Month: September 2022

Enlarge / A still from Runway's "Text to Video" teaser promo suggesting image-generation capabilities. (credit: Runway)

In a tweet posted this morning, artificial intelligence company Runway teased a new feature of its AI-powered web-based video editor that can edit video from written descriptions, often called "prompts." A promotional video appears to show very early steps toward commercial video editing or generation, echoing the hype over recent text-to-image synthesis models like Stable Diffusion but with some optimistic framing to cover up current limitations.

Runway's "Text to Video" demonstration reel shows a text input box that allows editing commands such as "import city street" (suggesting the video clip already existed) or "make it look more cinematic" (applying an effect). It depicts someone typing "remove object" and selecting a streetlight with a drawing tool that then disappears (from our testing, Runway can already perform a similar effect using its "inpainting" tool, with mixed results). The promotional video also showcases what looks like still-image text-to-image generation similar to Stable Diffusion (note that the video does not depict any of these generated scenes in motion) and demonstrates text overlay, character masking (using its "Green Screen" feature, also already present in Runway), and more.

Video generation promises aside, what seems most novel about Runway's Text to Video announcement is the text-based command interface. Whether video editors will want to work with natural language prompts in the future remains to be seen, but the demonstration shows that people in the video production industry are actively working toward a future in which synthesizing or editing video is as easy as writing a command.

Enlarge / Our two favorite interviews and gameplay sessions at PAX West 2022 revolved around games from two completely different companies. To be clear: Mina the Hollower (left) is not being produced in any way by Justin Roiland (right) or his company Squanch Games. (credit: Yacht Club Games / Squanch Games)

SEATTLE—Last week's crowded, fun-filled PAX West 2022 expo was very different from the ghost town of its 2021 edition, which meant Ars Technica got to spend time with some of our favorite video game creators. You may have already seen our PAX West chat with the co-creators of the Monkey Island series, where we got a peek at Return to Monkey Island's new puzzles, jokes, and delectable animations. But that wasn't the only interview we conducted.

Below are two additional interviews based on highlights from our time at the four-day expo. Each comes from indie studios whose previous games have impressed: Yacht Club Games (Shovel Knight) and Squanch Games (Trover Saves the Universe). The interviews were conducted after I played each studio's new game, and I'll be back tomorrow to report on other gameplay highlights from the expo.

Mina the Hollower
(Release date TBD, platforms TBD | Official site)

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  The deeper you go into Mina the Hollower, the more gothic and Castlevania-ey its Zelda-inspired top-down adventuring looks and feels. [credit: Yacht Club Games ]

My favorite discovery at PAX West 2022 wasn't entirely surprising, as it hit many of my personal gameplay biases: a Game Boy Color aesthetic; a top-down adventure that recalls the three Game Boy-exclusive Legend of Zelda games; and the development chops of a studio like Yacht Club Games, which is best known as the creator of the incredible platformer Shovel Knight.

Enlarge / On the left: iPhone 14. On the right: iPhone 14 Plus. Each shows a configuration of the new always-on lock screen functionality in iOS 16. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Republican lawmakers have warned Apple that it will face intense scrutiny from Congress if the California company procures memory chips from a controversial Chinese semiconductor manufacturer for the new iPhone 14.

Marco Rubio, Republican vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said they were alarmed following a media report that Apple would add Yangtze Memory Technologies Co to its list of suppliers for Nand flash memory chips that are used to store data on smartphones.

“Apple is playing with fire,” Rubio told the Financial Times. “It knows the security risks posed by YMTC. If it moves forward, it will be subject to scrutiny like it has never seen from the federal government. We cannot allow Chinese companies beholden to the Communist party into our telecommunications networks and millions of Americans’ iPhones.”