Artificial intelligence is making steady advances into subtitling but, say its practitioners, it’s a vital service that needs a human to make it work

Is artificial intelligence going to destroy the SDH [subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing] industry? It’s a valid question because, while SDH is the default subtitle format on most platforms, the humans behind it – as with all creative industries – are being increasingly devalued in the age of AI. “SDH is an art, and people in the industry have no idea. They think it’s just a transcription,” says Max Deryagin, chair of Subtle, a non-profit association of freelance subtitlers and translators.

The thinking is that AI should simplify the process of creating subtitles, but that is way off the mark, says Subtle committee member Meredith Cannella. “There’s an assumption that we now have to do less work because of AI tools. But I’ve been doing this now for about 14-15 years, and there hasn’t been much of a difference in how long it takes me to complete projects over the last five or six years.”

Hurtling towards a deranged finale, this 1989 obscenity follows a rich kid who grows suspicious of everyone around him – and it’s never felt more relevant

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The Substance, Together, Titane, Sick of Myself: body horror is having a bit of a resurgence lately. So what better time to revisit Brian Yuzna’s slimy obscenity Society? It’s a movie that definitely thinks we should be taxing billionaires, and to make its point, Society throws an ending at you that you will never – ever – forget.

Society’s entire reputation rests upon this finale and there is no discussion to be had without addressing the queasy and lurid final act. So please take this as both spoiler and content warning, and don’t blame me if you feel like your eyeballs need cleaning after seeing it.

Alex O’Keefe, who is Black, said he was removed by police after white woman complained about him to the conductor

A one-time writer for FX’s hit show The Bear was taken off a New York City commuter train in handcuffs after a dispute with a passenger over how he was sitting – an incident he recorded in a video shared widely on social media.

Alex O’Keefe, who is Black, said in an Instagram post that he was headed to Connecticut on a Metro-North train on Thursday when he was removed by police after a white woman complained to a conductor about the way he was sitting.

Every two weeks, a language is lost – and by the end of the century, half of the world’s 7,000 tongues could have vanished. We meet the artist using eyeliner and chokeberries to rescue everything from Ogham to Arablish

In his studio, Sam Winston appears less artist, more linguistic alchemist. He is experimenting with manufacturing inks out of tobacco from Marlboro cigarettes, the juice of Belarusian chokeberries imported in a 100g packet small enough to make it past customs and a strange brew of kohl eyeliner from the Middle East and galena – the mineral form of lead sulfide – from Wales.

The coloured substances are used to conjure words on to giant canvas flags that will soon hang from the ceiling of London’s Barbican Centre – connecting a group of poets’ native languages with materials from their native landscapes. The quintet speak marginal or at-risk languages covering five continents, and their newly commissioned poems all speak to their sense of home.

The Flight Of The Conchords star wanted to be a dancer and learned the guitar to Neil Young. But which pop titan has his daughter forced him to like?

The first song I fell in love with
I would sing Hit The Road Jack by Ray Charles in my room when I was about 10. I had it on cassette, and wanted to learn every lyric so I could sing it to the end and get all the bits right.

The first album I bought
The soundtrack to Footloose on cassette from HMV on Cuba Street in Wellington. I’m a big fan of the movie and wanted to be a dancer when I was a kid, so this really hit the spot.

Away from the algorithm, the sound of multicultural Britain blossoms in sports halls and group chats, supporting community and inspiring the next generation of musicians

I don’t learn about music from record shops or curated playlists. I discover it on muddy football pitches in east London, with the smell of chips drifting from the van at half-time; in rented cricket halls in Bradford where there is always a giant urn of tea bubbling in the corner. The sounds that have shaped me as a Black British person aren’t designed by algorithms or commissioned by labels. They come from battered speakers balanced on trestle tables, bhangra basslines rattling the walls of community centres in Southall and WhatsApp threads buzzing long after everyone has gone home.

I remember attending a Somali football league in east London where the match ended but no one left. The players, still in muddy boots, piled into the clubhouse to eat rice from foil trays while a DJ wired up his decks at the side of the pitch. The final whistle had barely faded before Sneakbo’s The Wave ripped across the park, the chorus bouncing off the goalposts like an anthem and propelling players and families to move. A few weeks later, in Bradford, I was in a cricket club that had become a bhangra night. Aunties juggled trays of samosas and paper cups of tea as the floor shook to the pounding rhythm of British-Asian bhangra pioneers Alaap ’s take on traditional Heer Ranjha, a song older than most of the crowd but carried with fresh force through second and third-generations. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was unforgettable. And here, too, the loop revealed itself. Sport gathered the people, music deepened the connection, and that connection made space for the next track, the next party, the next young talent.

Rose theatre, Kingston upon Thames
Ava Pickett’s modern-day adaptation of the novel adds pop music, farce and clowning but lacks gimlet-eyed observations

An early blast of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance sets the mood of this 21st-century take on Jane Austen’s comedy of manners. Award-winning writer Ava Pickett transplants the fictional village of Highbury to deepest Essex and dials up the modernity, music and laughs. Emma (Amelia Kenworthy) is a serious-minded type, albeit still insufferably self-regarding and judgy. She has just failed her finals at Oxford University and is in a state of emotional meltdown when she returns home to begin meddling in the lives of all around her.

Her sister, Isabella (Jessica Brindle), loves fake tans and Elton (Bobby Lockwood) is an oily estate agent in sockless loafers. Emma’s biggest critic and secret admirer, George Knightley (Kit Young), is a builder and brother to oafish John (Adrian Richards), who is getting married to Isabella. Mr Woodhouse (Nigel Lindsay) is still a widower but also a latter-day Del Boy furtively carrying on with Mrs Bates (Lucy Benjamin), a beautician, while Harriet (Sofia Oxenham), kooky and hapless in love, works in the local Co-op.

Rijksmuseum says that just like Shakespeare, Rembrandt drew widely and shamelessly from earlier sources

When most people copy someone else’s pictures or ideas it’s generally considered plagiarism. But when Rembrandt did it, it was “emulation” – a display of his craft, experts have said, as they revealed research pointing to an image “inspired” by another in one of the Dutch master’s most famous paintings.

The Night Watch, Rembrandt’s 1642 masterpiece showing the citizens of Amsterdam marching out to defend the city, features a barking dog in the right-hand corner that is largely copied from a popular drawing by a lesser-known Dutch artist, it has been claimed.

The Harry Potter star, who has not acted in a film since 2018, says she found promotion duties ‘soul-destroying’ but is now ‘maybe the happiest and healthiest I’ve ever been’

Emma Watson has spoken out about her decision to pause her acting career in favour of academia in a new interview with Hollywood Authentic.

The star, best known for her role as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films, has not acted in a film since December 2018, when she completed work on Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women, and said she was now “maybe the happiest and healthiest I’ve ever been”.