Other as action and against each other as well. Both wales and ireland have new coaches and after winning their opening games last weekend grand slam is still on for both sides, but ireland know they will have to improve on their performance last weekend when theyjust got over the line with scotland. It has been a trademark of the irish team over the la st trademark of the irish team over the last few years, to be physically dominant, and our thoughts were last week we had it in part but we were not as consistent as we usually are in that aspect of the game. We know we have to step that up a little bit this week, find that consistency, so we dont let teams off the hook and we dont let teams off the hook and we just keep putting pressure on in terms of dominance. Theyre a very, very physical team and if you let them get on the front foot, theyre very, very dangerous so weve got to be very careful about the areas we play in and make sure that we match that physicality thats obviously going to be there. We know its not an easy place to go, the record speaks for itself there, so its going to be a big challenge but we certainly have to front up physically and make sure we play at the right ends of the field. Later on, we have the oldest contest in International Rugby the calcutta cup and today the venue for scotland against england is murrayfield in edinburgh. Theres been the usual war of words between the two camps and england boss eddiejones is well known for getting involved. More than that, as he told sonja mclaughlan, he believes its his duty. I think as a head coach you have got a responsibility to. Like, it is easy not to say anything. Sure, i understand. But i think you have got a responsibility to create the theatre of the game, to paint a picture of how you want your players to play. And sometimes to paint a picture to the opposition. Sometimes
it works, sometimes it does not. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. Scotland have held the trophy for the past two years after beating england at murrayfield in 2018 and coming away from twickenham with a draw last year, but the players just try to keep out of the pre match mind games. Myjob is to concentrate on making sure that im getting my performance spot on, but also making sure that the team are switched on and were here for the right reasons. Were not listening to what everybody else has got to say, we are concentrating on what happens within the four walls of our changing room and making sure were focused and ready for whats coming our way. So a great day of rugby to look forward to. Commentary on ireland against wales is on radio 5 live. Kick off is at 2. 15pm, with scotland v england live on bbc one and the bbc sport website. Thats at 4. 45pm. Over on the bbc sport website, youll find text commentary from todays early kick offs in the premier league and the scottish cup. Thats all the sport. Now its time for click. It is time for the oscars and were here to hand out the awards. There is best actor in a box. Most surprising actor in a lead role. Best performance by a jedi, and best film that has not yet been made. La, la, la, la land. It is oscars weekend and time for hollywood to give itself a pat on the back and time for the rest of us to be reminded there is a reason why the movie industry chose to live in southern california. And with all of glamorous la to choose from, they put me in a box. In a warehouse. Although it is the coolest box i have been in for a while because, spoiler alert, i am not really in the box i am out here. That is virtual me and it is called portl. The box itself is real, of course and the lights inside provide the illumination for the modified human sized 4k lcd screen on the front. This can show pre recorded video or live images of some loon messing about in front of a camera. Whats he doing . The same . Oh, yeah, of course. I must say, iam impressed. Ifigured out all these reasons why somebody might not want to do a hologram and i eliminated those reasons. That is why we developed portl. While i have had fun with so called holograms over the years they have all needed a huge set up
with precisely placed projectors and enormous pieces of glass or giant mesh and dark environments to allow the images to stand out. This one, however, is compact, portable and really bright. First things first, these are not holograms. You know what i think about the term hologram. But these are the most realistic not holograms i think i have ever seen. The key is that this part of the screen is transparent, so if the camera moves left and right you can see the background move behind the character and that really gives you a feeling that they are there and that this is a sd image. A small piece of reflective floor and the shadow of the actor is also captured and sent to the booth, something that really adds to the realism. It is a thumbs up from me, really. He is not too happy, however. Oh, yes, he is. Send in the clowns. With thejoker leading the oscar pack this weekend with 11 nominations, it is not hard to see how the right kind of character inside one of these devices could have a films Marketing Department going nuts. I would like to see every cardboard cutout standing in a lobby replaced with a hologram portl. I want to go to a museum and then hologram einstein asks me a question. We could beam the next president of the United States from his or her own Campaign Office into all 50 states at the same time. With the ability to hear, see and interact with the audience in real time. And david has another project on the go which is not live. Pretty much the opposite, in fact. One of the most famous things about the hologram industry is bringing back the dead. Digital resurrections. These are people who never gave
their consent while they were alive but they have all become super famous holograms in death. And what we are doing is we filmed half a dozen of the worlds most famous icons while they were alive so they could do the performance that they want to do. They hold the microphone how they want to, they sing the way they want to sing. It is not a body double and a cgi head, it is really them. It is less macabre and easier for the audience to get behind. And when the time comes we can access the content and send them on tour. And, actually, that idea is where we go next. Because there is currently a trend in resurrecting dead celebrities. The technology exists to put convincing cgi versions of actors into film. It raises a lot of issues. You are tearing me apart did you know that james dean only
ever made three movies before his death in a car accident in 1955 . Did you also know that after his death his image rights have been handled by mark rosler at cmg worldwide. A kid was killed tonight his memory, his value still resonate with young people around the world, struggling to understand themselves as teenagers and the rebel personality of james dean. So it has always been important for the family that future generations remember who james dean was. Managing the Business Affairs of dead celebrities may sound unusual but it means that their estates get royalties from any paraphernalia that features their faces. And these days, that does notjust mean mugs. We essentially want to bring james dean back so that he is an option for storytellers
and for content creators to use him for traditional film, virtual reality, gaming, music, branded content. In the first james dean project will see a virtual version of this screen icon co star in a vietnam war film called finding jack. Our intention is to put together a 3d virtualjames dean using all the historical data, images and pictures and video that we have had over the course of the last 64 years. We have watched motion and facial capture Technology Mature over the last 15 years and it is now completely possible to capture an actors performance and map their movements and expressions onto a different digital being. It has created monsters. It made Robert De Niro and will smith young again and it has even allowed a films production to continue after its stars untimely death. But the james dean project takes this idea to a different level. Using a celebritys likeness not because the story demands it, but because some dead celebrities a bankable. Celebrities are bankable. It is not like you are creating a brand new virtual being from scratch where you have to spend ample amount of capital to create the awareness for him. People know james dean. He is an icon. But this is much more than blending old existing footage into new scenes. This needs to be a completely flexible 3d photorealistic fully this needs to be a completely flexible, 3d, photorealistic, fully animated, believable version of a person that can act in new scenes and deliver new dialogue. And we humans may accept cgi monsters but we are biologically wired to spot any hint of a fake human. They just look wrong. They break the realism and they end up firmly in what is known as the uncanny valley. As i have learned about visual effect, a big part of illusion is how much time you are giving your artist to refine the work. Often it is rushed and often it has been asked to do things that technology does not deliver well. Previous attempts at cgi actors have been mixed and i wonder whether there is a certain quality threshold that you orjames deans estate has to insist on . Our expectations are very high. Virtual assets that we create will evolve over time. This is not a one time and its perfect. It will evolve. So, ourjames dean that we will release for this movie may be a little different
than the james dean we release a later date. Of course there is more to an actor thanjust theirface. That is just one part of the entire performance package. If you are going to take an actor and put them into something new you need to find a reference for them. You need another actor to do it. How much is it then their performance . Or can you just take stuff from things they have already done but then it is not original. It is a bit of a minefield. Unsurprisingly, some actors have themselves expressed their annoyance. I dont think this is going to be replacing actors that are alive because they have talent that nobody can achieve unless you are physically alive, to be able to make adjustments on the fly. But i also think that working with a virtual star individual being makes it easier to release and market content in the future. Sometimes it is very easy to use a Digital Asset to promote
what you were trying to get viewers to see versus hiring actors to promote content. That costs additional capital. So basically living actors, human actors are a bit of a pain and you would rather work with avatars . To some extent. It is easy to work with deceased celebrities. Hello and welcome to the week in tech. It was the week that uber received a permit that could allow itself self driving cars back onto californian roads for testing nearly two years after a fatal accident in arizona. The uk government is bringing a ban on petrol, diesel and hybrid car sales forward from 2040 to 2035. And googles location Data Tracking is now under a probe by the european regulator. It says it will establish if google
was operating illegally and with due transparency. An artist in berlin tricked google maps into saying there was a trafficjam by dragging a wagon of smart phones around the street. He searched for directions on the app on 99 secondhand mobiles before hitting the streets, wheeling the handsets past google ho. Scientists have successfully tested a device that prints bioskin. This artificial skin, first tested on pigs, is now a step closer to use in human burn clinics. Scientists in israel have developed a tiny robot that can transform shape to step up and over obstacles. The reconfigurable, continuous track robot uses just three motors to flex its body on a link by link basis to build its own track in the air. And finally, a i25 year old film of a train has had an ai update. A youtuber used a Neural Network to scale the famous lumiere brothers short into 4k so crisp it could have
been shot on a modern smart phone. Oh, jenny, you are so cute she is said to be the most realistic robotic animal and i can tell you she feels pretty real. That nose almost feels wet and squidgy. And these dementia patients at las vegass Senior Living facility seem pleased to meet her. You are a good dog. She is awesome. You look real. Look at those teeth. Watch out. Jim hensons creature shop is responsible for the lifelike look, feel, movements and behaviour that have been built on top of this sensor embedded voice controllable robot. There is a great deal of research on the benefits of live animal therapy for seniors with dementia. It helps soothe behavioural and psychological symptoms and reduces the need for certain medications. The problem is many seniors can no longer safely care for or have a live animal around them. With robotic animals it is important to introduce them early in the disease progression so that they have the cognitive abilities to form that attachment so when they are at a later stage in dementia, the animal is already something that they turn to for comfort. It is a dog. I thought it was a real dog. This is really quite a strange experience because the dog does almost feel real and sound real. And everybody seems to be feeling that. But is that right . There are people who, despite explaining to them that it is a robot, actually still believe that it is a real dog. We looked at that from an ethical
perspective and we are concerned about not tricking them but on the other hand, you know, if it gives them comfort, that is really the goal. They like to suspend disbelief. They like to be able to relate to it as if it is a long lost pet that they may have known in an earlier time. Id like to have you. I would let you sleep in the bed with me. And she could be solving a problem here that has already been identified. We started a while back, bringing dogs into the community because we felt like the dogs were a method of helping with loneliness and. What we found is that we have to pay just as much attention to the dogs as the human. Does she ever not like people . She usually likes everybody. It wouldnt be better to design a robot dog that does not like people. Of course, not everyone likes dogs though. What we find is that the barking behaviour in a real dog or robot triggers that fear response and so, one of the things that we can do in the setup of the robot is turn off the barking behaviours. This rechargeable robotic dogs behaviour is customisable via a Smartphone App but there are pros and cons to the whole thing. Before we started filming, she had to be rebooted and it was really quite disturbing as she temporarily died. She clearly did bring joy though and i can see the benefits of it being designed to sit on laps or raised surfaces rather than creating a tripping hazard on the floor. Other breeds and a cat are in development but i was left with one real issue. I feel really bad that we have to take her away from them. Now, recently, weve seen Artificial Intelligence start to outperform humans in very specific tasks. But could ai ever predict a films success better than the people who work here . That is the question that mark asked and this is the answer. Nobody knows anything, so said legendary screenwriter William Goldman who was talking about the movie business and how incredibly difficult it is to predict hits. That is why we end up with films like the reimagined robin hood. And godzilla king of the monsters, both, absolute stinkers. In the movie game, predicting blockbusters is more art than science. This Company Thinks its cracked the cash breaking cinematic code. It claims its a can help predict a movies success at the box office before it goes into production. I think when you say, ai making decisions about films, people get a bit edgy because they start thinking about robot directors or computers making artistic decisions and that is not what is really happening here. It is very much about the business side of the film industry. I caught up with the ceo at the companys hollywood office. Up here, we have an example movie, detective pikachu. My god, you can understand me just enter base information on a project, look at the synopsis. The kind of thing you see on imbd. Whats the project, estimated budget, the rating, the genre, the keywords . All these sectors are very important because they determine how valuable the project is. And from there we build different tools that you can use to evaluate that film. Pikachus voice actor,
ryan reynolds, he could also run and compare ryan to potential comedians, comedy actors that might be suitable for that role. He is adorable. Youre adorable. Using the system, we can play a movie version of fantasy football, changing around elements like the casting. Depending on the gradient to be provided with, this system protects the chances of financial success. Try somebody who is a big name at the moment who probably would be alright for this film dwayne the rock johnson. We will put him in here. Press the button. And now the system, otherwise everything stays the same when we calculate. As you can see, it predicts that there is more revenue. Lets recast with damejudi dench. It drops quite a bit. I havent seen you before have i . All of the data is effectively based on things that are already established. What happens when it comes to the wildcard movies, something that comes completely out of nowhere and that nobody could have predicted and caught everybody by surprise. What happens then . They will still catch everybody by surprise. Outliers are outliers and they are called that because they dont happen very often. 5 , 3 of these movies. They actually are part of a group of outliers that everybody keeps talking about but in reality, its a very slim minority. They are adamant that humans are still in the mix and that its software is an additional assistive tool for movie moguls. This is based on hard numbers, the business side of the industry. What about the scripts . Is there anything out there that could tell you whether a script is good or not . I dont think there is anything out there that can tell you if a script is good, especially not quality good because right now. Exactly, ai cannot understand whether a script is good. The companys recently penned a deal
with Warner Brothers but the studio insists the Machine Learning software will be used in the marketing and distribution side of things. As far as Hollywood Studios are concerned, humans remain in the picture. For now. Were going to do this, you and me. Really interesting stuff, isnt it . That was mark and of course, this weekend is oscar weekend so we will know very soon which films did well this year. Weve been looking