Latest news with #Mann
Time of India
6 hours ago
- Time of India
CM Rakshak Padak for 4 cops, saved 11 from canal
Chandigarh: Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann on Friday honoured four police officers for their heroic efforts in rescuing 11 people — including five children — after a car plunged into the Sirhind Canal in Bathinda earlier this week. He announced CM Rakshak Padak for them, to be awarded at the state-level Independence Day function. At a ceremony at his official residence, Mann felicitated members of the Police Control Room (PCR) team: Assistant sub-inspectors Rajinder Singh and Narinder Singh, along with constables Jaswant Singh and Harpal Kaur. The CM praised their swift and courageous response during the July 23 incident as "inspiring example of public service". ASI Narinder Singh was the first to jump into the canal to save the passengers. Constable Jaswant Singh, who cannot swim, nonetheless followed him into the water to assist in the rescue. Mann also commended members of the public and other PCR staff who had helped evacuate the victims safely. He congratulated Bathinda senior superintendent of police Avneet Kaundal and her team for their coordination and commitment. He expressed hope that their actions would serve as a model for cops across Punjab. MSID:: 122906497 413 |
Time of India
6 hours ago
- Time of India
Punjab chief minister's Rakshak Padak for 4 cops who saved 11 from Sirhind canal
Chandigarh: Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann on Friday honoured four police officers for their heroic efforts in rescuing 11 people — including five children — after a car plunged into the Sirhind Canal in Bathinda earlier this week. He announced CM Rakshak Padak for them, to be awarded at the state-level Independence Day function. At a ceremony at his official residence, Mann felicitated members of the Police Control Room (PCR) team: Assistant sub-inspectors Rajinder Singh and Narinder Singh, along with constables Jaswant Singh and Harpal Kaur. The CM praised their swift and courageous response during the July 23 incident as "inspiring example of public service". ASI Narinder Singh was the first to jump into the canal to save the passengers. Constable Jaswant Singh, who cannot swim, nonetheless followed him into the water to assist in the rescue. Mann also commended members of the public and other PCR staff who had helped evacuate the victims safely. He congratulated Bathinda senior superintendent of police Avneet Kaundal and her team for their coordination and commitment. He expressed hope that their actions would serve as a model for cops across Punjab. MSID:: 122906497 413 |
India Today
a day ago
- Politics
- India Today
Punjab, top Sikh body spar over events on Guru Tegh Bahadur's martyrdom day
A fresh tussle has erupted in Punjab between the Bhagwant Mann-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD)-aligned Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC). This time, the friction centres around their separate plans to commemorate the 350th martyrdom anniversary of Guru Tegh Bahadur, the 9th Guru of Monday, Punjab Education Minister Harjot Singh Bains announced that the state government's upcoming celebration has been scheduled from November 19 to 25, where the government will organise several events, including a major yatra starting from Srinagar, which will be flagged off by Chief Minister Bhagwant yatras from Punjab's Majha, Malwa, and Doaba regions will converge at Anandpur Sahib, the birthplace of Guru Tegh Bahadur, and the city will be turned into a white city to mark the day. However, the SGPC has voiced strong objections after the government announcement, calling the overlapping of events disruptive and disrespectful to Sikh traditions. SGPC president Harjinder Singh Dhami accused the Mann government of intentionally sidelining Sikh institutions and calling for avoidable controversy with the Panth. 'Instead of following the cooperative spirit shown by earlier governments, this administration is intruding into Panthic affairs,' Dhami said.'SGPC, as the premier religious body of the Sikh community, holds the rightful authority to lead such historic religious commemorations in coordination with Sikh organisations and sangat (devotees). The role of governments should be to facilitate arrangements for the devotees—not to interfere in religious affairs,' Dhami told India response, CM Mann hit back at the SGPC on Tuesday, questioning if the body held a 'copyright' on organising events for Sikh Gurus. Mann also mentioned that during Prakash Singh Badal's government, similar events were hosted together by the SGPC and the SAD-led Punjab is not the first time that the SGPC or any government excluding SAD is in contradiction. The situation mirrors a similar conflict in 2019, when the SGPC clashed with the then Congress-led government over parallel events for Guru Nanak's 550th birth anniversary, due in November, carries political weight ahead of the 2027 Punjab Assembly polls. For the SAD, struggling with internal divisions and a waning voter base, the commemorations represent a chance to reconnect with the public. Meanwhile, the AAP government seems determined to assert its role in religious and cultural the controversy, preparations are moving ahead at full pace. The state government expects over one crore devotees in Anandpur Sahib and plans to turn the city white for the occasion. A 'tent city' will be erected for visitors, and sound-and-light shows will be held across all 23 districts. Seminars in universities are also on the cards to spread awareness about Guru Tegh Bahadur's legacy. Coordination is underway with Haryana, Delhi, and Jammu & Kashmir to facilitate the SGPC has stated it will invite leaders from all states to its commemorative events, aiming for inclusivity. However, the body's secretary, Balwinder Singh, claimed he was unaware of any official communication with the Mann the two sides choose to reconcile and organise joint events, it could lead to the unlikely scenario of CM Mann sharing the stage with SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal—a politically sensitive prospect, given the SGPC's frequent criticisms of the AAP government.- EndsMust Watch
Los Angeles Times
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
De-aged stars, cloned voices, resuscitated dead icons: AI is changing the art and business of acting
For filmmaker Scott Mann, three dozen F-bombs had the makings of a million-dollar headache. When Mann wrapped 'Fall,' a 2022 thriller about two women stranded atop a 2,000-foot radio tower, he figured the hard part was over. Shot in the Mojave Desert on a $3-million budget, the film didn't have money to burn and seemed on course. But Lionsgate wanted a PG-13 rating and, with 35 expletives, 'Fall' was headed for an R. Reshoots would cost more than $1 million — far beyond what the production could afford. In the past, a director might have taken out a second mortgage or thrown themselves at the mercy of the ratings board. Mann instead turned to AI. A few years earlier, he had been dismayed by how a German dub of his 2015 thriller 'Heist' flattened the performances, including a key scene with Robert De Niro, to match stiff, mistranslated dialogue. That frustration led Mann to co-found Flawless, an AI startup aimed at preserving the integrity of an actor's performance across languages. As a proof of concept, he used the company's tech to subtly reshape De Niro's mouth movements and restore the emotional nuance of the original scene. On 'Fall,' Mann applied that same technology to clean up the profanity without reshoots, digitally modifying the actors' mouths to match PG-13-friendly lines like 'freaking' — at a fraction of the cost. As AI stirs both hype and anxiety in Hollywood, Mann understands why even such subtle digital tweaks can feel like a violation. That tension came to a head during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, in which AI became the defining flash point in the fight over acting's future. 'Ours is a rights-based industry,' says Mann, 45, who helped develop a digital rights management platform at Flawless to ensure performers approve any changes to their work. 'It's built on protecting human creativity, the contributions of actors, directors, editors, and if those rights aren't protected, that value gets lost.' Still, Mann doesn't see AI as a threat so much as a misunderstood tool — one that, used carefully, can support the artists it's accused of replacing. Flawless' DeepEditor, for example, lets directors transfer facial expressions from one take to another, even when the camera angle or lighting changes, helping actors preserve their strongest moments without breaking continuity. 'Plenty of actors I've worked with have had that moment where they see what's possible and realize, 'Oh my God, this is so much better,'' Mann says. 'It frees them up, takes off the pressure and helps them do a better job. Shutting AI out is naive and a way to end up on the wrong side of history. Done right, this will make the industry grow and thrive.' AI isn't hovering at the edges of acting anymore — it's already on soundstages and in editing bays. Studios have used digital tools to de-age Harrison Ford in 'Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,' resurrect Peter Cushing's Grand Moff Tarkin in 'Rogue One' and clone Val Kilmer's voice in 'Top Gun: Maverick' after throat cancer left him unable to speak. The technology has reshaped faces, smoothed dialogue and fast-tracked everything from dubbing to reshoots. And its reach is growing: Studios can now revive long-dead stars, conjure stunt doubles who never get hurt and rewrite performances long after wrap. But should they? As the tools grow more sophisticated, the threat to actors goes beyond creative disruption. In an industry where steady work is already elusive and the middle class of working actors is vanishing, AI raises the prospect of fewer jobs, lower pay and, in a dystopian twist, a future in which your disembodied face and voice might get work without you. Background actors were among the first to sound the alarm during the 2023 strike, protesting studio proposals to scan them once and reuse their likenesses indefinitely. That scenario is already beginning to unfold: In China, a state-backed initiative will use AI to reimagine 100 kung fu classics, including films starring Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee, through animation and other digital enhancements. Lee's estate said it was unaware of the project, raising questions about how these actors' likenesses might be used, decades after filming. If the soul of acting is a human presence, what remains when even that can be simulated? 'You want to feel breath — you want to feel life,' said actor and director Ethan Hawke during a panel at 2023's Telluride Film Festival, where strike-era unease over AI was palpable. 'When we see a great painting, we feel a human being's blood, sweat and tears. That's what we're all looking for, that connection with the present moment. And AI can't do that.' Justine Bateman may seem like an unlikely crusader in Hollywood's fight against AI. Launched to fame as Mallory Keaton on the 1980s sitcom 'Family Ties,' she later became a filmmaker and earned a computer science degree from UCLA. Now, as founder of the advocacy group CREDO23, Bateman has become one of the industry's fiercest voices urging filmmakers to reject AI-generated content and defend the integrity of human-made work. Loosely modeled on Dogme 95, CREDO23 offers a certification of films made without AI, using minimal VFX and union crews. It's a pledge backed by a council including 'Mad Men' creator Matthew Weiner, 'The Handmaid's Tale' director Reed Morano and actor Juliette Lewis. The 2023 SAG-AFTRA contract set new guardrails: Studios must get actors' consent to create or use digital replicas of their likenesses, and those replicas can't generate new performances without a separate deal. Actors must also be compensated and credited when their digital likeness is used. But to Bateman, a former SAG-AFTRA board member and negotiating committee rep, those protections are little more than sandbags against an inevitable AI flood: hard-won but already straining to keep the technology at bay. 'The allowances in the contract are pretty astounding,' Bateman says by phone, her voice tight with exasperation. 'If you can picture the Teamsters allowing self-driving trucks in their contract — that's on par with what SAG did. If you're not making sure human roles are played by human actors, I'm not sure what the union is for.' To Bateman, the idea that AI expands access to filmmaking — a central tenet of its utopian sales pitch — is a dangerous myth, one that obscures deeper questions about authorship and the value of creative labor. 'Anyone can make a film — my last two, I shot on an iPhone,' Bateman says. 'The idea that AI is 'democratizing film' doesn't even make sense. What it really does is remove the barrier of skill. It lets people pretend they're filmmakers when they're not, by prompting software that wouldn't even function without having stolen a hundred years of film and TV production made by real filmmakers.' Bateman's opposition to AI is rooted in a deep distrust of Silicon Valley's expanding influence over the creative process and a belief that filmmaking should be driven by artists, not algorithms. 'The tech bro business completely jumped the shark with generative AI,' she says. 'Is it solving plastics in the ocean? Homelessness? L.A. traffic? Not that I'm aware of.' She scoffs at the supposed efficiencies AI brings to the filmmaking process: 'It's like saying, whatever somebody enjoys — sex or an ice cream sundae — 'Hey, now you can do it in a quarter of the time.' OK, but then what do you think life is for?' To Bateman, an actor's voice, face, movements or even their choice of costume is not raw material to be reshaped but an expression of authorship. AI, in her view, erases those choices and the intent behind them. 'I'm deeply against changing what the actor did,' she says. 'It's not right to have the actor doing things or saying things they didn't do — or to alter their hair, makeup or clothes in postproduction using AI. The actor knows what they did.' While Bateman has been public and unwavering in her stance, many actors remain unsure whether to raise their voices. In the wake of the strikes, much of the conversation around AI has moved behind closed doors, leaving those who do speak out feeling at times exposed and alone. Scarlett Johansson, who lent her smoky, hypnotic voice to the fictional AI in Spike Jonze's Oscar-winning 2013 film 'Her,' now finds herself in a uniquely uncomfortable position: She's both a symbol of our collective fascination with artificial performance and a real-world example of what's at stake when that line is crossed. Last year, she accused OpenAI of using a chatbot voice that sounded 'eerily similar' to hers, months after she declined to license it. OpenAI denied the claim and pulled the voice, but the incident reignited concern over consent and control. Johansson has long spoken out against the unauthorized use of her image, including her appearance in deepfake pornography, and has pushed for stronger safeguards against digital impersonation. To date, though, she is one of the few major stars to publicly push back against the creeping mimicry enabled by AI — and she's frustrated that more haven't joined her. 'There has to be some agreed-upon set of boundaries in order for [AI] to not be detrimental,' she told Vanity Fair in May. 'I wish more people in the public eye would support and speak out about that. I don't know why that's not the case.' Ed Ulbrich, 60, a pioneering visual effects producer and co-founder of Digital Domain, has spent his career helping actors do the impossible, one pixel at a time. In 2008's 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,' he led the team of more than 150 artists in building a fully digital version of Brad Pitt's face so the actor could convincingly age in reverse — a two-year effort that earned Ulbrich and three colleagues an Oscar for visual effects and set a new benchmark for digital performance. (Nearly two decades later, the achievement is still impressive, although some scenes, especially those with Pitt's aged face composited on a child's body, now show their digital seams.) For 2010's 'Tron: Legacy,' Ulbrich helped digitally transform Jeff Bridges into his 1982 self using motion capture and CGI. Working on last year's 'Here' — Robert Zemeckis' technically daring drama starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright as a couple whose lives play out across decades in a single New Jersey living room — showed Ulbrich just how far things have come. For someone who jokes he has 'real estate in the uncanny valley,' it wasn't just the AI-enabled realism that floored him. It was the immediacy. On set, AI wasn't enhancing footage after the fact; it was visually reshaping the performance in real time. 'You look up and see 67-year-old Tom Hanks. You look down at the monitor — he's 20, and it looks better than the best CGI,' Ulbrich says. 'In my world, the human face is the holy grail. That is the most complicated thing you can do. And now it's getting done in near real time before your eyes. The actor can come back and look at the monitor and get new ideas, because they're seeing a different version of themselves: younger, older, as an alien or whatever.' This kind of seamless AI-driven alteration marks a new frontier in postproduction. Modern AI systems can now 'beautify' actors' faces, like some would with a Instagram or Zoom filter: smooth out wrinkles, alter skin tone, sharpen jawlines, subtly nudge eye position to better match a desired gaze. What once required painstaking VFX can now be handled by fast, flexible AI tools, often with results invisible to audiences. Once limited to only big-budget sci-fi and fantasy productions, this digital touch-up capability is expanding into rom-coms, prestige dramas, high-end TV and even some indie films. Dialogue can be rewritten and re-lipped in post. Facial expressions can be smoothed or swapped without reshoots. More and more, viewers may have no way of knowing what's real and what's been subtly adjusted. 'Here' was largely rejected by both audiences and critics, with some deeming its digitally de-aged performances more unsettling than moving. But Ulbrich says digitally enhanced performance is already well underway. Talent agency CAA has built a vault of client scans, a kind of biometric asset library for future productions. Some stars now negotiate contracts that reduce their time on set, skipping hours in the makeup chair or performance-capture gear, knowing AI can fill in the gaps. 'Robert Downey, Brad Pitt, Will Smith — they've all been scanned many times,' says Ulbrich, who recently joined the AI-driven media company Moonvalley, which pitches itself as a more ethical, artist-centered player in the space. 'If you've done a studio tentpole, you've been scanned. 'There is a lot of fear around AI and it's founded,' he adds. 'Unless you do something about it, you can just get run over. But there are people out there that are harnessing this. At this point, fighting AI is like fighting against electricity.' While many in Hollywood wrestle with what AI means for the oldest component of moviemaking, others take a more pragmatic view, treating it as a tool to solve problems and keep productions on track. Jerry Bruckheimer, the powerhouse producer behind 'Top Gun,' 'Pirates of the Caribbean' and this summer's 'F1,' is among those embracing its utility. 'AI is not going anywhere and it's only going to get more useful for people in our business,' he said in a recent interview with The Times. He recalled one such moment during post-production on his new Brad Pitt–led Formula One drama, a logistical feat filmed during actual Formula One races across Europe and the Middle East, with a budget north of $200 million. 'Brad was in the wilds of New Zealand, and we had test screenings coming up,' Bruckheimer says. 'We couldn't get his voice to do some looping, so we used an app that could mimic Brad Pitt. I'm sure the union will come after me if you write that, but it wasn't used in the movie because he became available.' While he's skeptical of AI's ability to generate truly original ideas — 'We're always going to need writers,' he says — Bruckheimer, whose films have grossed more than $16 billion worldwide, sees AI as a powerful tool for global reach. 'They can take Brad's voice from the movie and turn it into other languages so it's actually his voice, rather than another actor,' he says. 'If it's not available yet, it will be.' The debate over AI in performance flared earlier this year with 'The Brutalist,' Brady Corbet's award-winning drama about a Hungarian architect. After the film's editor, Dávid Jancsó, revealed that AI voice-cloning software had been used to subtly modify the Hungarian accents of stars Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones, the backlash followed swiftly. Some critics accused the film of using AI to smooth over performances while presenting itself as handcrafted, a move one viral post derided as trying to 'cheap out without soul.' Corbet later clarified that AI was used sparingly, only to adjust vowel sounds, but the decision left some viewers uneasy — even as Brody went on to win the Oscar for lead actor. If the controversy over 'The Brutalist' struck some as a moral crisis, David Cronenberg found the whole thing overblown. Few filmmakers have probed the entanglement of flesh, identity and technology as relentlessly as the director of 'Videodrome,' 'The Fly' and last year's 'The Shrouds,' so he's not particularly rattled by the rise of AI-assisted performances. 'All directors have always messed around with actors' performances — that's what editing is,' Cronenberg told The Times in April. 'Filmmaking isn't theater. It's not sacred. We've been using versions of this for years. It's another tool in the toolbox. And it's not controlling you — you can choose not to use it.' Long before digital tools, Cronenberg recalls adjusting actor John Lone's vocal pitch in his 1993 film 'M. Butterfly,' in which Lone played a Chinese opera singer and spy who presents as a woman to seduce a French diplomat. The director raised the pitch when the character appeared as a woman and lowered it when he didn't — a subtle manipulation to reinforce the illusion. Far from alarmed, Cronenberg is intrigued by AI's creative potential as a way of reshaping authorship itself. With new platforms like OpenAI's Sora and Google's Veo 3 now capable of generating increasingly photorealistic clips from simple text prompts, an entire performance could conceivably be conjured from a writer's keyboard. 'Suddenly you can write a scene — a woman is walking down the street, she looks like this, she's wearing that, it's raining, whatever — and AI can create a video for you,' Cronenberg says. 'To me, this is all exciting. It absolutely can threaten all kinds of jobs and that has to be dealt with, but every technological advance has done that and we just have to adapt and figure it out.' In the Hollywood of the late 1970s, there was no AI to tweak an actor's face. So when 'Star Wars' star Mark Hamill fractured his nose and left cheekbone in a serious car crash between shooting the first and second films, the solution was to tweak the story. The 1980 sequel 'The Empire Strikes Back' opened with Luke Skywalker being attacked by a nine-foot-tall snow beast called a wampa on the ice planet Hoth, partly to account for the change in his appearance. Decades later, when Hamill was invited to return as a younger version of himself in the 2020 Season 2 finale of 'The Mandalorian,' the chance to show Luke 'at the height of his powers was irresistible,' he says. But the reality left him feeling oddly detached from the character that made him famous. Hamill shared the role with a younger body double, and digital de-aging tools recreated his face from decades earlier. The character's voice, meanwhile, was synthesized using Respeecher, a neural network trained on old recordings of Hamill to mimic his speech from the original trilogy era. 'I didn't have that much dialogue: 'Are you Luke Skywalker?' 'I am,'' Hamill recalled in an interview with The Times earlier this year. 'I don't know what they do when they take it away, in terms of tweaking it and making your voice go up in pitch or whatever.' When fans speculated online that he hadn't participated at all, Hamill declined to correct the record. 'My agent said, 'Do you want me to put out a statement or something?'' Hamill recalls. 'I said, 'Eh, people are going to say what they want to say.' Maybe if you deny it, they say, 'See? That proves it — he's denying it.'' When Luke returned again in a 2022 episode of 'The Book of Boba Fett,' the process was even more synthetic: Hamill was minimally involved on camera and the character was built almost entirely from digital parts: a de-aged face mapped onto a body double with an AI-generated voice delivering his lines. Hamill was credited and compensated, though the exact terms of the arrangement haven't been made public. The visual effect was notably improved from earlier efforts, thanks in part to a viral deepfake artist known as Shamook, whose YouTube video improving the VFX in 'The Mandalorian' finale had racked up millions of views. He was soon hired by Industrial Light & Magic — a rare case of fan-made tech critique turning into a studio job. 'In essence, yes, I did participate,' Hamill says. It's one thing to be digitally altered while you're still alive. It's another to keep performing after you're gone. Before his death last year, James Earl Jones — whose resonant baritone helped define Darth Vader for generations — gave Lucasfilm permission to recreate his voice using AI. In a recent collaboration with Disney, Epic Games deployed that digital voice in Fortnite, allowing players to team up with Vader and hear new lines delivered in Jones' unmistakable tones, scripted by Google's Gemini AI. In May, SAG-AFTRA later filed a labor charge, saying the use of Jones' voice hadn't been cleared with the union. Last year's 'Alien: Romulus' sparked similar backlash over the digital resurrection of Ian Holm's android character Ash nearly a decade after Holm's death. Reconstructed using a blend of AI and archival footage, the scenes were slammed by some fans as a form of 'digital necromancy.' For the film's home video release, director Fede Álvarez quietly issued an alternate cut that relied more heavily on practical effects, including an animatronic head modeled from a preexisting cast of Holm's face. For Hollywood, AI allows nostalgia to become a renewable resource, endlessly reprocessed and resold. Familiar faces can be altered, repurposed and inserted into entirely new stories. The audience never has to say goodbye and the industry never has to take the risk of introducing someone new. Hamill, for his part, seems ready to let go of Luke. After his final arc in 2017's 'The Last Jedi,' he says he feels a sense of closure. 'I don't know the full impact AI will have but I find it very ominous,' he says. 'I'm fine. I had my time. Now the spotlight should be on the current and future actors and I hope they enjoy it as much as I did.' Actor Tye Sheridan knows how dark an AI future could get. After all, he starred in Steven Spielberg's 2018 'Ready Player One,' a sci-fi thriller set inside a corporate-controlled world of digital avatars. But Sheridan isn't trying to escape into that world — he's trying to shape the one ahead. With VFX supervisor Nikola Todorovic, Sheridan co-founded Wonder Dynamics in 2017 to explore how AI can expand what's possible on screen. Their platform uses AI to insert digital characters into live-action scenes without green screens or motion-capture suits, making high-end VFX more accessible to low-budget filmmakers. Backed by Spielberg and 'Avengers' co-director Joe Russo, Wonder Dynamics was acquired last year by Autodesk, the software firm behind many animation and design tools. 'Since the advent of the camera, technology has been pushing this industry forward,' Sheridan, 28, says on a video call. 'AI is just another part of that path. It can make filmmaking more accessible, help discover new voices. Maybe the next James Cameron will find their way into the industry through some AI avenue. I think that's really exciting.' With production costs spiraling, Todorovic sees AI as a way to lower the barrier to entry and make riskier, more ambitious projects possible. 'We really see AI going in that direction, where you can get those A24-grounded stories with Marvel visuals,' he says. 'That's what younger audiences are hungry for.' The shift, Todorovic argues, could lead to more films overall and more opportunities for actors. 'Maybe instead of 10,000 people making five movies, it'll be 1,000 people making 50,' he says. Still, Todorovic sees a threshold approaching, one where synthetic actors could, in theory, carry a film. 'I do think technically it is going to get solved,' Todorovic says. 'But the question remains — is that what we really want? Do we really want the top five movies of the year to star humans who don't exist? I sure hope not.' For him, the boundary isn't just about realism. It's about human truth. 'You can't prompt a performance,' he says. 'You can't explain certain movements of the body and it's very hard to describe emotions. Acting is all about reacting. That's why when you make a movie, you do five takes — or 40. Because it's hard to communicate.' Sheridan, who has appeared in the 'X-Men' franchise as well as smaller dramas like 'The Card Counter' and 'The Tender Bar,' understands that instinctively and personally. 'I started acting in films when I was 11 years old,' he says. 'I wouldn't ever want to build something that put me out of a job. That's the fun part — performing, exploring, discovering the nuances. That's why we fall in love with certain artists: their unique sensibility, the way they do what no one else can.' He knows that may sound contradictory coming from the co-founder of an AI company. That's exactly why he believes it's critical that artists, not Silicon Valley CEOs, are the ones shaping how the technology is used. 'We should be skeptical of AI and its bad uses,' he says. 'It's a tool that can be used for good or bad. How are we going to apply it to create more access and opportunity in this industry and have more voices heard? We're focused on keeping the artist as an essential part of the process, not replacing them.' For now, Sheridan lives inside that paradox, navigating a technology that could both elevate and imperil the stories he cares most about. His next acting gig? 'The Housewife,' a psychological drama co-starring Naomi Watts and Michael Imperioli, in which he plays a 1960s New York Times reporter investigating a suspected Nazi hiding in Queens. No AI. No doubles. Just people pretending to be other people the old way, while it lasts.
Time of India
2 days ago
- Sport
- Time of India
Punjab govt to develop 4,000 sports grounds to fight drug menace, promote youth sports: CM Mann
Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann (Image: PTI) CHANDIGARH: Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann on Sunday announced that modern sports grounds will be developed in villages across the state to wean youth away from drugs and channelise their energy in a positive direction. "We have decided to develop these grounds. The work on 3,083 grounds is going to start and a total of 4,000 grounds will be developed in the first phase," he said during a press conference here. He said athletes who won medals in international competitions will also be involved in coaching to promote a sporting culture among the youth. There are nearly 13,000 villages in Punjab, and quality sports grounds will be built in every village, he added. Mann said when children take part in sports, they stay away from bad habits and their energy is channelised positively. Taking a swipe at previous governments, he alleged they pushed youth towards drugs. "Youth were inclined towards sports and education. But during the previous governments' time, they were neither given grounds nor books. As they say, an idle mind is a devil's workshop, many youth fell into bad habits. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like 21st Century Skills Start with Confident Communication Planet Spark Learn More Undo Gradually, Punjab slipped into the quagmire of drugs and youngsters did not get the atmosphere they deserved," he said. "Being a Punjabi and a sports lover, our aim is to pull the state's youth out of the drug menace. For that, we need to give them alternatives so they do not slip back into the habit," Mann said. He stressed that the best alternative is sports and added that with proper support and opportunities, Punjab's youth can excel in several sports. Despite lack of facilities in the past, players like Shubman Gill and Harbhajan Singh emerged from Punjab, he said, adding that many players in the national hockey team also come from the state. Punjab's youth can excel in hockey, cricket, kabaddi, athletics -- what they need is the right atmosphere and support, the chief minister said.
