Amazon’s Alexa Fund VC has made an investment in San Francisco-based startup Fable, which this week launched Showrunner, a generative AI model with an app that lets people create animated TV shows using text prompts. Showrunner has been in a closed alpha test involving about 10,000 users. Initially, Fable is making Showrunner available for free, but plans to eventually price it at $10-$20 monthly for credits enabling creation of TV-style content on Discord. The Showrunner-generated content will be shareable on social media sites including YouTube. Specific terms of Amazon’s investment have yet to be disclosed. Read more

The Walt Disney Company concluded its Upfront advertising sales with notable increases in sports and streaming commitments and an overall figure consistent with 2024’s number. Sports was a bright spot, generating close to $4 billion through both linear and addressable platforms including ESPN and others, propelled by double-digit growth in volume for “Monday Night Football” and College Football and a “high single-digit” increase in NBA volume driven largely by the NBA Finals and the half-time and post-game analysis series “Inside the NBA” that ESPN landed starting this year. Read more

New York-based Runway AI has introduced a sophisticated video model called Aleph that can perform a wide range of edits from text prompts — adding, removing and transforming objects; generating various angles on a scene; or modifying style and lighting, among other things. Aimed at streamlining post-production, Runway calls Aleph an “in-context video model,” meaning it is designed to work with existing visual material rather than generating imagery from scratch. Using Aleph puts storytellers just a prompt or two from turning that wide shot into an extreme close-up, or adding a new “next shot,” providing what Runway calls “endless coverage.” Read more

Google’s YouTube is adding new age-verification methods designed to protect teens. The streaming video platform is using AI to interpret “a variety of signals” to identify users under 18, regardless of the birthdate used to create the account. If the system identifies a user as a teen, age-appropriate protections will automatically take effect. These include disabling personalized advertising, restricted recommendations, limits on repetitive viewing of certain content and screen-time reminders. If the system incorrectly categorizes a user as under 18, they will have the option to correct the situation with a credit card or a government ID. Read more

Runway has joined forces with IMAX to present the finalists from its fourth annual AI Film Festival in a 10-city U.S. commercial run, with four days of screenings at each location, from August 17 to 20. Tickets are on sale now for IMAX theaters in Manhattan, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Dallas, Boston, Atlanta, Denver and Washington, D.C. The 10 finalists vied among 6,000 submissions for the 2025 competition, which marks the first time the AIFF finalists will get a national theatrical release. In 2024 finalists screened for one day at only two theaters in New York and Los Angeles. Read more