Category: Technology

Samsung will begin using the One UI name for all its consumer devices, now including TVs and home appliances. Executive Vice President Sally Hyesoon Jeong made the announcement at the company’s 2024 developer conference (via 9to5Google). The One UI branding was previously exclusive to its Galaxy phones, tablets and wearables.

“One UI now goes beyond mobile as the software experience for all Samsung consumer devices,” Hyesoon Jeong said onstage at the San Jose keynote. It’s part of the company’s aim for more cohesive branding across its consumer ecosystem, especially as its AI approach evolves.

Samsung also teased that its next software user experience, One UI 7, will arrive with the 2025 batch of Galaxy S phones. “One UI 7 will bring a fresh, new look to the entire interface,” Hyesoon Jeong said at the conference. She laid out three goals for the upcoming software: simple (with a purpose), impactful (leaving a “signature impression”), and emotive design that elicits a human reaction from the user.

The Samsung VP says the One UI 7 home screen grid represents the more focused design principles. “It’s sleeker and easier to use, giving you a neat home screen no matter which Galaxy device you’re using,” said Hyesoon Jeong.

Although you’ll have to wait until early next year for One UI 7, the company said a developer beta will be available to test-drive by the end of this year.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/samsungs-one-ui-now-covers-all-of-its-consumer-devices-including-tvs-and-appliances-201850799.html?src=rss 

At this point, you probably either love the idea of making realistic videos with generative AI, or you think it’s a morally bankrupt endeavor that devalues artists and will usher in a disastrous era of deepfakes we’ll never escape from. It’s hard to find middle ground. Meta isn’t going to change minds with Movie Gen, its latest video creation AI model, but no matter what you think of AI media creation, it could end up being a significant milestone for the industry.

Movie Gen can produce realistic videos alongside music and sound effects at 16 fps or 24 fps at up to 1080p (upscaled from 768 by 768 pixels). It can also generative personalized videos if you upload a photo, and crucially, it appears to be easy to edit videos using simple text commands. Notably, it can also edit normal, non-AI videos with text. It’s easy to imagine how that could be useful for cleaning up something you’ve shot on your phone for Instagram. Movie Gen is just purely research at the moment —Meta won’t be releasing it to the public, so we have a bit of time to think about what it all means.

The company describes Movie Gen as its “third wave” of generative AI research, following its initial media creation tools like Make-A-Scene, as well as more recent offerings using its Llama AI model. It’s powered by a 30 billion parameter transformer model that can make 16 second-long 16 fps videos, or 10-second long 24 fps footage. It also has a 13 billion parameter audio model that can make 45 seconds of 48kHz of content like “ambient sound, sound effects (Foley), and instrumental background music” synchronized to video. There’s no synchronized voice support yet “due to our design choices,” the Movie Gen team wrote in their research paper.

Meta says Movie Gen was initially trained on “a combination of licensed and publicly available datasets,” including around 100 million videos, a billion images and a million hours of audio. The company’s language is a bit fuzzy when it comes to sourcing — Meta has already admitted to training its AI models on data from every Australian user’s account, it’s even less clear what the company is using outside of its own products.

As for the actual videos, Movie Gen certainly looks impressive at first glance. Meta says that in its own A/B testing, people have generally preferred its results compared to OpenAI’s Sora and Runway’s Gen3 model. Movie Gen’s AI humans look surprisingly realistic, without many of the gross telltale signs of AI video (disturbing eyes and fingers, in particular). 

“While there are many exciting use cases for these foundation models, it’s important to note that generative AI isn’t a replacement for the work of artists and animators,” the Movie Gen team wrote in a blog post. “We’re sharing this research because we believe in the power of this technology to help people express themselves in new ways and to provide opportunities to people who might not otherwise have them.”

It’s still unclear what mainstream users will do with generative AI video, though. Are we going to fill our feeds with AI video, instead of taking our own photos and videos? Or will Movie Gen be deconstructed into individual tools that can help sharpen our own content? We can already easily remove objects from the backgrounds of photos on smartphones and computers, more sophisticated AI video editing seems like the next logical step. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/metas-movie-gen-looks-like-a-huge-leap-forward-for-ai-video-but-you-cant-use-it-yet-165717605.html?src=rss 

Ten years ago, the Reaper of Souls expansion completely reimagined and revived Diablo III. It overhauled huge swaths of the game, strengthening its foundation enough that D3 remained a fun time even as it stretched far past what should have been its expiration date.

Diablo IV has moved at a different pace. It managed to get through launch without the technical mishaps that plagued its predecessor, but it was still a game that landed somewhere short of its full potential on arrival. Our review felt that, and I felt it in my own playthrough. Once I finished the campaign and started the grinding loop, I quickly got bored and abandoned my character.

But ahead of its first major expansion, Vessel of Hatred, Diablo IV is not the same as it was at launch. I’ve spent some time with the new content in Vessel of Hatred and while I’ll cover what the region of Nahantu brings to the table, I’m also taking this chance to take a broader look at the state of Diablo IV.

Vessel of Hatred adds companionship and customization

Vessel of Hatred introduces a new region, Nahantu, and a new class, Spiritborn. Nahantu is a jungle biome with lush greenery in some spaces and complete devastation in others. Basically, it’s your standard Diablo IV location. It also has several points of interest for the lore nerds out there.

Spiritborn is a completely new class in the Diablo universe and it’s a great addition. This is a close-range fighter with skills inspired by four Spirit Guardians: The gorilla abilities center defense and heavy hits, the jaguar delivers tempo-driven fire attacks, the eagle deals lightning damage via feathers, and the centipede is all about poison powers. Yes, centipede. It doesn’t sound like a fearsome creature, but trust me, those poison attacks are rad. The biggest thrill spawns from the ultimate abilities, where the actual Spirit Guardian appears to fight on your behalf. Having a spectral gorilla smash down and crush enemies is deeply satisfying in a way I didn’t know I needed.

In my run of D4, I’ve put the most hours into playing a Necromancer and a Sorcerer. They’re both loads of fun, but they feel at their strongest when they’re completely focused on one element or damage type. I’m not enamored of needing to completely redo my talent tree and paragon boards every time I encounter a unique item, so I appreciate that a Spiritborn really can pick and choose skills from across the four Guardians. That’s something Blizzard devs spoke about in a livestream about the class design, and I’m pleased to report that the class-specific Spirit Hall makes it easy to get benefits from legendary and unique item powers without overhauling your entire rotation. That’s not to say optimal builds won’t emerge over time, but flexibility is a real win in the Spiritborn kit.

My other favorite addition in Vessel of Hatred is the Den, a quartet of mercenaries that can join you on your quests. For solo players, they act like the companions in Diablo III — you can pick one to follow you around and join your battles. Each has a miniature skill tree that you can customize to best match your own playstyle. A secondary mechanic, Reinforcement, allows you to access followers’ abilities even if you don’t or can’t have one equipped. Reinforcement allows you to pick a single ability from a single merc and set when you want them to use it. Their skills can map directly to when you use your own powers, or to more battle-specific conditions such as your character being injured or crowd controlled. My favorite combo started with me casting an eagle spell to yoink enemies into a clump, then my archer buddy would show up and fire off an incendiary grenade to scorch them all. But the combinations are pretty endless and easy to switch up on a whim.

The Den isn’t a deep game system and heavy-duty players probably won’t take long to max out all four companions. However, it offers yet another opportunity to customize your playthrough, and that’s where I think a Diablo game shines. Even though I used a default Spiritborn model, named her Test and never bothered to transmog gear, it still didn’t take long for me to start feeling attached to the character. This was my Spiritborn, my journey to save the world with my set of allies.

Sanctuary is a bleak place. Even when I play D4 with other people, the oppressive grimness of the settings and situations creates a feeling of “us against the world.” Maybe a few NPCs will be useful from time to time, but most of them are either going to betray us or lie to us or die on us. But for once, even while facing the most unbeatable foes, Vessel of Hatred made me feel connected. It’s in the expansion’s basic premise, that Neyrelle has chosen to shoulder an impossible burden for you and is going to try her damnedest to survive and succeed. It’s in the presence of the Den, where someone always has your back in battle. It’s in the refrain of your guide, Eru: Help is needed, so help is offered. It’s in the new Dark Citadel end-game dungeon, which you literally can’t complete without at least one other person. Even if you play Vessel of Hatred solo, you never feel alone.

There are other notable features arriving with Vessel of Hatred, and you’ll notice the stat crunch and new difficulty system if you’ve been keeping up with the game over the past year. Runewords are returning in a throwback to Diablo II, and there is of course more powerful gear to hunt down. But I see those updates as the culmination of a whole year of tweaks and revisions to Sanctuary.

A review of Diablo IV‘s first year

For better and for worse, Blizzard is a game studio that responds to the demands of its audience. “We’ve heard your feedback” may be the most-uttered phrase across the company’s events. I think there’s a balance to be struck in giving the community such a loud voice in a game’s direction, but in the case of Diablo IV, it has generally turned out well. When a lot of people fill the forums and say that a system is unfun, odds are good it’ll get reworked. And there definitely were some unfun points in Diablo IV.

The item system got a thorough and rewarding overhaul in Season 4. Activities like the Helltide and Nightmare dungeons are no longer gated to the highest difficulty levels. Even simple tweaks have done a lot to improve quality of life: At one point, the locations of the vendors changed so that the Blacksmith, Jeweler and Occultist are now all next to each other, meaning you aren’t mounting up to go across town just to swap out one item of gear. Nearly every update feels intended to give players more agency and more power.

A seasonal model also helps here, introducing fresh gameplay ideas every few months that the devs can learn from and possibly turn into permanent updates. For instance, Vessel of Hatred is launching with the start of a new season that adds Realmwalker monsters to chase across Sanctuary. Not every season revolutionizes the core gameplay — sometimes it’s just a glimpse into a faction with a short story thread to untangle — but these themed end-game additions can be reason enough to keep playing.

So, is it worth returning to Sanctuary?

For those who just want to experience the story, Vessel of Hatred is a worthwhile and natural continuation of the cliffhanger from the base game. For über-fans, I assume you live on the PTR and already have your own opinions about what’s coming (and you’ll play for hours no matter what).

I’m mostly speaking to the group in the middle, who have dabbled occasionally or never logged back in after the big Lilith battle. For these players, now’s a good time to return to Diablo IV. Explore the new story, try the Spiritborn; you’ll probably find plenty to enjoy.

A live game usually needs some time to find its footing, or to prove it has staying power beyond an initial fifteen minutes of fame. Vessel of Hatred is just the latest example of how Blizzard is committed to changing, improving and making Diablo IV a hell of a good time.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/vessel-of-hatred-is-the-latest-reason-to-start-playing-diablo-iv-again-160036459.html?src=rss