Dave Filoni Just Got a Bigger, More Important Star Wars Job

It sure seems like there’s gonna be a second season of Ahsoka since its creator, Dave Filoni, just got a big promotion. Filoni is now the chief creative officer of Lucasfilm, which means that he’ll play a much bigger role in the direction Star Wars stories take in the future.

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Ex-Republican Grandee Sounds The Alarm On Current GOP: ‘It’s Getting Scary Up In Here’

Former RNC chair Michael Steele spelled out why three key Republican assumptions about Donald Trump are wrong.

Paramount+ Chopped Its Movie Streaming Library in Half

While most customers probably have Paramount+ subscriptions for series-watching purposes (the many Star Trek shows and Yellowstone spin-offs are its big franchises), having access to a vast library of movies is also a perk. Or it was a perk: according to a new survey, the number of available feature titles is fewer…

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There's Good News for PlayStation Controller Users on Steam

Playing games on Steam with an Xbox controller has always been a pretty user-friendly experience. But we can’t say the same for PlayStation DualShock and DualSense controllers. That changed today with a Steam update that now allows PlayStation’s DualShock and DualSense owners to find games that fully support the…

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The AI startup behind Stable Diffusion is now testing generative video

Stable Diffusion’s generative art can now be animated, developer Stability AI announced. The company has released a new product called Stable Video Diffusion into a research preview, allowing users to create video from a single image. “This state-of-the-art generative AI video model represents a significant step in our journey toward creating models for everyone of every type,” the company wrote. 

The new tool has been released in the form of two image-to-video models, each capable of generating 14 to 25 frames long at speeds between 3 and 30 frames per second at 576 × 1024 resolution. It’s capable of multi-view synthesis from a single frame with fine-tuning on multi-view datasets. “At the time of release in their foundational form, through external evaluation, we have found these models surpass the leading closed models in user preference studies,” the company said, comparing it to text-to-video platforms Runway and Pika Labs

Stable Video Diffusion is available only for research purposes at this point, not real-world or commercial applications. Potential users can sign up to get on a waitlist for access to an “upcoming web experience featuring a text-to-video interface,” Stability AI wrote. The tool will showcase potential applications in sectors including advertising, education, entertainment and more. 

The samples shown in the video above appear to be of relatively high quality, matching rival generative systems. However, it has some limitations, the company wrote: it generates relatively short video (less than 4 seconds), lacks perfect photorealism, can’t do camera motion except slow pans, has no text control, can’t generate legible text and may not generate people and faces properly. 

The tool was trained on a dataset of millions of videos and then fine-tuned on a smaller set, with Stability AI only saying that it used video that was publicly available for research purposes. The origin of the data set is important, given that Stability AI was recently sued by Getty Images for scraping its image archives. 

Video is a key goal for generative AI, due to its potential to simplify content creation. However, it’s also a tool with the most potential for abuse via deepfakes, copyright violations and more. And unlike OpenAI with its ChatGPT product, Stability has had less success commercializing its Stable Diffusion product and burned through cash at a high rate, TechCrunch noted. And last week, vice president of audio at Stability AI, Ed Newton-Rex, resigned over the use of copyrighted content to train generative AI models. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-ai-startup-behind-stable-diffusion-is-now-testing-generative-video-105519658.html?src=rss

Iowa Republican Official’s Wife Convicted Of Ballot-Stuffing

Kim Taylor was found guilty of a scheme to stuff the ballot box in her husband Jeremy Taylor’s unsuccessful race for a GOP nomination to run for Congress.

There's Good News for PlayStation Controller Users on Steam

Playing games on Steam with an Xbox controller has always been a pretty user-friendly experience. But we can’t say the same for PlayStation DualShock and DualSense controllers. That changed today with a Steam update that now allows PlayStation’s DualShock and DualSense owners to find games that fully support the…

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10 Christmas Horror Movies Streaming (or Streaming Soon) on Shudder

Halloween is spooky and all, but—if movies are anything to go byChristmas is the holiday that really sets off knife-wielding fiends who enjoy dress-up. If you have Shudder, you have a wealth of choices at your fingertips; we’ve assembled a list of movies you can watch right now, as well as a few coming very soon.

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Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Book Is Now Out And Critics Are Suggesting A Scathing New Use

The early responses to the newly-published “MTG” are in and… oh dear.

10 Christmas Horror Movies Streaming (or Streaming Soon) on Shudder

Halloween is spooky and all, but—if movies are anything to go byChristmas is the holiday that really sets off knife-wielding fiends who enjoy dress-up. If you have Shudder, you have a wealth of choices at your fingertips; we’ve assembled a list of movies you can watch right now, as well as a few coming very soon.

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