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Veeam Data Platform v13: Redefining Data Resilience for the AI Era

Veeam Data Platform v13: Redefining Data Resilience for the AI Era

Tech-news

Veeam® Software has released version 13 of its flagship Veeam Data Platform. CEO Anand Eswaran calls it a “defining moment for the future of data and cyber resilience.” The November 19, 2025, release addresses three major challenges facing enterprise IT: ongoing ransomware threats, rapid infrastructure changes driven by shifts in the hypervisor market, and new AI workloads that require distinct protection approaches.

Trusted by more than 550,000 customers, the platform delivers protection across physical, virtual, and cloud environments. Version 13 introduces capabilities that fundamentally change how organizations detect threats, recover from attacks, and maintain operational flexibility without vendor lock-in.

Security Intelligence Takes Center Stage

The most significant addition to v13 is Recon Scanner 3.0, developed by Coveware (acquired by Veeam) and now directly integrated into the platform. The scanner flags suspected adversary behavior across monitored endpoints, including brute force attacks, suspicious file activity, and unexpected network connections.

Unlike traditional backup-focused security tools that examine data at rest, Recon Scanner provides operational threat visibility across the entire infrastructure. Findings are fed into a Consolidated Triage Inbox, where security teams can view threats ranked by severity. Suppression rules help teams filter noise and focus on genuine incidents rather than false positives.

Recon Scanner integrates with Microsoft Sentinel, so teams can review backup data alongside broader threat intelligence. This helps security staff connect what they see in their infrastructure to signals coming from other tools. The platform also continues to support integrations with CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks, Splunk, and ServiceNow, which lets organizations feed data protection alerts directly into the systems they already use.

The new Malware Analysis AI Agent autonomously reviews suspicious activity. It identifies malware, creates a clear report, and shares practical remediation steps, all while mapping its findings to the MITRE ATT&CK  framework for added context. By doing the initial legwork, it shortens investigation time and helps teams confirm backup integrity and find clean recovery points faster.

Backups are immutable by default to prevent recovery points from being modified. Combined with SAML-based single sign-on and least-privilege access controls, the platform addresses multiple vectors commonly exploited by ransomware operators.

Instant Recovery to Microsoft Azure

Version 13 introduces what Veeam calls “true instant recovery” directly in Microsoft Azure. This capability enables rapid restoration in a secure cleanroom environment, allowing teams to validate recoverability and minimize downtime.

The feature addresses a common pain point in disaster recovery and ransomware response. When on-premises infrastructure is unavailable or compromised, organizations can restore critical workloads to Azure within minutes. This isolated environment lets teams confirm systems are clean, perform forensic analysis, or temporarily operate in production while rebuilding primary infrastructure.

Traditional recovery approaches required either maintaining costly hot standby environments or accepting long recovery times while spinning up new infrastructure. Instant Recovery to Azure offers a middle ground: organizations pay for cloud resources only when needed yet can restore workloads quickly.

Breaking Free from Hypervisor Lock-In

The ongoing disruption in the virtualization market has created urgency around hypervisor independence. Version 13 directly addresses this with expanded platform support and a new integration framework.

Support for Scale Computing HyperCore is available now, with additional platforms including HPE Morpheus VM Essentials, Citrix XenServer, and XCP-ng coming soon. Support for Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization will be added in 2026, building on existing Kasten integration for container backups.

The Universal Hypervisor Integration API marks Veeam’s biggest architectural shift in the platform. The standard lets any hypervisor vendor build native integration with Veeam’s backup and recovery tools. When new virtualization technologies appear, whether from established vendors or startups, the framework supports rapid integration without requiring Veeam to write platform-specific code.

For organizations evaluating alternatives to VMware following Broadcom’s acquisition and licensing changes, this expanded support removes data protection as a barrier to migration. Teams can move workloads to alternative hypervisors while maintaining consistent backup and recovery capabilities.

The Veeam Software Appliance

Version 13 introduces the Veeam Software Appliance, a pre-configured Linux-based deployment option that represents a shift in how Veeam delivers its platform. The appliance includes a hardened operating system, Veeam software, and automated security updates based on DISA STIG standards.

Best deployment practices are built in, reducing complexity. The system self-updates and removes the overhead of operating system management. High availability support ensures uninterrupted operations without requiring proprietary hardware.

This approach differs from traditional backup appliances that combine software with specific hardware configurations. Organizations can deploy the Veeam Software Appliance on their choice of hardware or in virtual machines, avoiding hardware lock-in while still gaining the simplified deployment and management benefits of appliance-based solutions.

Joe Moffitt, Principal Technical Architect at Darktrace, described the impact: “V13 allowed us to simplify and centralize everything. It comes ready to go out of the box, which made setup effortless – it’s made our environment so much easier to manage.”

For smaller organizations with Veeam Essentials licenses, initial support will be limited to virtual machine deployments on any supported hypervisor. Physical server deployments are not supported initially due to hardware troubleshooting complexity on non-enterprise hardware.

Enhanced Management and Access Control

A new web-based console provides browser-native management, simplifying both initial setup and daily administration. The interface marks a shift from traditional heavy client applications toward lightweight, modern management tools.

Version 13 also includes enhanced Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) with SAML single sign-on integration. Fine-tuned access controls support zero-trust principles, enforcing least-privilege access, reducing the attack surface, and lowering exfiltration risk by keeping sensitive data in the right hands.

These controls address a common weakness in backup infrastructure security. Many organizations grant overly broad access to backup systems, creating risk if credentials are compromised. The updated RBAC capabilities allow administrators to define granular permissions aligned with job responsibilities.

Intelligence Through Veeam ONE v13

Accompanying the platform release, Veeam ONE v13 provides updated monitoring, reporting, and analytics capabilities. The system now uses an agent-based Veeam Analytics Service for data collection, with HTML5-based reporting for faster generation and access.

The reporting engine supports interactive charts and widgets with export capabilities to image or CSV formats. A new PostgreSQL reporting database accelerates report generation through cached reporting and data warehousing. Global search options help teams quickly locate specific reports by name or characteristics.

Veeam ONE v13 includes integration with Veeam Threat Hunter and Indicators of Compromise in Threat Center’s Malware Detections Map, Malware Detections Report, and potential infrastructure malware activity alarms. ServiceNow integration allows mapping of Veeam ONE alarm states to ServiceNow impact and urgency levels.

AI-Powered Assistance

The platform includes Veeam Intelligence, an AI chatbot integrated into the management interface. Users can identify anomalies, pinpoint clean restore point information, and run malware scans all within the chat.

This conversational interface offers an alternative to navigating multiple screens and reports when responding to incidents. During a ransomware event, administrators can use the chatbot to identify the last known clean backup, assess data integrity across multiple workloads, or initiate malware scans, all through natural language queries.

Strategic Direction and Market Positioning

Veeam sees v13 as foundational technology for a larger vision. Eswaran described the release as “laying the technical foundation for Veeam’s next chapter: a unified data and AI command platform that brings protection, security, governance, and AI trust together in one intelligent experience.”

The statement indicates Veeam’s push beyond traditional data protection toward data governance, security operations, and the protection of AI workloads. Organizations running AI systems need protection and recovery capabilities for training data, models, and inference results.

Looking Forward

Version 13 isn’t just another update. It responds to major changes in how enterprises run their IT infrastructure and to the threats they face. The platform combines threat detection, AI-powered analysis, support for multiple hypervisors, and easier deployment. It’s built to handle what organizations are dealing with now and what they’ll likely face soon.

Ransomware groups keep getting better at what they do, and companies have more infrastructure options than ever. They need backup systems that can keep up without forcing them to start from scratch. Veeam is betting on a combination of security intelligence, support for different platforms, and keeping things simple to use. Good data protection must be both powerful and practical.

The platform works with multiple vendors through open APIs, which matters because more companies are worried about getting locked into one ecosystem or being forced to migrate. Organizations are juggling hypervisor changes, cloud migrations, and new AI projects while trying to stop attacks. V13 gives them options without making flexibility and protection mutually exclusive.

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#Veeam #Data #Platform #v13 #Redefining #Data #Resilience #Era

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On Thursday morning, Meta published an ad to its official Instagram account with the message that artificial intelligence will not “make us less connected” or “leave us behind.” It was set to the 1972 David Bowie track “Five Years,” which is about, among other things, the end of the world.

“Call us optimists, call us dreamers, call us whatever the hell you want—but we’re betting on people, and we like those odds,” the narrator says, as a toddler plays with a butterfly, two parents laugh with their infant, and Jalen Brunson waves at the Knicks Championship Parade. (The ad also takes special care to highlight use cases for its controversial smart glasses that are not, say, harassing women while surreptitiously recording them.)

The snippet of “Five Years” used in the ad includes the following lyrics:

I heard telephones, opera house, favorite melodies

I saw boys, toys, electric irons and TVs

My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare

I had to cram so many things to store everything in there

And all the fat, skinny people

And all the tall, short people

And all the nobody people

And all the somebody people

I never thought I’d need so many people

Perhaps understandably, it skips other parts of the song, including the opening:

News had just come over
We had five years left to cry in
News guy wept and told us
Earth was really dying

When reached for comment, Meta spokesperson Francis Brennan said he “would like to highlight what David Bowie himself said about ‘Five Years’ and its meaning: having optimism for the future.” Brennan sent along a 1972 quote about the song that he sourced to BowieBible.com.

“People are so incredibly serious and scared of the future that I would wish to turn the feeling the other way, into a wave of optimism,” reads the quote, which is itself sourced from NME Magazine. “If one can take the micky out of the future, and what it is going to be like … It’s going to be unbelievably technological.”

Nevertheless, BowieBible.com also notes that the song “speaks of a dystopian nightmare in which Earth enters its final five years, for reasons undisclosed, and the ensuing panic, violence, and attempts at redemption.”

BowieBible.com also quotes from a 2018 interview with drummer Mick Woodmansey: “Well, we chatted about it, and we knew it was about the end of the world and pretty depressing,” Woodmansey said of the song. “I remember when we recorded it, he was actually in tears. He was doing the vocal and he was actually crying.”

According to Jeremy D. Larson, the deputy director of Condé Nast sister publication Pitchfork, taking songs out of context for commercials is a time-honored tradition. He points to a Carnival Cruise ad that uses an Iggy Pop song about heroin addiction. (He also says that since Warner Chappell Music owns Bowie’s catalog, they are the ones with discretion over where his songs end up.)

#Metas #FeelGood #Song #Worlddavid bowie,meta,smart glasses,ads,apocalypse,artificial intelligence">Meta’s New Feel-Good AI Ad Uses a Song About the World EndingOn Thursday morning, Meta published an ad to its official Instagram account with the message that artificial intelligence will not “make us less connected” or “leave us behind.” It was set to the 1972 David Bowie track “Five Years,” which is about, among other things, the end of the world.“Call us optimists, call us dreamers, call us whatever the hell you want—but we’re betting on people, and we like those odds,” the narrator says, as a toddler plays with a butterfly, two parents laugh with their infant, and Jalen Brunson waves at the Knicks Championship Parade. (The ad also takes special care to highlight use cases for its controversial smart glasses that are not, say, harassing women while surreptitiously recording them.)The snippet of “Five Years” used in the ad includes the following lyrics:I heard telephones, opera house, favorite melodiesI saw boys, toys, electric irons and TVsMy brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spareI had to cram so many things to store everything in thereAnd all the fat, skinny peopleAnd all the tall, short peopleAnd all the nobody peopleAnd all the somebody peopleI never thought I’d need so many peoplePerhaps understandably, it skips other parts of the song, including the opening:News had just come overWe had five years left to cry inNews guy wept and told usEarth was really dyingWhen reached for comment, Meta spokesperson Francis Brennan said he “would like to highlight what David Bowie himself said about ‘Five Years’ and its meaning: having optimism for the future.” Brennan sent along a 1972 quote about the song that he sourced to BowieBible.com.“People are so incredibly serious and scared of the future that I would wish to turn the feeling the other way, into a wave of optimism,” reads the quote, which is itself sourced from NME Magazine. “If one can take the micky out of the future, and what it is going to be like … It’s going to be unbelievably technological.”Nevertheless, BowieBible.com also notes that the song “speaks of a dystopian nightmare in which Earth enters its final five years, for reasons undisclosed, and the ensuing panic, violence, and attempts at redemption.”BowieBible.com also quotes from a 2018 interview with drummer Mick Woodmansey: “Well, we chatted about it, and we knew it was about the end of the world and pretty depressing,” Woodmansey said of the song. “I remember when we recorded it, he was actually in tears. He was doing the vocal and he was actually crying.”According to Jeremy D. Larson, the deputy director of Condé Nast sister publication Pitchfork, taking songs out of context for commercials is a time-honored tradition. He points to a Carnival Cruise ad that uses an Iggy Pop song about heroin addiction. (He also says that since Warner Chappell Music owns Bowie’s catalog, they are the ones with discretion over where his songs end up.)#Metas #FeelGood #Song #Worlddavid bowie,meta,smart glasses,ads,apocalypse,artificial intelligence

artificial intelligence will not “make us less connected” or “leave us behind.” It was set to the 1972 David Bowie track “Five Years,” which is about, among other things, the end of the world.

“Call us optimists, call us dreamers, call us whatever the hell you want—but we’re betting on people, and we like those odds,” the narrator says, as a toddler plays with a butterfly, two parents laugh with their infant, and Jalen Brunson waves at the Knicks Championship Parade. (The ad also takes special care to highlight use cases for its controversial smart glasses that are not, say, harassing women while surreptitiously recording them.)

The snippet of “Five Years” used in the ad includes the following lyrics:

I heard telephones, opera house, favorite melodies

I saw boys, toys, electric irons and TVs

My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare

I had to cram so many things to store everything in there

And all the fat, skinny people

And all the tall, short people

And all the nobody people

And all the somebody people

I never thought I’d need so many people

Perhaps understandably, it skips other parts of the song, including the opening:

News had just come over
We had five years left to cry in
News guy wept and told us
Earth was really dying

When reached for comment, Meta spokesperson Francis Brennan said he “would like to highlight what David Bowie himself said about ‘Five Years’ and its meaning: having optimism for the future.” Brennan sent along a 1972 quote about the song that he sourced to BowieBible.com.

“People are so incredibly serious and scared of the future that I would wish to turn the feeling the other way, into a wave of optimism,” reads the quote, which is itself sourced from NME Magazine. “If one can take the micky out of the future, and what it is going to be like … It’s going to be unbelievably technological.”

Nevertheless, BowieBible.com also notes that the song “speaks of a dystopian nightmare in which Earth enters its final five years, for reasons undisclosed, and the ensuing panic, violence, and attempts at redemption.”

BowieBible.com also quotes from a 2018 interview with drummer Mick Woodmansey: “Well, we chatted about it, and we knew it was about the end of the world and pretty depressing,” Woodmansey said of the song. “I remember when we recorded it, he was actually in tears. He was doing the vocal and he was actually crying.”

According to Jeremy D. Larson, the deputy director of Condé Nast sister publication Pitchfork, taking songs out of context for commercials is a time-honored tradition. He points to a Carnival Cruise ad that uses an Iggy Pop song about heroin addiction. (He also says that since Warner Chappell Music owns Bowie’s catalog, they are the ones with discretion over where his songs end up.)

#Metas #FeelGood #Song #Worlddavid bowie,meta,smart glasses,ads,apocalypse,artificial intelligence">Meta’s New Feel-Good AI Ad Uses a Song About the World Ending

On Thursday morning, Meta published an ad to its official Instagram account with the message that artificial intelligence will not “make us less connected” or “leave us behind.” It was set to the 1972 David Bowie track “Five Years,” which is about, among other things, the end of the world.

“Call us optimists, call us dreamers, call us whatever the hell you want—but we’re betting on people, and we like those odds,” the narrator says, as a toddler plays with a butterfly, two parents laugh with their infant, and Jalen Brunson waves at the Knicks Championship Parade. (The ad also takes special care to highlight use cases for its controversial smart glasses that are not, say, harassing women while surreptitiously recording them.)

The snippet of “Five Years” used in the ad includes the following lyrics:

I heard telephones, opera house, favorite melodies

I saw boys, toys, electric irons and TVs

My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare

I had to cram so many things to store everything in there

And all the fat, skinny people

And all the tall, short people

And all the nobody people

And all the somebody people

I never thought I’d need so many people

Perhaps understandably, it skips other parts of the song, including the opening:

News had just come over
We had five years left to cry in
News guy wept and told us
Earth was really dying

When reached for comment, Meta spokesperson Francis Brennan said he “would like to highlight what David Bowie himself said about ‘Five Years’ and its meaning: having optimism for the future.” Brennan sent along a 1972 quote about the song that he sourced to BowieBible.com.

“People are so incredibly serious and scared of the future that I would wish to turn the feeling the other way, into a wave of optimism,” reads the quote, which is itself sourced from NME Magazine. “If one can take the micky out of the future, and what it is going to be like … It’s going to be unbelievably technological.”

Nevertheless, BowieBible.com also notes that the song “speaks of a dystopian nightmare in which Earth enters its final five years, for reasons undisclosed, and the ensuing panic, violence, and attempts at redemption.”

BowieBible.com also quotes from a 2018 interview with drummer Mick Woodmansey: “Well, we chatted about it, and we knew it was about the end of the world and pretty depressing,” Woodmansey said of the song. “I remember when we recorded it, he was actually in tears. He was doing the vocal and he was actually crying.”

According to Jeremy D. Larson, the deputy director of Condé Nast sister publication Pitchfork, taking songs out of context for commercials is a time-honored tradition. He points to a Carnival Cruise ad that uses an Iggy Pop song about heroin addiction. (He also says that since Warner Chappell Music owns Bowie’s catalog, they are the ones with discretion over where his songs end up.)

#Metas #FeelGood #Song #Worlddavid bowie,meta,smart glasses,ads,apocalypse,artificial intelligence

Apple just launched the public iOS 27 beta 2, mostly centered around small quality-of-life updates.

The iOS 27 beta 2, which should be identical to the fourth developer beta released earlier this week, isn’t as momentous as the first beta was. That one brought over the bulk of iOS 27’s new features, including the Siri AI beta experience, while the second beta seems more focused on making everything the first beta introduced work a little better.

Still, there are some new things to try. If you want to check them out, read our guide for how to install public betas first. As always, make sure you create a fresh device backup ahead of time.

SEE ALSO: Apple Store app will soon get an AI shopping assistant

Keep your Apple TV library stocked with fresh downloads

If you love Apple TV shows like Widow’s Bay, and you find yourself away from reliable internet access regularly (in other words, you travel a lot), there’s a new option in the Apple TV app to enable automatic downloads. This will, as its name suggests, automatically download the next two episodes in any show in your “Continue Watching” queue, and then delete them when you’re finished watching.

This might take up some space in your device storage, so keep that in mind, but it’ll also ensure you have something to watch when the airplane WiFi isn’t working.

New and enhanced Siri voices

Siri AI is the headliner for all of iOS 27, and the new public beta added a couple of things to try out with regards to voices.

Specifically, you can now mess with the Pace and Expressivity sliders for two American-accented Siri voices to give you an idea of how much customization each voice will have once Siri AI is fully baked and iOS 27 is really out. If you want to do this with other Siri voices, you’ll have to wait, and the sliders are apparently shown as “coming soon” for every other option.

Speaking of other options, the new update apparently adds some new voices and kinds of English accents to try out. You won’t be able to customize those yet, but they might be worth experimenting with anyway.

Increased AirPods control in Control Center

Lastly, as far as new additions go, Apple made a small but meaningful change to Control Center. If you own a pair of AirPods Pro and use the Adaptive Audio feature, you can access the slider to adjust how much outside audio the AirPods allow in within Control Center now. This isn’t massive, obviously, but it will save time since you won’t have to go into the AirPods settings menu anymore.

As a bonus, try Siri AI

The new iOS 27 public beta 2 doesn’t introduce any major changes to Siri AI beyond what we’ve seen before, but as a general reminder, the enhanced version of Siri is available to try in the iOS 27 beta, as long as you have an iPhone 15 Pro or newer.

Once you have the iOS 27 beta installed, what you’ll need to do is ensure Apple Intelligence is turned on in your Settings menu. After that, follow these steps:

  1. Go to Settings

  2. Tap Siri

  3. Tap “Try the new Siri (beta)”

This will put you on a waitlist to try Siri AI. No, you won’t be able to try it right away, but it shouldn’t take more than five to 10 days at the absolute maximum to get approved.

#iOS #public #beta #upgrades">3 iOS 27 public beta 2 upgrades you can try right now Apple just launched the public iOS 27 beta 2, mostly centered around small quality-of-life updates.The iOS 27 beta 2, which should be identical to the fourth developer beta released earlier this week, isn’t as momentous as the first beta was. That one brought over the bulk of iOS 27’s new features, including the Siri AI beta experience, while the second beta seems more focused on making everything the first beta introduced work a little better. Still, there are some new things to try. If you want to check them out, read our guide for how to install public betas first. As always, make sure you create a fresh device backup ahead of time. SEE ALSO: Apple Store app will soon get an AI shopping assistant Keep your Apple TV library stocked with fresh downloads If you love Apple TV shows like Widow’s Bay, and you find yourself away from reliable internet access regularly (in other words, you travel a lot), there’s a new option in the Apple TV app to enable automatic downloads. This will, as its name suggests, automatically download the next two episodes in any show in your “Continue Watching” queue, and then delete them when you’re finished watching. This might take up some space in your device storage, so keep that in mind, but it’ll also ensure you have something to watch when the airplane WiFi isn’t working. Mashable Light Speed New and enhanced Siri voicesSiri AI is the headliner for all of iOS 27, and the new public beta added a couple of things to try out with regards to voices.Specifically, you can now mess with the Pace and Expressivity sliders for two American-accented Siri voices to give you an idea of how much customization each voice will have once Siri AI is fully baked and iOS 27 is really out. If you want to do this with other Siri voices, you’ll have to wait, and the sliders are apparently shown as “coming soon” for every other option.Speaking of other options, the new update apparently adds some new voices and kinds of English accents to try out. You won’t be able to customize those yet, but they might be worth experimenting with anyway.Increased AirPods control in Control CenterLastly, as far as new additions go, Apple made a small but meaningful change to Control Center. If you own a pair of AirPods Pro and use the Adaptive Audio feature, you can access the slider to adjust how much outside audio the AirPods allow in within Control Center now. This isn’t massive, obviously, but it will save time since you won’t have to go into the AirPods settings menu anymore. As a bonus, try Siri AIThe new iOS 27 public beta 2 doesn’t introduce any major changes to Siri AI beyond what we’ve seen before, but as a general reminder, the enhanced version of Siri is available to try in the iOS 27 beta, as long as you have an iPhone 15 Pro or newer.Once you have the iOS 27 beta installed, what you’ll need to do is ensure Apple Intelligence is turned on in your Settings menu. After that, follow these steps:Go to SettingsTap SiriTap “Try the new Siri (beta)”This will put you on a waitlist to try Siri AI. No, you won’t be able to try it right away, but it shouldn’t take more than five to 10 days at the absolute maximum to get approved. #iOS #public #beta #upgrades

Apple just launched the public iOS 27 beta 2, mostly centered around small quality-of-life updates.

The iOS 27 beta 2, which should be identical to the fourth developer beta released earlier this week, isn’t as momentous as the first beta was. That one brought over the bulk of iOS 27’s new features, including the Siri AI beta experience, while the second beta seems more focused on making everything the first beta introduced work a little better.

Still, there are some new things to try. If you want to check them out, read our guide for how to install public betas first. As always, make sure you create a fresh device backup ahead of time.

SEE ALSO: Apple Store app will soon get an AI shopping assistant

Keep your Apple TV library stocked with fresh downloads

If you love Apple TV shows like Widow’s Bay, and you find yourself away from reliable internet access regularly (in other words, you travel a lot), there’s a new option in the Apple TV app to enable automatic downloads. This will, as its name suggests, automatically download the next two episodes in any show in your “Continue Watching” queue, and then delete them when you’re finished watching.

This might take up some space in your device storage, so keep that in mind, but it’ll also ensure you have something to watch when the airplane WiFi isn’t working.

New and enhanced Siri voices

Siri AI is the headliner for all of iOS 27, and the new public beta added a couple of things to try out with regards to voices.

Specifically, you can now mess with the Pace and Expressivity sliders for two American-accented Siri voices to give you an idea of how much customization each voice will have once Siri AI is fully baked and iOS 27 is really out. If you want to do this with other Siri voices, you’ll have to wait, and the sliders are apparently shown as “coming soon” for every other option.

Speaking of other options, the new update apparently adds some new voices and kinds of English accents to try out. You won’t be able to customize those yet, but they might be worth experimenting with anyway.

Increased AirPods control in Control Center

Lastly, as far as new additions go, Apple made a small but meaningful change to Control Center. If you own a pair of AirPods Pro and use the Adaptive Audio feature, you can access the slider to adjust how much outside audio the AirPods allow in within Control Center now. This isn’t massive, obviously, but it will save time since you won’t have to go into the AirPods settings menu anymore.

As a bonus, try Siri AI

The new iOS 27 public beta 2 doesn’t introduce any major changes to Siri AI beyond what we’ve seen before, but as a general reminder, the enhanced version of Siri is available to try in the iOS 27 beta, as long as you have an iPhone 15 Pro or newer.

Once you have the iOS 27 beta installed, what you’ll need to do is ensure Apple Intelligence is turned on in your Settings menu. After that, follow these steps:

  1. Go to Settings

  2. Tap Siri

  3. Tap “Try the new Siri (beta)”

This will put you on a waitlist to try Siri AI. No, you won’t be able to try it right away, but it shouldn’t take more than five to 10 days at the absolute maximum to get approved.

#iOS #public #beta #upgrades">3 iOS 27 public beta 2 upgrades you can try right now

Apple just launched the public iOS 27 beta 2, mostly centered around small quality-of-life updates.

The iOS 27 beta 2, which should be identical to the fourth developer beta released earlier this week, isn’t as momentous as the first beta was. That one brought over the bulk of iOS 27’s new features, including the Siri AI beta experience, while the second beta seems more focused on making everything the first beta introduced work a little better.

Still, there are some new things to try. If you want to check them out, read our guide for how to install public betas first. As always, make sure you create a fresh device backup ahead of time.

SEE ALSO: Apple Store app will soon get an AI shopping assistant

Keep your Apple TV library stocked with fresh downloads

If you love Apple TV shows like Widow’s Bay, and you find yourself away from reliable internet access regularly (in other words, you travel a lot), there’s a new option in the Apple TV app to enable automatic downloads. This will, as its name suggests, automatically download the next two episodes in any show in your “Continue Watching” queue, and then delete them when you’re finished watching.

This might take up some space in your device storage, so keep that in mind, but it’ll also ensure you have something to watch when the airplane WiFi isn’t working.

New and enhanced Siri voices

Siri AI is the headliner for all of iOS 27, and the new public beta added a couple of things to try out with regards to voices.

Specifically, you can now mess with the Pace and Expressivity sliders for two American-accented Siri voices to give you an idea of how much customization each voice will have once Siri AI is fully baked and iOS 27 is really out. If you want to do this with other Siri voices, you’ll have to wait, and the sliders are apparently shown as “coming soon” for every other option.

Speaking of other options, the new update apparently adds some new voices and kinds of English accents to try out. You won’t be able to customize those yet, but they might be worth experimenting with anyway.

Increased AirPods control in Control Center

Lastly, as far as new additions go, Apple made a small but meaningful change to Control Center. If you own a pair of AirPods Pro and use the Adaptive Audio feature, you can access the slider to adjust how much outside audio the AirPods allow in within Control Center now. This isn’t massive, obviously, but it will save time since you won’t have to go into the AirPods settings menu anymore.

As a bonus, try Siri AI

The new iOS 27 public beta 2 doesn’t introduce any major changes to Siri AI beyond what we’ve seen before, but as a general reminder, the enhanced version of Siri is available to try in the iOS 27 beta, as long as you have an iPhone 15 Pro or newer.

Once you have the iOS 27 beta installed, what you’ll need to do is ensure Apple Intelligence is turned on in your Settings menu. After that, follow these steps:

  1. Go to Settings

  2. Tap Siri

  3. Tap “Try the new Siri (beta)”

This will put you on a waitlist to try Siri AI. No, you won’t be able to try it right away, but it shouldn’t take more than five to 10 days at the absolute maximum to get approved.

#iOS #public #beta #upgrades

Imagine you are the parent of an inquisitive seven-year-old who loves his family, playing baseball, and hanging out with his friends. It’s the life you’ve always wanted. And then the worst thing that ever could happen happens: A freak accident takes your son away. But as it turns out, you don’t have to live with the grief for long, because now there’s an AI company that can bring your kid back in the form of a robotic double that looks indistinguishable from a human.

This is the world that acclaimed director Hirokazu Kore-eda, who won the Palme d’Or for his 2018 feature Shoplifters, has created with his latest sci-fi drama, Sheep in the Box. It’s the type of story that might have seemed far-fetched a few years ago but feels less so as AI encroaches on every aspect of our lives. This is a tension Kore-eda is acutely aware of — so much so that he sat down with a robotics expert while he was writing the script to get some answers of his own. They told him that because of the robots overheating, “we would sooner have clones of humans than we would humanoid robots,” Kore-eda recounted.

But don’t let the robots fool you into thinking this isn’t a human film. Grief work is a common theme in Kore-eda’s vast filmography. Though it might be set in a near future, the core of Sheep in the Box is still a family learning how to move through their loss. And if we give ourselves permission to suspend disbelief and go on this journey, we might see ourselves in it too.

The Verge sat down with Hirokazu Kore-eda at Neon’s offices days before Sheep in the Box’s US debut. Speaking through an interpreter, Kore-eda tells all about writing and directing this picture, including what happened when he fed the script through ChatGPT.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

You’ve made so many films about grief. What have you learned about processing grief through making all this work?

What have I learned about grief? I think it’s that everyone experiences it differently. It’s very diverse. And when I made my first film, Maborosi, that was exactly about grief. And that was around the time that I read books by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, books on grief work. And I learned about the process of grief work and used that as a kind of framework for the film. However, it’s not as if grief linearly follows a specific process. So I would say that I’ve learned that it varies from person to person.

In Sheep in the Box, memories become information. There was something about that that felt a little unsettling or cold for me. How did it fit for you? How did it work for you?

I’m not sure I’ve been able to arrive at this fact through this film, but as I was filming, one thing that I was thinking about was that the memories that are input into the humanoid Kakeru are preselected by his parents. So it’s not really the same as memory as we experience it. It’s preselected data. I think that once memory is severed from our physical form, what we experience inside as memory, it’s not the same. It’s not the same when it’s input as data. It’s not the same as the things that we recall that stir up the emotions that make us human.

There’s so much noise about AI in our world right now. What made this theme feel so urgent for you to tackle?

In Japan, there’s a tremendous increase in various initiatives involving AI. When you get in the taxi, there’s a screen that’s constantly telling you of all these commercials for raising your rate of productivity through AI. But I was interested in the rise of AI used toward a kind of grief work. Just a few years ago in Japan, a famous singer who had died was re-created through AI and then was singing a new song. I also heard about in Korea a young girl who had passed away being re-created through AI for processing the grief of the parents.

And then in the film, what started as a seed for the film was the businesses that are being generated in places like China where AI is being used to re-create people who have passed. I wouldn’t call myself an expert on grief, but as a person who’s made many films around grief, one thing that I thought about was how the shape of grief would change through this use of AI in both good and bad ways. That’s what drew me to this idea of how new technologies impact this married couple who is trying to restart or redo their family life through the use of AI.

One of the big conversations around AI is about the resources that it uses. I thought it was really interesting that the humanoids don’t drink water or eat food. Can you talk about that decision?

You thought it was kind of ironic, right?

I actually spoke to an expert on these types of technologies and when I talked to them, they were saying that the big obstacle to creating these humanoid robots would be the fact that they generate so much heat in having to move very smoothly, in processing information, and that there would be no way to release or process that heat.

In order for me to write this story, I needed to clear that obstacle of the fact that they would be generating so much heat that perhaps it wouldn’t even be possible. So I decided to shelve that one issue for the sake of the story. They don’t consume resources. It’s more of a means for them to become independent, that they don’t depend on these resources in order to live.

A still from Sheep in the Box

Neon

Because it’s set in the near future, I had a hard time discerning between fiction and a possible reality. When it was fiction, I loved it. But when it was reality, I was a little afraid. What is it for you?

It’s difficult to say, and I don’t want to talk about it in a roundabout way, but I spoke to a robotics expert and I showed them the outline of this story and they said, “Well, this isn’t possible. There’s no way that we’ll make humanoid robots because of the difference in the physicality and the construction of just bodies that humans have internal organs and bone structure inside whereas robots are built from the outside.”

So that there would be no way that we could achieve humanlike movements or that you could touch a humanoid robot and they would feel like a human. But if we were to put ethics aside, they said that we would sooner have clones of humans than we would humanoid robots. And that sounded way scarier to me.

A robot is a robot no matter what way you think about it. But I think that as long as we don’t live in a world full of clones, there’s still a sense of hope there. We’re already in an era where we can clone our pets. I think that’s already happening. So when you think about it from an ethical standpoint, even nations are dealing with it in this ethical way in different ways. So now that if cloning is possible, the way that we manipulate life is becoming more advanced and strange. And that to me is a much scarier prospect.

This film has a lot of blue in it, especially with the wardrobe. That felt intentional.

As far as the costumes and the use of blue, that might just be the decision of Sachiko Ito, who did the costuming. One of the concepts that I brought up to her was that I wanted to use earth tones for the people, the leads in the film. And also one of her concerns was that 10 years into the future, climate change would mean that we live in a hotter climate. So there were a lot of things around thinking through the materials and the construction of the clothing, that perhaps there would be fewer buttons and drawstrings and zippers and fasteners and things like this.

I’m really curious to hear you talk about how AI has permeated your daily life.

I don’t think I’ve incorporated AI intentionally outside of the use of translation AI. I think that it has become so skillful that I often use AI in order to translate my Japanese into English in order to send messages and communicate.

This came up in the Q&A yesterday at Japan Society. I described how it was my first time using ChatGPT in a way where I fed it the script for this film and said, “Give me feedback.” And we did a few exchanges between myself and AI and every time I would make edits to the script, they would say that it’s great. They said, “You’re going to get into Cannes.” But first ChatGPT said, “I think you’ll get into the Un Certain Regard section.” And I said, “Only Un Certain Regard?” Then my producer said, “Well, the director of this film is a person named Hirokazu Kore-eda.” It said, “Well, in that case, you’re getting into the competition.”

And I did get into the competition, so AI is not wrong, but I think that any person could tell me as much. So I don’t think that I found any utility in that exchange. And the fact that there’s no humanness in the background to this exchange is what makes it mostly unattractive to me.

I think that the more that you train an AI, for instance, on a person who is maybe known for giving romantic advice, then that advice also becomes more normalized. So I think that I’m not personally sold on it and I don’t find that AI is all that useful to me. What I find more problematic is that human beings are becoming so geared towards a kind of productivity mindset that this is even affecting activities on set for filmmaking. I think that safety is important, but for instance, we’re no longer filming driving scenes on the road. We’re doing it in studios by compositing backgrounds. I think that stunt work is also going to maybe fall to the side and then slowly be subsumed by AI or VFX.

It’s really not about us excluding AI from our day to day. Already we’re using things that we would have used our imagination for and then offloading that onto computers. For instance, with this film, I shot a driving scene at a studio and we composited the background.

But I don’t find it all that interesting. I’m going to stop writing scenes that require this type of VFX or compositing because I think that the more that we are being subsumed by productivity, it’s actually the antithesis of creativity.

Sheep in the Box is in select theaters Friday, July 24.

Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.
#scifi #movie #imagines #isnt #dystopianColumn,Entertainment,Film,Q&A">The sci-fi movie that imagines AI isn’t so dystopian after allImagine you are the parent of an inquisitive seven-year-old who loves his family, playing baseball, and hanging out with his friends. It’s the life you’ve always wanted. And then the worst thing that ever could happen happens: A freak accident takes your son away. But as it turns out, you don’t have to live with the grief for long, because now there’s an AI company that can bring your kid back in the form of a robotic double that looks indistinguishable from a human.This is the world that acclaimed director Hirokazu Kore-eda, who won the Palme d’Or for his 2018 feature Shoplifters, has created with his latest sci-fi drama, Sheep in the Box. It’s the type of story that might have seemed far-fetched a few years ago but feels less so as AI encroaches on every aspect of our lives. This is a tension Kore-eda is acutely aware of — so much so that he sat down with a robotics expert while he was writing the script to get some answers of his own. They told him that because of the robots overheating, “we would sooner have clones of humans than we would humanoid robots,” Kore-eda recounted.But don’t let the robots fool you into thinking this isn’t a human film. Grief work is a common theme in Kore-eda’s vast filmography. Though it might be set in a near future, the core of Sheep in the Box is still a family learning how to move through their loss. And if we give ourselves permission to suspend disbelief and go on this journey, we might see ourselves in it too.The Verge sat down with Hirokazu Kore-eda at Neon’s offices days before Sheep in the Box’s US debut. Speaking through an interpreter, Kore-eda tells all about writing and directing this picture, including what happened when he fed the script through ChatGPT.Robyn KannerThis interview has been edited and condensed.You’ve made so many films about grief. What have you learned about processing grief through making all this work?What have I learned about grief? I think it’s that everyone experiences it differently. It’s very diverse. And when I made my first film, Maborosi, that was exactly about grief. And that was around the time that I read books by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, books on grief work. And I learned about the process of grief work and used that as a kind of framework for the film. However, it’s not as if grief linearly follows a specific process. So I would say that I’ve learned that it varies from person to person.In Sheep in the Box, memories become information. There was something about that that felt a little unsettling or cold for me. How did it fit for you? How did it work for you?I’m not sure I’ve been able to arrive at this fact through this film, but as I was filming, one thing that I was thinking about was that the memories that are input into the humanoid Kakeru are preselected by his parents. So it’s not really the same as memory as we experience it. It’s preselected data. I think that once memory is severed from our physical form, what we experience inside as memory, it’s not the same. It’s not the same when it’s input as data. It’s not the same as the things that we recall that stir up the emotions that make us human.There’s so much noise about AI in our world right now. What made this theme feel so urgent for you to tackle?In Japan, there’s a tremendous increase in various initiatives involving AI. When you get in the taxi, there’s a screen that’s constantly telling you of all these commercials for raising your rate of productivity through AI. But I was interested in the rise of AI used toward a kind of grief work. Just a few years ago in Japan, a famous singer who had died was re-created through AI and then was singing a new song. I also heard about in Korea a young girl who had passed away being re-created through AI for processing the grief of the parents.And then in the film, what started as a seed for the film was the businesses that are being generated in places like China where AI is being used to re-create people who have passed. I wouldn’t call myself an expert on grief, but as a person who’s made many films around grief, one thing that I thought about was how the shape of grief would change through this use of AI in both good and bad ways. That’s what drew me to this idea of how new technologies impact this married couple who is trying to restart or redo their family life through the use of AI.One of the big conversations around AI is about the resources that it uses. I thought it was really interesting that the humanoids don’t drink water or eat food. Can you talk about that decision?You thought it was kind of ironic, right?I actually spoke to an expert on these types of technologies and when I talked to them, they were saying that the big obstacle to creating these humanoid robots would be the fact that they generate so much heat in having to move very smoothly, in processing information, and that there would be no way to release or process that heat.In order for me to write this story, I needed to clear that obstacle of the fact that they would be generating so much heat that perhaps it wouldn’t even be possible. So I decided to shelve that one issue for the sake of the story. They don’t consume resources. It’s more of a means for them to become independent, that they don’t depend on these resources in order to live.NeonBecause it’s set in the near future, I had a hard time discerning between fiction and a possible reality. When it was fiction, I loved it. But when it was reality, I was a little afraid. What is it for you?It’s difficult to say, and I don’t want to talk about it in a roundabout way, but I spoke to a robotics expert and I showed them the outline of this story and they said, “Well, this isn’t possible. There’s no way that we’ll make humanoid robots because of the difference in the physicality and the construction of just bodies that humans have internal organs and bone structure inside whereas robots are built from the outside.”So that there would be no way that we could achieve humanlike movements or that you could touch a humanoid robot and they would feel like a human. But if we were to put ethics aside, they said that we would sooner have clones of humans than we would humanoid robots. And that sounded way scarier to me.A robot is a robot no matter what way you think about it. But I think that as long as we don’t live in a world full of clones, there’s still a sense of hope there. We’re already in an era where we can clone our pets. I think that’s already happening. So when you think about it from an ethical standpoint, even nations are dealing with it in this ethical way in different ways. So now that if cloning is possible, the way that we manipulate life is becoming more advanced and strange. And that to me is a much scarier prospect.This film has a lot of blue in it, especially with the wardrobe. That felt intentional.As far as the costumes and the use of blue, that might just be the decision of Sachiko Ito, who did the costuming. One of the concepts that I brought up to her was that I wanted to use earth tones for the people, the leads in the film. And also one of her concerns was that 10 years into the future, climate change would mean that we live in a hotter climate. So there were a lot of things around thinking through the materials and the construction of the clothing, that perhaps there would be fewer buttons and drawstrings and zippers and fasteners and things like this.I’m really curious to hear you talk about how AI has permeated your daily life.I don’t think I’ve incorporated AI intentionally outside of the use of translation AI. I think that it has become so skillful that I often use AI in order to translate my Japanese into English in order to send messages and communicate.This came up in the Q&A yesterday at Japan Society. I described how it was my first time using ChatGPT in a way where I fed it the script for this film and said, “Give me feedback.” And we did a few exchanges between myself and AI and every time I would make edits to the script, they would say that it’s great. They said, “You’re going to get into Cannes.” But first ChatGPT said, “I think you’ll get into the Un Certain Regard section.” And I said, “Only Un Certain Regard?” Then my producer said, “Well, the director of this film is a person named Hirokazu Kore-eda.” It said, “Well, in that case, you’re getting into the competition.”And I did get into the competition, so AI is not wrong, but I think that any person could tell me as much. So I don’t think that I found any utility in that exchange. And the fact that there’s no humanness in the background to this exchange is what makes it mostly unattractive to me.I think that the more that you train an AI, for instance, on a person who is maybe known for giving romantic advice, then that advice also becomes more normalized. So I think that I’m not personally sold on it and I don’t find that AI is all that useful to me. What I find more problematic is that human beings are becoming so geared towards a kind of productivity mindset that this is even affecting activities on set for filmmaking. I think that safety is important, but for instance, we’re no longer filming driving scenes on the road. We’re doing it in studios by compositing backgrounds. I think that stunt work is also going to maybe fall to the side and then slowly be subsumed by AI or VFX.It’s really not about us excluding AI from our day to day. Already we’re using things that we would have used our imagination for and then offloading that onto computers. For instance, with this film, I shot a driving scene at a studio and we composited the background.But I don’t find it all that interesting. I’m going to stop writing scenes that require this type of VFX or compositing because I think that the more that we are being subsumed by productivity, it’s actually the antithesis of creativity.Sheep in the Box is in select theaters Friday, July 24.Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Robyn KannerCloseRobyn KannerPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Robyn KannerColumnCloseColumnPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All ColumnEntertainmentCloseEntertainmentPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All EntertainmentFilmCloseFilmPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All FilmQ&ACloseQ&APosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All Q&A#scifi #movie #imagines #isnt #dystopianColumn,Entertainment,Film,Q&A

This interview has been edited and condensed.

You’ve made so many films about grief. What have you learned about processing grief through making all this work?

What have I learned about grief? I think it’s that everyone experiences it differently. It’s very diverse. And when I made my first film, Maborosi, that was exactly about grief. And that was around the time that I read books by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, books on grief work. And I learned about the process of grief work and used that as a kind of framework for the film. However, it’s not as if grief linearly follows a specific process. So I would say that I’ve learned that it varies from person to person.

In Sheep in the Box, memories become information. There was something about that that felt a little unsettling or cold for me. How did it fit for you? How did it work for you?

I’m not sure I’ve been able to arrive at this fact through this film, but as I was filming, one thing that I was thinking about was that the memories that are input into the humanoid Kakeru are preselected by his parents. So it’s not really the same as memory as we experience it. It’s preselected data. I think that once memory is severed from our physical form, what we experience inside as memory, it’s not the same. It’s not the same when it’s input as data. It’s not the same as the things that we recall that stir up the emotions that make us human.

There’s so much noise about AI in our world right now. What made this theme feel so urgent for you to tackle?

In Japan, there’s a tremendous increase in various initiatives involving AI. When you get in the taxi, there’s a screen that’s constantly telling you of all these commercials for raising your rate of productivity through AI. But I was interested in the rise of AI used toward a kind of grief work. Just a few years ago in Japan, a famous singer who had died was re-created through AI and then was singing a new song. I also heard about in Korea a young girl who had passed away being re-created through AI for processing the grief of the parents.

And then in the film, what started as a seed for the film was the businesses that are being generated in places like China where AI is being used to re-create people who have passed. I wouldn’t call myself an expert on grief, but as a person who’s made many films around grief, one thing that I thought about was how the shape of grief would change through this use of AI in both good and bad ways. That’s what drew me to this idea of how new technologies impact this married couple who is trying to restart or redo their family life through the use of AI.

One of the big conversations around AI is about the resources that it uses. I thought it was really interesting that the humanoids don’t drink water or eat food. Can you talk about that decision?

You thought it was kind of ironic, right?

I actually spoke to an expert on these types of technologies and when I talked to them, they were saying that the big obstacle to creating these humanoid robots would be the fact that they generate so much heat in having to move very smoothly, in processing information, and that there would be no way to release or process that heat.

In order for me to write this story, I needed to clear that obstacle of the fact that they would be generating so much heat that perhaps it wouldn’t even be possible. So I decided to shelve that one issue for the sake of the story. They don’t consume resources. It’s more of a means for them to become independent, that they don’t depend on these resources in order to live.

A still from Sheep in the Box

Neon

Because it’s set in the near future, I had a hard time discerning between fiction and a possible reality. When it was fiction, I loved it. But when it was reality, I was a little afraid. What is it for you?

It’s difficult to say, and I don’t want to talk about it in a roundabout way, but I spoke to a robotics expert and I showed them the outline of this story and they said, “Well, this isn’t possible. There’s no way that we’ll make humanoid robots because of the difference in the physicality and the construction of just bodies that humans have internal organs and bone structure inside whereas robots are built from the outside.”

So that there would be no way that we could achieve humanlike movements or that you could touch a humanoid robot and they would feel like a human. But if we were to put ethics aside, they said that we would sooner have clones of humans than we would humanoid robots. And that sounded way scarier to me.

A robot is a robot no matter what way you think about it. But I think that as long as we don’t live in a world full of clones, there’s still a sense of hope there. We’re already in an era where we can clone our pets. I think that’s already happening. So when you think about it from an ethical standpoint, even nations are dealing with it in this ethical way in different ways. So now that if cloning is possible, the way that we manipulate life is becoming more advanced and strange. And that to me is a much scarier prospect.

This film has a lot of blue in it, especially with the wardrobe. That felt intentional.

As far as the costumes and the use of blue, that might just be the decision of Sachiko Ito, who did the costuming. One of the concepts that I brought up to her was that I wanted to use earth tones for the people, the leads in the film. And also one of her concerns was that 10 years into the future, climate change would mean that we live in a hotter climate. So there were a lot of things around thinking through the materials and the construction of the clothing, that perhaps there would be fewer buttons and drawstrings and zippers and fasteners and things like this.

I’m really curious to hear you talk about how AI has permeated your daily life.

I don’t think I’ve incorporated AI intentionally outside of the use of translation AI. I think that it has become so skillful that I often use AI in order to translate my Japanese into English in order to send messages and communicate.

This came up in the Q&A yesterday at Japan Society. I described how it was my first time using ChatGPT in a way where I fed it the script for this film and said, “Give me feedback.” And we did a few exchanges between myself and AI and every time I would make edits to the script, they would say that it’s great. They said, “You’re going to get into Cannes.” But first ChatGPT said, “I think you’ll get into the Un Certain Regard section.” And I said, “Only Un Certain Regard?” Then my producer said, “Well, the director of this film is a person named Hirokazu Kore-eda.” It said, “Well, in that case, you’re getting into the competition.”

And I did get into the competition, so AI is not wrong, but I think that any person could tell me as much. So I don’t think that I found any utility in that exchange. And the fact that there’s no humanness in the background to this exchange is what makes it mostly unattractive to me.

I think that the more that you train an AI, for instance, on a person who is maybe known for giving romantic advice, then that advice also becomes more normalized. So I think that I’m not personally sold on it and I don’t find that AI is all that useful to me. What I find more problematic is that human beings are becoming so geared towards a kind of productivity mindset that this is even affecting activities on set for filmmaking. I think that safety is important, but for instance, we’re no longer filming driving scenes on the road. We’re doing it in studios by compositing backgrounds. I think that stunt work is also going to maybe fall to the side and then slowly be subsumed by AI or VFX.

It’s really not about us excluding AI from our day to day. Already we’re using things that we would have used our imagination for and then offloading that onto computers. For instance, with this film, I shot a driving scene at a studio and we composited the background.

But I don’t find it all that interesting. I’m going to stop writing scenes that require this type of VFX or compositing because I think that the more that we are being subsumed by productivity, it’s actually the antithesis of creativity.

Sheep in the Box is in select theaters Friday, July 24.

Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.

#scifi #movie #imagines #isnt #dystopianColumn,Entertainment,Film,Q&A">The sci-fi movie that imagines AI isn’t so dystopian after all

Imagine you are the parent of an inquisitive seven-year-old who loves his family, playing baseball, and hanging out with his friends. It’s the life you’ve always wanted. And then the worst thing that ever could happen happens: A freak accident takes your son away. But as it turns out, you don’t have to live with the grief for long, because now there’s an AI company that can bring your kid back in the form of a robotic double that looks indistinguishable from a human.

This is the world that acclaimed director Hirokazu Kore-eda, who won the Palme d’Or for his 2018 feature Shoplifters, has created with his latest sci-fi drama, Sheep in the Box. It’s the type of story that might have seemed far-fetched a few years ago but feels less so as AI encroaches on every aspect of our lives. This is a tension Kore-eda is acutely aware of — so much so that he sat down with a robotics expert while he was writing the script to get some answers of his own. They told him that because of the robots overheating, “we would sooner have clones of humans than we would humanoid robots,” Kore-eda recounted.

But don’t let the robots fool you into thinking this isn’t a human film. Grief work is a common theme in Kore-eda’s vast filmography. Though it might be set in a near future, the core of Sheep in the Box is still a family learning how to move through their loss. And if we give ourselves permission to suspend disbelief and go on this journey, we might see ourselves in it too.

The Verge sat down with Hirokazu Kore-eda at Neon’s offices days before Sheep in the Box’s US debut. Speaking through an interpreter, Kore-eda tells all about writing and directing this picture, including what happened when he fed the script through ChatGPT.

Robyn Kanner

This interview has been edited and condensed.

You’ve made so many films about grief. What have you learned about processing grief through making all this work?

What have I learned about grief? I think it’s that everyone experiences it differently. It’s very diverse. And when I made my first film, Maborosi, that was exactly about grief. And that was around the time that I read books by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, books on grief work. And I learned about the process of grief work and used that as a kind of framework for the film. However, it’s not as if grief linearly follows a specific process. So I would say that I’ve learned that it varies from person to person.

In Sheep in the Box, memories become information. There was something about that that felt a little unsettling or cold for me. How did it fit for you? How did it work for you?

I’m not sure I’ve been able to arrive at this fact through this film, but as I was filming, one thing that I was thinking about was that the memories that are input into the humanoid Kakeru are preselected by his parents. So it’s not really the same as memory as we experience it. It’s preselected data. I think that once memory is severed from our physical form, what we experience inside as memory, it’s not the same. It’s not the same when it’s input as data. It’s not the same as the things that we recall that stir up the emotions that make us human.

There’s so much noise about AI in our world right now. What made this theme feel so urgent for you to tackle?

In Japan, there’s a tremendous increase in various initiatives involving AI. When you get in the taxi, there’s a screen that’s constantly telling you of all these commercials for raising your rate of productivity through AI. But I was interested in the rise of AI used toward a kind of grief work. Just a few years ago in Japan, a famous singer who had died was re-created through AI and then was singing a new song. I also heard about in Korea a young girl who had passed away being re-created through AI for processing the grief of the parents.

And then in the film, what started as a seed for the film was the businesses that are being generated in places like China where AI is being used to re-create people who have passed. I wouldn’t call myself an expert on grief, but as a person who’s made many films around grief, one thing that I thought about was how the shape of grief would change through this use of AI in both good and bad ways. That’s what drew me to this idea of how new technologies impact this married couple who is trying to restart or redo their family life through the use of AI.

One of the big conversations around AI is about the resources that it uses. I thought it was really interesting that the humanoids don’t drink water or eat food. Can you talk about that decision?

You thought it was kind of ironic, right?

I actually spoke to an expert on these types of technologies and when I talked to them, they were saying that the big obstacle to creating these humanoid robots would be the fact that they generate so much heat in having to move very smoothly, in processing information, and that there would be no way to release or process that heat.

In order for me to write this story, I needed to clear that obstacle of the fact that they would be generating so much heat that perhaps it wouldn’t even be possible. So I decided to shelve that one issue for the sake of the story. They don’t consume resources. It’s more of a means for them to become independent, that they don’t depend on these resources in order to live.

A still from Sheep in the Box

Neon

Because it’s set in the near future, I had a hard time discerning between fiction and a possible reality. When it was fiction, I loved it. But when it was reality, I was a little afraid. What is it for you?

It’s difficult to say, and I don’t want to talk about it in a roundabout way, but I spoke to a robotics expert and I showed them the outline of this story and they said, “Well, this isn’t possible. There’s no way that we’ll make humanoid robots because of the difference in the physicality and the construction of just bodies that humans have internal organs and bone structure inside whereas robots are built from the outside.”

So that there would be no way that we could achieve humanlike movements or that you could touch a humanoid robot and they would feel like a human. But if we were to put ethics aside, they said that we would sooner have clones of humans than we would humanoid robots. And that sounded way scarier to me.

A robot is a robot no matter what way you think about it. But I think that as long as we don’t live in a world full of clones, there’s still a sense of hope there. We’re already in an era where we can clone our pets. I think that’s already happening. So when you think about it from an ethical standpoint, even nations are dealing with it in this ethical way in different ways. So now that if cloning is possible, the way that we manipulate life is becoming more advanced and strange. And that to me is a much scarier prospect.

This film has a lot of blue in it, especially with the wardrobe. That felt intentional.

As far as the costumes and the use of blue, that might just be the decision of Sachiko Ito, who did the costuming. One of the concepts that I brought up to her was that I wanted to use earth tones for the people, the leads in the film. And also one of her concerns was that 10 years into the future, climate change would mean that we live in a hotter climate. So there were a lot of things around thinking through the materials and the construction of the clothing, that perhaps there would be fewer buttons and drawstrings and zippers and fasteners and things like this.

I’m really curious to hear you talk about how AI has permeated your daily life.

I don’t think I’ve incorporated AI intentionally outside of the use of translation AI. I think that it has become so skillful that I often use AI in order to translate my Japanese into English in order to send messages and communicate.

This came up in the Q&A yesterday at Japan Society. I described how it was my first time using ChatGPT in a way where I fed it the script for this film and said, “Give me feedback.” And we did a few exchanges between myself and AI and every time I would make edits to the script, they would say that it’s great. They said, “You’re going to get into Cannes.” But first ChatGPT said, “I think you’ll get into the Un Certain Regard section.” And I said, “Only Un Certain Regard?” Then my producer said, “Well, the director of this film is a person named Hirokazu Kore-eda.” It said, “Well, in that case, you’re getting into the competition.”

And I did get into the competition, so AI is not wrong, but I think that any person could tell me as much. So I don’t think that I found any utility in that exchange. And the fact that there’s no humanness in the background to this exchange is what makes it mostly unattractive to me.

I think that the more that you train an AI, for instance, on a person who is maybe known for giving romantic advice, then that advice also becomes more normalized. So I think that I’m not personally sold on it and I don’t find that AI is all that useful to me. What I find more problematic is that human beings are becoming so geared towards a kind of productivity mindset that this is even affecting activities on set for filmmaking. I think that safety is important, but for instance, we’re no longer filming driving scenes on the road. We’re doing it in studios by compositing backgrounds. I think that stunt work is also going to maybe fall to the side and then slowly be subsumed by AI or VFX.

It’s really not about us excluding AI from our day to day. Already we’re using things that we would have used our imagination for and then offloading that onto computers. For instance, with this film, I shot a driving scene at a studio and we composited the background.

But I don’t find it all that interesting. I’m going to stop writing scenes that require this type of VFX or compositing because I think that the more that we are being subsumed by productivity, it’s actually the antithesis of creativity.

Sheep in the Box is in select theaters Friday, July 24.

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