Author: NY TIMES

What does artificial intelligence sound like? Hollywood has been imagining it for decades. Now A.I. developers are cribbing from the movies, crafting voices for real machines based on dated cinematic fantasies of how machines should talk.Last month, OpenAI revealed upgrades to its artificially intelligent chatbot. ChatGPT, the company said, was learning how to hear, see and converse in a naturalistic voice — one that sounded much like the disembodied operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson in the 2013 Spike Jonze movie “Her.”ChatGPT’s voice, called Sky, also had a husky timbre, a soothing affect and a sexy edge. She was agreeable…

So many locals over so many decades have left Gourin in rural Brittany for the United States that Air France awarded the town a miniature Statue of Liberty.So proud were residents of that binational identity, they fund-raised four years ago to have the statue recast in bronze. It sits in a place of prominence, in Gourin’s main square, encircled by poles bearing international flags.And yet, in the recent elections for the European Parliament, almost one-third of local voters opted for the far-right National Rally, a French party built on intense anti-immigration sentiment.“This is an area that knows what it means…

For Olivier Rousteing, the creative director of Balmain, the Parisian luxury house, South Africa is a long way from home. But the country is close to his heart.“My passport is French,” said Mr. Rousteing, 38, on a phone call from Paris. “But my blood is African,” added the designer, who learned relatively late in life that he is of Somalian and Ethiopian descent.The coastal Western Cape region of South Africa provided inspiration for Mr. Rousteing’s latest style collaboration: a Balmain collection developed in partnership with Disney to promote the 30th anniversary of the “The Lion King,” which was released in…

In the stock market, all is not quite as it seems.A slowdown in inflation has boosted investor confidence in the economy this year and, combined with an intense fervor for artificial intelligence, provided the backdrop to a rally that has beaten all expectations.The S&P 500 has climbed 15 percent in the first half of 2024.The gains have been remarkably steady, with the index only once rising or falling more than 2 percent in a single day. (It rose.) A widely tracked measure of bets on more volatility to come is close to its lowest-ever level.But a look beneath the surface…

Listen to and follow ‘Hard Fork’Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTubeRecord labels — including Sony, Universal and Warner — are suing two leading A.I. music generation companies, accusing them of copyright infringement. Mitch Glazier, chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, the industry group representing the music labels, talks with us about the argument they are advancing. Then, we take a look at defense technology and discuss why Silicon Valley seems to be changing its tune about working with the military. Chris Kirchhoff, who ran a special Pentagon office in Silicon Valley, explains what he thinks is…

Superficially, abortion rights had a good run at the Supreme Court this term. Two weeks ago, the justices unanimously let an abortion pill remain widely available. On Thursday, the court dismissed a case about Idaho’s strict abortion ban, which had the effect of letting emergency rooms in the state perform the procedure when the patient’s health is at risk.But the two rulings were so technical as to be ephemeral. They seemed designed for avoidance and delay, for kicking a volatile subject down the road — or at least past Election Day.Some supporters of abortion rights called the rulings Pyrrhic victories,…

‘Fatal Attraction’ (July 31)Stream it here.This erotic thriller from Adrian Lyne was one of the most successful pictures of 1987 — and one of the most controversial, prompting heating conversations about its depictions of adultery and mental illness that moved from movie listings to opinion pages and magazine covers. The story is simple: Michael Douglas stars as a family man whose seemingly offhand weekend extramarital affair with Glenn Close turns into a matter of literal life and death. It is a deeply flawed picture — Close’s nuanced characterization outclasses the paper-thin caricature she’s given, and critics of the era were…

Part of the roof at a terminal at India’s busiest airport collapsed early Friday amid heavy thunderstorms and rains, killing at least one person and injuring several others, according to officials and local media. The airport suspended all departures from the terminal.India’s minister of civil aviation said in a social media post that rescue operations were in progress at Terminal 1 of the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi and that emergency responders were on site. Airport officials said that the collapse happened around 5 a.m. local time in the departure area of the terminal and that all departures…

Lucie Lott said knew she would marry Eladio Fabregas even before the two had spoken.Their paths first crossed in September 2021 outside the cafeteria at Samford University in Homewood, Ala. Ms. Lott, now 22, was starting as a freshman, and Mr. Fabregas, 25, who goes by Lalo, was a junior.“We did a triple take,” Ms. Lott recalled. “I remember telling my roommate right after that I had met my future husband.”Mr. Fabregas, a native of Galicia, Spain, came to the United States on a tennis scholarship. During that brief encounter, Ms. Lott noticed he was wearing a shirt for Samford’s…

In March 2018, a day after announcing sweeping tariffs on metals imported from America’s allies and adversaries alike, President Donald J. Trump took to social media to share one of his central economic philosophies: “Trade wars are good, and easy to win.”As president, Mr. Trump presided over the biggest increase in U.S. tariffs since the Great Depression, hitting China, Canada, the European Union, Mexico, India and other governments with stiff levies. They hit back, imposing tariffs on American soybeans, whiskey, orange juice and motorcycles. U.S. agricultural exports plummeted, prompting Mr. Trump to send $23 billion to farmers to help offset…