Latest news with #TheMatrix
South Wales Argus
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- South Wales Argus
Monopoly Events Comic Con Wales 2025 returns to Newport
Monopoly Events is bringing its annual Comic Con Wales to the ICC on Saturday, August 9 and Sunday, August 10. The convention, known for celebrating all things pop culture, promises appearances from a range of actors across various franchises. This includes Supernatural's Misha Collins, Doctor Who's Billie Piper and Michelle Gomez, Baywatch's Erika Eleniak, and Ian Cardoni, Harry Belden, and Spencer Grammer from Rick and Morty. Misha Collins fans can also have the option to have a photo with the star dressed as Castiel. A special appearance will also be made by Peggy, the canine superhero, Dogpool. Laurence Fishburne, a legend from The Matrix, is set to be the star of the convention. He will be joined by David Bradley, known for his roles in Harry Potter and Game of Thrones, and former WWE stars Kevin Nash, Amy Dumas (formerly known as Lita), and Jake 'The Snake' Roberts. Other notable appearances include Tyler Mane, Nadji Jeter, Matt Ryan, Graham McTavish, David Hayter, Quinton Flynn, Sean Pertwee, and Will Mellor. The convention will also feature Ralf Little, Ricky Tomlinson, Michael Winslow, Anton Lesser, Robert Emms, Jimmy Vee, Julian Glover, Leigh Gill, and Jack Veal. The star-studded lineup is part of a broader programme of activities planned for the weekend. Attendees can participate in workshops led by industry professionals on topics such as cosplay crafting, comic book writing, and special effects makeup. The weekend will also feature panel discussions with celebrity guests, providing fans with the opportunity to ask questions. In addition, the Artist Alley will showcase unique, one-of-a-kind pieces for sale, and the exhibitor area will be filled with vendors selling comics, collectibles, apparel, and more. Cosplay enthusiasts can look forward to the highly anticipated cosplay contest, while others can enjoy the gaming zone featuring the latest video games, board games, and tabletop RPGs. There will also be a potions making class. The cosplay competition will be judged by cosplayers SHINIGAMI22, KAROINNA, and PUPPET PAUL, with SoCalVal hosting the panels. Family-friendly activities will also be available, including kids' cosplay and drawing workshops, and a chance to watch live wrestling from the stars of Newport-based company Exposure Wrestling Entertainment. There will also be a number of set photo opportunities, including Paddington's bench, the Mystic Falls sign from The Vampire Diaries, the Vought Tower Seven sculpture, the TARDIS, the Hobbit Hole, the Jurassic Park gates and Blue the Raptor, and the Predator trophy wall. The convention is expected to attract thousands of fans, contributing to the sense of community that Monopoly Events aims to foster. Comic Con Wales is designed to be a celebration of community fandoms, with organisers hoping that attendees will not only enjoy their current fandoms but also discover new ones. Remaining entry tickets and guest photo and autograph opportunities can be purchased on the Monopoly Events website.
The Star
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Star
The unnerving future of AI-fuelled video games
SAN FRANCISCO: It sounds like a thought experiment conjured by René Descartes for the 21st century. The citizens of a simulated city inside a video game based on The Matrix franchise were being awakened to a grim reality. Everything was fake, a player told them through a microphone, and they were simply lines of code meant to embellish a virtual world. Empowered by generative artificial intelligence like ChatGPT, the characters responded in panicked disbelief. 'What does that mean,' said one woman in a gray sweater. 'Am I real or not?' The unnerving demo, released two years ago by an Australian tech company named Replica Studios, showed both the potential power and the consequences of enhancing gameplay with artificial intelligence. The risk goes far beyond unsettling scenes inside a virtual world. As video game studios become more comfortable with outsourcing the jobs of voice actors, writers and others to artificial intelligence, what will become of the industry? At the pace the technology is improving, large tech companies such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon are counting on their AI programs to revolutionise how games are made within the next few years. 'Everybody is trying to race toward AGI,' said tech founder Kylan Gibbs, using an acronym for artificial generalised intelligence, which describes the turning point at which computers have the same cognitive abilities as humans. 'There's this belief that once you do, you'll basically monopolise all other industries.' In the earliest months after the rollout of ChatGPT in 2022, the conversation about artificial intelligence's role in gaming was largely about how it could help studios quickly generate concept art or write basic dialogue. Its applications have accelerated quickly. This spring at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, thousands of eager professionals looking for employment opportunities were greeted with an eerie glimpse into the future of video games. Engineers from Google DeepMind, an artificial intelligence laboratory, lectured on a new program that might eventually replace human play testers with 'autonomous agents' that can run through early builds of a game and discover glitches. Microsoft developers hosted a demonstration of adaptive gameplay with an example of how artificial intelligence could study a short video and immediately generate level design and animations that would otherwise have taken hundreds of hours to produce. And executives behind the online gaming platform Roblox introduced Cube 3D, a generative AI model that could produce functional objects and environments from text descriptions in a matter of seconds. These were not the solutions that developers were hoping to see after several years of extensive layoffs; another round of cuts in Microsoft's gaming division this month was a signal to some analysts that the company was shifting resources to artificial intelligence. Studios have suffered as expectations for hyperrealistic graphics turned even their bestselling games into financial losses. And some observers are worried that investing in AI programs with hopes of cutting overhead costs might actually be an expensive distraction from the industry's efficiency problems. Most experts acknowledge that a takeover by artificial intelligence is coming for the video game industry within the next five years, and executives have already started preparing to restructure their companies in anticipation. After all, it was one of the first sectors to deploy AI programming in the 1980s, with the four ghosts who chase Pac-Man, each responding differently to the player's real-time movements. Sony did not respond to questions about the AI technology it is using for game development. Yafine Lee, a spokesperson for Microsoft, said, 'Game creators will always be the center of our overall AI efforts, and we empower our teams to decide on the use of generative AI that best supports their unique goals and vision.' A spokesperson for Nintendo said the company did not have further comment beyond what one of its leaders, Shigeru Miyamoto, told The New York Times last year: 'There is a lot of talk about AI, for example. When that happens, everyone starts to go in the same direction, but that is where Nintendo would rather go in a different direction.' Over the past year, generative AI has shifted from a concept into a common tool within the industry, according to a survey released by organisers of the Game Developers Conference. A majority of respondents said their companies were using artificial intelligence, while an increasing number of developers expressed concern that it was contributing to job instability and layoffs. Not all responses were negative. Some developers praised the ability to use AI programs to complete repetitive tasks like placing barrels throughout a virtual village. Despite the impressive tech demos at the conference in late March, many developers admitted that their programs were still several years away from widespread use. 'There is a very big gap between prototypes and production,' said Gibbs, who runs Inworld AI, a tech company that builds artificial intelligence programs for consumer applications in sectors such as gaming, health and learning. He appeared on a conference panel for Microsoft, where the company showed off its adaptive gameplay model. Gibbs said large studios could face costs in the millions of dollars to upgrade their technology. Google, Microsoft and Amazon each hope to become the new backbone of the gaming sector by offering AI tools that would require studios to join their servers under expensive contracts. Artificial intelligence technology has developed so fast that it has surpassed Replica Studios, the team behind the tech demo based on the 'Matrix' franchise. Replica went out of business this year because of the pace of competition from larger companies like OpenAI. Replica's chief technology officer, Eoin McCarthy, said that at the height of the demo's popularity, users were generating more than 100,000 lines of dialogue from nonplayer characters, or NPCs, which cost the startup about $1,000 per day to maintain. The cost has fallen in recent years as the AI programs have improved, but he said that most developers were unaccustomed to these unbounded costs. There were also fears about how expensive it would be if NPCs started talking to one another. When Replica announced it was ending the demo, McCarthy said, some players grew concerned about the fate of the NPCs. ''Were they going to continue to live or would they die?'' McCarthy recalled players asking. He would reply: 'It is a technology demo. These people aren't real.' Large companies are often forgoing those moral questions in their presentations to studio executives. Nvidia has collaborated with a startup named Convai to imbue NPCs in a cyberpunk ramen shop with real-time conversations. The Verge posted video showing that Sony was using OpenAI's speech recognition system and other technologies to create a version of Aloy, the protagonist of Horizon Forbidden West, that could answer player questions. Some technologists have gone even further, experimenting with AI programs that put faithful simulations of real people into games. In late 2023, researchers from Google and Stanford University partnered on the creation of generative agents, which they described as proxies of human behavior. 'Generative agents wake up, cook breakfast, and head to work; artists paint, while authors write; they form opinions, notice each other, and initiate conversations; they remember and reflect on days past as they plan the next day,' their report stated. In a virtual world inspired by The Sims, these agents developed relationships with each other, even planning a Valentine's Day celebration at a cafe. Some ethics experts have applauded the development of technology that might take some burden off acquiring human test subjects. But others have questioned the point of a technology that can only replicate a person's choices. 'Humans should be at the center of what we do,' said Celia Hodent, a specialist in user experience and cognitive science who has been developing a code of ethics in the gaming industry. 'Instead of thinking of AI as a solution for everything, having better processes might be a better starting point.' Many of the current programs that could automate game development are still prohibitively expensive to run and full of glitches. Entrepreneurs are preaching patience, saying that usable models will probably take another five years in order to improve quality and bring costs down. Gibbs said the adaptive gameplay model shown during Microsoft's conference session would probably costs hundreds or thousands of dollars an hour to run commercially. A similar program called Oasis has its own problems, he said. Because it generates content on a frame-by-frame basis, it forgets visual information not immediately present on-screen, leaving players in a constantly shifting environment. While the technology shows promise, Gibbs said, it is still an answer in search of a problem. 'How do we push the research community in a more useful direction?' he asked. 'It's a cheaper way to make games, but it is going to cost you 5,000 times more to run a game, so is it actually cheaper?' Beyond the dollar signs, ethics experts remain focused on questions of how prepared the industry is for sentient characters and levels that design themselves. Cansu Canca, the director of responsible AI practice at Northeastern University in Boston, said there would be a risk to individual agency and privacy by normalizing the technology. 'My biggest concern is not that the AI gains consciousness,' she said, 'but what it means for us to exist in a virtual environment where encounters cannot always be controlled or predicted.' – ©2025 The New York Times Company This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Kyodo News
01-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Kyodo News
FEATURE: H.K. Cantonese opera features Trump-Zelenskyy duel in political farce
HONG KONG - U.S. President Donald Trump gets into an all-out brawl with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump's twin brother stops a bullet like Neo in "The Matrix" (1999), only to be killed by another one. Trump later brings him back to life with a pill that turns out to be "Made in China." These absurd plotlines are the latest additions to "Trump, the Twins President," a Cantonese opera aimed at drawing new and younger audiences. Hong Kong playwright Li Kui-ming hopes the production will help revive the 500-year-old dying art form. The three-and-a-half-hour theatrical production parodies recent political events and global figures, including former U.S. President Richard Nixon, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and the late Chinese leader Mao Zedong and his fourth wife, Jiang Qing. First staged in 2019, the opera returned to the Xiqu Centre, a performing arts venue designated for Cantonese opera and traditional Chinese performing arts, with sold-out crowds. Zelenskyy is a new addition to the production, now in its third version. The four-day run began on June 5, the same day the real Trump held a highly anticipated call with Chinese President Xi Jinping -- the two leaders' first known direct contact since Trump's return to the White House in January. The opera begins with Ivanka Trump having a dream about her father's long-lost twin brother in China. His name is Chuan Pu, which is a transliteration of Trump's name in Mandarin Chinese. Disillusioned by the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Chuan moves to the United States to reunite with Trump. Ivanka has Chuan pretend to be her father at a Pennsylvania rally because Trump has been abducted by aliens on Mars. In contrast to last summer's events where Trump narrowly escaped with his life after an assassination attempt at a campaign rally, Chuan catches the first bullet in his hand but dies from the second shot to his chest. Trump returns from Mars and revives Chuan with a pill that he claims he brought from Mars but that is actually made in China. Other references to Trump include his proposal that Canada become the 51st American state, his love-hate relationship with tech billionaire Elon Musk, and his feud with Harvard University. Cantonese opera, rooted in modern-day Guangdong and Guangxi provinces in southern China, was registered as an "intangible cultural heritage of humanity" by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in 2009. It dates back five centuries to the Ming Dynasty. However, some say the art form has become outdated because of its traditional costumes and heavy references to ancient Chinese classics and can only be appreciated by older generations. The March closure of the 53-year-old Sunbeam Theatre, the only Hong Kong landmark showcasing Cantonese opera, disappointed local playgoers. Li, 70, said he wanted to change things up after producing 36 plays the traditional way. He chose Trump as the protagonist because of the U.S. president's "influence on people's daily lives." Ultimately, the show's message is about peace, not a geopolitical statement about China and Hong Kong, Li said. "Chuan Pu yearns for love, peace, and resolving conflicts peacefully," said Li, a feng shui practitioner by trade. Due to the continual crackdown on dissent under the national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020, many shows satirizing current political affairs have been canceled in Hong Kong. Just days before the debut of Li's play, Sunny Lam, a popular local singer-songwriter, canceled a concert following a "careful assessment." Lam rose to fame on YouTube with his derisive lyrics against the Hong Kong government's policies. Li maintained that his work was a "representation of Hong Kong's creative freedom," particularly in his depiction of the Cultural Revolution. Launched by Mao in 1966, the 10-year upheaval aimed to purge capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society and reassert Mao's authority. Discussion of the movement is largely considered taboo within mainland China's official narratives. "I fully experience the benefits of 'one country, two systems,'" Li said, referring to the principle adopted in the former British colony. "But if you have a political motive, of course, people will not allow you to perform." University student Rachel Yiu, 26, noticed the absence of the current Chinese leadership in the satirical play. "If it's going to be performed safely, there's an expectation of which side it will take," she said. "We all know the circumstances Hong Kong is in. This is the reality."
Gulf Today
31-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Gulf Today
Sequel success
Movie sequels do not have the best reputations. They can be disappointing and a let-down, especially if the original movie was a big success. This week, however, we are taking a look at films which not only live up to the success of their prequels but outshine them. The 'Scream' movies are probably the most famous horror film franchises to ever be released. The original 'Scream,' which came out back in 1996, was a huge hit with audiences and critics alike. That film was followed by five more over the years but none of them lived up to the first one until 2022. With the original title and a brilliant cast that includes Mikey Madison and Jenna Ortega, 'Scream' (2022) did really well. 'The Matrix' was released in 1999 and was followed by three more films. While the second and third installments were fine, it was 'The Matrix Resurrections' that really got fans excited. With all the plot twists and futuristic ideas as the previous films, the fourth installment also has a more human and emotional aspect to it. Keanu Reeves is still the star with actors Jessica Henwick and Priyanka Chopra joining him. In other news this week, turn to our Health pages to read about the questions you need to be asking yourself in relation to ageing and well-being. Food, hydration and physical activity play a huge role in how we age so make sure you are taking care of these important factors.
Euronews
31-07-2025
- Euronews
Keanu Reeves set to receive stolen Rolex watches from Chilean police
Keanu Reeves is to be reunited with six of his Rolex watches stolen from his Hollywood Hills home in Los Angeles during a string of high-profile thefts across the United States in December 2023. The luxury timepieces, worth an estimated €110,000, turned up in the Chilean capital, Santiago, were discovered several months ago when police raided several homes and found items including stolen cars, iPhones and designer purses. That operation coincided with another Chilean investigation, coordinated with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, into a spate of burglaries by South America-based crime groups targeting multimillion-dollar homes in the U.S, many belonging to celebrities and professional athletes, such as Kansas City Chiefs football star Travis Kelce. Chilean authorities announced they're returning the goods to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation as the US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem was in the country to discuss transnational crime. Noem herself was victim of a theft in April, allegedly committed by a Chilean national illegally residing in the US, when her purse was stolen at a Washington restaurant. The FBI will arrange for the watches return to Reeves, best known for his roles in action franchises like The Matrix and John Wick. Chilean police say they are still investigating any link between the theft of Reeves' watches and the other high-profile burglaries.
