Meta’s Oversight Board is set to take on a new high-profile case ahead of next year’s presidential election. The board said it planned to announce a case involving a user appeal related to an “altered” video of President Joe Biden. The board didn’t disclose specifics of the case, which it said would be announced formally “in the coming days,” but suggested it will touch on policies that could have far-reaching implications for Meta.

“In the coming days the Oversight Board will announce a new case regarding a user-appeal to remove an altered video of President Joe Biden on Facebook,” the Oversight Board said in a statement. “This case will examine issues related to manipulated media on Meta’s platforms and the company’s policies on misinformation, especially around elections.”

While neither Meta or the Oversight Board has shared details about the video in question, the case could further shape the social network’s policies around AI-generated or otherwise manipulated media. Even before the rise of generative AI tools that make it easier than ever to create fake videos of public figures, Meta has taken heat over its response to suggestively edited videos of politicians. In 2019, the company declined to remove an edited clip that falsely claimed then-Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi was “drunk.”

The incident prompted the company’s current policy that bars AI-generated deepfakes, but allows some other types of edited videos to remain up. Over the last year, fact checkers have regularly debunked deceptively-edited videos of Joe Biden that often spread widely on Facebook and Instagram.

It’s not the first time the Oversight Board has weighed in on a case involving a head of state, The board previously got involved in Meta’s suspension of Donald Trump, and recently recommended Meta suspend the former prime minister of Cambodia (Meta ultimately declined to do so). When the Oversight Board agrees to a case, Meta is only required to implement the board’s decision for the specific Facebook or Instagram post in question. The board also makes a number of policy suggestions, which Meta is free to ignore, though it must provide written responses.

Meta may charge Instagram users in Europe a $14 per month subscription fee unless they opt in to targeted ads, according to The Wall Street Journal. In addition, it may impose a combined monthly fee of $17 for ad-free access to Facebook and Instagram on desktop. 

Last month, rumors surfaced that Meta would start forcing subscriptions on users who opted out of targeted ads, but the potential fees were unknown. Users willing to pay would see no advertising on Facebook and Instagram, while those who want to stick to the free version would have to consent to be targeted by ads based on their personal data. The company has reportedly discussed the plans with regulators in Brussels and Ireland.

The move comes in response to a court ruling in July finding that Facebook must gain the consent of users to access their personal data. That court said that site operators have to prove that users willingly gave permission, possibly by allowing them to reject ad tracking. That's exactly what Apple did with iOS 14, and with very few users opting in, Meta predicted a significant hit to its revenue. In its ruling, the EU court also said companies should explore subscription models for users. 

If accurate, the numbers revealed by the WSJ are just a bit less than Netflix charges in the EU for it's regular monthly plan. With only power social media users or companies likely willing to pay that, Meta could effectively force regular users to accept targeted ads or stop using its social media sites altogether.

Earlier this year, the EU hit Facebook with a record €1.2 billion ($1.3 billion) fine for transferring EU user data to the US, in violation of the bloc's key digital privacy rules. And the rules are about to tighten more, as Europe's Digital Markets Act (DMA) regulations come into force starting in March 2024. 

At the same time, Meta makes nearly a quarter of its revenue in Europe, with the bloc accounting for $7.2 billion of its $32 billion total in the second quarter this year. 

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.

The film-focused social media site LetterBoxd has new ownership. Cofounder Matthew Buchanan announced on Friday that Tiny, a venture capital firm, has bought a 60 percent stake in the platform. The New York Times reported that the deal values Letterboxd at over $50 million. Buchanan and fellow founder Karl von Randow will retain minority shareholder positions and continue to lead the company as they insist “very little else will change.”

Founded in 2011, Letterboxd was a rare independently owned social network. It grew significantly during pandemic lockdowns as homebound users sought new movies to stream (and communities to chat with). Lacking the clutter of Amazon-owned IMDb, the website and app provided a haven for film buffs who wanted to write and read reviews, rate movies, create watch lists and socialize with fellow enthusiasts.

Letterboxd’s cofounders frame the move as less about selling out to big money and more a growth opportunity. “Teaming up with Tiny represents a big leap forward for us,” Buchanan and von Randow wrote in a statement. “We see this as a huge win for our community, enabling us to cement Letterboxd’s future with additional resources without sacrificing the DNA of what makes it special.”

The site doesn’t currently support television series, but the founders say they’re working on a way to offer that. They insist they want to incorporate TV shows “only once we know we can do it right.” Letterboxd partnered with Netflix earlier this year, bringing the streaming service’s recommendations to the social platform. 

“We’ve been huge fans and users of Letterboxd for a long time and could not be more excited to join forces with Matthew, Karl, and the rest of the team for the long-term,” said Andrew Wilkinson, Co-founder of Tiny. “If you’re running out of things to watch, it’s because you haven’t used Letterboxd yet — and we believe that the potential for superior discovery is a large opportunity.”

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 is shipping its final DVD rentals, marking the end of an era that helped make the company the streaming behemoth it is today. "Netflix will mail its final DVD on September 29, 2023," the company said in a post on X yesterday. "But the red envelope remains an enduring symbol of our love of entertainment."

Netflix announced in April this year that it would shut down its DVD rental business on September 29, saying the shrinking demand for physical rentals is making it "increasingly difficult" to offer the quality of service it wants. The company shipped its first disc (Beetlejuice) in 1998, and has since shipped 5.2 billion movies in those red envelopes to more than 40 million customers. 

DVD rentals paved the way for Netflix to introduce streaming on-demand in 2007, and it quickly grew to become the company's most popular offering by 2009. The rest is history, as Netflix gradually expanded to produce its own streaming content and now counts over 238 million subscribers. Meanwhile, DVD rentals (which shifted to DVD.com) have gradually become a minor part of Netflix. And while video purists still love DVDs and Blu-rays, sales worldwide dropped 19 percent from 2021 to 2022 alone. In one recent blow, Disney announced that it was halting DVD and Blu-ray production in Australia.   

While it's sadly the end of an era, there is one silver lining. This summer, Netflix announced that anyone who still has a rental will be able to keep their discs, and can even request up to 10 more movies so that the company can clear out its stock. "Please enjoy your final shipments for as long as you like," the company posted on X. 

Netflix

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.

Ironically, when ChatGPT debuted last November and basically broke the internet for a few days, the AI itself wasn't informed. In fact, its entire knowledge base stopped abruptly in September, 2021 because that was the most recent data the system was initially trained on. Wednesday, OpenAI announced that ChatGPT will now be able to answer even the most modern of queries as the generative AI assistant can now look up information, in real-time.

The new feature is being called Browse with Bing and appears to work directly within the normal Bing Chat window, notifying the user when it is looking up information from the web and providing citation links with its answers. "Browsing is particularly useful for tasks that require up-to-date information, such as helping you with technical research, trying to choose a bike, or planning a vacation," the OpenAI team wrote in a subsequent tweet. "Browsing is available to Plus and Enterprise users today, and we’ll expand to all users soon. To enable, choose Browse with Bing in the selector under GPT-4."

This isn't the first time that ChatGPT has gone on the internet, mind you. It had a web browsing capability available to Plus subscribers as recently as this past July, though that feature got axed after users kept exploiting it to get around paywalls. This announcement follows another major update from earlier in the week, revealing the chatbot's new multimodal functions.

Cuphead developer Studio MDHR is celebrating the indie game’s sixth anniversary by giving Xbox and Windows players free behind-the-scenes content. The DLC includes high-res photos, concept art, a video player and the entire soundtrack. The developer describes the bonus content as a “love letter” to fans on the game’s initial platforms. It will be available on Friday, September 29.

The Cuphead DLC will include over 100 behind-the-scenes photos, including “never-before-seen concepts and unused art pieces” from one of gaming’s most stylistic titles. Among the images is a peek at early concept art that Studio MDHR describes as akin to Microsoft Paint.

“With our process being so painstaking once we put pencil to paper, we often use paint tools during brainstorming sessions to communicate ideas very quickly to one another for the broad strokes of a boss attack or phase transition,” said MDHR co-director Chad Moldenhauer. “A few of these made their way into the photo gallery, and we think they’re a fun break from tradition for the more handcrafted art we usually put out!”

Studio MDHR

The bonus content also includes the entire 86-track Cuphead soundtrack for the first time. In addition, a never-before-heard MIDI demo track will play in the background as you browse the stylized DLC menus.

Moldenhauer says the team wrestled with including music from The Delicious Last Course DLC as it was concerned about spoilers. “After much discussion, though, we came down on the side of giving the Xbox community access to as much of Kris’s great tunes as possible — especially as we feel most of the players enjoying a section like this will have experienced the full Cuphead game experience already!” said Moldenhauer. The song used over 110 musicians, more than on any tracks from the base game.

”We thought it would be fun to give this to our Xbox community as a gift on the game’s anniversary, as our Cuphead journey really started with the release on Xbox,” said Moldenhauer. “In game development, plans like that don’t always work out, but we were fortunate that all our testing and finalization for the update seemed to finish with enough time to launch on the game’s sixth birthday!”

We learned at last year's Meta Connect that Quest headsets would gain official support for Xbox Cloud Gaming and now we have a clearer idea of when that will happen. During this year's event, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the game streaming service will be available on Meta Quest 3 sometime in December. 

Using your headset, you'll be able to stream games like Halo Infinite, Starfield and Forza Horizon 5 to a large, virtual 2D screen. You'll need an Game Pass Ultimate subscription to use Xbox Cloud Gaming, as well as a compatible controller. A disclaimer notes that the service will only be available on Quest in select regions. It's unclear if and when Xbox Cloud Gaming will be available on Quest 2 and Quest Pro.

Enthusiasts have already found ways to access Xbox Cloud Gaming on Quest headsets, but official support will make it easy for anyone to dive right in. By the time the service becomes available on Quest, Microsoft may have closed its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, so you might kind of be able to play the likes of Call of Duty and Overwatch 2 in virtual reality in a few months.