service

July 13 (UPI) — Federal security officials received key information about an assassination attempt on President Donald Trump when a gunman’s bullet grazed Trump’s ear at a rural Pennsylvania campaign rally last summer, a Government Accountability Office report shows.

The report, commissioned by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the Secret Service received tips on the attempted assassination at least 10 days prior to the incident in Butler County, Penn., “but failed to relay the information to federal and local law enforcement personnel responsible for securing and staffing the event,” a report released by the Senate Judiciary Committee said.

The report said the Secret Service had no process in place to share the information.

“As an important step, I allocated $1.17 billion in the One Big Beautiful Bill to provide the Secret Service with additional funding,” Grassley said in a release regarding the report. “I’m hopeful this significant injection of resources will go a long way in bringing the agency up to speed.”

Former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheadle had said there was no information made available leading up to the attack one year ago, but Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said that was not true.

“She did not tell the truth,” Paul said during an appearance on the CBS News program Face the Nation. “She said there were no assets that were requested in advance. We found at least four occasions, actually, maybe five occasions, where requests were made. The primary request that was made by both Trump’s Secret Service detail, as well as his campaign was for counter-snipers.”

Paul contended that there was “plenty of time to take him off the stage” based on the information that was available. He said a report of a suspicious person with a range-finder equipped weapon turned out to be the shooter who made the attempt on Trump’s life.

The GAO report said the site agent responsible for identifying vulnerabilities was new to her job and that the Butler County rally was the first time she had planned and secured a large, outdoor event.

Federal immigration agents raided a Home Depot in Barstow last month and arrested a man who had his 3-year-old pit bull, Chuco, with him. A friend managed to grab Chuco from the scene and bring him back to the garage where he lives. The dog’s owner was deported to Mexico the next day.

The SPAY(CE) Project, which spays and neuters dogs in underserved areas, put out a call on Instagram to help Chuco and an animal rescue group agreed to take him, but then went quiet. Meanwhile, the garage owner took Chuco to an undisclosed shelter.

After repeated attempts, SPAY(CE) co-founder Esther Ruurda said her nonprofit gave up on finding the dog or a home for him, since “no one has space for an adult male Pittie these days.” So “the poor dog is left to die in the shelter.”

Chuco, a roughly 3-year-old pit bull, whose owner was deported last month. A friend took Chuco in, but his landlord reportedly dropped the dog at a shelter and would not say which one.

(SPAY(CE) Project)

It’s not an isolated incident. Since federal immigration raids, primarily targeting Latino communities, began roiling Los Angeles in early June, animal rescues and care providers across the county are hearing desperate pleas for help.

At least 15 dogs were surrendered at L.A. County animal shelters due to deportations between June 10 and July 4, according to the county’s Department of Animal Care and Control.

Pets belonging to people who are deported or flee are being left in empty apartments, dumped into the laps of unprepared friends and dropped off at overcrowded shelters, The Times found.

“Unless people do take the initiative [and get the pets out], those animals will starve to death in those backyards or those homes,” said Yvette Berke, outreach manager for Cats at the Studios, a rescue that serves L.A.

Yet with many animal refuges operating at capacity, it can be difficult to find temporary homes where pets are not at risk of euthanasia.

Fearing arrest if they go outside, some people are also forgoing healthcare for their pets, with clinics reporting a surge in no-shows and missed appointments in communities affected by the raids.

“Pets are like the collateral damage to the current political climate,” said Jennifer Naitaki, vice president of programs and strategic initiatives at the Michelson Found Animals Foundation.

Worrying data

Cats curiously watch a visitor at the AGWC Rockin’ Rescue in Woodland Hills. Manager Fabienne Origer said the center is at capacity and these pets need to be adopted to make room for others.

With shelters and rescues stuffed to the gills, an influx of pets is “another impact to an already stressed system,” Berke said.

Dogs — large ones in particular — can be hard to find homes for, some rescues said. Data show that two county shelters have seen large jumps in dogs being surrendered by their owners.

The numbers of dogs relinquished at L.A. County’s Palmdale shelter more than doubled in June compared with June of last year, according to data obtained by The Times. At the county’s Downey shelter, the count jumped by roughly 50% over the same period.

Some of this increase could be because of a loosening of requirements for giving up a pet, said Christopher Valles with L.A. County’s animal control department. In April the department eliminated a requirement that people must make an appointment to relinquish a pet.

Rocky, a 7-year-old mixed-breed dog, has been at AGWC Rockin’ Rescue for three years.

There’s no set time limit on when an animal must be adopted to avoid euthanizing, said Valles, adding that behavior or illness can make them a candidate for being put to sleep.

And there are resources for people in the deported person’s network who are willing to take on the responsibility for their pets, like 2-year-old Mocha, a female chocolate Labrador retriever who was brought in to the county’s Baldwin Park shelter in late June and is ready for adoption.

“We stand by anybody who’s in a difficult position where they can’t care for their animal because of deportation,” Valles said.

Some rescues, however, urge people not to turn to shelters because of overcrowding and high euthanasia rates.

Rates for dogs getting put down at L.A. city shelters increased 57% in April compared with the same month the previous year, according to a recent report.

L.A. Animal Services, which oversees city shelters, did not respond to requests for comment or data.

Already at the breaking point

Fabienne Origer, manager of AGWC Rockin’ Rescue, with Gracie, a 4-week-old kitten found on Ventura Boulevard and brought to the center a week ago.

Every day, Fabienne Origer is bombarded with 10 to 20 calls asking if AGWC Rockin’ Rescue in Woodland Hills, which she manages, can take in dogs and cats. She estimates that one to two of those pleas are now related to immigration issues.

The rescue, like many others, is full.

Part of the reason is that many people adopted pets during the COVID-19 crisis — when they were stuck at home — and dumped them when the world opened back up, she said.

Skyrocketing cost of living and veterinary care expenses have also prompted people to get rid of their pet family members, several rescues said. Vet prices have surged by 60% over a decade.

L.A. Animal Services reported “critical overcrowding” in May, with more than 900 dogs in its custody.

“It’s already bad, but now on top of that, a lot of requests are because people have disappeared, because people have been deported, and if we can take a cat or two dogs,” Origer said. “It’s just ongoing, every single day.”

Wounds you can’t see

Assistant manager Antonia Schumann pets a couple of dogs at AGWC Rockin’ Rescue.

Animals suffer from the emotional strain of separation and unceremonious change when their owners vanish, experts said.

When a mother and three young daughters from Nicaragua who were pursuing asylum in the U.S. were unexpectedly deported in May following a routine hearing, they left behind their beloved senior dog.

She was taken in by the mother’s stepmom. Not long after, the small dog had to be ushered into surgery to treat a life-threatening mass.

The small dog is on the mend physically, but “is clearly depressed, barely functioning and missing her family,” the stepmother wrote in a statement provided to the Community Animal Medicine Project (CAMP), which paid for the surgery. She’s used to spending all day with the girls and sleeping with them at night, the stepmom said.

From Nicaragua, the girls have been asking to get their dog back. For now, they’re using FaceTime.

Shirley and Bruno lounge in their space at AGWC Rockin’ Rescue. They have been there for five years.

Prior to the ICE raids, 80 to 100 people often lined up for services at clinics run by the Latino Alliance for Animal Care Foundation.

Now such a line could draw attention, so the Alliance staggers appointments, according to Jose Sandoval, executive director of the Panorama City-based organization that provides education and services to Latino families.

“It’s hitting our ‘hood,” Sandoval said, “and we couldn’t just sit there and not do anything.”

Within two hours of offering free services — including vaccines and flea medication refills — to people affected by ICE raids, they received about 15 calls.

CAMP, whose staff is almost entirely people of color and Spanish speaking, is mulling reviving telehealth options and partnering to deliver baskets of urgently needed pet goods. It’s drilling staffers on what to do if immigration officers show up at the workplace.

“Humans aren’t leaving their house for themselves, so if their dog has an earache they may hesitate to go out to their vet, but animals will suffer,” said Alanna Klein, strategy and engagement officer for CAMP. “We totally understand why they’re not doing it, but [pets] are alongside humans in being impacted by this.”

CAMP has seen a 20%-30% increase in missed appointments since the first week of June, for everything from spay and neuter to wellness exams to surgical procedures. After a video of an ICE raid at a car dealership near CAMP’s clinic in Mission Hills circulated in mid-June, they had 20 no-shows — highly unusual.

“We’re forced to operate under the extreme pressure and in the midst of this collective trauma,” said Zoey Knittel, executive director of CAMP, “but we’ll continue doing it because we believe healthcare should be accessible to all dogs and cats, regardless of their family, socioeconomic or immigration status.”

The agency said the six unnamed individuals face punishments ranging from ’10- to 42-day suspensions without pay’.

Six Secret Service agents on duty during last year’s failed assassination attempt against United States President Donald Trump have faced disciplinary action, including suspensions ranging from 10 to 42 days, the agency has said.

The US Secret Service said it was prohibited from releasing the names of those facing disciplinary action in a Thursday statement marking the one-year anniversary of the shooting at a Pennsylvania rally on July 13, 2024.

It said the six individuals face punishments ranging from “10- to 42-day suspensions without pay”, while all will also be “placed on restricted duty or into non-operational positions”.

The statement did not specify the grounds for their suspensions, but said the incident – in which a lone gunman opened fire at a rally in the town of Butler – represents an “operational failure”.

The attacker accessed a nearby rooftop with a direct line of sight to the former president as he spoke on stage. A bystander was killed, while Trump’s ear was reportedly wounded in the attack. Agents shot and killed the gunman at the scene.

In an interview with Fox News set to air on Saturday, Trump said the Secret Service should have stationed an agent on the rooftop. “There were mistakes made. And that shouldn’t have happened,” he said.

The agency said it will carry the event as a “reminder of the critical importance of its zero-fail mission and the need for continuous improvement”.

“Breakdowns in communication, technological issues, and human failure, among other contributing factors, led to the events of July 13,” it said.

The Secret Service said it has implemented 21 of 46 recommendations made by congressional oversight bodies in the wake of the assassination attempt.

Secret Service Director Sean Curran, who was in charge of Trump’s security detail at the rally, said the agency “has taken many steps to ensure such an event can never be repeated in the future”.

Detailed in the Secret Service statement were new protective measures for golf courses.

Soon after the Butler assassination attempt, a man with a gun hid near Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course in Florida with the intent to kill the then-Republican presidential candidate.

Prosecutors said Ryan Routh methodically plotted to kill Trump for weeks before aiming a rifle through the shrubbery as he played golf on September 15, 2024. A Secret Service agent spotted Routh before he was able to open fire on Trump.

On Thursday, Routh told Judge Aileen Cannon of the Southern District of Florida he wants to get rid of his court-appointed federal public defenders and represent himself at trial. Routh did not state his reasons for doing so.

Cannon did not immediately rule on Routh’s request and said she will issue a written order with her decision. Routh’s trial is scheduled to begin on September 9.

The new agency in charge of regulating name, image, likeness deals in college sports sent a letter to schools Thursday saying it had rejected deals between players and donor-backed collectives formed over the past several years to funnel money to athletes or their schools.

Those arrangements hold no “valid business purpose,” the memo said, and don’t adhere to rules that call for outside NIL deals to be between players and companies that provide goods or services to the general public for profit.

The letter to Division I athletic directors could be the next step in shuttering today’s version of the collective, groups that are closely affiliated with schools and that, in the early days of NIL after July 2021, proved the most efficient way for schools to indirectly cut deals with players.

Since then, the landscape has changed yet again with the $2.8-billion House settlement that allows schools to pay the players directly as of July 1.

Already, collectives affiliated with Colorado, Alabama, Notre Dame, Georgia and others have announced they’re shutting down. Georgia, Ohio State and Illinois are among those that have announced plans with Learfield, a media and technology company with decades of licensing and other experience across college athletics, to help arrange NIL deals.

Outside deals between athlete and sponsor are still permitted, but any worth $600 or more have to be vetted by a clearinghouse called NIL Go that was established by the new College Sports Commission and is being run by the auditing group Deloitte.

In its letter to the ADs, the CSC said more than 1,500 deals have been cleared since NIL Go launched on June 11, “ranging in value from three figures to seven figures.” More than 12,000 athletes and 1,100 institutional users have registered to use the system.

But the bulk of the letter explained that many deals could not be cleared because they did not conform to an NCAA rule that sets a “valid business purpose” standard for deals to be approved.

The letter explained that if a collective reaches a deal with an athlete to appear on behalf of the collective, which charges an admission fee, the standard is not met because the purpose of the event is to raise money to pay athletes, not to provide goods or services available to the general public for profit.

The same would apply to a deal an athlete makes to sell merchandise to raise money to pay that player because the purpose of “selling merchandise is to raise money to pay that student-athlete and potentially other student-athletes at a particular school or schools, which is not a valid business purpose” according to the NCAA rule.

Sports attorney Darren Heitner, who deals in NIL, said the guidance “could disproportionately burden collectives that are already committed to spending money on players for multiple years to come.”

“If a pattern of rejections results from collective deals submitted to Deloitte, it may invite legal scrutiny under antitrust principles,” he said.

On a separate track, some college sports leaders, including the NCAA, are seeking a limited form of antitrust protection from Congress.

The letter said a NIL deal could be approved if, for instance, the businesses paying the players had a broader purpose than simply acting as a collective. The letter uses a golf course or apparel company as examples.

“In other words, NIL collectives may act as marketing agencies that match student-athletes with businesses that have a valid business purpose and seek to use the student’s NIL to promote their businesses,” the letter said.

Pells writes for the Associated Press.

Who says you can’t go Home Box Office again?

Warner Bros. Discovery renamed its streaming service HBO Max on Wednesday, formally reversing its decision from two years ago to dump the prestigious HBO brand in a bid to make the service more appealing to a mainstream, meat-and-potatoes crowd.

The gambit to chase Netflix with a service called Max didn’t work. Warner Bros. Discovery’s leaders eventually recognized the tremendous value in the HBO name, and sheepishly brought it back for an encore.

The company announced the switch in May.

“The good news is I have a drawer full of stationary from the last time around,” HBO Chairman Casey Bloys said in May, making light of Warner Bros. Discovery’s about-face during the company’s annual programming upfront presentation to advertisers at Madison Square Garden in New York.

The move marks the fifth name for the service in 15 years.

HBO’s first digital offering, introduced in 2010, was called HBO Go. Eventually the company added an HBO Now app. Then, in 2020, when the company launched its comprehensive streaming service with Warner Bros. movies and television shows, executives decided the HBO Max name would play to the company’s strengths while beckoning customers with a souped-up product and moniker to match.

That lasted until Chief Executive David Zaslav stepped in. The company truncated the name to Max because Zaslav and other executives felt the need to create some distance from HBO’s signature shows to make room for the nonscripted fare of Discovery’s channels, including HGTV and Food Network.

Now it’s back to HBO Max.

The company has said the shift was a response to audiences’ desire for quality over quantity.

“No consumer today is saying they want more content, but most consumers are saying they want better content,” the company said in May.

The change also represents a recognition that Warner Bros. Discovery, a medium-sized media company with a huge debt burden, couldn’t compete with Netflix, which tries to offer something for everyone.

And while some of the Max-branded shows, including “The Pitt,” are critically acclaimed, it was the HBO fare, including “The White Lotus,” that has been the most consistent draw for subscribers.

HBO built its legacy as a premium cable channel that required an additional fee on the monthly cable bill. Such groundbreaking series as “The Sopranos,” “Game of Thrones” and “Sex and the City” put the channel at the vanguard of prestige programming.

Most subscribers who currently have Max won’t need to download a new app, company insiders said.

An app update will eventually change the blue Max logo to a black HBO Max one.

Staff writer Stephen Battaglio contributed to this report.

No surprise, 2025 has been an eventful year so far in Hollywood.

In addition to the megahits and epic bombs at the box office, the entertainment industry has been roiled by chaotic forces.

The second Trump administration. The ongoing Blake Lively–Justin Baldoni legal saga. The federal trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs, resulting in a mixed verdict in which the hip-hop mogul was acquitted of the most serious charges — racketeering and sex trafficking. And of course, the devastating wildfires that ravaged the Los Angeles area, particularly Pacific Palisades and Altadena, back in January.

But in terms of the actual business of movies, TV and streaming, there’s plenty of serious stuff to dig into that could shape the future of entertainment — from streaming’s continued ascent, to Disney and Universal’s lawsuit against Midjourney, to the race for state tax credits to save California’s beleaguered production economy.

Here’s our Wide Shot midyear review, by the numbers.

The box office has been on a roller-coaster ride since the COVID-19 pandemic, with the release schedule feeling the effects of the industry’s broader retrenchment. Although the 2023 strikes that thinned out the release schedule are in the rearview mirror, the uncertainty has very much continued.

After a brutal first quarter (ouch, “Snow White”), sales have rebounded thanks to hits including “Minecraft,” “Sinners” and “F1,” with grosses reaching $4.43 billion so far domestically, according to Comscore. That’s up 15% from the same period last year, but still down 26% from 2019. Attendance is up 6.5% from 2024 with about 350 million tickets sold, according to Steve Buck at EntTelligence.

The challenges remain the same.

Studios struggle to draw crowds with much other than the biggest blockbusters and whatever they can convince Gen Z is an “event” movie. And the films themselves are so expensive that even big numbers don’t guarantee that an action spectacle with a robust audience will break even during its theatrical run. Even horror movies aren’t really low-budget anymore (see “Final Destination: Bloodlines” and “28 Years Later”).

After years of shortened theatrical windows, audiences know they can wait to see a new movie at home, often after just a few weeks. That’s why theater owners at the industry convention CinemaCon called on studios to commit to a longer standard gap between a movie’s theatrical release and its availability for home viewing. Meanwhile, audiences face ever longer preshows, with ads now playing between the trailers at AMC. With so much debt, the chain sure needs the money.

The slate for the rest of the year is lumpy.

July is looking strong after “Jurassic World Rebirth’s” $147-million Fourth of July weekend opening, with Warner Bros. and DC’s “Superman” reboot, and Disney and Marvel’s “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” hoping to reinvigorate the superhero genre. Prerelease tracking for “Superman” is all over the place, but an opening of $125 million is a fair target. “Fantastic Four” is poised for a debut in the ballpark of $100 million. But August is lacking in obvious hits. Maybe Paramount’s “The Naked Gun” will bring pure comedy back — but we’ll see.

Paramount caved, reaching a $16-million deal to settle President Trump’s lawsuit over CBS News’ “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris. Trump declared victory over the “Fake News media,” while 1st Amendment advocates and journalists howled, fuming that the owner of one of TV’s most respected brands chose to buy peace rather than fight the case — widely considered frivolous — and stand up for press freedom.

There are still unanswered questions. In the aftermath of the deal, a source close to Trump‘s world said the president’s team is also anticipating millions of dollars in airtime for PSAs related to MAGA-friendly causes and antisemitism — an alleged side deal that Trump himself referenced after the fact. Paramount said its deal with the Trump team did not include PSAs.

In any event, Paramount’s leaders — not to mention its incoming owners at Skydance Media and RedBird — are eager to move on. David Ellison and Shari Redstone are now counting on the Federal Communications Commission to finally approve the $8-billion merger so they can get to work reshaping the storied entertainment firm.

Speaking of Paramount, one of the company’s biggest franchises is causing headaches for the new owners — and vice versa — as the company wrangles with the creators of “South Park” over the future of the long-running, foulmouthed cartoon.

Skydance balked at a proposed overall deal worth at least $2.5 billion for the “South Park” guys, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, sources have said. (Their current $900-million deal is still in place.) Separately, the two sides are trying to work out the streaming rights to the show. Paramount wants to run the episodes on Paramount+, but it also wants to share the rights (and the costs) with another streamer — perhaps the 300-plus episodes’ current home, HBO Max. The streaming rights are expected to fetch north of $200 million a year.

In Hollywood’s current era of downsizing, Skydance may have legitimate reasons to not want to overpay for a show entering its 27th season. But Parker and Stone still have leverage: Without “South Park,” the cupboard at Comedy Central is pretty bare.

Parker and Stone’s lawyers have gone to the mat, accusing David Ellison’s allies — namely former NBCUniversal boss and current RedBird executive Jeff Shell — of overstepping their authority in the negotiations. The “South Park” team expressed its displeasure in a way only the makers of Cartman and Kenny could. After Comedy Central announced a delay for the new season premiere, the show’s X profile tweeted a statement saying the Skydance deal was “a s—show and is f— up South Park.”

Hollywood got its long-sought lifeline from Sacramento, as Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a beefed-up film and television tax credit program, allocating $750 million annually for productions in the state.

That’s more than double the previous program, which was capped at $330 million a year. Shortly afterward, the state legislature passed a law to increase the tax credit to as much as 35% of qualified expenditures for movies and TV series shot in the Greater Los Angeles area — and up to 40% for productions shot outside the region. It also expanded the types of productions that could qualify.

California currently provides a 20% to 25% tax credit to offset qualified production expenses, such as money spent on film crews and building sets. The plan does not cover above-the-line expenses, such as actor and director salaries, which remains a disadvantage as California tries to compete with other states and countries. New York and Texas are both ramping up their own incentive programs.

The Golden State’s production economy has been devastated by competition. Boosting the tax incentives is one lever the state can pull to lure shoots back. There’s also been a push to overhaul red tape at the local level in Los Angeles. Whatever good all this does, it’s sure to be more effective than Trump’s now-largely forgotten call for tariffs on movies produced abroad.

Streaming hit a major symbolic milestone earlier this year, as television usage for YouTube, Netflix and their brethren overtook broadcast and cable for the first time in May, according to Nielsen. Streaming services combined to attract 44.8% of all TV set viewing, representing the largest share to date for direct-to-consumer platforms. Viewership for linear networks was just behind at 44.2%.

Nielsen’s regular viewership report — the Gauge — is a useful snapshot of the state of television today. Combined with the rapid decline of cable and satellite bundle subscriptions, the drop-off in viewing explains much of what’s going on at the legacy media companies.

Firms including Disney and Paramount are still cutting hundreds of jobs to adjust to the new realities. Warner Bros. Discovery — which has been on a yearslong quest to reduce its heavy debt load — said it will split its operations in two, cleaving the studios and streaming business from its global networks. That decision followed NBCUniversal’s move to spin off its cable nets into a new company called Versant.

Those plans are gambles. Cable networks are in decline, but they’re profitable. For most media companies, streaming is growing but has only just gotten into the black after years of losing billions.

Honorable mentions:

$417.5 million: Alcon Entertainment, the production company known for “The Blind Side” and “Blade Runner 2049,” gained a prized asset by acquiring the film library of bankrupt Village Roadshow. The $417.5-million deal gives the firm Village’s stakes in movies including “Joker” and “Mad Max: Fury Road,” both released by Warner Bros. Village Roadshow declared bankruptcy amid a brutal legal battle with Warner Bros. over its release of “The Matrix Resurrections,” which went to streaming and theaters at the same time.

$400 million: “It Ends With Us” director Justin Baldoni’s lawsuits against actress Blake Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds, the New York Times and others were tossed last month, with a judge ruling that the claims — including defamation, extortion and breach of contract — failed to pass legal muster. U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman granted motions to dismiss both a $400-million countersuit against Lively, Reynolds and others and a $250-million defamation claim against The Times.

$2 billion: The biggest movie of the year isn’t from Hollywood at all. It’s “Ne Zha 2,” an animated Chinese film that grossed more than $2 billion, the vast majority of which came from its home country. Despite trade wars and the dominance of local productions, though, U.S. movies can still do well in China. “Jurassic World Rebirth” opened with $41.6 million there.

$20 million: Walt Disney Co. and Universal are suing AI firm Midjourney for allegedly ripping off and copying their intellectual property with its image-generating technology. With 150 violations cited in the lawsuit, at a statutory $150,000 per infringing item, that’s a total of more than $20 million in potential damages.

$300 billion: The eye-popping valuation for privately held OpenAI, the San Francisco company behind ChatGPT and Sora.

$9.2 billion: The amount Disney ultimately paid for Comcast’s Hulu stake, valuing the service at $27.6 billion. After a mediation process, Disney paid less for the stake than Comcast wanted.

— Times staff writers Meg James, Samantha Masunaga, Wendy Lee, Stephen Battaglio, Stacy Perman and Josh Rottenberg contributed to this article.

Stuff we wrote

Finally …

Listen: For your morning run, Killswitch Engage’s “This Consequence.”

Watch: I finally started “Apple Cider Vinegar” over the weekend, and hoo boy, what a fascinating, infuriating story.

Celebrities are all too familiar with the world of deepfakes, the colloquial term for artificial intelligence-generated videos that depict actors and other Hollywood talent falsely doing or saying things that they never agreed to.

To protect themselves, actors including Steve Harvey, Beverly Hills talent agency WME and studios have enlisted the help of Vermillio, a Chicago-based company that tracks famous people’s digital likenesses and intellectual property online. Depending on what its clients want, it can have the material taken down .

But as AI technology continues to improve and becomes more widely available to the general public, regular people are getting scammed too.

Now, Vermillio says it is offering a version of its service for free to everyone.

The move comes as more and more convincing deepfakes continue to proliferate online, making it difficult for social media sites to police such activity. In 2019, there were about 18,000 deepfakes globally and this year, there have been roughly 2 trillion generative creations, said Vermillio Chief Executive and co-founder Dan Neely.

That leaves average Joes at a growing risk of being impersonated online, with little recourse.

“We can’t wait for governments to solve this problem,” Neely said. “We can’t wait for legislators to solve this problem. We can’t wait for other people to solve this problem. We just said it’s the right thing to do, so we should just be doing it.”

With this move, Vermillo is adopting a classic “freemium” model — offering partial service for no charge and up-selling for additional features.

Here’s how it works.

Using its TraceID technology, the company flags problematic content. For paying clients, Vermillio can send take-down requests to sites such as YouTube or Instagram. Additionally, Vermillio says clients can monetize their data by licensing it.

People who sign up for the free version enter information about themselves such as their name, date of birth and social media handles on sites including Instagram or YouTube.

Then, Vermillio will use that information to build a “likeness model” to scour the Internet for potential red flags involving the user’s identity. Then Vermillio alerts the user to what exists online. For example, if someone has created a fake Instagram account of that user, Vermillio would flag that.

Users are notified of this type of content and can decide for themselves what they would like to allow, or take action to remove. If the user wants Vermillio to request take-downs of the inappropriate content, users would need to upgrade to a paid account, which starts at $10 a month and includes five monthly take down requests.

While many social media platforms give an option to users to flag problematic content, Vermillio said it is faster and more effective than having users go directly to YouTube or Instagram to rectify the situation. It has built a network of partners and can escalate take-downs in as quickly as an hour, the company said.

Vermillio executives said some real life examples of deep fakes include celebrity voices used to raise money for fake charities or terrorist organizations, and high school students creating fake pornography of their classmates.

“It’s affecting regular people in the sense that they’re getting scammed by deep fakes, but it’s also affecting teenagers, so people need to understand where they stand,” said Kathleen Grace, Vermillio’s chief strategy officer. “This is an easy way for them to do that.”

While fake social media profiles have existed for years, “generative AI just poured gasoline on it,” Grace said.

The company said hundreds of people use Vermillio’s services, but didn’t specify numbers. By the end of the year, the company expects to have thousands.

Neely said the company isn’t profitable and declined to share revenue figures. Time magazine reported that revenue from Vermillio’s TraceID has increased tenfold from April 2023 to April 2024. The company makes money through the paid versions of its service and licensing. Vermillio has raised $24 million in funding.

Hollywood companies and talent are navigating artificial intelligence in different ways.

Groups such as performers guild SAG-AFTRA are pushing for more state and federal protections against deepfakes. Some celebrities such as Academy Award-winning supporting actor Jamie Lee Curtis struggled to get a fake ad of her on Instagram taken down showing her falsely endorsing a dental product.

WME announced a partnership with Vermillio last year.

“The scale of the issue is extraordinary, so if you’re a rights holder, just trying to understand how much of these AI outputs are based on or utilized my data, my IP in some way, shape or form, is a massive need,” said Chris Jacquemin, WME’s head of digital strategy.

“They’ve obviously proven that TraceID can protect the most important, most high profile public figures in the world,” Jacquemin added. “Opening it up in a much broader application, I think is a huge step forward in really democratizing how anybody can start to police use of their likeness with respect to AI and AI platforms.”

The $145-million global opening of Apple’s “F1 The Movie” came as a relief — both for the iPhone maker itself and theater operators hoping for an original hit during this sequel-dominated summer of blockbusters.

The expensive Brad Pitt action sports drama, directed by Joseph Kosinski (“Top Gun: Maverick”) and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, was a high-stakes gamble by the Cupertino-based tech giant, which until now has enjoyed little success at cinemas.

In the U.S. and Canada, the film did better than expected, generating $57 million in ticket sales through Sunday, according to studio estimates. Analysts were projecting $40 million to $50 million, based on prerelease tracking. Warner Bros. Pictures, which is on a much-needed hot streak, distributed “F1” in partnership with Apple.

Because the movie cost at least $200 million to make (and perhaps far more, according to some reports) after tax breaks and before significant marketing costs, the picture is still far from profitable. But with strong reviews from audiences and critics — an “A” CinemaScore, 83% “fresh” on the Tomatometer and 97% approval from moviegoers on Rotten Tomatoes — the film should continue to perform well in the coming weeks.

It’ll face some serious competition, with Universal Pictures’ “Jurassic World: Rebirth” arriving in theaters Wednesday for the Fourth of July holiday weekend and Warner Bros.’ “Superman” from James Gunn coming shortly afterward.

Nonetheless, “F1” has the all-important Imax screens locked down until “Superman,” and that should be an advantage, given that the movie plays like both an old-school blockbuster and a thrill ride.

The question now: What does this mean for Apple’s film business and how the company approaches theatrical releases in the future?

Since Apple got into Hollywood six years ago with the launch of Apple TV+, the movie slate has struggled to come up with a big-screen success, despite huge spending on prestigious projects and big-name talent.

Its Sundance acquisition “CODA” won the 2022 best picture Oscar, albeit in a weird year, in a first for a streaming company.

But Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” and Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” weren’t commercial hits. “Argylle” and “Fly Me to the Moon” flopped, and “Wolfs” was scaled back from its planned theatrical release. The Miles Teller–Anya Taylor-Joy feature “The Gorge” went straight to streaming.

Analysts and movie industry insiders have speculated that the performance of “F1” would heavily influence whether Apple dove further into blockbuster filmmaking or abandoned theaters altogether. Apple certainly treated it like a high-stakes release, having Chief Executive Tim Cook give an interview with Variety and promoting the film through various parts of the company, including its retail stores and its music, fitness, maps and podcast apps.

Apple lacks an in-house theatrical distribution arm and instead enlists traditional studios for those duties. Burbank-based Warner Bros. worked with Apple on the marketing side while also contributing financially to the campaign, according to people close to the studios.

As of now, it’s unclear what Apple’s ambitions are for the multiplex.

Spike Lee’s Denzel Washington-starring thriller “Highest 2 Lowest,” a reimagining of the 1963 Akira Kurosawa classic “High and Low,” is getting a miniature theatrical window from A24 ahead of its September streaming release on Apple TV+. Apple has already inked a deal for another upcoming Kosinski-Bruckheimer collaboration, about UFOs.

An Apple spokeswoman did not respond to a question about future movie plans.

Theater owners want to see more from Apple at a time when they’re often struggling with a lack of compelling material, especially for grown-ups. With “F1,” they saw a glimpse of hope.

“F1” is a racing movie with throwback vibes, which is no guarantee of success. But the F1 brand is strong, especially internationally, where the movie is doing particularly well ($88.4 million so far). The companies sold the movie as a sort of “Top Gun: Maverick” on wheels, an approach that resonated with audiences. People familiar with the data say the film is drawing in audiences who don’t typically go to theaters, which the theaters desperately need.

The box office performance bodes well for the title’s eventual streaming release on Apple TV+.

With the exception of Netflix, which remains set against doing a true traditional theatrical business, film studios say movies that open in theaters do better on streaming than if they’re simply dumped onto a crowded service. Amazon has again committed to theaters since acquiring MGM Studios after slinking away from the business model years ago.

On the other hand, theatrical releases are risky, especially for a company that cares about its reputation the way Apple does. Flops are embarrassing, even for a company that’s worth $3 trillion and can afford to subsidize a filmmaker’s vision.

In both movies and TV, Apple has been selective with its programming strategy.

It doesn’t have a vast library or a deluge of new releases to keep people interested the way Netflix does. Thus, its subscriber counts have lagged the bigger rivals with more voluminous offerings, according to analysts. (Apple doesn’t disclose subscriber numbers.)

Ask anyone in Hollywood why, exactly, Apple is in the movie business at all and you’ll get varied answers.

Of course, the company wants to grow Apple TV+, which Apple views as part of a larger play to boost its services business. Having a hit movie, in theory, should help with that. People who work with Apple will often argue that the company is more interested in the branding glow that comes with a great movie than whether any particular title makes money.

The company has developed a reputation for quality, especially with buzzy TV projects including Jon Hamm’s “Your Friends & Neighbors,” Seth Rogen’s “The Studio” and, more recently, “Stick” starring Owen Wilson.

“We studied it for years before we decided to do [Apple TV+],” Cook told Variety. “I know there’s a lot of different views out there about why we’re into it. We’re into it to tell great stories, and we want it to be a great business as well. That’s why we’re into it, just plain and simple.”

For Apple, the question of whether to commit to the blockbuster business is a billion-dollar component of a $3-trillion car.

Stuff we wrote

Number of the week

California legislators voted Friday to more than double the amount allocated each year to the state’s film and television tax credit program, raising that cap to $750 million from $330 million.

The increase is a win for the studios, producers, unions and industry workers who have lobbied state legislators for months on the issue, Samantha Masunaga reported.

Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed the increase to help lure productions back to the state at a time when local film and TV employment is sparse.

But other states have not given up the arms race.

New York recently upped its film tax credit cap to $800 million. Texas is also ramping up its incentive program to compete with regional rivals.

Finally …

Watch: “Becoming Led Zeppelin.”

Listen: Dream Theater, “Night Terror.”

Apple Music on Monday said it’s opening a three-story studio in Culver City this summer that will have a 4,000-square-foot soundstage for live performances and fan events.

“With this new studio, we are furthering our commitment to creating a space for artists to create, connect, and share their vision,” said Rachel Newman, Apple Music’s co-head, in a statement.

The facility spans more than 15,000 square feet and includes two radio studios for live interviews and performances, a spatial audio mixing room, booths for songwriting and podcasting, and rooms to help artists create content, Apple said in a post about the studio.

The facility is located in Culver City in the Hayden Tract neighborhood. Los Angeles architect Eric Owen Moss, known for his distinctive and sculptural structures throughout Los Angeles, designed the building that houses the new studio. Apple didn’t provide an exact date for the studio’s opening.

The new space shows how Apple, headquartered in Cupertino, Calif., has been expanding its real estate footprint in Southern California as it pushes further into the entertainment industry.

The tech giant is building a new office complex on the border of Culver City and Los Angeles that is expected to house the company’s television streaming service Apple TV+.

As technology, including the frenzy around artificial intelligence, continues to reshape the way musicians and filmmakers tell stories, tech companies are emphasizing that they want to support creativity.

Last year, Apple apologized after an iPad Pro ad that showed a hydraulic press crushing musical instruments such as a piano and other creative tools before the thin device was revealed, sparked backlash. While the commercial showcased Apple’s thinnest product, some critics viewed it as a symbol of technology destroying creativity.

Apple said the new studio will serve as the anchor for a global network of creative hubs that are already open in New York, Tokyo, Berlin, Paris and Nashville. The company said it plans to open more studios soon.

Apple also announced that as part of its 10-year anniversary celebration, Apple Music Radio starting on July 1 will start counting down the service’s top 500 most-streamed songs. Apple Music is also releasing a way for its listeners to see and stream the songs they’ve played the most since they joined the service in a “Replay All Time” playlist.

In January, as wildfires tore through greater Los Angeles, more than 7,500 emergency personnel mobilized — confronting searing heat and extreme winds, trying to contain the devastation.

Among them stood an Olympic gold medalist and a professional soccer champion.

L.A. County firefighters David Walters and Erin Regan, former athletes who were among the 7,500 emergency personnel who responded to the January wildfires in Southern California, earned them this year’s Pat Tillman Award for Service that will be presented at the ESPY Awards.

The award — named after Tillman, the former Arizona Cardinals safety who left the NFL to enlist in the Army following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and was killed in action — celebrates those with deep ties to sports who have served others, embodying Tillman’s legacy.

Years before joining the fire department, Walters helped the U.S. win the 4×200-meter freestyle relay gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Games. He swam the lead leg in the preliminaries, helping the team set an Olympic record that paved the way for a world-record win in the final.

During the fires, Walters recounted the exhausting conditions as crews fought blazes that scorched nearly 38,000 acres — claiming the lives of 30 people and destroying homes, businesses and landmarks in Altadena and the Pacific Palisades.

“We’re pretty much trying to keep what is left here standing,” Walters told NewsNation. “So we’re not laying down. We’re staying in our position — that’s correct, I did sleep on top of the hose bed last night, just staying ready to do what we can still do.”

Walters told ESPN he is honored to serve Los Angeles.

“This has been a challenging year, but also a rewarding one as we watched the Los Angeles community come together to support their neighbors,” he said in ESPN’s award announcement.

Regan, who joined the department in 2008, once anchored the Washington Freedom to a Women’s United Soccer Assn. title following a stellar goalkeeping career at Wake Forest, where she earned first-team All-ACC honors and broke multiple school records.

Outside of firehouse duties, Regan champions female representation in the fire service. She co-founded Girls’ Fire Camp, a one-day program introducing young girls to firefighting, and launched the Women’s Fire Prep Academy, offering mentorship and hands-on training for aspiring female firefighters.

“My career choice was inspired by my family’s history of public service, so receiving this award is a tribute to the many great influences that shaped my upbringing,” Regan said in ESPN’s award announcement. “As first responders, we take pride in hard work and serving others, and I’m truly humbled to be recognized alongside incredible heroes like Pat Tillman.”

The ESPYs, hosted by comedian Shane Gillis, will air on ABC and stream on ESPN+ on July 16 at 8 p.m. PDT.

June 23 (UPI) — JetBlue Airways, the fifth-largest airline in the United States, is ceasing service at Miami International Airport in an attempt to end less profitable routes.

The last flight for the low-cost carrier in Miami is scheduled for Sept. 3, officials told WFOR-TV. The airline first began operating at MIA in 2021.

The airport is the 10th busiest in the United States and serves several nations, including in Central and South America.

JetBlue informed MIA of the changes Friday, Greg Chin, communications director for Miami-Dade Aviation Department, told the Miami Herald.

Travelers who booked on flights after Sept. 3 “will have the option to fly via Fort Lauderdale or receive a full refund to their original form of payment,” JetBlue spokesperson Derek Dombrowski told the Miami Herald.

JetBlue operates only a single route into Miami International with two daily flights between the city and Boston’s Logan International Airport, according to Dombrowski. Connections are available from Boston, including New York’s JFK, where the airlines is based.

The airline was operating as many as 14 daily flights to and from Miami International at its peak, according to the Miami Herald.

JetBlue CEO Joanna Geraghty, in an internal memo shared with CBS News last week, said the company would “wind down underperforming routes” to reduce costs amid softening demand for travel.

“We’re hopeful demand and bookings will rebound, but even a recovery won’t fully offset the ground we’ve lost this year, and our path back to profitability will take longer than we’d hoped,” she said in the memo. “That means we’re still relying on borrowed cash to keep the airline running.”

Jet Blue has 1,000 daily flights switch 100 destinations, including European nations.

Jet Blue will continue to offer service at the two other South Florida airports: Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International and West Palm Beach. Elsewhere in Florida, service is offered in Orlando, Jacksonville, Sarasota/Bradenton, Tampa Bay, Tallahassee and Key West.

JetBlue is the second-largest carrier in Fort Lauderdale, behind Spirit, with about 6.8 million serve at that airport in 2024.

The airline also plans to cut other routes, including West Palm Beach-Buffalo, N.Y., The Points Guy reported.

American Airlines is the largest carrier at the Miami airport as it serves as a hub to Latin America and the Caribbean. Other major U.S. airlines serving the airport are Delta, Spirit, United and Frontier. Southwest doesn’t operate there.

Lehe Ledu Liangjiang Holiday Hotel, a popular family resort in Chongqing, has become a huge viral hit in China thanks to its red panda wake-up service, that is now attracting heat

A Chinese hotel has been told it must stop waking guests up with red pandas.

Lehe Ledu Liangjiang Holiday Hotel, a popular family resort in Chongqing, currently offers guests the chance to be awakened by the russet-tinted mammals. Many guests are attracted to the hotel solely for its red panda wake-up experience, which involves one of the fluffy animals being led into a guest’s bedroom in the morning.

The animal is then allowed to walk around the room freely and climb onto the duvet-covered bed if it wishes. The service has become a hit online, earning the title “the world’s cutest wake-up service.”

One British couple, Reanne and Ben, documented the experience on their YouTube channel On Tour With Dridgers. In their video, the red panda can be seen wandering along the hotel corridor with a staff member, entering the room, chomping a chunk of apple, and then climbing onto the couple’s bed.

The seemingly friendly and relaxed panda allows the duo to stroke it while eating apple from their hands.

READ MORE: Tourists could be banned from Spanish beaches locals warn have become ‘theme parks’

Now, the Chongqing Forestry Bureau has asked the hotel to stop all activities that allow contact between guests and red pandas. It has sent a team to the hotel to conduct an on-site investigation and said it will release the results of this visit soon.

While the nature of the Forestry Bureau’s concerns is not currently clear, the attraction has long attracted criticism online from those who warn it could lead to injury of both animal and human, as well as the transmission of diseases. The general welfare of the pandas is also a concern.

READ MORE: One of world’s friendliest countries plotting to charge tourists more than localsREAD MORE: Hotel insider’s warning as she explains why you should never use free toiletries

The hotel said that the red pandas are borrowed from a zoo, have been vaccinated, and are cared for by dedicated staff. They told China Newsweek that four red pandas are kept on-site and are on a rota for guest visits.

Sun Quanhui, a scientist from the World Animal Protection organisation, told the Global Times that red pandas are a nationally protected wild species. Sun said that they should not be kept as pets or used for tourism-related entertainment, warning that their sensitive natures could lead them to become stressed in such an environment.

LONDON — Music streaming service Deezer said Friday that it will start flagging albums with AI-generated songs, part of its fight against streaming fraudsters.

Deezer, based in Paris, is grappling with a surge in music on its platform created using artificial intelligence tools it says are being wielded to earn royalties fraudulently.

The app will display an on-screen label warning about “AI-generated content” and notify listeners that some tracks on an album were created with song generators.

Deezer is a small player in music streaming, which is dominated by Spotify, Amazon and Apple, but the company said AI-generated music is an “industry-wide issue.”

It’s committed to “safeguarding the rights of artists and songwriters at a time where copyright law is being put into question in favor of training AI models,” CEO Alexis Lanternier said in a press release.

Deezer’s move underscores the disruption caused by generative AI systems, which are trained on the contents of the internet including text, images and audio available online. AI companies are facing a slew of lawsuits challenging their practice of scraping the web for such training data without paying for it.

According to an AI song detection tool that Deezer rolled out this year, 18% of songs uploaded to its platform each day, or about 20,000 tracks, are now completely AI generated. Just three months earlier, that number was 10%, Lanternier said in a recent interview.

AI has many benefits but it also “creates a lot of questions” for the music industry, Lanternier told The Associated Press. Using AI to make music is fine as long as there’s an artist behind it but the problem arises when anyone, or even a bot, can use it to make music, he said.

Music fraudsters “create tons of songs. They upload, they try to get on playlists or recommendations, and as a result they gather royalties,” he said.

Musicians can’t upload music directly to Deezer or rival platforms like Spotify or Apple Music. Music labels or digital distribution platforms can do it for artists they have contracts with, while anyone else can use a “self service” distribution company.

Fully AI-generated music still accounts for only about 0.5% of total streams on Deezer. But the company said it’s “evident” that fraud is “the primary purpose” for these songs because it suspects that as many as seven in 10 listens of an AI song are done by streaming “farms” or bots, instead of humans.

Any AI songs used for “stream manipulation” will be cut off from royalty payments, Deezer said.

AI has been a hot topic in the music industry, with debates swirling around its creative possibilities as well as concerns about its legality.

Two of the most popular AI song generators, Suno and Udio, are being sued by record companies for copyright infringement, and face allegations they exploited recorded works of artists from Chuck Berry to Mariah Carey.

Gema, a German royalty-collection group, is suing Suno in a similar case filed in Munich, accusing the service of generating songs that are “confusingly similar” to original versions by artists it represents, including “Forever Young” by Alphaville, “Daddy Cool” by Boney M and Lou Bega’s “Mambo No. 5.”

Major record labels are reportedly negotiating with Suno and Udio for compensation, according to news reports earlier this month.

To detect songs for tagging, Lanternier says Deezer uses the same generators used to create songs to analyze their output.

“We identify patterns because the song creates such a complex signal. There is lots of information in the song,” Lanternier said.

The AI music generators seem to be unable to produce songs without subtle but recognizable patterns, which change constantly.

“So you have to update your tool every day,” Lanternier said. “So we keep generating songs to learn, to teach our algorithm. So we’re fighting AI with AI.”

Fraudsters can earn big money through streaming. Lanternier pointed to a criminal case last year in the U.S., which authorities said was the first ever involving artificially inflated music streaming. Prosecutors charged a man with wire fraud conspiracy, accusing him of generating hundreds of thousands of AI songs and using bots to automatically stream them billions of times, earning at least $10 million.

Chan writes for the Associated Press.

It was only a matter of time before the major Hollywood studios started taking the fight to the artificial intelligence industry over its alleged abuse of intellectual property.

Now, it’s on.

Last week, Walt Disney Co. and Universal Pictures sued AI firm Midjourney in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, accusing the popular image generator of blatantly copying and profiting from copyrighted images of characters from franchises such as “Star Wars,” “Minions,” “Cars,” Marvel, “The Simpsons” and “Shrek.”

The complaint cited numerous examples, illustrated with dozens of striking photos, of San Francisco-based Midjourney’s technology being used to generate virtually indistinguishable copies of Darth Vader, Iron Man, Bart, Woody and Elsa, sometimes in frames quite similar to scenes from the actual movies and TV shows.

The lawsuit says Midjourney employed such images to promote its subscription service and encourage the use of its image generator. The companies are seeking unspecified monetary compensation, as well as a court order to stop Midjourney from further infringement, including by using studio-owned material to train its upcoming video tool.

“Midjourney is the quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism,” Disney and Universal’s lawyers wrote in the 110-page complaint. “Piracy is piracy, and whether an infringing image or video is made with AI or another technology does not make it any less infringing.”

The stakes of this battle are high, according to the studios. The AI company’s misuse of Disney and Universal’s intellectual property “threatens to upend the bedrock incentives of U.S. copyright law that drive American leadership in movies, television, and other creative arts,” the court document said.

Midjourney has not responded to requests for comment.

AI companies have typically argued that they are protected by “fair use” doctrine, which allows for the limited reproduction of material without permission from the copyright holder.

Midjourney founder David Holz in 2022 told Forbes that the company did not seek permission from copyright holders, saying “there isn’t really a way to get a hundred million images and know where they’re coming from.”

This battle is a long time coming.

Artists — including screenwriters, animators, illustrators and other entertainment industry workers — have been raising the alarm for years about the threat of AI, not just to their actual jobs but to the work they create. AI models are trained on anything and everything that’s publicly available on the internet, which includes copyrighted material owned by studios or the artists themselves, they argue.

The Writers Guild of America last year called on the big entertainment companies to take legal action against tech giants and startups in order to put a stop to such “theft.” But this is the first time any of the major film studios have gone after an AI company for copyright infringement. They may not be the last.

The studios are following the lead of the New York Times and other publishers, who sued OpenAI and its backer Microsoft over alleged plagiarism. The major music labels have also taken AI firms to court over the use of copyrighted music. Studios are in an awkward position because they’re weighing the possibility of licensing their content to AI firms or using the technology for their own purposes.

Reid Southen, a Michigan-based film concept artist whose research on AI was cited at length in the lawsuit, said he hopes Disney and Universal’s complaint encourages others to take a similar stance.

“Hopefully, I think other studios are looking at what’s going on with Disney and Universal now, and considering, ‘Hey, what about our properties?’” said Southen, who has worked on studio films including “The Matrix Resurrections,” “The Hunger Games” and “Blue Beetle.” “If Universal and Disney think they have a strong enough case to pursue this, I would hope other studios would take note of that and maybe pursue it as well.”

Southen became part of the story in December 2023, after the release of Midjourney v6 started making waves online. He saw someone use the tech to generate an image of Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker, and he started messing around with it himself to see what kinds of copyrighted material he could prompt it to rip off. He posted the results on social media, which led AI researcher Gary Marcus to reach out.

Marcus and Southen published an in-depth article for IEEE Spectrum in January 2024, making the case that Midjourney and other well-funded AI firms were training their models on copyrighted work without their permission or compensation and spitting out images nearly identical to the studios’ own material.

That article illustrated how simple prompts could produce nearly exact replicas of famous film and TV characters.

The prompts didn’t necessarily need to ask for a particular character by name.

The researchers were able to coax uncanny images from AI with prompts as basic as “animated toys” (resulting in pictures of “Toy Story” characters) and “videogame plumber” (which turned up versions of Mario from “Super Mario”). According to Marcus and Southen, all it took was the phrase “popular movie screencap” to evoke a picture similar to an actual frame from “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice” or “The Dark Knight.”

“It shows that they are very clearly trained on hundreds, if not thousands, of movies and YouTube videos and screen caps and all this stuff, because I was able to find matching screen caps and images, not just from trailers, but from deep in movies themselves,” Southen said.

The Midjourney examples were the most egregious, Southen said, but the company was not the only offender. For instance, OpenAI’s image generation technology DALL-E was also capable of producing “plagiaristic” images of copyrighted characters without prompting them specifically by name, Southen said, echoing the findings of his and Marcus’ IEEE Spectrum article.

OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment. The Disney and Universal lawsuit did not name OpenAI, which is also responsible for the video generator Sora that is trying to take the film business by storm.

Many chatbots and text-to-image tools have guardrails around intellectual property, but they clearly have limitations. Ask ChatGPT to create an image of Kermit the Frog, and it will flatly reject the request. However, for example, I was recently able to request a picture of a Muppet-like female pig character, and the result was not unlike Miss Piggy, though I wouldn’t quite say it was a one-for-one copy.

Southen argues that this is a sign of a serious flaw in large language model training — the fact that they’ve already been fed on so much publicly available data. “Sometimes it’s not giving you something that’s spot-on, but it’s giving you enough that you know that it knows what it’s doing,” he said. “Like, you know where it’s pulling from.”

In public comments, studio executives have made it clear that they’re not against AI as a whole. “We are bullish on the promise of AI technology and optimistic about how it can be used responsibly as a tool to further human creativity,” said Horacio Gutierrez, Disney’s chief legal and compliance officer, in a statement on the lawsuit.

As media industry expert Peter Csathy put it in a recent newsletter, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do AI.

But even doing it the right way will be disruptive. Use of AI for storyboarding and pre-visualization could save millions of dollars, which translates to more job losses in the entertainment industry. Lionsgate and AMC Networks have announced deals to use AI to streamline operations and processes.

For artists like Southen, that’s a troubling reality. He said he has seen his annual income shrink in half since generative AI technology came on the scene.

“You can point at things like the strikes and other stuff going on, but the story is the same for most of the people that I know — that their income since all this stuff came has been dramatically impacted,” he said. “Work that was otherwise very steady for me for a long time is just nowhere to be found anymore.”

Stuff we wrote

Number of the week

Streaming just notched a significant milestone.

The technology’s share of total television usage overtook the combined viewership of broadcast and cable for the first time, according to Nielsen.

Streaming represented 44.8% of TV viewership in May 2025, the data firm said, marking a record, while broadcast clocked in at 20.1% and cable garnered 24.1% for a combined 44.2% going to linear viewing.

Nielsen cautioned that rankings may fluctuate because broadcast networks still command a tremendous share of eyeballs, particularly when NFL football airs.

Finally …

I caught some stellar acts at the Hollywood’s Bowl’s Blue Note Jazz Festival on Saturday. Shout-out to saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin and bassist Derrick Hodge. Here’s Benjamin’s Tiny Desk Concert performance for NPR.

June 16 (UPI) — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced the first woman head of the country’s secret intelligence service, MI6, since it was formed in 1909.

Blaise Metreweli will be promoted from her current role as “Q,” in which she is the agency’s lead on technology and innovation. She will take over from the current holder of the role of “C,” MI6 Chief Sir Richard Moore, when his term is up in the fall, No. 10 Downing Street said in a news release Sunday.

“The historic appointment of Blaise Metreweli comes at a time when the work of our intelligence services has never been more vital. The United Kingdom is facing threats on an unprecedented scale — be it aggressors who send their spy ships to our waters or hackers whose sophisticated cyber plots seek to disrupt our public services,” Starmer said.

As C, the 47-year-old will serve as the face of British intelligence in more ways than one, since she is the sole named operative. The identities of roughly all 3,600 agents of the organization a closely guarded state secret.

A career intelligence officer who has also held senior roles at the sister-domestic intelligence service MI5, Metreweli is a Middle East specialist with a lengthy track record as an operative in the region, as well as in Europe.

“I am proud and honored to be asked to lead my service. MI6 plays a vital role — with MI5 and Government Communications Headquarters — in keeping the British people safe and promoting U.K. interests overseas,” she said.

“I look forward to continuing that work alongside the brave officers and agents of MI6 and our many international partners.”

Outgoing chief Moore said in a post on X that Metreweli was the right person for the job, particularly with the current tensions in the Middle East and her out-of-the-box thinking in using technology.

“I am absolutely delighted by this historic appointment of my colleague, Blaise Metreweli, to succeed me as ‘C’. Blaise is a highly accomplished intelligence officer and leader, and one of our foremost thinkers on technology. I am excited to welcome her as the first female head of MI6,” said Moore.

MI6, which began life as the Secret Service Bureau, has never been led by a woman, in contrast with MI5 and the electronic surveillance agency GCHQ. MI5 has previously been headed by two women, while Anne Keast-Butler continues to head GCHQ after being appointed in April 2023 by the previous Conservative government.

The Guardian noted that the on-screen M, James Bond‘s handler in the film franchise was played by Judi Dench for almost two decades, starting alongside Pierce Brosnan in his first stint as 007.

In his first words directed specifically to Americans, Pope Leo XIV told young people on Saturday how to find hope and meaning in their lives through God and in service to others.

“So many people who suffer from different experiences of depression or sadness — they can discover that the love of God is truly healing, that it brings hope,” the first American pope said in a video broadcast on the giant screen at Rate Field, the White Sox baseball stadium on Chicago’s South Side.

The event — set in Leo’s hometown and at the home stadium of his favorite major league team — was organized by the Archdiocese of Chicago in honor of his recent election as pope. Leo seized the opportunity to speak directly to young people, tying his message to the Roman Catholic Church’s ongoing Jubilee year of hope that was declared by Pope Francis.

In Saturday’s message, Leo urged those listening in the stadium and online to be beacons of hope capable of inspiring others.

“To share that message of hope with one another — in outreach, in service, in looking for ways to make our world a better place — gives true life to all of us, and is a sign of hope for the whole world,” he said.

The afternoon program, emceed by Chicago Bulls announcer Chuck Swirsky, highlighted Leo’s roots, including music by the city’s Leo Catholic High School Choir and a musician from Peru, where Leo lived and worked for years. There was also a discussion featuring a former teacher of the future pope as well as a high school classmate and fellow Augustinian.

The event also celebrated the mixing of Catholicism and baseball, including a special invitation from the team for Leo to throw out a ceremonial first pitch at a future White Sox game.

Leo, formerly Robert Prevost, was elected May 8, becoming the first American pope in the 2,000-year history of the church.

Leo, 69, spent his career serving as an Augustinian missionary and ministering in Peru before taking over the Vatican’s powerful office of bishops. He succeeded Pope Francis, who died April 21.

“When I see each and every one of you, when I see how people gather together to celebrate their faith, I discover myself how much hope there is in the world,” Leo said in the video message.

The program was followed by a Mass celebrated by Cardinal Blase Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago who was part of the conclave that elected Leo.

Meyer writes for the Associated Press.

This Saturday, a parade celebrating the Army’s 250th anniversary kicks off in Washington. It will include nearly 10,000 soldiers and dozens of helicopters, tanks and armored fighting vehicles. The 90-minute event is expected to cost $45 million — factoring in the roughly $16 million for anticipated damage to roads not accustomed to such heavy tracked vehicles.

In a recent interview, President Trump promoted the event, which also falls on his 79th birthday: “We have the greatest missiles in the world. We have the greatest submarines in the world. We have the greatest army tanks in the world. We have the greatest weapons in the world. And we’re going to celebrate it.”

Thing is — after 25 years in the Army, from West Point to Iraq — I (like everyone else who’s worn a uniform) can affirm that our equipment isn’t what makes us great. Our Army and all America’s armed services are made of men and women, not metal and wire. The gear always changes; the Americans who serve and sacrifice are the constant.

It’s not just the parade. Other recent events suggest the commander-in-chief could use a friendly nudge toward the right way to honor our military. On May 24, Trump gave a graduation speech at West Point with his red campaign hat on, veered into a five-minute story about avoiding “trophy wives,” blew off the traditional handshake with cadets by saying, “I’m going back now to deal with Russia, to deal with China” — and then flew straight to his golf club in New Jersey.

The next morning, Trump began with a Truth Social message: “HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO ALL, INCLUDING THE SCUM THAT SPENT THE LAST FOUR YEARS TRYING TO DESTROY OUR COUNTRY.” Which made his next “weave,” during what’s typically a somber speech at Arlington National Cemetery, seem almost tame: “We have the World Cup and we have the Olympics…. Now look what I have. I have everything.”

Of course, neither is exactly the right tone to memorialize those who’ve fallen. (Who even says “happy” Memorial Day?)

But gaffes like this raise a far more important question: How should we honor our military? How ought civilians properly thank those in uniform, past and present?

It can be awkward. I know from experience. I was a 24-year-old lieutenant when I got home from my first yearlong tour in Iraq. I was wearing my camo uniform when someone loudly said, “Thanks for your service!” from about 15 feet away. I didn’t know what to do, so I nodded in response. I was embarrassed at the acknowledgment. Better men whom I served with didn’t come home.

I’m not the first to feel that feeling. Eighty years ago, nearly to the day, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered an address in London just after the end of the Second World War. He said, “Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in the blood of his followers and the sacrifices of his friends.” Anyone who’s served in real close combat knows full well that when you’re fortunate enough to get to come home, you can be proud, very proud of your service — but you never brag or boast.

So here’s the right way to think about honoring our military: We appreciate a modest acknowledgment — no more, never less — of our unique role in defending our country and way of life.

“No more” because we are not special. Soldiers aren’t movie superheroes — if we were, there would be nothing to honor because there’d be no risk. We come to service from among you. We’re the guy you sat next to in chemistry, the girl you played with on the playground. We’re not always victims, we’re not always villains, we’re not always valorous, and we’re not always victorious. We’re some blend of all these things. Even George Washington, arguably our greatest general, who won the war that mattered most and protected America when it was still in its crib — worried constantly about losing. He was scared because he was human, and so have been all those since who’ve worn an American uniform.

“Never less” because we are unique. We train to get over our fears to fight. We go where we’re sent, not where we choose. We trade soldiers’ lives for our nation’s protection, for objectives, for time, for military value. Nobody ever said this better than John Ruskin. “The soldier’s trade, verily and essentially, is not slaying, but being slain,” the English historian wrote in the 1800s. “Put him in a fortress breach, with all the pleasures of the world behind him, and only death and his duty in front of him, he will keep his face to the front; and he knows that this choice may be put to him at any moment.”

But just as we acknowledge this unique role, we in uniform must also equally appreciate those who make our service possible. For those in uniform aren’t the only ones in America who sacrifice. Imagine the parents who send their only daughter or son into combat — would anyone dare say they do not also risk everything?

Or other forms of service. My mother was a special education teacher in a poorer part of town and struggled for years to give a chance to otherwise forgotten kids. My father was among the first to join the Transportation Security Administration after 9/11. So I’ve seen civilians serving, even when it was hard.

There are some who misguidedly claim military members have a monopoly on service. This myopia is best captured by a bumper sticker shaped in a soldier silhouette: “Freedom Isn’t Free — I Paid for It.”

This claim is as flimsy as the sticker it’s printed on. It ignores those who also contribute to the fullness of freedom: journalists who free the truth, doctors who free us of disease, clergy who free our souls, teachers who free us of ignorance, lawyers who free the innocent, and so many more in society who silently serve every day. After all, each soldier is the direct result of this entire community. And while basic security may be necessary for the exercise of freedom, it’s certainly not sufficient to ensure “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” That takes a bigger American team.

It’s taken me two decades to figure out how to respond to “Thanks for your service.” I now say, “It’s been the greatest privilege — thank you for making it possible.”

That doesn’t cost $45 million or even 45 cents. All it should ever cost is a brief moment of direct eye contact, a few genuinely felt words — and never ever forget the handshake.

ML Cavanaugh is the author of the forthcoming book “Best Scar Wins: How You Can Be More Than You Were Before.” @MLCavanaugh

Meredith Hayden, a New York-based social media influencer and cookbook author, didn’t start out wanting to create comforting content.

But that’s exactly what resonated with audiences.

She went viral a few years ago by posting about her “day in the life” as a private chef in the Hamptons. Now she has a large following on YouTube for her Wishbone Kitchen brand and her “Dinner With Friends” video series, where she shows herself setting up relaxing dinner parties, making French-style hot chocolate and re-creating a cozy coffee shop at home.

You might see her online wearing pajamas or in bed with her dog while talking to the camera. She doesn’t edit out the parts where she messes up the recipe, saying her fans appreciate the flubs. Hayden, who recently completed a tour for “The Wishbone Kitchen Cookbook,” said she isn’t necessarily going for a vibe, at least not intentionally, despite the clear Ina Garten influence.

“This is really just how I live my life,” Hayden, 29, said by phone. “I am glad it comes across as comforting, because I’m definitely someone who gravitates more towards ‘comfort content’ myself.”

“I’m not planning on watching ‘Severance,’” she added, saying she gravitates toward more wholesome, grounded content, such as home makeover shows of the non-competitive variety.

That personal preference aligns with a broader trend among young adult viewers, according to recent data from United Talent Agency, the Beverly Hills representation firm. The company’s data and insights group, UTA IQ, compiled stats suggesting that many younger consumers are leaning toward material that soothes the nerves and acts as a warm blanket, rather than ratcheting up the anxiety.

“Comfort content” is like popping a Lorazepam (though not in the excessive dose Parker Posey’s character takes in “The White Lotus”) or CBD gummy at the end of the day. The trend is playing out across TV, streaming, literature and social media, said UTA IQ executive Abby Bailey.

She sees it in the rise of #CleanTok videos (totaling 49 billion views last year), in which people do mundane household chores, as well as robust streaming viewership of nostalgic low-intensity sitcoms including “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and the successful February debut of a new CBS soap opera, “Beyond the Gates.”

“Somber themes, intellectual depth, cultural satires — those have always defined prestige entertainment, and it’s left many to discount the value and the viewership of this more lighthearted, comforting programming,” Bailey told The Times. “But as audiences are prioritizing their well-being and taking brain-breaks from the weight of the world, the definition of what’s capital ‘I’ important in entertainment is shifting.”

The changing attitudes are particularly noticeable in the young adult entertainment space, which several years ago was dominated by postapocalyptic teen dramas such as “The Hunger Games” and the “Divergent” series.

More than half (58%) of U.S. adults ages 18 to 30 say TV shows and movies depicting young adults have become too dark and heavy, according to UTA IQ’s April poll of more than 1,000 people. More than 70% said they want to see lighter and more joyful TV shows with young people.

That’s not to say that the upcoming season of the dark and sexually explicit “Euphoria” won’t be successful or that the next “Hunger Games” film won’t work at the box office. That type of content still has its place, even as tastes evolve. But studios and streamers appear to be noticing the audience’s shifting habits.

Examples are popping up in the young adult space on streaming services, including Tubi’s 2024 sports romance movie “Sidelined: The QB & Me,” which is getting a sequel. The Netflix teen drama “My Life With the Walter Boys” was recently renewed for a third season, ahead of its Season 2 premiere.

There are plenty of other opportunities now for young people to take mental breaks on the couch, from the rise of “cozy gaming” to the crossover appeal of “healing fiction,” a genre of whimsical books from Japan and Korea that have taken off elsewhere. Olympic diver Tom Daley, who went viral when he was photographed knitting between his events in Tokyo, created a competition show called “Game of Wool” that will debut on Channel 4 in the U.K.

Some millennial parents have turned to gentler, less overstimulating TV shows from decades ago — think “Arthur” and “Clifford the Big Red Dog” — to co-view with their young children.

Comfort content is certainly nothing new. The term brings to mind the idyllic autumnal walkways of Stars Hollow, the fictional small town from “Gilmore Girls,” as well as just about anything on the Hallmark Channel, which has enough of a following to justify its own $8-a-month subscription streaming service.

But there may be a reason the category is finding renewed purchase in trying times. Bailey hears that theme from consumers who just aren’t in the mood for any more nail-biters. “Time and time again, I get people saying, ‘I just can’t bring myself to watch anything serious,’” Bailey said. “‘Like, all I want to do is watch Bravo.’”

Stuff we wrote

Studio splitsville

As expected, Warner Bros. Discovery will split into two companies, separating its streaming and studios businesses from the struggling television networks business, the New York-based media giant said Monday.

The Streaming & Studios company will consist of the film and TV studios as well as HBO and HBO Max. The Global Networks company (which is taking on much of the debt) will have CNN, Discovery and other channels.

The divorce is aimed to be completed by mid-2026. Afterward, Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav will be CEO of the streaming and studios group, while Chief Financial Officer Gunnar Wiedenfels will run the networks.

The firm previously foreshadowed this move by restructuring its operations along similar lines.

Warner Bros. Discovery thus joins Comcast’s NBCUniversal, which is sweeping basic cable networks, including MSNBC and USA, into a new separate entity called Versant. It’s widely speculated that Paramount Global — if and when the Skydance deal happens — will also eventually unload declining legacy networks.

The breakups reflect an ongoing reality — linear television is in big trouble. The struggles of the cable bundle have continued to weigh on studio finances, with customers moving rapidly to on-demand services.

Indeed, if anyone thought the entertainment business’ bloodletting was over after last year’s series of layoffs, Walt Disney Co. and Warner Bros. Discovery disabused them of that notion in recent days.

Disney slashed several hundred employees on June 2. An actual number was not disclosed, but the cuts are significant, coming after Bob Iger embarked on a plan to reduce staff by 8,000 two years ago following his return as chief executive.

The latest layoffs hit film and television marketing teams, television publicity, casting and development as well as corporate financial operations. The cuts happen to land as the company is celebrating huge box office results from “Lilo & Stitch.”

The new downsizing comes amid Disney’s efforts to pare down its production pipeline after binge-spending during the streaming wars. The reduction corresponds to Disney’s efforts to focus on quality over quantity while also cutting costs.

A couple days after Disney’s layoffs, Warner Bros. Discovery cut staff from its cable television channels business. Those Warner Bros. Discovery reductions were smaller in scale (eliminating fewer than 100 roles), but the message to the industry couldn’t be clearer. Comcast’s NBCUniversal has also undergone layoffs.

The question is: What comes next? Many expect the cast-off Warner and NBCUniversal networks to merge at some point, with Paramount channels perhaps joining them one day.

Finally …

Listen: Turnstile’s new album “Never Enough” is out. Also, The Beths have a new tune. Sabrina Carpenter’s latest has already been declared the “song of the summer.”

June 7 (UPI) — Free Starlink internet service on some regional United Airlines flights has been suspended due to static interference.

The airline began offering free Starlink Wi-Fi service during flights in May, but static interference forced United officials to turn off the service on about 24 airliners, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The airline is working with Starlink to correct the problem, which it says does not affect flight safety.

“We expect the service to be back up and running on these aircraft soon,” United officials said. “The fix will be deployed during routine maintenance, and the airline doesn’t anticipate any impact on flight schedules.”

The problem was first revealed by The Points Guy, which reported the issue commonly occurs when new onboard connectivity technologies are installed on aircraft.

United installed the Starlink service on about two dozen regional aircraft but received reports of static interference while the Wi-Fi service was used.

A similar problem arose when United Airlines installed its Viasat connectivity service on its main air fleet. A quick fix solved the problem.

Starlink is a subsidiary of the Elon Musk-owned SpaceX and uses a global network of small satellites to provide subscribers with Wi-Fi service anywhere in the world.

ITV viewers have slammed the channel as the service crashed – stopping them watching The British Soap Awards 2025.

Soap fans were tuning into watch the awards ceremony, which was meant to start at 8pm.

5

5

5

But the programme was delayed by seven minutes with just a message from the broadcaster and a black screen.

The message read: “We’re sorry for the disruption.”

Fans were quick to take to social media with their complaints.

One wrote: “What the hell is going on ? Will it ever come on?”

A second said: “Oh dear looks like we got major problems on ITV1.”

A third commented: “Well, I guess I am not watching The Soap Awards on ITVX. What’s going on?”

Despite the delay, the ceremony, which was filmed earlier this week, kicked off with Jane McDonald hosting for a second year.

It comes after Coronation Street were brutally snubbed at the awards as they failed to pick up any of the previously announced awards at this year’s ceremony.

The annual soap event made a return this year after ITV mysteriously axed the contest in 2024.

But it was bad news for Coronation Street as the programme suffered a devastating loss after managing to bag just the specially curated Outstanding Achievement Award which went to Roy Cropper star David Neilson.

The show failed to secure wins in any of the main panel or viewer-voted categories amid ITV’s ongoing cash crisis and the mass cast exodus at the soap over the past six months.

Its ITV counterpart Emmerdale also faced a crushing blow ahead of the impending ITV schedule changes which will see 30 minutes worth of each programme cut a week from January 2026.

BBC rival EastEnders swept the board after collecting a total of eight gongs in its 40th anniversary year – more than double its nearest rival, Channel 4’s Hollyoaks who got three awards.

EastEnders was awarded Best Soap after its huge live episode and anniversary week which saw Anita Dobson return as Angie Watts and Martin Fowler killed off in the arms of his love, Stacey.

It was certainly not the only award that they picked up with actress Lacey Turner receiving the trophy for Best Leading Performer ahead of her impending exit from the show.

The 40th anniversary also managed to clutch the Scene of the Year thanks to Angie’s shock return.

Steve McFadden a won a trophy for Best Dramatic Performance as Phil Mitchell but did not attend the ceremony with Angela Wynter and Rudolph Walker also receiving prizes as Patrick and Yolande – beating Corrie fan favourites Lisa Swain and Carla Connor, affectionately known as Swarla, to the Best On-Screen Partnership award.

The Walford based soap also collected the Comedy Performance gongs and Villain of the Year.

In a major blow to Coronation Street, only David Neilson picked up the Outstanding Achievement Award as Roy Cropper which was presented to him by by his on-screen wife Julie Hesmondhalgh.

British Soap Awards 2025: Winners List

Here’s who took home trophys at the 2025 British Soap Awards

Best Single Episode – Eastenders: Phil’s Psychosis: The Mitchells In 1985

Best Young Performer – Emmerdale – Amelia Flanagan as April Windsor

Scene Of The Year – Eastenders: Angie Watts’ Shock Return

Best Newcomer – Hollyoaks: Isabelle Smith as Frankie Osborne

Villain Of The Year – Eastenders: Navin Chowdhry as Nish Panesar

Best Family – Hollyoaks: The Osbornes

Best Dramatic Performance – Eastenders: Steve McFadden as Phil
Mitchell

Best On-Screen Partnership – Eastenders: Rudolph Walker & Angela
Wynter as Patrick & Yolande Trueman

Outstanding Achievement Award – Coronation Street: David Neilson

Best Comedy Performance – Eastenders: Patsy Palmer as Bianca Jackson

The Tony Warren Award – Emmerdale: Mike Plant

Best Storyline – Hollyoaks: Sibling Sexual Abuse

Best Leading Performer – Eastenders: Lacey Turner as Stacey Slater

Best British Soap – Eastenders

Hollyoaks managed to win three awards with Isabelle Smith winning as Best Newcomer with The Osbourne family taking home Best Family and the sibling sexual abuse storyline being named Best Storyline.

Emmerdale managed just two awards with Amelia Flanagan beating her Corrie star brother Will to the Best Young Performer prize.

Mike Plant, one of the show’s camera operators, picked up the prestigious off-screen Tony Warren Award accolade for his contributions to the soap behind the scenes.

ITV’s crushing defeats come amid a period of unrest backstage at the shows.

Both Corrie and Emmerdale have lost a number of stars over the past 12 months amid cuts at the channel.

In particular, Coronation Street has faced increasing criticism of its far-fetched storylines and dwindling viewer interest in many of its plots.

5

5