Features

LOS ANGELES/MEXICO CITY — You know him as a cute, cuddly bear, but Winnie the Pooh is about to receive a terrifying makeover as the knife-wielding villain of a blood-drenched new slasher film — no joke.

Pooh’s shocking reinvention — which hits US theatres next Wednesday and has already provoked death threats from enraged fans — could break box office records and test the limits of intellectual property law.

“Look, this is mental,” said Rhys Frake-Waterfield, the 31-year-old director of “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey”. 

“I’ve had petitions to stop it. I’ve had death threats. I’ve had people saying they called the police,” he told AFP.

While Pooh, Piglet and Eeyore’s family-friendly big-screen adventures have been licensed to Disney for decades, the copyright on the first A.A. Milne books recently expired — and Frake-Waterfield’s tiny British indie studio pounced on the opportunity.

The first images of “Blood and Honey”, in which a sinister, human-sized Pooh and Piglet hovered menacingly behind a young woman relaxing in a hot tub, quickly went viral last year.

Now the live-action film — made on a shoestring budget of less than $250,000 — is set for a major global theatrical release.

It is already out in Mexico, where it has made nearly $1 million in two weeks, and some industry analysts are tipping it to become one of the most profitable films of all time.

Frake-Waterfield originally hoped his film “might do a mini theatrical run in certain areas”.

He now believes it could achieve the highest “budget-to-box office ratio” since “Paranormal Activity”, the $15,000 film that launched a near $1 billion franchise over a decade ago.

“I really believed in the idea. Other people didn’t... and now it’s doing all right,” he joked.

‘Un-family friendly’

Under US law, copyrights expire 95 years after a work is first published. The first “Winnie-the-Pooh” book came out in 1926.

However, there are caveats, especially when a character evolves over time.

Distinctive traits that were added to Pooh in later books or Disney films, such as his red shirt or fondness for playing the game Poohsticks, have not yet entered the public domain.

Similarly, Pooh’s friend Tigger did not appear until later books, and so could not appear in “Blood and Honey”.

And then there is the issue of trademark.

Copyrights prevent the unlicensed copying of the creative work itself, for example books, films and characters. They expire after a set time.

Trademarks guard the source of a work, preventing anyone else from making a product that could mislead consumers into thinking it came from the original author. They can be renewed indefinitely.

“You can’t suggest that somehow it’s sponsored by or affiliated or associated with Disney in any way, because Disney still does have robust trademark protection,” said copyright lawyer Aaron J. Moss.

In this instance, the absurdity of making a Pooh horror movie helps the film’s producers.

“Simply because it is so un-family friendly, and isn’t anything that [viewers] would expect Disney to have anything to do with, that would make any potential trademark claim much more difficult to assert,” he said.

Frake-Waterfield said there was never any desire to skirt as close to Disney’s Pooh as legally possible.

“It’s literally the opposite. I want to go as far away from them as possible,” he said.

“I want Winnie the Pooh to be big and menacing and scary and intimidating and horrifying. I don’t want him to be small and cuddly and cute.”

‘Million’ dollar offer

In the film, Pooh and Piglet have been left infuriated, abandoned and feral by the departure of Christopher Robin — now a young adult — and go on a murderous rampage. 

An AFP reporter at a screening in Mexico City this week said many audience members appeared to be leaving the theatre disappointed, with Jonathan Ortiz, 32, describing the film as “very bad”.

But neither the plot nor critical response are likely to matter much.

Hype around the movie is so substantial that Frake-Waterfield is already preparing a sequel — as well as horror movies based on “Bambi” and “Peter Pan” books.

“One person literally yesterday was like, ‘Do you want a million to make a film? Just tell me the concept and we will just go ahead with it,’” he said.

“That’s really hard to get. It’s hard to get funding for any film, but people are starting to really try and engage.”

PARIS — Experts have warned that the recent detection of bird flu in mammals including foxes, otters, minks, seals and even grizzly bears is concerning but emphasised that the virus would have to significantly mutate to spread between humans.

Since late 2021, Europe has been gripped by its worst-ever outbreak of bird flu, with North and South America also experiencing severe outbreaks.

This has led to the culling of tens of millions of domestic poultry worldwide, many with the H5N1 strain. The global outbreak is also responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of wild birds.

Tom Peacock, a virologist at the Imperial College London, told AFP that it constitutes a “panzootic” — a pandemic among animals, in this case birds.

“We are not fully sure why it’s happening now but we think this might be driven by a slightly different strain of H5N1 which is spreading very effectively in wild, migratory birds,” Peacock said.

It is rare that bird flu jumps over into mammals — and rarer still that humans catch the potentially deadly virus. 

The UK Health Security Agency said that a fox had recently tested positive for H5N1. 

It joins eight foxes and otters which tested positive in the UK last year, all of which had a PB2 mutation. 

Peacock said that this mutation “allows the virus to replicate better in mammalian cells”. 

But further mutations would be “required for the virus to cause a flu pandemic” in humans, he added.

France announced last week that a cat had been put down after testing positive for H5N1.

And last month, the US state of Montana’s parks service said three grizzly bears with bird flu had been euthanised.

All of these mammals were suspected to have eaten infected birds.

Paul Wigley, a professor of animal microbial ecosystems at the UK’s Bristol University, said that while “there is no transmission within mammalian populations, the risk to humans remains low”.

‘Potential to cause pandemic’?

However two recent larger scale infections have raised concerns that bird flu has the potential to spread between mammals.

One was an outbreak of H5N1 with the PB2 mutation at a Spanish farm in October that led to the culling of more than 50,000 minks.

Research published in the journal Eurosurveillance last month said its findings “indicate that an onward transmission of the virus to other minks may have taken place in the affected farm”.

Transmission between the minks has not been confirmed, with further research ongoing.

The mass death of some 2,500 endangered seals found along Russia’s Caspian Sea coast last month has also raised concern.

A researcher at Russia’s Dagestan State University, Alimurad Gadzhiyev, said last week that early samples from the seals “tested positive for bird flu”, adding that they were still studying whether the virus caused the die-off.

Peacock warned there have been mixed reports from Russia about the seals, which could have contracted the virus by eating infected seabirds.

But if the seals did give bird flu to each other it “would be yet another very concerning development”, he added.

“The mink outbreaks, the increased number of infections of scavenger mammals and the potential seal outbreak would all point to this virus having the potential to cause a pandemic in humans”, he said.

‘Mixing point’

David Heymann, an infectious disease specialist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, urged caution.

More bird flu cases could be being detected in mammals because countries have ramped up testing, he said.

“This may have been going on for years and nothing has really occurred,” he told AFP.

But it was always concerning when a flu virus enters mammals “because they’re often the mixing point of influenza viruses, or they create an environment where mutations can occur and then can become adapted in humans”, he added.

Even if that did occur, he said there were excellent surveillance systems in Europe and North America, and that H5N1 has been heavily researched since it first emerged in China and Hong Kong in 1996.

If H5N1 did mutate into a strain that could circulate among humans, the current seasonal flu vaccine could be fairly easily updated to include it, he said.

The UK Health Security Agency said “there is no evidence of sustained human to human transmission” of bird flu.

Over the last two decades, there have been 868 confirmed H5N1 cases in humans with 457 deaths, according to the World Health Organisation. There were four confirmed cases and one death last year.

Last month, Ecuador reported South America’s first case of the A(H5) bird flu virus in a human — a nine-year-old girl who was in contact with backyard poultry.

The experts called for continued surveillance of avian influenza in wild birds, poultry and mammals, in order for humans to limit their exposure.

PARIS — A new generation of AI chatbots has unleashed a titanic battle between Microsoft and Google for the eyeballs of billions of web users, and the dollars they bring.

Microsoft has gone all-in with a multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI, the firm behind the world’s most buzzy bot ChatGPT, hoping to revolutionise its unloved Bing search engine.

Google has owned the search market for two decades and is not ceding any ground — it hit back this week with an in-house bot of its own, called Bard.

And the AI gold rush is not limited to Silicon Valley search giants, Chinese firm Baidu announcing its own bot this week.

But what exactly is the fight about? 

Big tech firms have spent years ripping unimaginable amounts of data from the Internet and churning it into so-called large language models that they use to train algorithms.

This is how voice recognition tools like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri or Google Assistant work.

Google and Facebook owner Meta have poured their efforts into tools that can translate hundreds of languages, screen for harmful content, or target users with personalised ads.

Yet, the fundamentals of search have remained largely unchanged.

You punch a few words into Google and it spits back a mix of useful links and often less useful ads.

But if AI has its way, these familiar pages of blue links could soon be just another dusty corner of internet history.

‘Relegated to history’

“A tool like ChatGPT can create search engines that give a structured answer to questions instead of simply a list of documents like Google does at the moment,” said Thierry Poibeau of French research institute CNRS.

What that means in practice is that future search engines will not produce lists of links — instead they will give the user coherent and full answers using multiple sources.

Neeva, a search engine that markets itself as privacy friendly, is already pushing this kind of experience.

Neeva founder Sridhar Ramaswamy, a former Google executive, told AFP that smaller companies were much better placed to innovate.

“We use large language models to look at all of the pages that are going to result for a query and show you a summary, and then show you a very rich visual experience,” he said.

Like many analysts, Ramaswamy was highly critical of his former firm’s obsession with ads, which he claimed was ruining the experience of users.

Industry analyst Rob Enderle said Google’s search business risked being torpedoed by innovations in AI.

“Google still largely lives off the fact their search engine is the most widely used,” he said.

But these changes could “relegate them to history”. 

However, there is still a long way to go before AI chatbots successfully wed themselves to search engines.

Racist bots

“Tools like chatGPT provide the illusion of an all-knowing being answering your questions, but that’s not true,” said Claude de Loupy of French AI text firm Syllabs.

Social media is overflowing with comical examples of ChatGPT’s failings, not least its lack of ability in basic maths.

It has also been accused of bias after it refused to generate a poem praising Donald Trump but was more than happy to pen a paean to his successor as US president, Joe Biden.

There are questions about the sources the bots are trained on, the people who are employed in often terrible conditions to program them, copyright issues around pictures and the ultimate question of how firms will monetise their new toys.

However, OpenAI has largely managed to clear up one vital aspect that has plagued such bots — it is very difficult to get ChatGPT to say offensive things.

Microsoft got burnt in 2016 when its teenage AI chatbot Tay was immediately jumped on by Twitter users who got it to spout racist comments.

Meta was similarly embarrassed last year when it launched an AI tool called Galactica.

It was intended to help academics to write papers but had to be withdrawn after it invented citations and could be asked to write racist tracts.

LOS ANGELES — Pop queen Beyonce on Sunday reigned supreme at the Grammys, breaking the all-time record for wins with her 32nd prize and fourth of the night — but the Album of the Year prize that’s long eluded her slipped from her fingers once again, going instead to Brit Harry Styles.

All of the top contenders including Adele, Taylor Swift and Lizzo went home with an award — but it was surprise after surprise in the top four categories.

Beyonce entered the ceremony with the most chances at Grammy gold with nine, following the release of “Renaissance”, her rich, sprawling ode to club music.

She clinched the all-time Grammy record by winning the prize for Best Dance/Electronic Music Album for her smash “Renaissance”, thus surpassing the late classical conductor Georg Solti, who had 31 awards.

“I’m trying not to be too emotional. And I’m trying to just receive this night,” Queen Bey said, wearing a shimmering, curve-hugging gown, her hair in mermaid waves as her peers witnessed the history-making moment.

Beyonce thanked her family, and paid special tribute to the queer community, who she credited with inventing the genre she celebrated in her historically layered record that pays homage to pioneers of funk, soul, rap, house and disco.

But while her album was considered a likely candidate for best album, it was Styles who snagged that prestigious award.

“On nights like tonight, it’s obviously so important for us to remember that there is no such thing as bests in music,” said Styles.

His win over Queen Bey was sure to draw obvious comparisons to 2017, when Adele swept the top prizes at the glitzy music biz gala, shutting out Beyonce’s culture-shaking “Lemonade”.

The Grammys’ winningest artist still remains on the outside looking in at the top prizes: Beyonce has never won Album or Record of the Year, which this time around went to Lizzo for “About Damn Time”.

She only scored Song of the Year once, for 2008’s “Single Ladies”. This year, folk, rock and blues singer Bonnie Raitt scooped up that honor.

Beyonce was nevertheless the top winner on Sunday with her four gramophones.

Both folk rocker Brandi Carlile and rapper Kendrick Lamar ended the night with three awards each.

Adele, one of the night’s heavyweights, took home just one award in the pop categories, while Taylor Swift was shut out once again from Song of the Year, a songwriting award.

Swift did however win the Best Music Video prize for her short film based on the 10-minute version of her song “All Too Well”.

Puerto Rican reggaeton megastar Bad Bunny kicked off the show by bringing the audience to its feet with the first performance, before taking home the prize for Best Musica Urbana Album.

Bad Bunny, indisputably the world’s biggest commercial artist, nabbed the prize for his major drop “Un Verano Sin Ti”, which was also an Album of the Year contender.

“Thank you to all the Latinos across the entire world,” he said in Spanish. “We will keep elevating this genre to the next level.”

Actor Viola Davis became the latest showbiz heavyweight to earn a coveted EGOT — winner of an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony — by taking the Grammy for best audio book, narration and storytelling for her memoir “Finding Me”.

The star-studded 65th annual gala, hosted once again by comedian Trevor Noah, also featured performances from Styles, Lizzo and Mary J. Blige, as well as an exuberant tribute to hip-hop music featuring a constellation of stars.

After several Grammy years with clear Best New Artist favourites — winners like Olivia Rodrigo, Megan Thee Stallion and Billie Eilish — American jazz singer Samara Joy scooped up the prize over an eclectic field.

The category has grown increasingly reflective of the internet age’s impact on popular music, and many of the nominees — including Brazil’s Anitta, Eurovision rockers Maneskin and rapper Latto — have all found viral fame on TikTok.

“I can’t even believe — I’ve been watching you all on TV for, like, so long,’ the Bronx-born artist told the audience, after earlier taking home the prize for Best Jazz Vocal Album. 

“To be here by just being who I was born as, I’m so thankful.”

Some of her competitors for Best New Artist still had a good night: Wet Leg swept the alternative music categories, Muni Long took home the award for Best R&B Performance, and Molly Tuttle won for Best Bluegrass Album.

A late coming competitor to the Tesla Model S ubiquitous to the sporting coupe-like low-roof EV executive saloon segment, the Audi E-Tron GT Quattro is one of the most convincing and desirable current generation electric cars. 

A more agreeable affair to drive than most EVs – as viewed from an avowedly petrol-headed perspective – the E-Tron GT is, however, not without some of the same foibles of most EVs, but drives with a more ‘normal’ fluency and sense of directness than many others electric cars.

Sporting style

An extension of Audi’s EV technology first showcased with the E-Tron SUV circa 2018, the E-Tron GT Quattro was launched in 2021, as the sportiest application of such tech so far. The E-Tron GT’s body style owes more to the low-slung A7 saloon-coupe. 

Low, wide and long with beefy wheel-arches hinting at the Ingolstadt manufacturer’s iconic 1980s Quattro, the E-Ton GT’s slim scowling headlights, aggressively wide-bodied, road-hugging stance, rakishly arcing roofline and even its rear light signature, however, channel the mid-engine Audi R8 in character.

An attractive and more viscerally aggressive design than class competitors like the athletic Model S or the decidedly less sporty looking Mercedes-Benz EQE, the E-Tron GT’s design would have looked still better were it a shorter two-door coupe, rather than coupe-like four-door. 

That said, the GT’s layout follows a now familiar and similar formula as its competitors, with it heavy batteries positioned under the floor for a low within-wheelbase centre of gravity, with two front and rear electric motors providing all-wheel-drive.

Progressive, prodigious

Operating with front-wheel-drive bias in “efficiency” mode, rear-wheel bias in “dynamic” mode, and the most energy-conserving combination in “comfort” mode, the E-Tron GT’s motors develop 235BHP and 429BHP at the front and rear, respectively. 

Able to quickly and electronically alter power distribution front and rear, as necessary, to effectively put power down for sure-footed traction and road-holding, the GT’s normal combined output is 469BHP and 464lb/ft torque, which allows for swift 4.6-second 0-100km/h acceleration and a capped 245km/h top speed.

Able to increase power output to 523BHP for short 2.5-second bursts, the E-Tron GT rockets through 0-100km/h in 4.1-seconds. 

Launching with plenty of thrust to pin one back into the well-contoured and supportive driver’s seat and not entirely convincing synthesised “engine” sounds, the GT’s immediacy and generous torque output from standstill, are similar to other powerful EVs. 

However, what is un-typical is that the GT has a near equal power to torque ratio, and so feels more rapidly progressive, rather than immediate and overpowering, especially when powering out corners.

Firm fluency

Though brief, a test drive did also demonstrate the E-Tron GT’s progressive accelerator input modulation, which made it feel more controllable, fluent and adjustable than some overpowered EVs. 

The GT’s use of a two-speed — rather than most EV’s single-speed — automatic gearbox also provided better driving fluency and longer-legged consistency as it accumulates speed. 

The GT’s adjustable force regenerative brakes allow for more coasting, gliding, and a sense of fluent normalcy, rather than being awkward, unintuitive, intrusive and aggressively immediate upon accelerator lift off.

With ample driver assistance and management systems, and weighing a whopping 2,276kg, the E-Tron GT driving experience seemed more direct and better masked its mass than expected. Firm riding but not jarring or outright uncomfortable over common bumps and imperfections, it drives with a grounded and centred, if heavy, feel. 

Tidy turning in and well controlled through corners, the GT is sportier and more engaging than similar vehicles, but nevertheless clinical and not as viscerally engaging as lighter, more analogue combustion engine alternatives.

Stylish sophistication

Powered by a 83.7kWh battery pack, the E-Tron GT’s claimed driving range is between 458-501km, but as with all EVs, such figures will see drop depending on driving condition, style, topography and other factors. 

Harnessing some of it power through kinetic regenerative braking, the GT’s 80 per cent charging time can be as quick as 22.5-minutes under ideal condition, using a high capacity 270kW DC charger, where available. However, more common charging options include 2-hour 50kW DC charging and 8.5-hour 11kW AC charging.

Sporty, stylish and sophisticated, the E-Tron GT Quattro’s low slung cabin ha a hunkered down ambiance. 

Design is elegant and upmarket, if slightly busy, yet user-friendly with its extensive comfort, convenience and infotainment features. 

Front seating is spacious, comfortable, supportive and well adjustable. Forward visibility is decent, while cameras and sensors supplement rear, over-shoulder and close proximity views. 

Rear door access and headroom are less generous for taller, larger occupants with wide, high front seat backs blocking visibility. Its 405-litre boot is meanwhile decent in space, if not especially generous.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: Front- & rear-mounted electric motors

Gearbox: 2-speed automatic, all-wheel-drive

Combined power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 469 (476) [350]

Combined, boost mode power, BHP(PS) [kW]: 523 (530) [390]*

Front motor power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 235 (238) [175]

Rear motor power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 429 (435) [320]

Power-to-weight: 230BHP/tonne**

Combined torque lb/ft (Nm): 464 (630)

Torque-to-weight: 281Nm/tonne**

0-100km/h: 4.1-seconds*

Top speed: 245km/h (electronically governed)

Driving range, WLTP: 458-501km 

Fast charging: 22-min, 30-sec @270kW, DC***

Other charging: 2-hrs, @50kW, DC charging***

Home Charging: 8-hrs, 30-min @11kW, AC***

Battery: Lithium-ion

Battery capacity, net (gross) 83.7kWh (93.4kWh)

Wheelbase: 2,900mm

Track, F/R: 1,710/1,694mm

Aerodynamic drag co-efficiency: 0.24

Loading height: 681mm

Cargo volume, minimum: 405-litres

Unladen/Kerb weight: 2,276kg/2,351kg

Steering: Electric-assisted speed sensitive rack & pinion

Steering ratio: 15.4:1

Turning circle: 11.6-metres

Suspension: Double wishbone/multi-link

Brake: Ventilated discs, kinetic regenerative braking

Tyres, F/R: 225/55R19/275/45R19

*During temporary 2.5-second boost mode

**Unladen weight

***To 80 per cent

As I welcome 2023 with open arms, I can’t help but look back on 2022 in the hopes of having learnt a lesson or two. After all, the older we get, the better we appreciate how much we learn from our past mistakes.

We learn much more from our failures than from our successes. With that in mind, let’s start the new year a little differently this time. Instead of making a list of our New Year resolutions, let’s instead write two lists; one for the things that worked for us in 2022 and one for the things that didn’t work for us. This is not for the purpose of beating ourselves up, but so that we can make necessary modifications and adjustments to help us do better this year.

Food prep

Let me clarify what I mean, using my own journey as an example. One of the things I have been able to stick to in 2022 is eating more veggies and staying away from processed food. This has meant spending a lot more time in my kitchen for meal prep and washing more dishes! But it has also been very therapeutic in forcing me to slow down and to give my health priority.

Just hearing the sound of the knife chopping the zucchini and onions refocuses my mind on my goals. Hearing the sizzling sound of the squash and broccoli on my stove reinforces what I’m so desperately trying to accomplish. Sights, sounds and smells play a much bigger part than we’d like to believe. Usually this works against us; I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s succumbed to eating a hot cinnamon roll at the mall after smelling the cinnamon and watching that sugary white layer on top! 

Turning the table around

We can just as easily turn the table around and use our senses to make healthier choices. Once we train our bodies to make better food choices, our gut literally starts to crave them more. I still remember the wonderful smell of corn on the cob when my mama used to make it for us as children. We simply must fight the good fight and make these fresh foods readily available in our kitchens so they can make it onto our plates.

Healhty food at work

The second thing that worked well for me in 2022 is that I learned to pack healthy food to work. This way, I do not coming home famished and ready to eat everything in sight. This means meal prep on the weekends so that I can “grab and go” on workdays.

One of the easiest things to grab are hard boiled eggs along with a banana or apple that help take the edge off hunger. I eat them for breakfast and if I get hungry later, I keep nuts in my desk drawer to keep me from going into the break room and scarfing down the doughnuts and other homemade delicacies my co-workers bring to the office!

Water every hour

The third thing I’ve been very intentional about is drinking a glass of water every hour. Hydration isn’t just good for staving off migraines, but also doubles to fill and satisfy us so we’re not mistakenly thinking we’re hungry. You can always test true hunger pangs with a glass or two of water. After drinking and you still feel hungry, then you really should have something to eat. Interestingly enough, people fail to drink enough water in the winter because it’s not hot outside. Experts advise that if you wait until you’re thirsty to actually drink, then your body is already dehydrated. So, keep that in mind this winter season — your skin will thank you too!

As for the list of things that didn’t work well for me in 2022, I’m not sure there’s enough space in this article to share those! Perhaps it’s the times I bought the box of chocolates in case I needed a gift for someone. Somehow those always ended up on my hips instead! Therefore, the lesson learned is not to bring that special something inside your home if you know you won’t be able to resist it. Even if it’s on sale! Unless you are giving them away that same day, don’t kid yourself about having strong willpower, because you’re just setting yourself up for failure.

False beliefs

I’ve also become aware of false beliefs such as the belief that I can eat half the portion at the restaurant and take the leftovers home to eat later. As soon as the food is served, that great intention goes out the window. Therefore, I’ve learned to ask the waitress to divide my salad and hot entrée so that my husband and I can share our favourites without feeling guilty about the huge portions. It’s also easier on your wallet.

Sweet friend, join me this new season in learning from our past failures instead of letting them bring us down. Staying positive helps us to remain open to trying new strategies that keep us motivated to never quit!

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

LOS ANGELES — The brightest stars in pop music will vie for the industry’s top awards at the Grammys in Los Angeles on Sunday, with a Beyonce-Adele rematch set to take centre stage.

Kendrick Lamar, Harry Styles and Taylor Swift are also among the frontrunners at the gala primed to be the most star-studded in recent memory.

The performance-heavy ceremony will include songs from major contenders Styles, Bad Bunny, Lizzo and Mary J. Blige at the 65th annual show, hosted once again by comedian Trevor Noah.

Beyonce leads the pack with nine chances at Grammy gold, followed by rapper Lamar with eight. Adele and fellow balladeer Brandi Carlile scored seven nods each.

Music’s biggest night follows a year of blockbuster albums, including Beyonce’s “Renaissance” — a pulsating collecting of club tracks — and Adele’s introspective ode to the ugly cry, “30”.

Those records will face off in the most prestigious categories, six years after the British artist shut out Queen Bey’s culture-shaking “Lemonade”.

Adele’s sweep in 2017 left both women in tears, with the crooner calling Beyonce her “idol” and telling the audience her fellow megastar’s paradigm-shifting record should have won.

That contest fuelled perennial criticism that the Academy consistently fails to pay Black artists their due.

This year, Billboard predicts the Beyhive will rejoice over a best album win for their Queen, while the industry tracker thinks Adele has the top shot at best record — the award for overall performance of a song — for her single “Easy On Me”.

But as the shock upsets of Grammys past prove, it’s really anyone’s game.

Either way, with this year’s new nominations, Beyonce continues to forge a history-making path: She moved into a tie with her husband, Jay-Z, as the most nominated artists ever with 88 each.

Already the woman with the most Grammys, Beyonce could overtake classical conductor Georg Solti for the most wins by any artist, with four victories on Sunday; she’s tied for second place with music power player Quincy Jones.

Swift top songwriter?

Bad Bunny, indisputably the world’s biggest commercial artist, has three Grammy chances off his major drop “Un Verano Sin Ti”, which is in the running for Album of the Year.

It’s the first time an all Spanish-language album has a chance at that coveted award, and it’s the first time the Puerto Rican reggaeton megastar has landed a solo nomination in the major Grammy categories.

Styles, Lizzo and Doja Cat all figure among the top nominees, while pop juggernaut Swift could finally win the Song of the Year prize that has evaded her for years.

The superstar — who has been making good on a vow to re-record her first six albums to gain control of her rights to them — has a chance at the prestigious award celebrating songwriters for her 10-minute version of “All Too Well”.

The original song came out in 2012 on Swift’s album “Red”, but qualified for inclusion because the expanded version contained more than 50 per cent new material.

TikTok newbies

After several Grammy years with clear Best New Artist frontrunners — Olivia Rodrigo, Megan Thee Stallion and Billie Eilish — Sunday’s race is wide open.

The category has grown increasingly eclectic and reflective of the internet age’s impact on popular music, and many of the nominees including Brazil’s Anitta, Eurovision rockers Maneskin and rapper Latto have all found viral fame on TikTok.

South Korea’s boy band sensation BTS — who last year declared they were taking a hiatus — meanwhile is hoping for a first elusive Grammy.

The Academy — comprised of music makers including artists, composers and engineers — also shortlisted a coterie of the industry’s enduring stars, with Bonnie Raitt, Willie Nelson and ABBA each garnering a handful of nominations.

After wowing audiences with a show-stopping performance at the 2019 Grammys, the big-voiced Carlile will take the stage once more as she competes in the top categories as well as for roots and Americana honours.

Asked on a recent red carpet about her slate of nominations, Carlile said she was “ecstatic”.

“Those kinds of accolades are life-affirming,” she told AFP.

“Especially because the Grammys is my peers, it means other musicians think I did a good job this year.”

“That’s why it feels so good.”

WASHINGTON — The excitement around ChatGPT — an easy to use AI chatbot that can deliver an essay or computer code upon request and within seconds — has sent schools into panic and turned Big Tech green with envy.

But behind the headlines, the potential impact of ChatGPT on society remains more complicated and unclear. Here is a closer look at what ChatGPT is (and is not):

Is this a turning point?

It is entirely possible that November’s release of ChatGPT by California company OpenAI will be remembered as a turning point in introducing a new wave of artificial intelligence to the wider public. 

What is less clear is whether ChatGPT is actually a breakthrough with some critics calling it a brilliant PR move that helped OpenAI score billions of dollars in investments from Microsoft.

Yann LeCun, Chief AI Scientist at Meta and professor at New York University, believes “ChatGPT is not a particularly interesting scientific advance,” calling the app a “flashy demo” built by talented engineers.

LeCun, speaking to the Big Technology Podcast, said ChatGPT is void of “any internal model of the world” and is merely churning “one word after another” based on inputs and patterns found on the internet.

“When working with these AI models, you have to remember that they’re slot machines, not calculators,” warned Haomiao Huang of Kleiner Perkins, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm.

“Every time you ask a question and pull the arm, you get an answer that could be marvellous... or not... The failures can be extremely unpredictable,” Huang wrote in Ars Technica, the tech news website.

Just like Google

ChatGPT is powered by an AI language model that is nearly three years old — OpenAI’s GPT-3 — and the chatbot only uses a part of its capability. 

The true revolution is the humanlike chat, said Jason Davis, research professor at Syracuse University.

“It’s familiar, it’s conversational and guess what? It’s kind of like putting in a Google search request,” he said.

ChatGPT’s rockstar-like success even shocked its creators at OpenAI, which received billions in new financing from Microsoft in January.

“Given the magnitude of the economic impact we expect here, more gradual is better,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in an interview to StrictlyVC, a newsletter

“We put GPT-3 out almost three years ago... so the incremental update from that to ChatGPT, I felt like should have been predictable and I want to do more introspection on why I was sort of miscalibrated on that,” he said.

The risk, Altman added, was startling the public and policymakers and on Tuesday his company unveiled a tool for detecting text generated by AI amid concerns from teachers that students may rely on artificial intelligence to do their homework.

What now?

From lawyers to speechwriters, from coders to journalists, everyone is waiting breathlessly where the disruption from ChatGPT will be felt first, with a pay version of the chatbot expected soon.

For now, officially, the first significant application of OpenAI’s tech will be for Microsoft software products. 

Though details are scarce, most assume that ChatGPT-like capabilities will turn up on the Bing search engine and in the Office suite.

“Think about Microsoft Word. I don’t have to write an essay or an article, I just have to tell Microsoft Word what I wanted to write with a prompt,” said Davis.

He believes influencers on TikTok and Twitter will be the earliest adopters of this so-called generative AI since going viral requires huge amounts of content and ChatGPT can make the chore almost instantaneous.

This of course raises the spectre of disinformation and spamming carried out at an industrial scale. 

For now, Davis said the reach of ChatGPT is very limited by computing power, but once this is ramped up, the opportunities and potential dangers will grow exponentially.

And much like the ever imminent arrival of self-driving cars that never quite happens, experts disagree on whether that is a question of months or years.

Ridicule

LeCun said Meta and Google have refrained from releasing AI as potent as ChatGPT out of fear of “ridicule” and backlash.

Quieter releases of language-based bots — like Meta’s Blenderbot or Microsoft’s Tay for example — were quickly shown capable of generating racist or inappropriate content.

Tech giants have to think hard before releasing something “that is going to spew nonsense” and disappoint, he said.

MUMBAI/PARIS — Sitting in a lotus position, four men weave glittering beads through gold thread on an organza sheet, carefully constructing a wedding dress that will soon wow crowds at Paris Fashion Week.

For once, the French couturier behind the design, Julien Fournie, is determined to put these craftsmen in the spotlight: his new collection, which showed in Paris on Tuesday, is entirely made with fabrics from Mumbai. 

He says a sort of “design imperialism” means that French fashion houses often play down the fact that their fabrics are made outside France. 

“The houses which don’t admit it are perhaps afraid of losing their clientele,” Fournie told AFP. 

But that is absurd, he continued.

“India is number one in the world in embroidery. It’s ancestral. They’ve been dressing maharajas in gold-embroidered outfits since the 16th century.”

Fournie works with a company called Creations By Shanagar (meaning “to adorn” in Sanskrit), housed in a non-descript beige building near Mumbai’s international airport. 

Dozens of men in grey polo shirts sit cross-legged on cushions, heads bent over large sheaths of fabric. There is silence but for the clicking of needles and beads, the whirl of ceiling fans, and the occasional plane overhead.

‘A lot of fantasy’

For decades, they have played an essential but unsung role in the fashion industries of Europe, Japan and the United States.

“I like working with Julien because he is another master craftsperson who knows his subject very well,” said director Chetan Desai, 55. 

“He has a lot of fantasy. He comes up with his own concepts and I have to translate those ideas into embroidery. 

“It has been a very challenging experience and at the same time, it has been very fruitful,” he added.

Back in France, Fournie sends the compliments back. 

“What they know how to do better than anyone is to embroider with degraded gold thread, passing it through transparent beads to create colour gradients. It’s unprecedented,” he said.

It gives silk an aged, elegant look for wedding dresses that “shine, but not too much”. 

“Haute couture customers don’t want to look like a Christmas tree,” he added. 

“I’ve worked with great French embroiderers and each time it’s complicated. Everyone wants to put in their own ideas and you never get exactly what you want.”

Star clients

Desai’s father set up Creations By Shanagar in the 1960s as a workshop for handloomed and embroidered saris. 

In the 1990s, Desai looked further afield to France, partnering with Franco-Tunisian designer Azzedine Alaia on dresses that ultimately graced the likes of Naomi Campbell. 

He does not divulge the current clients on his books but his past roster gives a sense of the high demand. They include Jean Paul Gaultier, Yohji Yamamoto and Donna Karan.

Even Hollywood came knocking, with Shanagar helping design Nicole Kidman’s costumes for the 2001 hit “Moulin Rouge!”.

The atelier attracts workers from across India, such as Biswajit Patra, 31, who has been working here since he was 16. 

“I learned the trade in my village near Kolkata because my father was doing the same job and my brother and sister are also doing this job,” he said.

Among their unique ideas is a way of rolling up pieces of tulle to make embroidered flowers.

“They have a range of techniques that we don’t have here,” said Jean-Paul Cauvin, director of Fournie’s house in France. 

One of the most delicate jobs is preparing the fabric once it arrives from India and heads for the workshop where it will be assembled into the dresses. 

It is Fournie himself who irons out the fabric. 

“Sixty per cent of haute couture is ironing,” he said with a smile.