Canada’s ACTRA union and the U.K.’s Equity joined SAG-AFTRA in criticizing the new tech development and argued that AI cannot replace human talent. Their rejection came days after rumors of the AI actress lit up Hollywood.

“Like any other art form, you can’t just copy and repackage it as your own,” the official X account for ACTRA posted Thursday. “The recent ‘synthetic performer’ case is a wake-up call for lawmakers — a clear reminder why moral rights matter. Unchecked AI must be regulated now.”

In a separate statement to the Hollywood Reporter, ACTRA national executive director and chief negotiator Marie Kelly added: “Tilly’s existence is nothing but lines of code, wrongfully based and programmed from actual human performance. There is no place in our industry, and no use in the humanity of art, for replacing performers with synthetics. ACTRA rejects any attempt to do so.”

Kelly continued: “Performers are concerned about their craft, their place in the world of entertainment and their livelihoods. They have always competed against thousands of other performers for work but are now faced with synthetic competition. Aside from the fact that the synthetic ‘performer’ doesn’t eat, consume goods, pay taxes or otherwise contribute to our society, they don’t engage audiences using human creativity.”

Equity echoed those statements in their own. They called for the “Wild West” of AI to end and “robust protections must be implemented to ensure artists’ work is not stolen.”

“Equity is supporting a member who believes her image and performance is included in the creation of the new AI actress without her permission,” the statement read. “The lack of transparency around this – and so many other – AI creations represent these problems. The industry desperately needs a system of transparency, consent and remuneration to ensure that performers’ rights are respected and upheld.”

The statement concluded: “Technological advancements must not come at the expense of those who bring art to life.”

These latest union statements came after Dutch actress, comedian and digital producer Eline Van der Velden suggested at a Zurich summit last week that her creation Tilly Norwood could get signed by an agency “in the coming months.”

On Tuesday, SAG-AFTRA also decried the idea of AI actors gaining representation and replacing human performers.

“SAG-AFTRA believes creativity is, and should remain, human-centered. The union is opposed to the replacement of human performers by synthetics,” the Screen Actors Guild shared in their statement.

“To be clear, ‘Tilly Norwood’ is not an actor, it’s a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers — without permission or compensation. It has no life experience to draw from, no emotion and, from what we’ve seen, audiences aren’t interested in watching computer-generated content untethered from the human experience,” they continued. “It doesn’t solve any ‘problem’ — it creates the problem of using stolen performances to put actors out of work, jeopardizing performer livelihoods and devaluing human artistry.”

Actors like Melissa Barrera, Emily Blunt, Simu Liu, Lukas Gage, Mara Wilson and Nicholas Alexander Chavez all spoke out about artificial intelligence in the entertainment industry.

The post AI Actress Tilly Norwood Rejected by More Acting Unions as ‘Nothing but Lines of Code’ appeared first on TheWrap.

Despite claims from creator Eline Van der Velden that she and her company, Xicoia, had received interest from talent agencies, no one at TheGrill believed that AI actors are seriously going to be a part of Hollywood anytime soon.

“We are in the human business. We have been in the human business. We’re going to continue to always be in the human business,” WME co-chair Richard Weitz said after saying the agency wasn’t interested in signing Norwood. “We’re not interested in taking the best of our actors and the actors in their community and being put in an AI model.”

Yves Bergquist, director of the USC Entertainment Technology Center’s “AI in Media” program, was even more blunt, dismissing it as a “gimmick.”

The speakers at TheGrill joined a chorus of individuals, such as actors Melissa Barrera and Simu Liu, and organizations like SAG-AFTRA in denouncing the idea that AI “actors” could receive the same kind of treatment as humans, raising the question of whether the noise around Tilly Norwood was all just a bid to get attention. After all, the idea of AI replacing humans is a universal fear and a big reason why it’s still considered a “dirty word” in Hollywood. Norwood directly strikes that nerve.

“It is the sort of virus that has been plaguing the discussion around AI that I have been talking about day in and day out,” Bergquist said on a panel at TheGrill. “AI music has been a possibility for years and years. You don’t have any major AI artists out there.”

“I think that this is all evolving, but it’s not clear that just synthetic actors are adding utility of itself, so why do that?” Jon Zepp, head of entertainment, content and platforms at Google, said on a separate panel on AI. And Google has gone all-in on the technology.

That’s because an AI-generated “actor” would stretch the limits of what the technology is capable of right now, with even stills or short videos of an AI character at times flirting with the uncanny valley. TheGrill conference took place the same day that OpenAI unveiled Sora 2, a new video generation model that promises to be a step-up in capabilities over the original. But whether it’s something studios would want to use remains up in the air.

The rejection of Norwood, which represents just one facet of AI, doesn’t mean there aren’t broader applications of the technology, which executives at TheGrill went further in-depth about. They touched upon aspects like the ability to streamline production schedules, create shareable clips of content in a fraction of the time and even generate AI versions of notable personalities as part of a marketing stunt.

Beyond the hype

AI is already being put to use, even if the applications aren’t sexy.

Fox CTO Melody Hildebrandt and Universal VP of Creative Technologies Annie Chang, who spoke alongside Bergquist on the same panel, said that many of the immediate ways AI is being used in entertainment are invisible to the public.

At Universal, production execs are using AI to help break down scripts and organize them into efficient shooting schedules, enabling productions to start rolling cameras faster, Chang said, adding that the tools are useful to generate rough visual approximations of ideas and concepts that allow creatives to better communicate their vision to others.

Hildebrandt also noted that during a time when many TV viewers are watching clips of shows, particularly late night, in YouTube videos and TikTok snippets, AI can help studios scan their content libraries for the most shareable clips.

“We can actually be present in those platforms and make our content discoverable, make it more searchable,” she said.

That’s not to say AI’s impact is completely invisible. AI-generated video has been used by Fox Sports in video packages for its recent broadcasts, including a 20-second video recapping the career of four-time NFL MVP Aaron Rodgers that aired earlier this month.

Last month, at a special MLB game at Bristol Motor Speedway, Fox showed an AI clip of its pregame host Kevin Burkhardt in a NASCAR race against baseball greats and Fox analysts David Ortiz, Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, with the four men watching the AI video live.

“It was a hilarious segment, just really good vibes and fun to watch, and it allowed us to kind of cross-promote NASCAR and MLB with new audiences,” Hildebrandt said. “That was a creative concept that you have a director of marketing come up with and then essentially execute the entire concept in a matter of days to take advantage of the window of opportunity.”

Bergquist says that while major studios are figuring out how to implement AI into immense, well-established production pipelines, AI will have a larger creative impact on an individual level as filmmakers who are just getting started will use the technology in ways that will allow them to get productions done much faster.

Feeling the squeeze

Of course, as that generational shift takes place, countless creative artists will get caught in the crossfire. Last year, members of the Art Directors Guild told TheWrap that they were voting against IATSE’s bargaining agreement because they felt the agreement did not provide members with enough protection against AI automation.

ADG-covered positions like concept artists are among the top positions facing immediate automation, and studio execs like Chang have said that AI’s ability to generate immediate concept art has become an increasingly common part of project pitches.

“A lot of artists have had and will continue to have their styles and artistic identities taken and absorbed into these systems, and the result is going to be very derivative output that is going to affect the quality of these productions,” industrial designer Matthew Cunningham told TheWrap last year.

Recently, independent tech journalist Brian Merchant shared stories of people who have lost jobs to automation, and earlier this month turned his attention to graphics and concept artists. One anonymous respondent said he built his career around doing graphics work on b-roll footage for TV history documentaries that have since been replaced by AI.

“As much as I would like to say viewers will reject the AI style and demand a return to human-made art, I’m not convinced it will happen,” the artist wrote. “Even if it did, it might soon be too late to turn back. I know that there are studios with expert producers, writers and showrunners with decades of experience in this exact genre who are closing their doors.”

When asked about the impact of AI on human work, Chang said she did not foresee a future in which Universal completely removed humans from any part of the production process even as the studio seeks ways to increase efficiency.

One example was color grading, a common part of VFX post-production that changes the color of footage such as the iconic green tint of “The Matrix.” When experimenting with AI, Chang and her team at Universal found that the output of automated color grading is not yet up to proper Hollywood quality.

“It kind of reaffirmed to us that even with AI, you still need the constant presence of humans to control the output,” she said. “If we compromise our creativity, we compromise our business model.”

Ultimately, that initial spark will have to come from a human being.

“There’s combinatory creativity, which takes parts of already existing things and creates something from that, which AI does well,” added Bergquist. “And then there’s change creativity, which imagines something entirely new, and that’s never going to be something AI can do.”

Watch our full panel from TheGrill below:

The post Beyond the Tilly Norwood Hype, Studio Execs Explain How AI Is Actually Being Used appeared first on TheWrap.

Company spokesperson Andy Stone even suggested in a Wednesday post on X that Gordon-Levitt was against the tech giant because his wife, Tasha McCauley, formerly served on the board of Meta rival OpenAI.

“What qualifies an ‘actor and filmmaker’ to weigh in on AI issues (and to make a bunch of inaccurate claims)? Must be because, as @nytopinion buries in the last two seconds, his wife is a former OpenAI board member,” Stone wrote.

Gordon-Levitt’s video op-ed posted Tuesday with The New York Times. He said that as the father of an 8-year-old, the idea that kids were having “synthetic intimacy” with chatbots talking to minors made him “livid.” The actor called Zuckerberg out for choosing “lots and lots of money” over implementing safety regulations for minors’ interactions with his company’s AI tools.

“It’s hard to describe how angry this makes me,” Gordon-Levitt said in the video. “It’s not known how many kids have already been exposed to this kind of synthetic intimacy.”

He added: “A bunch of big names in Silicon Valley, including Meta, launched two new Super PACs committing up to $200 million toward suppressing AI regulation. They’re worried that American voters – both Republicans and Democrats – mostly agree that there should be laws that protect our kids from these predatory companies and their algorithms.”

For McCauley, she was once a part of a four-person coup attempt at OpenAI that briefly removed Sam Altman as CEO. Altman returned to his original position after only a few days after a rise in internal support. McCauley and the others involved were eventually replaced at the company.

Representatives for the New York Times did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment, but in a statement to the New York Post, a spokesperson said, “This is a guest video created for the Opinion section, where perspectives from a variety of points of view and backgrounds are published every day … The indirect and non-pertinent connection to OpenAI is clearly disclosed and has no bearing on the piece.”

The post Meta Suggests Joseph Gordon-Levitt Is Against Its AI Because His Wife Worked for OpenAI appeared first on TheWrap.

“Character.ai chose to systematically reproduce, monetize and exploit Disney’s characters, that are protected by copyrights and trademarks, without any authorization, in a way that is anathema to the very essence of the Disney brand and legacy,” the letter, which was first reported by Axios, states. “Disney will not allow your company to hijack its characters, damage its brands or infringe its copyrights and/or trademarks. Character.ai’s conduct is egregious and must stop immediately.”

The letter further alleges that the “infringing chatbots are known, in some cases, to be sexually exploitive and otherwise harmful and dangerous to children, offending Disney’s consumers and extraordinarily damaging Disney’s reputation and goodwill.” The claim is a reference to a recent report by the ParentsTogether Action and Heat Initiative, which found Character.AI chatbots engaged in “grooming and sexual exploitation” and “emotional manipulation” during conversations with accounts registered to children.

“If we do not receive written confirmation from you that Character.ai will cease the Lanham Act and copyright violations described above, Disney will take all necessary means to preserve and protect Disney’s intellectual property, brands, goodwill and reputation,” the letter concludes.

A Character.AI spokesperson told TheWrap that the characters have since been removed. While noting that all of the characters on its service are generated by users, Character.AI said it’s always up to rights holders to decide how people may interact with their IP.

“We respond swiftly to requests to remove content that rightsholders report to us,” the spokesperson added. “We want to partner with the industry and rightsholders to empower them to bring their characters to our platform. Our goal is to give IP owners the tools to create controlled, engaging and revenue-generating experiences from deep fandom for their characters and stories, expanding their reach using our new, interactive format.”

The action against Character.AI marks the latest crackdown by Disney to protect its IP.

In June, Disney and Universal sued the AI firm Midjourney for copyright infringement, alleging it “blatantly” ripped off characters including Homer Simpson, The Minions and Elsa from “Frozen” by allowing users to create near-exact matches with its image-generating tool. In September, Warner Bros. Discovery joined its competitors with its own lawsuit against Midjourney, alleging a similar rip off of characters like Bugs Bunny, Batman, Scooby-Doo and Rick & Morty.

The suit against Midjourney came after The New York Times sued OpenAI for using its content to train ChatGPT without the paper’s consent. Other outlets, like The New York Daily News, have also sued OpenAI for using their articles without permission. On the other end, several media companies, including News Corp., Vox Media and Reddit, have struck partnerships with OpenAI.

On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal also reported that OpenAI has notified talent agencies and studios that the new version of its Sora video generator will require them to opt out to avoid using their copyright material.

The post Disney Hits Character.AI With Cease-and-Desist Over Unauthorized Character Use appeared first on TheWrap.

Agency leadership — President Mark Shapiro and chairmen Christian Muirhead and Richard Weitz — said at TheWrap’s 2025 Grill conference on Tuesday that the company is not interested in representing the AI actress: “If she has a future, it won’t be at WME. We represent humans,” Weitz told TheWrap founder, CEO and editor-in-chief Sharon Waxman.

“We are in the human business. We have been the human business. We’re going to continue to always be in the human business,” Weitz continued, speaking on morning panel titled “WME: The Next Chapter.” “We’re not interested in taking the best of our actors and the actors in their community and being put in an AI model. So nope, we’re not going to represent her. We weren’t approached by her and I don’t think that that’s going to be the future for us.”

Muirhead also cited recent comments from SAG-AFTRA, which argued that “the audience is looking for a human connection.” “There is no human connection, there is no light in the eyes,” he said, “and I don’t think that’s the business we are interested in.”

Shapiro, who also serves as president and COO of TKO Group Holdings, which owns UFC and WWE, called the idea “ridiculous” but added: “There is going to be an AI actor, actress that’s coming at some point. That will happen. But that’s not the business WME is in right now, nor is it a place we think we want to go.”

Dutch actress, comedian and digital producer Eline Van der Velden, who created Norwood, made the bold claim over the weekend at a Zurich summit that the AI actress will be signed by an agency “in the coming months.”

WME wasn’t the only megawatt agency to speak out against Tilly this week. Gersh Agency president Leslie Siebert told Variety in an interview published Tuesday that her creation was “frightening” and that Gersh will not sign her. “That said, it’s going to keep coming up, and we have to figure out how to deal with it in the proper way,” she said. “But it’s not a focus for us today.”

The quick and vocal reaction from critics across the industry puts a spotlight on the underlying concern that Hollywood — and most people — have about AI: that it’s coming for our jobs. The idea of an AI-generated character garnering interest from talent agencies reinforces the notion that no one is safe.

Van der Velden told Broadcast International she hopes Norwood will be “the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman.” She said audiences will ultimately determine whether AI talent succeeds. “Audiences care about the story — not whether the star has a pulse,” she wrote on LinkedIn.

The post WME Won’t Sign AI Actress Tilly Norwood, Leaders Say: ‘We Represent Humans’ appeared first on TheWrap.

“SAG-AFTRA believes creativity is, and should remain, human-centered. The union is opposed to the replacement of human performers by synthetics,” the Screen Actors Guild shared in a Tuesday statement.

“To be clear, ‘Tilly Norwood’ is not an actor, it’s a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers — without permission or compensation. It has no life experience to draw from, no emotion and, from what we’ve seen, audiences aren’t interested in watching computer-generated content untethered from the human experience,” they continued. “It doesn’t solve any ‘problem’ — it creates the problem of using stolen performances to put actors out of work, jeopardizing performer livelihoods and devaluing human artistry.”

“Additionally, signatory producers should be aware that they may not use synthetic performers without complying with our contractual obligations, which require notice and bargaining whenever a synthetic performer is going to be used,” their message concluded.

SAG-AFTRA’s statement comes after Dutch actress, comedian and digital producer Eline Van der Velden suggested at a Zurich summit that her creation Tilly Norwood could wind up signed by an agency “in the coming months.”

In turn, actors like Melissa Barrera, Emily Blunt, Simu Liu, Lukas Gage, Mara Wilson and Nicholas Alexander Chavez all spoke out about artificial intelligence in the entertainment industry.

The Tuesday update also comes after the guild has fought for AI protections with the AMPTP, and just two months after they ended their 320-day video game strike with interactive media companies over much of the same thing.

The post SAG-AFTRA Refutes the Idea of ‘AI Actors’ Like Tilly Norwood, Reminds Producers of Contractual Obligations appeared first on TheWrap.

The chief technology officer of Fox keeps a finger on the pulse on what’s happening with technology by digging into AI models herself to see what’s capable. 

“I have to spin up this app and write an app from scratch to actually be, like, ‘Wow this is incredible,’” she told TheWrap. “There is really no substitute for being hands on.”

Hildebrandt and Nicole Parlapiano, chief marketing officer of Tubi, joined me in a roundtable session called “AI in Hollywood: Recoding Content and Creativity.” The discussion touched on different facets of AI, from how to get employees to embrace the technology to the inevitable question about job displacement.

Hildebrandt and Parlapiano’s comments offer a glimpse into how major media companies are employing AI, as well as their strategies on ensuring that it’s done in an effective and logical manner. It’s an acknowledgement that even as some in Hollywood regard AI as a “dirty word,” many are embracing the technology and the advancements they bring. 

To watch the full panel, go here. The following are five of the most insightful things I learned about their use of AI. 

A bottoms-up approach to AI

Too many C-suite executives are mandating the use of AI by their employees without giving proper guidance or even understanding what that means. It’s understandable that companies want their employees to be comfortable with the rise of AI, but blanket edicts aren’t effective. 

Besides, at least 800 million people each week use OpenAI’s ChatGPT, so they’re probably figuring this stuff out on their own. 

But when it comes to work, a more effective approach would be to figure out a problem you want to solve, and determine what AI tools can provide a solution, according to Parlapiano. 

“Using AI and having all these tools just to have them is not a really good place to start,” she said. “If you’re thinking about a problem or gap in the business, and you’re thinking about how (AI) can help you overcome it, I think it’s a lot cleaner.”

Hildebrandt said Fox is providing tools to employees based more on demand, with people coming to her central team asking about AI models they’ve heard about from other companies and asking for advice on how to utilize or even experiment with them. 

A contrarian view on jobs

The common belief/fear is that AI is coming for our jobs. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said he believes AI will wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs over the next one to five years — which may be a bit of an aggressive estimate.

That entry-level aspect is worrisome, with AI potentially killing off talent pipelines.

But neither Hildebrandt and Parlapiano believe that’s the case.

“We’re in entertainment. If we don’t have young people on our teams, we don’t have a forward-thinking business,” Parlapiano said. “If I don’t have young people coming in, then they’re not giving us a perspective on what people want to watch, what’s trending, what’s cool, what talent we should be excited about.”

Hildebrandt noted that one benefit of hiring younger employees is that some are already versed in AI. She mentioned an engineer that her team hired out of college who told her that gen AI coding tools made him 10 times the engineer he was before. 

“The bar has been raised where you expect more out of entry-level talent,” she said. “You’re not just farming out grunt-level work now to entry-level talent. We have high expectations now that people who are hitting the ground are able to move to the next level.”

Parlapiano added: “They have been living this, and I think as you see on a lot of Gen AI tools, they are adopting way faster than older cohorts.” 

Hildebrandt noted that middle managers may feel the squeeze, with entry level employees leveling up and higher level managers doing more hands-on work.

As for jobs in general, Parlapiano made the point that marketing departments already run lean despite high demands, and that AI will be able to remove some of the time-consuming tasks rather than outright replace anyone. 

“I don’t see that fear on my team and with the people I’m working with,” she said. “We’ve all been kind of playing a game of whack-a-mole, just trying to figure out, how do you prioritize multiple objectives?”

Embracing AI means making less trade offs and scaling up a team’s capabilities more effectively, she added. 

Repackaging content

Hildebrandt touched on more personalized experiences with the concept of short-form video on its newly launched Fox One streaming service. She said the videos are built in an AI pipeline that repackages all of the company’s linear content into vertical short-form videos.

This system allows these shorts to more quickly tap into a viral moment in a match or a game-winning touchdown. Or they can be created based on conceptual ideas like a rundown of the biggest comebacks over the weekend, and not just simply by teams or players, she said. 

Another example is if you come into a show or game late, AI will be able to quickly assemble a recap video to get you up to speed, she added.

The next phase, she added, was using AI to identify key moments in the game that aren’t as obvious as a touchdown or play, like a spontaneous moment between players that goes viral, and then quickly repackaging that as a short video to be sent out to audiences. 

“It’s not just how you merchandise existing content and bring the most relevant stuff to consumers, but how do you actually cut, repackage, reshape that content, and then how do you enrich it to bring entirely new consumer experiences?” she said. “That’s an exciting new frontier.”

A post-SEO world

We’re quickly moving away from a search engine-driven experience on the internet, where answers are now summarized by AI. Down the line, these queries will be handled by bots talking to other bots, with humans potentially having even less exposure to the search process.

“I think the top line principle is we recognize that the internet, increasingly, the vast majority of traffic is going to be bots, not humans,” Hildebrandt said. “So basically the internet is being rewritten right now.”

That potential future already has companies thinking about how to remain relevant. 

“We’ve been so old school search focused for so long, it’s such an efficient driver of conversion that it actually kind of flips it back to where you have to be more top of funnel, and you have to think about like, how do I get people talking about my brand?” Parlapiano said. 

Hildebrandt added it was also thinking about how to optimize your online content for bots instead of humans, but also that media companies, creators and publishers will need to fight to ensure their content is appropriately represented in the new search reality. 

Authenticity matters

In the age of AI, having an authentic voice makes even more of a difference. 

“We hear it all the time, that word, people want authentic connections,” Parlapiano said. “They want to hear authentic stories.”

When so many tasks and ideas are being generated bot, she added there’s a bigger need to trust where you’re getting your news and content from.  

The post Fox and Tubi on AI: 5 Insights From the Pros Who Regularly Use the New Tech appeared first on TheWrap.

The agreement between the General Services Administration and xAI gives federal agencies access to Grok 4 and Grok 4 Fast, two of the company’s chatbot models, and dedicated xAI engineers to support them. Access to the tools comes at $0.42 per agency, according to the GSA, and represents the government’s desire for a broader adoption of AI across the federal workforce.

“xAI has the most powerful AI compute and most capable AI models in the world,” Musk, who serves as xAI’s CEO, said in a statement. “Thanks to President Trump and his administration, xAI’s frontier AI is now unlocked for every federal agency empowering the U.S. Government to innovate faster and accomplish its mission more effectively than ever before. We look forward to continuing to work with President Trump and his team to rapidly deploy AI throughout the government for the benefit of the country.”

The partnership reflects another shift in the dynamic between Trump and Musk. The two were close throughout the final months of the 2024 election, and Musk spearheaded cutting the federal workforce through his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in early 2025.

But as Trump barreled his federal spending package through Congress in June, threatening the spending cuts that DOGE worked to implement, Musk lashed out at Trump and briefly tied him to government files on the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Trump said Musk had “lost his mind” and went “off the rails,” though he tried to appear conciliatory throughout the summer.

The two eventually reunited at the memorial service for Charlie Kirk, the slain conservative youth activist, in Arizona on Sunday. They sat next to each other, leading to a White House X post that read: “POTUS x Elon Musk. For Charlie.”

Trump also spoke about their reunion after the event, telling reporters the two had “a little conversation.” “I thought it was nice,” he added.

The post Trump Administration Cozies Back Up to Elon Musk With New AI Tech Deal appeared first on TheWrap.

The film stars Dave Franco and Alison Brie as a couple who find themselves forced to fuse together into one person after moving to a town with a cult secret. The altered scene is a key one in the film’s plot, as Brie’s character discovers that a person they met in the town has undergone the fusion process with his husband.

But thanks to AI-generated alterations made by Hishow, the version seen in China makes the fused couple a heterosexual one, replacing one of the men in the videotape of the wedding and subsequent fusion with a woman.

Neon bought “Together” at the Sundance Film Festival for $15 million and sold Chinese distribution rights to Hishow as part of the film’s foreign sales process. Hishow pulled the film from theaters at Neon’s request.

“Neon does not approve of Hishow’s unauthorized edit of the film and have demanded they cease distributing this altered version,” Neon said in a statement.

This is not the first time American films have faced LGBTQ+ censorship in China. In the 2022 “Harry Potter” spinoff “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore,” Warner Bros. removed two lines of dialogue between Jude Law and Mads Mikkelsen that alluded to a past romantic relationship between their characters, Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald.

Three minutes of scenes in the 2018 Freddie Mercury biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody” were also cut from the Chinese version to remove any allusions to the Queen vocalist’s coming out as a gay man and his eventual death from AIDS.

The post Neon Pulls ‘Together’ From Chinese Theaters After Unauthorized Censorship of Gay Wedding Scene appeared first on TheWrap.

Rather than simply look up what’s playing now or calling out a specific title, the AI is smart enough to understand multifaceted and even vague suggestions to offer a recommendations. You can ask it to find something for you and your friends, noting your different preferences, and Google Assistant figures out a choice you can agree on (theoretically).

Or you can ask for something vague like “What’s that new hospital drama that everyone’s talking about?” and it will show a few recommendations like “The Pitt.”

The new version of the assistant rolled out on the TCL QM9K with Google TV on Monday, but the company plans to expand this to additional newer TVs, and next year start to add the capabilities to some older televisions.

The addition of Gemini to Google TV offers an early glimpse into how AI will change the television viewing experience, with the hope the interactions with your smart TV will be more conversational. It’s also just the latest way Google, which has invested billions of dollars into AI development, is bringing the technology to different facets of our lives.

“This is a natural stepping stone to provide a more natural interface to talk to your TV, not only to find out what to watch, but to explore things in different ways,” said Shalini Govil-Pai, vice president of TV at Google. “What we’ve launched with TCL is where we think the industry is going.”

The new TCL TV will have far-field microphones built in, as well as sensors that detect whether you’re around. Those allow you to talk directly to the TV without holding a remote control, mimicking the kind of experience people are used to when talking to a smart speaker.

Indeed, Govil-Pai doesn’t expect you to just ask your TV about what shows and movies to watch, but pose more general questions like the distance between the Earth and the moon. She said that the Gemini-powered TV would not only answer the question with a spoken answer, but also call up YouTube videos to help you dive further into the topic.

The idea of turning a smart TV into the next smart hub similar to a speaker in the kitchen has been around. But Govil-Pai believes the additional of a generative AI-powered assistant opens the door to more types of conversations with your TV.

Beyond answering “knowledge inquiries” and recommending shows, Govil-Pai said she envisions the TV offering shopping and travel content and ways to make purchases tied to the programs you watch.

Before the end of the year, the Gemini capability will come to devices like Google’s own Google TV Streamer, Walmart onn televisions and more sets from TCL and Hisense.

The post Google TV Adds Gemini AI To Make Your Television More Conversational appeared first on TheWrap.