Hollywood urges Trump to protect film, TV from AI

Hundreds of Hollywood stars, including Ben Stiller and Cate Blanchett, have urged Trump's White House to protect film, TV and music copyrights against big tech and AI. The open letter - signed by over 400 actors, directors and artists - hit back against tech giants like Google and OpenAI, who said their AI models must be allowed to train on a vast range of copyrighted work or risk being left behind by Chinese rivals. But "weakening copyright protections" and allowing tech giants to "exploit America's creative and knowledge industries" would threaten "world's most vibrant creative economy", the letter said. The US entertainment industry supports over 2.3 million jobs that generate some $230 billion in annual wages, as well as "provide the foundation for American democratic influence and soft power abroad", it said.

New 'Assassin's Creed' game panned in Japan:

A Japanese lawmaker has slammed the latest video game in the hit "Assassin's Creed" series, complaining that a samurai character destroys the interior of a Shinto shrine."Shadows" the game by France's Ubisoft, to be released Thursday is set in 16th-century feudal Japan inspired by real historical events and samurai movies. "Shadows" has already sparked fierce debate online and beyond for casting a black samurai, Yasu- ke, as one of the two playable protagonists. A Japanese petition against the depiction of the samurai character got over 100,000 signatures.

Vietnam pulls dolls over South China Sea map

Seething tensions over South China Sea have struck an unlikely victim in Vietnam: popular dolls pulled from shops over a facial mark sup- posedly resembling Beijing's claims in the waterway. China-made "Baby Three dolls" became a must-have among Vietnamese kids earlier this year and had been flying off shelves across the country. That was until an online backlash began over "Town rabbit V2" model of the doll and a marking on its cheek that was said to resemble China's so- called "nine-dash line". "Almo- st all kids have started to boy- cott (the dolls) because they saw it as a nationalistic issue, thinking buying them was unpatriotic," a vendor said.