In less than three years, generative AI has evolved from an experimental toy to a regular presence in studio pitches, previs workflows, and even the festival circuit. Yet one challenge has stymied the full adoption of generative AI in long-form storytelling: establishing and maintaining control over outputs. This challenge also fuels many of the anxieties surrounding the use of artificial intelligence in media production. How can artists maintain their creative voice when a machine is doing all the artistic work, and often doing so with inconsistent results? The Entertainment Technology Center at USC set out to tackle these and related challenges with a new film project, “The Bends.” Read more

After five years of spadework, ATSC 3.0 NextGen TV is ready for its close-up with the fall football season and growing HDR interest across the sports world. The August 23 NFL preseason game between New Orleans Saints and Denver Broncos was an inflection point, the first time a local U.S. broadcaster delivered an over-the-air show in native HDR from “glass to glass” — camera lenses to NextGen TV home screens. Now the NextGen coalition Pearl TV is gearing up for a marketing push to promote the benefits of HDR in the lead-up to the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Read more

Google is rolling out “Gemini in Chrome” to U.S. Mac and Windows desktop users. Business users will get it in the weeks to come, as will Android and iOS mobile devices. The immediate change integrates “Google AI into Chrome across multiple levels so it can better anticipate your needs, help you understand more complex information, and make you more productive when you browse the web.” There are a number of safety features that leverage AI to combat scams and handle things like automatic password resets. And Gemini in Chrome will soon be able to recall websites previously visited without requiring you to scroll through your browsing history. An agentic browsing assistant is also in the works. Read more

Sci-fi short “Europa,” written and directed by Jacqueline Elyse Rosenthal, is the Entertainment Technology Center’s latest project to test the expanding possibilities of virtual production and remote collaboration. To call “Europa” a cloud-first production is to rethink filmmaking from the ground up. This wasn’t just a distributed team working online — it was an ecosystem where every workflow, from previs to final VFX, operated entirely in the cloud. It wasn’t a workaround; it was the foundation. And powering that foundation — every tool, every task, every decision — was AWS. Read more

Nvidia is investing $5 billion in Intel via a common stock purchase at $23.28 per share, which translates to about a 4 percent stake. The companies plan to collaborate across multiple projects, developing custom data center and PC products to accelerate applications and workloads across the hyperscale, enterprise and consumer markets. Nvidia’s NVLink will be used to connect the architectures, integrating Nvidia’s GPUs with Intel’s CPU technologies. For data centers, Intel will customize x86 CPUs that Nvidia can integrate into its AI platforms. Intel also plans to build x86 SOCs that integrate Nvidia RTX GPU chiplets for PCs. Read more