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To the surprise of just about everyone — seemingly including the studio behind it — virtual reality game Ultrawings 2 has hit PlayStation VR2 earlier than expected. Developer Bit Planet Games wrote on X that “shadow dropping Ultrawings 2 on PS VR2 today was not on our 2024 bingo card but, well, here we are.” (A shadow drop refers to a surprise release of a product as soon as it’s announced, like Hi-Fi Rush.)

It’s unclear exactly how Ultrawings 2, which debuted on Steam and Meta Quest in 2022, arrived on PS VR2 ahead of schedule. Bit Planet had wanted to bring the aerial adventure title to that platform by the end of 2023 but was unable to. It instead promised to release Ultrawings 2 on PS VR2 early this year. On January 9, Bit Planet noted it had started the submission process.

Nevertheless, the studio says the PS VR2 debut was “unforeseen.” While the developers say the current version of the game has some “relatively minor issues,” those have been resolved and were planned to be fixed in a day-one patch. That’s more likely to be a day-five update, but the studio said Ultrawings 2 is “solid” as is.

In any case, at least there’s one more game for folks to try on PS VR2. In the 11 months that the headset has been around, Sony itself has only published three VR experiences on the platform.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ultrawings-2-hits-ps-vr2-early-and-even-the-developer-was-surprised-173918655.html?src=rss 

George Carlin’s estate has filed a lawsuit against the makers of an hour-long comedy special featuring an AI replica of the comedian, as reported by NBC News. The late comedian’s estate, including his daughter Kelly Carlin, filed the suit in a Los Angeles federal court last night. It claims the online media company that posted the video, Dudesy, violated the performer’s right to publicity and infringed on a copyright.

The video’s called “George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead” and features an hour of new “material” by the comedian, who died in 2008. As AI replications go, it’s certainly not going to break any records. It’s audio only and, honestly, doesn’t even sound that much like Carlin. It sounds like a below average impression of the comedian. Also, it’s very, very bad. Carlin had an extremely unique voice and this video is mostly basic punchlines you can see coming from a mile away. There’s very little outlandish wordplay. There’s no righteous fury. There are, however, a lot of jokes comparing Donald Trump to poop.

“I understand and share the desire for more George Carlin. I, too, want more time with my father. But it is ridiculous to proclaim he has been ‘resurrected’ with AI,” Kelly Carlin wrote in a statement. She went on to write that the Carlin in that video is a “poorly-executed facsimile cobbled together by unscrupulous individuals.”

The estate’s attorney, Josh Schiller, went on to warn that AI risked becoming “a tool that allows bad-faith actors to replace creative expression, to exploit the already existing work of creators, and to get rich at the expense of others.”

Dudesey, the channel that created and posted the video, is actually run by the popular comedian Will Sasso and author Chad Kultgen. They didn’t write the material here. The AI was trained on thousands of hours of Carlin routines to create the facsimile, according to a report by NPR. Sasso and Kultgen are, however, named in the suit. The pair behind Dudesy liken the AI-created Carlin to an impressionist who impersonates a public figure.

Sasso suggested in a podcast last week that the AI version was no replacement for the real thing, going on to say that it was “interesting how heated people get about it.” The lawsuit calls the video a “piece of computer-generated click-bait which detracts from the value of Carlin’s comedic works and harms his reputation.”

The complaint seeks unspecified damages and the immediate removal of “any video or audio copies” of the hour-long special. So, if you’re curious to hear a pretty bad Carlin impression make obvious jokes about Taylor Swift, you had better get on that while you have the chance.

Of course, this is just the latest salvo in the ongoing war between AI algorithms and humans that create works of value. This issue was at the very heart of last year’s Hollywood writers’ strike and the recent spate of AI-created celebrities used to scam consumers. This is just the beginning. It’s an election year, after all, and bad actors have already used an AI replication of President Biden’s voice to urge New Hampshire residents not to vote in last week’s primary.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/george-carlins-estate-sues-over-ai-generated-comedy-special-170333368.html?src=rss 

We’ve reached the end of another week, so it’s time for a roundup of the best deals we could find on tech we like. Happily, a couple of the items we saw at CES (and named among the best) are already seeing decent discounts. So those who want to smoke meat indoors or invest in home back up batteries are in luck. As for smaller gadgets, we saw a deal on our favorite Bluetooth tracker, found a sale on Anker batteries and chargers and noted that Apple’s AirPods Pro (which will work with the upcoming Vision Pro) are still hovering at their all-time low price. This also may be the last week to take advantage of pre-order promotions on the soon-to-be-released Samsung Galaxy S24 smartphones. Here are the best tech deals from this week that you can still get today.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazons-2023-echo-show-8-is-back-to-90-plus-the-rest-of-this-weeks-best-tech-deals-171619129.html?src=rss 

The National Security Agency’s director has confirmed that the agency buys Americans’ web browsing data from brokers without first obtaining warrants. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) blocked the appointment of the NSA’s inbound director Timothy Haugh until the agency answered his questions regarding its collection of Americans’ location and Internet data. Wyden said he’d been trying for three years to “publicly release the fact that the NSA is purchasing Americans’ internet records.”

In a letter dated December 11, current NSA Director Paul Nakasone confirmed to Wyden that the agency does make such purchases from brokers. “NSA acquires various types of [commercially available information] for foreign intelligence, cybersecurity, and other authorized mission purposes, to include enhancing its signals intelligence (SIGINT) and cybersecurity missions,” Nakasone wrote. “This may include information associated with electronic devices being used outside and, in certain cases, inside the United States.”

Nakasone went on to claim that the NSA “does not buy and use location data collected from phones known to be used in the United States either with or without a court order. Similarly, NSA does not buy and use location data collected from automobile telematics systems from vehicles known to be located in the United States.”

An NSA spokesperson told Reuters that the agency uses such data sparingly but that it has notable value for national security and cybersecurity purposes. “At all stages, NSA takes steps to minimize the collection of US [personal] information, to include application of technical filters,” the spokesperson said.

Wyden has called the practice unlawful. “Such records can identify Americans who are seeking help from a suicide hotline or a hotline for survivors of sexual assault or domestic abuse,” he said.

The senator urged Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to order US intelligence agencies to stop buying Americans’ private data without consent. He also asked Haines to direct intelligence agencies to “conduct an inventory of the personal data purchased by the agency about Americans, including, but not limited to, location and internet metadata.” Wyden said that any data that does not comply with Federal Trade Commission standards regarding personal data sales should be deleted.

Wyden pointed to an FTC settlement that this month banned a data broker from selling location data. The agency alleged that the information, which it claimed was sold to buyers including government contractors, “could be used to track people’s visits to sensitive locations such as medical and reproductive health clinics, places of religious worship and domestic abuse shelters.”

The FTC stated in its complaint against the broker, formerly known as X-Mode Social, that by “failing to fully inform consumers how their data would be used and that their data would be provided to government contractors for national security purposes, X-Mode failed to provide information material to consumers and did not obtain informed consent from consumers to collect and use their location data.”

The settlement was the first of its kind with a data broker. In a statement, Wyden, who has been investigating the data broker industry for several years, said he was “not aware of any company that provides such a warning to users [regarding their consent] before collecting their data.”

The issue of US federal agencies buying phone location data isn’t exactly new. In 2020, it emerged that Customs and Border Protection had been doing so. The following year, Wyden claimed the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon bought and used location data from Americans’ phones.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nsa-admits-to-buying-americans-web-browsing-data-from-brokers-without-warrants-154904461.html?src=rss