Epic Games executives suggest "AI is going to become more and more difficult to detect" Comments come as Fortnite maker says it cannot ban AI-generated thumbnails used in user-generated content Image credit: Epic Games News by Vikki Blake Contributor Published on April 30, 2025 Epic Games has confirmed it will not be policing the AI "slop" used in thumbnail generation for third-party mini-games in Fortnite, saying "it's probably going to become unenforceable" as AI becomes more difficult to distinguish from human-made artwork. The comment comes as Fortnite's user-generated content is increasingly fronted by thumbnails generated via AI. In an interview with Mustard Plays, Epic Games execs stressed the company's priority was ensuring the thumbnails were "compliant with [its] rules." They also emphasized that Epic would not be using AI in its own first-party Fortnite modes, with executive vice president Sax Persson suggesting that the "best results" still came from human artists, not artificial intelligence. "From our perspective, for moderation, thumbnails - like, we don't really care what tool you use to make your thumbnails," product management director Dan Walsh said, as transcribed by our sister site, Eurogamer. "All we care about is whether or not it's compliant with our rules. "I think to some degree AI is going to become more and more difficult to detect. It's not going to stand out as a unique thing, it's just going to be another tool that people are using to create things. "So trying to look for that specifically is going to become increasingly difficult to the point where it's probably going to become unenforceable. We're really just focused on - 'does this asset comply with our rules, yes or no?', not 'what tool did you use to make this asset'?" In terms Epic using AI itself, Persson said: "We've always embraced new technology, but with an ethical stance on the source, like as we generate things, it has to be understood and it has to be properly licensed. So to that degree, we rely on what we provide to people directly to be the best tools that we can humanly do, but the ethical guidelines are proper ownership." In February, Epic shared its Epic Games Store 2024 Year in Review blog post, highlighting its achievement of reaching 295 million users on its PC store representing an increase of 25 million users year-on-year. Consumer spending on the platform reached $1.09 billion in 2024, an increase of 15% from last year. In comparison, spending on third-party titles declined by 18% to $255 million.

The Meta AI app could soon get a paid tier, similar to the ones offered by rivals like OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the plan during a Q1 2025 earnings call on Wednesday, saying there’s an opportunity to offer a “premium service for people who want to unlock more compute or additional functionality” in Meta AI. As part of Meta’s efforts to compete with ChatGPT, the company launched a standalone Meta AI app this week, allowing you to interact with the chatbot and generate images from within the app. The chatbot, which Meta says now has nearly 1 billion users, was previously only available within apps like Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Microsoft’s Copilot all offer paid subscriptions that give users access to more advanced features and compute. Meta reported earning $42 billion in revenue over the past few months and revealed that it now expects to invest up to $72 billion on AI, rather than the up to $65 billion Zuckerberg announced previously. Additionally, Zuckerberg mentioned incorporating “product recommendations or ads” within Meta AI. It’s not clear when ads, or a paid tier, might roll out, as Zuckerberg said, “I expect that we’re going to be largely focused on scaling and deepening engagement for at least the next year before we’ll really be ready to start building out the business.”

Multimodal foundation models have shown substantial promise in enabling systems that can reason across text, images, audio, and video. However, the practical deployment of such models is frequently hindered by hardware constraints. High memory consumption, large parameter counts, and reliance on high-end GPUs have limited the accessibility of multimodal AI to a narrow segment of institutions and enterprises. As research interest grows in deploying language and vision models at the edge or on modest computing infrastructure, there is a clear need for architectures that offer a balance between multimodal capability and efficiency. Alibaba Qwen Releases Qwen2.5-Omni-3B: Expanding Access with Efficient Model Design In response to these constraints, Alibaba has released Qwen2.5-Omni-3B, a 3-billion parameter variant of its Qwen2.5-Omni model family. Designed for use on consumer-grade GPUs—particularly those with 24GB of memory—this model introduces a practical alternative for developers building multimodal systems without large-scale computational infrastructure. Available through GitHub, Hugging Face, and ModelScope, the 3B model inherits the architectural versatility of the Qwen2.5-Omni family. It supports a unified interface for language, vision, and audio input, and is optimized to operate efficiently in scenarios involving long-context processing and real-time multimodal interaction. Model Architecture and Key Technical Features Qwen2.5-Omni-3B is a transformer-based model that supports multimodal comprehension across text, images, and audio-video input. It shares the same design philosophy as its 7B counterpart, utilizing a modular approach where modality-specific input encoders are unified through a shared transformer backbone. Notably, the 3B model reduces memory overhead substantially, achieving over 50% reduction in VRAM consumption when handling long sequences (~25,000 tokens). Key design characteristics include: Reduced Memory Footprint: The model has been specifically optimized to run on 24GB GPUs, making it compatible with widely available consumer-grade hardware (e.g., NVIDIA RTX 4090). Extended Context Processing: Capable of processing long sequences efficiently, which is particularly beneficial in tasks such as document-level reasoning and video transcript analysis. Multimodal Streaming: Supports real-time audio and video-based dialogue up to 30 seconds in length, with stable latency and minimal output drift. Multilingual Support and Speech Generation: Retains capabilities for natural speech output with clarity and tone fidelity comparable to the 7B model. Performance Observations and Evaluation Insights According to the information available on ModelScope and Hugging Face, Qwen2.5-Omni-3B demonstrates performance that is close to the 7B variant across several multimodal benchmarks. Internal assessments indicate that it retains over 90% of the comprehension capability of the larger model in tasks involving visual question answering, audio captioning, and video understanding. In long-context tasks, the model remains stable across sequences up to ~25k tokens, making it suitable for applications that demand document-level synthesis or timeline-aware reasoning. In speech-based interactions, the model generates consistent and natural output over 30-second clips, maintaining alignment with input content and minimizing latency—a requirement in interactive systems and human-computer interfaces. While the smaller parameter count naturally leads to a slight degradation in generative richness or precision under certain conditions, the overall trade-off appears favorable for developers seeking a high-utility model with reduced computational demands. Conclusion Qwen2.5-Omni-3B represents a practical step forward in the development of efficient multimodal AI systems. By optimizing performance per memory unit, it opens opportunities for experimentation, prototyping, and deployment of language and vision models beyond traditional enterprise environments. This release addresses a critical bottleneck in multimodal AI adoption—GPU accessibility—and provides a viable platform for researchers, students, and engineers working with constrained resources. As interest grows in edge deployment and long-context dialogue systems, compact multimodal models such as Qwen2.5-Omni-3B will likely form an important part of the applied AI landscape. Check out the model on GitHub, Hugging Face, and ModelScope. Also, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and join our Telegram Channel and LinkedIn Group. Don’t Forget to join our 90k+ ML SubReddit. Asif RazzaqWebsite |  + postsBioAsif Razzaq is the CEO of Marktechpost Media Inc.. As a visionary entrepreneur and engineer, Asif is committed to harnessing the potential of Artificial Intelligence for social good. His most recent endeavor is the launch of an Artificial Intelligence Media Platform, Marktechpost, which stands out for its in-depth coverage of machine learning and deep learning news that is both technically sound and easily understandable by a wide audience. The platform boasts of over 2 million monthly views, illustrating its popularity among audiences.Asif Razzaqhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/6flvq/Mem0: A Scalable Memory Architecture Enabling Persistent, Structured Recall for Long-Term AI Conversations Across SessionsAsif Razzaqhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/6flvq/Diagnosing and Self- Correcting LLM Agent Failures: A Technical Deep Dive into τ-Bench Findings with Atla’s EvalToolboxAsif Razzaqhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/6flvq/Beyond the Hype: Google’s Practical AI Guide Every Startup Founder Should ReadAsif Razzaqhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/6flvq/Tutorial on Seamlessly Accessing Any LinkedIn Profile with exa-mcp-server and Claude Desktop Using the Model Context Protocol MCP

It’s the end of the fight for Sgt. Rock, the DC Studios World War 2 film that might have starred Penguin actor Colin Farrell as the titular character with director Luca Guadagnino at the helm and a script from Challengers and Queer scribe Justin Kuritzkes. The movie was in pre-production, with filming set to take place in the UK, but according to The Hollywood Reporter the project will no longer be moving forward as part of the upcoming DCU slate.The outlet also claimed DC Studios was in the middle of building out the cast for the project, with Challengers star Mike Faist in talks for a part, and an undisclosed actress cast in the role of a French resistance fighter. The World War 2 film would have seen combat unit Easy Company battle Nazi forces in Europe.PlayTHR touched on a potential story for the film, which would have seen Sgt. Rock join forces with the female French resistance fighter character in a bid to find the Spear of Destiny before the Nazis. In DC lore, the Spear of Destiny was used to pierce the side of Christ while he was on the cross and has supernatural properties.The reason for giving this project the axe? Well, it’s unclear. One source at THR said it was the project’s requirements for shooting outside that have put it in this position, while another claimed that despite Guadagnino’s resume, his lack of superhero movie experience had execs wary of his ability to produce results.According to the first source, the film isn’t entirely dead and would be “re-assessed at the end of the year for a possible summer shoot in 2026,” but whether or not that actually comes to pass obviously remains to be seen.Daniel Craig was once set to star in the Luca Guadagnino-directed Sgt. Rock movie. Photo by Pamela Rovaris/Archivio Pamela Rovaris/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images.The first news of the project came back in November 2024, when Daniel Craig was reportedly set to star. Sgt. Rock was created by Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert and had his comic debut in 1959.James Gunn's rebooted DCU kicks off proper with this July's Superman, and is followed by Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow in 2026, with a cameo from Jason Momoa's Lobo. The DCU Clayface movie is set for September 2026.Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images.Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.

T-Mobile may be taking its sweet time rolling out the Starlink beta it announced during the Super Bowl in February, but the carrier is also sweetening the deal for those who test the satellite internet beta. It’s been known for years that T-Mobile would be SpaceX’s first carrier partner for bringing Starlink internet service to phones. SpaceX and T-Mobile announced the news at a joint event in August 2022. We finally started seeing the first pieces of the collaboration at the start of 2025 when T-Mobile and SpaceX used Starlink to offer text messaging to those affected by the wildfires in LA. Then T-Mobile finally announced how the service would be offered in February. It was somewhat of a surprise when T-Mobile said it planned to sell Starlink access to customers using other carriers. More surprising was that T-Mobile promised to let anyone using any mobile phone service try the satellite internet service for free over the summer. Now, in addition to trying out T-Mobile Starlink for free without switching carriers, T-Mobile has communicated that it will also provide testers with 50GB of 5G data and unlimited texts during the trial period. The carrier is also extending access to its T-Mobile Tuesdays promotional perks for T-Mobile Starlink testers. Our phone partners have been hustling to get more phones satellite-optimized, and in just a couple weeks, you’ll be invited to the beta.    To show our appreciation for your patience, we’re throwing some extras your way. Once you have beta access, you’ll also enjoy the following perks for 90 days: Free satellite service Access to our traditional 5G network, including 50GB of high-speed data and unlimited texts T‑Mobile benefits like $5 movie tickets, 25% off concert tickets, travel discounts, and T‑Mobile Tuesdays for free stuff and great perks every week Plus you’ll get a $5 Early Adopter discount for satellite service when the beta is over—normally $15 per month. T-Mobile is still accepting applications from anyone interested in testing its satellite internet product before the Starlink feature goes live in July. In the meantime, if you signed up in February and are still waiting for your invitation to test T-Mobile Starlink, it sounds like invitations should arrive around mid-May. Do more with your iPhone Follow Zac Hall: X | Threads | Instagram | Mastodon Add 9to5Mac to your Google News feed.  FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.You’re reading 9to5Mac — experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Don’t know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel

"I don't think she was that happy with it."Two months ago in February, Mark Zuckerberg made headlines when he took the stage in a baby blue jumpsuit to perform for his wife's birthday.Priscilla Chan, the billionaire's wife of 13 years, seemed to take it in stride — even as he leapt off the piano, recreating Benson Boone's stunning performance at the Grammys a week prior.But that was just one of his many gifts to Chan, who was turning 40. Zuckerberg also forked out bigtime for a gawdy seven-foot statue in Chan's likeness, fabricated out of turquoise and silver. He unveiled the gift last August, sharing the gesture with the world via a photo on Instagram."Bringing back the Roman tradition of making sculptures of your wife," the tech mogul enthused.As it turns out, Chan was less receptive of the statue than the odd performance. On a recent appearance on the podcast "This Past Weekend" hosted by Theo Von, Zuckerberg revealed Chan's thoughts on the extravagant gesture."I don't think she was that happy with it," the Meta CEO said, adding that she was a "good sport" about the towering gift."She doesn't want a sculpture of her in the front lawn," Zuckerberg told Von, in a decidedly human moment. "That's weird."The whole thing seems more like a gift for Zuckerberg than for Chan. The billionaire is apparently a huge fan of the sculptor behind the statue, the pop artist Daniel Arsham, but decided to go with his wife's likeness, he said on the podcast, because a statue of himself would have been "crazy.""Who wants a sculpture of themselves in the front yard?" Zuckerberg asked Von, ironically.The bizarre present is sort of par for the course for Zuckerberg and Chan. Though the uber-rich tech couple reportedly skipped the marriage prenup, they have signed a contract mandating a minimum of one date and 100 minutes of "alone time" per week.That contract came about through a "series of negotiations" after Chan decided to move to Palo Alto, California to open two schools for low-income communities near the San Francisco Bay Area. Those communities were shocked recently when the couple pulled funding with little explanation, leaving some to speculate it's part of the billionaire's rightward turn on social issues.And when it comes to weird junk on her lawn, Chan might be lucky to get away with just the statue; Zuck's also graced Chan with an appalling cover version of Lil Jon's "Get Low," as well as deploying an MMA fighting cage in his backyard to prepare for a would-be cage match with Elon Musk back in 2023."Mark, I have been working on that grass for two years," Chan wrote in a text Zuckerberg shared on Instagram, prompting the billionaire to poll his followers: "save the grass" or "keep the octagon."That fight never happened, but it's anyone's guess whether the fighting cage is still standing — or what bizarre scheme Zuckerberg springs on his wife next.Share This Article

Apr 30, 2025The Hacker NewsMalware / Data Breach Everyone has cybersecurity stories involving family members. Here's a relatively common one. The conversation usually goes something like this: "The strangest thing happened to my streaming account. I got locked out of my account, so I had to change my password. When I logged back in, all my shows were gone. Everything was in Spanish and there were all these Spanish shows I've never seen before. Isn't that weird?" This is an example of an account takeover attack on a customer account. Typically what happens is that a streaming account is compromised, probably due to a weak and reused password, and access is resold as part of a common digital black market product, often advertised as something like "LIFETIME STREAMING SERVICE ACCOUNT - $4 USD." In the grand scheme of things, this is a relatively mild inconvenience for most customers. You can reset your credentials with a much stronger password, call your bank to issue a new credit card and be back to binge-watching The Crown in short order. But what happens when similar incidents occur thousands of times daily across the world's most popular web applications? The Hidden Scale of Account Takeovers (ATO) Flare's recent report, The Account and Session Takeover Economy, reveals just how widespread and costly this issue has become. Industries like e-commerce, gaming, productivity SaaS, and streaming are particularly hard-hit, each seeing over 100,000 newly exposed accounts per month. The report found a median account takeover exposure rate of 1.4% among platforms ranging from 5 million to 300 million users. Of particular concern is the rise in session hijacking—a technique that allows attackers to bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA) by stealing session cookies, often via infostealer malware. Returning to the streaming example, it's likely that the attacker didn't even need to log in with a password. With an active session token in hand, they simply injected it into a browser using an anti-detect tool and gained full access—without triggering alerts or MFA challenges. A major entertainment or e-commerce platform with millions of users—Netflix, Epic Games, or Wayfair—can conservatively expect thousands of customer accounts to be vulnerable to takeover at any given time. Average New Exposed Accounts (Monthly) – Scaled View from Flare's The Account and Session Takeover Economy Report What's the Real Cost of an ATO The economic toll of ATOs is difficult to fully quantify, but Flare's report breaks it down into three major categories: labor, fraud, and customer churn. Let's revisit the streaming example from earlier. Some users may chalk the issue up to bad luck and stick around for the next season of Stranger Things. Others, however, may cancel out of frustration—especially when they've already had to reset passwords, deal with credit card issues, or simply feel their trust has been violated. A 2023 report from fraud prevention company Sift found that 73% of users believe the brand—not the user—is responsible for preventing ATOs. We've used streaming as an example in this article because of their cultural significance in global entertainment, but we don't make any assumptions about their security posture, breach history, or business practices. To understand the potential business impact, consider a fictional entertainment streaming service. If there are 100 million paying customers at $120 per year… If 0.5% of accounts are taken over—about one-third of the median exposure rate—that's 500,000 affected users. If even 20% of those users churn, the company stands to lose $12 million in annual revenue. In a worst-case scenario where 73% walk away, the loss grows to $44 million. This is all very rough "back of napkin" math but it provides a starting point for quantifying the financial risks associated with ATOs. Remember, this is just a churn risk. Fraud-related losses are a separate discussion entirely! Now extrapolate this challenge across the hundreds of web applications that service millions of daily users. Cost of ATOs & Fraud Mechanism Per Industry Recommendations for ATO Prevention1. Monitor the Infostealer Ecosystem While ransomware grabs headlines, infostealer malware is fueling the majority of credential-based attacks. Flare's data shows a 26% year-over-year increase in exposures involving stolen credentials and session cookies. According to Verizon's 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR), 88% of basic web app attacks involve stolen credentials, demonstrating how central infostealers are to modern account takeover operations. 2. Detect and Remediate Exposed Accounts Organizations can dramatically reduce ATO risk by combining real-time infostealer intelligence with their identity and access management systems. This enables the detection and remediation of accounts that have been compromised—especially those with valid session cookies, which allow attackers to bypass authentication entirely. Proactive monitoring and auto-remediation can prevent account abuse before it impacts customer experience or bottom-line metrics. 3. Communicate a Security-First Approach Introducing friction—like forced password resets—can feel risky for customer experience. But most users expect companies to not only protect their data but also communicate any issues. Also from Sift's report- only 43% of ATO victims were notified by their company that their account had been compromised. Customers who experience this fraud but aren't notified may feel like the company is not aware of account takeovers or have steps to help them out. By clearly communicating the purpose behind these measures, organizations can reframe proactive security as a value-added feature. Transparency around ATO risks helps customers feel safer—and more loyal—over time. About the Author: Nick Ascoli is the Director of Product Strategy at Flare and an experienced threat researcher who is recognized for his expertise in data leaks, reconnaissance, and detection engineering. Nick is an active member of the cybersecurity community contributing to open-source projects, regularly appearing on podcasts (Cyberwire, Simply Cyber, etc.) and speaking at conferences (GrrCON, B-Sides, DEFCON Villages, SANS, etc.) Found this article interesting? This article is a contributed piece from one of our valued partners. Follow us on Twitter  and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post. SHARE    

I’m not sure any DC Comics character has spent more time in the Hollywood trenches than Sgt. Rock. The World War II hero, created by Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert in the late ’50s, was almost an Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle in the 1990s, produced by Joel Silver. The project got far enough along that there were promotional items made for it; look around online and you can find Sgt. Rock buttons with Schwarzenegger’s likeness. (Never mind that the Austrian Schwarzenegger makes a strange choice for an American soldier fighting in World War II.) Later Bruce Willis took a stab at a Rock movie for a while, possibly with Guy Ritchie in line to direct. That one never happened either.In the last few years, there have been new reports of renewed life for the Sgt. Rock movie, with Challengers’ Luca Guadagnino set to direct. Early rumors had Daniel Craig in line to play the title role, but then Colin Farrell was reportedly in line to star.Now that version’s not happening either. Variety reports that while Warner Bros. was looking at shooting Sgt. Rock this summer, the project “is no longer in development at the studio.” The reason, according to “a knowledgable source”: “The need for exterior location shooting in the U.K. required a summer start date that the production couldn’t make, and filming in the winter was a non-starter. So the studio has put the project on hold with the hope that it can start up again in 2026.”DC ComicsDC Comicsloading...READ MORE: 15 Actors Who Turned Down Big DC RolesTHR quoted an anonymous source who gave a similar reasoning regarding scheduling and outdoor locations, but then mentioned “another source” who “raised the possibility that Guadagnino remained untested in the realm of action movies, and even though the budget was in the $70 million range, a paltry sum for comic book movies, higher ups may have wavered in their confidence.”The trade also said the planned film had Rock as a soldier fighting in World War II, and would have involved him “teaming with up with the female French Resistance fighter ... to find the mystical Spear of Destiny, the spear used to stab Jesus Christ during his crucifixion, which in lore is said to have supernatural properties.” The script was written by Justin Kuritzkes, who also penned Guadagnino’s recent hit Challengers.Poor Sgt. Rock. War is hell, but there ain’t no hell on earth quite like development hell.Every DCEU Movie Ranked From Worst to BestFrom Man of Steel to Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, we ranked every movie in the DC Extended Universe.

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The famous actor, filmmaker and marijuana enthusiast is the latest Call of Duty operator in Season 3 Reloaded.