philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Doubling down on metasurfaces

Almost a decade ago, Harvard engineers unveiled the world’s first visible-spectrum metasurfaces – ultra-thin, flat devices patterned with nanoscale structures that could precisely control the behavior of light. A powerful alternative to traditional, bulky optical components, metasurfaces today enable compact, lightweight, multifunctional applications ranging from imaging systems and augmented reality to spectroscopy and communications. 

Now, researchers in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences(SEAS) are doubling down, literally, on metasurface technology by creating a bilayer metasurface, made of not one, but two stacked layers of titanium dioxide nanostructures. Under a microscope, the new device looks like a dense array of stepped skyscrapers. ...

 “It opens up a new way to structure light, in which we can engineer all its aspects such as wavelength, phase and polarization in an unprecedented manner…

“Many people had investigated the theoretical possibility of a bilayer metasurface, but the real bottleneck was the fabrication,” said Alfonso Palmieri, graduate student and co-lead author of the study. With this breakthrough, Palmieri explained, one could imagine new kinds of multifunctional optical devices – for example, a system that projects one image from one side and a completely different image from the other. ...

See the full story here: https://seas.harvard.edu/news/2025/04/doubling-down-metasurfaces

Hollywood studios can’t make money from AI-powered fake movie trailers on YouTube anymore

If you've ever visited YouTube and clicked on a trailer for the next superhero film and thought it seemed too good to be true, well, you might have been right. Wishful thinking, clever editing, and a scoop of AI fakery produced clips enticing billions of clicks and earning plenty of cash through advertising. The shocking part is that a lot of that money apparently found its way to the very studios you might expect to try and shut down any such unauthorized use of their intellectual property, at least according to information uncovered recently by Deadline.

That sidehustle may now be over with YouTube removing two of the biggest homes of these AI-laced fake trailers, Screen Culture and KH Studio, from its Partner Program. That means no more ad revenue for them or the studios reportedly getting a piece of the action.

Screen Culture has made many popular trailers full of AI-generated shots for upcoming films like The Fantastic Four: First Steps and Superman. KH Studio is more famous for its imaginary casting, like Leonardo DiCaprio in the next Squid Game or Henry Cavill as the next James Bond. You would be forgiven for assuming the plotlines, characters, and visuals on display were teasing details of the films, but they were produced far from the real film development. ...

YouTube is somewhat stuck as fan-made trailers have long been a popular kind of content. Using AI, though, can make a fake trailer seem good enough to trick people, even if only by accident. And YouTube doesn't want to encourage the practice by monetizing it. ...

See the full story here: https://www.techradar.com/computing/artificial-intelligence/hollywood-studios-cant-make-money-from-ai-powered-fake-movie-trailers-on-youtube-anymore

AMC to Add 65 ScreenX, 4DX Theaters in Deal with CJ 4DPlex

AMC Entertainment has entered into a partnership with South Korean cinema technology company CJ 4DPlex to bring 65 of its ScreenX and 4DX theaters to its venues in the United States and Europe. AMC’s 25 ScreenX auditoriums will use 4DX’s signature multi-projection approach to immerse audiences in a 270-degree field of view, starting this summer. There will be 40 4DX installations opening, beginning in the fall. With 4DX, moviegoers get a multi-sensory experience that includes motion seating and atmospherics like water, wind, scents and snow in addition to special lighting and other effects to enhance the action onscreen. ...

Variety reports that upcoming ScreenX and 4DX experiences include films from Lionsgate, Marvel, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner Bros. ...

See the full story here: https://www.etcentric.org/amc-to-add-65-screenx-4dx-theaters-in-deal-with-cj-4dplex/

ChatGPT’s Projects Feature Brings Order to Your AI Chaos

... It gives you the ability to put your discussions with ChatGPT in separate spaces, like folders in a filing cabinet, complete with uploaded documents, web searches, custom instructions, and whatever else you've added. ...

Click New project in the navigation pane on the left. (If you can't see the navigation pane, click the icon in the very top-left corner to reveal it.) If you already have projects in place, click the + (plus) icon to create a new one. ...

See the full story here: https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-use-chatgpt-projects/

Bill Gates: AI to replace major jobs within 10 years, humans won’t be needed ‘for most things’

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Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman believes that the transformation of work by AI will have a “hugely destabilising” impact.

In his 2023 book, “The Coming Wave,” Suleyman writes: “These tools will only temporarily augment human intelligence. They will make us smarter and more efficient for a time, and will unlock enormous amounts of economic growth, but they are fundamentally labor replacing.”

Despite acknowledging potential disruptions, Gates remains optimistic about AI’s positive contributions, including breakthroughs in medical treatments, climate solutions and widespread education. ...

See the full story here: https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/bill-gates-ai-to-replace-major-jobs-within-10-years-humans-wont-be-needed-for-most-things/news-story/8cf7bc4b4fb22b985663d59e467a59af

Fighting Fiction With Fact In An AI-Powered World

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A Perfect Storm of Trust and Technology

At their core, deepfakes are hyper-realistic audio or video forgeries created using generative adversarial networks—machine learning models where two AIs compete to produce increasingly convincing synthetic content. The result is content that can fool not just the eye or the ear, but even the instincts of experienced professionals. ...

The cybersecurity industry is scrambling to respond, but many of today’s defenses are fundamentally reactive. ...

And even when deepfakes are flagged, there's often no system in place to stop them from being acted upon. ...

Shifting from Reaction to Prevention

The path forward requires a fundamental shift: instead of simply identifying deepfakes after the fact, organizations need to prevent them from reaching users in the first place. That means integrating proactive safeguards into the communication channels themselves—blocking suspicious calls, verifying identities before interaction, and securing messaging platforms. ...

Innovating Real-Time Defense

Polyguard is embracing this proactive approach. The company launched today as the first platform designed to block deepfake and AI-powered fraud in real time across audio, video, and messaging.

Unlike traditional detection tools, Polyguard is designed to intercept threats before they’re delivered, using identity-verified encrypted communication channels and real-time inbound/outbound number blocking. Polyguard claims it also protects against caller ID spoofing and integrates with platforms like Zoom and call center software to secure common vectors for attack. ...

The Arms Race Between Authenticity and AI

This is not just a technological battle. As synthetic media becomes more sophisticated, the very concept of truth is at stake. Institutions, regulators, and technologists must work together to define new norms for digital trust. ...

See the full story here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tonybradley/2025/03/27/fighting-fiction-with-fact-in-an-ai-powered-world/

OpenAI’s viral Studio Ghibli moment highlights AI copyright concerns

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According to Evan Brown, an intellectual property lawyer at the law firm Neal & McDevitt, products like GPT-4o’s native image generator operate in a legal gray area today. Style is not explicitly protected by copyright, according to Brown, meaning OpenAI does not appear to be breaking the law simply by generating images that look like Studio Ghibli movies.

However, Brown says it’s plausible that OpenAI achieved this likeness by training its model on millions of frames from Ghibli’s films. Even if that was the case, several courts are still deciding whether training AI models on copyrighted works falls under fair use protections.

“I think this raises the same question that we’ve been asking ourselves for a couple years now,” said Brown in an interview. “What are the copyright infringement implications of going out, crawling the web, and copying into these databases?”...

See the full story here: https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/26/openais-viral-studio-ghibli-moment-highlights-ai-copyright-concerns

Over 4 million Gen Zers are jobless—and experts blame colleges for ‘worthless degrees’ and a system of broken promises for the rising number NEETs

... Too much time has been focused on promoting a four-year degree as the only reliable route, despite the payoff being more uneven and uncertain, says Bulanda. Other pathways, like skilled trade professionals,should be a larger share of the conversation. ...

Plus, with others struggling to land a job in a market changing by the minute thanks to artificial intelligence, it’s no wonder Gen Z finds doomscrolling at home more enjoyable than navigating an economy completely different than what their teachers promised them....

Efforts should include ramping up accessible entry points like apprenticeships and internships, especially for disengaged young people, as well as building better bridges between industries and education systems, Maleh says. ...

See the full story here: https://fortune.com/2025/03/25/gen-z-neet-not-in-education-employment-training-higher-ed-worthless-degrees-college/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Blockchain Integration Guide for Legacy System

‘Super-Turing AI’ uses less energy by mimicking the human brain

PhilNote: this is a general audience article, but the research it reports on could be of interest.

... Dr. Suin Yi, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Texas A&M's College of Engineering, is on a team of researchers that developed "Super-Turing AI," which operates more like the human brain. This new AI integrates certain processes instead of separating them and then migrating huge amounts of data like current systems do. ...

In the brain, the functions of learning and memory are not separated, they are integrated. ...

"Traditional AI models rely heavily on backpropagation—a method used to adjust neural networks during training," Yi said. "While effective, backpropagation is not biologically plausible and is computationally intensive.

"What we did in that paper is troubleshoot the biological implausibility present in prevailing machine learning algorithms," he said. "Our team explores mechanisms like Hebbian learning and spike-timing-dependent plasticity—processes that help neurons strengthen connections in a way that mimics how real brains learn."

Hebbian learning principles are often summarized as "cells that fire together, wire together." This approach aligns more closely with how neurons in the brain strengthen their connections based on activity patterns. By integrating such biologically inspired mechanisms, the team aims to develop AI systems that require less computational power without compromising performance. ...

Read the full story here: https://techxplore.com/news/2025-03-super-turing-ai-energy-mimicking.html