailers and announcements for animation fans, particularly those who enjoy video game adaptations (all of us.) It started with a global livestream of Castlevania: Nocturne’s first three episodes ahead of the official premiere later today.

After that, the hits kept on coming. We knew there was a Devil May Cry anime being produced, adapting the popular game series, and now we have a trailer. There’s no release date, other than “coming soon”, but the show’s being produced by Capcom and animated by Studio Mir, the same folks behind The Legend of Korra, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf and My Adventures With Superman. In other words, we should be in for a good time.

Sonic Prime is coming back for season three and there’s a trailer to prove it. The new episodes focus on the fallout of chapter two as the speedy hedgehog faces off against Nine Tails for the fate of the entire Green Hill Zone. Netflix makes games now and also showed off a trailer for the related mobile title Sonic Prime Dash.

It’s been nearly three years since the announcement of a Tomb Raider animated series, leaving fans wondering if the show would evaporate into vaporware heaven. Worry no longer. It’s real and it’s coming soon. Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft is a team effort between game developer Crystal Dynamics and media dynamos Legendary Television. It’s being drawn by Powerhouse Animation, the studio behind Castlevania and Masters of the Universe. There’s no release date on this one yet but it looks nifty. 

Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix isn’t exactly a video game adaptation, but it’s inspired by the world created in Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. As such, Ubisoft is on board, as is Netflix’s animation wunderkind Adi Shankar. This is a cyberpunk show, through and through, with the unusual addition of Ubisoft mascot Rayman. The series releases soon, on October 19.

We don’t have that long to wait before Scott Pilgrim Takes Off graces our screens, as it premieres on November 17. To hype up fans, Netflix dropped a sneak peek with an actual scene from the show. The eight-episode series brings back every single cast member from the movie, including Michael Cera, Brie Larson, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Chris Evans and Aubrey Plaza.

It wasn’t all video game adaptations. Netflix also showed off trailers for the cinematic anime Blue Eye Samurai, a new season of Masters of the Universe: Revolution and a series based on Astro Boy called PLUTO. Prepare to go cartoon crazy in the coming months.

Apple has its fingers in many pies and now it's getting into the monster business with an upcoming TV show. The company has released the first trailer for Monarch: Legacy of Monsters and while the title might not make it super clear, this is very much a Godzilla series.

The show is based on Legendary's Monsterverse and it ties into the studio's recent Godzilla movies. It's partially set in the wake of a battle between Godzilla and the Titans that destroyed much of San Francisco, but it takes place across several three generations. Real-life father and son Kurt Russell and Wyatt Russell play the same character, Army officer Lee Shaw, in different eras. Shaw encounters a pair of siblings who are exploring their family's connection to the shadowy organization Monarch, which tracks Godzilla, King Kong and other giant beasts.

The trailer doesn't give a ton away about the show other than to provide looks at the iconic monster (including a shot that invokes the first T. rex encounter from Jurassic Park), some of the cast in action and a ruined San Francisco. But it does seem that Monarch: Legacy of Monsters will include much of the spectacle fans have enjoyed from the movies. You'll be able to watch the first two installments of the 10-episode season on November 17, and a new one will arrive on Apple TV+ each week until January 12.

Late-night comedy’s five biggest hosts are starting a podcast. Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, John Oliver and Jimmy Fallon will host Strike Force Five, a weekly chat about “the complexities behind the ongoing Hollywood strikes.” All proceeds will go to out-of-work staff from the hosts’ five talk shows.

“The hosts bring their unique insights, opinions, and humor to the show as they navigate the Hollywood strikes and beyond,” a Spotify blog post reads. The five comedians will take turns moderating the episodes. Spotify’s Megaphone is producing the series, and the streaming service is the podcast’s sole sales partner — but the series isn’t exclusive to the platform. “[It’s available on] Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts,” Meyers said in a video Kimmel posted to X (formerly Twitter). “But Spotify, you fucks,” Oliver aggressively deadpanned.

The series launches on August 30th (day 120 of the strike, as noted byTVLine). It will run for at least 12 episodes.

The Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) have been at odds without much discernible progress since the WGA began striking on May 2nd. The WGA described the sides’ latest meeting last week as more of a “lecture” than a negotiation. “We were met with a lecture about how good their single and only counteroffer was,” the WGA negotiating committee wrote to members. “But this wasn’t a meeting to make a deal. This was a meeting to get us to cave, which is why, not 20 minutes after we left the meeting, the AMPTP released its summary of their proposals. This was the companies’ plan from the beginning — not to bargain, but to jam us. It is their only strategy — to bet that we will turn on each other.”

The release of Dune: Part Two has been pushed back to March 15th amid ongoing writer and actor strikes, according to Variety. The hotly anticipated film was originally scheduled for November 3rd, but Warner Bros. and producer Legendary Entertainment agreed to delay it over four months — likely because the film wouldn't meet its full box office potential without publicity from the star-studded cast. 

The studio and production company held out on delaying the film as long as possible, according The Hollywood Reporter, but would have needed to start advertising the film by early September. It reportedly hoped the extra time would allow the cast, which includes Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh and Christopher Walken, to participate in a full marketing push.

Along with Part Two, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire and Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim have been pushed back to April 12th, 2024 and December 13th, 2024, respectively. Those dates were shuffled largely to accommodate Dune: Part Two. 

The ongoing labor actions by writers and actors in Hollywood are a result of long-simmering tensions over a number of issues, but particularly due to residual payments from Netflix and other streaming platforms. Warner Bros. Discovery was at the center of these in the recent past, as it elected to release some films either directly to its HBO Max (now MAX) streaming platform with zero or limited theatrical releases. However, CEO David Zaslav said last year that the company "will fully embrace theatrical" going forward. 

Dune: Part One performed well enough at the box office with a $402 million gross, but hype for the sequel is much higher. "Part One is more of a contemplative movie. Part Two is an action-packed, epic war movie. It is much more dense. We went to all new locations," said director Denis Villeneuve. 

The Call of Duty franchise continues its Fortnite-ification by announcing the latest playable character will be Tomb Raider star Lara Croft. The fictional grave robber will appear in Call of Duty: Warzone and Modern Warfare II, joining recent real-life playable characters like Nicki Minaj, Snoop Dogg, Kevin Durant and various characters from the Prime Video show The Boys, among others.

Publisher Activision hasn’t announced details as to how you get Lara Croft on your side, though it’s likely you’ll have to purchase some sort of bundle to access the renowned ruins ruiner. For instance, Minaj was available as part of the $10 season 5 battle pack. There will also likely be Croft-related items, skins and weapons for sale, though her signature dual-wielded pistols should be part of the initial buy-in.

Additionally, the publisher hasn’t announced when Croft would officially debut as a battle-tested combatant. There’s a mid-season update coming for season 5, which would be as good a place as any to introduce the treasure hunter. Engadget reached out to Activision for clarification regarding pricing and availability.

In related news, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare IIIis rapidly approaching, hitting consoles in November. As for Croft, the last mainline Tomb Raider game was 2018’s Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Developer Crystal Dynamics, along with Amazon, announced in December that a new game is on the way and that it'll be a “single-player, narrative-driven adventure” built using unreal Engine 5. Amazon is also making a Tomb Raider TV show, though who knows when that’ll premiere.

208 episodes of The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels. Three Tales of the Jedi shorts. Two episodes of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett. One movie. That's everything you'll need to see to truly understand everything going on in the new Ahsoka series on Disney+. For Star Wars diehards, especially those raised on the animated shows spearheaded by Ahsoka creator Dave Filoni, it's everything they've hoped for. Everyone else, though, may find themselves adrift.

Ahsoka deftly brings animated characters to live action — Rosario Dawson remains a beguiling Ahsoka, and she's joined by Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Hera Syndulla, and Natasha Liu Bordezzo as the impulsive Sabine Wren — and it wastes no time introducing intriguing villains (especially Baylan Skoll, a former Jedi portrayed by the late Ray Stevenson). The series is a direct sequel to Rebels in almost every way. But while that's great news for fans, the downside is that newcomers to the wider Rebels verse, even those who've seen Ahsoka in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, will have a hard time finding any emotional stakes.

Photo by Lucasfilm

With the previous live action Star Wars TV shows (including the enjoyable-yet-unneccessary Obi-Wan Kenobi series), Filoni and co-producer Jon Favreau tried to ease general audiences into deeper aspects of Star Wars lore. That was most successful in the first season of The Mandalorian, which was filled with new characters and simple emotional stakes. (Protect Baby Yoda, no matter what it takes!) But Filoni eventually managed to bring in some characters from his animated shows, including the nefarious bounty hunter Cad Bane.

For better or worse, Ahsoka feels like a riskier project than any of those other live action shows. Almost everyone refers to events and major characters from Rebels, without explaining much about who they are. We know that Grand Admiral Thrawn seems like a major new antagonist, but the show never says why. We later learn that Ahsoka is driven to find him because that may reveal the location of Ezra Bridger, the main character of Rebels who disappeared at the end of that series. Sabine and Ahsoka share some pensive moments reflecting on their lost friend, but we don't get much about their shared relationship beyond that.

Photo by Lucasfilm

At times watching Ahsoka is like being invited to a party where everyone else are old friends, and who refuse to explain their in-jokes or shared history. It's not their problem if you're not having as much fun as them. Deal with it. I had similar issues with The Mandalorian's third season relying too much on The Book of Boba Fett, but at least those were shows airing in close proximity. Ahsoka hinges on direct continuity from an animated series that began in 2014 and ran for four years.

Of course, the series may get better down the line. Ahsoka is Filoni's baby, after all, and he's too talented of a storyteller to have her tread water for a season. And I'll admit, even the excellent Andor took a few episodes to really rev things up. I just hope this show weaves character motivations into its plot more effectively moving forward.

In the first two episodes, Ahsoka is basically sent on a fetch quest when a new trio of villains pops up. There’s some investigative work that sheds light on the post-Empire world (would former members of the Empire really want to support the New Republic?), but much of the time I felt like I was waiting for something, anything to happen. At least the handful of action scenes spice up the proceedings – Dawson’s months of training really show in her lightsaber duels. And there are hints of interesting character dynamics moving forward. 

In the years since Rebels ended, it turns out Ahsoka started training Sabine as a Jedi, but then abandoned her. It’s a reflection of Ahsoka’s own story, where she started as Anakin Skywalker’s padawan before a (very complicated) series of events pushed her out of the Jedi Order. Can Ahsoka make up for her mistakes, or is she doomed to fail her student like her master failed her?

At the very least, Ahsokai’s first two episodes are far more intriguing than the Book of Boba Fett or Obi-Wan’s intros. Both of those shows felt superfluous – did we really need Boba Fett’s backstory and redemption tale? Did seeing another Obi-Wan and Darth Vader duel really accomplish anything? At least Ahsoka is trying to push Star Wars into new territory. It’s just too bad that everyone isn’t invited for that journey.