Charles Pulliam-Moore | The VergeThe Verge is about technology and how it makes us feel. Founded in 2011, we offer our audience everything from breaking news to reviews to award-winning features and investigations, on our site, in video, and in podcasts.2026-09-18T18:54:39+00:00https://www.theverge.com/authors/charles-pulliam-moore/rsshttps://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/verge-rss-large_80b47e.png?w=150&h=150&crop=1Charles Pulliam-Moore<![CDATA[Disney’s first CTO is Character.AI’s former CEO]]>https://www.theverge.com/?p=9975552026-09-18T14:54:39-04:002026-09-18T14:27:04-04:00
You would think that a multimedia conglomerate as large as Disney would have a few chief technology officers by now, but the company has just appointed someone to the position for the very first time.
Anand jumping ship to Disney comes as a bit of a surprise considering how this time last year, the company was sending Character.AI cease and desist letters due to the startup’s tools infringing on copyrighted IP. But Anand’s hiring could be a sign of how Disney wants to move forward with AI now that its partnership with OpenAI has fallen apart.
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Charles Pulliam-Moore<![CDATA[What Hollywood thinks about existential AI warnings]]>https://www.theverge.com/?p=9973582026-09-18T13:13:12-04:002026-09-18T12:35:19-04:00
As the tech sector sounds alarms about AI’s potential to destroy humanity, entertainment labor groups are urging the public to stay focused on what’s already happening. The Verge reached out to Disney, Netflix, Amazon, Lionsgate, and other studios who have started using AI, as well film startups focused on bringing generative AI into the mainstream to ask for their reaction to the recent warnings surrounding the technology. None have responded to our request for comment. The Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) and Writers Guild of America East (WGAE) did, however.
The AI tools used in entertainment production differ from the AI systems that have sparked a recent round of whistleblowing and apocalyptic declarations. They do not seem to be as existentially dangerous as the AI systems that drove former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon to quit his job and prompted Anthropic alignment lead Evan Hubinger to insist that the technology could “kill all humans” at some point “within the next decade.”
But despite the differences between entertainment-focused AI and the models developed by Anthropic and OpenAI, AI models that generate digital facsimiles of actors and attempt to replicate traditional filmmaking tools pose a threat to some human jobs. Similar to the way that the Hollywood unions advocated for protections and increased oversight around AI’s use during the 2023 strikes, Coxon’s Anthropic exit has inspired a wave of AI researchers to speak out in favor of stronger safety protocols. The heads of major AI companies including Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and X have also called for an industry-wide slowdown on the technology’s development. While president Donald Trump has dismissed these concerns as overreactions, some other US politicians have felt pressured to take legislative action. Hollywood unions’ fight for strict rules around gen AI’s use did not stop the entertainment industry from embracing AI, but they have given Hollywood’s laborers a way to fight back in instances when they feel that AI tools are being used to harm them.
When I recently spoke with the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists’ (SAG-AFTRA) chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree Ireland, he told me that the union recognized early on how AI could impact its members’ livelihoods. Most people might not have been familiar with the idea of studios completely replacing human actors with digital replicas, but SAG-AFTRA understood that it had an opportunity to shape public opinion about AI in Hollywood by “speaking out about it at the earliest possible point we could.”
“We bargained for and achieved enforceable, meaningful guardrails around how this technology can be implemented by the major employers in our industry,” Crabtree-Ireland explained. “That doesn’t include companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google directly, but it does encompass all of the companies who have built up businesses around the creation of professional level entertainment content in the United States.”
Though Crabtree-Ireland believes we “should be concerned about the broader societal and social implications of AI,” he also thinks that some of the warnings about the technology being an extinction-level threat could potentially be hyperbole and overblown. Doomerism has become one of the more common ways that AI companies generate buzz around their products, but the fact that Coxon left Anthropic to sound the alarm has given Crabtree-Ireland pause. Hearing the message from “the CEOs of these companies or the billionaires who’ve made their billions off of doing the exact thing that they’re now warning us might not be good,” has left him unsure “what to trust or what to believe.” But he acknowledged that Coxon was able to achieve “traction with the public.”
“The recklessness of the tech oligarchs pushing AI on our society has been matched only by their rampant dishonesty.”
Getting people to believe that SAG-AFTRA’s fears about AI should be taken seriously was one of the union’s major goals when its members voted to strike. The key to doing that, Crabtree-Ireland told me, was leading the strike with a focused message that clearly laid out to the public what was at stake and steps that could be taken to prevent worst case scenarios. If not for that, Crabtree-Ireland thinks that the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) might not have agreed to some of the union’s demands like requiring that studios gain permission and compensate actors for the use of their AI-generated replicas. “If that principle hadn’t been established, I think the economic incentive to use replication and to replace human performances would have been much stronger” and “would have resulted in a much greater and faster adoption of digital replication.” Had the protections not been codified, Crabtree-Ireland is confident that entertainment workers would be in a much more dire position now.
Writers Guild of America East (WGAE) executive director Sam Wheeler was much more pointed in his condemnation of the “tech oligarchs pushing AI on our society” whose recklessness “has been matched only by their rampant dishonesty.” But while Wheeler finds it hard to take AI companies’ warnings at face value, he noted that the WGAE “has long warned that unregulated artificial intelligence poses an existential threat to workers, to our democracy, and to the world.”
“Guild members have bargained meaningful AI protections into their contracts; in 2023 WGA members spent 148 days on strike before the film and television studios agreed to real safeguards for film and television writers,” Wheeler said. “But collective bargaining is not a replacement for government regulation, and we are grateful to states like New York that continue to enact meaningful regulations in the absence of federal action.”
Wheeler listed the disempowerment of workers, the degradation of the internet, the spread of disinformation, and increasing energy costs as some of the tangible societal harms AI has exacerbated. He urged policymakers not to be distracted by AI companies’ claims of ushering in an apocalypse because the real issue at hand is people behaving irresponsibly.
“These harms are the result of decisions made by human beings,” Wheeler insisted. “The WGAE believes that addressing those concrete harms and holding AI companies and their executives liable for the destruction their products cause is the surest way to safeguard against any worst-case scenarios.”
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Charles Pulliam-Moore<![CDATA[Resident Evil is a comedy first and a thrilling nightmare second]]>https://www.theverge.com/?p=9964162026-09-16T14:45:35-04:002026-09-16T14:45:35-04:00
When Paul W.S. Anderson’s Resident Evil hit theaters in 2002, video game movies were largely seen as a niche. Films like Mortal Kombat and Tomb Raider had proven that big-screen game adaptations could be successful, but the commercial and critical failure of projects like the 1993 Super Mario Bros. still cast a long shadow. And while Anderson’s vision of Raccoon City might have captivated audiences on the whole, many hardcore fans of Capcom’s games were left disappointed by the way the original movies wildly deviated from the source material.
Weaponsdirector Zach Cregger’s new take on Resident Evil is a return to the franchise’s fundamentals and a choice example of how video game movies have evolved. Its story is stripped down and its zombified monsters are terrifying. It’s also chiefly a movie that’s trying to make you laugh. Cregger uses humor to amplify his Resident Evil’shorror — his spin on the games’ infected ghouls are meant to be as funny as they are disturbing. The film feels like it could be the beginning of a fantastic new era for the franchise, but what’s most impressive is how well it can work as one and done.
Though this Resident Evil is peppered with nods to Capcom’s games, it focuses on Bryan (Austin Abrams), a medical courier character created for the movie. Like most people living in his mountain town, Bryan knows that a drive over to Raccoon City in the middle of winter can be hell, but a last-minute, high-paying delivery gig is enough to convince him to make the trip. Even with the treacherous weather and spotty cellphone reception, Bryan’s journey with his mysterious cargo is mostly uneventful as he first sets out. But he begins to understand what kind of danger he’s wandering into when he accidentally runs over a shambling woman (Andrea Miltnerová) who doesn’t seem to realize that she’s just been hit by an out-of-control car.
Resident Evil’s first big scare almost immediately establishes the sense of humor Cregger leans into throughout the film. You can feel the fear oozing out of Bryan as he trudges into the woods looking for the woman, but that tension momentarily evaporates as the film smash-cuts to him coaxing her into his car so that he can get her the medical help she clearly needs. The same dread rushes to the fore when Bryan witnesses how Resident Evil’s infected humans can mutate into creatures that feel like nods to Katamari Damacy and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. But it’s hard not to laugh when Bryan muses about how interesting the zombies’ transformations are to see up close.
Cregger knows that while viewers might not be familiar with Resident Evil’s lore, we can all appreciate how horror movies need their characters to make poor decisions. Abrams plays Bryan with a wide-eyed guilelessness that’s charming, but what really makes the character work is the way each monster encounter forces him to evolve into someone with better survival instincts.
By building the film around a civilian instead of highly trained special agents, Cregger and co-writer Shay Hatten give themselves the ability to tell a story that leans into the survival aspect of survival horror. Because Bryan is a bit of a dolt who’s constantly screaming in terror and fumbling his bullets when he’s scared, it often feels like the movie is replicating the experience of playing (or watching someone else play) a Resident Evil game for the first time. Bryan finds a couple of guns and a very limited number of bullets, but they’re nowhere near enough to make him feel safe as he trudges toward Raccoon City making the occasional stop to search seemingly empty buildings in hopes of finding a way to call for help.
The movie’s indoor scenes where Bryan’s rifling through drawers and tiptoeing down dark hallways are its most suspenseful because Cregger establishes early on that danger is always lurking just around the corner. Those moments are when it really seems like Cregger is channeling the essence of Capcom’s games, but you can also feel the director winking at his audience whenever Bryan talks about video games teaching him how to navigate his situation.
There’s a general straightforwardness to Cregger’s Resident Evil that sets it apart from many other recent video game adaptations. The film isn’t as concerned with overall character development as The Last of Us and its set pieces aren’t as large as The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’s. But those qualities work in the movie’s favor because they help draw your attention to all of the imaginative ways Cregger interpolates classic elements of Resident Evil storytelling and gameplay.
Especially coming after Weapons, Resident Evil feels like Cregger putting his mark on a beloved gaming property while breathing new life into a film franchise that was always fun, but lost its way as it grew in scale. Cregger has found a way to make the world of Resident Evil seem primed for more cinematic exploration, and to show us how far video game movies have come.
Resident Evil also stars Zach Cherry, Will Merrick, Zoé Bellas, Chris Lew Kum Hoi, Griffin Newman, and Magdalena Sittovaas. The movie hits theaters on September 18th.
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Charles Pulliam-Moore<![CDATA[Anime reaction YouTubers are at war with copyright enforcers]]>https://www.theverge.com/?p=9938982026-09-11T13:05:27-04:002026-09-11T11:12:58-04:00
On September 6th, YouTuber Nicholas Light posted a video to one of his channels that made it seem like all of his content was about to be removed from the platform. In the video — ominously titled “My Channel will be Deleted Today” — Light alleges that he was on the receiving end of some of the “thousands upon thousands of false copyright strikes” recently initiated by a company called Remove Your Media. Light spends much of the 13-minute video accusing Remove Your Media CEO Eric Green of being a troll who systematically targets creators whose content mentions or features clips of popular anime series like Bleach and One Piece.
It’s not clear how many of Light’s 1.3 million subscribers made it to the end of the video where he admits that YouTube already removed the copyright strikes against his account and informed him that his channel would not be deleted. But in a follow-up video titled “My Channel will NOT be deleted” posted on September 8th, Light thanked himself and “every single person that contributed” to the ongoing conversation about Remove Your Media unfairly threatening creators’ livelihoods.
When I recently spoke with Light via email, he told me that over 60 of his videos had been temporarily taken down after he was hit with over a dozen copyright strikes stemming from Remove Your Media’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown requests. Light said that “having a video taken down or struck is almost second nature” for people running reaction channels. But he insisted that the way Remove Your Media has been going after creators is abusive and unrelated to any legitimate interest in protecting copyrighted IP.
“I think [Remove Your Media is] trying to get the attention of these companies, to hopefully get hired by them,” Light said. “But because they’re so sloppy, they’re damaging themselves. With all the major channels covering this, they’re doomed.”
While it’s easy to get the sense that Light might have been playing up some of this drama for viewers’ attention, it is clear that a number of other content creators have similarly been hit with an inordinate amount of copyright strikes. Many of these creators specialize in anime and gaming reaction videos that feature blurred-out or otherwise altered pieces of copyrighted footage. The creators superimpose the altered copyrighted footage (like anime opening sequences or full episodes) onto videos of themselves reacting to and/or commenting on it.
Though these types of videos are kind oflike an inverse Mystery Science Theater 3000 where the on-camera creators are meant to be the focus, viewers can also use them as a (less-than-ideal) way to watch copyrighted material without having to pay for it. The creators insist that their content is fundamentally transformative and protected by fair use, but that has not kept YouTube from sending them warnings about their accounts potentially being erased.
Remove Your Media feels it does not need to extensively review all of a creator’s videos to file DMCA takedowns in good faith
Remove Your Media legal representative Evan F. Stone told me that Viz Media and Crunchyroll are two of the company’s “biggest anime clients.” Stone explained that Remove Your Media “reports thousands of allegedly infringing links every day” — some of which are “forwarded by the copyright owners themselves,” while others are discovered through online searches. Stone also noted that some clients are “very lenient” with certain types of content, despite their weak fair use defense. But he was adamant that the content being produced by YouTubers Remove Your Media has gone after is not transformative enough to fall under fair use.
“Commentary, in this context, does not make the use transformative: these videos show the copyrighted work in its entirety, and a great deal of this content sits behind a paywall,” Stone said. “Add the fact that some viewers are watching these versions rather than the licensed versions, and the effect on the marketplace is real.”
Stone also pointed out that some reaction video creators use their free YouTube channels as a way to encourage viewers to subscribe to their paid Patreon pages. In Remove Your Media’s view, when a reaction creator’s business model “is recording someone watching full episodes and selling those recordings, episode included, behind a Patreon paywall,” the company does not need to extensively review every single one of their uploads to file DMCA takedowns in good faith.
“For any particular video a creator believes was noticed in error, the counter-notice exists for exactly that situation, and it works,” Stone said. “What [Remove Your Media] is seeing instead is channels countering every single video, full episode uploads included, swearing under penalty of perjury that each one was removed by mistake.”
From Light’s perspective, channels like his are producing a unique kind of entertainment that also benefits copyright holders. “It’s free promotion for them at the end of the day,” he explains. Reaction videos of all genres have been popular on the internet for years, and it’s clear from view counts on YouTube that anime fans in particular are watching this kind of content.
Light feels that because “the [anime industry] doesn’t do the best job promoting their works outside of Japan,” he and his peers have been picking up the advertising slack with their videos. And while Remove Your Media says that it works on behalf of certain anime distribution platforms including Crunchyroll and Viz Media, Light believes that “no company in the industry would want to align with a company so sloppy.” Crunchyroll did not respond to The Verge’s questions about whether it has hired Remove Your Media to enforce copyright and Viz Media would not comment on record.
Similar to Light, Ron and Michelle Jackson — the couple behind the Rice & Ginger YouTube channel — uploaded a video last week announcing that their account might be deleted within a few days after being flagged hundreds of times for copyright violations. In addition to emphasizing that their video was not meant to be clickbait-y, the Jacksons encouraged viewers to subscribe to their Patreon page, and they said that the larger wave of creator takedowns is being caused by “one individual making hell for basically all of us.”
The Jacksons did not respond to The Verge’s ask for comment about whether that unnamed individual might be Eric Green or Remove Your Media and how they were able to avoid having their channel deleted on the date (September 6th) listed in their first video addressing the situation. On September 9th, the YouTubers said that their account was now scheduled to be deleted the following day, and they described YouTube’s approach to enforcing copyright as a broken system that allows for AI-powered mass reporting. By September 10th, the Rice & Ginger YouTube channel was still online, and the Jacksons were back with a new video thanking Light for speaking out on their behalf and “saving” their channel.
When I reached out to YouTube asking how it handles DMCA takedown disputes between reaction video creators and IP rightsholders, policy communications manager Jack Malon said that the company “does not decide who owns the rights to content.” Rather than mediating the legality of who owns the copyrighted content and whether a creator’s videos fall under fair use, YouTube brings the two parties together and leaves it to them to work the matter out between themselves.
“When we receive valid legal requests, we remove the content to comply with copyright law,” Malon said. “If uploaders believe they have the right to use the material, including for exceptions like fair use, they can file a counter notification.”
Malon added that YouTube only removes creators’ videos “when a rightsholder submits a valid and legal takedown request” because the company has to comply with copyright law. According to YouTube, creators can solve copyright strikes by submitting counter notifications — a process that involves providing evidence of ownership or permission to use all elements featured in the removed content. In response to my questions about how Remove Your Media selected the creators that were affected by the takedowns, he said that the company prioritized going after YouTube channels that generate “feeder traffic for paywalled copies of episodes nobody licensed to them.”
“For any particular video a creator believes was noticed in error, the counter-notice exists for exactly that situation, and it works,” Stone said. “What [Remove Your Media] is seeing instead is channels countering every single video, full episode uploads included, swearing under penalty of perjury that each one was removed by mistake.”
This drama highlights how certain dynamics of the creator economy may be changing
Malon told me that, after a creator submits counter notifications, their videos can be restored and the strikes on their accounts can be resolved “if the rightsholder does not respond with proof of legal action to restrain the allegedly infringing content.” But it’s not entirely clear how YouTube confirms the validity of a claimant’s purported ownership of removed content.
On September 10th, Light returned to his channel with another video lambasting both Remove Your Media and YouTube for the way the companies have gone about initiating and handling DMCA disputes. Light said that the Jacksons’ videos will be restored within 10 business days as a result of “all of the noise that [we] made together,” and he addressed people who have speculated that he might be leaning into this drama for financial gain.
“It’s funny to me I start having problems with my AdSense the 10 days I choose to go after YouTube,” Light said, explaining that his videos have been demonetized during the DMCA fight. “Really makes you think. So maybe we should shut the fuck up when we say stupid shit like ‘he’s banking on the situation. He’s only doing this for money.’”
Though Light and others who have spoken out about the way YouTube handles copyright issues might not be trying to capitalize on being deplatformed, this drama has highlighted how certain dynamics of the content creator economy may be changing. Anime reaction videos probably aren’t going away anytime soon, but it does seem like studios and distributors are becoming more aggressive about monitoring how their IP is being repurposed online. And while creators of all kinds still rely on fair use to produce the content that pays their bills, they may need to tread much more carefully if they want to avoid getting caught up in an aggressive purge.
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Charles Pulliam-Moore<![CDATA[Content creators drop the ball]]>https://www.theverge.com/?p=9904262026-09-05T10:00:16-04:002026-09-05T10:00:16-04:00
The USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. | Getty Images
During Naomi Osaka’s match against Anastasia Zakharova at this year’s US Open earlier this week, a gaggle of ring light-wielding influencers who were packed in a luxury suite became enough of a distraction that the umpire paused the match and repeatedly asked them to quiet down. Elsewhere in the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, other creators could be seen asking US Open staffers to take full-flash photos of them while Osaka and Zakharova were playing.
Last month, United States Tennis Association (USTA) media operations director Jeanmarie Daly said that the US Open was “almost doubling” the number of content creators it was approving for credentials. There were “close to 100” influencers at this year’s tournament — up from 54 last year. But in a statement to ABC News, USTA spokesperson Brendan McIntyre emphasized that the influencers whose antics disrupted Osaka and Zakharova’s match were not credentialed by the organization. McIntyre also told The Athleticthat media credentials were not given to Meg Radice and Audrey Jongens — two lifestyle influencers whose access to the US Open was revoked after they posted images of their badges to Instagram. According to McIntyre, Radice and Jongens “were improperly submitted for credentials on a staff list provided by a food vendor,” and seems like the creators might have screwed themselves over by flexing for their followers.
Though those creators weren’t exactly practicing proper US Open etiquette, they were doing their jobs (read: making content) with the single-minded focus that often makes their presence an annoyance to the people around them. These influencers were at the US Open to share the experience with their followers, and regardless of whether they were invited by the USTA directly or not, they were helping the organization advertise the event to an audience that might not have otherwise been paying attention.
Tennis etiquette is that you don’t even GET UP IN THE MIDDLE OF A POINT but now at @US Open apparently it’s ring lights and photo shoots everywhere in the MIDDLE OF A POINT. Listen, I love bringing new people to the open and I’m all for getting more people into tennis because it’s such a fun sport to watch but if you’re going to disrespect the players, you shouldn’t come to the match. And I LOVE content creators bringing tennis to everyone on social media but if you’re not going to be respectful of the game being played thats NOT OKAY. Yyou can see ring lights from all over the stadium and the umpire and players made it very clear that it’s a HUGE DISTRACTION and it’s now impacting the players ability to play the game we are all here to see. And apparently the us open and USTA are just fine with it because their staff is helping it happen. @influencersinthewild @Tennis Channel #nyccontentcreator#naomiosaka#usopen#tennistiktok#usopentennis
Influencers have become an integral part of the advertising industry, with US creator ad spend hitting $37 billion in 2025 and being projected to reach $44 billion by the end of this year. Companies are increasingly relying on content creators to market their products, but what happened at the US Open is a snapshot of how that reliance can lead to undesirable outcomes for everyone involved. Videos of the US Open disruptions have gone viral across social media and sparked a conversation about whether influencers are the best people to invite to exclusive functions.
But the point many people seem to be glossing over is that influencers are usually only invited to events like the US Open, awards shows, and film premieres because a brand decided it was worth bringing them there. As irksome as creators can be when they take up too much public space, that kind of behavior is something the companies that hire them have to anticipate. And as reporter Jessica Schiffer notes, some brands have been scrambling to get ahead of any potential blowback by sending out “helpful reminders” on tennis etiquette.
Brands are so worried about getting caught up in the influencer discourse that they’re starting to outline tennis etiquette for people invited to the US Open by them. pic.twitter.com/ecvk3gokqT
Before a rule change in 2024, the US Open was actually much more strict about requiring attendees to stay in their seats until breaks during the match when players switch sides of the court. Now attendees can get up whenever they want, and the event features designated spaces close to the tennis courts where people can move freely — something tournament director Stacey Allaster described as “an important addition to the fan experience at the US Open.” The influencers at this year’s US Open might not have technically been breaking any rules, but they were having a negative impact on other attendees’ viewing experience. And in the days after videos of the influencers began spreading online, the USTA put up new signage outside stadiums asking spectators to “please refrain from using flash photography or other lighting.”
Taking selfies and shooting videos are core elements of the content creation hustle, but brands working with influencers should have made clear that, during a tennis tournament, there are times when it’s best to just watch the matches. While the content creators might have been having fun, many of the people around them weren’t able to enjoy the match in peace. That kind of main character energy often is exactly what companies want because it’s what keeps influencers’ fans engaged. But brands have to understand that simply letting creators run wild isn’t always the best plan of action.
Callaway Golf Company learned this the hard way last month after an ad produced by YouTube channel-turned-sports apparel company Good Good hit the internet and immediately sparked outrage. The video — a spoof of Curry Barker’s Obsession — features Good Good cofounder Garrett Clark grinning maniacally after shoving professional golfer Alexis Miestowski to the ground when she reaches for his Callaway-branded driver. Many saw the ad as being distasteful and making light of violence against women, which prompted Callaway to issue an apology and sever ties with Good Good.
In a statement about the ad and subsequent backlash, Callaway CEO Chip Brewer said that “mistakes were made, and we are taking the matter very seriously.” Brewer also admitted that Callaway signed off on the video before it was posted, but he insisted that its content did not reflect the company’s values. Though Callaway was quick to take the ad down, the fact that it was approved in the first place is an issue in and of itself. Even if the ad hadn’t been misogynistic, it still wasn’t funny or a particularly good riff on Obsession, and a more responsible advertising head probably would have requested significant revisions.
The video was very on-brand for Good Good — a company that targets the kind of young, bro-y men whose attention (and money) the golfing industry is very keen on capturing. As The Athletic points out, Good Good is just one of many influencer outfits, including Barstool Sports and No Laying Up, that have built successful partnerships with golf brands.
Similar to the way that the brands who sent influencers to the US Open should have given them some behavioral direction, companies like Callaway have to be mindful about what it means to use “edgy” content creators as their ambassadors. Influencers who have built successful platforms tend to like having creative control over the content they make, but companies paying them for promotion have a personal responsibility to make sure that they’re not being represented by people acting foolishly.
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Charles Pulliam-Moore<![CDATA[Google needs Hollywood more than the studios need AI]]>https://www.theverge.com/?p=9874292026-09-01T18:50:29-04:002026-09-01T18:50:29-04:00
Google has reportedly been reaching out to a number of Hollywood’s biggest studios, hoping to strike licensing agreements that would allow it to train its AI models on copyrighted material in exchange for massive piles of cash. In theory, these deals would be a win-win: a huge financial boon to the studios that would also give Google a significant advantage in its race to outpace other AI companies. But while there’s little downside for Google, these deals pose a distinct set of risks to each of the studios that might be thinking about going all-in on AI. Getting into bed with Google this way might benefit Hollywood in the short term, but it could just as easily backfire and leave the public feeling burned by the entertainment industry.
Though Google has not yet been able to get Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, or Universal to agree to anything officially, the company’s executives have been reaching out to multiple studio representatives with pitches focused on its AI technology, according to unnamed sources speaking to The Los Angeles Times. Google wants permission to train its AI models on the studios’ vast libraries of copyrighted content, and it’s willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to get ahold of them. Per The LA Times, Google could pay a studio like Disney / Pixar around $40 million just for the rights to generate outputs featuring a single copyrighted character. That payout could swell well into the billions the more characters Google’s deals encompass, and studios might be able to secure a portion of however much advertising revenue Google makes from AI-generated content featuring that IP on platforms like YouTube.
As expensive as these partnerships would be for Google, they would also be an invaluable tool as the company continues to crystalize its position as one of the most prominent players in the AI game. Gemini being able to spit out Disney-approved images of Darth Vader and Snow White might not seem all that significant on its face, but that’s exactly the sort of thing that could get more ordinary, non tech-obsessed people seeing generative AI in a more positive (if innocuous) light. After years of hearing AI companies boast about their plans to disrupt society and eliminate jobs, public sentiment — especially among young people — about the technology has shifted into the negative. Even with tools like ChatGPT being as popular as they are, the larger AI industry has been so mired in controversy and plagued by concerns about its real world harms that it would now be hard-pressed to put out products that would immediately curry widespread goodwill. Striking deals with film and TV studios would give Google a convenient way to shift the larger narrative about its AI ambitions.
The content developed through these partnerships would presumably look better than the slop currently being churned out by models trained on ill-gotten source data, and having Google’s name and logos slapped all over official AI-generated Disney content would do wonders to legitimize this technology in people’s minds. But even if it didn’t, the partnership would still signal to the public that the entertainment industry sees generative AI as a tool worth embracing. It’s hard to quantify how valuable that framing would be to Google, whose DeepMind arm struck a $75 million investment deal with A24 earlier this summer. But it’s very easy to imagine how taking Google’s AI cash could put studios on a path that ultimately alienates their workers and audiences.
Regardless of whether a studio were to incorporate AI tools into their production workflows or simply feature user-generated AI content on their platforms (which was Disney and OpenAI’s plan before their partnership collapsed), striking a licensing agreement with Google would be a watershed moment.
Lionsgate, a notable studio but not a major player, struck a licensing deal with Runway in 2024. So far, nothing concrete has come out of that partnership, but the companies say they’re working on a plan to release AI-generated shorts. Once any one of the big legacy studios hop on to the AI bandwagon and manage to actually make something they can show the world, more production houses have a reason to follow suit. AI’s potential to speed production timelines up while keeping costs down is one of the main things that has kept studios interested in utilizing the technology. Shareholders would absolutely love it if production houses could put out more movies while spending less money, but doing that by using AI tools would almost certainly put a significant portion of the entertainment workforce out of jobs.
What may be keeping Disney and other studios from rushing to take Google up on its offers is the way that people have reacted to seeing AI used in the production of films like Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Fans were dismayed to find AI-generated images in Brand New Day’s official artbook, and the negative reaction might have been even more intense had people known about the technology’s use before the film hit theaters. It’s impossible to know for sure whether awareness about AI’s presence in Brand New Day’s production would have kept it from making $2 billion at the box office. But it stands to reason that none of the studios is eager to be the first to learn what happens when they release a project that’s presented as being the product of Google’s AI tools.
Though Google has everything to gain from Hollywood embracing AI, the studios have to be mindful of how endorsing this technology could leave them out on a limb. And as much as Google might be presenting its products as the solution to all of the entertainment industry’s issues, the AI industry needs Hollywood more than Hollywood needs more slop.
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Charles Pulliam-Moore<![CDATA[Musicians-turned-detectives are hunting for AI grifters]]>https://www.theverge.com/?p=9858662026-08-28T15:10:32-04:002026-08-29T08:00:00-04:00
For musicians — especially those creating art in technologically-focused spaces like electronic dance music — the increasingly complicated question of what is “real” and what isn’t feels particularly urgent and personal. Professional courtesy can make this only more complex; listeners can call out performers they suspect of using gen AI, but it’s something else for artists to raise concerns about their professional peers. There are some though, like 26-year-old EDM producer Max “H4RRIS” Harris, who are taking a stand against generative technology with videos calling out anyone they believe is trying to pass off AI slop as human-made art.
When I recently spoke with Harris, he told me that he sees AI-generated music as “a kind of decoy art form,” and he thinks that the people making it don’t really have anything meaningful to say with their creations. He feels that true art in any medium is “created by people that are trying to express feelings and messages,” and he believes that the only thing AI boosters are really interested in is making a quick profit.
“I don’t consider AI-generated material to be art, and I don’t think this technology is really advancing art in any meaningful way,” Harris said. “It’s a technological advancement that’s giving people a way to steal real art and pass it off as their own.”
Harris, originally from Maine, described his approach to making music as being fairly similar to working in other creative mediums. He always begins with a core concept before he starts “throwing more ideas down until I find something that sticks.” And as complicated as his workflow might look to someone unfamiliar with all of the tools and programs that he uses — his production setup includes Ableton Live, Novation Launchkey 49 MIDI controller, Ableton Push 3, Launchpad X, a couple of analog synthesizers, Serum, Diva, and the software sampler Kontakt — he said that the entire process is “really just me making creative decisions” that culminates in a sound that feels right.
“Each of those decisions — and there’s hundreds of them to go into each song — brings me closer to evoking a specific kind of idea or emotion,” Harris explained. “And then once I have a song mapped out, I have to start making even more choices about how to mix it in a way that makes it sound good and presentable.”
In Harris’ view, being a real artist means being able to make those kinds of experimental but informed creative decisions using your own studied understanding of a given medium. One of Harris’ biggest issues with gen AI is the way the technology often eliminates a user’s need to think about how songs (or books, films, podcasts, etc.) come together. But he has also been dismayed at the way that AI posers are muddying listeners’ understanding of what human-made EDM actually sounds like.
“Aside from the similar vocals, you can usually hear a sharp hissing throughout the track,” Harris said of AI-generated songs. “I think that comes from the way that these models often work by starting with a big white noise block and then making guesses about waveforms by referencing data taken from real songs.”
Harris pointed to MANSA’s “Midnight on My Mind” and Danny and Ian Asher’s “Take Me (To The Moon)” as what he thinks are examples of AI-produced songs that embody what he jokingly refers to as “the AI revolution” that’s responsible for polluting the EDM space. MANSA, Danny, and Asher have not publicly commented on whether they use generative tools in their music. But Harris and other EDM fans have noticed the similarities between “Take Me (To The Moon)” and another person’s AI-generated track. There’s no definitive evidence that MANSA produced “Midnight on My Mind” with AI. Harris could very well be wrong about these songs being generated with AI. But his insistence that they are reflects the larger culture of mistrust that has developed in response to the growing presence of AI content online.
“People are just straight up uploading original, copyrighted tracks of artists like Madonna and asking [AI] to remix them.”
Harris holds AI production company Suno responsible for the recent spike in this kind of music being uploaded to the internet, but he also credits specific quirks of the platform for helping him learn how to spot songs worth calling out.
“Something I’ve noticed with a lot of Suno-generated tracks is that a lot of the time, you’ll hear the vocals and other melodic elements will start stuttering at the same exact time,” Harris explained. “These models still have a hard time fully separating different parts of the songs they’re trained on, and they treat these elements like one big instrument. As a music producer, all of these things come across like choices that a human just wouldn’t make with their compositions because it just doesn’t make sense.”
Suno also came up multiple times during my conversation with 39-year-old Italian turntabilist-turned-producer Nihil Young. Young’s posts on Threads about people using Suno are what initially inspired Harris to make his videos. Like Harris, Young has spent the past few months watching multiple EDM newcomers’ stars rise after they post music he thinks was generated with AI tools like Suno’s. And while Young isn’t usually one to get involved with online discourse, he felt it was important to speak out about how many people are flooding the scene with AI tracks.
“These songs are the sound of Suno, which to me means that the people behind the songs are just straight up uploading original, copyrighted tracks of artists like Madonna and asking the platform to remix them,” Young told me, referring to Josh Fawaz’s “Like a Prayer” cover, which now includes AI credits following a wave of online backlash. “If they can do it with major artists like her, they can do it with you, me, and everyone else, which just isn’t cool. They can take your entire catalog, feed it to Suno, and generate ‘new’ songs from that stolen work.”
Young claimed that in response to his Threads posts, he received multiple hacking attempts and a wave of online harassment from AI defenders. He also told me that he thinks people bought fake followers to boost his Spotify numbers as a way of casting doubt on his authenticity. That spooked Young — who is raising a young daughter and just put out a new album of his own — to rethink whether he should continue. He’s taken a break from callouts, but he still thinks it’s important to know about the way AI music is harming human artists.
“Music production is where most of my income comes from, and almost as soon as AI began rolling out, I started losing many of my clients,” said Young, who has previously done audio mixing and mastering work for Sony Music, Warner, and Universal. “I can only imagine what it’s been like for singers, graphics artists, and people working in other creative fields. Whether you realize it or not, this stuff is impacting everyone.”
What Young wishes more listeners could appreciate is how easy it has become to generate entire songs with platforms like Suno. In his opinion, most people using AI to make music “aren’t actually doing anything creative and they don’t have a true artistic process” because many generative tools on the market involve some degree of autogeneration. When I brought up how detailed AI prompts can be, he insisted that many of the people posting AI music likely aren’t even writing their own inputs. Young noted that Suno’s Simple Mode allows users to whip up songs by simply selecting a musical genre and clicking a button — a process that requires basically zero thinking. (Suno has not responded to a request for comment in time for publication.)
Aside from the people uploading all of these songs, no one has a way of being absolutely certain whether the tracks were generated with AI or made by an actual artist. AI music detection tools are one potential solution, but it’s not entirely clear how and, perhaps more importantly, if listeners might incorporate them into their lives. Judging by the numbers (which, of course, can be manipulated with paid streams), there do seem to be people who don’t mind the sounds of Suno and other AI tools. Young knows that most people’s ears probably aren’t well-attuned to identifying audio slop, but he still thinks that music lovers owe it to themselves to make the effort to find real, human artists.
“In my opinion, it becomes obvious that you’re listening to AI-generated music when you put on a good pair of headphones,” Young told me. “But I also think that a lot of people these days are consuming music like fast food and listening to it through the speakers on their phone. Or they just have it on a background noise, and they don’t necessarily care what it sounds like.”
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Charles Pulliam-Moore<![CDATA[Major YouTube creators are facing backlash for accepting AI money]]>https://www.theverge.com/?p=9831812026-08-21T15:16:43-04:002026-08-21T09:37:52-04:00
A still from Sam Kolder’s video “AI is replacing me.” | Screenshot: The Verge, YouTube
Over the past few days, a number of prominent filmmaking content creators including Matti Haapoja and Sam “Kold” Kolder have posted videos of themselves demonstrating what’s possible with AI platform Higgsfield. The videos highlight Higgsfield’s recently added Seedance 2.5 functionality and pitch these technologies as the future of video production.
In response to these videos, other creators started sharing what appear to be screenshots of partnership offers they’d received from PR firms working on Higgsfield’s behalf. All of this led fans to the conclusion that Higgsfield has been trying to use creators to boost its profile and garner goodwill from the public. Almost immediately, fans began dragging Haapoja and Kolder for seemingly working with Higgsfield. Haapoja’s and Kolder’s videos are not labeled as ads and neither of the creators responded to The Verge’s questions about whether these were paid partnerships. (After this piece was published, Higgsfield PR manager Nuray Omarkhan said that “the creators were compensated through a negotiated combination of monetary payment and Higgsfield credits.) But in producing and posting videos that feel very much like ads for Higgsfield, both creators left portions of their audiences feeling alienated.
Haapoja and Kolder enthusiastically frame Higgsfield and Seedance 2.5 as innovative tools that have the potential to revolutionize the entertainment industry. Haapoja’s is kind of like an infomercial where he explains how Cully Hill Boys — Higgsfield’s feature-length film starring AI-generated duplicates of YouTubers Mikyle “N3on” Rafiq and Matt Kiatipis — was produced with prompts. Haapoja also demonstrates Seedance 2.5’s capabilities with AI-manipulated footage of himself placed in different sci-fi settings. Kolder’s video — titled “AI is replacing me” — tells a story that starts off with an explanation of Kolder’s background in video production before it becomes a fictionalized, Chappie-esque narrative in which he explores Mauritania with the help of a robot. Both videos blend footage of real people with distinctly uncanny AI-generated imagery.
On Threads, Haapoja’s video was met with pushback from fans and other creators who consider him their peer. Marques Brownlee took issue with Haapoja likening generative AI to the Canon EOS 5D Mark II (an iconic DSLR known for making shooting in 1080p full HD more affordable for independent filmmakers). Brownlee also emphasized that unlike the 5D Mark II (a physical tool people still had to learn how to use), gen AI is “trained on real human-made material without any credit.”
Unlike the overwhelmingly negative feedback to Haapoja’s video, Kolder’s comments section on YouTube was more of a mixed bag, with many viewers responding positively. But for every few “absolute cinema!” or “amazing transitions!” comments, there are people lamenting that “AI defeated our king” and insisting that “no AI can replace creative artists.”
The negative reactions to Haapoja’s and Kolder’s videos have been much louder than most of the responses to some of Higgsfield’s other recent creator collaborations. Cully Hill Boys debuted last week without all that much fanfare, which made it seem like viewers might not have had particularly strong feelings either way about it. When you scroll through some of the posts that Cully Hill Boys’ cast shared about the film, there’s a mix of AI boosters cheering Higgsfield on and people knocking the company for being a slop purveyor. For the most part, those criticisms haven’t been aimed at the film’s cast — who gave Higgsfield the right to use their likenesses, but were otherwise not as directly involved in the project’s production as traditional actors would be.
What’s different about Haapoja’s and Kolder’s posts is how they come across as sponsored advertising intended to ingratiate the creators’ audiences with Higgsfield. Even though neither of the creators goes so far as to say “you, too, should absolutely be using these products,” that certainly seems to be the underlying message. The caption for Kolder’s video appears to contain what looks like an affiliate link, offering a 30 percent discount on an annual Higgsfield subscription.
As common as partnerships between brands and creators are today, Haapoja’s and Kolder’s cases show what can happen when people with large social media followings involve themselves with products and companies that don’t align with their audiences’ values. This is a potential issue with basically any product, but by endorsing generative AI in particular, creators are opening themselves up to becoming focal points for people’s negative feelings about the technology. That’s what happened earlier this month when OpenAI invited a gaggle of influencers to a luxury resort in New York for a “Summer Club” retreat. None of those content creators uploaded anything as substantial as lengthy videos showing off OpenAI’s tools, but their posts about the trip and receiving OpenAI-branded swag were more than enough to leave their followers turned off.
While companies like OpenAI and Higgsfield can afford (to some extent) to rub people the wrong way with their advertisements, creators who agree to partnerships with AI companies are in a much more complicated position. Creators can only secure such deals after building large followings, but those followings often consist of people who see them as trustworthy individuals with beliefs similar to their own. For creators like Haapoja and Kolder, whose appeal as filmmakers lies in their own human creativity, this bargain is especially risky. At a time when many AI services and tools are seen as a threat, endorsing the technology can signal to their followers that they aren’t someone to be invested in.
Update, August 21st: This story has been updated with a comment from Higgsfield confirming that these videos were part of paid collaboration deals with creators.
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Charles Pulliam-Moore<![CDATA[Nielsen is leaning more on wearables to hear what people are watching]]>https://www.theverge.com/?p=9823582026-08-19T15:53:09-04:002026-08-19T15:53:09-04:00
In order to beef up its ability to accurately measure viewership data in the streaming era, Nielsen is moving forward with a plan to use more information gathered from its partners’ wearable devices.
Today, Nielsen announced “a number of key enhancements” that are being added to its data capturing process ahead of the upcoming fall TV season. As of August 31st, Nielsen’s co-viewing data will now include information obtained from smart-watch like gadgets that Neilsen’s research panelists wear in their homes. The Portable People Meter (PPM) Wearables — which Nielsen first began deploying nationally in 2016 to bolster its audio, local TV, and national audience measurements — are meant to be worn on the wrist while listening for audio from TV scenes, series, and films. The company says that users wearing the devices won’t need to go through the typical Nielsen log in process, and it believes that incorporating this technology into its processes will give it a better idea “of how many people are watching a given program.”
Building on its decision from earlier this year to adopt the Advertising Research Foundation’s (ARF) Device and Account Sharing (DASH) data into its methodology, Nielsen will use new DASH estimates that are based on more recent survey data. The company will also use data from two additional surveys in order to better estimate how many Spanish-speaking households are in its pool of panel participants. Nielsen is also updating the machine learning tool it uses to process information from data providers to assess the demographic makeup of individual households, which means. The firm noted that this last update should help “ensure the data is more representative and does not artificially skew toward older residents.”
Each of these new features makes it sound like Nielsen is taking even more stops to maintain its position as the industry standard for ratings capture at the time when people’s viewing habits have become much more fractured. The company also has to contend with the way the rise of streaming makes it difficult to accurately assess what people are watching. Being asked to keep Nielsen’s proprietary devices in their homes is nothing new for the company’s panel participants, but the push to wear listening wearables could strike some as a bit intrusive. But if this all really does lead to Nielsen capturing more reliable information, other firms might follow its example.
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Charles Pulliam-Moore<![CDATA[Coyote vs. Acme is even funnier because Warner Bros. Discovery tried to kill it]]>https://www.theverge.com/?p=9811312026-08-18T09:35:35-04:002026-08-18T09:35:35-04:00
There’s an argument to be made that people wouldn’t be all that interested in Coyote vs. Acme if it weren’t for the way David Zaslav tried to kill it. By trying to shelve the project, Warner Bros. Discovery only drew attention to its habit of disappearing nearly completed movies in order to cash in on tax write-offs.
Coyote vs. Acme’s generally positive reviewsare on the money; it really is one of the best Looney Tunes movies in years. In theory, this suggests that the movie might do well at the box office and become a case study in WBD making terrible decisions. Ironically, though, all of the drama surrounding the live-action / animated hybrid film is actually part of what makes it an enjoyable watch.
Loosely based on Ian Frazier’s Coyote v. Acme piece in The New Yorker, the new movie follows Wile E. Coyote as he concocts another harebrained scheme to kill the Road Runner. But rather than simply trying to destroy his nemesis with elaborate plans that involve various gadgets, Coyote decides to go after Acme with a lawsuit over its faulty products. Though attorney Kevin Avery (Will Forte) would rather take the settlement proposed by Acme’s legal counsel Buddy Crane (John Cena), Coyote believes he can receive a much bigger payout by going to court. And with countless examples of how Acme’s products have harmed him, Coyote’s confident that he can build a strong case.
Coyote vs. Acme leans into the absurd with a world in which humans and cartoon maniacs exist alongside one another. When the coyote isn’t busy trying to catch his dinner, he has to deal with all the ordinary drudgery that comes with being a productive member of society, like Avery’s niece, Paige (Lana Condor.) This and the way a bevy of Looney Tunes characters pop up as people working regular jobs brings a delightful energy to Coyote vs. Acme that’s akin to The Muppets. And by framing Acme as a cross between WBD, Apple, Tesla, and Lockheed Martin, the movie sets its story up to work as commentary about corporations screwing customers over with false promises.
At its core, Coyote vs. Acme is a classic Looney Tunes project, meaning that it spends much of its runtime focusing on ridiculous gags. The movie’s script — penned by James Gunn, Jeremy Slater, and Samy Burch — features moments where Coyote and Avery grow to see one another as friends, but it’s mostly focused on showcasing how chaotic life would be in a world filled with beings who regularly defy the laws of physics with their cartoonish antics. This makes Coyote vs. Acme an excellent showcase of the way its creative team blends traditional animation with live-action footage. The movie’s set pieces are mildly amusing, but its story is so by-the-numbers that one would be hard-pressed to call it riveting.
What is interesting about the film’s story is the way it makes WBD seem like a studio that’s afraid of poking fun at itself. You can almost hear Gunn, Slater, and Burch having a laugh at Zaslav’s expense as Foghorn Leghorn (Eric Bauza) is introduced as Acme’s conniving leader, and those kinds of jokes are what makes the movie feel like it might actually resonate with audiences. By going meta and not exactly trying to be a movie for children (remember, this is about a legal battle), Coyote vs. Acme highlights how WBD could be getting a bit more use out of characters like Bugs Bunny (also Bauza) and Granny (Candi Milo). Had the studio just put the movie out on its own, it might have made Zaslav and his fellow executives seem like people with an understanding of how to capitalize on legacy intellectual property. But whatever accolades Coyote vs. Acme ultimately receives will largely be attributed to Ketchup Entertainment, which bought the rights to distribute it.
The box office performances for WBD’s last few Looney Tunes projects suggests that Coyote vs. Acme won’t be breaking any records before it winds up on one streaming platform or another. But when the film releases on August 28th, it will remind the public of how ready WBD was to throw it in the chipper. Especially now as the studio navigates a potential merger with Paramount, that kind of cavalier attitude toward jettisoning people’s work makes Zaslav’s WBD seem like a company that isn’t exactly committed to art. That might not matter to Zaslav, who stands to make bank regardless of whether the Paramount merger goes through. But it’s a terrible look for a studio that’s trying to maintain its reputation as one of Hollywood’s biggest players.
