I våras genomförde svenska studenter en studie för att undersöka hur pass svårt det är att upptäcka AI-genererade röster. Enligt en studie av Ipsos i samarbete med Deezer har vi även svårt att avgöra om musik är AI-genererad eller inte.
Studien genomfördes med 9000 deltagare i åtta länder. Deltagarna lyssnade på tre låtar och behövde därefter avgöra om musiken var helt AI-genererad eller inte. Hela 97 procent av deltagarna misslyckades. Värt att påpeka är att många förmodligen inte visste vad som är möjligt med dagens AI-verktyg, vilket kan ha påverkat resultatet.
Av de som deltog ansåg 80 procent att AI-genererad musik ska etiketteras på strömningstjänster, så att det tydligt framgår att musiken är skapad av AI. Det finns en ”artist” på Spotify med helt AI-genererad musik som i skrivande stund har 2,7 miljoner lyssnare globalt. Spotify berättar inte att musiken är skapad av AI.
AI har varit särskilt kontroversiellt inom kreativa yrken och konst. Kritiken är främst tredelad. Dels anser kritikerna att AI riskerar att ersätta kreativa, stimulerande yrken som folk älskar. Gällande just musik tar AI-genererade artister royalties från riktiga artister, på grund av hur utbetalningarna fungerar. En annan del av kritiken är att AI-modellerna baseras på artisters och konstnärers arbete – ofta utan ersättning.
Den tredje stora kategorin av kritik är mer filosofisk: kan en maskin överhuvudtaget förmedla riktiga känslor och erfarenheter och skapa konst, eller är det bara en sorglig och själlös imitation av vad människor redan har skapat?
Som tidigare rapporterats kommer de svenska 3G-näten stängas ned i år. Fler mobiler än väntat har drabbats av omställningen, eftersom vissa telefoner inte längre kommer kunna ringa 112 trots att de har 4G-modem.
Att de drabbade mobilerna inte längre kan hantera nödsamtal ska bero på att de saknar VoLTE Emergency – de kan inte ringa 112 över 4G. Post- och telestyrelsen anser att 2G-näten inte är en tillräckligt säker backup och har därför beordrat operatörer att blockera mobiler som inte kan ringa 112 över 4G.
Enligt SVT kommer tiotusentals mobiler i Sverige snart bli obrukbara. Operatörer ska ha meddelat berörda kunder. Känner du någon som blivit drabbad eller har du drabbats själv och behövt uppgradera?
A Nuremberg in 2028 Worldcon bid has been unveiled in advance of next week’s Smofcon. The bidders propose to hold the Worldcon in Nuremberg (Nürnberg), Bavaria, Germany in mid-July 2028. The venue would be the NürnbergMesse Conference Center, within which they will design a “Worldcon … Continue reading →
The crew behind the Buffy the Vampire Slayer revival (reportedly titled Buffy the Vampire Slayer: New Sunnydale), have been doing an excellent job of keeping the show’s most important details a secret. Every now and then, though, one of the members of the revival can’t help but say a little something about the highly-anticipated series. This time around, it was showrunner Chloé Zhao who shared a small (but absolutely adorable) story from the shoot.
In an interview with Lauren Veneziani that was posted to Instagram, Zhao revealed that one her favorite Buffy episodes is Season 3’s “The Prom.” It’s the episode that ends with Jonathan giving a passionate speech in which he becomes one of the few Sunnydale High students to acknowledge and appreciate what Buffy does for everyone on a regular basis. Buffy then receives the “Class Protector” award: a kind of parasol affixed to a golden base. The award has come to symbolize one of the sweetest and most powerful moments in the series. Yet, Zhao says she learned that Sarah Michelle Gellar never kept the Class Protector award prop from that episode. So, she hatched a plan.
“On the day of the wrap, we made a replica of that [award] and then I memorized the speech,” Zhao says. “So, I went up there to say, ‘Some of us didn’t know you,’ you know there’s that speech… I did the whole thing. And then we presented her with the [Class Protector award]. It was amazing. Some of the crew members were like, ‘What’s happening?’ But the ones that know the speech… I had such a good time doing that.”
There is sadly no media of the recreated prop available at the moment, though we’ll hopefully get a peek of that soon now that Zhao has shared the story. And while that prop will (likely) not make an appearance in the revival, it’s always fascinating to hear Zhao reminisce about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Those memories not only solidify her super fan status but offer a window into her thoughts about the series that perhaps reveal little things about what we can expect from the show.
So far as that goes, Zhao also took he time to talk about her favorite Buffy love interests and give a little respect to one of the slayer’s more “boring” beaus.
“In my 40s, I appreciate Riley more,” Zhao says of the one that got away (in a military helicopter). “When I was younger I thought he was kind of boring and I preferred Spike. Now, I’m like ‘maybe a little less Spike and a little more Riley.’”
But don’t worry fans and friends. Zhao admits that Buffy and Angel had the best chemistry despite him being a “runner.” [end-mark]
We are all in Westeros until further notice. HBO announced today that House of the Dragon, the first Game of Thrones spinoff, has been renewed for a fourth season. The third season isn’t expected until next summer, so this is a very early renewal for the tale of the Greens and Blacks and dragons and murders.
But that’s not all! Months before the series premiere, HBO has also already renewed A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms for a second season. As Variety points out, “The second season is slated for 2027, meaning Thrones fans will have new dispatches out of Westeros every year through 2028.”
Francesca Orsi, the head of HBO’s drama series and films, said, “Together, House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms reveal just how expansive and richly imagined George R. R. Martin’s universe continues to be. In January, I think audiences will be delighted by the inspiring underdog tale of Dunk and Egg that George and [showrunner] Ira Parker have captured so beautifully. And this summer, House of the Dragon is set to ignite once again with some of its most epic battles yet.”
Get it? Set to ignite? Because there are dragons? I’ll see myself out.
In 2022, in a blog post full of praise for House of the Dragon’s first season, George R.R. Martin wrote, “It is going to take four full seasons of 10 episodes each to do justice to the Dance of the Dragons, from start to finish.” There is no indication in HBO’s announcement as to whether or not the fourth House of the Dragon (or “HOT D,” as Martin referred to it in the same post) season will be the show’s final season. But there is certainly precedent for HBO taking a series past the end of Martin’s writing.
The Dance of the Dragons continues at some unannounced date next summer. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which explores the tales of Dunk and Egg, a knight and his squire, premieres on January 18th. [end-mark]
A year ago, Amazon MGM Studios announced yet another video game adaptation: Mass Effect. The popular games series follows a soldier in the 22nd century who battles aliens and machines; the game lends itself to articles like Polygon‘s “To all the Krogans I’ve killed before.” It is one of those alarming games where your choices determine the story. As an anxious person, I have not played it, but I am quite intrigued that some very brilliantwriters have penned novels set in its universe.
A few months ago, Amazon MGM Studios announced the adaptation would have as showrunner Doug Jung, known for writing Star Trek Beyond and The Cloverfield Paradox; he joined previously announced writer Daniel Casey, one of the people responsible for sending Dominic Toretto’s friends to space in F9: The Fast Saga.
But nothing has been said about the series’ plot, timeframe, story, or … any details, really. Today, for N7 Day (a fan celebration named for protagonist Commander Shepard’s military rank), Mass Effect executive producer Mike Gamble announced a key detail on the BioWare blog:
The writers room is going strong, and we’ve got a lot figured out about how it fits within the Mass Effect canon, and where it sits in respect to the new game. The show will explore a brand-new story within the universe’s timeline, and will be set after the original trilogy. It won’t be a retread of Commander Shepard’s story – because after all … that’s YOUR story, isn’t it?
This is a smart choice for an adaptation of a game series that relies on player choices; there’s no way to retell the games’ story without rejecting some of those choices. But stretching off into the future (as they did for the fourth game, Mass Effect: Andromeda) allows the writers and showrunner to work in the same sandbox without stepping on too many toes. (Some toes always get stepped on where adaptations are concerned.)
According to IGN, “Back in August, Amazon was spotted as having listed a Q4 2026 production date for the series—meaning that it is still a year away from shooting.” So it’ll likely be a minute before many more details are revealed.[end-mark]
Batterier i smartphones är på väg att nå en ny milstolpe genom en femsiffrig kapacitet, närmare bestämt 10 000 mAh: dubbelt så många milliamperetimmar som Galaxy S25 Ultra. Att dylika monsterbatterier är på gång och förväntas landa i början av 2026 var känt sedan tidigare.
Nu har en certifiering indikerat att Honor Power 2 kommer bli en av de första mobilerna med 10 000 mAh. En normalstor mainstream-mobil har aldrig erbjudit så mycket energi tidigare. Trots den enorma kapaciteten förväntas telefonen vara 8 millimeter tunn.
In an interview with Screen Rant, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman said that the series’ final two seasons will focus a bit more on wrapping up the show and less on the kind of one-off concept episodes that have gradually become a bigger part of the story.
“We’re making season 5 now, we’re trending towards that, which is probably the center line of Star Trek, right?” Goldsman said. “We’re trending now, and beginning with season 4 and through season 5, to a much more singular sci-fi, action-adventure, emotional storytelling. And you know, the outliers are getting less and less, as we kind of focus on saying goodbye to each other and the fans.”
As we have previously discussed, Strange New Worlds’ third season offered significantly more one-off concept episodes to… mixed results. While some (many, one could argue) of those episodes were quite good in their own right, they began to eat into the show’s meager ten-episode seasons. Character arcs and longer plotlines were often shelved during those episodes, which contributed to the previous season’s generally disjointed nature.
Yet, you shouldn’t expect Strange New Worlds‘ final seasons to completely abandon such episodes or the creative spirit behind them. We already know that we’re due for a “puppet” episode of the series, and co-showrunner Henry Alonso Myers explains that the crew want to keep the spirit of those one-off adventures alive throughout the series.
“The thing I will say about season 4 is, it’s in line with what we have done with the previous seasons, in the sense that we look at this like, ‘this could be our last season.’ So we treat it that way,” said Myers. “What’s something that we want to try to do, that [we] have never done before? What is something we want to try to do a version of, that [past shows] have done before, but never in this way. So that’s what we do in season 4.”
The comment about treating the upcoming season like the show’s last season is particularly interesting given that it seemed like there really wasn’t a guarantee that the show would get its final (abbreviated) fifth season. Yet, as Myers says, the showrunners have spiritually been treating the series like it could go away at any moment. That would help explain the “go for broke” nature of the show getting so many ideas out there in such a short period of time.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 is expected to premiere sometime in 2026. [end-mark]
Antingen har Galaxy Watch-ägare automagiskt börjat sova bättre eller så har Samsung ändrat hur klockorna beräknar sömnpoäng. Enligt Reddit-inlägg har flera personer som sover med en Galaxy Watch på handleden plötsligt fått mycket högre resultat.
Samsung analyserar användarens sömn och delar ut en poäng som representerar kvaliteten. I tråden rapporterar flera att de fått betydligt högre siffror än tidigare, närmare 100 poäng natt efter natt. Klockorna hävdar att användarna sovit så bra som de aldrig gjort tidigare.
Om skillnaden inte beror på en ändring av algoritmen kan det handla om en bugg. Är det några som upplever att Galaxy Watch har delat ut högre sömnpoäng senaste tiden?
Regeringens utredare rekommenderar att det ska bli straffart att se illegal ip-tv. Ett eventuellt förbud gör att hundratusentals svenska tittare riskerar att bötfällas. Enligt Mediavision prenumererade 580 000 svenska hushåll på en illegal ip-tv-tjänst förra året.
För hela Norden är siffran 1,3 miljoner hushåll. All ip-tv är inte olovlig. Vad som gör ip-tv illegal är när filmer, serier, sport och annat innehåll sänds utan tillstånd. Många utnyttjar illegal ip-tv till att få billig tillgång till dyrt sportutbud.
The general feeling toward Strange New Worlds’ third season has certainly been more tepid than the previous two. And while everyone rushes to give their opinion as to why, there’s a common theme developing that concerns me. Namely, a lot of blame is being placed on the more comedic episodes of this season, to the extent that it’s possible the series showrunners felt need to provide some reassurance. An interview over at Cinemablend has co-showrunner Henry Alonso Myers promising the season four will be the show’s “best work,” but also that—
“I think that we’re probably a little more serious in four[…]”
Mr. Myers, say it ain’t so.
In fairness, the majority of the interview reasserts that “genre-hopping” will still occur, and that the showrunners themselves thought any unevenness in the current season could be attributed to the various Hollywood strikes occurring while they were attempting to get season three made. But that interests me far less than how quick viewers were to jump on comedy being the culprit in Strange New Worlds’ series woes.
We’ve come back to this old fight, I see.
It’s no secret that plenty of fans don’t like it when Star Trek gets “goofy.” In many minds, a science fiction series that takes itself seriously has no business engaging in shenanigans (or hijinks, as T’Pring would have it) of any kind. When Trek goes off the rails or jumps that shark, their socialist utopian future is giving up a little of its hard-won pedigree, as it were.
I’m no big fan of pedigree in general, but I would like to point out that this take is flagrantly subjective and equally “goofy.” Many of Trek’s most famous and beloved episodes are among its silliest, and it’s not reasonable to expect a series that used to run 22-plus episode seasons to have morality plays and deep thoughts aplenty every single episode. Pretending that comedy brings Star Trek down is akin to claiming that a key spice is ruining the flavor of a dish; you may not like the amount of said spice, the flavor balance overall, but you cannot make the soup without it.
Image: Paramount
Volume would seem to be part of the complaint on many-a-viewer’s lips—the Cinemablend piece linked above specifically notes that season three contains three lighter-leaning episodes, making up nearly a third of the season’s ten-episode run. Too many, it would seem. But I’ll cry foul on this one: To start, that was the same number as last season (“Charades,” “Those Old Scientists,” and “Subspace Rhapsody”). So if you enjoyed season two, you’re misplacing your ire.
But when we get into successful Star Trek seasons in general, “more than a quarter, less than a third” is a good rule on lighter episodes. For example, take the Original Series itself, and its highly successful second season. Of a 26-episode run, I count at least seven comedic/lighter stories (sorry, “Catspaw” counts, it’s a flipping Halloween episode). That’s 26.9%, or 27% rounded up. Only a few points shy of Strange New Worlds’ 30%, notably. And, perhaps even more relevant, the third season of the Original Series is counted as dismal fare overall by even the most devoted Trek fans. You know how many comedic episodes that season had? Zero.
Unless we’re counting “Spock’s Brain” as intentionally comedic. Which… we can if we must, I suppose.
The truth of the trouble is, there are several points working against Strange New Worlds in its basic construction, and these problems were always bound to creep up as time wore on. The first and most egregious culprit: It simply doesn’t have enough episodes.
Star Trek: Discovery, the initial salvo in Trek’s resurgence on television, started out with 15-episode seasons. This is a great sweet spot, one that sits between what we had in classic series, and what we’re currently getting. Lower Decks capped out at 13 episodes per season, which isn’t ideal, but still better than Strange New Worlds, and the more typical episode run in our age of streaming TV. Prodigy gave us whopping 20-episode seasons, and managed to do more in its limited run that most of the shows getting a “full” five seasons. (Bring us back to seven seasons, I beg you.)
Star Trek: Picard only had 10-episode seasons, and you could argue that it worked to the show’s detriment, particularly where its new characters were concerned. But even that’s not a fair comparison to what’s happening with Strange New Worlds—why? Because that series was focused on one of the most beloved characters in Star Trek’s history, a man with more narrative attached to his name than nearly any other, the eponymous Jean-Luc Picard. The show also worked under the auspices of arc-based television, meaning that those 10 episodes were intended to tell a complete story; not so with SNW’s episodic plots.
Image: CBS / Paramount+
By the time Strange New Worlds ends—don’t forget, the final season is set give audiences just six episodes—it will only truly have two seasons worth of episodes when comparing it to Trek as we knew it. An entire series comprised of 46 stories. There are only three shorter Trek series: Prodigy, unceremoniously cancelled before it could prove its mettle; the Animated Series, made to bank on audience fervor in the wake of TOS’ cancellation, and thought of by many as an extension of the Original Series itself; and Picard, which was never intended to be a full series, and only went on as long as its leading man was interested in going along for the ride. Is it any wonder that we’re feeling cheated already?
Season three of Strange New Worlds isn’t working for many fans because we’re being given mid-series story arcs without the amount of narrative needed to back those arcs up. Spock’s we’re-not-labelling-it romance with La’an? It’s adorable, but it does seem to spring out of nowhere, founded entirely on the actors’ incredible work in their dance sequences. Actors Ethan Peck and Christina Chong are forced to sell the relationship on chemistry alone with absolutely no buildup—audiences can fill in the gaps, but the gaps we got used to be far smaller than these. As a result, it makes Spock appear either confused or kinda fickle, and vaults right over the steps La’an needed to take in order to be ready for a relationship. (The woman who sang “How Would That Feel” literally five episodes previous is not there yet! It’s only been a few months since then!)
How about Pike and Batel’s partnership speedrun and tearful goodbye? Marie was never much of a fan favorite as a character (and some of the reasons here are complicated, but plenty of them are rooted in weird sexist ideas about who is the right match for Captain Papa Hair Wax), but the choice to have her essentially give up her life to be a time guardian against Ultimate Evil is… it’s just bad, y’all. Particularly when she argues that she never fit anywhere since she was saved from being a Gorn incubator, when she literally nabbed her dream job two episodes previous. And the lifetime-in-a-bottle sequence that we’re supposed to mourn over? Sorry, Farscape and The Magicians did it better—and plenty of other series besides, including TNG’s eternally famous “The Inner Light.”
You know what might have helped? Seeing this relationship bloom over three full seasons of television. It’s difficult to focus on the tragedy of Pike and Batel not getting their rote, highly abridged, extremely heteronormative lifetime—their daughter is gonna marry Admiral April’s son? really?? you had no other ideas?—when we’ve barely seen them together as a couple, and any depth to their partnership only got focus in this season.
Photo Credit: Marni Grossman / Paramount+
How about Erica Ortega’s difficulty adjusting back into her job after almost being murdered by a Gorn at the start of the season? Hate to say this, but it’s hard to care much about that arc when we don’t really have a full picture of Erica as a person. Melissa Navia is one of the most charming actors on the show, hands down, but what do we actually know about Erica? That she’s great at her job, likes pranks, and loves to razz people. That’s about it. (Oh, and that she’s a bit, uh, xenophobic when compared to her companions, which is awkward as hell, particularly when the show doesn’t address it much.) There’s plenty we can guess at, but again, when it comes to on-screen development, we’ve been given practically nothing. When we finally get something real juicy—like La’an killing Erica’s new Gorn friend, assuming her to be a threat to Erica’s life in a moment of split-second trauma-backed terror—the complexity of that pain is mentioned, but not truly explored.
Which brings us to another problem that Strange New Worlds is uniquely poised to drown under: It wants to be a show that plucks at that nostalgia harp every chance it gets, while also offering something sexy, bright, and new. The result is a lot of confusion around who should be getting focus in the series: while the show has a better female main character cast balance than nearly all Trek shows on record, it’s clear that there’s some fear around spending too much time with those characters in favor of Pike and Spock (and now Scotty and Kirk).
For the record, I’m not one of the fans who gets annoyed every time dear ol’ Jim shows up—I think he should, much in the same way Doctor McCoy is constantly on the bridge of the Enterprise when he has absolutely no reason to be. I want to watch Kirk and Spock flirt bond at every available opportunity, and have enjoyed most of the choices SNW makes in filling in the edges of well-known and beloved characters. But this confusion means that I’m not getting enough of either the newer characters or the legacy ones. It results in a lot of uncomfortable storytelling choices; ones where characters make decisions too quickly to understand their motivations or changes of heart; ones where female characters get plenty of screentime, but none of the depth that their male counterparts receive; ones where bioessentialism paints entire species with crude brushes without a second thought.
And again, the answer is simple: Give us more.
I know more about Deanna Troi than I may ever know about Una Chin-Riley because despite being far less central to Next Generation’s overall narrative, I’ve spent days, weeks even, with the counselor. That’s how much narrative space she takes up. Television has forgotten that much of our love of the medium was born of time, plain and endless. The glimmer of prestige led streamers to copy television formats with powerful arcs and singular narratives when most of the allure TV used to provide was company.
What Strange New Worlds has accidentally proven is that you can’t have “episodic” TV without a whole lot of episodes. It would be nice if someone holding the cash at Paramount realized it, and finally gave us back what we’ve all been missing.[end-mark]
