The type foundry says its AI tools aren't "just for efficiency".

Visualizing the voidSnowpiercer season four hit screens in 2023. In it, the shows post-apocalyptic narrative reaches new heights of intrigue as Snowpiercer explores areas previously thought to be uninhabitable, including one scene where the train leaves its tracks and travels independently across a frozen ocean. The season also involves more action and expansive environments, meaning Image Engine was trusted with 343 shots across multiple episodes. Notable sequences included the Snowpiercer train metamorphosing into a snow tread vehicle, unveiling an epic frozen port city, a thrilling nighttime rocket launch over an icy ocean at night, and the dramatic freezing of the character Ben (Iddo Goldberg), who makes a supreme sacrifice for the safety of others.The amount of work on season four was fivefold, so there was a big difference in volume and the size of the comp team, says Jesus Lavin, Compositing Supervisor. Some of the more complex shots were those where we had to comp practical sets on huge, full-CG environments with long aerial travelling cameras. These shots were very challenging and required a lot of integration.One such environment was that of New Eden a new warm spot discovered on the frozen Earth. Image Engine built the entire valley of New Eden, ensuring it looked convincing from multiple angles. The New Eden environment shots contained multiple square kilometres of landscape with buildings, mountain ranges, lakes, and the integration of the trestle bridge and canyon from season 3, says Poser. The environment team needed to work from many different angles in full CG, but with the added challenge of combining that with plates of the New Eden set.As well as the more expansive shots of New Eden, we also worked on close-up sequences of many areas that only make up a tiny part of the environment, which we up-rezzed and refined to accommodate the need, he continues. These shots included the bridge worksite, canyon, top of the cliff, and the area west of New Eden with its parked trains and tracks.In one episode, viewers witness the camera pan over the New Eden worksite, soar across the tundra, and fly by the track scaler vehicle.This shot started with a live plate component of a crane shot that was handed off to a 3D rendering of a fly-through animation, says Jack Evans, CG Supervisor. We blended the final shot in comp with added digital matte painting elements to fill out the background. Combining these disparate elements into one cohesive shot was challenging, but our compositing team knocked it out of the park. By the end of the show, these huge environment shots felt second nature.Ali Ehtemami, Lead Compositor at Image Engine, ensured the particle and FX setups that gave these environments an extra edge in fidelity continued to be refined and improved to ensure a realistic result.The number of shots, delivery targets and the fact that we were working on all the episodes across the season made season four even more challenging and every shot was embellished with snow particles and 2D atmos and fog elements, says Ehtemami. So, to meet this challenge, I took all the great FX work the team accomplished on Snowpiercers previous two seasons and further refined and optimized the core atmos and particle tool we created for smoke, snow, snowdrifts, clouds, and fog in Nuke. I tweaked the setup in a way that kept the quality of the particle setups high while running at least ten times faster. Moreover, we introduced a new modular compositing workflow specifically tailored for this show, coupled with various optimizations implemented in the compositing process. These advancements greatly contributed to enhancing production efficiency!Embracing complexityOf course, the Snowpiercer train itself did not go without its fair share of attention in season four. This time, the trains visual effects required a significant increase in mechanical complexity as well as further optimization of the train track tool, as Poser describes.For season four, the tool could: generate better wheel alignment and displacement and connect wheels correctly on the train track, even when the track was curved or sloped; correctly link the train cars; create better train car spacing with support for steep angles and curves; and improve instancing for performance and caching, he says. By this point, the tool was firing on all cylinders and saving us time which the team could then spend on creating even more beautiful, believable shots.Those shots included some close-ups of Snowpiercer that revealed the train in more detail than in any previous season. One close-up sequence sees the character of Ben stepping outside the train to release a stuck link between two train cars, and in another, Melanie (Jennifer Connelly) must crawl through the trains undercarriage and into the cooling vents. For these scenes, the Image Engine team had to construct the Snowpiercers intricate undercarriage with numerous moving mechanical pieces and higher-resolution textures.The most challenging setup was definitely the close-up shot of the undercarriage of the train where the tank-like treads are first revealed, which enable Snowpiercer to leave the tracks and travel independently across the frozen ocean, says Evans. The team had to design a believable system that could deploy snow treads across the whole train, lift it with hydraulic pistons and allow Snowpiercer to leave the track and freely drive through a ruined port city and onto a frozen ocean.To create the sequence, Image Engine created concept artwork of the undercarriage design for approval, then built out the treads and their animation, ensuring the mechanism felt like something that could realistically propel the train. Our animation supervisor, Curtis Richardson-Smith, created animated mockups of modified geometry for the mechanism used to link the cars together, which the asset department then used to build out the more detailed work, explains Evans. Ultimately, the close-up shot revealing all of this was a cross-department effort involving assets, animation, FX, and compositing. When it all came together, the results blew me away.Making the unreal, realImage Engines task list for season four also encompassed numerous shots of actors against a green screen, such as some scenes that show characters moving around on the exterior of the Snowpiercer train.The biggest challenge on shots like these is always integrating something shot on stage to make it look like the actors are actually on a train driving 150kph and rumbling through a frozen world, says Poser. This is an even bigger challenge when the actors are very close to the surface or touch and interact with the CG train, like Melanie hanging onto the ladder on the side of Snowpiercer. There are an incredible amount of details and small things to get right, or else the shot will look fake. These sequences require flawless execution from matchmove and roto to lighting and final comp.Lavin adds: When dealing with blue screen material shot on set, the challenge is finding a middle ground between the look that comes with studio lighting and the lighting you need in your CG to make the shot look good. Nevertheless, our Image Engine lighters are amazing at tasks like these at this point.Image Engine also updated and optimized its tools to more easily incorporate 2D elements on cards within its 3D scenes. These updates gave us a lot of flexibility in quickly trying out different ideas without involving the compositing team every time we wanted to combine practical elements in our CG environments, says Widen.Many scenes across Snowpiercer season four also required the addition of digital doubles CG replicas that needed to feel as believable and natural as their living counterparts to sell the believability of the set pieces in which they featured. When you have a full CG shot with digi-doubles, most of the workload is on the shoulders of animators and lighters, says Lavin. Again, at this point, the team is fantastic at making these shots feel real. Our artists delivered some incredible work.

I'm an AI reporter, and next year, I want to be bored out of my mind. I don't want to hear about increasing rates of AI-powered scams, messy boardroom power struggles or people abusing AI programs to create harmful, misleading or intentionally inflammatory photos and videos.It's a tall order, and I know I probably won't get my wish. There are simply too many companies developing AI and too little guidance and regulation. But if I had to ask for one thing this holiday season, it's this: 2025 needs to be the year we get meaningful AI content labels, especially for images and videos. Zooey Liao/CNETAI-generated images and videos have come a long way, especially over the past year. But the evolution of AI image generators is a double-edged sword. Improvements to the models mean that images come out with fewer hallucinations or flukes. But those weird things, people with 12 fingers and disappearing objects, were one of the few things people could flag and second guess whether the image was created by humans or AI. As AI generators improve and those tell-tale signs disappear, it's going to be a major problem for all of us. The legal power struggles and ethical debates over AI images will undoubtedly continue next year. But for now, AI image generators and editing services are legal and easy to use. That means AI content is going to continue to inundate our online experiences, and identifying the origins of an image is going to become harder -- and more important -- than ever. There's no silver bullet, one-size-fits-all solution. But I'm confident that widespread adoption of AI content labels would go a long way toward helping.The complicated history of AI art Upgrade your inbox Get cnet insider From talking fridges to iPhones, our experts are here to help make the world a little less complicated. If there's one button you can push to send any artist into a blind rage, it's bringing up AI image generators. The technology, powered by generative AI, can create entire images from a few simple words in your prompts. I've used and reviewed several of them for CNET, and it can still surprise me how detailed and clear the images can be. (They're not all winners, but they can be pretty good.)As my former CNET colleague Stephen Shankland succinctly put it, "AI can let you lie with photos. But you don't want a photo untouched by digital processing." Striking a balance between retouching and editing away the truth is something that photojournalists, editors and creators have been dealing with for years. Generative AI and AI-powered editing only make it more complicated.Take Adobe for example. This fall, Adobe introduced a ton of new features, many of which are generative AI-powered. Photoshop can now remove distracting wires and cables from images, and Premiere Pro users can lengthen existing film clips with gen AI. Generative fill is one of the most popular Photoshop tools, on par with the crop tool, Adobe's Deepa Subramaniam told me. Adobe made it clear that its generative editing is going to be the new norm and future. And because Adobe is the industry standard, that puts creators in a bind: Get on board with AI or fall behind.Even though Adobe promises never to train on its users' work -- one of the biggest concerns with generative AI -- not every company does or even discloses how its AI models are built. Creators who share their work online already have to deal with "art theft and plagiarism," digital artist Ren Ramos told me earlier this year, noting how image generation tools grant access to the styles that artists have spent their lives honing.What AI labels can doAI labels are any kind of digital notices that flag when an image might have been created or significantly altered by AI. Some companies automatically add a digital watermark to their generations (like Meta AI's Imagine), but many offer the ability to remove them by upgrading to paid tiers (like OpenAI's Dall-E 3). Or users can simply crop the image to cut out the identifying mark.There's been a lot of good work done this past year to aid in this effort. Adobe's content authenticity initiative launched a new app this year called Content Credentials that lets anyone attach digital, invisible signatures to their work. Creators can also use these credentials to disclose and track AI usage in their work. Adobe also has a Google Chrome extension that helps identify these credentials in content across the web.Google adopted a new standard for content credentials for images and ads in Google Search as part of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, co-founded by Adobe. It also added a new section to image info on Google Search that highlights any AI editing for "greater transparency." Google's beta program for watermarking and identifying AI content, called SynthID, took a step forward and was rolled out open-source to developers this year.Social media companies have also been working on labeling AI content. Folks are twice as likely to encounter false or misleading online images on social media than on any other channel, according to a report from Poynter's MediaWise initiative. Instagram and Facebook's parent company Meta rolled out automatic "Made with AI" labels for social posts, and the labels quickly, mistakenly flagged human-taken photographs as AI-generated. Meta later clarified that the labels are applied when it "detect[s] industry standard AI image indicators" and changed the label to read "AI info" to avoid the implication that an image was entirely generated by a computer program. Other social media platforms, like Pinterest and TikTok, have AI labels to varying degrees of success -- in my experience, Pinterest has been overwhelmingly flooded with AI, and TikTok's AI labels are omnipresent but easy to overlook.Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, recently shared a series of posts on the subject, saying: "Our role as internet platforms is to label content generated as AI as best we can. But some content will inevitably slip through the cracks, and not all misrepresentations will be generated with AI, so we must also provide context about who is sharing so you can assess for yourself how much you want to trust their content."If Mosseri has any actionable advice other than "consider the source" -- which most of us are taught in high school English class -- I'd love to hear it. But more optimistically, it could hint at future product developments to give people more context, like Twitter/X's community notes. These things like AI labels are going to be even more important if Meta decides to go through with its experiment to add AI-generated suggested posts to our feeds.What we need in 2025All of this is great, but we need more. We need consistent, glaringly obvious labels across every corner of the internet. Not buried in the meta data of a photograph but slapped across it (or above/below it). The more obvious, the better.There isn't an easy solution to this. That kind of online infrastructure would take a lot of work and collaboration across tech, social and probably government and civil society groups. But that kind of investment in distinguishing raw images from those that are entirely AI-generated to everything in between is essential. Teaching people to identify AI content is great, but as AI improves, it's going to get harder for even experts like me to accurately assess images. So why not make it super freaking obvious and give people the information they need to know about an image's origins -- or at least help them second-guess when they see something weird?My concern is that this issue is currently at the bottom of many AI companies' to-do lists, especially as the tide seems to be turning to developing AI videos. But for the sake of my sanity, and everyone else's, 2025 has to be the year we nail down a better system for identifying and labeling AI images.

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December 18, 2024The Scientists Versus Dartmouth: Inside a Sexual Harassment Scandal That Shook Science to Its CoreIn 2017, a group of students at Dartmouth College filed a lawsuit that revealed an entrenched culture of power and abuse, and in doing so, they sparked a wider conversation about sexual violence in science.By Sharon Shattuck edited by Jeffery DelViscioTranscriptTEXT CARD: 2020Dartmouth College, N.H.Vassiki Chauhan: In September 2015, I arrived from the Boston Airport on the Dartmouth Coach that loops around the green.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.I felt hopeful about things that were going to happen here, things Id get to learn, and science Id get to do. But it doesnt feel very much like that anymore.Im Vassiki Chauhan. Im a Ph.D. student in the field of cognitive neuroscience. Im pursuing my Ph.D. at Dartmouth, and I specifically work on how humans perceive faces of other people.When I was in the ninth grade, I got my hands on a book about theory of relativity and Einsteins life, and how he became a scientist, and that just blew my mind.I became really intrigued by physics, I spent all my pocket money buying books about cosmology, general relativity and quantum mechanics, like I was really really really into it.Because I was interested in physics, I loved thinking about artificial intelligence and robotics...so it kind of all came together in the end.When I was pulling into Hanover, and I flew in from Mumbai, I was captivated by these red brick buildings. I felt like I was kind of walking into a dream when I got there.Once I got here, I noticed that in order to fit in, there was a certain amount of requirement to go together and get a drink.There were three tenured professors in the department of psychological and brain sciences. Todd Heatherton, Bill Kelley and Paul Whalen. They brought in a lot of grants, they were very famous.The professors would be in the bar, and all of a sudden, you know, some women in the group would suddenly have new drinks in their hands that they didnt even choose, that they didnt pay for, and we knew that they were paid for by the professors.That was highly normalized, so uh, I just went with it.Kristina Rapuano: The mentorship was so heavily entangled in this drinking culture like, if there was a drink in front of you, like to turn it down almost felt like you were turning down advising.Sasha Brietzke: Either you go out to the bar and have a beer with him and hell read your papers, or you dont, and youre neglected.Annemarie Brown: There are now so many red flags. And none of them registered to me at all at the time as a red flag. They would try to keep us from talking to each other about our experiences, and it worked pretty well.Rapuano: Bill Kelley and Paul Whalen would routinely make jokes about our physical appearance, as though this were a competition.Andrea Courtney: I witnessed Paul Whalen kiss someone on the forehead, and there were just lots of hugs and inappropriate touching.Marissa Evans: The text messages went from like "Oh, what are you up to?" to "Oh, I've been drinking. Like a girl like you would never have a guy like me. Sending nude photos and telling me like what he wanted to do with meRapuano: When I entered graduate school with Bill Kelley, I experienced a lot of heavy grooming behaviors, from really day one. Until he physically took advantage of me at a conference. This being my advisor, I kind of just...I didnt push back, I didnt say anything. I felt trapped.Chauhan: Cumulatively it's like all consistent with, you know, how predators behave.One day Paul Whalen, he invited me to his house for a farewell party for one of his RAs and there were a bunch of other graduate students there. And then, we went to a bar and after that, I was like okay, if you want to get another beer, this place is closing down, we can go to your house.Id been to his house before, and I didnt feel like it was anything out of the ordinary.And I was trying to play music and he had gone to grab beers or something and I just . . . I felt his body behind me. And you know, you don't forget a thing like that. You don't forget that Oh my god, what's really happening right now?I always remember saying noI used the word, I used the action. I was explicit. And I, I know that to the core.He had so much power and influence and weight, and I was just this graduate student from India, like, early stages of my PhD.It was just this deep and insidious violation of trust and human behavior.Brietzke: I didn't know for a while the degree of wrongdoing that had happened. I'd heard rumors.I went to a conference, an academic conference, and Todd Heatherton came to like a post conference event at a karaoke bar, extremely intoxicated. Um, and he like summoned me over to where he was sitting, and kind of grabbed me by, um, the butt and sat me on his lap. I just remember feeling this intense sense of embarrassment and shame and that I would never be taken seriously as a scientist.I started just kind of raging really, in the hotel, in the conference hotel. And then, after that I just started talking to people.Courtney: To be honest, it took comparing my experience with the other women before I started to realize I wasnt the problem.Brown: We realized how eerie and startling the similarities were between the patterns of these women.We realized, these men meant to do this.Brietzke: At first it's just like oh, this is just my experience. And then it's oh, other people had these experiences with these three men. And it's like oh, a lot of women.Rapuano: So we sort of organized ourselves and met with the chairs of the department. Without even naming the professors they understood. They knew exactly who we were talking about and decided to launch a Title IX investigation.Brietzke: A committee determined that the three professors should be fired.But before that could be finalized, Bill and Paul resigned, and Todd retired.Chauhan: If you either allow three professors to resign or retire after a year-long investigation, you're not setting a precedent. You're just doing the easiest, least costly thing for the institution.At that point it just felt like okay, maybe what we need to do to effect real change is sue the college from our side.Because they need to treat us better.Rapuano: When we first decided to file a lawsuit, I did want to remain anonymous.Brietzke: I felt like I was detonating my career without really knowing the full extent of the damages.Chauhan: I was worried about not being seen as a scientist. Being seen as a victim.But in order to have our stories resonate with other women, in order to get institutions to take interest in what we had to say, we had to go all-in.We had to basically put our lives at stake for the impact we wanted to make.ABC World News Tonight archival: The stunning accusations from several young women, accusing three male professors at Dartmouth of turning their department into a 21st century Animal House, they say, calling it a predators club.Courtney: The response was overwhelmingly positive and that was, very, very encouraging.Rapuano: I've had faculty from other institutions reach out and ask for more information about our case so that they can make changes within their own departments.Chauhan: A lot of Indian women reached out to me and they're like given our culture I can't believe this is something that you decided to do, and it makes me feel like this is an option for me as well.TEXT CARD: In 2019 the plaintiffs and 70+ class members reached a $14-million settlement with Dartmouth.TEXT CARD: Under the settlement, Dartmouth invested $1.5-million to hire diverse faculty and support a nonprofit working to end gender-based violence.TEXT CARD: 2024Harlem, New York CityRapuano: During the lawsuit, I think it was really important for our names and our faces to be part of that, because it humanized what that case represented. But it's important to know that our narratives don't end with that case. It's a story that is constantly evolving and unfolding, and it is our lives, and we're not defined by that case, but it transforms who we are to this day.So I ended up becoming a research scientist at a startup. I'm really grateful that I've been able to land in a place where I can still do my science, but that has these more checks and balances, and I don't need to worry about that kind of abuse of power being wielded over me.One of the things that I started doing is actually weight lifting. So I lift heavy weights three to four times a week. I can squat much more than my body weight. Yeah, its really fun. It feels good to be in your own body and, like, feel powerful.Chauhan: I was a graduate student at Dartmouth when the lawsuit came out. So I had to finish my PhD in the aftermath of all of that. So in some ways there was a lot of hostility in that moment, in that environment.Given that so much unexpected stuff had happened, I felt like there was no way science would hold onto me. It felt like nobody would want me, in fact. But um, I kept following the path of my curiosity, and that brought me to New York City.So now I'm working as a postdoc at Barnard College.Chauhan (tape): I cant wait to show this to youI also work as a publisher now, or volunteer as a publisher, with Science for the People.This is the issue that I got involved with. Its about technology.We also have a robust, amazing New York City chapter where we engage in direct action together.It's a really fulfilling experience to not feel alone in wanting science to be more than a profession.Rapuano: I've been very fortunate to maintain a very close tie with my best friend Vassiki.She's fiercely living her life in every aspect, both in her science as a postdoc, her activist work. I'm just always in awe of her.Chauhan: What Ive learned is that if you want to make change, don't go at it alone. Try to do it with people who will share the burden, and have the same goals as you and as a result can keep you accountable.There are very few things I think of as permanent, but our friendship is one of those things.TEXT CARD: Scientific American reviewed the complaint filed by the interviewees as part of the lawsuit.TEXT CARD: In October 2024 we reached out to Dartmouth for comment on this story. The college replied:There is no place for sexual violence or harassment at Dartmouth. We work every day to ensure a learning and research environment that is safe, respectful, equitable, and inclusive for all students, faculty, and staff.Dartmouth had no prior knowledge of misconduct and applauds the efforts of the women who brought these concerns to light in 2017. Upon learning of the students concerns, Dartmouth promptly conducted a rigorous and objective review consisting of separate investigations of each of the former faculty members, led by an experienced external investigator who interviewed more than 50 witnesses and reviewed extensive documentation.Dartmouth took the unprecedented step to revoke the tenure and terminate the employment of all three faculty members after a careful investigation revealed conduct that was at odds with the Colleges values and violated its policies.

December 19, 20243 min readMost Expensive Dinosaur Fossil Ever Could Reveal Stegosaurus SecretsThe huge Stegosaurus fossil Apex, bought at auction for $44.6 million, has debuted on loan at the American Museum of Natural HistoryBy Zane Wolf edited by Sarah Lewin FrasierA new stegosaurus fossil named Apex which was bought by billionaire Kenneth C. Griffin is unveiled while it is on loan for the next four years to the American Museum of Natural History, December 5, 2024 in New York, NY. Sipa USA/Alamy Live NewsMy first visit to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) involved a flurry of media cameras, a sea of press badges and no small amount of intrigue. We had all been invited to witness the unveiling of something. The museum made it clear we could expect to see a spectacular specimen that would rival the ranks of storied favorites such as Sue, the spectacular and beloved Tyrannosaurus rex specimen at Chicagos Field Museum.Suffice it to say the AMNH delivered. Following a countdown from a bevy of schoolchildren at the front of the crowd, curtains were drawn to reveal Apex, one of the most complete and largest Stegosaurus fossils yet discovered. The fossil was bought for a record-breaking $44.6 million last Julyits the most expensive ever sold at auction, according to APand is currently on a long-term loan to the museum.The Apex Stegosaurus on view in the American Museum of Natural Historys Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation.Alvaro Keding & Daniel Kim/ AMNHOn supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Apex (named, aptly, for its size) is 11.5 feet tall and 27 feet long, and it died around 150 million years agothe peak era for Stegosaurus in terms of species diversity and population density. A considerable amountroughly 80 percentof Apexs skeleton was recovered, and compared with other Stegosaurus specimens with similar amounts of skeletal material, this specimens fossilization process preserved its three-dimensional characteristics exceptionally well. The important thing for me is those bones come from all of the major regions of the skeleton, so were not missing important parts of this animal, says Roger Benson, Macaulay Curator of Paleontology and curator-in-charge of fossil amphibians, reptiles, and birds and fossil plants at the AMNH. Apexs completeness and size could give scientists a crucial opportunity to answer some outstanding basic questions.For instance, researchers still arent sure what the massive, iconic back plates of Stegosaurus were good for, explains Paul Barrett, a paleontologist and dinosaur specialist at the Natural History Museum in London. Were they used for thermoregulation or defense? And if it was the latter, how effective were they at fending off attacks? With a lot of well-preserved skeleton to work with, scientists are bound to find more clues about functionality.Thanks to Apexs completeness, it can be used to craft virtual models to study how this animal moved in comparison to smaller specimens, showing how locomotion gaits might have changed as the animals matured. Apex adds another really important point of comparison for all the other Stegosaurus remains that we already know about, and its particularly important in that its near the very top end of the size range, Barrett explains.The Apex Stegosaurus on view in the American Museum of Natural Historys Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation.Alvaro Keding & Daniel Kim/ AMNHApexs large size also suggests this dinosaur specimen died when it was relatively mature, which would be a rarity. Dinosaurs were living a kind of rock-star lifestyle of living fast and dying young, Barrett says, and the dearth of fully adult specimens creates a large gap in our knowledge about how and when these animals reached full maturity.Benson and Barrett describe two ways to determine biological age in a fossil. First, vertebrates are often born with more bones than they have when they die because some eventually fuse together. Human craniums are a prime example, consisting of five separate major bones that fuse into one structure after birth. In Apex, Benson explains, every single vertebra is fused, and thats one of the really clear signs of older age.Second, like tree rings, patterns of bone growth can indicate periods of fast and slow growth as well as overall age. By looking across bone samples from small, younger specimens and larger, adult specimens like Apex, its possible to construct a model of when and how rapidly Stegosaurus grew during different periods of its life. This can yield valuable information about its overall metabolism and the duration of various life stages.