It’s almost the weekend, party people! We hope everyone has a better couple of days than Kim Dotcom — the German tech entrepreneur who founded the file-sharing site Megaupload. After 13 years of wrangling, New Zealand (where Dotcom resides) has agreed to extradite him to the US to face fraud, racketeering, and copyright infringement charges. It turns out that giving away IP for free is super illegal. We wonder if any AI company founders will face similar charges one day…

In other news… it’s the summer of 4DX, OpenAI warns that you may love ChatGPT’s voice too much, and Paramount may get yet another interested buyer.

Want to discover even more newsletters? Here are some of our favorites

• YouTube – Kraven

• X (Twitter) – Katy Perry

• Google – Matthew Perry

• Reddit – Billie Eilish

• TikTok – “Disco” - Surf Curse

• Spotify – “All” - Snow Patrol 

.ENTERTAINMENT.

4DX screenings soar in popularity thanks to Twisters

The Future. 4DX screenings — the immersive cinema format that utilizes 20 off-screen special effects to make audiences feel like they’re in the movie — had its two best weekends ever this summer with the releases of Twisters and Deadpool & Wolverine. If audiences continue to be drawn to the format, it’s possible that some filmmakers may start making the experience a part of their creative vision from the start.

Twist and shout
4DX screenings may have just had their IMAX moment.

• Although 4DX tech has been in the US since 2014, Twisters officially brought it into the mainstream — it accounted for 15% of the movie’s domestic opening weekend gross ($2.1 million) and has remained a huge audience draw.

• Deadpool & Wolverine continued the hot streak, with 4DX accounting for $2.5 million of its opening weekend box office (6% of the total) — showing that the audience for the format is sustaining and even growing.

• Exhibitors have been psyched by the results, with theater owners saying they’ve expanded 4DX screenings to keep up with the demand and they’re making preparations for upcoming films like Alien: Romulus, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and Gladiator 2.

The market for 4DX, which is overseen and designed by South Korea’s CJ Group, has plenty of room for growth, especially in the US — there are 727 4DX screens internationally but only 64 in the US. CJ Group has already said it plans to build a “significant number” of additional theaters.

Hollywood studios and theater owners hope that 4DX has a future more like IMAX than 3D — a format with lasting appeal rather than flash-in-the-pan popularity (other than the Avatar films, of course).

71.8% of you voted Yes in yesterday’s poll: Do you think human creativity and generative AI can coexist?

“This is similar to the 1980s’ rise of laser printers and page layout software. We thought it was the end of designers, but they turned out to be even more valuable to tell the software what to do.”

“I’m using it daily in the workplace. For me, it enhances and inspires creativity. Refinement of copy and a human touch (emotion) are always needed.”

“Human creativity makes the tools (AI) to help create more efficiently. AI is a tool that enhances human creativity. Remove AI, and human creativity slows down. Remove human creativity, and AI disappears. But we are a lazy bunch, and AI is a cool tool.”

.A WORD FROM OUR FRIENDS AT MECO.

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Media, Music, & Entertainment

• Edgar Bronfman, Jr. is reportedly organizing a bid for Paramount Global before the go-shop period for the media conglomerate expires on August 21st that allows Skydance to complete its merger. [Read More]

• Cable TV has possibly reached its newspaper moment where assets will be squeezed by investment funds, rolled up with competitors, or simply shut down. [Read More]

• Netflix and Google have inked a deal that makes the tech giant the title sponsor for Emily in Paris, allowing audiences to shop looks from the season. [Read More]

Fashion & E-Commerce

• Streetwear is evolving from its hypebeast era to its niche-community era, ironically giving the apparel a broader appeal. [Read More]

• Klarna is giving users the ability to store money on the platform like a savings account and also opening up cash-back opportunities with participating retailers. [Read More]

• Pajamacore is the hottest trend in fashion that very few people get to appreciate. [Read More]

Tech, Web3, & AI

• California’s AI-disaster bill passed the state’s Appropriations Committee after changing its language to allow the state to sue only after an AI-created disaster has occurred, not before — a suggestion put forth by Anthropic. [Read More]

• Some in Silicon Valley have a radical idea to save Google from a government-mandated breakup — the tech giant making its search index publicly available so other startups can use it. [Read More]

• Harvard biologists are the first to build a diagram of a cubic millimeter of a human cerebral cortex at a subcellular level — the most detailed look of the brain we have yet. [Read More]

Creator Economy

• Threads keeps rolling out new features — now allowing users to save multiple drafts and insights into a user’s audience. [Read More]

• Linktree has acquired the social media scheduling tool Plann, giving Linktree users one of the features they request the most. [Read More]

• LinkedIn is starting to shed its professional vibe for something more akin to Facebook or Instagram. Is the platform now business casual? [Read More]

.ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.

OpenAI warns users they could fall in love with ChatGPT’s voice mode

The Future. The ability to talk with ChatGPT in a humanlike voice, a feature released last month, comes with a big risk factor, according to the company — the possibility of developing an unhealthy emotional connection to the system. Considering that some users are hosting group chats or even dating chatbots via Character.AI and Replika, ChatGPT’s voice mode could force some companies to open up an HR division to deal with human-AI matters.

Emotional update
A warning in the “system card” for OpenAI’s GPT-4o system lays out the dangers of people using the anthropomorphic AI voice.

• Using ChatGPT’s humanlike voice interface could make some users emotionally attached to their chatbot, especially considering there have been allegations of the voices appearing flirty.

• It could also lead users to trust the chatbots more, even when “hallucinating” incorrect information — a situation complicated by ChatGPT’s growing ability to “persuade” people.

• Worse yet, it could ultimately make users less reliant on human relationships or interactions.

Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, head of preparedness at OpenAI, says that voice-enabled AI could help people who suffer from loneliness or need additional practice with social interactions. But, Iason Gabriel, a staff research scientist at Google DeepMind, told Wired that its use “creates this impression of genuine intimacy [that can lead] to troubling questions about emotional entanglement.”

In other words, human-AI relations are about to get even more complicated.

• Watch: Bloomberg takes a peek into how Worldcoin’s dystopian eye-scanning orbs are built… and tries to understand the company’s goal to bring identity verification into the AI and blockchain age.

• Read: Nate Silver, the famous election statistics pundit from FiveThirtyEight, discusses his new book, On the Edge, about the culture of risk-taking (specifically, gambling).

• Listen: WSJ explores Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest’s lawsuit against Meta, which alleges that its AI-powered ad system is making scams a bigger problem across its platforms.

When you can’t decide if you should be healthy and drink water or simply eat dessert.

LATEST PODCAST EPISODE

Today, on an extra special bonus episode of Future Forecast, our hosts Boye and Chris sit down with Andrew Kenward, the President and COO of Almost Friday Media. Andrew was an agent at WME in the digital media department at WME before being brought into the Almost Friday universe in 2021. We chat with him about his career, his goals for the brand moving forward, and what it's like working in media today.