Chris N.

Meta shutting down Horizon, then the next day opening it back up.. is one of the saddest things I've ever seen in this industry. This lack of XR leadership is detrimental to the community. it's over. Metaverse is so dead (for now) https://lnkd.in/ewSbQE9r

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One of the elephants in the room of video AI is that "AI actors" are really, really bad Past models struggle at generating "lifelike" humans, there's always something off, we're right in the uncanny valley And although Seedance 2.0 is impressive, it still lacks the basic experience of working with actors and being able to refine a take: try to be more intense towards the end, calmer at the beginning, emphasize this word, walk a bit faster when you get closer to the camera… A way to tackle this is just to… work with real actors! Here reenactor Thierry Peteau show the level of expressiveness you can get by working with a talented and skilled actor (check out his work especially if you can comprendre le français) I made a quick Mago Style Transfer pass on top of his performance and voilà ! We're in a XVIIth century portrait

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Last week we continued to beat the drum for the future of AI in NYC. At a packed meetup at AssemblyAI, co-hosted with Hathora the conversation fully moved from “what if” to “here’s what broke in production and how we fixed it.” Builders weren’t debating demos. They were talking about redundancy at scale, voicemail detection failures, interruption timing, and why certain voices outperform others in real deployments. 🔸 87% of teams have voice agents in prod. 🔸 Only 12% are happy with them. The gap isn’t models—it’s infra, metrics, and knowing what actually matters to customers. That’s the work ahead. Can’t wait to keep building!

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GenAI + Composite Workflow Test We’re spending most of our time iterating and improving our cinematic pipeline. At the core of our mission at Vision Machina is to unlock Hollywood grade AI-native production workflows to tell our best stories Done by our Partner, Head of AI Production & world class VFX artist Kevin Pinga

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i just saw the first tiny moves toward making AI music work in a live setting. train a model like this with your own output and what you get is your own custom remixer! or don't and maybe get hit with a bunch of copyright violations if your performance goes viral. he's figured out a way to run ACE Step live and using MIDI controllers to morph the noise seed to get variations on output. https://lnkd.in/gCf7dWXi

This should be the path for platform companies to offer third party developers safer access to important on-device sensors that could exploit user data. If a developer can show that their custom ML module won't sneak any sensitive data through so as to collect it (and also won't DoS the OS), then it can be made very safe by running inside the ML pipeline and only outputting limited metadata. It also offers the chance for the OS to filter out sensitive information to limit potential concerns. Turns out, this is also a path for the platform developers to prove to customers that their OSes stick to the same set of rules -- all ML must run inside a secure pipeline.

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The "Fractional Executive" is becoming the secret weapon for scaling studios. Not every studio needs a full-time, high-cost C-suite member from day one, but every studio needs executive-level strategy. Hiring "fractional" leadership allows studios to access top-tier talent for critical growth phases without the overhead. It’s the ultimate surgical recruitment move for the modern, agile studio. #GamingIndustry #Startups #Leadership #FractionalExec #GameRecruiter

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We had early access to Opus 4.6 and ran evals across the board on document tasks. Opus 4.6 stood out on our document splitting benchmark, beating Gemini 3 Flash and outperforming Opus 4.5 by ~3-5%. Our document splitting benchmarks tests models on mixed length documents (8-200 pages), with about 15-20k tokens of complex instruction following logic. We were pleasantly surprised that despite how well Opus 4.6 performs on long context agentic use cases, performance on single turn non-reasoning tasks didn't suffer (an issue we've seen with other models). We evaluate every new model as it comes out on a variety of document evals, comparing them on accuracy, cost, and latency across a wide range of use cases and layouts. We'll be releasing and sharing more of this work publicly soon, stay tuned. Congrats to Anthropic on the launch of a great model!

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To build or to bill? In the music industry, that question separates the thwo opposite approaches of the companies. Most people talk about vision, but move like vending machines. They don’t build artists, they rent attention. At WAD360, we don’t chase transactions.We build systems that hold weight, we care about our reputation and the long-term relationship with the players. We care about moving careers and partnerships forward. Sometimes that means saying no. But this world needs fewer people obsessed with revenue and more obsessed with results that last.

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We are genuinely saddened to see the number of layoffs impacting Meta and the broader XR industry. To those affected—our thoughts are with you. We know this isn’t just a professional disruption; for many, it’s financial, emotional, and deeply personal. At MetaHus, we want to be very clear: This is not a direct employment announcement. What it is—is an invitation to step back and rethink what the future of the XR industry can look like together. Instead of moving from interview to interview, waiting on decisions that are outside your control, we believe this moment presents an opportunity to restructure how we think about XR, work, collaboration, and growth. The opportunities ahead of us are extensive. But to unlock them responsibly and at scale, we first need to understand: Who the talent is What skills exist across the industry Where people are located globally How we can align capabilities, experience, and vision We cannot allow this level of talent to go unused. And the market will not grow unless we grow the industry from the ground up. That is exactly what MetaHus is doing right now through our global strategic partnerships—working across education, autism and neurodivergent programs, senior care, schools, community centers, correctional facilities, and workforce development. Our goal is to create a clear, data-driven understanding of the global XR talent pool. To do that, we are building a master list / global registry of individuals affected by these layoffs—so we can understand: Scale Reach Skills Resources Possibilities This isn’t about titles. It’s about building infrastructure. If you have been affected, or if you know someone who has, please share this with them. Encourage them to reach out, follow, and message us directly. Our intention is to connect with as many people as possible by the end of the week. Let’s turn a negative into a rebuild. A restructuring. A new foundation. Under MetaHus, we are building The Grid—a society-wide, country-wide XR + AI integration system focused on teaching people how to use the tools and technologies this industry has been developing for years. This will naturally lead to: Our own game development studio Experience and simulation development studios A continuous pipeline of products, services, and real-world deployments This is how we unite software, hardware, creators, and communities. Thank you for taking the time to read this. And again—our sincere condolences to anyone financially or personally impacted by these changes. Together, we can move through anything. — MetaHus Building The Grid #meta #ai #vr #tech #opportunities

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Tip for the Day #37: Beware Red Flag Investors This might ruffle a few feathers. When you’re chasing funding, it’s easy to ignore investor red flags & warning signs. Most real investors are legitimate—but sadly, some are not. For indie projects under $3–5M, here are common red flags: Requiring “A-list talent attached.” True attachment is a legal/financial commitment (often pay-or-play with funds already verified in escrow). An LOI isn’t enough, and most low-budget investors know that. If this is a hard requirement at that level, that's a Red Flag (See Tip for the Day #6 for more on this) Sloppy or unprofessional application forms. Poor formatting, mismatched fonts, or questionable documents often signal someone fishing for your information. Red Flag Offering a driver’s license or passport as “proof.” Real investors don’t operate this way. Red Flag Claiming a "studio" distribution deal is required. Legit pre-distribution deals typically involve proven teams and major talent—rare for small indie projects. Red Flag Pushing tax incentive monetization early. This can be legit, but it’s expensive. There are legit lenders that will monetize rebates prior to filming, but use caution, their fees are not cheap & in most cases, they will only fund 50% to 80% of the forecasted rebate. (See Tip for the Day #10 for more on this). Demanding presales. Presales require bankable talent attached—if you truly have that, you may not need the investor. That’s the irony of saying presales required. You can actually do enough foreign presales to raise your full budget, thus negating the need for an investor. (Primarily for projects $3 million & under) Constant unexplained delays. Financing takes time, but months of missed timelines without clarity is a Red Flag. Poor grammar in emails or contracts. Simple, but often revealing. Red Flag “Skin in the game” aka, you invest a certain amount of your own money into your project (normally 10% to 20%). This is not a red flag by itself & is quite common in legit deals. Red Flags arise when you're required to deposit those funds, up front, into the investor's escrow account that you don’t have access to & can't monitor. That can be a scam & once deposited, you may never hear from them again. Use caution & an entertainment attorney. Refusing to show Proof of Funds. This should be quick and standard. Delays or excuses usually mean there’s nothing to show. Red Flag Last-minute upfront fees. Legit fees are disclosed early and documented. Surprises near closing are a major Red Flag There's other Red Flags as well, but these come up often. Always do your due diligence on anyone offering to finance your project. If you’ve encountered other red flags, feel free to share them in the comments. For my film/TV budgeting, scheduling, consulting, or financing business plans prep services info, rates & limited time discounts, please email me at filmbudget007@gmail.com Let’s make a movie!

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From Reddit threads to million-dollar bidding wars, the short story has become Hollywood's most efficient engine for new IP. I'll do a little exploration as to why 'small' can be the new 'big' for indie creators. https://lnkd.in/gW447uur This post was inspired by "The Big Short" by Antonia Cereijido, originally published in L.A. Material. #213TV #indie #shortstory #film #filmmaker #tv #TheBigShort

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