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Fresh off the box office success of Project Hail Mary , Amazon MGM Studios has announced its theatrical release lineup for the next year. Most of the titles aren't likely to hit the highs of the Ryan Gosling starrer which has grossed $515 million in theaters. However, there are a number of promising releases like Spaceballs: The New One and Highlander starring Henry Cavill, both sequels to '80s films. Another is The Sheep Detectives with Hugh Jackman, the trailer for which has been a hit on YouTube. Earlier this year, Amazon MGM promised to release up to 14 films in theaters over the next year and leave them to run for as long as 45 days — a far cry from its previous policy of releasing just a few films for several weeks at most. That strategy is paying off so far. "Four months. Four films. Over $670 million at the box office. And we have nine more on the way,” said Amazon MGM's head of domestic theatrical distribution, Kevin Wilson. The company said that it's not about volume, but impact. "We are building films that give audiences a reason to leave the house. Films with scale. Ambition," Wilson said. Looking at the slate, though, some of those films are likely to be hits and some not so much. First up is The Sheep Detectives set to arrive on May 8th. You may scoff at the title, but the trailer has racked up 20 million views and mainly positive comments. It looks like fun, family-friendly fare and stars a popular actor, so one could easily see this being a hit for Amazon MGM. Masters of the Universe is next up on June 5, 2026. "Director Travis Knight brings the world of Eternia to life on a massive scale with stars Nicholas Galitzine, Camila Mendes, and Idris Elba," Amazon explains. The film is based on the Mattel toy franchise and animated series so again, it could be another magnet for kids and their nostalgic parents. How to Rob a Bank is a heist comedy with a solid cast including Nicholas Hoult, Zoë Kravitz, Anna Sawai, Pete Davidson, and John C. Reilly, set to arrive on September 4. That's followed by Verity (October 2, 2026) based on the Colleen Hoover novel and Peter Farrelly's I Play Rocky Sylvester Stallone biopic about the production of the 1976 film Rocky . 2027 starts with the The Beekeeper 2 (January 15) starting Jason Statham, followed by The Thomas Crown Affair (March 5, 2027) directed by and starring Michael B. Jordan. Spaceballs: The New One , a sequel to the classic Mel Brooks movie arrives on April 23, 2027 with Rick Moranis, Josh Gad, Keke Palmer, Lewis Pullman, Daphne Zuniga, Bill Pullman, and Mel Brooks. Other films expected but without release dates yet include The Chosen: Crucifixion , A Colt is My Passport , Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother and Highlander starring Henry Cavill based on the 1986 cult classic. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/amazon-mgms-2026-theatrical-slate-includes-highlander-and-spaceballs-the-new-one-094505690.html?src=rss
Adobe isn't the only company releasing a new AI assistant this week . Ahead of its Create event in Los Angeles today, Canva announced Canva AI 2.0. Building on its existing AI assistant , the company is billing the release as its most significant update since the platform first launched in 2013, and the culmination of years of investment to build its own foundational design models. As you might imagine, it all starts with a conversational interface that allows you to describe an idea or goal and the system will start generating a design to match. Under the hood, there's a new orchestration layer that allows the model to use all of Canva's disparate tools to accomplish complex, multi-step tasks. For instance, the company suggests you could use Canva AI to create a multi-channel advertising campaign, and the software will generate everything you need to get that off the ground. For brands, Canva AI 2.0 can adapt to their design needs. Canva If edits are required, the company says Canva AI avoids one of the pitfalls of many other image generation models. It's possible to edit every visual element the system generates, just like if they were created with a traditional image editor. As a result, you can do things like swap out images and tweak fonts without affecting any other part of a design. To bring everything together, Canva has built persistent memory into the tool. The more you use Canva AI, the better the system will get at applying your personal taste and style to future generations. According to the company, it also has a context window that is long enough to maintain coherence until you arrive at a final design. Alongside those enhancements, Canva is adding support for new workflows that expand what you can do with its software, starting with connections that allow its models to pull data from other apps, including Notion, Slack, Zoom, Gmail, Google Calendar and more. Users can also schedule tasks for Canva AI to complete in the background, and the company has even baked in deep research capabilities into the tool. The coding function Canva previously offered has been upgraded to include support for HTML imports, allowing users to bring any HTML file or AI-generated experience into Canva's visual editor to tweak the design of it without breaking things. For brands, the company is also offering a tool that can process their visual identity and apply it to new and existing designs. Canva's updated coding agent now support HTML imports. Canva As a casual observer, it might seem like Canva is trend chasing, but Danny Wu, the company's head of AI, argues the new AI tools represent a natural evolution for Canva. "This is something we've been dreaming of and working towards for quite a while," he tells Engadget. "Even before ChatGPT was a thing, we were thinking, 'what if we don't have a template that matches your needs?' … So I wouldn't describe this as a pivot or shift, we've been wanting to offer these kinds of capabilities all along as part of our mission to make design simple." If you want to give Canva's new tools a try for yourself, Canva AI 2.0 is available as a research preview starting today. The first 1 million people who visit the Canva website will get first access, with availability gradually expanding to more users over the coming weeks. As before, access to Canva’s AI features remains included in the company’s free offering, though it’s also introducing a new AI Pass add-on that significantly increases rate limits for users. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/canva-starts-previewing-a-more-powerful-version-of-its-ai-assistant-130000966.html?src=rss
Aaarrrgh, that's a good start.
Anthropic has started rolling out identity verification on Claude “for a few use cases.” The company didn’t list out those use cases in its announcement, but we’ve asked it for details and will update this post when we hear back. Anthropic says you might see a verification prompt upon “accessing certain capabilities,” asking you to verify your identity. You would have to show a valid and physical government-issued photo ID. You’d also have take a selfie with your phone or computer camera that the system will compare against the ID you present. The news, as you’d expect, wasn’t well-received . Many users are questioning the necessity of identity verification to be able to use an AI chatbot, especially if Anthropic already has their credit cards on file as paying subscribers. People are also criticizing Anthropic’s decision to use Persona Identities, which also provides age verification services for OpenAI and Roblox. One of Persona’s major investors is venture firm Founders Fund, which was co-founded by Peter Thiel, who’s also the co-founder and chairman of surveillance company Palantir. Palantir’s customers are mostly federal agencies and government offices , including the FBI , the CIA and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement . Most criticisms against the company center around the services it provides those customers, as they’re mainly used to expand government surveillance using its facial recognition and AI technologies. In its announcement, Anthropic said that Persona will be the one handling your IDs and selfies. It will not copy and store those images. It also said that Persona is “contractually limited” in how it can use your data and that all data passing through its process is “encrypted in transit and at rest.” Anthropic emphasized that it will not use your identity data to train its models and that it will not share your data with anyone else. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/anthropic-will-ask-claude-users-to-verify-their-identities-for-a-few-use-cases-115754092.html?src=rss
