Katina Alford

Netflix has acquired an AI filmmaking startup called InterPositive, according to a report by Variety. This is a company that was founded by actor Ben Affleck back in 2022. Don't worry if you haven't heard of it. Affleck has been operating the company in stealth mode for the past few years, so this is pretty much it's big coming-out party.
The terms of the acquisition haven't been disclosed, but Affleck will remain on as a senior advisor to Netflix. Additionally, the entire staff will be absorbed into the streaming platform.

Affleck says he started the company after "observing the early rise of AI in production" and realizing how the "models came up short." The company makes tools that generate AI models based on an existing production's dailies. This lets filmmakers use the model in the post-production process to do stuff like mix and color, relight shots and add visual effects.
Affleck adds that this tech is "not about text-prompting or generating something from nothing." Netflix says the company will keep "filmmakers at the center of the process." The company recently used generative AI tools to whip up a VFX shot in a show called The Eternaut. It's also been using AI to make ads more intrusive. We'll have to wait and see if creators do indeed remain at the center of things. Netflix will offer access to InterPositive's tech to creative partners but has no plans to sell it commercially.

To Affleck's credit, he seems to have a nuanced understanding of modern AI tools. "We also need to preserve what makes storytelling human, which is judgment," he said. "The kind that takes decades to build, experience to hone and that only people can have. I knew I had a responsibility to my peers and our industry, to protect the power of human creativity and the people behind it." However, it's worth reiterating that the company is no longer in Affleck's hands, as he is now just an advisor.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/netflix-just-bought-an-ai-startup-founded-by-ben-affleck-184536640.html?src=rss

Meta is facing a class action lawsuit for false advertising related to its AI glasses following reports about the company's use of human contractors to review footage captured from users' glasses. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco, alleges that Meta's claims about the devices' privacy features have misled users. The lawsuit comes after a Swedish newspaper reported that subcontractors in Kenya have raised concerns about viewing footage recorded via Ray-Ban Meta glasses. According to Svenska Dagbladet, workers have reported witnessing "intimate" material, including bathroom visits, sexual encounters and other private details as part of their job labeling objects in videos captured on users' smart glasses."This nationwide class action seeks to hold Meta responsible for its affirmatively false advertising and failure to disclose the true nature of surveillance and its connection to the company’s AI data collection pipeline," the lawsuit, filed by Clarkson Law Firm, states. The filing names two individuals who live in California and New Jersey who purchased Meta's smart glasses. It says that both "relied" on Meta's marketing claims about the glasses' privacy protecting features and that they would not have purchased them if they knew about the company's use of contractors. The lawsuit seeks monetary damages and injunctive relief.A spokesperson for Meta confirmed to Engadget that data from its smart glasses can be shared with human contractors in some cases. The company declined to comment on the claims in the lawsuit."Ray-Ban Meta glasses help you use AI, hands free, to answer questions about the world around you," the spokesperson said. "Unless users choose to share media they've captured with Meta or others, that media stays on the user's device. When people share content with Meta AI, we sometimes use contractors to review this data for the purpose of improving people's experience, as many other companies do. We take steps to filter this data to protect people's privacy and to help prevent identifying information from being reviewed."What the company doesn't explicitly say there is that there is no way to use the smart glasses' "multimodal" features without sharing the captures of your surroundings with the company. As I noted in my review of the second-generation Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses last year: "images of your surroundings processed for the glasses' multimodal features like Live AI can be used for training purposes (these images aren't saved to your device's camera roll)." So while Meta claims that users' own recordings are kept private, footage that is captured but not stored locally for users — like video when Live AI is in use — can be sent to contractors who help train the company's AI models. Meta's privacy policy doesn't specifically mention the use of human contractors, though it states that such data can be used for training purposes. "The undisclosed human review pipeline renders the Meta AI Glasses’ privacy features materially misleading, transforms the product from a personal device into a surveillance conduit, and exposes consumers to unreasonable risks of dignitary harm, emotional distress, stalking, extortion, identity theft, and reputational injury," the lawsuit says. "Indeed, Meta employees and contractors have described viewing credit card numbers, nudity, sexual activity, and identifiable faces in the footage they reviewed, and reported that Meta’s purported anonymization safeguards do not reliably function."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-hit-with-a-class-action-lawsuit-over-smart-glasses-privacy-claims-182846817.html?src=rss

OpenAI is releasing a new model today, and like GPT-5.2 before it, GPT-5.4 is all about professional work. OpenAI is calling GPT-5.4 its most capable frontier model for tasks like coding and data analysis. OpenAI claims the new model produced presentations with stronger, more varied aesthetics and made more effective use of its image generation tools.It's also the first model from OpenAI built with native computer-use capabilities, making it better at carrying out tasks across several apps at the same time. When it comes to computer use, one noticeable improvement OpenAI has recorded is the way GPT-5.4 issues mouse and keyboard commands. It's significantly better at navigating a desktop environment than its predecessor.  When users turn to GPT-5.4 in ChatGPT, where it will now be the default model for the chatbot's Thinking mode, the system will outline how it plans to tackle a request, giving people the opportunity to tell it to adjust course as it's generating a response. At the same time, the new model offers better web research capabilities, especially when it comes to "highly specific" queries, according to OpenAI. "Together, these improvements mean higher-quality answers that arrive faster and stay relevant to the task at hand," the company states. Separately, OpenAI claims GPT-5.4 is its most factual model yet, noting, relative to GPT-5.2, it's 18 percent less likely to generate a response with any errors. Here's hoping it knows not to turn to Grokipedia for information, something its predecessor was known to do.    As mentioned, GPT-5.4 will be available in ChatGPT when users select the chatbot's Thinking mode, and as GPT-5.4 Pro from the model picker. As such, this isn't a release for Free and Go users — or even Plus subscribers, for that matter. It's more for enterprise customers, and developers who rely on the company's Codex app. On that note, for API customers, OpenAI claims GPT-5.4 is its most token efficient reasoning model to date, though those tokens will cost more than their GPT-5.2 counterparts. For instance, OpenAI is pricing one million input tokens at $2.50, up from $1.75 with GPT-5.2.   The fact that OpenAI has increasingly shifted its strategy to focus on professionals shouldn't be surprising. When Microsoft announced last September it would add Anthropic's models to Copilot 365 (where previously it depended exclusively on OpenAI's systems), there were reports that suggested the company made the decision because it found Claude was better at tasks like generating spreadsheets and presentations. Reporting from The Information suggests OpenAI is generating about $25 billion in annualized revenue. However, the company is still far from being profitable, and with more than $1.4 trillion in data center commitments on the books, it's reliant on funding from investors to keep the lights on. Seen in that context, productivity represents a place where it might have a chance to build a sustainable business. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/i-hope-you-like-spreadsheets-because-gpt-54-loves-them-180000444.html?src=rss