On social media, a number of creators are using AI to create nostalgic photos of China. Although these images get some details wrong, they are realistic enough to fool and impress many of their followers.

The images look sophisticated in terms of resolution, sharpness, saturation and hue. Her realism is due in part to a recent major update to the Midjourney artificial intelligence imaging program, released in mid-March, which is not only better at generating human hands, but also simulating different styles of photography.

Even for the untrained eye, it is relatively easy to see that the photos were generated by an AI. But for some creators, their experiments are more about remembering a specific epoch in time than trying to fool their audience. Read the full story.

– Zeyi Yang

Zeyi’s story comes from China Report, his weekly newsletter that gives you the inside scoop on technology in China. Registration to get it in your inbox every Tuesday.

Read more about our coverage of AI-generated images:

+ With these new tools you can see for yourself how biased AI image models are. Bias and stereotyping are still major problems for systems like DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion, despite company attempts to address them. Read the full story.

Hogwarts Legacy dominated sales in February, according to Industry Tracking Group Circana (formerly known as NPD Group and IRI). According to the new sales report, the Wizarding World title was the first to oust Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 from the top spot since it launched last October. In fact, several new titles climbed the list, suggesting that gamers are hungry for new games to play amidst the old familiars.

“February results (and indeed those going back to October of last year) show stabilization in trends, both in buy and in engagement,” said Mat Piscatella, an analyst at Circana. “We are in the midst of the ‘new normal’ and no longer subject (for now) to the wild swings we saw in the market as of March 2020.”

Software isn’t the only place for major chart changes. According to Circana’s chart for February (above), gamers spent $495 million on hardware, up 68% from this time last year. Speaking of hardware, Piscatella said, “This is the highest spending for video game hardware in a February month since 2009’s $534 million total…The improved PS5 offering certainly helped, as did strong sales figures for both new releases and games.” for catalog titles. ”

February 2023 Circana: The 20 best-selling games of the month in the US

One of the first things to notice is how many newly launched games have made the charts, with seven recently released titles making the list. In addition to the new games, some of the late 2022 titles have retained their place, including Sonic Frontiers, God of War Ragnarok, and Pokémon Scarlet & Violet.

Both Last of Us games have climbed the list, presumably thanks to continued acclaim for the HBO TV adaptation. Part 1 was recently released on PC, although it did have one particularly poor reception thanks to several bugs in the game. Part 2 has moved up from number 41 to number 18, possibly because new and returning players want to see how the story will unfold in the upcoming seasons of the series.

Hogwarts Legacy and other new titles

Avalanche Games’ Hogwarts Legacy is undoubtedly the big winner of the month, taking first place. Publisher Warner Bros Interactive previously reported that the game sold 12 million copies in two weeks its launch. It’s not the only new title on the list, however. The second highest new title on the list is EA Originals’ Wild Hearts, followed by Sega’s period drama Like a Dragon: Ishin! and Square Enix RPG Octopath Traveler II.

Further down the list are some slightly more niche titles, like Kirby’s Return to Dreamland and rhythm game Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line. The strategy game Company of Heroes 3 also hit the charts. Overall, the abundance of new titles on the chart suggests that consumers are eager to play new games rather than sticking to the top titles of the last few months.

What’s not on the charts

A few notable releases from this period seem to be missing from the bestseller charts. Nintendo’s much-hyped Metroid Prime Remaster, for example, didn’t make the list. This is most likely because Nintendo doesn’t typically offer information on its digital sales, and the physical release of the remaster came later in the month than the digital launch.

Another February release missing from the charts is Mundfish’s Atomic Heart. This could be partly due to its inclusion in Xbox Game Pass Sales on Steam seemed promising. It’s also possible that its publishers didn’t provide Circana with digital sales information for the charts.

February 2023 Circana: 20 best selling games of 2022 so far

The annual calendar isn’t much different from the top 20 of the month, although that’s not a surprise as it only covers two months. However, it is worth noting that Hogwarts Legacy also tops this list, meaning that Modern Warfare 2 sales in one month surpassed Modern Warfare 2 sales over two months. 2021’s Call of Duty title, Vanguard, was similarly knocked off the top spot by Pokémon Legends: Arceus in January 2022, and then knocked down even lower by Elden Ring.

The list also includes a few names that were dropped from the February list, indicating their sales were at least enough to keep them in the larger category. Fire Emblem: Engage, One Piece Odyssey, and Forspoken all secured a spot on the annual list. Again, only two months have passed and it remains to be seen if they will stay there for more months.

Google’s bard has not Exactly had an impressive debut – and The information reported that the company is so interested in changing the fate of its AI chatbots that it’s forcing its DeepMind division to help the Google Brain team beat OpenAI with a new initiative called Gemini. The informationThe report also includes the potentially jarring third-party claim that Google has deigned to train Bard with OpenAI’s ChatGPT data sourced from a site called ShareGPT. A former Google AI researcher reportedly opposed the use of this data, according to the publication.

But Google firmly and clearly denies that the data was used: “Bard is not trained on data from ShareGPT or ChatGPT,” says spokesman Chris Pappas The edge.

Accordingly The information, a Google AI engineer named Jacob Devlin left Google to immediately join its rival OpenAI after trying to warn Google not to use this ChatGPT data as it would violate OpenAI’s terms of service and that its Answers would look too similar. A source told the publication that following its warnings, Google is no longer using this data. It may have discarded that part of the training as well.