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Comcast is breaking up with NBCU. Why did it ever buy it in the first place?
Comcast has announced that it is splitting itself into two separate companies: a Comcast broadband business and an NBCUniversal entertainment business. The move follows the earlier spin-off of its cable assets, such as CNBC and MS.NOW, into a new company called Versant, and it marks the effective end of Comcast’s long-running bet on combining media…
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Slate’s Gray $25,000 Truck Just Got a Crayola Makeover
The Bezos-backed automaker building America’s cheapest electric truck is teaming up with the crayon company in a bid to brighten its rides. Make ours Razzmatazz.
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Free Waymo rides in California? You can thank a regulatory quirk.
Waymo, the Alphabet-owned leader in driverless robotaxis, is being held up by a delayed ruling from a California regulator, meaning it cannot yet expand into new parts of Northern and Southern California or charge passengers for rides in its new vehicle. As a result of this regulatory quirk, riders can currently travel in Waymo’s new…
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Art gallery where Princess Eugenie is a director is cleared of breaching Russian sanctions over sale of painting
An art gallery where Princess Eugenie serves as a director has been cleared of breaching UK sanctions imposed on Russia. Hauser & Wirth, along with shipping company Artay Rauchwerger Solomons, had faced criminal charges over the sale of a painting to a buyer named Alexander Popov, whom prosecutors alleged was a Russian resident. The case…
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Character.AI wants a piece of the microdrama pie
Character.AI has announced c.ai Series, a slate of short-form, episodic “microdramas” designed to be watched and interacted with on a phone, marking the latest step in the company’s push to become a broader storytelling platform beyond its LLM-powered chatbots. Unlike rival services such as ReelShort and DramaBox, which offer cheaply produced live-action shows with human…
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The newest entrant in the military’s launch competition isn’t actually a launch company
The US Space Force has added two more companies, Impulse Space and Relativity Space, to the pool of firms eligible to bid for national security launch contracts. Winning a place in the military launch market is both a mark of maturity and a valuable revenue source for rocket firms. While Relativity Space’s inclusion is unsurprising…
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Licence to drill? How a Trump-linked Texas oil company is elbowing its way into Greenland
A Texas-based oil company, Greenland Energy, is pushing to drill for oil beneath Jameson Land in eastern Greenland, backed by figures linked to Donald Trump. At a June meeting in the remote settlement of Ittoqqortoormiit, the company’s representative, Robert Price, told residents it had permission to land drilling equipment and had filed pending applications to…
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Character.ai enters the microdrama arena with its own productions, but there’s a twist
Character.AI, the platform that lets people chat with customised AI avatars, has entered the fast-growing “microdrama” market by producing its own short-form series made with AI production tools. The distinguishing feature is that users over 18 can chat with the shows’ characters, ask them questions and role-play alternative storylines, drawing on the company’s core conversational…
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AI Platform Character.ai Introduces Suite of Microseries Focused on Anime, Horror, Action Adventure: ‘Deeper Connection Between Fans and Characters’
Character.ai, the platform known for letting users create and chat with AI-generated characters, has launched “c.ai Series”, a collection of short AI-made microseries built around characters native to its platform. What sets the format apart, the company says, is that the experience does not end when an episode finishes: users aged over 18 can continue…
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Character.ai’s New Business? Microdramas
Character.ai, the chatbot company founded by former Google engineers, is launching a microdrama division, marking a notable diversification for a firm best known for its AI companion chatbots. The company will announce on Thursday that it has created AI-generated animated vertical-video series, penned by hired Hollywood writers but produced using artificial intelligence rather than traditional…