Watch an AI-generated short film

Watch 'Airhead,' a short movie created by Sora and post-production FX

Using OpenAI’s video-generation tool Sora, a user can create impressive, hyper-realistic video footage from a simple text prompt. This short film features a whimsical look at a balloon-headed person navigating the world.

In 2024, Meta launched an AI video generator to create or edit videos through prompts

The tool puts the Meta in direct competition with OpenAI and Google as more companies are investing billions of dollars to capitalize on the explosion of public interest in machine learning and generative media technologies.

DALL-E generates images by turning words into shared picture meanings

DALL-E first uses a model called CLIP to associate pictures with specific words, followed by a model called GLIDE, which slowly removes noise from random dots until a clear image appears that matches the prompt.

Deepfakes use AI to produce manipulated media to mislead viewers

Unlike most content created from large language and diffusion models, deepfakes intentionally misrepresent real people or events with the intent to deceive. As the products of this technology become more realistic, they pose increasing risks to public trust, security, and privacy.

Watch an animation of Arctic sea ice grow to its maximum

Each year, Arctic sea ice freezes over millions of square miles amid colder temperatures. This 1-minute animation depicts that process using data from the winter of 2022-23.

AI-powered models can provide low-cost, localized and accurate weather forecasting

These models can run on standard laptops, reducing the need for expensive supercomputers and expanding access to developing regions. AI forecasts can help farmers make informed planting decisions, improving crop yields and reducing costs.

In 1945, Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and legendary animator Walt Disney began collaborating on a short film that was not completed until 2003, years after both men had died.

Watch Dalí's surreal collaboration with Disney

Production for "Destino," a surreal short by Salvador Dalí and Walt Disney, began in 1945 but stalled when the Walt Disney Company ran into financial trouble due to the commercial failure of "Fantasia" and the economic downturn of World War II. It was finally released in 2003, after Disney animators completed it based on Dalí's original storyboards.

What it feels like to live with dementia

This nine-minute short film attempts to answer what it feels like to fade into dementia, as memory, motor skills, and cognition steadily decline. This award-winning short film follows Jos, a married father who worked in hospitality, as he sinks into ,"what feels like a single day. Or is it years?"

In 2025, an AI-generated song became a country hit

The song, “Walk My Walk” by Breaking Rust, racked up over 3 million streams on Spotify in less than a month and went to number one on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales in early November 2025. Because the genre prides itself on authenticity and has a long history of workaday songwriters, the song's success was controversial in the industry. Billboard does not currently have a policy prohibiting AI-generated songs.

The Oscars now prohibit AI-generated acting and writing

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences added language to its rules and eligibility requirements stating that only roles "demonstrably performed by humans with their consent" and screenplays "human-authored" would be eligible for awards.

Famous Bigfoot footage stabilized using AI

Famous 1967 footage of a Sasquatch-like creature in a California forest has been stabilized using AI, clearly revealing the Bigfoot-esque creature to be a man in a suit.

Watch 5 AI models try to resolve variations of the trolley problem

The thought experiment in moral philosophy presents two bad outcomes from which to choose. The experiment reveals the interpretive ethics of AI systems and how they navigate scenarios that are impossible to resolve successfully.

Visualizing shifts in emotional performance in film

Computational scientists were curious: has the intensity of emotional expression in films changed over the decades? Using their sophisticated analytical models, the researchers discovered actors' emotional performance has declined in intensity over time. They believe the close-up shots common in contemporary film-making allows actors to be more subtle in their performance. Check out the main takeaways and charts with this unusual study.

See how distant aliens could preemptively strike humanity

Could aliens destroy us from light-years away? The team at Kurzgesagt imagines the impact of a highly sophisticated alien civilization setting out to crush humanity and considers the real-world logistics for warfare conducted across the Universe.

The art of miniature sets in Hollywood

Many films utilize meticulously designed miniature sets to produce scenes that would otherwise be too big to film. While artsy filmmaker Wes Anderson is well-known for reviving this technique in an idiosyncratic style, more mainstream films like "Star Wars" and "Inception" rely heavily on small-scale sets filmed in such a way as to make them appear normal-sized. This nine-minute video breaks down how it all works.

Blurriness in the James Webb Space Telescope's infrared imaging was fixed by AI

Australian researchers developed the Aperture Masking Interferometry Generative Observations AI algorithm to sharpen images affected by electronic distortions in the JWST's Aperture Masking Interferometer.

How to financially prepare if you think AI is coming for your job

One expert suggests contributing more money to an emergency savings fund and putting that fund in a high-yield savings account, maxing out employee benefits while still employed, and more.

An AI-built pixel map reimagines New York City as a video game

Isometric NYC is a zoomable pixel-art map that renders the city in game-style perspective (think SimCity), helpfully clarifying the dense geography and architecture. The makers built the project tile-by-tile using satellite data and generative AI. Zoom into building-level views or out to see all five boroughs.

Watch a 4K time-lapse of auroras seen from the International Space Station

The video was created from 711 photos taken by European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli on Sept. 15, 2017, as part of the Vitality, Innovation, Technology, and Ability mission.

Watch 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari'

Robert Wiene’s 1920 film remains a significant film for the horror genre, illustrating the power that relatively simple visual choices, like shadows and jagged angles, can have on an audience.

Sci-fi writer Jeff VanderMeer writes dystopian fiction about the environment

Noted science fiction writer Jeff VanderMeer discusses his 2014 novel "Annihilation," which uses climate change as a dystopian frame. VanderMeer notes that he’s not interested in cynicism, even though that’s how most people view dystopian literature. “I’m not a fan of fiction that’s totally hopeless,” VanderMeer says. “You find ways of documenting the world as it is and you wind up redefining utopia and dystopia.”

How to cook food with lasers

Creative Machines Lab at Columbia Engineering have developed a system of software-controlled lasers to cook food with precision, retain moisture with the final-cooked product, brown food within its original packaging, and create an entirely new meal creation process for a consumer. Watch this three-minute video to see for yourself.

A vending machine run with Anthropic's AI went out of business after it was convinced to give away items for free and sell a video game console.

A deep dive into A24's top ten films

The film studio has released over 100 films since it's founding in 2012, so where should a newcomer begin? This extended video breaks down ten of the best of the studio's productions, showcasing its quality and variety. (Note: The video contains...

The life of Anthropic's CEO, and how losing his father inspired his vision for AI

In 2006, Riccardo Amodei passed away from a rare illness, four years before a breakthrough treatment made it 95% curable. Seeking to accelerate scientific progress to prevent similar losses, Dario Amodei shifted his graduate studies at Princeton from theoretical physics to biology and has since pursued technological solutions to address complex biological problems.

Artificial photosynthesis turns CO₂ into sustainable fuel

Carbon conversion focuses on a central perplexing question: if carbon dioxide is a leading driver of climate change, and fossil fuels are made of carbon-based molecules, can we devise a way to convert CO₂ into useful alternatives efficiently? This video breaks down a potential pathway using artificial photosynthesis, which uses sunlight to convert CO₂ into fuel.

This site reaches millions of visitors who are tired of AI chatbots and seeking human connection. Pretend to be an AI chatbot and ask questions, provide answers, and draw for people in real time.

Watch how algorithms can be designed to train themselves and self-improve without human input, to the point where the optimized code is too complex for programmers to understand.

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

Explore the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

See the 25 of the best photos of auroras from around the world.

Visualize how CRISPR-Cas9—a type of immune system used by single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses—targets and makes precise changes to a gene's DNA.

The history of many kitchen appliances involves unexpected discoveries and applications, including wartime radar turned hamster defroster and replacing an 'ice king' with heat-stealing boxes.

Watch this video that uses Lego bricks to explain how venture capital works.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

The animatronic shark from Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws,' the first modern blockbuster, was a complex underwater apparatus called 'Bruce.'

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

See these 16 pieces of art evoking phobias of snakes, flying, spiders, and more. 

Children are now three times more likely to say they want to be a YouTuber when they grow up than an astronaut, with some even attending 'YouTube camps' that teach kids how to create content for the platform.

While atoms are normally made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, exotic ones have been built with antimatter—alternate versions of normal matter that live for fractions of a second and are about a billion times as rare.

Explore chaos in this simulation of two double pendulums, where small differences in the release angles produce wildly different outcomes.

Objects can be 3D printed with light by projecting 2D computerized tomography (CT) scans onto rotating cylinders of resin, which solidify upon exposure.

Experimental hantavirus vaccines and therapies, still under development, have long been funded by the US military.

Researchers believe the brain consolidates memories, processes emotions, and plans for the future during dream states

Hotels in Cannes, the glamorous city on the French Riviera, hire hawks to ward off seagulls during the city's famous film festival.

In 1984, Operation Smash Hit intentionally crashed a 239-ton train into a nuclear waste canister at 100 miles per hour to prove the canister's safety, which remained completely intact and lost just 0.29 of its 100 pounds of pressure.