On Thursday, SNK released a trailer for Fatal Fury: CotW 's upcoming second season, which launches on January 22. The trailer promises a pretty robust release schedule for the game's anniversary with monthly character drops over a six-month period. Returning characters Kim Jae Hoon, Nightmare Geese, Blue Mary, and Wolfgang Krauser are slated to join the game's roster, too. However, the excitement of fan-favorites returning has been almost entirely overshadowed by the game's latest trailer incorporating apparent AI-generated clips.
Consumers have grown so weary of AI-generated content and straight-up slop, they're taking extra time to find work made by real people. And some brands are going even further. Instead of airbrushing flaws, they're celebrating them - even going so far as to seek out imperfections in the influencer marketing deals they're planning. The dirty countertop or overflowing garbage can in the background is no longer grounds for a reshoot; it's a way to let viewers know that what they're watching is, well, real.
San Diego-based Vanna Jimenez became a beauty influencer by accident. A year ago, she began posting her morning routines on TikTok and Instagram out of her tiny antique bathroom. While she initially focused on her love of 1960s fashion, her skincare and makeup - tossed artfully across a silver tray piled with her coffee, jewellery, toothpaste, books and accessories - quickly gained followers and the attention of beauty brands.
Various groups are keeping their eyes peeled for hacking and information warfare efforts launched in response to an unprecedented U.S. operation conducted over the weekend that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and brought him to New York to face criminal charges. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is continuing to monitor the cyber landscape in the raid's aftermath. In a written statement, CISA acting Director Madhu Gottumukkala did not acknowledge any disinformation tracking, but said that the recent events in Venezuela demand "heightened vigilance" across sectors.
He argues that the algorithms have grown too sophisticated at sorting viewers into their own individual silos. If a viewer seeks out automotive content, they receive more automotive content. If they like health and beauty, their feed is largely restricted to health and beauty. The days of a single creator punching through to hundreds of millions of viewers are effectively over. Donaldson's rise required a specific historical moment, one where recommendation engines still permitted the emergence of mass figures. That window has closed.
As reported by Deadline, the Google-owned video platform has terminated two massive YouTube channels that peddled fake, AI-generated movie trailers, in what is one of the most high profile actions it's taken against the AI spam polluting the platform. Combined, the channels - called Screen Culture, based in India, and KH Studio, based in the US - boasted over two million subscribers and more than one billion views.
Concord, NH - Attorney General John M. Formella and a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general are calling on Meta to better enforce its own policies about pharmaceutical and wellness ads on Instagram and Facebook and take additional measures to prevent AI-generated weight loss content in ads. These ads are likely to see an uptick during the holiday season and the new year, when conversations around weight loss and appearance tend to increase.
A few months ago, I went to a birthday party at a bar in Neepsend, an old industrial neighbourhood by the River Don in Sheffield. The bar had been a steelworks once, but now it was another example of the international style you find everywhere, from Portland, Oregon, to all the other Portlands in Canada, England, Australia, and New Zealand: exposed brick, steel beams, concrete floors, Edison bulbs. The steelworkers had been transformed into accountants and brand managers, the molten pig iron into £9 cocktails.
Merriam-Webster has settled on a word that represents 2025 - and that word is "slop." The dictionary-maker defines "slop" as "digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence," something that many people have become familiar with as AI-generated content permeates the internet. This year, some of the most popular sites on the web took steps to stave off the infestation of AI slop, including YouTube, Wikipedia, Spotify, and Pinterest.
the company removed dozens of videos featuring Deadpool, Moana, Mickey Mouse, Star Wars characters and other Disney IP as of Friday, just days after Disney accused it of "infringing Disney's copyrights on a massive scale." The letter, seen by both publications earlier this week, called out Google not just for hosting these videos on YouTube, but also for using copyrighted works to train models including Veo and Nano Banana.
"Seattle's cosplay photography is a treasure trove of inspiration for fans of the genre. Check out these real-life cosplay locations and photos taken by @mrdangphotos. From costumes to locations, get the scoop on how to recreate these looks and capture your own cosplay moments in Seattle." effect, in which bots are essentially eating themselves over and over, in order to game their own systems.
Despite the rise of AI-generated summaries, ranking for key search terms remains essential, and authentic video content will become even more valuable for SEO and GEO visibility. SEO won't be going anywhere, GEO will still use top ranking results as one of the parameters when looking for references, so it's still important to rank on important keywords that are relevant to business.