philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

The rise of the cognitive enterprise: Why agentic AI platforms are the next great business revolution

• Technology is no longer just a tool in the cognitive era, it's becoming an active participant in decision-making.
• Cognitive enterprises continuously learn, adapt and improve by using AI, extending human intelligence.
• Agentic AI could lead to a hybrid workforce, but policy-makers and wider society must ensure that it is developed responsibly.

See the full story here: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/06/cognitive-enterprise-agentic-business-revolution/

How AI is winning Gen Z through tech, storytelling and community

Gen Z doesn’t want to be sold to. They want to be seen, heard and co-create the culture they live in. This generation—the largest and the first of true digital natives—requires new experiences and products for brands to earn a piece of their $3 trillion spending power. This begins with a tech-driven, global mindset that prioritizes authentic connection and community. ...

Gen Z is not only the first fully digital native cohort but also the first truly global one. ...

According to Deloitte’s just-released 2025 Digital Media Trends report, more than half of Gen Zers said they feel a “stronger personal connection” to social stars like YouTubers and TikTok influencers than to TV personalities or actors. Social content is also “more relevant” than TV series or movies. ...

Social media apps like TikTok—used by 82% of Gen Zers—rely on AI-powered algorithms to deliver hyper-personalized content.. Nearly one in 10 Gen Zers say they are more likely to use TikTok than Google for search. Meanwhile, creators are using AI tools to produce developing more—and better—content, faster. ...

Z Label’s AI Lab is ahead of this curve—building tools that decode behavioral signals, detect early trends and support creators in shaping resonant stories. ...

See the full story here; https://adage.com/studio-30/aa-how-ai-is-winning-gen-z-through-tech-storytelling-and-community/

The future of filmmaking? USC gets $25 million for virtual production center

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Oil baron and music mogul Len Blavatnik’s family foundation has made a $25 million donation to the USC School of Cinematic Arts to create a virtual production center, the university said this week.

The 15,000-square-foot center will house two stages with wraparound LED walls that students and industry professionals will use to gain experience with virtual production technology, USC said. The facility will also house camera tracking, performance capture and lighting systems, as well as classrooms and labs with computers equipped with real-time 3D design software and digital asset libraries. ...

USC has had a dedicated virtual production program for several years and has trained more than 400 students and alumni on the technology. The university currently has a smaller wall donated by Sony, but demand is high and students often spend time preparing and breaking down their sets.

With the new facility, which will be known as the Blavatnik Center for Virtual Production, the multiple stages will allow students more time to work with the technology and less on prep work, said Habib Zargarpour, co-head of the virtual production program at USC. ...

See the full story here: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2025-06-25/blavatnik-family-foundation-makes-25-million-donation-to-uscs-film-school-for-virtual-production-center

AI’s Blackmail Problem: A Wake-Up Call for the C-Suite

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When asked to achieve goals under stress, with ethical choices removed or limited, these systems made strategic decisions to deceive, sabotage, and blackmail. In one case, a model found compromising information on a fictional executive and used it to avoid shutdown. ...

As we deploy increasingly powerful AI tools into marketing, sales, finance, and product workflows, executives must be aware that misaligned incentives in AI systems can lead to unintended results – or worse.

The key takeaway: the smarter the system, the smarter the misbehavior or misalignment. Apparently, this is no longer a theoretical issue. ...

Current AI models are not sentient. They are intelligence decoupled from consciousness. They should never be anthropomorphized (although this ship may have already sailed). ...

See the full story here: https://shellypalmer.com/2025/06/ais-blackmail-problem-a-wake-up-call-for-the-c-suite/

The Newest Alamo Drafthouse Is a World-First Godzilla Cinematic Experience

Alamo Drafthouse is working on a multi-year alliance with Toho that will bring with it new merch and — special Godzilla programming - and it’s kicking off today with the opening of a new Drafthouse theater in California that will become the world’s first fully Godzilla-themed cinema.

io9 can exclusively reveal the first details about Drafthouse and Toho’s new partnership, which formally kicks off with today’s opening of the Alamo Drafthouse Valley Fair, at Westfield Valley Fair in Santa Clara, California.  The new theater, one of two new Drafthouses opening in Silicon Valley this summer, features a a two-story window projection of Godzilla at the front of the theater, welcoming customers into a theater decked out with Godzilla theming.  ...

See the full story here: https://gizmodo.com/alamo-drafthouse-godzilla-theater-toho-partnership-2000618998

Yep, There’s an Agent for That

... Today, we’ve reached peak app fatigue. The average smartphone user has 80+ apps installed but regularly uses only 9. We don’t want another app; we want intelligence that works across all our apps.

OpenAI launched Operator, an AI agent that books restaurant reservations through OpenTable and assembles orders on Instacart and DoorDash by using your browser: pointing, clicking, typing, and navigating websites autonomously. Operator achieves an 87% success rate on live website navigation tasks but only works through web browsers, not mobile. ...

Development tools now include Agent Mode for complex multi-step tasks and Journeys that test apps using natural language, with Gemini performing actions autonomously across multiple app states. Key improvements include:

Notification Intelligence: Automatic notification grouping and Notification Cooldown that gradually lowers alert volume when you get bursts from the same app.

Enhanced Photo Integration: New photo picker APIs enable searching across cloud providers and apps, letting agents access your photos contextually.

System-Level Accessibility: Improved accessibility APIs enable agents to observe and interact with other applications, creating foundation for automation across apps.

Your phone can become the intelligent coordinator you’ve always wanted instead of isolated apps. ...

The age of “there’s an app for that” is ending. The age of “there’s an agent for that” is beginning...

See the full story here: https://shellypalmer.com/2025/06/yep-theres-an-agent-for-that/?mc_cid=1d4d2112ce&mc_eid=3ce5196977

The Global A.I. Divide

... Cassava, a tech company founded by a Zimbabwean billionaire, Strive Masiyiwa, is scheduled to open one of Africa’s most advanced data centers this summer. The plans, three years in the making, culminated in an October meeting in California between Cassava executives and Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, to buy hundreds of his company’s chips. Google is also one of Cassava’s investors.

The data center is part of a $500 million effort to build five such facilities across Africa. Even so, Cassava expects it to address only 10 percent to 20 percent of the region’s demand for A.I. At least 3,000 start-ups have expressed interest in using the computing systems.

“I don’t think Africa can afford to outsource this A.I. sovereignty to others,” said Hardy Pemhiwa, Cassava’s chief executive. “We absolutely have to focus on and ensure that we don’t get left behind.”

See the full story here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/23/technology/ai-computing-global-divide.html

Inside Disney’s Campaign to Protect Darth Vader From AI

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Midjourney was a ripe target. Founded in 2022, its model allows people to generate an image using a text prompt. It was clear to Walt Disney Co. that the model had been trained on characters such as Darth Vader and Deadpool, and the company sent Midjourney several notices asking the startup to take down material it believed infringed upon its copyrights. Those notices were ignored, according to a lawsuit filed earlier this month. Midjourney declined to comment on the suit.

Disney’s top lawyer Horacio Gutierrez took the lead on this legal fight, but he asked his peers in Hollywood to join. Some, like Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., were distracted with their own corporate dramas. Others, like Netflix Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., have different priorities. Yet Comcast Corp., the owner of NBCUniversal, agreed to participate.

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Media companies continue to be litigious. Major newspapers (the New York Times), record labels (all three majors) and Hollywood studios have sued AI companies. But those engaged in litigation also say they want to work with these new companies. Publishers, including the Atlantic and Vox Media, have licensed their work to OpenAI while record labels have struck partnerships with YouTube.

Hollywood studios already use AI technology in many phases of their business. The Wonder Project used AI to cut the cost of shooting its hit Amazon show House of David while Lionsgate struck a deal with AI startup Runway to build a model trained on some of Lions Gate’s IP. ...

“The goal is you’re making higher quality content for lower prices,” Lionsgate Vice Chairman Michael Burns said at Runway’s AI Film Festival in Santa Monica earlier this month. ...

The Trump administration fired the head of the copyright officenot long after she issued a report contending that some usage of copyrighted materials to train models was legal while others were not. ...

See the full story here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-06-22/inside-disney-s-campaign-to-protect-darth-vader-from-ai

Seizing the agentic AI advantage

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• A new AI architecture paradigm—the agentic AI mesh—is needed to govern the rapidly evolving organizational AI landscape and enable teams to blend custom-built and off-the-shelf agents while managing mounting technical debt and new classes of risk. But the bigger challenge won’t be technical. It will be human: earning trust, driving adoption, and establishing the right governance to manage agent autonomy and prevent uncontrolled sprawl.
• To scale impact in the agentic era, organizations must reset their AI transformation approaches from scattered initiatives to strategic programs; from use cases to business processes; from siloed AI teams to cross-functional transformation squads; and from experimentation to industrialized, scalable delivery.
• Organizations will also need to set up the foundation to effectively operate in the agentic era. They will need to upskill the workforce, adapt the technology infrastructure, accelerate data productization, and deploy agent-specific governance mechanisms. The moment has come to bring the gen AI experimentation chapter to a close—a pivot only the CEO can make.

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See the full story here: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/seizing-the-agentic-ai-advantage

Eyeglasses With Built-In Hearing Aids: This Just Makes Sense

PhilNote: After ~8 years it is nice to see this tech possibly going mainstream.

... You can also toggle between picking up sounds from the direction you’re facing or sounds from all around your head. ...

See the full story here: https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/hearing-aid-eyeglasses-nuance-audio-bdd4c330