The top 10 aliens on screen ranked — from The Blob to ET
In the pantheon of aliens that have visited Earth (on screen, that is), the xenomorph is a particularly horrifying one, but as many have been friendly as have been hostile, as my personal pick of ten from the movies (not TV, so no Mork) suggests. You may wish to suggest others, of course, but remember, aliens on Earth only.
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The Guardian
36 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Digital resurrection: fascination and fear over the rise of the deathbot
Rod Stewart had a few surprise guests at a recent concert in Charlotte, North Carolina. His old friend Ozzy Osbourne, the lead singer of Black Sabbath who died last month, was apparently beamed in from some kind of rock heaven, where he was reunited with other departed stars including Michael Jackson, Tina Turner and Bob Marley. The AI-generated images divided Stewart's fans. Some denounced them as disrespectful and distasteful; others found the tribute beautiful. At about the same time, another AI controversy erupted when Jim Acosta, a former CNN White House correspondent, interviewed a digital recreation of Joaquin Oliver, who was killed at the age of 17 in a 2018 high school shooting in Florida. The avatar of the teenager was created by his parents, who said it was a blessing to hear his voice again. In June, Alexis Ohanian, a co-founder of Reddit, posted on X an animation of his late mother hugging him when he was a child, created from a photograph. 'Damn, I wasn't ready for how this would feel. We didn't have a camcorder, so there's no video of me with my mom … This is how she hugged me. I've rewatched it 50 times,' he wrote. These are just three illustrations of a growing phenomenon of 'digital resurrection' – creating images and bots of people who have died using photographs, videos, voice messages and other material. Companies offering to create 'griefbots' or 'deathbots' abound, and questions about exploitation, privacy and their impact on the grieving process are multiplying. 'It's vastly more technologically possible now because of large language models such as ChatGPT being easily available to the general public and very straightforward to use,' said Elaine Kasket, a London-based cyberpsychologist. 'And these large language models enable the creation of something that feels really plausible and realistic. When someone dies, if there are enough digital remains – texts, emails, voice notes, images – it's possible to create something that feels very recognisable.' Only a few years ago, the idea of 'virtual immortality' was futuristic, a techno-dream beyond the reach of ordinary people. Now, interactive avatars can be created relatively easily and cheaply, and demand looks set to grow. A poll commissioned by the Christian thinktank Theos and carried out by YouGov in 2023 found that 14% of respondents agreed they would find comfort in interacting with a digital version of a loved one who had died. The younger the respondent, the more likely they were to be open to the idea of a deathbot. The desire to preserve connections with dead loved ones is not new. In the past, bereaved people have retained precious personal items that help them feel close to the person they have lost. People pore over photos, watch videos, replay voice messages and listen to music that reminds them of the person. They often dream of the dead, or imagine they glimpse them across a room or in the street. A few even seek contact via seances. 'Human beings have been trying to relate to the dead ever since there were humans,' said Michael Cholbi, a professor of philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and the author of Grief: A Philosophical Guide. 'We have created monuments and memorials, preserved locks of hair, reread letters. Now the question is: does AI have anything to add?' Louise Richardson, of York university's philosophy department and a co-investigator on a four-year project on grief, said bereaved people often sought to 'maintain a sense of connection and closeness' with a dead loved one by visiting their grave, talking to them or touching items that belonged to them. 'Deathbots can serve the same purpose, but they can also be disruptive to the grieving process,' she said. 'They can get in the way of recognising and accommodating what has been lost, because you can interact with a deathbot in an ongoing way.' For example, people often wonder what a dead loved one might have done or said in a specific situation. 'Now it feels like you are able to ask them.' But deathbots may also provide 'sanitised, rosy' representations of a person, said Cholbi. For example, someone creating a deathbot of their late granny may choose not to include her casual racism or other unappealing aspects of her personality in material fed into an AI generator. There is also a risk of creating a dependency in the living person, said Nathan Mladin, the author of AI and the Afterlife, a Theos report published last year. 'Digital necromancy is a deceptive experience. You think you're talking to a person when you're actually talking to a machine. Bereaved people can become dependent on a bot, rather than accepting and healing.' The boom in digital clones of the dead began in the far east. In China, it can cost as little as 20 yuan (£2.20) to create a digital avatar of a loved one, but according to one estimate the market was worth 12bn yuan (£1.2bn) in 2022 and was expected to quadruple by 2025. More advanced, interactive avatars that move and converse with a client can cost thousands of pounds. Fu Shou Yuan International Group, a major funeral operator, has said it is 'possible for the dead to 'come back to life' in the virtual world'. According to the China Funeral Association, the cost is about 50,000 yuan per deceased person. The exploitation of grief for private profit is a risk, according to Cholbi, although he pointed to a long history of mis-selling and upselling in the funeral business. Kasket said another pitfall was privacy and rights to digital remains. 'A person who's dead has no opportunity to consent, no right of reply and no control.' The fraudulent use of digital material to create convincing avatars for financial gain was another concern, she added. Some people have already begun stipulating in their wills that they do not want their digital material to be used after their death. Interactive avatars are not just for the dead. Abba Voyage, a show that features digital versions of the four members of the Swedish pop group performing in their heyday, has been a runaway success, making about £1.6m each week. Audiences thrill – and sing along – to the exhilarating experience while the band's members, now aged between 75 and 80, put their feet up at home. More soberly, the UK's National Holocaust Centre and Museum launched a project in 2016 to capture the voices and images of Holocaust survivors to create interactive avatars capable of answering questions about their experiences in the Nazi death camps long into the future. According to Cholbi, there is an element of 'AI hype' around deathbots. 'I don't doubt that some people are interested in this, and I think it could have some interesting therapeutic applications. It could be something that people haul out periodically – I can imagine they bring out the posthumous avatar of a deceased relative at Christmas dinner or on their birthday. 'But I doubt that people will try to sustain their relationships with the dead through this technology for very long. At some point, I think most of us reconcile ourselves with the fact of death, the fact that the person is dead. 'This isn't to say that some people might really dive into this, but it does seem to be a case where maybe the prospects are not as promising as some of the commercial investors might hope.' For Mladin, the deathbot industry raises profound questions for ethicists and theologians. The interest in digital resurrection may be a consequence of 'traditional religious belief fading, but those deeper longings for transcendence, for life after death, for the permanence of love are redirected towards technological solutions,' he said. 'This is an expression of peak modernity, a belief that technology will conquer death and will give us life everlasting. It's symptomatic of the kind of culture we inhabit now.' Kasket said: 'There's no question in my mind that some people create these kinds of phenomena and utilise them in ways that they find helpful. But what I'm concerned about is the way various services selling these kinds of things are pathologising grief. 'If we lose the ability to cope with grief, or convince ourselves that we're unable to deal with it, we are rendered truly psychologically brittle. It is not a pathology or a disease or a problem for technology to solve. Grief and loss are part of normal human experience.'
Daily Mirror
an hour ago
- Daily Mirror
I was forced to ban Peppa Pig after my toddler continued to repeat one rude word
As a parent I have had to take drastic measures and ban Peppa Pig for good after my daughter continued to repeat and awful word Those of you who have tuned in previously for my Peppa Pig opinion pieces will already know that I am not the show's biggest supporter. I have outlined in the past that I would be switching over to Disney's family fun show Bluey, instead of allowing my two-year-old to follow the likes of Peppa, George, Mummy Pig and Daddy Pig. However, there was one occasion since my original statement when we accidentally watched the CBeebies programme. In fairness, it was not intentional, we'd tried desperately hard to find other shows that we felt were more suitable for our toddler. We'd just been watching Justin Fletcher's Something Special show and before we'd realised, the infamous pigs were next to follow on the channel. Of course, as Peppa and her family began to chime their snorts in the opening introduction, we were met with a roar of excitement from a toddler - who had not seen the show for sometime now. I shot a look at my partner, both of us providing a nod of approval that we would make one small allowance - and that she could watch it "just this once". What we didn't realise is that we would pay massively for "just this once," a mistake that would live with us for weeks to come. I think it's worth noting for the record that our daughter, apart from when she's unwell, is generally a good eater and will chow down most food with minimal fuss. Any way, back to the show and how this all ties together. We happened to allow our two-year-old to tune into episode 34, of season one, titled 'lunch". I would go out on a limb here and say this was probably the worst instalment I'd ever seen and regret deeply ever putting it on now. In this episode, George, Peppa Mummy Pig and Daddy Pig are visiting Granny and Grandpa Pig, who have collected fresh vegetables from their garden and invited everyone over to sample the goods with them at their table. As they all dig in, sampling the delicious homegrown produce, George is left looking perplexed. Granny, Grandad, Mummy and Daddy Pig prompt him to try various varieties of salad to which he rudely replies: "Yuck," and pokes his tongue out, moving his body away from his plate and turning his nose up. Refusing to try anything put in front of him, he simply tells them: "Yuck," each time before finally bursting into tears. Grandad intervene with a clever tactic, turning the salad into a dinosaur, with T-Rex obsessed George eventually lapping up the healthy goods in no time at all. I can see where the shows creators were going with narrative, that a little bit of creativity goes a long way but to use the word "yuck" in a food environment with impressionable toddlers watching, I simply do not agree with. As soon as we heard the word "yuck" leave George's lips, we knew we were in store for trouble. We're at that age where anything you say aloud will be consumed much like a sponge absorbing water. Sure enough, even after the episode had concluded, our two-year-old continued to repeat the word "yuck," finding it utterly hilarious. We'd hoped this would pass but it didn't. The next day, we presented our daughter with a homemade lasagne for dinner, a meal I had personally prepared totally from scratch and had probably taken the best part of five hours to cook - over the course of various parts of the day. As I placed her plate on the table, I was met with the word "yuck," yet again. I tried to encourage her to eat with playful aeroplane notions and was further shunned as she told me: "Yuck, yuck and yuck," much like George had done previously during the episode. It wasn't just happening in our home and we weren't the only ones to witness her blatant rudeness. We are fortunate enough that we have parents who help us out with childcare once or twice per week. On a visit, they'd dished up a lunchtime staple, peanut butter sandwiches, but were also met with the exact same response. On collection, we were left embarrassed as we summarised that George was to blame for her ill-mannered behaviour at meal times. We all mutually agreed that Peppa Pig would now be firmly banned across both households. Even if Peppa Pig happens to roll onto our screens by accident again, I'll be lunging for the remote as quicker than Usain Bolt to turn it off because in all honesty, from one parent to another, it's really not worth the additional stress or red faced apologies. Peppa Pig currently airs on CBeebies and Netflix.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
TV tonight: the wife of a serial killer speaks out in a grim documentary
9pm, Sky Crime Between April 1984 and August 1985, Richard Ramirez murdered at least 15 people in California. He died in 2013 while awaiting execution on San Quentin's death row. In this two-parter, interviews with Ramirez's wife (Doreen Lioy), friends, female admirers and family members, along with those with his victims' family members, are aired for the first time. It also examines 80s fan culture, and why he was celebrated by some like a rock star. Hollie Richardson 6.20pm, BBC Two 'One, two, three. One, two, three.' It's a celebration of waltzes in this special lineup to mark 200 years since the birth of 'waltz king' Johann Strauss II. The programme starts with his Die Fledermaus overture and ends with By the Beautiful Blue Danube, performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra. HR 7.15pm, BBC One More remarkable wildlife parenting lessons from David Attenborough, this time in the oceans. He starts on a reef with Banggai cardinal fish – the mother lays eggs in the father's mouth then he protects them for four weeks, unable to eat anything. And after they hatch, they don't leave his mouth until it's safe. HR 8pm, ITV1 Adrian Dunbar's eponymous retired detective returns for a second series. In the opener, a violent jewellery heist escalates into murder when a key witness is killed. Ridley and his former protege, DI Carol Farman (Bronagh Waugh), mount an undercover sting to stop the criminal mastermind behind the gang, before more lives are snuffed out. Ali Catterall 8pm, Channel 4 One for real Titanic heads, this two-part documentary series focuses not on the world's most infamous maritime disaster, but on subsequent efforts to find its wreck. Texas oil magnate Jack Grimm funded a cutting-edge mission in the 80s – but why was he so insistent on bringing a monkey with him? Hannah J Davies 9.15pm, BBC One Dorrigo is having a very bad week in the penultimate episode of the torrid Australian miniseries. His illicit affair with Amy is rudely interrupted when his call-up papers arrive – and before long he's shipped off to a Japanese PoW camp to face some brutal realities, leaving him haunted by loss in every sense. AC Jimmy's Hall, 1.10am, Film4 Eight years after his 2006 film The Wind That Shakes the Barley delved into the 1920s Irish war of independence and civil war, Ken Loach returned to the country to assess its uneasy peace circa 1932. In an absorbing, fact-based story, communist Jimmy (Barry Ward) returns from the US to his County Leitrim home to reopen a community hall, which exposes the continuing rift between the working class and 'the masters and the pastors' who dictate their lives and block democratic change. Simon Wardell Community Shield Football: Crystal Palace v Liverpool, 2pm, TNT Sports 1 At Wembley Stadium.
