A federal jury in Las Vegas has convicted five men for illegal streaming operations perpetrated through a company called Jetflicks, which generated millions of dollars in subscription revenue while causing “substantial harm to television program copyright owners,” according to the Department of Justice. Jetflicks, which charged customers $9.99 per month, had a catalog that included “hundreds of thousands” of copyrighted TV episodes, larger than the combined offerings of Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and Amazon Prime, prosecutors said, explaining the outfit “used sophisticated computer scripts and software to scour pirate websites for illegal copies of television episodes.” Continue reading DOJ Scores Criminal Conviction Against Operators of Jetflicks

YouTube is experimenting with a feature that allows viewers to add contextual “Notes” under videos, similar to what X does with its Community Notes. The Google-owned company says the intent is to provide clarity around things like “when a song is meant to be a parody,” when newly reviewed products are available for purchase, or “when older footage is mistakenly portrayed as a current event.” However, the timing preceding a pivotal U.S. presidential election and facing concerns about deepfakes and  misinformation is no doubt intentional. The pilot will initially be available on mobile in the United States. Continue reading YouTube to Tackle Misinformation with Crowdsourced Notes

Runway ML has introduced a new foundation model, Gen-3 Alpha, which the company says can generate high-quality, realistic scenes of up to 10 seconds long from text prompts, still images or a video sample. Offering a variety of camera movements, Gen-3 Alpha will initially roll out to Runway’s paid subscribers, but the company plans to add a free version in the future. Runway says Gen-3 Alpha is the first of a new series of models trained on the company’s new large-scale multimodal infrastructure, which offers improvements “in fidelity, consistency, and motion over Gen-2,” released last year. Continue reading Runway’s Gen-3 Alpha Creates AI Videos Up to 10-Seconds

Google DeepMind has unveiled new research on AI tech it calls V2A (“video-to-audio”) that can generate soundtracks for videos. The initiative complements the wave of AI video generators from companies ranging from biggies like OpenAI and Alibaba to startups such as Luma and Runway, all of which require a separate app to add sound. V2A technology “makes synchronized audiovisual generation possible” by combining video pixels with natural language text prompts “to generate rich soundscapes for the on-screen action,” DeepMind writes, explaining that it can “create shots with a dramatic score, realistic sound effects or dialogue.” Continue reading DeepMind’s V2A Generates Music, Sound Effects, Dialogue

More U.S. youth are relying on TikTok for news, according to a study by the Pew Research Center, which says young adults increasingly believe the short-form social video platform exposes them to information they don’t see elsewhere, even though they don’t primarily associate it with news. Among those who use TikTok, only 15 percent cite “news” as a major incentive for using the app. The study, which examines American news consumption on social media platforms, found X to be the most popular news source across all demographics, beating Meta’s Facebook and Instagram as well as ByteDance’s TikTok. Continue reading Pew Says Youth Turn to TikTok for News, but X Tops Overall

Voodoo, the French app publisher behind mobile games like “Helix Jump” and “Crowd City” has purchased social network BeReal for $537 million. Paris-based BeReal was launched in 2020, focusing on “authentic interactions,” but didn’t gain widespread popularity until 2022 when it captured the imagination of Gen Z. According to Voodoo, the platform now has more than 40 million active users, largely concentrated in the U.S., Japan and France. The new owner says it will invest in BeReal and plans to “accelerate its growth” using Voodoo’s “expertise and technologies,” adding that the acquisition “accelerates its diversification into consumer apps.” Continue reading Mobile Game Publisher Voodoo Acquires Social App BeReal

Northern California startup Luma AI has released Dream Machine, a model that generates realistic videos from text prompts and images. Built on a scalable and multimodal transformer architecture and “trained directly on videos,” Dream Machine can create “action-packed scenes” that are physically accurate and consistent, says Luma, which has a free version of the model in public beta. Dream Machine is what Luma calls the first step toward “a universal imagination engine,” while others are calling it “powerful” and “slammed with traffic.” Though Luma has shared scant details, each posted sequence looks to be about 5 seconds long. Continue reading Luma AI Dream Machine Video Generator in Free Public Beta

China’s Kuaishou Technology has a video generator called Kling AI in public beta that is getting great word-of-mouth, with comments from “incredibly realistic” to “Sora killer,” a reference to OpenAI’s still in closed beta video generator. Kuaishou claims that using only text prompts, Kling can generate “AI videos that closely mimic the real world’s complex motion patterns and physical characteristics,” in sequences as long as two minutes at 30 fps and 1080p, while supporting various aspect ratios. Kuaishou is China’s second most popular short-form video app, after ByteDance’s Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. Continue reading ByteDance Rival Kuaishou Creates Kling AI Video Generator

Apple is previewing visionOS 2, the next-gen operating system coming this fall for its Vision Pro mixed-reality headset. The new system includes a Mac Virtual Display that creates the ultra-wide equivalent of two side-by-side 4K monitors. The new OS updates navigational hand gestures and adds a Photos app feature that turns existing 2D pictures into spatial images. At WWDC Apple also announced that Blackmagic Design will release the URSA Cine Immersive, the first commercial camera system designed to capture images for the Vision Pro, and Canon unveiled a dual-lens optical setup for APS-C cameras. Continue reading Vision Pro Adds Dual 4K Virtual Display, URSA Cine Immersive

Alphabet is rolling out the Google TV network, an advertising platform that will for the first time allow media buyers to slot ads across the entire Google TV platform of more than 125 channels with one transaction. Google says those ads will reach the 20 million monthly active users who use Google TV and other Android TV OS devices to watch live sports, full-length TV shows, movies and more. Initially offering “staple connected-TV ad formats” — including non-skippable and 6-second bumpers ads — placed in-stream, Google says there are more formats to come. Continue reading Google TV Network is Alphabet’s New In-Stream Ad Platform

Nielsen will begin measuring the performance of Lionsgate‘s MovieSphere channel (available on 18 streaming platforms), making it the first major FAST service to get a deep dive regularly disseminated to clients by the analytics firm. Nielsen also collects data from Roku, Peacock, Pluto and Tubi, compiling them as part of the macro view in its monthly trends report “The Gauge.” Detailed MovieSphere data will now be collected and distributed to Nielsen’s ad buyer clients along with the material they receive for traditional networks. Lionsgate launched MovieSphere in 2020, serving-up free movies in AVOD and linear formats. Continue reading MovieSphere Is First Major FAST Channel Measured by Nielsen

Lux, the company behind the popular photography app Halide, is releasing an iPhone video app called Kino that makes it easy to add professional cinematic looks using only a smartphone. Kino’s Instant Grade feature lets users apply from a selection of color grade presets with a few simple taps. It can also apply cinematic motion blur using AutoMotion, adjusting the crisp images the iPhone tries to capture by default to “the dreamlike feeling of a motion picture.” Designed for professionals, but straightforward enough for amateurs to use, Kino supports external hard drives and iCloud backup. Continue reading Lux Brings Cinematic Tools to iPhone Shooters with Kino App

ElevenLabs has launched its text-to-sound generator Sound Effects for all users, available now at the company’s website. The new AI tool can create audio effects, short instrumental tracks, soundscapes and even character voices. Sound Effects “has been designed to help creators — including film and television studios, video game developers, and social media content creators — generate rich and immersive soundscapes quickly, affordably and at scale,” according to the startup, which developed the tool in partnership with Shutterstock, using its library of licensed audio tracks. Continue reading ElevenLabs Launches an AI Tool for Generating Sound Effects

Instagram is testing unskippable ads that will appear in users’ feeds. Screenshots of the new ad unit, which users can’t scroll through, began circulating on sites like Reddit and X, prompting general outrage, followed by confirmation that the test is underway. The ads include a countdown timer like those used in some streaming shows that prevent the ability to fast forward and also lock users onto the message without the ability to browse elsewhere on the site until the ad plays through. The approach is similar to the YouTube model for ads that appear before and midway through videos. Continue reading Instagram Users Angered by Test of ‘Unskippable’ Video Ads

A year after its announcement, Fable is launching Showrunner, a platform that lets anyone make TV-style animated content by writing prompts that are turned into shows by generative AI. The San Francisco company run by CEO Edward Saatchi with recruits from Oculus, Pixar and various AI startups is launching 10 shows that let users make their own episodes “from their couch,” waiting only minutes to see the finished result, according to Saatchi, who says a 15-word prompt is enough to generate 10- to 20-minute episodes. Saatchi is hoping Fable’s shows can garner an audience by self-publishing on Amazon Prime. Continue reading Fable Launches Showrunner Animated Episodic TV Generator