'The Last of Us' Season 2 confirmed for 2025

Fans of The Last of Us TV show can rejoice as HBO has officially confirmed that Season 2 will premiere in 2025. The announcement was made in the latest Max sizzle reel, which showcased the upcoming shows on the streaming service. Season 2 was originally slated for 2025, but the recent Hollywood strikes cast some doubt on the schedule. But with this sneak peek, it looks like it's still on track for 2025.

The second season will continue the story of Ellie and Joel, the survivors of a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by a fungal infection. It will also introduce Abby, a new character who plays a pivotal role in The Last of Us: Part II, the video game sequel that the show is based on. Bella Ramsey, who portrays Ellie, admitted that she felt a “big fear” of not meeting the expectations of the fans after the acclaimed first season. It is scheduled to start shooting in Canada in early 2024.

The Last of Us TV show, which is a collaboration between HBO and Naughty Dog, the game developer, debuted in January 2023 and became an instant hit. It received rave reviews from critics and audiences alike and was quickly renewed for a second season. The show was created by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, who are also the executive producers and writers.

Meanwhile, the future of The Last of Us game series is uncertain. Naughty Dog has reportedly shelved its multiplayer project and has not confirmed the development of The Last of Us: Part III.

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A new Copilot AI feature in Edge can summarize videos (with caveats)

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft’s AI Copilot in the Edge browser can now generate text summaries of videos—with some limitations. According to Mikhail Parakhin, Microsoft’s CEO of advertising and web services, this feature only works on videos that have been pre-processed by Microsoft or have subtitles.

Parakhin explained that Copilot needs a text transcript of the video to create a summary. He said, "In order for it to work, we need to pre-process the video. If the video has subtitles—we can always fallback on that, if it does not and we didn't preprocess it yet—then it won’t work."

Copilot can also summarize video meetings and calls in Microsoft 365, but it requires audio transcription first. Similarly, Copilot on Microsoft Stream can summarize any video, but it needs users to generate a transcript.

The feature was demonstrated by designer Pietro Schirano, who posted a screen recording of Copilot summarizing a YouTube video about the GTA VI trailer. The video had subtitles, so Copilot was able to produce a summary with highlights and timestamps in seconds.

However, not all videos have subtitles or transcripts. Parakhin said that most publicly available videos (i.e. YouTube) should work.

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Google makes NotebookLM available to all US users

GIF: Google

NotebookLM is Google’s experimental app that uses AI to help you take notes. It is now available to all US users 18 years or older. It also has new features and uses Google’s Gemini Pro AI model for better document analysis and reasoning.

With NotebookLM, you can import documents and get summaries, key points, and answers to your questions. And now, you can also convert your notes into different formats, such as outlines, study guides, emails, newsletters, and more. NotebookLM will suggest the best format for you, or you can choose your own. 

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