Features

CANNES, France — At an artificial intelligence talk on a Cannes beach, a presenter’s voice is cloned and used to say a random phrase in three languages, while another’s face is replaced live on screen as they speak.

Few of the film buffs attending the premiere industry festival are shocked.

Ever since the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT took the world by storm six months ago, spurring an AI race among tech giants, the technology has shaken up the film industry.

The use of AI to write scripts is one of the leading concerns among Hollywood movie and TV writers who are in their third week of a strike that has upended productions.

However the technology is revolutionising everything from voice acting, to analysing scripts and coming up with a budget, to creating mock-ups of scenes before you even pick up a camera.

“New things are created every single day,” says Quinn Halleck, a 25-year-old filmmaker who is about to release a three-part short movie called “./ Sigma_001” which is about a sentient AI being, and uses AI from conception to marketing and distribution.

“It’s not just one tool, it’s sort of sprinkled throughout the workflow process,” he tells AFP on the sidelines of a panel on AI.

This ranges from asking ChatGPT what a character could be like, what her backstory is, and “riffing” off that to create ideas.

Telling an anecdote about a showrunner who hires writers by giving them the same prompt as he gives ChatGPT and seeing if they perform better, he argues the “bar has been raised” to come up with great ideas.

But while some assistant roles may disappear, he believes a human director remains essential.

“You still have to come up with the ideas, you have to create the prompts and curate the answers.”

Deepfake technology

The world’s leading film festival, taking place on the French Riviera, got a hefty dose of AI with a lengthy scene de-aging Harrison Ford, 80, in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”.

While producers have ruled out using AI to keep the role going, actors like Tom Hanks believe it will allow him to keep acting long after his death.

Hanks is currently being de-aged in his upcoming movie “Here”, with help from deepfake, face-swapping technology from AI firm Metaphysic.

The company’s co-founder Tom Graham says technology has bridged the so-called “uncanny valley” — the visceral human rejection of less-than-realistic androids — and is now creating deepfakes where you “absolutely can’t tell the difference”.

The company is behind Deepfake Tom Cruise, a TikTok account that perfectly imitates the actor, and also created a hyper-real Elvis Presley who morphed into Simon Cowell and his co-judges on an episode of “America’s Got Talent”.

While filmmakers are brimming with excitement over the technology’s potential, questions of its abuse hang over the session.

“This set of technologies represents, you know, a set of tectonic social shifts like the industrial revolution, which will play out over the next 20-50 years and people should be worried about what happens,” Graham tells AFP.

“Unfortunately, I don’t believe that you can stop the advancement of the technology because a lot of it is open source. There’s not really anything to turn off.”

His advice: “You should try to own and control the rights to your biometric data, how you sound, how you look, and really kind of lock that down.”

Voice cloning

Magdalena Zielinska of ElevenLabs in Poland which claims to have created the “most expressive” AI voices available, says tools to check if a voice is synthetic will be essential.

Unlike the robotic AI voices of the past, models have learned to replicate the pace and intonation of human voices. 

She says the tool allows directors to see how a scene will sound, or advertisers to see what kind of voice resonates most with clients. It can also be used to fix problems in post-production.

Zielinska says the technology could allow an actor to license their voice and do more projects at the same time.

A voice actor who fled the war in Ukraine was struggling to find work in Poland, and is “now making money”, she says, after using the technology to clean up his English accent.

French director Mathias Chelebourg foresees that 90 per cent of overall production will eventually be done by AI on movie sets. 

“Hire right now an AI specialist in your team, whatever your job is, and hire it now, because in one year you will regret it,” he warns.

WASHINGTON — Tina Turner, the growling songstress whose explosive presence left an indelible mark on 20th-century rock, electrified fans with five decades of hit records — first with husband Ike Turner, then as a wildly successful solo act.

The Black eight-time Grammy winner, who has died at the age of 83, lit up the stage from the 1960s, and won a new generation of fans in a stunning comeback after escaping her violent marriage — making her popular music’s ultimate survivor.

Abandoned by her parents, she emerged from Tennessee’s cotton fields to become the impassioned “Queen of Rock and Roll” who, according to music lore, taught Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger how to dance.

After snowballing into a global phenomenon, the singer of “Nutbush City Limits” and “The Best” lived her final years in Switzerland with husband Erwin Bach, a former record label executive who was her romantic partner for three decades before they tied the knot in 2013.

Her early career, originally as a soul and R&B siren, was a roller coaster for Turner, who admitted attempting suicide at the height of Ike’s physical and emotional abuse.

Tina fled Ike in 1976, dashing across a highway to escape during a concert tour. Her divorce was finalised in 1978, and she was left with nothing but her stage name.

But the rock star dream still gnawed at her.

“How can I fill stadiums?” Turner wondered, in comments played during her 2021 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction.

“I wanted it. I wanted to do what Jagger and all the other guys at the time was doing.”

Those dreams were fulfilled, and then some, when she struck crossover gold with her 1984 album “Private Dancer”, whose Grammy-winning smash single “What’s Love Got to Do With It” propelled her to superstardom at age 44.

Four years later, she set the record for largest paying attendance of a performance by a solo artist when her Rio concert crowd topped 180,000.

As a Black woman who embraced rock over 1950s doo-wop and 1960s Motown, Turner was a double outsider. But she wrote — and then rewrote — the rule book for women in the genre.

“A Black woman owning the stage all by herself: that’s the dream right there,” singer and rapper Lizzo said of Turner.

Turner sold more than 100 million records worldwide, according to Billboard, and paved the way for bold performers like Janet Jackson, Madonna and Beyonce.

“I never in my life saw a woman so powerful, so fearless, so fabulous,” Beyonce told Turner from the Kennedy Centre stage in a 2005 Tina tribute. “And those legs!”

‘Pain in your heart’

Anna Mae Bullock was born on November 26, 1939, in Brownsville, Tennessee.

She and her sister grew up in a family of modest means, but conditions worsened when they were abandoned by their father, and then their mother.

When the grandmother who helped raise them died, Anna Mae moved in with relatives in St. Louis, Missouri at age 16.

There she met Ike Turner, a guitarist and bandleader eight years her senior who had already tasted fame, having written and recorded what was arguably the first rock and roll record, “Rocket 88”, in 1951. 

She convinced Ike to let her sing with him. 

When he scored a 1960 hit with her lead vocals on “A Fool in Love”, he gave her the stage name Tina Turner, and the pair performed as the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. By 1962, they were married.

From early on, Tina was the fiery, dominant presence, stealing the limelight with a blend of thick, textured vocals, haunting howls and mesmerising dance moves.

The Turner oeuvre reflected their personal tensions: it included “I Idolise You”, “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine”, and their most famous number, a 1970 cover of “Proud Mary”, in which Tina purrs about starting the song “nice and easy”, but finishing it “nice and rough”.

Even as she exuded raw sexual power as a performer, her singing was tinged with a palpable vulnerability.

“You sing with those emotions because you’ve had pain in your heart,” Turner told Rolling Stone magazine in 1986.

After leaving Ike, she toiled in Las Vegas shows, released modestly selling solo records and toured heavily in Europe. 

But with the success of 1984’s “Private Dancer”, her metamorphosis from manipulated co-star to resurrected rock goddess was complete.

The next year, she was onstage at Live Aid in Philadelphia for a memorable encounter with Jagger, who ripped off Turner’s black leather miniskirt mid-performance, revealing her in fishnet stockings and a leotard.

Turner grinned and ran fingers through her lion’s mane of hair. 

“I know, it’s only rock and roll but I like it!” she belted out.

She starred opposite Mel Gibson in a Hollywood blockbuster, “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome;” co-wrote a best-selling autobiography, “I, Tina;” and was the subject of a feature film, “What’s Love Got To Do With It” starring Angela Bassett.

‘A way out’

In the revealing 2021 HBO documentary “Tina”, an uncomfortable reality emerges: her past trauma had become a focus for interviewers, with the star repeatedly asked to recount her life’s worst moments.

Turner, who had embraced Buddhism and saw it as “a way out” of her dangerous first marriage, pointed to the faith as a catalyst for rejuvenation and stability. 

She often swatted away probing questions, once saying reliving the past was like a “curse”.

But personal hardships were impossible to ignore, including the violence from Ike.

“He used my nose as a punching bag so many times that I could taste blood running down my throat when I sang,” she wrote in her 2018 memoir, “My Love Story”.

In life after Ike, her concerts became glitzy spectacles — and she kept the high-octane rock flowing for decades.

A Wembley Stadium concert in 2000 saw a 60-year-old Turner holding nothing back, grinding across the stage in stiletto heels and her trademark leather miniskirt.

In 2008, she embarked on her Tina! — 50th Anniversary Tour, which grossed some $130 million.

In 2013, three months after marrying Bach and taking Swiss nationality, Turner relinquished her US citizenship.

The grande dame enjoyed her later years with Bach in their Zurich home and a vacation mansion near the French Riviera.

Tragedy struck in 2018 when Turner’s eldest son Craig, from her pre-Ike union with saxophonist Raymond Hill, committed suicide at 59.

Ike Turner — who died in 2007 — and Tina had one child together, Ronnie, who died last year at 62 of complications from colon cancer.

WASHINGTON — If there’s one thing we should all be able to agree on, it’s that all human beings belong to the same species, Homo sapiens.

But a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday has found a yawning gap between what people claim to believe and what they actually hold true.

A team from Harvard and Tufts gathered data from more than 60,000 subjects who took part in 13 experiments that tested their implicit biases.

An overwhelming majority — over 90 per cent — explicitly stated that white people and non-white people are equally human.

But on an implicit measure, white US participants, as well as white participants from other countries, consistently associated the attribute “human” (as opposed to “animal”) with their own group more than other racial groups. 

Conversely, Black, Asian and Hispanic participants showed no such bias, equally associating their own group and white people with “human”.

“The biggest takeaway for me is that we’re still grappling in a new form with sentiments that have been around for centuries,” first author Kirsten Morehouse, a PhD student at Harvard University, told AFP.

Throughout history, the de-humanisation of other races has been used as a pretext for unequal treatment, ranging from police brutality all the way to genocide. 

Implicit Association Test

The research relied on the Implicit Association Test (IAT), a tool developed in the 1990s and now widely used in the field.

A computer-based measure, it tests the strength of associations between two concepts — for example Black and white people or gay and straight people — and two attributes like good or bad.

The idea is that easier pairings, as measured by faster key responses, are more strongly associated in the mind than difficult pairings, as measured by slower responses.

Researchers believe IAT tests reveal attitudes that people would be unwilling to state publicly, or might not even be aware of on a conscious level. 

Across all the experiments, 61 per cent of white participants associated white people more with “human” and Black people more with “animal”.

An even greater number — 69 per cent of white participants — associated white participants more with humans and Asians more with animals, and the same result occurred for white people taking a white-Hispanic test.

These effects held true across age, religion and education of participants, but did vary by political affiliation and gender. Self-identified conservatives and men expressed slightly stronger implicit “human = white” associations.

Non-white people did not show an implicit bias in favour of their own racial groups compared to white people.

But they did show a bias towards whites as more human when the test was between white people and another minority group, for example Asians asked to take a test that assessed their attitudes towards white people versus Black people.

Social hierarchy

Morehouse attributed these findings to the fact that white people are socially and economically dominant in the United States, where 85 per cent of the participants were from (8.5 per cent were from Western Europe).

She theorised that while you might expect all races to be more biased in favour of their own “in-group”, such sentiments might be cancelled out by their lower standing in American society, resulting in overall neutrality.

The fact that “third party” participants were biased in favour of white people when assessed against another race “demonstrates how powerful these social hierarchies are”, she said. 

Similar tests to those used in the experiment are available to take at https://implicit.harvard.edu/ 

Morehouse said that while the results could be uncomfortable for some, awareness was a first step that could help individuals break patterns of stereotyping.

BIRMINGHAM, United Kingdom — In a rehearsal studio in central England, dancers are getting to grips with new, heavy metal-inspired ballet steps. Moving gracefully in unison, they team pirouettes with air guitar, leaps with head banging.

Welcome to “Black Sabbath — The Ballet”, the brainchild of Cuban dance superstar Carlos Acosta, artistic director of the Birmingham Royal Ballet.

Determined to celebrate the cultural treasures of the UK’s second city since his arrival in 2020, Acosta took his idea to Black Sabbath co-founder and guitarist Tony Iommi, who gave it his blessing along with the group’s original vocalist Ozzy Osbourne.

“I was fascinated with the idea. I thought ‘How are they going to do that’,” Iommi, 75, told AFP in Birmingham.

“I just couldn’t imagine how they’d do ballet to Black Sabbath and then I thought well maybe they’re going to use the... softer tracks, but no they went for ‘Black Sabbath’, ‘War Pigs’, ‘Iron Man’,” he said.

“I think I was just really intrigued.”

The full-length, three-act ballet opens in Birmingham, the pioneering group’s home city, in September before going on tour. Rehearsals have just begun.

Bat incident

According to writer Richard Thomas, the ballet is the “rags-to-riches story” of four young men who went from the “factory floor to one of the most successful bands in rock history”, although he stressed it would not be a documentary set to music and dance.

The legendary group’s original line-up was Osbourne, Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward.

They were instrumental in creating heavy metal in the early 1970s with dark and high-volume guitars coupled with a keen interest in the occult.

“It’s very simple. It’s like Black Sabbath meets the Birmingham Royal Ballet,” Thomas said.

There would, however, be use of archive interviews and also some famous Black Sabbath stories such as how Iommi lost the tips of two fingers in an industrial accident on his last day working at a sheet metal factory.

Also making an appearance will be the tale of the “Stonehenge” set that had to be dumped after a measurements mix-up meant it was so big it wouldn’t fit into auditoriums.

And he said there might “possibly be a brief mention of the bat incident”, in which Osbourne thought a fan had thrown a rubber bat onstage only to discover — after he took a bite — that it was real.

For Acosta, 39, there had been an immediate rapport with Iommi after he first approached him with the project.

“I didn’t know the man [or] how we were going to hit it off, but obviously we both come from the same background in terms of working-class and poor families... and the chemistry was instant,” he said.

The former star dancer said he came to the music of Black Sabbath late due to growing up in Cuba.

‘Stratospheric’

“I grew up in the 1980s, I wanted to be Michael Jackson. I didn’t know anything about Black Sabbath,” he said, adding that he only discovered the group through a friend in the late 1990s.

“This was the music of those who are marginalised so I found it very interesting.”

Musically, composer Chris Austin said it had been difficult to know where to start as the Black Sabbath back catalogue was so huge.

But he said once they narrowed it down it had been easy to be inspired by the music’s “glorious irregularity” and “enormous shifts of tempo”, combined with Osbourne’s early “stratospheric” vocals.

The show will be a treat for fans after the group, including three of the original members, ended their last-ever tour with a final concert in Birmingham in 2017.

Iommi said he was as interested as everyone else to discover how the ballet would turn out, but that he had been confident in Acosta and his team from the start.

“I know from our fans that there is a lot of excitement to come to the show,” he said, adding that he expected people would be particularly keen to join in.

“I think it will be great.”

Even on the eve of its demise by year’s end as Audi barrels along into a fully electric future, the R8 remains the singularly most exciting and iconic car since the German brand’s defining 1980-91 Quattro model. Likely be replaced by some hyper powerful sports car towards the end of the decade while the low-slung Audi E-tron GT electric super saloon keeps the flagship sports car seat warm in the meantime, neither can be expected to hold a candle to the soon departing R8 in dynamic finesse, visceral connectivity and authenticity.

While Audi have experimented with an electric variant in the form of the limited 100-car R8 E-tron of 2015, the R8 was nevertheless a dedicated mid-engine two-seat supercar powered by large high-revving naturally-aspirated combustion engines since inception. First released in 2006 as a more practical, subtle and discreet “grown up” alternative sister to Audi-owned Lamborghini models, the original R8 was based on the Lamborghini Gallardo. The second and still current generation R8 then arrived in 2015, sharing the same platform and engine as the new Lamborghini Huracan.

Evocative evolution

A faster, better handling and more comfortable and practical successor, the sensational second generation R8 is evolutionary in design, engineering and character. Little changed in size, it is lighter, stiffer and incorporates more aluminium and carbon-fibre content in its spaceframe construction and body. With a level waistline and broad footprint emphasising its Quattro four-wheel-drive, the successor R8 is a tauter, tidier, sharper and more predatory interpretation that gained a broader, taller single-frame hexagonal honeycomb grille flanked by side inlets and sharp, squinting headlights.

With a low ridged and rising bonnet, forward-set cabin and arcing roofline, the R8 carries itself with a sense of urgency, while its trademark vertical carbon-fibre “sideblades” serve as covers for the side intakes feeding its mid-mounted engine with air, and at the same time emphasising its broad shoulders, flowing lines and ground hugging stance. With a minor face-lift to see it through to end of production, the R8 gained a sharper front bumper treatment in 2019, with a yet bigger grille with slim inlets above, and it full width rear fascia honeycomb mesh.

Quick charisma

Sharing much with its Lamborghini sister including a gloriously rev-hungry naturally-aspirated engine, the R8’s charismatic and driver-engaging dry ump 5.2-litre V10 came in two versions, with the top R8 V10 Plus specification being rebranded as the R8 V10 Performance. Ostensibly gaining 10BHP, 15lb/ft torque and 0.1-second quicker acceleration, the R8 V10 Performance, however, seems to still be offered in some regional markets with little altered performance from the last driven R8 V10 Plus variant, as featured here as a representative example for a send-off review of Audi’s greatest modern road car.

Visceral and sensational in headline figures and real world driving, the 8,700rpm-capable V10 Plus develops 602BHP at 8,250rpm and 413lb/ft at 6,500rpm. Ripping through 0-100km/h in 3.2-seconds or less, 0-200km/h in 9.9-seconds and onto 330km/h, it is ultra-responsive to the slightest input as it pulls hard from idling through to mid-range, as it builds torque and power with urgently searing progression. Similarly responsive whether revving or winding down, it provides exacting throttle control for intuitive driving, and for dialling in exact increments of power to intuitively finesse grip, slip and ‘at the limit’ handling.

Connected yet committed

With its ferociously progressive delivery, the R8 V10 Plus allows far greater, more delicate and precise control for on-throttle handling than the unrefined sledgehammer brutality of a powerful electric motor, which tends to inopportunely unstick the driven wheels and inadvertently invoke intrusive electronic controls. The V10 Plus’ seamlessly swift shifting 7-speed dual-clutch gearbox meanwhile allows one to experience the full extent of its peaky rev range at different speeds, and continue accelerating with a relentlessness unlike that of typical single-speed electric vehicle transmission systems.

Bolting from standstill with all wheels digging into tarmac, the V10 Plus’ authentic, soul-stirringly visceral soundtrack is a throaty, raspy and distinctly metallic staccato that crackles and hardens to an urgent bellowing and wailing as revs rise viciously, and is unmatched by the E-tron GT’s synthesised noises, or any EV successor. Urgently indefatigable against wind resistance, the V10 Plus develops up to 140kg downforce at speed for stability and steering control. Meanwhile, optional adaptive magnetic dampers provide a supple, fluent and settled ride over fast straights and imperfect textures, and conversely taut cornering body control through switchbacks.

Comfort and clarity

Significantly lighter than the E-tron GT, the 1,580kg R8 V10 Plus is agile yet committed through corners, with rear-biased four-wheel-drive and low within-wheelbase weighting making it neutral and nimble through corners. Its direct, well-weighted electric-assisted steering meanwhile delivers a quick, crisp turn-in. With stability controls in low intervention mode, the V10 Plus can obligingly but slightly kick the rear out to tighten cornering lines, as its four-wheel-drive and limited slip differential quickly redistribute more power frontward and along the rear axle for more traction before blast out onto a straight. Scalpel sharp through hill climbs, it is connected, agile and engaging, yet develops plenty of road-holding when needed.

Capable yet flattering, the R8 V10 Plus is a more practical, attainable and understated daily supercar than its more exotic Lamborghini relation. Where the R8 excels is in its accessible, luxurious, well-equipped and spacious cabin, with useable luggage room, generous headroom and excellent visibility, including even better rear visibility than some front-engine sports cars. Its superb driving position, visibility and user-friendly manual mode steering-mounted gearbox paddle shifters meanwhile make one feel at the centre of action, and add a crucial level of confidence, control and clarity at speed, through switchbacks and in the city.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 5.2-litre, mid-mounted, dry sump, V10-cylinders

Bore x stroke: 84.5 x 92.8mm

Compression ratio: 12.5:1

Valve-train: 40-valve, DOHC, direct injection

Gearbox: 7-speed automated dual clutch

Driveline: Four-wheel-drive, multi-plate clutch, limited-slip differential

Gear ratios: 1st 3.133; 2nd 2.588; 3rd 1.958; 4th 1.244; 5th 0.979; 6th 0.976; 7th 0.841; R 2.647

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 602 (610) [449] @8,250rpm

Specific power: 115.7BHP/litre

Power-to-weight, unladen: 381BHP/tonne

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 413 (560) @6,500rpm

Specific torque: 107.6Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight, unladen: 354.4Nm/tonne

Rev limit: 8,700rpm

0-100km/h: 3.2-seconds

0-200km/h: 9.9-seconds

Top speed: 330km/h

Fuel consumption, combined: 12.3-litres/100km 

CO2 emissions, combined: 287g/km

Fuel capacity: 73-litres

Wheelbase: 2,650mm

Track, F/R: 1,638/1,599mm

Overhangs, F/R: 994/782mm

Unladen/kerb weight: 1,580kg/1,655kg

Weight distribution, F/R: 42 per cent/58 per cent

Luggage capacity, boot/behind front seats: 112-/226-litres 

Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion

Turning circle: 11.2-metres

Suspension: Double wishbones, adaptive magnetic dampers

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated, perforated ceramic discs

Brake calipers, F/R: 6-/4-piston calipers

Tyres: 245/30ZR20/305/30ZR20

By Sonia Salfity
Desparate Dieter

I find the older I get the less I can multitask, especially when it’s something that requires more of my attention. The problem with multitasking is that it prevents us from being fully present, which translates into less mindfulness.

It’s impossible to focus on an important task when we’re juggling a million things at a time. We’re bound to drop the ball on the important things and fail to do a good job due to overextending ourselves.

Healthy habits

When it comes to developing healthy habits, we can use our multitasking strategy to bundle established healthy habits with new ones we are trying to develop. Combining good habits that have become part of your daily routine with a new one you are trying to incorporate is something we do without thinking.

You may find you’re already doing this in some areas of your life without being consciously aware of it. Take cooking, for example; you find yourself waiting on something to simmer on your stove, so you decide you might as well make the coffee or do some meal prep since you can’t leave the kitchen. I’ve learned to combine mundane tasks with ones that are more enjoyable so it’s a win-win situation.

I listen to podcasts while putting the dishes away and doing laundry and tidying up. I’ve also learned to stop taking shortcuts so I no longer put items on the bottom of our staircase so I can take them when I’m going up for something else. Instead I make myself go up the stairs and while I’m at it I’ll brush my teeth and put some clothes away. Think of it as tag teams: One good habit after another makes for a successful win.

Committing to your healthy habit 

It all starts with our thoughts. That’s where we can break the cycle of unhealthy habits one thought at a time, one action at a time. Let me walk you through what that looks like in my life: If you tell me I need to walk an hour a few times a week, then I’m probably going to come up with an excuse half the time not to do so. Excuses like ‘I didn’t sleep well last night’, or ‘I don’t have time today’. Interestingly enough, everyone always seems to have time to scroll on their social media but never enough time to take a stroll with a friend. I’m guilty of that myself but I’ve found that combining the healthy habit with something we already enjoy makes you much more likely to show up!

For the last 14 years, I have been walking with a very good friend of mine. She’s the kind of friend that shows up rain or shine and is always on time. Knowing that I’ll be meeting Sue for a walk makes me more accountable and much more excited to connect with a friend. The walking part has become secondary to the pleasant conversations and a friendship that has grown the more miles we’ve covered. The connection is priceless and we don’t take that for granted. We even try to book appointments outside of our walking time just so we don’t have to miss out.

Combining positive habits with something we already enjoy is truly one of the easiest ways to get healthier. It’s just a matter of being intentional about it. You can even combine two or more healthy habits. We have even learned to pray on our walks when we have something heavy on our minds. So now we call them ‘prayer walks’ which are good for the body and the soul!

Another easy trick that hardly takes more effort is to cook a little extra when you’re already cooking for the family. This way you can do the meal prep for the next day and not have an excuse to stop for fast-food on your way home from work. The same idea applies when you eat out. Tell the server to give you a box for take-away and save half your portion for the next day. Restaurant portions are already at least double what a normal healthy portion should be, so get more for your money and save a few calories while you’re at it!

Whatever you do this May, let’s make sure we keep our eyes on the ball and never lose sight of our goals. Let’s remind ourselves that small victories lead to bigger ones when they become a regular part of our daily lives. These are the habits that will carry us through the hardest of days. Let us befriend them and not treat them as guests that are ‘here today, gone tomorrow!’ Instead may they have a permanent place in our lives as we make room for them because they are here to stay!

I suggest we kick out the unwelcome guests, the bad habits, and not keep inviting them back! Here’s to a healthier, mindful, and life-giving attitude as we get stronger and wiser about building good habits that we can pass on to our children so they won’t have the struggles we have endured as desperate dieters.

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

TYSONS CORNER, Virginia — It could be the ultimate blend of art and science — a new seven-suite “space symphony” inspired and illustrated by NASA’s latest mind-boggling images.

The world premiere outside Washington last week of “Cosmic Cycles” showcased vivid imagery compiled by the US space agency alongside the first-ever public performance of the music.

Henry Dehlinger, the symphony’s American composer, describes it as “almost like a total artwork”.

“It’s not just music, it’s not just visuals — it’s not a score for a film either,” the 56-year-old told AFP before the concert.

“It’s more of an immersive experience that encapsulates both visuals and sound.”

A similar effort was undertaken over a century ago by English composer Gustav Holst — but when he wrote his famous ode to “The Planets”, much in astronomy remained only theoretical.

Since then, humans have walked on the Moon, sent roving research labs to Mars and probed across the solar system with powerful telescopes allowing us to peer billions of light-years away.

The images from that research, compiled by NASA producers into seven short films, served as the inspiration for Dehlinger.

“I had to almost pinch myself and remind myself that this isn’t pretend — this is the real deal. Not science fiction, it’s the actual science,” he said.

Piotr Gajewski, music director and conductor of the National Philharmonic, explained that the idea for the project came after previous work with NASA on visuals to go with a double-billing of Claude Debussy’s “La Mer” (“The Sea”) and Holst’s “The Planets”.

For their next collaboration, 64-year-old Gajewski said he suggested to NASA “that we turn the tables on them”.

“Rather than them getting a piece of music and putting pictures to it, that they start by putting short videos together... of their very, very best work”.

For Wade Sisler, executive producer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the challenge was worth the effort.

“It’s a journey unlike one that I have ever helped anyone take,” Sisler, 64, told AFP.

‘Like Van Gogh paintings’

The seven-part piece begins at the heart of our solar system — the Sun — with shots of its swirling and gurgling surface, and explosions of particles out to the planets.

The next two movements focus on NASA studies of our home planet, from a global perspective and then through Earth photographs taken by astronauts in orbit.

Apart from photos and videos, interspersed throughout the seven films are a “mesmerising collection of data visualisations” created by NASA, Sisler explained.

Data on ocean currents, for example, “look like Van Gogh paintings when you put them in motion. The colours are beautiful, you see patterns that you never realised before”.

A fourth segment on the Moon is followed by profiles of each planet — including a focus on images of the Martian surface taken by NASA rovers.

Jupiter, a “regal subject” according to Dehlinger, is introduced by roaring chimes and horns.

The symphony also takes a detailed look at recent experiments on asteroids before a big finale of nebulae, black holes and other galactic phenomena.

In addition to two performances at venues outside Washington, NASA has released the videos to its YouTube page with a synthesised version of Dehlinger’s soundtrack.

‘A great mystery’

To hammer home the equal importance of the music and video, conductor Gajewski explained, they decided not to aim for exact synchronisation, but to be more “fluid”.

That approach allows him “to find some moments that are different each time and each performance”.

“We really wanted people to be able to experience the music, the performers themselves, and also the science in a balanced portfolio,” Sisler added.

Knowing the images and missions were real, Sisler said, elicits a stronger audience response in the digital age, when “you can conjure up anything through AI, conjure up anything in digital effects”.

“People are interested in real results. Like ‘wow, we really went to that asteroid. Wow, we’re really bringing it back here to Earth,’” he said, referring to the daring OSIRIS-REx sample retrieval mission.

That awe-inspiring factor made the images perfect companions to orchestral pieces, Gajewski said.

“What is it that all of a sudden makes us emotionally weak when we hear one kind of music, or proud when we hear different kinds?” he asked.

“It’s all a great mystery, and of course space is the other great mystery, so they complement each other very well.”

SAN FRANCISCO — Online search, dominated by Google for 25 years, has become as banal as making a phone call, but it could finally be getting a profound reset thanks to artificial intelligence.

The classic search and click made ubiquitous by the Google behemoth is getting a major AI makeover as bots ChatGPT, Bard or Bing see hundreds of millions of web surfers seek answers to life’s questions in a new way.

“People are realising how many times they use Google search, not to find a webpage, but to answer a question,” said Stefan Sigg, Chief Product Officer at Germany-based Software AG.

Microsoft, long considered big tech’s boring uncle, has jumped fearlessly and some say blindly into generative AI search with an update to Bing, the long struggling also-ran to Google.

Bing’s bot, which was released worldwide after three months of testing, responds directly to a query instead of throwing out a pageful of links for the search user to wade and click through.

With a prompt, Bing will compare two products, brainstorm vacation plans or reassuringly help prepare a job interview, for example.

‘Heavy lifting’

“Now, search does the heavy lifting for you,” said Cathy Edwards, VP Engineering at Google, during the company’s annual I/O developers conference in California.

The user no longer has to “sift through the information and then piece things together”, she said.

At the conference, matching Bing, Google presented the latest iteration of its web search juggernaut, but instead of the constellation of links that confronts you today, a chatbot offered a few paragraphs to answer what you were looking for.

Google’s AI amped search engine will slowly be released in the United States as a start, the company said.

“What we’re trying to do is make it more natural and intuitive, as easy as asking a friend and getting information from someone who’s really knowledgeable for any question you have in the world,” Elizabeth Reid, vice president of Search, told AFP.

Beyond search, Google and Microsoft have deployed generative AI tools to other products, from cloud to word processing, presenting bots as helpful “co-pilots”, to use the term hammered home by the Windows-maker.

Personal ‘genie’

“I think search is going to be fractured into a million pieces, and integrated into all sorts of interfaces, and not just one monolithic centralised place, which is what Google has become,” said John Battelle, author and media entrepreneur.

But if every website acts like a faithful friend, it will become ever more difficult to distinguish good information from bad, he warned.

“Would you trust an AI travel agent to give you the right deal? No,” Battelle said.

“I want my own ‘genie’, my ‘agent’ to negotiate with the website. If it’s just me against an AI, I’m gonna lose. I want one on my side.”

Battelle’s “genie” would digest a user’s information from the smartphone, computer, TV or car to help answer and act for the user in life online.

The bot, powered by personal data, would buy the best vacuum cleaner according to your tastes, habits and current promotions, sparing a long and tedious search

The AI personal assistant would have to come for a fee, ensuring that personal data wasn’t harvested and sold to the highest bidder for advertising or online tracking, as it is on social media.

Startups such as Replika, Anima and others are already moving into the companion AI space.

‘Vital role’

For the time being, Google isn’t going to disappear, said Jim Lecinski, professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management.

“We could have had this same conversation about four years ago with the advent of voice assistants like Alexa or Siri,” 

“Oh wow, search is going away because people are just going to speak their query to their car and device on their kitchen counter. Well, here we are,” he said.

The disruption of generative AI could, however, challenge the Internet’s business model, as it can allow users to find the product they want “without having to click on an ad”, Lecinski said.

But he has no doubt that the giants, ad-based Google and Meta first among them, will find solutions. 

In the new version of Google search presented on Wednesday, the ads still appear, either up at the top of the page or lower in the results, depending on the question asked.

“I don’t think we can predict what the future will have, but we do think ads will continue to play a vital role,” said Google’s Reid.

CANNES, France — Johnny Depp was feted by fans on Tuesday as he arrived on the red carpet for the screening of his comeback movie at the opening of the Cannes Film Festival, which has sparked anger over the choice to celebrate the divisive megastar.

Depp, 59, sporting a ponytail and shades, spent several minutes schmoozing with screaming fans, posing for selfies and signing autographs, before the screening of French period drama “Jeanne du Barry”, in which he plays King Louis XV. 

He joined stars such as Uma Thurman, Helen Mirren — her hair a witchy stack of blue and velvet — and Elle Fanning, for the first night of the industry shindig on the French Riviera.

Michael Douglas also received an honorary Palme d’Or, with the 78-year-old joking about the fact he is two years older than the festival. 

“This means so much to me because there are hundreds of festivals around the world but there’s only one Cannes,” he said.

While 21 films from around the globe are competing for the Palme d’Or — the festival’s top prize — there have repeated questions over its choice of opening film.

Depp remains a controversial figure since toxic court battles with ex-wife Amber Heard that revealed a turbulent private life involving alcohol, drugs and domestic abuse allegations.

But he is a long way from being “cancelled”, securing a record $20 million deal to remain the face of Dior fragrance, according to Variety last week, and set to direct Al Pacino in a biopic of artist Amedeo Modigliani later this year.

‘Violence 

in creative circles’

Although his new film is playing out of competition, the jury for the Palme d’Or was asked about Depp’s presence.

Jury member Brie Larson, star of “Captain Marvel” and an outspoken MeToo supporter, looked flustered. 

“You are asking me that? I don’t understand... Why me specifically?” she said. 

“I don’t know how I feel about it,” she added, curtly.

But there was plenty of anger online, with a friend of Heard, journalist Eve Barlow, starting a new hashtag — #CannesYouNot — criticising the decision to invite Depp. 

“Cannes seem proud of their history supporting rapists and abusers,” Barlow wrote on Instagram, with pictures of Depp alongside past Cannes regulars such as Harvey Weinstein, Roman Polanski and Gerard Depardieu — all of whom have faced sexual assault allegations.

On Monday, festival director Thierry Fremaux said he was not interested in Depp’s legal woes, saying: “I am interested in Depp the actor.” 

A group of 123 French film industry workers also denounced the festival for “rolling out the red carpet to men and women who commit assaults”. 

‘Greatest film prize’

Jury chief Ruben Ostlund, who won the top prize last year, described the Palme as “the greatest film prize in the world. If I can choose between an Oscar and a Palme, it is an easy choice”.

Of the films in the running for the award, a record seven have been directed by women.

Several Palme laureates are back in competition, including Britain’s two-time winner Ken Loach, Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-eda and Germany’s Wim Wenders.

The festival, which runs until May 27, includes a slew of hot-ticket premieres, including “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”, the fifth and final outing for Harrison Ford as the whip-cracking archaeologist, and Martin Scorsese’s new epic, “Killers of the Flower Moon”, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro.

Around a thousand police and security guards are in place for the festival, amid fears of protests linked to President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular pension reforms, with the CGT union even threatening to cut power.