AFP USA

ChatGPT-maker OpenAI is backing the production of a feature-length animated film created largely with artificial intelligence tools, aiming to prove the technology can revolutionize Hollywood filmmaking with faster timelines and lower costs.The movie, titled “Critterz,” follows woodland creatures on an adventure after their village is disrupted by a stranger, with producers hoping to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2026 before a global theatrical release, they said in statement on Monday.The project has a budget of under $30 million and a production timeline of just nine months — a fraction of the typical $100-200 million cost and three-year development cycle for major animated features.”Critterz” originated as a short film by Chad Nelson, a creative specialist at OpenAI, who began developing the concept three years ago using the company’s DALL-E image generation tool. Nelson has partnered with London-based Vertigo Films and Los Angeles studio Native Foreign to expand the project into a full-length feature.”OpenAI can say what its tools do all day long, but it’s much more impactful if someone does it,” Nelson said in the news release. “That’s a much better case study than me building a demo.”The production will blend AI technology with human work. Artists will draw sketches that are fed into OpenAI’s tools, including GPT-5 and image-generating models, while human actors will voice the characters. The script was written by some of the same writers behind the successful “Paddington in Peru.”However the project comes amid intense legal battles between Hollywood studios and AI companies over intellectual property rights.Major studios including Disney, Universal and Warner Bros. Discovery have filed copyright infringement lawsuits against AI firm Midjourney, alleging the company illegally trained its models on their characters.The film is funded by Vertigo’s Paris-based parent company, Federation Studios, with about 30 contributors sharing profits through a specialized compensation model.Critterz will not be the first animated feature film made with generative AI. In 2024, “DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict,” considered the first AI animated feature film and made with a budget of $405, was released, as well as “Where the Robots Grow.”Those releases, as well as the original “Critterz” short film, received mixed reactions from viewers, with some critics questioning whether current AI technology can produce cinema-quality content that resonates emotionally with audiences.

A former top security executive at WhatsApp filed a federal lawsuit Monday alleging that parent company Meta systematically violated cybersecurity regulations and retaliated against him for reporting the failures.Attaullah Baig, who served as head of security for WhatsApp from 2021 to 2025, claims that approximately 1,500 engineers had unrestricted access to user data without proper oversight, potentially violating a 2020 US government order that imposed a $5 billion penalty on the company.The lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco, alleges that Meta failed to implement basic cybersecurity measures, including adequate data handling and breach detection capabilities.According to the 115-page complaint, Baig discovered through internal security testing that WhatsApp engineers could “move or steal user data” — including contact information, IP addresses, and profile photos — “without detection or audit trail.”The filing claims Baig repeatedly raised concerns with senior executives, including WhatsApp head Will Cathcart and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.Baig alleges he faced escalating retaliation after his initial reports in 2021, including negative performance reviews, verbal warnings, and ultimately termination in February 2025 for alleged “poor performance.”The lawsuit also claims Meta blocked implementation of security features intended to address account takeovers affecting an estimated 100,000 WhatsApp users daily, choosing instead to prioritize user growth.Meta strongly disputed the allegations.”Sadly, this is a familiar playbook in which a former employee is dismissed for poor performance and then goes public with distorted claims that misrepresent the ongoing hard work of our team,” Carl Woog, vice president of communications at WhatsApp, told AFP in a statement.”Security is an adversarial space, and we pride ourselves on building on our strong record of protecting people’s privacy,” Woog added.The company said Baig left due to poor performance, with multiple senior engineers independently validating that his work was below expectations.Meta also noted that the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration dismissed Baig’s initial complaint, finding that Meta had not retaliated against him.The company further insisted that Baig’s self-description as head of security was an exaggeration of his role at WhatsApp, and that he was a lower-level engineer.Prior to joining Meta, Baig worked in cybersecurity roles at PayPal, Capital One, and other major financial institutions. The case adds to ongoing scrutiny of Meta’s data protection practices across its platforms — Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp — which serve billions of users globally.Meta agreed to the 2020 government settlement following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which involved improper harvesting of data from 50 million Facebook users. The consent order remains in effect until 2040.In his whistleblower complaint, Baig is requesting reinstatement, back pay, and compensatory damages, along with potential regulatory enforcement action against the company.In a separate case targeting Meta first reported by the Washington Post on Monday, current and former employees allege the company suppressed research on child safety risks in its virtual reality products.Meta denies these claims, stating it prioritizes youth safety and complies with privacy laws.

Rupert Murdoch’s children have reached a settlement in the legal dispute over control of the right-wing media mogul’s companies, News Corp and Fox Corp announced Monday.The agreement resolves litigation after siblings had contested Murdoch’s effort to install as successor his son Lachlan, who shares his father’s political orientation. But a Nevada court had blocked the 94-year-old’s effort.The new deal establishes a trust to replace the Murdoch Family Trust that had included Lachlan plus three other Murdoch siblings. Under the agreement, Prudence MacLeod, Elisabeth Murdoch and James Murdoch will receive cash based on equity sales and cease to have holdings in either media company.US media said the value of the settlement would be $3.3 billion, to be split evenly among the three siblings.The eldest daughter, Prudence, has had little involvement in the family business, but James and Elisabeth are known as more politically centrist.”New trusts will be established for the benefit of Lachlan Murdoch, Grace Murdoch and Chloe Murdoch,” said a press release from Fox and News Corp.Meanwhile “the departing beneficiaries” will “cease to be beneficiaries in any trust holding shares in News Corp or Fox Corporation.”- Media transformation -Friction over the future of the holdings — a stable that includes Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and a host of British and Australian media — had been the inspiration for the hit TV series “Succession.”The complicated structure of the trust reflects the colorful familial relationships that shaped Rupert Murdoch’s life as he built the multibillion-dollar empire.The original trust was reported to have been the result of a deal with his second wife — mother of Lachlan, Elisabeth and James — who wanted to ensure her offspring would not be disenfranchised by children Murdoch had with his third wife, Wendi Deng.Murdoch’s daughters with Deng — Grace and Chloe — will be beneficiaries of the new trusts, along with Lachlan.The agreement establishes LGC Holdco, which will own all shares of News Corp and Fox Corp previously held by the original family trust. Voting control for these shares “will rest solely with Lachlan Murdoch through his appointed managing director,” said the press release.The Murdoch empire has transformed tabloid newspapers, cable TV and satellite broadcasting over the last few decades while facing accusations of stoking populism across the English-speaking world.Brexit in Britain and the rise of Donald Trump in the United States are credited at least partly to Murdoch and his outlets.

The Trump administration on Monday launched a new immigration enforcement operation in Chicago, saying the latest federal crackdown in a US city would target the “worst of the worst criminals.”The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announcement of “Operation Midway Blitz” comes after President Donald Trump repeatedly threatened to send National Guard troops into Illinois, sparring with the state’s governor JB Pritzker in social media posts in recent days.”For years, Governor Pritzker and his fellow sanctuary politicians released Tren de Aragua gang members, rapists, kidnappers, and drug traffickers on Chicago’s streets — putting American lives at risk and making Chicago a magnet for criminals,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.Pritzker, a Democrat, slapped back at the accusations, posting on X that the operation “isn’t about fighting crime” because Washington had done no coordination with Chicago authorities and “the Trump Administration’s focused on scaring Illinoisians.”The DHS statement included a list of names, images and rap sheets for 11 “criminal illegal aliens” it said had been released back onto Illinois streets and are now sought for arrest.Having declared victory with his unpopular troop deployments and deportation raids in Washington and Los Angeles, Republican Trump has turned to Democratic-run Chicago as a fresh talking point in his militarized rollout of anti-immigrant policy. He calls the city a “hell-hole” ravaged by gun crime.US Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois criticized the move as actions that “don’t make us safer. They are a waste of money, stoke fear, and represent another failed attempt at a distraction.””As President Trump continues to wrongly hyper-fixate on deploying the military to Chicago, his administration is now ramping up its campaign to arrest hardworking immigrants with no criminal convictions,” Durbin said.Trump posted new anti-immigrant messaging to social media Monday, sharing sketchy memes and cable news clips, decrying weekend violence and saying “I want to help the people of Chicago, not hurt them. Only the Criminals will be hurt!”The president’s move to dial back his provocative tone against The Windy City came after brazen threats to unleash the military, and public protests that drew thousands of defiant demonstrators to Chicago’s streets.Over the weekend, Trump posted an apparently AI-generated image of himself costumed as blood-thirsty Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore of “Apocalypse Now,” tweaking the famous line to say “I love the smell of deportations in the morning” and depicting the Chicago skyline inundated by smoke, flames and helicopters.In the original line in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 film, Kilgore says he loves the smell of napalm, the highly flammable deadly weapon dropped on Vietnam. “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” the president wrote Saturday on Truth Social.Pritzker rebuffed the president’s threats saying: “This is not a joke. This is not normal… Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”Pritzker posted advice for how to cope with raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), telling his followers to be loud in their opposition and advising them of their right to deny entry to any agent who lacks a valid warrant.

The fatal stabbing of a Ukrainian refugee in the United States has taken on sweeping political dimensions, with the American right denouncing Democrats’ supposed lack of action on crime as President Donald Trump seeks to expand a crackdown.Iryna Zarutska, 23, was sitting quietly on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina on August 22 when she was attacked with no warning by a man sitting behind her, security video shows.Her murder made little national news last month but it recently surged into the spotlight after Republican lawmakers and far-right influencers promoted the graphic CCTV video last weekend. Now it appears to be serving as fuel to support Trump’s plans for sending troops into Democratic-run cities like Chicago. The operations, which Trump opponents see as an authoritarian takeover, are defended by Republicans as needed for fighting crime.”They’re evil people,” Trump said Monday. The president swiftly politicized the murder, taking to his Truth Social platform to slam the attacker as a “career criminal” with 14 prior arrests and saying Zarutska’s “blood is on the hands of the Democrats who refuse to put bad people in jail.””North Carolina and every State needs LAW AND ORDER,” Trump said, “and only Republicans will deliver it!”Zarutska and relatives emigrated from Ukraine in 2022 to escape the war, but her life ended tragically in an unprovoked attack by a man with apparent mental health issues.The detained suspect has been identified as Decarlos Brown, a 34-year-old African-American, and charged with first degree murder. He has multiple prior convictions and spent eight years in prison for armed robbery, according to court documents obtained by local television station WBTV.- ‘Ugly truth’ -The murder only gained national attention after the initial reaction by Charlotte’s Democratic mayor emerged.Days after Zarutska’s death, Mayor Vi Lyles offered “thoughts and prayers” to relatives of the victim, whom she did not identify in her initial statement. Instead she focused on the suspect’s condition.”I am not villainizing those who struggle with their mental health or those who are unhoused,” Lyles said in the statement.Criticism poured in. When footage of the murder was then released last week, and Lyles asked the media not to share it “out of respect for Iryna’s family,” an outcry ensued on the right.”Charlotte’s Mayor doesn’t want the media to show you the ugly truth. Why? Because she and other public officials in her city bear responsibility,” US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posted Sunday on X.The following day he accused Democrats of “downplaying murders like this by saying we can’t demonize the homeless or the mentally ill.”Trump advisor Stephen Miller accused Democrats of backing “the monstrous and the depraved.”- Racial dimension -Trump has sent National Guard troops to Washington and is threatening to do the same in Chicago, the country’s third-largest city, even as both have reported substantial reductions in crime in recent years.Zarutska’s murder is now fueling Republican demands — often infused with racial commentary — for more crackdowns.Early Monday, right-wing tech billionaire Elon Musk supported an X post on crime figures that said white people are victims of black violence far more often than the reverse.Conservative activist Charlie Kirk also addressed the race factor.”If a random white person simply walked up to and stabbed a nice law-abiding black person for no reason, it would be an apocalyptically huge national story used to impose sweeping political changes on the whole country,” Kirk posted Monday on X.The comment was an apparent reference to George Floyd, a Black man whose 2020 killing by a white police officer sparked waves of anti-racism protests months before incumbent Trump lost the presidential election to Joe Biden.

A lewd note allegedly from Donald Trump wishing late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein happy birthday in 2003 — and alluding to their unnamed “wonderful secret” — was released Monday by Democratic lawmakers, after the US president denied it existed.Democrats on the US House Oversight Committee, which is probing the handling of criminal investigations into the  financier, published the letter on social media after it was delivered by Epstein’s estate.The note is inserted into the sketched outline of a nude woman, and was allegedly part of a book of letters from Epstein’s friends, compiled by his now imprisoned associate Ghislaine Maxwell for the financier’s fiftieth birthday.The White House reiterated its denial of the authenticity of the letter on Monday, with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt saying “it’s very clear President Donald Trump did not draw this picture and he did not sign it.”The note consists of a short dialogue between “Donald” and “Jeffrey.””We have certain things in common,” says Donald, to which Jeffrey responds: “Yes, we do, come to think of it.””Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?” asks Donald.”As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you,” says Jeffrey.”A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,” the note ends, followed by Trump’s signature, which takes the place of pubic hair on the nude outline.Trump, 79, sued the Wall Street Journal for $10 billion after it originally reported the existence of the letter, insisting that he had never sent it.”President Trump’s legal team will continue to aggressively pursue litigation,” Leavitt said Monday.Epstein, a wealthy financier with high-level connections around the world, was found dead in his New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial for alleged sex trafficking of underage girls recruited to provide him with sexual massages.Trump’s supporters have been obsessed with the Epstein case for years and held as an article of faith that “deep state” elites were protecting a sex ring of Epstein associates, particularly in the Democratic Party and Hollywood.- Committee investigation -Trump took office in January promising to quickly get to the bottom of the Epstein conspiracies.But many of his supporters have been up in arms since the FBI and Justice Department said in July that Epstein had committed suicide, did not blackmail any prominent figures, and did not keep a “client list.”Trump himself has repeatedly attempted to bury the controversy as attention intensifies on his own long-term friendship with Epstein.Democrats and a handful of Republicans risking Trump’s ire have doubled down, demanding that all legal files related to Epstein be released.The Republican-controlled Oversight Committee has subpoenaed Justice Department documents as well as testimony from many high-ranking officials, including former president Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.The Wall Street Journal reported that Epstein’s birthday book contains letters from dozens of people, including former president Clinton.As part of its response to the controversy, Trump’s Justice Department interviewed Epstein associate Maxwell, who is now serving a 20-year prison sentence for recruiting underage girls for the financier.She was interviewed by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer.The Justice Department later released a transcript and audio recording of the interview, in which Maxwell says Trump was friendly with Epstein but was “never inappropriate with anybody.”The 63-year-old Maxwell, the only former Epstein associate convicted in connection with his activities, was moved from a prison in Florida to a minimum security facility in Texas following the interview with Blanche.

The US Supreme Court on Monday lifted an order preventing government agents from carrying out roving patrols to detain migrants in California, upholding at least for now a practice critics say amounts to racial profiling.The decision is the latest ruling by the country’s highest court in favor of President Donald Trump’s increasingly hardline stance in the wake of ramped up raids across Los Angeles and other parts of California.The conservative majority court announced the decision in an unsigned order that gave no reasons. Its three liberal members dissented. The case remains alive, however, in lower courts and could again end up before the highest court.The ruling came after a lower court said agents must have specific reasons to arrest people, beyond their speaking Spanish or gathering in places popular with those seeking casual work, and issued an order banning the practice.Opponents immediately slammed Monday’s ruling, with California Governor Gavin Newsom saying it was a deliberate attempt to hurt the state and its diverse people.”Trump’s hand-picked Supreme Court majority just became the Grand Marshal for a parade of racial terror in Los Angeles,” said Newsom.”This isn’t about enforcing immigration laws — it’s about targeting Latinos and anyone who doesn’t look or sound like Stephen Miller’s idea of an American,” he said, referring to the architect of Trump’s immigration enforcement policy.”Trump’s private police force now has a green light to come after your family — and every person is now a target.”Earlier this year masked and heavily armed agents began targeting groups of people at home improvement stores, car washes or on farms around Los Angeles, sparking weeks of mostly peaceful protests in the city.Critics said the raids — which swept up a number of US citizens, as well as others in the country legally — were bluntly aimed at anyone who appeared to be Latino or who was speaking Spanish.Even after the stay order was issued, agents continued to push the boundaries.In one high-profile case last month ICE agents grabbed more than a dozen people outside a Los Angeles home furnishings store in a “Trojan Horse” raid.Agents sprang from the back of a rented moving truck in an episode filmed by embedded journalists from Fox News. Last month a three-judge panel denied a government appeal to overturn the judge’s original order, after rights groups argued that the raids appeared to be arresting people largely based on their race.While the Supreme Court did not state reasons for its decision, one of the conservative justices, Brett Kavanaugh, wrote a concurring opinion in which he said “illegal immigration is especially pronounced in the Los Angeles area.”One of the three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina named to the court, dissented.”We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job,” she wrote.”The Constitution does not permit the creation of such a second-class citizenship status.”

Jury selection began Monday in the trial of a man charged with plotting to shoot Donald Trump on a Florida golf course during last year’s presidential election campaign.In an unusual step, Ryan Routh, 59, is representing himself at the trial in Fort Pierce, Florida, which is expected to last between two and four weeks.The Hawaii resident, who has no legal training, is charged with the attempted assassination, assaulting a federal officer and firearms offenses. He faces life in prison if convicted.Among his bizarre attempts to prepare for the trial, Routh has requested strippers and a golf putting green while in detention, according to US media.The demands — as well as Routh’s request that jurors be selected according to their views on Gaza and Trump’s desire to purchase Greenland — have been rejected by the court.Routh was arrested on September 15 after a Secret Service agent saw the barrel of a rifle poking from the bushes on the perimeter of the West Palm Beach golf course where Trump was playing a round ahead of the November election.The agent opened fire and Routh, who fled in a vehicle, was arrested shortly after.The incident came amid heightened security for Trump in the wake of an assassination attempt on July 13, where 20-year-old Matthew Crooks fired several shots during a rally, one of them lightly grazing Trump’s right ear.The attack, in which a rally goer was killed, proved to be a turning point in Trump’s triumphant return to power. Crooks was immediately shot by security forces and his motive remains unknown.Routh’s trial is being presided over by Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by Trump during his first term as president.Cannon gained national attention when she dismissed charges against the Republican over his hoarding of top secret government documents in his Florida home.Routh’s decision to defend himself is rare in US courts — particularly in high-profile criminal cases.The public defenders assigned to argue Routh’s case announced they had been removed after he refused to meet them.”It is clear that Mr Routh wishes to represent himself, and he is within his Constitutional rights to make such a demand,” they said in a court filing with the judge.Cannon granted Routh’s request that he be allowed to act as his own attorney but said he would be appointed standby counsel.His alleged motives remain unclear.Routh has said he voted for Trump in the 2016 election but has since made statements against him, including calling him a “baboon” and an “idiot” in a recent court filing.He has a fixation with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and reportedly traveled to Kyiv in an attempt to join foreign volunteer units before being rejected due to his age and lack of experience.

A US appeals court upheld Monday a jury’s $83.3 million penalty against President Donald Trump for defaming author E. Jean Carroll, whom he was found to have sexually assaulted.  The January 2024 order consisted of $65 million in punitive damages after the jury found Trump acted maliciously in his many public comments about Carroll, $7.3 million in compensatory damages and $11 million to pay for an online campaign to repair Carroll’s reputation.The civil order, which prompted an audible gasp in the federal court, far exceeded the more than $10 million in damages for defamation that Carroll had sought.Trump — whom a jury found liable for sexually assaulting Carroll in a separate federal civil case in New York — used his Truth Social platform at the time to fire off a spate of insulting messages attacking Carroll, the trial and the judge, whom he called “an extremely abusive individual.”- ‘Substantial financial penalty’ -“We hold that the district court did not err in any of the challenged rulings and that the jury’s duly rendered damages awards were reasonable in light of the extraordinary and egregious facts of this case,” the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit wrote.  Carroll, 81, alleged that Trump defamed her in 2019, when she first made her assault allegations public, by saying she “is not my type.”Jurors were shown Trump’s October 2022 deposition during which he confused a picture of Carroll for his former wife Marla Maples, which threatened to cast doubt on his claim Carroll was not his “type.”In 2023, another federal jury found Trump liable for sexually assaulting Carroll in a department store dressing room in 1996 and subsequently defaming her in 2022, when he called her a “complete con job.””We agree with the district court that the jury was entitled to find that Trump would not stop defaming Carroll unless he was subjected to a substantial financial penalty,” the appeals court ruled Monday.Trump was not required to attend the trial or to testify. However, he used the case to generate heated media coverage and to fuel his claims of being victimized as he campaigned for a return to the White House.

US President Donald Trump cheered Monday after a West Point military academy ceremony honoring “Saving Private Ryan” star and outspoken critic Tom Hanks was canceled.The multiple Oscar-winning actor — who was also an executive producer for several acclaimed miniseries about World War II — was meant to be hosted by the academy’s alumni association later this month.However news emerged over the weekend that this had been abruptly scrapped.Trump, who has overseen a purge of perceived opponents across civil society and the government — including inside the US military — said he was pleased. “Our great West Point (getting greater all the time!) has smartly cancelled the Award Ceremony for actor Tom Hanks. Important move!” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.”We don’t need destructive, WOKE recipients getting our cherished American Awards!!!” the president wrote, in an apparent reference to Hanks’ Democratic political leanings.Hanks was due to receive the prestigious Sylvanus Thayer Award from the West Point Association of Graduates (WPAOG) on September 25.According to The Washington Post, an email from the alumni association announcing the change did not specify whether Hanks would still receive the award without the ceremony.- Supporting veterans and military -The Thayer award is given to “an outstanding citizen of the United States whose service and accomplishments in the national interest exemplify personal devotion to the ideals expressed in West Point’s motto: ‘Duty, Honor, Country,'” the WPAOG said when announcing Hanks as the 2025 recipient.”Much of Hanks’ five-decade career reflects his support of veterans, the military, and America’s space program,” it said in a statement.Hanks starred as an Army captain who landed at D-Day in “Saving Private Ryan,” and portrayed a destroyer commander crossing the Atlantic as U-boats hunted for American ships in “Greyhound.” He also executive produced three miniseries about World War II: “Band of Brothers” about paratroopers in Europe, “The Pacific” about Marines fighting against Japanese forces, and “Masters of the Air” about the crews of US bombers.Hanks — who also served as a national spokesperson for the World War II memorial campaign and was chair of the D-Day museum capital campaign — had expressed excitement about visiting West Point.”To have my first ever visit to the Academy be to accept such an honor as the Thayer Award is simply astounding,” the WPAOG statement quoted him as saying.The alumni association did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the cancelation of the ceremony, which comes after Trump’s administration took aim at both library books and personnel at West Point earlier in the year.In May, the Pentagon ordered a hunt for and sequestration of materials in US military academy and war college libraries that contain information on subjects including diversity, anti-racism and transgender people.Two months later, the secretary of the army directed West Point to rescind an offer for a former cybersecurity agency chief to hold a prestigious position at the military academy after she drew the ire of a far-right conspiracy theorist.