“Images have power, I hope. Normally we try to be pretty private, but in this case I am sharing a photo in the hopes that it might dissuade the next person from throwing a Molotov cocktail at our house, no matter what they think about me,” Altman wrote alongside a family photo posted to his blog Friday afternoon. “The first person did it last night, at 3:45 am in the morning. Thankfully it bounced off the house and no one got hurt.”

He continued: “Words have power too. There was an incendiary article about me a few days ago. Someone said to me yesterday they thought it was coming at a time of great anxiety about AI and that it made things more dangerous for me. I brushed it aside.”

Yet, as Altman noted, not long after brushing aside the profile by Ronan Farrow, titled “Sam Altman May Control Our Future — Can He Be Trusted?,” he found himself “awake in the middle of the night and pissed, and thinking that I have underestimated the power of words and narratives.”

“This seems like as good of a time as any to address a few things,” he continued. “First, what I believe: Working towards prosperity for everyone, empowering all people, and advancing science and technology are moral obligations for me. AI will be the most powerful tool for expanding human capability and potential that anyone has ever seen. Demand for this tool will be essentially uncapped, and people will do incredible things with it. The world deserves huge amounts of AI and we must figure out how to make it happen.”

Altman then acknowledged that the “fear and anxiety about AI is justified,” stating that the industry has to get “safety right.”

Later on in his statement, he described himself as “being conflict-averse,” citing his upcoming trial with Elon Musk, in which the tech giant has asked for his removal as CEO.

“I was thinking about our upcoming trial with Elon and remembering how much I held the line on not being willing to agree to the unilateral control he wanted over OpenAI,” he added. “I’m proud of that, and the narrow path we navigated then to allow the continued existence of OpenAI, and all the achievements that followed.”

Altman went on: “I am not proud of being conflict-averse, which has caused great pain for me and OpenAI. I am not proud of handling myself badly in a conflict with our previous board that led to a huge mess for the company. I have made many other mistakes throughout the insane trajectory of OpenAI; I am a flawed person in the center of an exceptionally complex situation, trying to get a little better each year, always working for the mission. We knew going into this how huge the stakes of AI were, and that the personal disagreements between well-meaning people I cared about would be amplified greatly.”

Nonetheless, Altman said it was “another thing to live through these bitter conflicts and often to have to arbitrate them, and the costs have been serious. I am sorry to people I’ve hurt and wish I had learned more faster.”

Read his full statement here.

The post Sam Altman Responds to ‘Incendiary’ New Yorker Article and Molotov Cocktail Attack appeared first on TheWrap.

The company is raising the price of its core plan by $2 to $15.99, while its Premium Lite and Music plans are increasing $1 each to $11.99 and $8.99, respectively. Additionally, the family plan, which allows up to six people in the same household to have access, will increase by $4 to $26.99.

“We’re updating the price for YouTube Premium plans in the U.S. for the first time since 2023 to continue delivering a high-quality experience that supports creators and artists on YouTube,” a company spokesperson shared in a Friday statement to TheWrap. “This change allows us to maintain the features our members value most: ad-free viewing, background play, and a massive library of 300M+ tracks on YouTube Music. We continue to offer several plans, ensuring subscribers can choose the option that works best for them.”

YouTube is the latest to hike prices, following Netflix raising prices across its plans for the second time in over a year in March, Amazon increasing the fee for Prime Video’s ad-free viewing experience and Spotify increasing prices on its various plans in January.

YouTube Music and Premium collectively reach over 125 million subscribers globally — a number that includes trials.

The Premium Lite tier launched in 2025 as a cheaper alternative, now complete with access to downloads and background play for most videos.

The post YouTube Premium Raises Prices for First Time Since 2023 appeared first on TheWrap.

Rae announced the news at TheWrap’s Creators x Hollywood Summit on Wednesday, in partnership with Whalar and The Lighthouse, a half-day event exploring the intersection of creators, culture and the entertainment industry.

“TikTok is building a new model for micro-series, pairing creator-led storytelling with scaled distribution to reach audiences faster than ever,” Dawn Yang, Global Head of Entertainment Partnerships at TikTok, said in a statement to TheWrap. “We’re actively investing in the micro-series space and excited to partner with innovators like Issa Rae to bring bold, story-driven content to life across TikTok and PineDrama.”

During the panel conversation “Paving the Way: Creators in Hollywood,” Rae told TheWrap’s Raquel Calhoun that she designed “Screen Time” for the way audiences are consuming content today.

“I’ve been really excited about the microdramas space for a while and as a company when I think about our survival and our relevance, I want people to feel like, Hoorae is a part of their daily routines and part of their lives,” Rae said. “And this feels like an accessible point.”

“We’re so fortunate, which I’m announcing today too is we’ve done a deal with Tiktok to partner and do microdramas starting with ‘Screen Time’ and a few more, and it’s the first of its kind deal in this way, but it just makes my films and microseries more accessible for us,” she continued. “We’re doing it as minute soaps, and we’re still working out the release format, but again, it’s a way to kind of put our stamp on [the genre.]”

The new series and business endeavor marks Rae’s return to digital media, 15 years after launching her award-winning YouTube series “The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl.”

Together, TikTok and Hoorae will co-develop a slate of additional micro-series that will air exclusively on TikTok and its new microdrama app, PineDrama. “Screen Time” will land on the platforms later this month.

Here’s a description of the series, per Hoorae: “‘Screen Time’ begins with a double-date movie night disrupted by a mysterious figure who hijacks the TV, forcing the couples to confess their secrets or risk exposure, sparking a rapid escalation that threatens to unravel their relationships and lives.”

You can take a look at the series yourself in the video below.

The cast includes Brittney Jefferson (“Rap Sh!t”), Eric C. Lynch (“Queen Sugar”), Jasmine Luv (“Tell It Like a Woman”), Xavier Avila (“Shrinking”) and Jenna Nolen (“À La Carte”).

TheWrap’s Creators x Hollywood Summit is an invite-only gathering of the top creators, entertainment leaders and brand partners who are shaping the future of storytelling and the new entertainment economy.

TheWrap’s Creators x Hollywood is presented in partnership with global creator agency Whalar and The Lighthouse, both part of the Whalar Group. It is sponsored by City National Bank, Fox Entertainment, Lionsgate, Loeb & Loeb LLP and WEBTOON. 

The post Issa Rae’s Hoorae Media Sets First Microdrama Series ‘Screen Time’ in TikTok Content Deal | Exclusive appeared first on TheWrap.

“You asked for it. Here it is. The official Artemis II wake‑up song playlist,” the official NASA Instagram account wrote in a post Wednesday. “Each track was selected by the Moon crew, continuing a tradition that started more than 50 years ago. Stay tuned to find out which songs they’ll choose next.” The playlist in question features tracks chosen by Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover and Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen.

The playlist only includes eight songs at the time of this writing. The tracks in question are: “Pink Pony Club” by Chappell Roan, “Sleepyhead” by Young & Sick, “Green Light ft. Andre 3000” by John Legend, “Working Class Heroes (Work)” by CeeLo Green, “Good Morning” by Mandisa and TobyMac, “In a Daydream” by the Freddy Jones Band, “Tokyo Drifting” by Glass Animals and Denzel Curry and “Under Pressure” by David Bowie and Queen.

The Artemis II mission launched on April 1. It is NASA’s first crewed flight beyond Earth’s low orbit since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. On Tuesday, April 7, NASA released the first photos taken of the far side of the Moon, showcasing regions of Earth’s natural satellite that no human eye has seen before. Among the sights captured during the Artemis II crew’s seven-hour lunar flyby around the Moon’s far side was a rare in-space solar eclipse.

The test flight mission, which is expected to last a total of 10 days, marks humanity’s return to the Moon’s vicinity.

As part of the mission, Glover became the first person of color to travel beyond Earth’s low orbit and near the Moon. Koch, meanwhile, became the first woman, Hansen (a Canadian) the first non U.S. citizen and Wiseman the oldest astronaut to accomplish the same feats. The mission has taken the Artemis II crew farther away from Earth than any humans in history.

On April 1, broadcasts of the mission’s historic launch drew over 18 million viewers across ABC, CBS, NBC, Telemundo, CNN, FOX News and MS NOW.

The post NASA Shares Artemis II Crew’s Space Playlist appeared first on TheWrap.

“Our dedicated human journalists — including and especially the Times Guild’s 1,500 members — make this paper a reliable source for millions of subscribers who want quality reporting and commentary,” the letter, signed by the union’s AI subcommittee members Isaac Aronow, Parker Richards and Lydia DePillis, read. “When the Times instead publishes AI-generated work, intentionally or not, our readers lose trust in what we do. This is unacceptable. At present, the Times’ standards on AI use are woefully inadequate.”

The letter, which was first reported by Axios, was addressed to Times CEO and president Meredith Kopit Levien, publisher A.G. Sulzberger, executive editor Joe Kahn and opinion editor Katie Kingsbury. It was also addressed to managing editors Marc Lacey and Carolyn Ryan, who are the management representatives in contract negotiations.

The staffers highlighted TheWrap’s report from last week, which revealed the paper was cutting ties with freelance book critic Alex Preston after it discovered he used AI to help write a review that incorporated elements of a Guardian piece on the same book. Preston told TheWrap he used the tool “improperly” and failed to catch “overlapping language” with the Guardian review, and the Times called the usage “a serious violation of the Times’s integrity and fundamental journalistic standards.”

The staffers said the Times’ current public guidelines on the technology are “often unclear or open to interpretation” as they said it places the burden on writers and editors instead of company leaders.

“The company calls on employees to use AI ‘transparently,’ but often fails to disclose how AI is used in stories (and, conversely, has at times claimed that AI did work that was in fact done by human Guild members),” the members wrote. “We are told to use AI ‘ethically,’ but given little guidance on what exactly that means.”

The guild, which represents roughly 1,500 Times staffers, did not specify to which stories it was referring. The guild has also asked for the company to include protections around AI in the performance review process, offer clearer disclosures over how the technology is used in stories and strengthen protections over how AI uses a Times staffer’s name, image and likeness.

Negotiations around AI have stunted talks between the Times and its guild as both sides have tried to hammer out a new agreement following its last contract’s Feb. 28 expiration.

Lacey told Times staffers in a letter on Tuesday that both sides agreed that “having strong AI guidelines and standards” would “ensure the integrity of our work and maintain the trust of our readers,” but noted that the guild’s quest to define those guidelines in the contract could dampen how the paper experiments with the evolving technology.

“Where the company conflicts with guild leadership is whether we write AI restrictions and prohibitions into a contract lasting several years,” he wrote. “AI technology is ceaselessly evolving – quickly – and we believe that this rapid change is precisely why we must remain flexible.”

Lacey also said both sides have tentatively agreed to disability accomodation language, a point the company previously tried to tie to its AI proposal.

AI negotiations have spread across newsrooms. Staffers at the Sacramento Bee and the Charlotte Observer, two news outlets owned by McClatchy, expressed concerns with management over a new AI tool meant to repurpose older stories under new headlines, and unionized ProPublica staffers staged a 24-hour walkout on Wednesday after contract talks — including over AI provisions — broke down.

The post New York Times Guild Slams Paper’s AI Policies as ‘Woefully Inadequate’ appeared first on TheWrap.

In other words, the AI tool can mimic the editing skills of a real person who is willing to train it.

In kicking off this initiative, GPTZero partnered with Greg Altman, an Emmy-nominated TV producer; Bill Retherford, a journalist and 4-time Emmy winning documentarian; and Wendy Snyder, a college admission officer at Northeastern University. All three created “digital doubles” that they helped prompt and calibrate and can provide the kind of feedback they would’ve offered had they actually read your work.

The announcement comes on the heels of another AI service, Quilty, which last week promised to provide AI-generated creative and business feedback and analysis for Hollywood scripts — which we found yielded mixed results, and is part of a broader wave of AI assistive tools that have cropped up. But while Quilty’s AI model is a bit of a black box, with the fine-tuning done with a proprietary algorithm, GPTZero is trying to stand out by embracing the “human element” of AI feedback with the digital doubles.

“Every expert evaluates writing against criteria they’ve developed over years,” GPTZero CEO Edward Tian told TheWrap. “What makes a good cold open, what makes dialogue feel authentic. We work with them to capture that metric and apply it consistently.”

As Tian puts it, GPTZero comes at the AI phenomenon from a different direction, since it got its start as a service looking to weed out AI-generated content from written work. And AI detection has become big business; Tian said GPTZero has 17 million registered users and 800,000 daily active users submitting everything from book reports to scripts to see if there’s any AI content. Last month, book publisher Hachette canceled Mia Ballard’s “Shy Girl” after claims arose that AI detectors found much of her work was generated by AI.

But there’s a big difference between spotting what’s generated by AI and offering thoughtful feedback on everything from a screenplay to a TV script.

Which is why I built my own digital double.

How it works

After creating an account in GPTZero, I was able to create a custom reviewer by writing a short description of the kind of editor I wanted to be. In my case, I wanted my double to edit feature news stories with a focus on a compelling headline and introduction, a strong angle that’s backed up with reporting, the context to explain the relevance of a story, and clear and concise language.

I would then upload examples of raw copy stories that I would “edit” to my preference in an effort to calibrate the settings and to make it more like, well, me.

The early examples of feedback remained rough. It didn’t quite catch the core thematic paragraphs (i.e. “nut grafs”) in a story, although it helped with trimming down some of the copy. There were too many suggested edits to quotes, which you typically don’t touch.

But I acknowledge that I was still early in the process, and hadn’t really put in the time to really train the reviewer with my preferences.

Would I use it as a way to speed up the editing process? No. But I could see a scenario where writers looking for my edits could potentially use it as a source for early feedback. Although not until I really, really fine tune the model.

More digital doubles to come

While GPTZero is highlighting the three initial professionals who created a digital double, Tien said the company is working with larger agencies to get introductions to scriptwriters, producers and other professionals to expand the roster.

GPTZero charges you “credits” that you need to pay for each time you run a scan and get feedback, bt the company is still working on a monetization model for the humans whose doubles get tapped for feedback.

But ultimately, even if you create a double, as I did, you don’t have to make it public. I intend to keep mine private and would only share it with one of my reporters if they expressed interest (which I highly doubt).

“Our growth is community-driven, where editors, script writers, journalists, producers and comedy writers share their editing processes with their community,” Tien said. “It’s not character.ai where everyone wants to talk to Einstein. Writing is deeply personal, where targeted edits from writers that you know and trust are far more valuable than general feedback.”

The post An AI Detection Tool Wants to Provide ‘Human’ Feedback on Stories, and We Tested It | Exclusive appeared first on TheWrap.

More than 30 staffers in the paper’s union sent a letter to Bee management on March 27 stating they would withhold their bylines from stories created by their parent company McClatchy’s “content scaling agent,” a generative AI product that produces new pieces using the reporters’ existing work.

“We don’t want the public to think we have anything to do with it,” Ariane Lange, an investigative reporter at the Bee and the vice chair of its union, told TheWrap. “We think it’s a betrayal of the public’s trust, and it undermines our credibility, and also it’s frankly kind of insulting they’re asking us to be hacks.” 

The “content scaling agent,” which Lange said has been promoted by management as a way to boost the outlet’s traffic and productivity, allows Bee editors to produce summarized and repurposed versions of its reporters’ work under new headlines. Lange said editors can use the tool to produce versions of stories geared toward specific audiences, as well as roundups of multiple stories.

McClatchy, the 168-year-old newspaper chain behind prominent, Pulitzer Prize-winning local outlets like the Bee, the Miami Herald and the Charlotte Observer, began deploying the tool last month across a number of its 30 markets. While no story has run with a reporter’s byline at the Bee, the deployment of the “content scaling agent” is the latest development in McClatchy’s increasing adoption of generative AI, following its yearslong use of AI-generated summaries. The company’s embrace of AI has spurred disputes with unions representing some McClatchy employees and has rankled staffers elsewhere. 

The uproar inside McClatchy comes as newsrooms wrestle with how best to incorporate this transformative technology into workflows while upholding journalistic standards. Business Insider has experimented with publishing AI-generated stories (with a human editor) while a Fortune editor — the subject of a much-discussed Wall Street Journal profile  — has cranked out more than 600 articles in eight months using AI. The top editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer has advocated using AI to draft reporters’ stories, while Axios’ leadership framed efficient AI usage last month as a “moonshot”  to propel the company forward. 

In recent years, news organizations have leveraged AI to aid in investigative journalism, using the technology to analyze large data sets or produce visualizations, as well as to help hold lawmakers accountable, as evidenced by Cal Matters’ Digital Democracy tool.

But the misuse of AI has also led to unreliable and sometimes bogus stories, heightening concerns about credibility and job security. The New York Times’ contract negotiations with its union stalled earlier this year over AI, and ProPublica’s union authorized a strike last month partly over management’s refusal to agree to a ban on AI-related layoffs.

Gina Chua, the Executive Director of the Tow-Knight Center at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, told TheWrap that while AI can present several applications for journalists to report more efficiently, there remains a “spectrum” of concerns for reporters, ranging from how they’re serving their communities to how long they hold their jobs. As companies adopt the technology, they should consider the impact on how audiences discover and engage with the information produced by AI.

For a company to implement a whole new process, Chua said, history shows that it’s better to do it with employee buy-in rather than impose it on reluctant staffers. “Change is always difficult,” she said.

“When you need to make changes, you have to find ways to move people along,” she added.

From a public perception perspective, a Pew Research survey from last year found that 51% of people felt AI would negatively impact the news we get, with outlets flirting with breaking the trust they have with readers with even a single misstep.

“Our managers describe this to us as an experiment,” Lange, the Bee reporter, said, “and we responded, ‘Yeah, it is an experiment, and the imperiled guinea pig is our credibility.’”

A McClatchy spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment about the tool or make any executives available to discuss its use.

Inside the rollout

McClatchy started a quiet rollout of the content scaling agent earlier this year at several papers, including the Herald and the Centre Daily Times in Pennsylvania, summarizing stories using the tool while linking to the full story within the text. The tool was eventually rolled out to more newsrooms; a Charlotte Observer editor demonstrated the tool in a March 18 meeting with staff, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The labeling of the tool may vary from paper to paper, apparently dependent on union agreements, Lange said. At the Herald, where the union contract outlines reporters’ control over their bylines, stories were labeled as “produced using AI based on original work by” the reporter whose story was summarized. The Daily Times, which is not unionized, has cited “reporting by” the reporters of the original story, though the story itself was “produced with AI assistance.”

Lange said she first heard about the Bee’s use of the agent on March 20 when she learned some of her colleagues had been asked to work on the tool. The Sacramento Bee’s union that same day asked for a meeting with management, believing its top editors had violated a contract provision that required advance notice of a new generative AI tool. 

But as the paper’s executive editor Chris Fusco and Scott Lebar met with teams to discuss the tool and take questions about it, the fear that it could undermine the paper’s credibility persisted, prompting 31 journalists in the paper’s 35-member union to send the March 27 letter to management invoking another contract provision that allows a reporter to withhold their byline from a story in advance if they protest its use. 

Fusco met with the Bee’s union leaders, including Lange, on April 1 to affirm the paper would not add a reporter’s byline to stories produced using the tool and instead spoke about byline alternatives. The two sides also discussed an alternative where reporters could write another story themselves, Lange said.

One March 31 story ran with a byline label “edited by Sacramento Bee staff” and “produced with AI assistance.” 

Lange said she appreciated Fusco’s adherence to the union’s contract, but such an action alone did not address Bee staffers’ larger concerns over McClatchy’s AI adoption.

“On some level, it is a fight,” she said.

McClatchy’s AI embrace

The local news giant has adopted some form of automation to produce journalism over the last several years. 

It introduced the “Miami Herald Bot” in 2021 to write stories about home purchases on Miami’s sprawling real-estate beat, and it later developed another bot that produced hurricane-related stories. After advancements in generative AI technology in 2022, McClatchy leaned in further by producing AI summaries of stories that didn’t necessarily require reporters’ bylines, such as a Bee story from June last year that compiled ongoing housing projects in the city. 

McClatchy’s page outlining how it uses AI, last updated in spring 2025, lists five applications: boosting workflow, data analysis, AI-generated stories on basic data like weather and traffic, summarizing stories and how stories are displayed on their websites. The company said all work using AI is reviewed by humans first.

McClatchy staffers are also encouraged to use internal AI tools to help them write headlines optimized for search engines, said Michael Lycklama, a high school sports reporter at the Idaho Statesman, which is not currently using the content scaling agent. Nearly all of McClatchy’s reporting job listings also demand candidates know how to “leverage AI tools” for help in “finding efficiencies” as they report.

“It seems to kind of just be AI for AI’s sake,” said Lycklama, the chair of the Statesman’s union. “Anytime we ask, ‘Well, how do we know this is working?’ and, ‘What even is working?’ we can’t really get an answer.”

Some AI tools McClatchy has used have also been found to plagiarize. Nota, an AI company contracted by McClatchy, scrapped its network of local news websites last week after Poynter reported that it had mistakenly scraped content from some of Nota’s clients, including the McClatchy-owned Kansas City Star.

McClatchy’s AI adoption also sparked some union fights. The Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild, which is negotiating a union contract on behalf of the Statesman and a collection of newspapers in Washington state, battled McClatchy earlier this year over the company’s desire to produce AI-generated stories without human involvement and retain the right to create AI impersonations of reporters — or “deepfakes” — for photos, podcasts and videos. 

Bryan Clark, an opinion writer at the Statesman and the vice president of the PNW Newspaper Guild, told TheWrap the union had reached a tentative agreement with McClatchy on an AI clause that prevented deepfakes and demanded human involvement if AI content relies “substantially” on a reporter’s work. Such language would also likely limit the content scaling agent’s deployment at the Guild’s McClatchy-owned papers, Clark said, acknowledging the union’s “concerns” with the tool.

“What it consistently said in negotiations was it wanted to maintain as much flexibility as possible for this emerging technology,” Clark said about the AI negotiations. “We thought there were lines in the sand that should be non-negotiable matters of basic journalistic ethics and things like that, and I think we were largely successful.”

Where it goes

While the PNW Newspaper Guild has struck new AI protections, concerns about AI still exist within Sacramento’s borders — and beyond.

Members of the Charlotte Observer’s union met with newsroom leaders last week to address staff concerns with the tool, according to a person familiar with the matter, and both sides established that Observer reporters’ use of the tool is optional. Union leaders at the Miami Herald’s union are also discussing concerns about the tool’s impact on the newsroom, according to another person familiar with the matter.

Lange, the Sacramento Bee union vice chair, said her newsroom isn’t entirely opposed to the use of AI in cases where it appears ethical. 

But she said she and her colleagues worry newsroom editors may be overburdened by balancing these tools while editing reporters’ work, and she worries the agent’s presence on the website could risk damaging reporters’ relationships with their sources.

“I’ve written about some really tough things in my career — domestic violence, sexual assault, horrible traumas,” Lange said. “I don’t want to have to explain to a trauma victim that they can trust me with their story, but I cannot guarantee that it won’t be fed into a glorified chatbot.”

The post McClatchy Journalists Revolt Against AI: ‘It’s a Betrayal’ | Exclusive appeared first on TheWrap.

The megastreamer made a huge expansion of its winning kids and family strategy on Monday with the launch of Netflix Playground, a new app designed for children ages 8 and under that offers offline games with recognizable IP.

Oh, and there are no ads, no additional fees and no in-app purchases. Just playtime for kids, free with your existing subscription.

The app is available for smartphones and tablets, and once it’s downloaded all you need to do is sign into your Netflix account, then all the games are opened up and free to play at your (or more specifically, your kids’) leisure.

“We’re building a world where kids can not only watch their favorite stories, they can step inside them and interact with their favorite characters,” said John Derderian, Netflix Vice President of Animation Series + Kids & Family TV. “We’re creating a seamless destination for discovery, learning, and play. Whether it’s reuniting with Hank and the ‘Trash Truck’ crew for new adventures or making a smoothie with Peppa Pig, watching and playing on Netflix can be the fun and easiest part of every family’s day.”

Netflix Playground is available now in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia, the Philippines and New Zealand. It will be released in the rest of the world on April 28. 

Here are the games available at launch:

• Playtime With Peppa Pig – Jump into Peppa’s world with a collection of playful activities. Care for guinea pigs, drive the bus, make a smoothie and more.
• “Sesame Street” – Hang out with Elmo, Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Oscar and more beloved puppet pals. Practice matching with memory cards or coordination with connect-the-dots.
• “Dr. Seuss’s Horton!” – Explore vibrant jungle environments that encourage creativity through cause-and-effect play with Horton and friends. Try skateboarding and basketball, too!
• “Storybots” – Have fun with these curious and inquisitive critters through colorful sticker book scenes, jigsaw puzzles and more activities.
• Dr. Seuss’s The Sneetches – Join Stella Sneetch on interactive adventures through her world, choose shapes to develop pattern recognition and build a one-of-a-kind car.
• “Bad Dinosaurs” – Pick a tiny tyrannosaurus to run on a race track, or jam out with a turntable, keyboard and sound effects to make a fart-filled new song.
• “Dr. Seuss’s Red Fish, Blue Fish” – Tap and drag to reveal delightful surprises in the fishes’ living room and kitchen play zones, or soar through the air in a hot air balloon.
• Let’s Color – Unleash your creativity with coloring pages featuring your favorite characters.

As if that wasn’t enough, Netflix also announced a slew of new and returning programming in the kids space.

“Trash Truck,” the adorable and gentle animated series, has been renewed for a third season.

New episodes of “The Creature Cases” are also on the way. And “Young MacDonald,” a new musical series that follows “the optimistic and playful grandson of Old MacDonald and his animal friends as they solve problems, and learn about farm life” is being added to the service as well.

And here are the release dates for additional kids and family shows and programs throughout April, including the launch of “Danny Go!” on Monday and new episodes of “Ms. Rachel.”

• April 13: “My Sesame Street Friends: My Elmo” (Season 1) — Get ready for big giggles with everyone’s favorite furry red friend.
• April 20: “CoComelon Lane” (Season 7) — Celebrate more of life’s big “firsts” with JJ and the crew.
• April 27: “My Sesame Street Friends: My Abby” (Season 1) — Sparkle into spring with magic and rhymes with the local fairy-in-training.
• May 4: “Dr. Seuss’s Horton!” (Season 2) — More “person-is-a-person” adventures in the Jungle of Nool.
• May 11: “Mark Rober’s CrunchLabs” (Season 4) — High-energy builds that make science the star of the show.
• May 23: “Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie” — The ultimate a-meow-zing cinematic event makes its Netflix debut in the US.
• June 8: “Sesame Street” (Season 56, Volume 3) — Keep learning and growing with the neighborhood’s most iconic friends.
• This Summer: “Ms. Rachel” (Season 3) — New songs and milestones with the beloved educator and creator. 

The post Netflix Makes Huge Expansion in Kids Space With Launch of Gaming App appeared first on TheWrap.

“The people who make this stuff are losers,” she told Slash Film in an interview Thursday. “They’re not artists. They’re not creative. And they’ve wanted their whole lives to be special. And they’re not special.”

If there’s one thing we know about the Emmy Award winner, she doesn’t hold back when it comes to sharing what she thinks about anything — including societal shifts and the current state of affairs. Artificial intelligence and Hollywood’s acceptance of it was no different. She stated that AI creators are simply the talentless trying their best to fit in with and/or replace real-life craftspeople.

“They’re trying to rob real creative people of our gifts, and you can’t,” Einbinder said. “And even if you try, you will never be cool. You guys suck. No one likes you.”

She took it a step further and said that the studios and production companies that work with AI creators are in it solely for financial gain.

“Anyone who’s near you is because they crave power and access over any ethical standard,” she went on. “You are a loser. You will never be cool. And you probably had a rolly backpack in high school. I wanna put your head in the toilet and flush.”

Einbinder isn’t the first Hollywood star to publicly drag artificial intelligence. While presenting the Oscar for Best Animated Short Subject at the 2026 Academy Awards, actor and comedian Will Arnett shouted out “the creative people who bring these animated stories tonight” while blasting AI.

“Tonight, we are celebrating people, not AI, because animation, it’s more than a prompt. It’s an art form and it needs to be protected. Am I right?”

The post Hannah Einbinder Calls AI Creators ‘Losers’ Who Have Always Wanted to Be Special: ‘They’re Not’ appeared first on TheWrap.

TBPN co-hosts Jordi Hays and John Coogan said on Thursday that the ChatGPT maker would acquire the show, a deal the Financial Times pegged in the “low hundreds of millions of dollars.” The deal puts OpenAI firmly in the media business after a reported internal pledge last month to minimize “side quests,” a decision Altman told Axios co-founder Mike Allen on Thursday stemmed from the show’s ability to explain AI in a relatable way.

“Those guys do the best and most interesting job of covering what’s happening with AI in a way that people understand,” Altman said. “They’re fun, they’re not sensationalist. They go into real levels of technical depth, and it resonates with people. It resonates with the community of developers and builders that I want to make sure are fully informed in this.”

“They are genius marketers, and I would love to have better marketing” for AI, Altman added, acknowledging the public’s skepticism of the technology. “Given the amazing things AI can do, I think there’s got to be better marketing for AI.”

OpenAI has framed the acquisition around benefiting the company’s communications and marketing apparatus, and the TBPN team will report to chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane.

Altman asserted he would allow the hosts to “completely maintain their independence,” though he acknowledged potential fears about a tech company meddling with an editorial product.

“There have been other examples of tech companies or tech people supporting a media company where that doesn’t come across,” he said. “So that’s the only thing I’m worried about. But it’s just making sure that the world still trusts that they’re going to be harsh on us and cover the industry fairly.”

Altman‘s comments to Axios reiterated his X post about the deal, in which he called TBPN “my favorite tech show” and said he would help maintain the show‘s scrutiny of OpenAI with his own “occasional stupid decisions.”

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