Part wuxia epic and part pulp mystery novel, The Acolyte demonstrates what's possible when Star Wars embraces new characters and genres while abandoning the Dark Side of nostalgia. There isn't a Skywalker to be seen (at least in the four episodes I've watched), or any characters you've met before. It's not trying to fill gaps in pre-existing lore. It's simply a kickass Star Wars story, with perfectly executed action choreography, a bevy of talented actors and a story that feels genuinely fresh. And, best of all, you don't have to be caught up on The Book of Boba Fett or 208 episodes of animated shows to enjoy it.

A major reason why The Acolyte feels so unique is that it comes from Leslye Headland, a writer and director with no prior association to Star Wars. As the co-creator of Russian Doll, she proved that she could juggle a fantastical premise with rich, multi-layered characters. Her outsider perspective is exactly what Star Wars needs to avoid feeling stale. It's the counterpoint to the obsessive world-building from Dave Filoni, the George Lucas disciple behind The Clone Wars and many of the franchise's TV shows.

Lucasfilm Ltd.

The Acolyte begins with a scene right out of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: A lone warrior enters a bar, presents themself to the most powerful person there, and demands a fight. What follows is an expertly choreographed array of kicks, flips and Force-thrown knives, as the Jedi Master Indara (Carrie-Anne Moss), deflects her young attacker with effortless grace. "Who trained you?" She asks, echoing Michelle Yeoh's first confrontation with Zhang Ziyi in Ang Lee's film. (Yes, I got chills upon hearing that.)

I won't say too much about the plot of The Acolyte, but briefly it involves a former Jedi trainee, Mae (Amandla Stenberg), who is suspected of committing a series of crimes. Her former Jedi Master, Sol (played by Squid Game star Lee Jung-jae), is tasked with tracking her down and figuring out what's really going on. They're also joined by his new padwan trainee, played by Dafne Keen (Logan), and the over-eager, by-the-book Jedi Master Yord (Charlie Barnett).

Lucasfilm Ltd.

What makes The Acolyte truly intriguing is the way it explores the role of the Jedi and their chokehold (heh) on Force powers in the Star Wars universe. Are they actually the keepers of the peace, or a group of fanatical monks aligned with whoever happens to be in power? Is there a legitimate path beyond the Jedi for someone Force-capable like Mae, without turning to the Dark Side? I don't know how the series will answer these questions, but their existence alone is fascinating, as the broader franchise has seemed incapable of interrogating itself in recent years.

After The Rise of Skywalker brought the sequel trilogy to a disappointing close, Star Wars has mostly been mining nostalgia on Disney+ with varying levels of success. The Mandalorian started strong, but became bogged down with repetitive storytelling. The Book of Boba Fett was mostly forgettable, except for when it served as a bridge between season's two and three of The Mandalorian. Nobody needed the Obi-Wan series, but it was nice to see Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen back in action.

Lucasfilm Ltd.

Ahsoka and Andor were the most uniformly successful of the Star Wars TV projects, but they both also had to wrestle with pre-existing storylines. To truly understand Ahsoka, you needed to have watched over 200 episodes of The Clone Wars and Rebels, as well as several shorts and episodes from other Star Wars shows. Andor was the most mature vision of the franchise we've ever seen, thanks to creator Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton, The Bourne Identity), but it was also a slow burn narratively. (And it was still about a character we briefly met in Rogue One, itself a prequel story about finding the Death Star's blueprints.)

The only baggage The Acolyte has to deal with is the trail of middling Star Wars shows behind it. That alone may turn off some audiences. But I'm hoping people recognize it as a fresh start, a world beyond Skywalkers and nostalgia bait. The Acolyte is a reminder of what makes Star Wars great: exciting and pulpy storytelling on a cosmic scale. 

Ticketmaster is the victim of a cyber attack, its parent company, Live Nation, confirmed. The information stolen allegedly includes personal information from 560 million individuals, including names, numbers, addresses, and partial payment details. Hacking group ShinyHunters has demanded $500,000 in ransom money to prevent the data's sale and confirmed it held the 1.3TB of stolen data to Hackread.

In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Live Nation stated it had "identified unauthorized activity" on May 20 and subsequently started investigating it. On May 27, "a criminal threat actor offered what it alleged to be Company user data for sale via the dark web." 

Live Nation claims to be working to lower the risks posed to its customers and its own business. "As of the date of this filing, the incident has not had, and we do not believe it is reasonably likely to have, a material impact on our overall business operations or on our financial condition or results of operations," the company added. "We continue to evaluate the risks and our remediation efforts are ongoing."

Ticketmaster has faced previous breaches, including a bot attack during Taylor Swift ticket sales. The company also has a history as a hacker, illegally — and repeatedly — accessing the computer system of its rival, Songkick. Ticketmaster paid a $10 million criminal fine rather than face prosecution. However, the company's former head of Artist Services, Zeeshan Zaidi, pled guilty to conspiring to commit computer intrusions and wire fraud due to his role in the scheme.

OpenAI has created a new Safety and Security Committee less than two weeks after the company dissolved the team tasked with protecting humanity from AI’s existential threats. This latest iteration of the group responsible for OpenAI’s safety guardrails will include two board members and CEO Sam Altman, raising questions about whether the move is little more than self-policing theatre amid a breakneck race for profit and dominance alongside partner Microsoft.

The Safety and Security Committee, formed by OpenAI’s board, will be led by board members Bret Taylor (Chair), Nicole Seligman, Adam D’Angelo and Sam Altman (CEO). The new team follows co-founder Ilya Sutskever’s and Jan Leike’s high-profile resignations, which raised more than a few eyebrows. Their former “Superalignment Team” was only created last July.

Following his resignation, Leike wrote in an X (Twitter) thread on May 17 that, although he believed in the company’s core mission, he left because the two sides (product and safety) “reached a breaking point.” Leike added that he was “concerned we aren’t on a trajectory” to adequately address safety-related issues as AI grows more intelligent. He posted that the Superalignment team had recently been “sailing against the wind” within the company and that “safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products.”

A cynical take would be that a company focused primarily on “shiny products” — while trying to fend off the PR blow of high-profile safety departures — might create a new safety team led by the same people speeding toward those shiny products.

Jan Leike / X

The safety departures earlier this month weren’t the only concerning news from the company recently. It also launched (and quickly pulled) a new voice model that sounded remarkably like two-time Oscar Nominee Scarlett Johansson. The Jojo Rabbit actor then revealed that OpenAI Sam Altman had pursued her consent to use her voice to train an AI model but that she had refused.

In a statement to Engadget, Johansson’s team said she was shocked that OpenAI would cast a voice talent that “sounded so eerily similar” to her after pursuing her authorization. The statement added that Johansson’s “closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference.”

OpenAI also backtracked on nondisparagement agreements it had required from departing executives, changing its tune to say it wouldn’t enforce them. Before that, the company forced exiting employees to choose between being able to speak against the company and keeping the vested equity they earned. 

The Safety and Security Committee plans to “evaluate and further develop” the company’s processes and safeguards over the next 90 days. After that, the group will share its recommendations with the entire board. After the whole leadership team reviews its conclusions, it will “publicly share an update on adopted recommendations in a manner that is consistent with safety and security.”

In its blog post announcing the new Safety and Security Committee, OpenAI confirmed that the company is currently training its next model, which will succeed GPT-4. “While we are proud to build and release models that are industry-leading on both capabilities and safety, we welcome a robust debate at this important moment,” the company wrote.

The dog who inspired the famous meme coin Dogecoin has died, according to a post on Instagram by its owner. Kabosu, an adorable Shiba Inu, was likely around 18 years old, though owner Atsuko Sato doesn’t know the exact birthdate of the rescue pup.

“She quietly passed away as if asleep while I caressed her,” she wrote in a blog post published by The Guardian. “I think Kabo-chan was the happiest dog in the world. And I was the happiest owner.”

The Japanese dog not only inspired Dogecoin, but the iconic 2010 photo became the source of a vast collection of internet memes. Some have even called Kabosu the “Mona Lisa of the internet.” Sato snapped the photo two years after rescuing the dog from a puppy farm, in which she would have likely been put down. The image shows Kabosu with her paws on the sofa while giving the camera, well, a sort of grin. 

The photo became an NFT digital artwork that sold for $4 million, back when NFTs were a thing that people paid money for. As for the memecoin, it started as a joke by two software engineers but has now risen to be the eighth-most valuable cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of $23 billion. The price has ticked up today, likely by news of Kabosu’s passing.

Dogecoin was most famously backed by Elon Musk, even becoming available as currency to buy certain Tesla products. Other famous backers include Snoop Dogg, Gene Simmons and Mark Cuban, to name just a few.

Dogecoin has also inspired a bunch of other memecoins, from the spin-off Shiba Inu coin to cryptocurrency coins based on cats, Elon Musk and, sigh, even Donald Trump. These coins are known to be highly volatile, so invest at your own risk. Dogecoin, however, has remained mostly stable for a while now.

Musk has long-been the primary cheerleader behind Dogecoin, even changing the Twitter icon to the image of the Shiba Inu, before he pivoted to X. He also single-handily wiped out most of the coin’s value during his disastrous SNL performance and has been accused of using it to defraud investors and create a pyramid scheme.

A statue of Kabosu was erected in Sakura, Japan in November of last year. Reporting indicates that it cost $100,000 to build. “In the last few years I’ve been able to connect the online version of Kabosu, all these unexpected things seen from a distance, with our real lives,” Sato wrote. She has used the virality of her beloved Shiba inu to donate large sums to charities, including more than $1 million to Save the Children. Godspeed, you adorable pup.

Microsoft is leaning even more into AI after launching a new Copilot+ AI PC initiative earlier this year. It's a new set of standards for PCs with powerful neural processing units (NPUs), and it could be just as significant for Windows as Apple's move towards its M-series chips. In this episode, Cherlynn and Devindra discuss Copilot+ and the potential rise of Arm-based Windows systems, and we dive into the new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop.

Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!

Topics

• Microsoft announces a new chapter with Copilot+ and NPU-powered Surface Pro and Surface Laptop – 0:51

• Scarlett Johansson vs. OpenAI is just getting started – 37:17

• Sonos Ace headphones take aim at Apple’s AirPods Max – 42:15

• US Department of Justice makes its first arrest for AI-generated CSAM – 45:50

• Bloomberg Report: Humane AI seeks a buyer for $700m–$1B, but will they get it? – 47:21

• Listener Mail: Could you port the new ARM-based Windows to your Android handheld? – 51:42

• Working on – 53:11

• Pop culture picks – 54:19

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Credits 

Hosts: Cherlynn Low and Devindra Hardawar
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien

OpenAI will not enforce any nondisparagement agreement former employees had signed and will remove the language from its exit paperwork altogether, the company told Bloomberg. Vox recently reported that OpenAI was making exiting employees choose between being able to speak against the company and to keep the vested equity they earned. Employees could lose millions if they choose not to sign the agreement or if they violate it. Sam Altman, OpenAI's CEO, said he was "embarrassed" and didn't know that the provision existed, promising to have the company's paperwork altered. 

According to Bloomberg, the company notified former employees that "[r]egardless of whether [they] executed the agreement... OpenAI has not canceled, and will not cancel, any vested units." It released them from the agreement altogether, "unless the nondisparagement provision was mutual." At least one former employee said they had lost their vested equity that was equivalent to multiple times their family's net worth by refusing to sign when they left. It's unclear if they're getting it back with this change. The company also talked to current employees about this development, easing their worries that they will have to be careful with everything they say if they don't want to lose their stocks. 

"We are sorry for the distress this has caused great people who have worked hard for us," Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon said in a statement. "We have been working to fix this as quickly as possible. We will work even harder to be better."

This wasn't the only controversial situation OpenAI has been involved in as of late. The company recently revealed that it was disbanding the team it formed last year to help make sure humanity is protected from future AI systems, which could be so powerful they could cause our extinction. Before that, OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, who was one of the team's leads, left the company. Another team lead, Jan Leike, said in a series of tweets that "safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products" within OpenAI. In addition, Scarlett Johansson accused OpenAI of copying her voice without permission for ChatGPT's Sky voice assistant after she turned down Altman's request to lend her voice to the company. OpenAI denied that it copied the actor's voice and said that it hired another actor way before Altman contacted Johansson. 

Meta and Google are offering Hollywood studios millions of dollars with the hope of striking licensing deals that could improve their models for AI-generated video, according to a new report in Bloomberg. The companies have reportedly offered “tens of millions of dollars,” though it’s unclear what will come from the talks.

According to the report, Netflix and Disney “aren’t willing to license their content” but have “expressed interest in other types of collaborations.” Warner Brothers Discovery has reportedly indicated “a willingness to license some of its programs.”

A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment. Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The companies, it seems, are hoping such deals would help advance their video generation tools. Google recently showed off a text-to-video model, called Veo, and tapped Donald Glover to promote its capabilities. Meta is also researching AI-generated video.

There’s been something of an arms race among AI firms to forge licensing deals with media companies. OpenAI and NewsCorp announced a multi-year deal to bring news content to ChatGPT earlier this week. Meta is also considering paying publishers to access “news, photo and video content” to train its AI models, Business Insider reported.

But, as Bloomberg points out, Hollywood studios may have some reservations about such deals. Though AI-editing tools may be appealing, there has been widespread concern in the entertainment industry about how AI companies might use their creative work. That tension burst into full view this week when Scarlett Johansson accused OpenAI of copying her voice for its “Sky” assistant in ChatGPT after she declined to partner with the company herself. OpenAI has denied claims that it tried to mimic her voice, though the company has yet to explain that one Sam Altman tweet.

The Justice Department and 30 state and district attorneys general are attempting to break up Ticketmaster owner Live Nation. They claim in an antitrust suit filed in the Southern District of New York that the company has created an unlawful monopoly over the live entertainment industry. The suit argues that Live Nation has harmed fans, promoters and artists as its dominance has led to imposing higher ticket prices while stifling innovation and competition.

Live Nation owns and/or operates many venues and festivals. It also sells tickets to concerts and festivals, and manages many of the artists who play at them.

“We allege that Live Nation relies on unlawful, anticompetitive conduct to exercise its monopolistic control over the live events industry in the United States at the cost of fans, artists, smaller promoters and venue operators,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “The result is that fans pay more in fees, artists have fewer opportunities to play concerts, smaller promoters get squeezed out and venues have fewer real choices for ticketing services. It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster.”

It was reported back in 2022 amid Ticketmaster's struggle to handle overwhelming demand for Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour that the DOJ had been investigating whether Live Nation held a monopoly in the live music market. The Swift ticket debacle prompted a Senate antitrust hearing.

The DOJ claims that Live Nation established a dominant position by pushing artists to use its services and threatening possible competitors in the live music promotion space. The company is also accused of locking venues into long, exclusive contracts that prevent them from using alternative (and perhaps less expensive) ticketing platforms. The Justice Department says Live Nation handles about 60 percent of concert promotions at major venues in the US, as well as approximately 80 percent of primary ticketing at major concert venues.

According to the lawsuit, Live Nation sought to lock out competitors and protect its so-called "flywheel" model. The DOJ describes this as a "self-reinforcing business model that captures fees and revenue from concert fans and sponsorship, uses that revenue to lock up artists to exclusive promotion deals, and then uses its powerful cache of live content to sign venues into long term exclusive ticketing deals, thereby starting the cycle all over again."

A merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster got the green light from the DOJ in 2010, but the deal was subject to some conditions. After the Justice Department found in 2019 that Live Nation violated a condition that banned it from threatening venues that chose to use a Ticketmaster competitor, the agency extended the consent decree by five years to 2025.

In a statement, Live Nation rejected the assertion that it held a monopoly. "The defining feature of a monopolist is monopoly profits derived from monopoly pricing," it said. "Live Nation in no way fits the profile. Service charges on Ticketmaster are no higher than elsewhere, and frequently lower."

The company argued that breaking it up wouldn't lead to lower ticket prices or service fees. It claims that concert promoters and ticketing companies don't control ticket prices, which have been driven higher by increased production costs and the growing popularity of artists. Live Nation also states that Ticketmaster "retains only a modest portion" of service fees and that its market share has decreased in recent years.

Other parts of the government have put Live Nation and Ticketmaster in their sightlines. The House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would force Ticketmaster and other ticketing companies to show the total price of tickets to buyers up front. There's a separate bill in the Senate that seeks to make ticket pricing more transparent too. Along similar lines, the Federal Trade Commission, has proposed a rule to ban junk fees that companies including Ticketmaster add to the total price at checkout. For their part, Live Nation and Ticketmaster said last year that they'd start showing customers the total price of tickets at the jump.

Starliner, the Boeing-made vehicle intended to carry the next generation of astronauts, has had its launch scrubbed once again. NASA called off the maiden crewed launch after a number of key engineering faults were discovered, and has declined to announce a new test date. Until then, the two personnel expected to soar into the heavens will just have to standby and hope that engineers are able to address the flaws with the Boeing-made craft.

— Dan Cooper

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Panasonic S9 hands-on: A powerful creator camera with a patented LUT simulation button

But it’s also missing a bunch of features.

Photo by Steve Dent / Engadget

Steve Dent, our resident camera expert, has been playing with Panasonic’s new S9, its attempt to out-do Fujifilm’s cameras with film simulation. The S9 comes with a dedicated Look Up Table button, which will let you tweak the stills and video with custom film filters. Unfortunately, that comes at the cost of some other key features that may, or may not, be worth the trade off.

Continue Reading.

OpenAI didn't intend to copy Scarlett Johansson's voice, 'The Washington Post' reports

The company says it’s all a big misunderstanding.

Scarlett Johansson accused OpenAI of using a soundlike when she wouldn’t lend her voice to one of its products. Now, the company has fired back, claiming that its courting of the actress took place long after the “Sky” voice had been cast, and that nothing sinister went down here. Even though OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tweeted “her” as a reference to the character ScarJo played in the movie of the same name.

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OpenAI cast the actor of Sky's voice months before Sam Altman contacted Scarlett Johansson, and it had no intention of finding someone who sounded like her, according to The Washington Post. The publication said the flier OpenAI issued last year looked for actors that had "warm, engaging [and] charismatic" voices. They needed to be between 25 and 45 years old and had to be non-union, but OpenAI reportedly didn't specify that it was looking for a Scarlett Johansson voice-alike. If you'll recall, Johansson accused the company of copying her likeness without permission for its Sky voice assistant.

The agent of Sky's voice told The Post that the company never talked about Johansson or the movie Her with their talent. OpenAI apparently didn't tweak the actor's recordings to sound like Johansson either, because her natural voice sounded like Sky's, based on the clips of her initial voice test that The Post had listened to. OpenAI product manager Joanne Jang told the publication that the company selected actors who were eager to work on AI. She said that Mira Murati, the company's Chief Technology Officer, made all the decisions about the AI voices project and that Altman was not intimately involved in the process.

Jang also told the publication that to her, Sky sounded nothing like Johansson. Sky's actress told The Post through her agent that she just used her natural voice and that she has never been compared to Johansson by the people who know her closely. But in a statement Johansson's team shared with Engadget, she said that she was shocked OpenAI pursued a voice that "sounded so eerily similar" to hers that her "closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference" after she turned down Altman's offer to voice ChatGPT. 

Johansson said that Altman first contacted her in September 2023 with the offer and then reached out again just two days before the company introduced GPT-4o to ask her to reconsider. Sky has been one of ChatGPT's voices since September, but GPT-4o gave it the power to have more human-like conversations with users. That made its similarities to Johansson's voice more apparent — Altman tweeting "her" after OpenAI demonstrated the new large language model didn't help with the situation and invited more comparisons to the AI virtual assistant Johansson voiced in the movie. OpenAI has paused using Sky's voice "out of respect" for Johansson's concerns, it wrote in a blog post. The actor said, however, that the company only stopped using Sky after she hired legal counsel who wrote Altman and the company to ask for an explanation. 

If you're wondering if Sky truly does sound like Johansson, we embedded a video below so you can judge for yourself. It's a recording of Johansson's statement as read by the Sky voice assistant, posted by Victor Mochere on YouTube. Opinions in the comment section are divided, with some saying that it does sound like her if she were robotic, while others say that the voice sounds more like Rashida Jones.