Latest news with #DaveClark
Daily Mail
4 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Why Crystal Palace may be kicked out of Europe: How do the club plan to defend their case? And what will the impact be? All the key questions answered
As the tickertape fell and Dave Clark's Glad All Over belted out across Wembley's speakers, generations of Crystal Palace fans embraced. The unthinkable had unfolded before their eyes. Their street-smart Eagles had defeated the billionaires of Manchester City to win the FA Cup and secure the first major trophy for the Selhurst Park cabinet. Through the tears and the hugs and the smoke, attention turned to the Royal Box, and the forthcoming hoisting of that iconic silverware. But as the beaming, disbelieving red and blue hordes finally started to make their way back across the river, the excited chatter was of a European adventure. Finally, finally, some of the continent's bright lights would be heading to Croydon - and those Eagles themselves could now dream of flying overseas to watch their team in action. Days after their FA Cup win, Palace played the Europa League music to a still delirious support on a joyous night when Wolves visited Selhurst Park All eyes on Tuesday, however, will be on a European trip of a very different kind. This afternoon, a group of executives have a high-stakes meeting with UEFA executives among the worrying prospect that those dreams may soon be shattered. The issue is a story modern football. Like many others, members of Palace's ownership group have stakes in other clubs. And like many others have experienced, that can come with baggage. UEFA are not mad keen on multi-club ownership models. That's why they have rules around them. Put simply, clubs with the same owners cannot play in the same competitions for obvious reasons of integrity. And, given the growth of such models, it is an ongoing situation that has caused headaches across the top flight and beyond. Palace's position is complex. The club's majority owner is the American businessman John Textor, who holds around 43 per cent of the shares. Textor is also the majority shareholder at Lyon, who also happen to have qualified for the Europa League. UEFA has relaxed its rules - starting from last season - to allow clubs under the same groups to compete in different competitions. While not ideal, that may have left the door open for Palace to drop into the Europa Conference League. The problem here, however, is that the investment vehicle of David Blitzer, the director who has an 18 per cent stake in the Eagles, is the majority owner of Danish outfit Brondby, who are in a play-off to enter the same competition. The rules state that in such circumstances the club which finished in the higher place in its domestic league gets the slot. And so for Palace, who finished 12th and below both Lyon and Brondby, that door appears to be closed. That the club are in this position may come as a surprise. Those involved are serious players. Big-hitters. For this to have not already been addressed will raise eyebrows. There may well be some sympathy, however, given few outside the Palace dressing room will have seen their victory over Pep Guardiola's side coming. It is likely that Palace will argue that 59-year-old Textor has no control over football operations and that his majority stake only entitles him to 25 per cent of the voting rights. They could also say that he is actively seeking to sell his stake. The latter argument is unlikely to trigger much movement. UEFA declined to comment but based on previous instances they are unlikely to accept a compromise. It is expected that Textor will make the case himself. Should that case fall on deaf ears it may well leave owner and club in a tight spot. As a business operator, Textor is unlikely to have an appetite for a forced sale. The situation is widely known within football. The prospect of potential buyers knowing the backdrop is unlikely to push the price to an acceptable level. He has previously spoken of his dismay over his perceived lack of input at Selhurst Park and was, at one point, keen on moving for Everton. But a lightning-speed sale is unlikely given the amount of due diligence required. To rub salt into wounds, should a solution not be found, one of the main beneficiaries could be Palace's old foe. Their rivalry with Brighton may be smirked at elsewhere, but it is real and it is raw. Brighton finished eighth and so would be at the front of the queue to step in if Palace end up dropping out. And what of the club's star players? European competition is an enticing carrot to dangle when you're a mid-sized club punching above its weight. The likes Marc Guehi and Eberechi Eze, both heavily linked with moves elsewhere, may well be relishing an opportunity that could yet be taken away. And then there is the further impact of a loss in extra revenue that extra matches brings. Gate receipts, prize money and TV cash can be key to a club without the wealth of some of its rivals. Others have been here before and have acted accordingly. Manchester United, for example, told the world that Sir Jim Ratcliffe and INEOS would be controlling football operations at Old Trafford, which left them scrambling given their ownership of Nice. Subsequently, a blind trust was set up for the French side which allowed both to play in the Europa League. Elsewhere directors at Manchester City's sister club Girona stepped down and were replaced by independent lawyers in order to allow both sides to play in the Champions League while Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis took pre-emptive moves to step away from the club should they and his Greek side Olympiakos have qualified for the Champions League this season. Chelsea and Aston Villa have also had to deal with issues given their own portfolios. On its corporate-looking website, Textor's Eagle Football Holdings Limited describes itself as 'created to acquire interests in community-minded football businesses in Europe, South America, and the United States'. It adds that it 'is principally focused on those clubs and communities that are most likely to benefit from the collaboration synergies that can be achieved through a multi-club model of common ownership'. It ends: 'With a complete portfolio of highly collaborative football clubs, our focus is now to demonstrate the effectiveness of collaboration across our family of clubs to maximize the competitive success of each of our clubs.'That collaboration however, may now backfire. A decision on Tuesday is thought to be unlikely, although time is of the essence given the draws for the early rounds of European competition take place on June 17. While it may not have the drama of May's stunning victory under the arch, it could well form another key moment in Crystal Palace's long history.
India Today
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- India Today
Google Veo 3 is so good at making AI videos that it is fooling a lot of people
Earlier this week, at its I/O 2025 annual developer conference, along with a myriad of other AI updates, Google also unveiled its newest video generation model, Veo 3. The highlight of Google Veo 3 is that besides offering upgrades over Veo 2, for the first time ever it can also generate videos with audio. Google claims that Veo 3 'excels from text and image prompting to real-world physics and accurate lip syncing'. People started to put that claim to test soon after the announcement, and the results have fooled a lot of people. advertisementWe have come across a lot of posts on X which have videos generated with Google Veo 3 and the results are outstanding. There is a video that has gone viral which has an AI-generated video of a person doing stand-up comedy at a club. You can watch the video below, which was created using this simple prompt: 'a man doing stand-up comedy in a small venue tells a joke (include the joke in the dialogue)'NO WAY. It did it. And, was that, actually funny?Prompt:> a man doing stand up comedy in a small venue tells a joke (include the joke in the dialogue) fofr (@fofrAI) May 20, 2025Users on X are calling it the 'new era of filmmaking'.Created with Google Sound Design, and Voice were prompted using Veo 3 to a new era of filmmaking. Dave Clark (@Diesol) May 21, 2025advertisement Here is another post: 'WE CAN TALK! I spent 2 hours playing with Veo 3, and it blew my mind now that it can do sound! It can talk, and this is all out of the box'WE CAN TALK! I spent 2 hours playing with Veo 3 @googledeepmind and it blew my mind now that it can do sound! It can talk, and this is all out of the box... Ari K (@arikuschnir) May 20, 2025Our personal favourite from the lot of Veo 3 content online is an AI-generated video of Pythagorus explaining his theorem – 'Video and audio generated by Veo 3 natively'."Pythagoras explaining his theorem, in ancient Greece"Video and audio generated by Veo 3 natively. Pietro Schirano (@skirano) May 20, 2025Another astonishing generation is a video where Google Veo 3 was able to 'create singing and music videos from a single prompt'. 'It's just insane how coherent it is to the video,' writes the composer of the post. Google Veo 3 can create singing and music videos from a single just insane how coherent it is to the On! Jerrod Lew (@jerrod_lew) May 20, 2025Google says Veo 3 is 'great at understanding; you can tell a short story in your prompt, and the model gives you back a clip that brings it to life', and that really shows. As for availability, users in India may not be able to currently access Veo 3 right now. It is currently only available for Ultra subscribers in the United States in the Gemini app and in Flow. The Gemini AI Ultra plan is available in the US for $249.99 per month, which roughly translates to about Rs 21,000. It's also available for enterprise users on Vertex AI.
Axios
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
Google's new AI video tool floods internet with real-looking clips
Google's newest AI video generator, Veo 3, generates clips that most users online can't seem to distinguish from those made by human filmmakers and actors. Why it matters: Veo 3 videos shared online are amazing viewers with their realism — and also terrifying them with a sense that real and fake have become hopelessly blurred. The big picture: Unlike OpenAI's video generator Sora, released more widely last December, Google DeepMind's Veo 3 can include dialogue, soundtracks and sound effects. The model excels at following complex prompts and translating detailed descriptions into realistic videos. The AI engine abides by real-world physics, offers accurate lip syncing, rarely breaks continuity and generates people with lifelike human features, including five fingers per hand. According to examples shared by Google and from users online, the telltale signs of synthetic content are mostly absent. Case in point: In one viral example posted on X, filmmaker and molecular biologist Hashem Al-Ghaili shows a series of short films of AI-generated actors railing against their AI creators and prompts. Special effects technology, video-editing apps and camera tech advances have been changing Hollywood for many decades, but artificially generated films pose a novel challenge to human creators. In a promo video for Flow, Google's new video tool that includes Veo 3, filmmakers say the AI engine gives them a new sense of freedom with a hint of eerie autonomy. "It feels like it's almost building upon itself," filmmaker Dave Clark says. How it works: Veo 3 was announced at Google I/O on Tuesday and is available now to $249-a-month Google AI Ultra subscribers in the United States. Between the lines: Google says Veo 3 was "informed by our work with creators and filmmakers," and some creators have embraced new AI tools. But the spread of the videos online is also dismaying many video professionals and lovers of art. Some dismiss any AI-generated video as "slop," regardless of its technical proficiency or lifelike qualities — but, as Axios' Ina Fried points out, AI slop is in the eye of the beholder. The tool could also be useful for more commercial marketing and media work, AI analyst Ethan Mollick writes. It's unclear how Google trained Veo 3 and how that might affect the creativity of its outputs. 404 Media found that Veo 3 generated the same lame dad joke for several users who prompted it to create a video of a man doing stand-up comedy. Likewise, last year, YouTuber Marques Brownlee asked Sora to create a video of a "tech reviewer sitting at a desk." The generated video featured a fake plant that's nearly identical to the shrub Brownlee keeps on his desk for many of his videos — suggesting the tool may have been trained on them.
Mint
22-05-2025
- Business
- Mint
How Google Flow, powered by Veo 3, takes the internet by storm: Key features explained
Tech giant Google has recently launched a new AI-powered video creation platform called Flow, unveiled at its I/O 2025 event. The tool brings together the company's latest generative models —Veo, Imagen, and Gemini — and is now available to select users in the United States. Flow allows users to create short video clips and scenes using natural language prompts. It builds upon Google's earlier experimental tool, VideoFX, and is described as a space where creators can generate, edit and organise cinematic assets with a focus on scene consistency and control. Flow is integrated with Veo, Google's video generation model designed to deliver high-quality visual content with adherence to user prompts. It also includes Imagen for generating images from text and Gemini for interpreting prompts written in plain language. Notable features include: Camera Controls : Users can manually adjust camera angles, movements and perspectives within scenes. : Users can manually adjust camera angles, movements and perspectives within scenes. Scenebuilder : Enables users to edit and extend video sequences while maintaining continuity between shots. : Enables users to edit and extend video sequences while maintaining continuity between shots. Asset Management : Offers tools to organise images, character elements, and prompts for reuse across projects. : Offers tools to organise images, character elements, and prompts for reuse across projects. Flow TV: A library of sample clips made with Flow and Veo, where users can view the exact prompts used to generate each piece of content. Flow is accessible via two subscription tiers —Google AI Pro and Google AI Ultra. The Pro plan includes 100 generations per month, while the Ultra plan includes higher usage limits and early access to Veo 3, which supports environmental audio and character voice generation. The announcement has prompted a surge of user activity online, particularly focused on the capabilities of Veo 3. On X, users have begun sharing early outputs and discussing the implications of AI-assisted video production. One post from Dave Clark, co-founder of the production company Promise, stated: 'Created with Google Flow. Visuals, Sound Design, and Voice were prompted using Veo 3 text-to-video.' Another user wrote, 'Less than 24 hours since Google dropped Veo 3 and people are already creating wild stuff! 13 insane examples 🧵👇 1. A giraffe riding a bike in NYC.' Flow is currently limited to U.S.-based users subscribed to eligible plans, with a broader rollout expected in the coming months.
Time of India
21-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Google launches AI video creator Flow with Veo 3
Google unveiled its new AI-powered video generator, Flow, at its developers' conference on Tuesday. It is the latest iteration of VideoFX, a Google Labs experiment launched last year, and can generate video and audio elements. Google Flow uses its video model Veo 3 , text-to-image model Imagen and AI assistant Gemini to generate subjects, scenes and clips from text prompts. These can be pieced together into videos as per the creator's discretion. Flow allows camera control with the ability to control the motion, angles and perspectives when creating a video. Users can edit and extend the frame to reveal more elements or transition to the next scene. The AI video tool allows users to manage and organise all created elements, dubbed 'ingredients', and prompts used to make them Google has also added Flow TV, which gives exact prompts and techniques for clips, helping creators learn new styles. Live Events The company has collaborated with filmmakers Dave Clark, Henry Daubrez and Junie Lau to assess how Flow can be integrated into their workflow and improve it using their insights. Discover the stories of your interest Blockchain 5 Stories Cyber-safety 7 Stories Fintech 9 Stories E-comm 9 Stories ML 8 Stories Edtech 6 Stories Google Flow is available to Google AI Pro and Google AI Ultra subscribers in the US, and will be rolled out to more countries soon, the internet major said. Google AI Pro comes with key Flow features and 100 generations per month. The Google AI Ultra gives users the highest usage limits and early access to Veo 3 with native audio generation, bringing environmental sounds and character dialogue directly into video creation. Also Read: Key takeaways from Google I/O 2025: Gemini, Search in focus
