Tom Paton, whose Where the Robots Grow was one of the first AI animated feature films, debuted a new AI generated series today, Non Player Combat. His small team in the UK has been building AiMation Studios around a pipeline for long form generative AI content and a companion iOS microstreamer for distribution.

Non Player Combat introduces six photorealistic contestants who are dropped on a remote island in a survival contest that blends elements of battle royale games and unscripted competition shows. Each contestant carries a detailed psychological history created by AiMation’s writers. It all seems very familiar except for one twist: they are actually going to kill each other, or die trying, and the writers don’t know who, or how, or where this will happen.

Madison Cross is a survivalist who plans to survive Non-Player Combat.

AiMation Studios

Once the simulation begins, the Ai characters make each decision independently. They may form alliances or forgo them as they hunt each other, avoid predators, and fight for survival. Paton describes the show as a mix of Naked and Afraid and The Truman Show, unfolding because the characters believe their circumstances are real. In Hollywood the log line would be: Hunger Games in Westworld. The production team does not plan outcomes. Episodes are edited from logs of the simulation. The first episode debuts December 8 on YouTube and on the AiMation VOD app, with additional episodes released weekly.

Paton describes the approach as a hybrid of game development and documentary editing. “Every player has hundreds of pages of backstory. Childhood, trauma, love, crimes, philosophy. Their behavior emerges from that foundation. The AI takes those inputs and becomes the character,” he says. “We did not pick the winner. We did not pick who died and when. We created the psychology, not the plot.”

AiMation built the series with a five person team using its Omnigen workflow platform. The core reasoning system that controls the internal reasoning of the agents and governs moment to moment behavior was built in-house. ElevenLabs provides the synthetic voices. Seedance and other ByteDance models are the main generative AI models used in the production workflow. Paton says four episodes were completed in under two months at a reported cost of about 28K for the entire season. Traitors, a survival series with a comparable format, clocks in at one million dollars per episode.

The six contestants (four men, two women) in Non-Player Combat come straight out of a video game, consisting of a former Navy Seal, an egghead Chess champion, a hot influencer, a wilderness guide, the suicidal ex-con, and an a lethal martial arts. These not-quite human AI agents in Non-Player Combat don’t know they are AI. But we do. From the looks of the trailer the performances may be subtly uncanny, and have what I call an ‘AI accent,’ but that doesn’t matter. The agents don’t know they are AI, we do. That’s what makes this original, and dramatic.

We see AI animated characters everywhere now, and it seems like every other producer is working on some secret AI entertainment project on the down-low with “the studios.” If you like this sort of thing, there are thousands of responsive avatars waiting for you in places like Grok, Character.ai and Replikant. Showrunner’s Sim Francisco also follows AI animated characters, but the AI ‘animation’ of the characters is crude.

The characters in Non-Player Combat act with instincts inherited from a century of storytelling rather than written instructions, because of all the media the AI generators have been trained on. Paton believes the intended audience will absorb this without hesitation. “When they see the show and someone explains it is not real, it is AI, they will say who cares,” he says.

Paton says Non Player Combat is the beginning of a new AI driven entertainment format. “The future lies where the characters from the shows and films we watch are living their stories in real time, and it is those stories we are seeing edited down,” he says. The effect is unsettling and commercially interesting. Paton is marketing the series with a Gladiator line, a reminder of what entertainment has always relied on: spectacle. Are you not entertained?

The highly anticipated Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is rumored to retain its 5,000mAh battery, according to leaked specs. This suggests the 2026 Samsung flagship may delay adopting advanced silicon-carbon battery technology seen in rival phones. Photographer: Yuki Iawmura/Bloomberg

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As rival companies release phones with giant batteries using new silicon-carbon technology, a new leak suggests Samsung will stick with a familiar battery size for the upcoming Galaxy S26. But that doesn’t mean the Korean company won’t release a big-battery phone next year. Read on for more and check out my video on silicon carbon batteries below.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Will Feature A Normal-Sized Battery

Reliable leaker Ice Universe posted the full leaked specifications of the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S26 earlier this week. These are by far the most comprehensive details we’ve seen of the Galaxy S26 range so far, and they reveal some interesting tidbits.

The most eye-catching is that the Galaxy S26 Ultra will sport a 5,000mAh battery, just like the Galaxy S25 Ultra. If accurate, that means Samsung’s next flagship phone likely won’t be powered by a denser silicon-carbon battery, and we won’t see a huge jump in battery life for the Korean company’s 2026 flagship.

It’s the same story with the Galaxy S26 Plus, which will feature the same 4,900mAh power pack as the Galaxy S25 Plus. However, the base Galaxy S26 will receive a small 300mAh increase in its battery, up to 4,300mAh.

No Silicon-Carbon Battery In The Galaxy S26? Maybe Not Yet

Korean publication The Financial News reported in February that Samsung was considering incorporating silicon batteries into its “next smartphone.” These leaks suggest otherwise.

Samsung also said in a June interview with Tom’s Guide that the company is “always looking at…emerging technology” in response to a question about silicon-carbon batteries.

But Samsung’s “next smartphone” doesn’t necessarily just mean the initial Galaxy S26 handsets that will be unveiled in January. There are the foldable devices in the summer, alongside the Galaxy S26 FE launch in fall, in addition to other mid-range releases throughout the year.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the May release spot reserved for the Galaxy S26 Edge, which could be cancelled due to poor sales, will be repurposed for a Galaxy S26 silicon-carbon battery-powered phone.

Launched on May 13th, the Galaxy S25 Edge used a new mounting system and camera redesign to make the phone slimmer, which we have seen redeployed in the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and likely the new Galaxy Tri-Fold. Before that, Samsung released a one-off Note Edge in 2014 (on a separate date to the then flagship Galaxy S5) using new curved-glass technology, which eventually made its way to the main Galaxy S line a year later.

Samsung’s habit of releasing one-off devices with new technology, separate from its regular phones, would be a perfect vehicle for a phone powered by a silicon-carbon-battery. The risk that comes with these batteries (swelling and shorter lifespan) won’t be etched into the Galaxy S26’s Wikipedia page while providing a useful testing ground for gauging consumer interest.

The latest Windows 11 optional update is KB5070311. It is the November 2025 update and it came a little late (Dec. 1). But now it’s here, it’s provided some headaches alongside the new improvements. Here’s all you need to know.

Windows 11

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Much of the content is about fixing bugs and other issues, such as a recent issue where notifications can cause crashes. Microsoft described the release in terms of its improvements. “This non-security update for Windows 11, version 25H2 and 24H2 (KB5070311), improves functionality, performance, and reliability,” it said in a support document.

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In the same document it also confirmed that there were known issues.” After installing KB5070311, you might experience issues when opening File Explorer in dark mode. The window might briefly display a blank white screen before loading files and folders,” it said.

But there are other “rough edges,” as Windows Latest described it. “This update can fail to install due to errors like 0x80070306. But if the update does apply, it will break dark mode in File Explorer and also cause problems with Intel Arc GPU drivers,” it said, echoing some of Microsoft’s own comments, but goes on to say that “it’s actually worse than what Microsoft says, as we have run into white flashes when switching to any page in File Explorer, including folders, if we are on the Home page.”

Of course, if you don’t use dark mode, this is not a major problem, but there are other concerns. For instance, if you use Windows Hello, the password icon can become invisible in certain circumstances, such as when you select the button to sign in with other options. It’s not that it’s not there, but it’s not visible (which is arguably more annoying).

“If you hover over the space where the icon should appear, you’ll see that the password button is still available. Select this placeholder to open the password text box and enter your password. After entering your password, you can sign in normally,” is Microsoft’s comment on the situation.

Before you worry about this, it’s not affecting everyone: “Individuals using Windows Home or Pro editions on personal devices are very unlikely to experience this issue. This issue primarily affects enterprise or managed IT environments,” Microsoft went on. Even so, it’s not ideal. More news as it emerges.

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