Agreement comes amid anxiety in Hollywood over impact of AI on the industry, expression and rights of creators

Walt Disney has announced a $1bn equity investment in OpenAI, enabling the AI startup’s Sora video generation tool to use its characters.

Users of Sora will be able to generate short, user-prompted social videos that draw on more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars characters as part of a three-year licensing agreement between OpenAI and the entertainment giant.

We asked you to share your views on your children’s use of social media and how the ban is affecting your family. Here is what you told us

For some parents, social media sucks up their children’s time and steals them away from family life, instilling mental health issues along the way. For others, it provides their children with an essential line to friends, family, connection and support.

When Australia’s social media ban came into effect on Wednesday, millions of under-16s lost access to their accounts and were prevented from creating new ones.

As shoppers ask ChatGPT for inspiration, brands scramble to ensure their products appeal to the bots calling the shots

• Consumer test drive: can AI do your Xmas gift shopping for you?

Christmas shopping – some love it, to others it’s a chore, and this year for the first time many of us will outsource the annual task of coming up with gift ideas to artificial intelligence.

While traditional internet search, social media – especially TikTok and Instagram – and simply wandering a local high street will still be the main routes to presents for most this year, about a quarter of people in the UK are already using AI to find the right products, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.

If search interest holds, glitchy glam, cool blue, aliencore and gummy bear aesthetics are among the vibes set to rock the creative world next year

Next year, we’ll mostly be indulging in maximalist circus decor, working on our poetcore, hunting for the ethereal or eating cabbage in a bid for “individuality and self-preservation�, according to Pinterest.

The organisation’s predictions for Australian trends in 2026 have landed, which – according to the platform used by interior decorators, fashion lovers and creatives of all stripes – includes 1980s, aliens, vampires and “forest magic�.

Pregnant immigrants in ICE monitoring programs are avoiding care, fearing detention during labor and delivery

In early September, a woman, nine months pregnant, walked into the emergency obstetrics unit of a Colorado hospital. Though the labor and delivery staff caring for her expected her to have a smooth delivery, her case presented complications almost immediately.

The woman, who was born in central Asia, checked into the hospital with a smartwatch on her wrist, said two hospital workers who cared for her during her labor, and whom the Guardian is not identifying to avoid exposing their hospital or patients to retaliation.

Gen Z are the first generation to have grown up with social media, they were the earliest adopters, and therefore the first to suffer its harms. Now they are fighting back

Late one night in April 2020, towards the start of the Covid lockdowns, Shanley Clémot McLaren was scrolling on her phone when she noticed a Snapchat post by her 16-year-old sister. “She’s basically filming herself from her bed, and she’s like: ‘Guys you shouldn’t be doing this. These fisha accounts are really not OK. Girls, please protect yourselves.’ And I’m like: ‘What is fisha?’ I was 21, but I felt old,� she says.

She went into her sister’s bedroom, where her sibling showed her a Snapchat account named “fisha� plus the code of their Paris suburb. Fisha is French slang for publicly shaming someone – from the verb “afficher�, meaning to display or make public. The account contained intimate images of girls from her sister’s school and dozens of others, “along with the personal data of the victims – their names, phone numbers, addresses, everything to find them, everything to put them in danger�.

European Commission to assess whether Gemini owner is putting rival companies at a disadvantage

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The EU has opened an investigation to assess whether Google is breaching European competition rules in its use of online content from publishers and YouTube creators for artificial intelligence.

The European Commission said on Tuesday it would examine whether the US tech company, which runs the Gemini AI model and is owned by Alphabet, was putting rival AI owners at a “disadvantage�.

A far cry from hand-scrawled letters to Santa, on graphic design platform Canva users have created a whopping 1.4m Christmas wishlist presentations

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Twas three weeks before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, except for my 13-year-old daughter, who emerged from her lair with a level of vim uncommon in daylight hours.

As she made her approach with laptop aglow, her droll little mouth was drawn up in a bow. It then became apparent that I was about to become the audience (some may say “victim�) of a recent cultural phenomenon: the Christmas wishlist slideshow.

From Crocs to indestructible wallets, we rounded up the best guy-approved gifts they won’t know how they lived without

• The 15 US gifts to give the women in your life

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Whether you have been together for years, just made it official, or maybe you’re just shopping for your brother, one thing remains certain: he is going to claim he doesn’t need anything. The special guys in our lives often default to what they’ve always used and loved, from threadbare T-shirts to melted spatulas.

This season, give him the gift of novelty. Introduce him to a new gadget he hasn’t thought of for his man-cave (yes, our respondents still have those). Show him that it’s OK to cry with a personalized keepsake commemorating your shared history. Introduce a little color into his life if his year has been a bit bleak.

From nascent policy idea in one state to passing federal parliament in just days, it has been a whirlwind journey for the world-first legislation that will take effect from 10 December

• Australia’s world-first social media ban begins

• Australian social media ban explained: everything you need to know

• How is Australia’s social media ban affecting you and your family?

In early 2024, the South Australian premier’s wife put down a book she had been reading. It was Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation.

“[She] said to me you better bloody do something about this ... and then we got to work,� Peter Malinauskas later recalled in an ABC interview.

Easy-to-guess words and figures still dominate, alarming cysbersecurity experts and delighting hackers

It is a hacker’s dream. Even in the face of repeated warnings to protect online accounts, a new study reveals that “admin� is the most commonly used password in the UK.

The second most popular, “123456�, is also unlikely to keep hackers at bay.

Book-style Android with cutting-edge AI, good cameras and great tablet screen for media and multitasking on the go

Google’s third-generation folding phone promises to be more durable than all others as the first with full water and dust resistance while also packing lots of advanced AI and an adaptable set of cameras.

The Pixel 10 Pro Fold builds on last year’s excellent 9 Pro Fold by doing away with gears in the hinge along its spine allowing it to deal with dust, which has been the achilles heel of all foldable phones until now, gumming up the works in a way that just isn’t a problem for regular slab phones.

Standard iPhone levels up to Pro models with big screen upgrade, double the storage and more top features than ever

It may not look as different as the redesigned Pro models this year or be as wafer thin as the new iPhone Air, but the iPhone 17 marks a big year for the standard Apple smartphone.

That’s because Apple has finally brought one of the best features of modern smartphones to its base-model flagship phone: a super-smooth 120Hz screen.

Screen: 6.3in Super Retina XDR (120Hz OLED) (460ppi)

Processor: Apple A19

RAM: 8GB

Storage: 256 or 512GB

Operating system: iOS 26

Camera: 48MP main + 48MP UW; 18MP front-facing

Connectivity: 5G, wifi 7, NFC, Bluetooth 6, Thread, USB-C, Satellite, UWB and GNSS

Water resistance: IP68 (6 metres for 30 mins)

Dimensions: 149.6 x 71.5 x 7.95mm

Weight: 177g

Ultra-slim and light smartphone feels special, but cuts to camera and battery may be too hard to ignore for most

The iPhone Air is a technical and design marvel that asks: how much are you willing to give up for a lightweight and ultra-slender profile?

Beyond the obvious engineering effort that has gone into creating one of the slimmest phones ever made, the Air is a reductive exercise that boils down the iPhone into the absolute essentials in a premium body.

First new design in ages, upgraded camera, serious performance and longer battery life make it a standout year

The 17 Pro is Apple’s biggest redesign of the iPhone in years, chucking out the old titanium sides and all-glass backs for a new aluminium unibody design, a huge full-width camera lump on the back and some bolder colours.

That alone will make the iPhone 17 Pro popular for those looking to upgrade and be seen with the newest model. But with the change comes an increase in price to £1,099 (€1,299/$1,099/A$1,999), crossing the £1,000 barrier for the first time for Apple’s smallest Pro phone, which now comes with double the starting storage.

Cut-price watch offers most of what makes the Series 11 great, including an always-on screen, watchOS 26 and wrist-flick gesture

Apple’s entry level Watch SE has been updated with almost everything from its excellent mid-range Series 11 but costs about 40% less, making it the bargain of iPhone smartwatches.

The new Watch SE 3 costs from £219 (€269/$249/A$399), making it one of the cheapest brand-new fully fledged smartwatches available for the iPhone and undercutting the £369 Series 11 and the top-of-the-line £749 Apple Watch Ultra 3.

Camera-equipped sports shades have secure fit, open-ear speakers, mics and advanced Garmin and Strava integration

The Oakley Meta Vanguard are new displayless AI glasses designed for running, cycling and action sports with deep Garmin and Strava integration, which may make them the first smart glasses for sport that actually work.

They are a replacement for running glasses, open-ear headphones and a head-mounted action cam all in one, and are the latest product of Meta’s partnership with the sunglasses conglomerate EssilorLuxottica, the owner of Ray-Ban, Oakley and many other top brands.

Third-gen watch adds 5G, satellite SOS and messaging, a bigger screen and longer battery life in same rugged design

The biggest, baddest and boldest Apple Watch is back for its third generation, adding a bigger screen, longer battery life and satellite messaging for when lost in the wilderness.

The Ultra 3 is Apple’s answer to adventure watches such as Garmin’s Fenix 8 Pro while being a full smartwatch for the iPhone with all the trimmings. As such, it is not cheap, costing from £749 (€899/$799/A$1,399) – £50 less than 2023’s model – sitting above the £369-plus Series 11 and £219 Watch SE 3.

Top adventure watch upgraded with 4G calls, messages, live tracking, satellite texts and SOS for going off the grid

The latest update to Garmin’s class-leading Fenix adventure watch adds something that could save your life: phone-free communications and emergency messaging on 4G or via satellite.

The Fenix 8 Pro takes the already fantastic Fenix 8 and adds in the new cellular tech, plus the option of a cutting-edge microLED screen in a special edition of the watch. It is Garmin’s top model and designed to be the only tool you need to more-or-less go anywhere and track anything.

An all-new Croft adventure, Tomb Raider Catalyst, will be released in 2027 – and a remake of the action heroine’s first adventure arrives next year

After a long break for Lara Croft, a couple of fresh Tomb Raider adventures are on their way. They will be the first new games in the series since 2018, and both will be published by Amazon.

Announced at the Game Awards in LA, Tomb Raider Catalyst stars the “charismatic, self-assured, formidable Lara Croft� from the original 1990s games, says game director Will Kerslake. It’s set in the markets, mountains, and naturally the ancient buildings of northern India, where Lara is racing with other treasure hunters to track down potentially cataclysmic artefacts. It will be out in 2027.

What started as Guillaume Broche’s personal project has been nominated for 12 Game awards, sold more than 2m copies and been praised by Emmanuel Macron as a ‘shining example of French audacity’

The record-breaking 12 nominations at the Game awards this year was beyond the wildest dreams of Guillaume Broche when he first began inking out Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as a personal project while working at Ubisoft.

Before selling more than 2m copies, the narrative-driven roleplaying game with “a unique world, challenging combat and great writing� was a technical demo called We Lost. It was Broche’s appetite for risk and a few hopeful Reddit posts that would create the game’s world of Lumiere and its struggle against the Paintress.

Buying the Zombies, Run! studio wasn’t part of my plan, but our post-apocalypse ​game has a story that makes people feel seen

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A few days ago, I clicked a button on my phone to send funds to a company in Singapore and so took ownership of the video game I co-created and am lead writer for: Zombies, Run! I am a novelist, I wrote the bestselling, award-winning The Power, which was turned into an Amazon Prime TV series starring Toni Collette. What on earth am I doing buying a games company?

Well. First of all. Zombies, Run! is special. It’s special to me – the game started as a Kickstarter and the community that grew up around it has always been incredibly supportive of what we’re doing. And it’s special in what it does. It’s a game to exercise with. You play it on your smartphone – iPhone or Android – and we tell stories from the zombie apocalypse in your headphones to encourage you to go further, faster, or just make exercise less boring. Games are so often portrayed as the bad entertainment form, but I made a game that fundamentally helps people to be healthier.

PC, PS5, Switch 2; Sam Eng/Devolver Digital
An exquisitely fluid game of tricks, grinds and manuals is framed by a story that uncovers the poignancy of the infamously painful pastime

Skateboarding video games live and die by their vibe. The original Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater titles were anarchic, arcade fun while the recent return of EA’s beloved Skate franchise offered competent yet jarringly corporate realism. Skate Story, which is mostly the work of solo developer Sam Eng, offers a more impressionistic interpretation while capturing something of the sport’s essential spirit. It transposes the boarding action to a demonic underworld where the aesthetic is less fire and brimstone than glittering, 2010s-era vaporwave. It is also the most emotionally real a skateboarding game has ever felt.

The premise is ingenious: you are a demon made out of “pain and glass�. Skate to the moon and swallow it, says the devil, and you shall be freed. So that is exactly what you do. You learn to ollie first, a “delicate, precise trick� according to the artfully written in-game text. Then come the pop shuvit, kickflip, heelflip and more.

A surprising economic bubble is making it hard for anyone to buy Pokémon cards – especially children

Pokémon has been huge since the late 90s. Millions of people have fond memories of playing the original Red and Blue games, or trading cards in the playground for that elusive shiny Charizard (if your school didn’t ban them). The franchise has only grown since then – but, where the trading cards are concerned, things have taken an unexpected and unfortunate turn. It’s now almost impossible to get your hands on newly released cards thanks to an insane rise in reselling and scalping over the past year.

Selling on your old cards to collectors has always been part of the hobby, and like baseball cards or Magic: The Gathering, Pokémon cards can sometimes go for thousands of pounds. However, the resale market for Pokémon has climbed so high that even new cards are valued at hundreds, before they’ve even been released. The latest set, Phantasmal Flames, had a rare special illustration Charizard that was being valued at more than £600 before anyone had even found one. When a pack of cards retails at about £4, there’s a huge potential profit to be had.