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The musician Grimes has developed an interactive AI plush toy for children which can converse with and “learn” the personalities of their owners. Grimes and toy company Curio created the line of toys in partnership with OpenAI, as first reported by The Washington Post. Grimes, who voices all three toys, is also an investor and advisor for the product. The three plush figurines are named Gabbo, Grem, and Grok — not to be confused with the AI chatbot named Grok owned by Elon Musk, a former partner of Grimes. Curio told the…

Greta Gerwig, fresh from her box office triumph Barbie, is to be president of the jury for the 2024 edition of the Cannes film festival.In a lengthy statement announcing Gerwig’s appointment to the role, the festival said: “Gerwig manages to combine what was previously judged to be incompatible: delivering arthouse blockbusters, narrowing the gap between art and industry, exploring contemporary feminist issues with deft as well as depth, and declaring her demanding artistic ambition from within an economic model that she…

Apple has been named PETA’s 2023 Company of the Year for setting a good example by ditching leather from all of its products earlier this year. In a statement on its website, PETA, the animal rights charity, said, “Apple Inc. clearly recognizes that today’s conscious consumers want to support sustainable brands—in the past five years, global searches for sustainable goods have increased by 71%, and surveys indicate that a vast majority of shoppers care about the environmental impact of the products they buy. As the…

A fungus that attacked other organisms 407 million years ago has been unearthed among a collection of fossils, making it the oldest of its kind to have ever been found. The new plant pathogen has also been named Potteromyces asteroxylicola, in honor of The Tale of Peter Rabbit author and amateur mycologist Beatrix Potter.While having your name attached to an ancient predatory fungus might not seem like the most complimentary of moves, Potter’s devotion to the study and documenting of fungi has become far more recognized…

Time magazine declared Taylor Swift as 2023’s person of the year on Wednesday, and accompanied the announcement with a rare interview from the artist in which she reflected on the year of her career that truly put her on top of the world. Unsurprisingly, right-wing commentators took the opportunity to interpret Swift’s well-earned success to launch into a conspiracy theory bender. Swift, who has publicly aligned herself with the pro-choice movement and declared her opposition to former President Donald Trump, has…

Killers of the Flower Moon was named the best film of the year by the National Board of Review, adding to the early awards-season haul of Martin Scorsese's Osage epic. The National Board of Review, a long-running organization comprised of film enthusiasts and academics, also on Wednesday named Scorsese best director and Lily Gladstone best actress. That follows recent honors for the film and for Gladstone from the New York Film Critics Circle and the Gotham Awards. Also read: Killers of the Flower Moon review round-up:…

Over the course of the last three years in particular, every moment in which you started to think Taylor Swift couldn’t get any bigger than she already was, the magnitude of her celebrity expanded three times its size. In 2023, that expansion ballooned even larger in the face of albums both old and new and an international stadium tour that completely flattened Ticketmaster’s infrastructure. It placed her on top of the world, and as she is named Time‘s Person of the Year, Swift reflects in a rare interview on all of…

Taylor Swift has just been named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.It is the singer’s accomplishments as an artist—culturally, critically, and commercially— that has brought her to the prestigious title.As a pop star, the publication reported, the 33-year-old musician has been sitting in rarefied company, alongside Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, and Madonna; as a songwriter, she has been compared to Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, and Joni Mitchell. As a businesswoman, Time wrote, she has built an empire worth, by some…

The Oxford University Press announced its 2023 word of the year on Monday (4 December), and it’s one that you may need to use if you’re confident your flirty moves have a history of success and your confidence is a force to be reckoned with.If you exhibit this type of behavior, you may exude “rizz”, the chosen word for 2023, by Oxford’s standards.A team of experts and tens of thousands of public votes selected rizz as the word which most captures 2023, Sky News reported.Mainly used by Gen Z to describe someone’s ability…

Apple has announced the winners of the 2023 App Store Awards, listing the 14 best apps and games across different categories. Fitness-focussed hiking and biking app AllTrails has emerged as the best app on iPhone this year, while miHoYo's latest RPG gacha title Honkai: Star Rail has been named as the iPhone Game of the Year. Other winners include machine learning-powered editing app Photomator, souls-like action RPG Lies of P, and curated film streaming platform Mubi. Last month, Apple had announced a list of 40…