Author: Brian Merchant

Mike Rianda’s debut feature, the sci-fi comedy The Mitchells vs. the Machines, is about a family of misfits battling an AI, unleashed by a Silicon Valley tech company, that wants to eliminate humans. The movie was a critical and commercial hit when it dropped on Netflix in 2021, becoming the streamer’s most-watched animated movie at

When Noah saw the email, a wave of anxiety hit. It was spring 2023, and the Activision artist was reading a message from the company’s then chief technology officer, Michael Vance, about how artificial intelligence was “top of mind” at the video game publisher. Systems were still being tested, Vance wrote, but “what we have