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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiniMax_(company)#Hailuo_AI] | [TOKENS: 630]
Contents MiniMax (company) MiniMax is an artificial intelligence (AI) company based in Shanghai, China. Background MiniMax was founded in December 2021 by several computer vision researchers from SenseTime. When it first started out, it received funding from MiHoYo. In March 2024, Alibaba Group led a $600 million financing round for MiniMax giving it a valuation of $2.5 billion. Other investors of MiniMax include Hillhouse Investment, HongShan, IDG Capital and Tencent. On 9 January 2026, MiniMax held its initial public offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange to become a listed company. Products MiniMax's first product was Glow which was launched in October 2022. The app allowed users to create virtual characters and then chat with them about various topics. Only four months after launch, the app had over 5 million users. Due to filing issues,[clarification needed] Glow was terminated in March 2023. Glow was relaunched under two new brands: Talkie, launched for international markets in June 2023, and Xing Ye (ๆ˜Ÿ้‡Ž), introduced in September 2023 for the Chinese market. Talkie was profiled The Wall Street Journal in July 2024. For June 2024 Talkie ranked fifth among the most-downloaded free entertainment apps in the U.S. More than half of Talkie's 11 million monthly active users were in the U.S. Other popular markets included Philippines, the U.K. and Canada. Talkie produced AI-simulated conversations with people such as Donald Trump, Taylor Swift, Elon Musk and LeBron James. In March 2024, MiniMax launched Hailuo AI, an AI text and music-generating large language model (LLM) platform. In September 2024, MiniMax launched video-01, a text-to-video model under Hailuo AI. A review by Tom's Guide described it as roughly equivalent to Luma Labs Dream Machine but not as good as Runway Gen-3. In December 2024, Broadcast reported that Hailuo AI can reproduce the logos of British television channels Channel 4, Channel 5, and ITV in its AI-generated videos. On 20 January 2025, MiniMax launched audio functions for Hailuo AI. On 17 April 2024, MiniMax launched the ABAB 6.5 series, a mixture of experts language model. In January 2025, MiniMax unveiled the MiniMax-01 LLM product line, which includes a general-purpose MiniMax-Text-01 model and MiniMax-VL-01 model with visual capabilities. In April 2025, MiniMax released Speech-02, a text-to-speech model with support for over 30 languages.[unreliable source?] In June 2025, MiniMax released MiniMax-M1.[non-primary source needed] In February 2026, MiniMax released MiniMax-M2.5, and the M2.5-Lightning variant.[non-primary source needed] See also References External links
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riffusion] | [TOKENS: 301]
Contents Riffusion Riffusion is a neural network, designed by Seth Forsgren and Hayk Martiros, that generates music using images of sound rather than audio. The resulting music has been described as "de otro mundo" (otherworldly), although unlikely to replace man-made music. The model was made available on December 15, 2022, with the code also freely available on GitHub. The first version of Riffusion was created as a fine-tuning of Stable Diffusion, an existing open-source model for generating images from text prompts, on spectrograms, resulting in a model which used text prompts to generate image files which could then be put through an inverse Fourier transform and converted into audio files. While these files were only several seconds long, the model could also use latent space between outputs to interpolate different files together (using the img2img capabilities of SD). It was one of many models derived from Stable Diffusion. In December 2022, Mubert similarly used Stable Diffusion to turn descriptive text into music loops. In January 2023, Google published a paper on their own text-to-music generator called MusicLM. Forsgren and Martiros formed a startup, also called Riffusion, and raised $4 million in venture capital funding in October 2023. References This artificial neural network-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. This scientific software article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information.
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DALL-E] | [TOKENS: 2870]
Contents DALL-E DALL-E, DALL-E 2, and DALL-E 3 (stylised DALLยทE) are text-to-image models developed by OpenAI using deep learning methodologies to generate digital images from natural language descriptions known as prompts. The first version of DALL-E was announced in January 2021. In the following year, its successor DALL-E 2 was released. DALL-E 3 was released natively into ChatGPT for ChatGPT Plus and ChatGPT Enterprise customers in October 2023, with availability via OpenAI's API and "Labs" platform provided in early November. Microsoft implemented the model in Bing's Image Creator tool and plans to implement it into their Designer app. With Bing's Image Creator tool, Microsoft Copilot runs on DALL-E 3. In March 2025, DALL-E-3 was replaced in ChatGPT by GPT Image's native image-generation capabilities. History and background DALL-E was revealed by OpenAI in a blog post on 5 January 2021, and uses a version of GPT-3 modified to generate images. On 6 April 2022, OpenAI announced DALL-E 2, a successor designed to generate more realistic images at higher resolutions that "can combine concepts, attributes, and styles". On 20 July 2022, DALL-E 2 entered into a beta phase with invitations sent to 1 million waitlisted individuals; users could generate a certain number of images for free every month and may purchase more. Access had previously been restricted to pre-selected users for a research preview due to concerns about ethics and safety. On 28 September 2022, DALL-E 2 was opened to everyone and the waitlist requirement was removed. In September 2023, OpenAI announced their latest image model, DALL-E 3, capable of understanding "significantly more nuance and detail" than previous iterations. In early November 2022, OpenAI released DALL-E 2 as an API, allowing developers to integrate the model into their own applications. Microsoft unveiled their implementation of DALL-E 2 in their Designer app and Image Creator tool included in Bing and Microsoft Edge. The API operates on a cost-per-image basis, with prices varying depending on image resolution. Volume discounts are available to companies working with OpenAI's enterprise team. The software's name is a portmanteau of the names of animated robot Pixar character WALL-E and the Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dalรญ. In February 2024, OpenAI began adding watermarks to DALL-E generated images, containing metadata in the C2PA (Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity) standard promoted by the Content Authenticity Initiative. Technology The first generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) model was initially developed by OpenAI in 2018, using a Transformer architecture. The first iteration, GPT-1, was scaled up to produce GPT-2 in 2019; in 2020, it was scaled up again to produce GPT-3, with 175 billion parameters. DALL-E has three components: a discrete VAE, an autoregressive decoder-only Transformer model (12 billion parameters) similar to GPT-3, and a CLIP pair of image encoder and text encoder. The discrete VAE can convert an image to a sequence of tokens, and conversely, convert a sequence of tokens back to an image. This is necessary as the Transformer model does not directly process image data. The input to the Transformer model is a sequence of tokenised image caption followed by tokenised image patches. The image caption is in English, tokenised by byte pair encoding (vocabulary size 16384), and can be up to 256 tokens long. Each image is a 256ร—256 RGB image, divided into 32ร—32 patches of 4ร—4 each. Each patch is then converted by a discrete variational autoencoder to a token (vocabulary size 8192). DALL-E was developed and announced to the public in conjunction with CLIP (Contrastive Language-Image Pre-training). CLIP is a separate model based on contrastive learning that was trained on 400 million pairs of images with text captions scraped from the Internet. Its role is to "understand and rank" DALL-E's output by predicting which caption from a list of 32,768 captions randomly selected from the dataset (of which one was the correct answer) is most appropriate for an image. A trained CLIP pair is used to filter a larger initial list of images generated by DALL-E to select the image that is closest to the text prompt. DALL-E 2 uses 3.5 billion parameters, a smaller number than its predecessor. Instead of an autoregressive Transformer, DALL-E 2 uses a diffusion model conditioned on CLIP image embeddings, which, during inference, are generated from CLIP text embeddings by a prior model. This is the same architecture as that of Stable Diffusion, released a few months later. While a technical report was written for DALL-E 3, it does not include training or implementation details of the model, instead focusing on the improved prompt following capabilities developed for DALL-E 3. Capabilities DALL-E can generate imagery in multiple styles, including photorealistic imagery, paintings, and emoji. It can "manipulate and rearrange" objects in its images, and can correctly place design elements in novel compositions without explicit instruction. Thom Dunn writing for BoingBoing remarked that "For example, when asked to draw a daikon radish blowing its nose, sipping a latte, or riding a unicycle, DALL-E often draws the handkerchief, hands, and feet in plausible locations." DALL-E showed the ability to "fill in the blanks" to infer appropriate details without specific prompts, such as adding Christmas imagery to prompts commonly associated with the celebration, and appropriately placed shadows to images that did not mention them. Furthermore, DALL-E exhibits a broad understanding of visual and design trends.[citation needed] DALL-E can produce images for a wide variety of arbitrary descriptions from various viewpoints with only rare failures. Mark Riedl, an associate professor at the Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing, found that DALL-E could blend concepts (described as a key element of human creativity). Its visual reasoning ability is sufficient to solve Raven's Matrices (visual tests often administered to humans to measure intelligence). DALL-E 3 follows complex prompts with more accuracy and detail than its predecessors, and is able to generate more coherent and accurate text. DALL-E 3 is integrated into ChatGPT Plus. Given an existing image, DALL-E 2 and DALL-E 3 can produce "variations" of the image as individual outputs based on the original, as well as edit the image to modify or expand upon it. The "inpainting" and "outpainting" abilities of these models use context from an image to fill in missing areas using a medium consistent with the original, following a given prompt. For example, this can be used to insert a new subject into an image, or expand an image beyond its original borders. According to OpenAI, "Outpainting takes into account the imageโ€™s existing visual elements โ€” including shadows, reflections, and textures โ€” to maintain the context of the original image." DALL-E 2's language understanding has limits. It is sometimes unable to distinguish "A yellow book and a red vase" from "A red book and a yellow vase" or "A panda making latte art" from "Latte art of a panda". It generates images of an astronaut riding a horse when presented with the prompt "a horse riding an astronaut". It also fails to generate the correct images in a variety of circumstances. Requesting more than three objects, negation, numbers, and connected sentences may result in mistakes, and object features may appear on the wrong object. Additional limitations include generating text, ambigrams and other forms of typography, which often results in dream-like gibberish. The model also has a limited capacity to address scientific information, such as astronomy or medical imagery. Ethical concerns DALL-E 2's reliance on public datasets influences its results and leads to algorithmic bias in some cases, such as generating higher numbers of men than women for requests that do not mention gender. DALL-E 2's training data was filtered to remove violent and sexual imagery, but this was found to increase bias in some cases such as reducing the frequency of women being generated. OpenAI hypothesise that this may be because women were more likely to be sexualised in training data which caused the filter to influence results. In September 2022, OpenAI confirmed to The Verge that DALL-E invisibly inserts phrases into user prompts to address bias in results; for instance, "black man" and "Asian woman" are inserted into prompts that do not specify gender or race. OpenAI claims to address concerns for potential "racy content" โ€“ containing nudity or sexual content generation, with DALL-E 3 through input/output filters, blocklists, ChatGPT refusals, and model level interventions. However, DALL-E 3 continues to disproportionally represent people as White, female, and youthful. Users are able to somewhat remedy this through more specific prompts for image generation. A concern about DALL-E 2 and similar image generation models is that they could be used to propagate deepfakes and other forms of misinformation. As an attempt to mitigate this, the software rejects prompts involving public figures and uploads containing human faces. Prompts containing potentially objectionable content are blocked, and uploaded images are analysed to detect offensive material. A disadvantage of prompt-based filtering is that it is easy to bypass using alternative phrases that result in a similar output. For example, the word "blood" is filtered, but "ketchup" and "red liquid" are not. Another concern about DALL-E 2 and similar models is that they could cause technological unemployment for artists, photographers, and graphic designers due to their accuracy and popularity. DALL-E 3 is designed to block users from generating art in the style of currently-living artists. While OpenAI states that images produced using these models do not require permission to reprint, sell, or merchandise, legal concerns have been raised regarding who owns those images. In 2023 Microsoft pitched the United States Department of Defense to use DALL-E models to train battlefield management systems. In January 2024 OpenAI removed its blanket ban on military and warfare use from its usage policies. Reception Most coverage of DALL-E focuses on a small subset of "surreal" or "quirky" outputs. DALL-E's output for "an illustration of a baby daikon radish in a tutu walking a dog" was mentioned in pieces from Input, NBC, Nature, and other publications. Its output for "an armchair in the shape of an avocado" was also widely covered. ExtremeTech stated "you can ask DALL-E for a picture of a phone or vacuum cleaner from a specified period of time, and it understands how those objects have changed". Engadget also noted its unusual capacity for "understanding how telephones and other objects change over time". According to MIT Technology Review, one of OpenAI's objectives was to "give language models a better grasp of the everyday concepts that humans use to make sense of things". Wall Street investors have had a positive reception of DALL-E 2, with some firms thinking it could represent a turning point for a future multi-trillion dollar industry. By mid-2019, OpenAI had already received over $1 billion in funding from Microsoft and Khosla Ventures, and in January 2023, following the launch of DALL-E 2 and ChatGPT, received an additional $10 billion in funding from Microsoft. Japan's anime community has had a negative reaction to DALL-E 2 and similar models. Two arguments are typically presented by artists against the software. The first is that AI art is not art because it is not created by a human with intent. "The juxtaposition of AI-generated images with their own work is degrading and undermines the time and skill that goes into their art. AI-driven image generation tools have been heavily criticized by artists because they are trained on human-made art scraped from the web." The second is the trouble with copyright law and data text-to-image models are trained on. OpenAI has not released information about what dataset(s) were used to train DALL-E 2, inciting concern from some that the work of artists has been used for training without permission. Copyright laws surrounding these topics are inconclusive at the moment. After integrating DALL-E 3 into Bing Chat and ChatGPT, Microsoft and OpenAI faced criticism for excessive content filtering, with critics saying DALL-E had been "lobotomized." The flagging of images generated by prompts such as "man breaks server rack with sledgehammer" was cited as evidence. Over the first days of its launch, filtering was reportedly increased to the point where images generated by some of Bing's own suggested prompts were being blocked. TechRadar argued that leaning too heavily on the side of caution could limit DALL-E's value as a creative tool. Open-source implementations Since OpenAI has not released source code or weights for any of the three models, there have been several attempts to create open-source models offering similar capabilities. Released in 2022 on Hugging Face's Spaces platform, Craiyon (formerly DALL-E Mini until a name change was requested by OpenAI in June 2022) is an AI model based on the original DALL-E that was trained on unfiltered data from the Internet. It attracted substantial media attention in mid-2022, after its release due to its capacity for producing humorous imagery. Another example of an open source text-to-image model is Stable Diffusion by Stability AI. See also References External links
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[SOURCE: https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/wikispecies:ืขืžื•ื“_ืจืืฉื™] | [TOKENS: 379]
ืขืžื•ื“ ืจืืฉื™ ื‘ืจื•ื›ื™ื ื”ื‘ืื™ื ืœื•ื•ื™ืงื™ืžื™ื ื™ื, ื”ืžื“ืจื™ืš ื”ื—ื•ืคืฉื™ ืฉืœ ืขื•ืœื ื”ื—ื™! ื•ื™ืงื™ืžื™ื ื™ื ื”ื•ื ืžื“ืจื™ืš ืคืชื•ื— ื•ื—ื•ืคืฉื™ ืฉืœ ืžื™ื ื™ื. ื”ืžื“ืจื™ืš ืžื›ืกื” ืืช ืžื’ื•ื•ืŸ ื”ื—ื™, ืžืขืœ-ื”ืžืžืœื›ื•ืช ื”ืžืขืจื›ื•ืช ื”ืฉื•ื ื•ืช, ื•ื›ืœื” ื ื’ื™ืคื™ื. ืขื“ ื›ื” ื™ืฉ ืœื ื• 937,900 ืขืจื›ื™ื ื˜ืงืกื•ื ื•ืžื™ื™ื. ื•ื™ืงื™ืžื™ื ื™ื ื”ื•ื ืžืื’ืจ ื—ื•ืคืฉื™, ืžืคื ื™ ืฉืื™ืŸ ื–ื›ื•ื™ื•ืช ื™ื•ืฆืจื™ื ืขืœ ื”ื—ื™ื™ื! ื ื™ื•ื•ื˜ ื˜ืงืกื•ื ื•ืžื™ ื•ื™ืงื™ืžื™ื ื™ื ื‘ืฉืคื•ืช ื ื•ืกืคื•ืช ื•ื™ืงื™ืžื™ื ื™ื ืžื•ืคืขืœ ืขืœ ื™ื“ื™ ืงืจืŸ ื•ื™ืงื™ืžื“ื™ื”, ืฉืžืคืขื™ืœื” ืžืกืคืจ ืžื™ื–ืžื™ื ืจื‘-ืœืฉื•ื ื™ื™ื ืฉืœ ืชื•ื›ืŸ ื—ื•ืคืฉื™.
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sora_(text-to-video_model)] | [TOKENS: 1809]
Contents Sora (text-to-video model) Sora is a text-to-video model and social media app developed by OpenAI. The model generates short video clips based on prompts, and can also extend existing short videos. In February 2024, OpenAI previewed examples of its output to the public, with the first generation of Sora released publicly for ChatGPT Plus and ChatGPT Pro users in the US and Canada in December 2024, and the second generation, called Sora 2, was released to select users in the US and Canada at the end of September 2025. It integrates social media features. By default, the generator uses copyrighted material in its videos, unless copyright holders actively opt-out of having their content included. Videos contain a visible, moving digital watermark to prevent misuse, however a week after Sora 2's release third-party programs became prevalent which could remove the watermark. History Several other text-to-video generating models had been created prior to Sora, including Meta's Make-A-Video, Runway's Gen-2 and Google Veo. OpenAI, the company behind Sora, had released DALLยทE 3, the third of its DALL-E text-to-image models, in September 2023. The team that developed Sora named it after the Japanese word for "sky" to signify its "limitless creative potential". On February 15, 2024, OpenAI first previewed Sora by releasing multiple clips of high-definition videos that it had created, including an SUV driving down a mountain road, an animation of a "short fluffy monster" next to a candle, two people walking through Tokyo in the snow and fake historical footage of the California gold rush. OpenAI stated that it was able to generate videos as long as one minute. The company then shared a technical report that highlighted the methods used to train the model. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also posted a series of tweets responding to Twitter users' prompts with Sora-generated videos of the prompts. As of December 9, 2024, OpenAI had gradually made Sora available to the public for ChatGPT Pro and ChatGPT Plus users in the U.S. and Canada. Prior to this, the company had provided limited access to a small "red team", including experts in misinformation and bias, to perform adversarial testing on the model. The company also shared Sora with a small group of creative professionals, including video makers and artists, to seek feedback on its usefulness in creative fields. In February 2025, OpenAI announced plans to integrate Sora into ChatGPT by letting users generate Sora videos from the chatbot. Sora 2 was unveiled on September 30, 2025, with an iOS app at the same time, as well as an Android app two months later. All videos generated by the model feature a visible, moving watermark to prevent misuse behaviors of the tool. The previous version of Sora also added a safety watermark to allow viewers to distinguish between real and fictional content. On October 7, 404 Media reported that third-party programs that could remove the watermark from Sora 2 videos had become prevalent. Some internet users and online content creators, such as Hank Green, have called the mobile app "SlopTok", a reference to both the popular mobile app TikTok and the popular term AI slop. Many outlets, such as Wired magazine, have noted that the Sora 2 app is overtly similar to TikTok in style and features. Legal regulation In November 2024, an API key for Sora access was leaked by a group of testers on Hugging Face who posted a manifesto stating that they were protesting that Sora was used for "art washing". OpenAI revoked all access three hours after the leak was made public and stated that "hundreds of artists" have shaped the development and that "participation is voluntary". At the time of its launch, Sora 2 allowed copyrighted content by default unless copyright holders contacted OpenAI to restrict the generation of their content on the platform. On October 3, 2025, OpenAI stated that a future update to Sora 2 would give copyright holders "more granular control" over the generation of copyrighted content, but the company did not state whether existing content would be removed. On October 6, the chairman of the MPA criticized OpenAI's approach to copyright with Sora 2. On December 11, 2025, the Walt Disney Company announced that it will invest $1 billion in OpenAI to allow users to generate more than 200 of its copyrighted characters on Sora 2. These characters include those from Disney Animation, Pixar, Marvel Studios and Star Wars. Capabilities and limitations The technology behind Sora is an adaptation of the technology behind DALL-E 3. According to OpenAI, Sora is a diffusion transformer, a denoising latent diffusion model with one transformer as its denoiser. A video is generated in latent space by denoising 3D "patches", then transformed to standard space by a video decompressor. Recaptioning is employed to augment training data by using a video-to-text model to create detailed captions for videos. OpenAI trained the model using publicly available videos as well as copyrighted videos licensed for the purpose, but did not reveal the number or the exact source of the videos. Upon its release, OpenAI acknowledged some of Sora's shortcomings, including its limited capacity to simulate complex physics, to understand causality and to differentiate left from right. OpenAI also stated that, in adherence to the company's existing safety practices, Sora will restrict text prompts for sexual, violent, hateful or celebrity imagery, as well as content featuring existing intellectual property. Sora researcher Tim Brooks stated that the model learned how to create 3D graphics from its dataset alone, while fellow Sora researcher Bill Peebles said that the model automatically created different video angles without being prompted. According to OpenAI, Sora-generated videos are also tagged with C2PA metadata to indicate that they are AI-processed. Reception In 2024, Will Douglas Heaven of the MIT Technology Review called the demonstration videos "impressive", but noted that they must have been cherry-picked and may not be representative of Sora's typical output. American academic Oren Etzioni expressed concerns over the technology's ability to create online disinformation for political campaigns. For Wired, Steven Levy similarly wrote that it had the potential to become "a misinformation train wreck" and opined that its preview clips were "impressive" but "not perfect" and that it "show[ed] an emergent grasp of cinematic grammar" due to its unprompted shot changes. Levy added, "[i]t will be a very long time, if ever, before text-to-video threatens actual filmmaking." Lisa Lacy of CNET called its example videos "remarkably realistic โ€“ except perhaps when a human face appears close up or when sea creatures are swimming". Filmmaker Tyler Perry announced he would be putting a planned $800 million expansion of his Atlanta studio on hold, expressing concern about Sora's potential impact on the film industry. In October 2025, The New York Times remarked that the release of the Sora 2 app in September 2025 was "jaw-dropping (for better and worse)" though also remarked that the app was a "social network in disguise" and "the type of product that companies like Meta and X have sought to build: a way to bring A.I. to the masses that people can share." The article expressed concern regarding the product's potential impact on society and its potential use to promote misinformation, disinformation, and scams. OpenAI came under controversy over character generation after Sora 2 produced several videos that featured copyrighted characters. The company stated it would work with rights holders to block characters from Sora at their request, giving copyright holders more control. In October 2025, Japan's Content Overseas Distribution Association submitted a request to OpenAI demanding that it stop using the copyrighted content of its member companies, including Studio Ghibli and Square Enix. Various estates of celebrities have threatened legal action against OpenAI's Sora 2 app, due to deepfake videos being created of their likeness, including celebrities that have passed away. Family members of the late comedians Robin Williams and George Carlin also urged OpenAI to take action against "hurtful videos" and to restrict deepfakes of their loved ones. OpenAI restricted users from making videos of the late Martin Luther King Jr. and gave estates the ability to opt out of those they represent. In popular culture The episode "Sora Not Sorry" from South Park is a satire that critiques AI deepfake videos and copyright issues surrounding generative AI models with the title being a reference to Sora. See also References External links
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[SOURCE: https://he.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ืขืžื•ื“_ืจืืฉื™&oldid=42551287] | [TOKENS: 4698]
ืขืžื•ื“ ืจืืฉื™ ื”ื™ื“ืขืช ืคื•ืจื˜ืœื™ื ืคื•ืจื˜ืœ ื”ื™ื•ื ื™ื•ื ืคื˜ื™ืจืชื• ืฉืœ ื“ืื ืงืŸ ืื“ื•ืืจื“ืก ืคื•ืจื˜ืœ ื”ื›ื“ื•ืจื’ืœ ื”ื•ื ืฉืขืจ ืœื›ืœ ื”ื ื•ืฉืื™ื ื‘ื•ื•ื™ืงื™ืคื“ื™ื” ื”ืงืฉื•ืจื™ื ื‘ื›ื“ื•ืจื’ืœ. ื‘ืคื•ืจื˜ืœ ื ืžืฆืื™ื ืงื™ืฉื•ืจื™ื ืœืขืจื›ื™ื ื•ืœืชืžื•ื ื•ืช ื ื‘ื—ืจื•ืช ื‘ื ื•ืฉื, ืœืื™ืฉื™ื ื‘ื•ืœื˜ื™ื ื‘ืชื—ื•ื, ืœืžื•ืฉื’ื™ื ื—ืฉื•ื‘ื™ื ื•ืœื ื•ืฉืื™ ืžืฉื ื”. ื”ืฆื™ื˜ื•ื˜ ื”ื™ื•ืžื™ ื›ืœ ื”ืžื•ืกื™ืฃ ื’ื•ืจืข ื”ื˜ื™ืค ื”ื™ื•ืžื™ ื‘ืืจื’ื– ื”ื—ื•ืœ ื ื™ืชืŸ ืœื‘ืฆืข ื ื™ืกื•ื™ื™ ืขืจื™ื›ื” ื‘ื‘ื˜ื—ื”. ื’ืฉื• ืœืืจื’ื– ื”ื—ื•ืœ, ืœื—ืฆื• ืขืœ ื”ืœืฉื•ื ื™ืช "ืขืจื™ื›ื”" ื•ื ืกื• ื‘ืขืฆืžื›ื! ื—ื“ืฉื•ืช ื•ืืงื˜ื•ืืœื™ื” ืขืจืš ืžื•ืžืœืฅ ื’ืจืฉึนื ืฉืœื•ื (1897โ€“1982) ื”ื™ื” ืžื’ื“ื•ืœื™ ื—ื•ืงืจื™ ื”ืงื‘ืœื”, ืกืคืจืŸ, ื•ื›ืŸ ืืกืคืŸ ืกืคืจื™ ืงื‘ืœื”, ื—ืกื™ื“ื•ืช ื•ืžื™ืกื˜ื™ืงื”. ื‘ื ื™ื’ื•ื“ ืœืžืฉืคื—ืชื• ื”ืžืชื‘ื•ืœืœืช, ื ืžืฉืš ืœื™ื”ื“ื•ืช ื•ื”ื™ื” ื—ื‘ืจ ื‘ืืจื’ื•ืŸ ื”ืฆื™ื•ื ื™ "ื™ื•ึผื ื’ ื™ื•ึผื“ื”". ื”ื•ื ืœืžื“ ืขื‘ืจื™ืช ื•ืชืœืžื•ื“ ืžื’ื™ืœ ืฆืขื™ืจ ื•ื‘ื’ื™ืœ 18 ื”ื—ืœ ืœืœืžื•ื“ ืืช ืกืคืจ ื”ื–ื•ื”ืจ ื‘ื›ื•ื—ื•ืช ืขืฆืžื•. ืืช ืขื‘ื•ื“ืช ื”ื“ื•ืงื˜ื•ืจื˜ ืฉืœื•, ืขืœ ืกืคืจ ื”ื‘ื”ื™ืจ, ืขืฉื” ื‘ืื•ื ื™ื‘ืจืกื™ื˜ืช ื‘ืจืœื™ืŸ. ื‘ืฉื ืช 1923 ืขืœื” ืœืืจืฅ ื™ืฉืจืืœ ื•ื ื™ื”ืœ ืืช ื”ืžื—ืœืงื” ืœื™ื”ื“ื•ืช ื‘ื‘ื™ืช ื”ืกืคืจื™ื ื”ืœืื•ืžื™. ื‘ื™ืŸ ื”ืฉื ื™ื 1925 ืœ-1964 ื”ื™ื” ืžืจืฆื” ืœืงื‘ืœื” ื‘ืื•ื ื™ื‘ืจืกื™ื˜ื” ื”ืขื‘ืจื™ืช. ื‘ืžื”ืœืš ื”ืงืจื™ื™ืจื” ืฉืœื• ื”ื•ื–ืžืŸ ืœื”ืจืฆื•ืช ื‘ืžื•ืกื“ื•ืช ืืงื“ืžื™ื™ื ื™ื•ืงืจืชื™ื™ื ื‘ื›ืœ ื”ืขื•ืœื. ืคืขื™ืœื•ืชื• ื”ืฆื™ื‘ื•ืจื™ืช ื›ืœืœื”, ื‘ื™ืŸ ื”ื™ืชืจ, ืคืจืกื•ื ืžืืžืจื™ื ื‘ืขื ื™ื™ื ื™ ื”ืฉืขื”, ื—ื‘ืจื•ืช ื‘ืชื ื•ืขืช "ื‘ืจื™ืช ืฉืœื•ื", ื•ืฉืœื™ื—ื•ืช ืžื˜ืขื ื”ืื•ื ื™ื‘ืจืกื™ื˜ื” ื”ืขื‘ืจื™ืช ืœืื™ืจื•ืคื” ืœืฉื ื”ืฆืœืช ืกืคืจื™ื ืฉื”ื•ื—ืจืžื• ื‘ืชืงื•ืคืช ื”ืฉื•ืื”. ื‘ื ื•ืกืฃ, ืกื™ื™ืข ื‘ื”ืงืžืช ืžืกืคืจ ืžื›ื•ื ื™ ืžื—ืงืจ ื•ืžื•ืกื“ื•ืช ืืงื“ืžื™ื™ื ื•ืืฃ ืขืžื“ ื‘ืจืืฉ ื—ืœืง ืžื”ื. ืฉืœื•ื ื”ืงื“ื™ืฉ ืืช ื—ื™ื™ื• ืœื—ืงืจ ื”ืžื™ืกื˜ื™ืงื” ื”ื™ื”ื•ื“ื™ืช ื•ื”ื™ื” ืžื”ืจืืฉื•ื ื™ื ืฉื—ืงืจื• ืืช ื”ืชื—ื•ื ื‘ืืžืฆืขื•ืช ื›ืœื™ ืžื—ืงืจ ืืงื“ืžื™ื™ื. ื”ื•ื ื’ื™ืœื” ื•ื”ื•ืฆื™ื ืœืื•ืจ ื›ืชื‘ื™ ื™ื“ ืจื‘ื™ื ื‘ืชื—ื•ื ื”ืงื‘ืœื” ื•ื—ืงืจ ืืช ื›ืœ ืขื ืคื™ ืชื•ืจืช ื”ืกื•ื“ ื”ื™ื”ื•ื“ื™ืช. ื‘ื”ื’ื™ืขื• ืœื’ื™ืœ 80 ืžื ืชื” ื”ื‘ื™ื‘ืœื™ื•ื’ืจืคื™ื” ืฉืœื• ื›-600 ืžื—ืงืจื™ื ื‘ืชื—ื•ื ื”ืงื‘ืœื”. ืขื ืกืคืจื™ื• ื”ื ื•ื“ืขื™ื ื‘ื™ื•ืชืจ ื ื™ืชืŸ ืœืžื ื•ืช ืืช ืกื“ืจืช ื”ืจืฆืื•ืชื™ื•, ืžืฉื ืช 1938, ืขืœ ื”ื–ืจืžื™ื ื”ืขื™ืงืจื™ื™ื ืฉืœ ื”ืžื™ืกื˜ื™ืงื” ื”ื™ื”ื•ื“ื™ืช (ื‘ืื ื’ืœื™ืช), ื•ืžื—ืงืจื• ืขืœ ืฉื‘ืชื™ ืฆื‘ื™ ื•ื”ืชื ื•ืขื” ื”ืฉื‘ืชืื™ืช ื‘ื™ืžื™ ื—ื™ื™ื•, ืžืฉื ืช 1957, ืฉื ื™ื”ื ืชื•ืจื’ืžื• ืœืฉืคื•ืช ืจื‘ื•ืช ื•ื”ืงื ื• ืœื• ื”ื›ืจื” ื‘ื™ื ืœืื•ืžื™ืช. ืขืœ ืคื•ืขืœื• ื”ืืงื“ืžื™ ื”ื•ื ื–ื›ื” ื‘ืชื•ืืจื™ ื›ื‘ื•ื“ ื•ื‘ืคืจืกื™ื ืจื‘ื™ื ื‘ืืจืฅ ื•ื‘ืžื“ื™ื ื•ืช ืฉื•ื ื•ืช ื‘ืขื•ืœื, ืืฃ ืขืœ ืคื™ ืฉื—ืœืง ืžืžื—ืงืจื™ื•, ื‘ืขื™ืงืจ ื‘ืชื—ื•ื ื”ื—ืกื™ื“ื•ืช ื•ื”ืฉื‘ืชืื•ืช, ืขื•ืจืจ ื‘ืฉืขืชื• ืžื—ืœื•ืงื•ืช ืงืฉื•ืช. ื”ืฉืคืขืชื” ืฉืœ ืชื•ืจืชื• ื—ืจื’ื” ืžืขื‘ืจ ืœืขื•ืœื ื”ืืงื“ืžื™ื” ื•ืžื“ืขื™ ื”ื™ื”ื“ื•ืช, ื•ื”ื™ื ืžืžืฉื™ื›ื” ืœื”ืฉืคื™ืข ืขืœ ืจื‘ื™ื ื’ื ืœืื—ืจ ืžื•ืชื•. ืžื“ื™ ืฉื ื” ืžืชืคืจืกืžื™ื ืงื‘ืฆื™ื ื”ืžื›ื ืกื™ื ืืช ืžื—ืงืจื™ื• ื‘ื ื•ืฉืื™ื ืฉื•ื ื™ื, ื•ื›ืŸ ืžืชืคืจืกืžื™ื ื™ื•ืžื ื™ื• ื”ืื™ืฉื™ื™ื ื•ืชื›ืชื•ื‘ื•ืช ืฉื ื™ื”ืœ. ื‘ืžืงื‘ื™ืœ, ืžืชืคืจืกืžื™ื ืขืฉืจื•ืช ืžื—ืงืจื™ื ืขืœ ืžื—ืงืจื™ื•, ืฉื—ืœืงื ื‘ืื™ื ืœื”ืคืจื™ืš ื—ืœืง ืžื”ื ื—ื•ืช ื”ื™ืกื•ื“ ืฉืงื‘ืข. ืœืื—ืจ ืžื•ืชื•, ื‘ื”ืชืื ืœื”ื•ืจืื•ืช ืฉื”ืฉืื™ืจ, ื”ื•ืขื‘ืจื• ืœืกืคืจื™ื™ื” ื”ืœืื•ืžื™ืช ืืจื›ื™ื•ื ื• ื•ืกืคืจื™ื™ืชื• ื‘ืชื•ืจืช ื”ืกื•ื“, ืฉื”ื›ื™ืœื• ื›-25,000 ืกืคืจื™ื ืฉืงื™ื‘ืฅ ื‘ืžืฉืš ื—ื™ื™ื•, ืžื—ืฆื™ืชื ื‘ืชื•ืจืช ื”ืกื•ื“, ื•ื”ื ื›ื•ืœืœื™ื ืืช ืžืจื‘ื™ืช ื”ืคืจืกื•ืžื™ื ื‘ื“ืคื•ืก ื‘ืชื—ื•ื ื–ื”. ืชืžื•ื ืช ื”ื™ื•ื ื”ื™ื•ื ื‘ื”ื™ืกื˜ื•ืจื™ื” 21 ื‘ืคื‘ืจื•ืืจ โ€“ ื—ื•ื“ืฉ ืคื‘ืจื•ืืจ โ€“ ื”ื™ื•ื ื‘ื”ื™ืกื˜ื•ืจื™ื” ืื™ืจื•ืขื™ื ื‘ืœื•ื— ื”ืขื‘ืจื™ ืคืจืฉืช ื”ืฉื‘ื•ืข: ืชืจื•ืžื”ื”ื“ืฃ ื”ื™ื•ืžื™: ืžืกื›ืช ืžื ื—ื•ืช, ื“ืฃ ืž"ืื“' ื‘ืื“ืจ ื”'ืชืฉืค"ื• - ืื™ืจื•ืขื™ื ื‘ืœื•ื— ื”ืขื‘ืจื™ ืขืจืš ืžื•ืžืœืฅ ื’ืจืฉึนื ืฉืœื•ื (1897โ€“1982) ื”ื™ื” ืžื’ื“ื•ืœื™ ื—ื•ืงืจื™ ื”ืงื‘ืœื”, ืกืคืจืŸ, ื•ื›ืŸ ืืกืคืŸ ืกืคืจื™ ืงื‘ืœื”, ื—ืกื™ื“ื•ืช ื•ืžื™ืกื˜ื™ืงื”. ื‘ื ื™ื’ื•ื“ ืœืžืฉืคื—ืชื• ื”ืžืชื‘ื•ืœืœืช, ื ืžืฉืš ืœื™ื”ื“ื•ืช ื•ื”ื™ื” ื—ื‘ืจ ื‘ืืจื’ื•ืŸ ื”ืฆื™ื•ื ื™ "ื™ื•ึผื ื’ ื™ื•ึผื“ื”". ื”ื•ื ืœืžื“ ืขื‘ืจื™ืช ื•ืชืœืžื•ื“ ืžื’ื™ืœ ืฆืขื™ืจ ื•ื‘ื’ื™ืœ 18 ื”ื—ืœ ืœืœืžื•ื“ ืืช ืกืคืจ ื”ื–ื•ื”ืจ ื‘ื›ื•ื—ื•ืช ืขืฆืžื•. ืืช ืขื‘ื•ื“ืช ื”ื“ื•ืงื˜ื•ืจื˜ ืฉืœื•, ืขืœ ืกืคืจ ื”ื‘ื”ื™ืจ, ืขืฉื” ื‘ืื•ื ื™ื‘ืจืกื™ื˜ืช ื‘ืจืœื™ืŸ. ื‘ืฉื ืช 1923 ืขืœื” ืœืืจืฅ ื™ืฉืจืืœ ื•ื ื™ื”ืœ ืืช ื”ืžื—ืœืงื” ืœื™ื”ื“ื•ืช ื‘ื‘ื™ืช ื”ืกืคืจื™ื ื”ืœืื•ืžื™. ื‘ื™ืŸ ื”ืฉื ื™ื 1925 ืœ-1964 ื”ื™ื” ืžืจืฆื” ืœืงื‘ืœื” ื‘ืื•ื ื™ื‘ืจืกื™ื˜ื” ื”ืขื‘ืจื™ืช. ื‘ืžื”ืœืš ื”ืงืจื™ื™ืจื” ืฉืœื• ื”ื•ื–ืžืŸ ืœื”ืจืฆื•ืช ื‘ืžื•ืกื“ื•ืช ืืงื“ืžื™ื™ื ื™ื•ืงืจืชื™ื™ื ื‘ื›ืœ ื”ืขื•ืœื. ืคืขื™ืœื•ืชื• ื”ืฆื™ื‘ื•ืจื™ืช ื›ืœืœื”, ื‘ื™ืŸ ื”ื™ืชืจ, ืคืจืกื•ื ืžืืžืจื™ื ื‘ืขื ื™ื™ื ื™ ื”ืฉืขื”, ื—ื‘ืจื•ืช ื‘ืชื ื•ืขืช "ื‘ืจื™ืช ืฉืœื•ื", ื•ืฉืœื™ื—ื•ืช ืžื˜ืขื ื”ืื•ื ื™ื‘ืจืกื™ื˜ื” ื”ืขื‘ืจื™ืช ืœืื™ืจื•ืคื” ืœืฉื ื”ืฆืœืช ืกืคืจื™ื ืฉื”ื•ื—ืจืžื• ื‘ืชืงื•ืคืช ื”ืฉื•ืื”. ื‘ื ื•ืกืฃ, ืกื™ื™ืข ื‘ื”ืงืžืช ืžืกืคืจ ืžื›ื•ื ื™ ืžื—ืงืจ ื•ืžื•ืกื“ื•ืช ืืงื“ืžื™ื™ื ื•ืืฃ ืขืžื“ ื‘ืจืืฉ ื—ืœืง ืžื”ื. ืฉืœื•ื ื”ืงื“ื™ืฉ ืืช ื—ื™ื™ื• ืœื—ืงืจ ื”ืžื™ืกื˜ื™ืงื” ื”ื™ื”ื•ื“ื™ืช ื•ื”ื™ื” ืžื”ืจืืฉื•ื ื™ื ืฉื—ืงืจื• ืืช ื”ืชื—ื•ื ื‘ืืžืฆืขื•ืช ื›ืœื™ ืžื—ืงืจ ืืงื“ืžื™ื™ื. ื”ื•ื ื’ื™ืœื” ื•ื”ื•ืฆื™ื ืœืื•ืจ ื›ืชื‘ื™ ื™ื“ ืจื‘ื™ื ื‘ืชื—ื•ื ื”ืงื‘ืœื” ื•ื—ืงืจ ืืช ื›ืœ ืขื ืคื™ ืชื•ืจืช ื”ืกื•ื“ ื”ื™ื”ื•ื“ื™ืช. ื‘ื”ื’ื™ืขื• ืœื’ื™ืœ 80 ืžื ืชื” ื”ื‘ื™ื‘ืœื™ื•ื’ืจืคื™ื” ืฉืœื• ื›-600 ืžื—ืงืจื™ื ื‘ืชื—ื•ื ื”ืงื‘ืœื”. ืขื ืกืคืจื™ื• ื”ื ื•ื“ืขื™ื ื‘ื™ื•ืชืจ ื ื™ืชืŸ ืœืžื ื•ืช ืืช ืกื“ืจืช ื”ืจืฆืื•ืชื™ื•, ืžืฉื ืช 1938, ืขืœ ื”ื–ืจืžื™ื ื”ืขื™ืงืจื™ื™ื ืฉืœ ื”ืžื™ืกื˜ื™ืงื” ื”ื™ื”ื•ื“ื™ืช (ื‘ืื ื’ืœื™ืช), ื•ืžื—ืงืจื• ืขืœ ืฉื‘ืชื™ ืฆื‘ื™ ื•ื”ืชื ื•ืขื” ื”ืฉื‘ืชืื™ืช ื‘ื™ืžื™ ื—ื™ื™ื•, ืžืฉื ืช 1957, ืฉื ื™ื”ื ืชื•ืจื’ืžื• ืœืฉืคื•ืช ืจื‘ื•ืช ื•ื”ืงื ื• ืœื• ื”ื›ืจื” ื‘ื™ื ืœืื•ืžื™ืช. ืขืœ ืคื•ืขืœื• ื”ืืงื“ืžื™ ื”ื•ื ื–ื›ื” ื‘ืชื•ืืจื™ ื›ื‘ื•ื“ ื•ื‘ืคืจืกื™ื ืจื‘ื™ื ื‘ืืจืฅ ื•ื‘ืžื“ื™ื ื•ืช ืฉื•ื ื•ืช ื‘ืขื•ืœื, ืืฃ ืขืœ ืคื™ ืฉื—ืœืง ืžืžื—ืงืจื™ื•, ื‘ืขื™ืงืจ ื‘ืชื—ื•ื ื”ื—ืกื™ื“ื•ืช ื•ื”ืฉื‘ืชืื•ืช, ืขื•ืจืจ ื‘ืฉืขืชื• ืžื—ืœื•ืงื•ืช ืงืฉื•ืช. ื”ืฉืคืขืชื” ืฉืœ ืชื•ืจืชื• ื—ืจื’ื” ืžืขื‘ืจ ืœืขื•ืœื ื”ืืงื“ืžื™ื” ื•ืžื“ืขื™ ื”ื™ื”ื“ื•ืช, ื•ื”ื™ื ืžืžืฉื™ื›ื” ืœื”ืฉืคื™ืข ืขืœ ืจื‘ื™ื ื’ื ืœืื—ืจ ืžื•ืชื•. ืžื“ื™ ืฉื ื” ืžืชืคืจืกืžื™ื ืงื‘ืฆื™ื ื”ืžื›ื ืกื™ื ืืช ืžื—ืงืจื™ื• ื‘ื ื•ืฉืื™ื ืฉื•ื ื™ื, ื•ื›ืŸ ืžืชืคืจืกืžื™ื ื™ื•ืžื ื™ื• ื”ืื™ืฉื™ื™ื ื•ืชื›ืชื•ื‘ื•ืช ืฉื ื™ื”ืœ. ื‘ืžืงื‘ื™ืœ, ืžืชืคืจืกืžื™ื ืขืฉืจื•ืช ืžื—ืงืจื™ื ืขืœ ืžื—ืงืจื™ื•, ืฉื—ืœืงื ื‘ืื™ื ืœื”ืคืจื™ืš ื—ืœืง ืžื”ื ื—ื•ืช ื”ื™ืกื•ื“ ืฉืงื‘ืข. ืœืื—ืจ ืžื•ืชื•, ื‘ื”ืชืื ืœื”ื•ืจืื•ืช ืฉื”ืฉืื™ืจ, ื”ื•ืขื‘ืจื• ืœืกืคืจื™ื™ื” ื”ืœืื•ืžื™ืช ืืจื›ื™ื•ื ื• ื•ืกืคืจื™ื™ืชื• ื‘ืชื•ืจืช ื”ืกื•ื“, ืฉื”ื›ื™ืœื• ื›-25,000 ืกืคืจื™ื ืฉืงื™ื‘ืฅ ื‘ืžืฉืš ื—ื™ื™ื•, ืžื—ืฆื™ืชื ื‘ืชื•ืจืช ื”ืกื•ื“, ื•ื”ื ื›ื•ืœืœื™ื ืืช ืžืจื‘ื™ืช ื”ืคืจืกื•ืžื™ื ื‘ื“ืคื•ืก ื‘ืชื—ื•ื ื–ื”. ืคื•ืจื˜ืœื™ื ืคื•ืจื˜ืœ ื”ื™ื•ื ื™ื•ื ืคื˜ื™ืจืชื• ืฉืœ ื“ืื ืงืŸ ืื“ื•ืืจื“ืก ืคื•ืจื˜ืœ ื”ื›ื“ื•ืจื’ืœ ื”ื•ื ืฉืขืจ ืœื›ืœ ื”ื ื•ืฉืื™ื ื‘ื•ื•ื™ืงื™ืคื“ื™ื” ื”ืงืฉื•ืจื™ื ื‘ื›ื“ื•ืจื’ืœ. ื‘ืคื•ืจื˜ืœ ื ืžืฆืื™ื ืงื™ืฉื•ืจื™ื ืœืขืจื›ื™ื ื•ืœืชืžื•ื ื•ืช ื ื‘ื—ืจื•ืช ื‘ื ื•ืฉื, ืœืื™ืฉื™ื ื‘ื•ืœื˜ื™ื ื‘ืชื—ื•ื, ืœืžื•ืฉื’ื™ื ื—ืฉื•ื‘ื™ื ื•ืœื ื•ืฉืื™ ืžืฉื ื”. ื”ืฆื™ื˜ื•ื˜ ื”ื™ื•ืžื™ ื›ืœ ื”ืžื•ืกื™ืฃ ื’ื•ืจืข ืชืžื•ื ืช ื”ื™ื•ื ื”ื˜ื™ืค ื”ื™ื•ืžื™ ื‘ืืจื’ื– ื”ื—ื•ืœ ื ื™ืชืŸ ืœื‘ืฆืข ื ื™ืกื•ื™ื™ ืขืจื™ื›ื” ื‘ื‘ื˜ื—ื”. ื’ืฉื• ืœืืจื’ื– ื”ื—ื•ืœ, ืœื—ืฆื• ืขืœ ื”ืœืฉื•ื ื™ืช "ืขืจื™ื›ื”" ื•ื ืกื• ื‘ืขืฆืžื›ื! ื”ื™ื“ืขืช ื”ื™ื•ื ื‘ื”ื™ืกื˜ื•ืจื™ื” 21 ื‘ืคื‘ืจื•ืืจ โ€“ ื—ื•ื“ืฉ ืคื‘ืจื•ืืจ โ€“ ื”ื™ื•ื ื‘ื”ื™ืกื˜ื•ืจื™ื” ืื™ืจื•ืขื™ื ื‘ืœื•ื— ื”ืขื‘ืจื™ ืคืจืฉืช ื”ืฉื‘ื•ืข: ืชืจื•ืžื”ื”ื“ืฃ ื”ื™ื•ืžื™: ืžืกื›ืช ืžื ื—ื•ืช, ื“ืฃ ืž"ืื“' ื‘ืื“ืจ ื”'ืชืฉืค"ื• - ืื™ืจื•ืขื™ื ื‘ืœื•ื— ื”ืขื‘ืจื™ ื—ื“ืฉื•ืช ื•ืืงื˜ื•ืืœื™ื” ื•ื™ืงื™ืคื“ื™ื” ืžื•ืคืขืœืช ืขืœ ื™ื“ื™ ืงืจืŸ ื•ื™ืงื™ืžื“ื™ื”, ื”ืžืคืขื™ืœื” ืžืกืคืจ ืžื™ื–ืžื™ื ืจื‘ึพืœืฉื•ื ื™ื™ื ื•ื—ื•ืคืฉื™ื™ื ื ื•ืกืคื™ื:ืžื™ื–ืžื™ ื•ื™ืงื™ืžื“ื™ื” ื ื•ืกืคื™ื: Welcome to the Hebrew Wikipedia! For assistance in other languages, please see the embassy. ืœืœื ื”ื•ื“ืขืช ื”ื’ื ื” ืื•ื˜ื•ืžื˜ื™ืช
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midjourney] | [TOKENS: 2355]
Contents Midjourney Midjourney is a generative artificial intelligence program and service created and hosted by the San Franciscoโ€“based "independent research lab" Midjourney, Inc. Midjourney generates images from natural language descriptions, called prompts, similar to OpenAI's DALL-E and Stability AI's Stable Diffusion. It is one of the technologies of the AI boom. The tool was in open beta as of August 2024, which it entered on July 12, 2022.[citation needed] The Midjourney team is led by David Holz, who co-founded Leap Motion. Holz told The Register in August 2022 that the company was already profitable. Users generate images with Midjourney using Discord bot commands or the official website. History Midjourney, Inc. was founded in San Francisco, California, by David Holz, previously a co-founder of Leap Motion. The Midjourney image generation platform entered open beta on July 12, 2022. On March 14, 2022, the Midjourney Discord server launched with a request to post high-quality photographs to Twitter and Reddit for systems training.[citation needed] The company has been working on improving its algorithms, releasing new model versions every few months. Version 2 of their algorithm was launched in April 2022, and version 3 on July 25. On November 5, 2022, the alpha iteration of version 4 was released to users. Starting from the 4th version, MJ models were trained on Google TPUs. On March 15, 2023, the alpha iteration of version 5 was released. The 5.1 model is more opinionated than version 5, applying more of its own stylization to images, while the 5.1 RAW model adds improvements while working better with more literal prompts. The version 5.2 included a new "aesthetics system", and the ability to "zoom out" by generating surroundings to an existing image. On December 21, 2023, the alpha iteration of version 6 was released. The model was trained from scratch over a nine month period. Support was added for better text rendition and a more literal interpretation of prompts. Functionality Midjourney is accessible through a Discord bot or by accessing their website. Users can use Midjourney through Discord either through their official Discord server, by directly messaging the bot, or by inviting the bot to a third-party server. To generate images, users use the /imagine command and type in a prompt; the bot then returns a set of four images, which users are given the option to upscale. To generate images on the website, users initially needed to have generated at least 1,000 images through the bot; this limitation has since been removed. Midjourney released a Vary (Region) feature on September 5, 2023, as part of MidJourney V5.2. This feature allows users to select a specific area of an image and apply variations only to that region while keeping the rest of the image unchanged. Midjourney introduced its web interface to make its tools more accessible, moving beyond its initial reliance on Discord. This web-based platform was launched in August 2024 alongside the release of Midjourney version 6.1. The web editor consolidates tools such as image editing, panning, zooming, region variation, and inpainting into a single interface. The introduction of the web interface also syncs conversations between Midjourney's Discord channels and web rooms, further enhancing collaboration across both platforms. This shift was in response to growing competition from other AI image generation platforms like Adobe Firefly and Googleโ€™s Imagen, which had already launched as native web apps with integration into popular design tools. This feature lets users control how much influence an uploaded image has on the final output. By adjusting the "image weight" parameter, users can prioritize either the content of the prompt or the characteristics of the image. For instance, setting a higher weight will ensure that the generated result closely follows the image's structure and details, while a lower weight allows the text prompt to have more influence over the final output. With Style Reference, users can upload an image to use as a stylistic guide for their creation. This tool enables MidJourney to extract the styleโ€”whether it is the color palette, texture, or overall atmosphereโ€”from the reference image and apply it to a newly generated image. The feature allows users to fine-tune the aesthetics of their creations by integrating specific artistic styles or moods. The Character Reference feature allows for a more targeted approach in defining characters. Users can upload an image of a character, and the system uses that image as a reference to generate similar characters in the output. This feature is particularly useful in maintaining consistency in appearance for characters across different images. Uses Midjourney's founder, David Holz, told The Register that artists use Midjourney for rapid prototyping of artistic concepts to show to clients before starting work themselves. The advertising industry has been quick to embrace AI tools such as Midjourney, DALL-E, and Stable Diffusion, among others. The tools that enable advertisers to create original content and brainstorm ideas quickly are providing new opportunities, such as "custom ads created for individuals, a new way to create special effects, or even making e-commerce advertising more efficient", according to Ad Age.[promotion?] Architects have described using the software to generate mood boards for the early stages of projects, as an alternative to searching Google Images. The program was used by the British magazine The Economist to create the front cover for an issue in June 2022. In Italy, the leading newspaper Corriere della Sera published a comic created with Midjourney by writer Vanni Santoni in August 2022. Charlie Warzel used Midjourney to generate two images of Alex Jones for Warzel's newsletter in The Atlantic. The use of an AI-generated cover was criticised by people who felt it was taking jobs from artists. Warzel called his action a mistake in an article about his decision to use generated images. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver included a 10-minute segment on Midjourney in an episode broadcast in August 2022. A Midjourney image called Thรฉรขtre D'opรฉra Spatial won first place in the digital art competition at the 2022 Colorado State Fair. Jason Allen, who wrote the prompt that led Midjourney to generate the image, printed the image onto a canvas and entered it into the competition using the name Jason M. Allen via Midjourney. Other digital artists were upset by the news. Allen was unapologetic, insisting that he followed the competition's rules. The two category judges were unaware that Midjourney used AI to generate images, although they later said that had they known this, they would have awarded Allen the top prize anyway. In December 2022, Midjourney was used to generate the images for an AI-generated children's book that was created over a weekend. Titled Alice and Sparkle, the book features a young girl who builds a robot that becomes self-aware. The creator, Ammaar Reeshi, used Midjourney to generate a large number of images, from which he chose 13 for the book. Both the product and process drew criticism. One artist wrote that "the main problem... is that it was trained off of artists' work. It's our creations, our distinct styles that we created, that we did not consent to being used." In 2023, the realism of AI-based text-to-image generators, such as Midjourney, DALL-E, or Stable Diffusion, reached such a high level that it led to a significant wave of viral AI-generated photos. Widespread attention was gained by a Midjourney-generated photo of Pope Francis wearing a white puffer coat, the fictional arrest of Donald Trump, and a hoax of an attack on the Pentagon, as well as the usage in professional creative arts. Research has suggested that the images Midjourney generates can be biased. For example, even neutral prompts in one study returned unequal results on the aspects of gender, skin color, and location. A study by researchers at the nonprofit group Center for Countering Digital Hate found the tool to be easy to use to generate racist and conspiratorial images. In October 2023, Rest of World reported that Midjourney tends to generate images based on national stereotypes. In 2024, a Frontiers journal published a paper which contained gibberish figures generated with Midjourney, one of which was a diagram of a rat with large testicles and a large penis towering over himself. The paper was retracted a day after the images went viral on Twitter. Prior to May 2023, Midjourney implemented a moderation mechanism predicated on a banned word system. This method prohibited the use of language associated with explicit content, such as sexual or pornographic themes, as well as extreme violence. Moreover, the system also banned certain individual words, including those of religious and political figures, such as Allah or General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping. This practice occasionally stirred controversy due to perceived instances of censorship within the Midjourney platform. Commencing in May 2023, with subsequent updates post version 5, Midjourney transitioned to an AI-powered content moderation system. This advanced mechanism allowed for a more nuanced interpretation of user prompts by analyzing them in their entirety. It consequently facilitated the context-dependent use of words that had previously been prohibited. For instance, users can now prompt the AI to generate a portrait of Xi Jinping. At the same time, the system will prevent the generation of contentious images, such as depictions of global leaders, including Xi Jinping, in situations of arrest. Litigation On January 13, 2023, three artistsโ€”Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortizโ€”filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt, claiming that these companies have infringed on the rights of millions of artists by training AI tools on five billion images scraped from the web, without the consent of the original artists. The legal action was initiated in San Francisco by attorney Matthew Butterick in partnership with the Joseph Saveri Law Firm, the same team challenging Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI (developers of ChatGPT and DALL-E) in court. In July 2023, U.S. District Judge William Orrick inclined to dismiss most of the lawsuit filed by Andersen, McKernan, and Ortiz but allowed them to file a new complaint. Another lawsuit was filed in November 2023 against Midjourney, Stability AI, DeviantArt and Runway AI for using the copyrighted work of over 4,700 artists. On June 11, 2025, Universal Pictures (owned by Comcast) and The Walt Disney Company filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Midjourney. The suit described Midjourney as "a bottomless pit of plagiarism." On September 4, 2025, Warner Bros. Discovery filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Midjourney, claiming the company is engaged in the "theft" of its intellectual property, which includes characters like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Tweety, and Scooby-Doo. The suit also claims that the generative AI program "has made a calculated and profit-driven decision to offer zero protection for copyright owners even though Midjourney knows about the breathtaking scope of its piracy and copyright infringement." See also References External links
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text-to-video_model] | [TOKENS: 1877]
Contents Text-to-video model A text-to-video model is a form of generative artificial intelligence that uses a natural language description as input to produce a video relevant to the input text. Advancements during the 2020s in the generation of high-quality, text-conditioned videos have largely been driven by the development of video diffusion models. Models There are different models, including open source models. Chinese-language input CogVideo is the earliest text-to-video model "of 9.4 billion parameters" to be developed, with its demo version of open source codes first presented on GitHub in 2022. That year, Meta Platforms released a partial text-to-video model called "Make-A-Video", and Google's Brain (later Google DeepMind) introduced Imagen Video, a text-to-video model with 3D U-Net. In February 2023, Runway released Gen-1 and Gen-2, among the first commercially available text-to-video and video-to-video models accessible to the public through a web interface. Gen-1, initially released as a video-to-video model, allowed users to transform existing video footage using text or image prompts. Gen-2, introduced in March 2023 and made publicly available in June 2023, added text-to-video capabilities, enabling users to generate videos from text prompts alone. In March 2023, a research paper titled "VideoFusion: Decomposed Diffusion Models for High-Quality Video Generation" was published, presenting a novel approach to video generation. The VideoFusion model decomposes the diffusion process into two components: base noise and residual noise, which are shared across frames to ensure temporal coherence. By utilizing a pre-trained image diffusion model as a base generator, the model efficiently generated high-quality and coherent videos. Fine-tuning the pre-trained model on video data addressed the domain gap between image and video data, enhancing the model's ability to produce realistic and consistent video sequences. In the same month, Adobe introduced Firefly AI as part of its features. In January 2024, Google announced development of a text-to-video model named Lumiere which is anticipated to integrate advanced video editing capabilities. Matthias Niessner and Lourdes Agapito at AI company Synthesia work on developing 3D neural rendering techniques that can synthesise realistic video by using 2D and 3D neural representations of shape, appearances, and motion for controllable video synthesis of avatars. In June 2024, Luma Labs launched its Dream Machine video tool. That same month, Kuaishou extended its Kling AI text-to-video model to international users. In July 2024, TikTok owner ByteDance released Jimeng AI in China, through its subsidiary, Faceu Technology. By September 2024, the Chinese AI company MiniMax debuted its video-01 model, joining other established AI model companies like Zhipu AI, Baichuan, and Moonshot AI, which contribute to China's involvement in AI technology. In December 2024 Lightricks launched LTX Video as an open source model. Alternative approaches to text-to-video models include Google's Phenaki, Hour One, Colossyan, Runway's Gen-3 Alpha, and OpenAI's Sora, Several additional text-to-video models, such as Plug-and-Play, Text2LIVE, and TuneAVideo, have emerged. FLUX.1 developer Black Forest Labs has announced its text-to-video model SOTA. Google was preparing to launch a video generation tool named Veo for YouTube Shorts in 2025. In May 2025, Google launched the Veo 3 iteration of the model. It was noted for its impressive audio generation capabilities, which were a previous limitation for text-to-video models. In July 2025 Lightricks released an update to LTX Video capable of generating clips reaching 60 seconds, and in October 2025 it released LTX-2, with audio capabilities built in. In February 2026, ByteDance released Seedance 2.0, it was noted for its impressive realistic generation, motion and camera control and 15 second generation, however the model faced huge critiscism from Motion Picture Association for copyright infringement. After viewing a viral clip of a fight between actors Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, Rhett Reese, who is the co-writer of Deadpool & Wolverine and Zombieland announced that on social media "I hate to say it. Itโ€™s likely over for us," further stating that "In next to no time, one person is going to be able to sit at a computer and create a movie indistinguishable from what Hollywood now releases." Architecture and training There are several architectures that have been used to create text-to-video models. Similar to text-to-image models, these models can be trained using Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) such as long short-term memory (LSTM) networks, which has been used for Pixel Transformation Models and Stochastic Video Generation Models, which aid in consistency and realism respectively. An alternative for these include transformer models. Generative adversarial networks (GANs), Variational autoencoders (VAEs), โ€” which can aid in the prediction of human motion โ€” and diffusion models have also been used to develop the image generation aspects of the model. Text-video datasets used to train models include, but are not limited to, WebVid-10M, HDVILA-100M, CCV, ActivityNet, and Panda-70M. These datasets contain millions of original videos of interest, generated videos, captioned-videos, and textual information that help train models for accuracy. Text-video datasets used to train models include, but are not limited to PromptSource, DiffusionDB, and VidProM. These datasets provide the range of text inputs needed to teach models how to interpret a variety of textual prompts. The video generation process involves synchronizing the text inputs with video frames, ensuring alignment and consistency throughout the sequence. This predictive process is subject to decline in quality as the length of the video increases due to resource limitations. The Will Smith Eating Spaghetti test is a benchmark for models. Limitations Despite the rapid evolution of text-to-video models in their performance, a primary limitation is that they are very computationally heavy which limits its capacity to provide high quality and lengthy outputs. Additionally, these models require a large amount of specific training data to be able to generate high quality and coherent outputs, which brings about the issue of accessibility. Moreover, models may misinterpret textual prompts, resulting in video outputs that deviate from the intended meaning. This can occur due to limitations in capturing semantic context embedded in text, which affects the model's ability to align generated video with the user's intended message. Various models, including Make-A-Video, Imagen Video, Phenaki, CogVideo, GODIVA, and NUWA, are currently being tested and refined to enhance their alignment capabilities and overall performance in text-to-video generation. Another issue with the outputs is that text or fine details in AI-generated videos often appear garbled, a problem that stable diffusion models also struggle with. Examples include distorted hands and unreadable text. Ethics The deployment of text-to-video models raises ethical considerations related to content generation. These models have the potential to create inappropriate or unauthorized content, including explicit material, graphic violence, misinformation, and likenesses of real individuals without consent. Ensuring that AI-generated content complies with established standards for safe and ethical usage is essential, as content generated by these models may not always be easily identified as harmful or misleading. The ability of AI to recognize and filter out NSFW or copyrighted content remains an ongoing challenge, with implications for both creators and audiences. Impacts and applications Text-to-video models offer a broad range of applications that may benefit various fields, from educational and promotional to creative industries. These models can streamline content creation for training videos, movie previews, gaming assets, and visualizations, making it easier to generate content. During the Russo-Ukrainian war, fake videos made with Artificial Intelligence were created as part of a propaganda war against Ukraine and shared in social media. These included depictions of children in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, fake ads targeting children encouraging them to denounce critics of the Ukrainian government, or fictitious statements by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about the country's surrender, among others. Kaur vs Kore is the first Indian feature film made using generative AI which features dual role for the AI character of Sunny Leone, set to release in 2026. Chiranjeevi Hanuman โ€“ The Eternal is an Indian movie made entirely using Generative AI created by Vijay Subramaniam which is set for theatrical release in 2026. The movie was widely criticised by the Film makers in the Bollywood industry for entirely relying on AI and use of AI was seen as an existential threat to their career. Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh is an Indian mythological OTT series released on October 2025 and streamed on JioHotstar. It is recognized as the first series created entirely using artificial intelligence to generate visuals and character animations and consists of 100 episodes. Comparison of models See also References
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinchilla_(language_model)] | [TOKENS: 480]
Contents Chinchilla (language model) Chinchilla is a family of large language models (LLMs) developed by the research team at Google DeepMind, presented in March 2022. Models It is named "chinchilla" because it is a further development over a previous model family named Gopher. Both model families were trained in order to investigate the scaling laws of large language models. It claimed to outperform GPT-3. It considerably simplifies downstream utilization because it requires much less computer power for inference and fine-tuning. Based on the training of previously employed language models, it has been determined that if one doubles the model size, one must also have twice the number of training tokens. This hypothesis has been used to train Chinchilla by DeepMind. Similar to Gopher in terms of cost, Chinchilla has 70B parameters and four times as much data. Chinchilla has an average accuracy of 67.5% on the Measuring Massive Multitask Language Understanding (MMLU) benchmark, which is 7% higher than Gopher's performance. Chinchilla was still in the testing phase as of January 12, 2023. Chinchilla contributes to developing an effective training paradigm for large autoregressive language models with limited compute resources. The Chinchilla team recommends that the number of training tokens is twice for every model size doubling, meaning that using larger, higher-quality training datasets can lead to better results on downstream tasks. It has been used for the Flamingo vision-language model. Architecture Both the Gopher family and Chinchilla family are families of transformer models. In particular, they are essentially the same as GPT-2, with different sizes and minor modifications. Gopher family uses RMSNorm instead of LayerNorm; relative positional encoding rather than absolute positional encoding. The Chinchilla family is the same as the Gopher family, but trained with AdamW instead of Adam optimizer. The Gopher family contains six models of increasing size, from 44 million parameters to 280 billion parameters. They refer to the largest one as "Gopher" by default. Similar naming conventions apply for the Chinchilla family. Table 1 of shows the entire Gopher family: Table 4 of compares the 70-billion-parameter Chinchilla with Gopher 280B. See also References
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World#cite_ref-Berto_24-0] | [TOKENS: 5641]
Contents World The world is the totality of entities, the whole of reality, or everything that exists. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique, while others talk of a "plurality of worlds". Some treat the world as one simple object, while others analyze the world as a complex made up of parts. In scientific cosmology, the world or universe is commonly defined as "the totality of all space and time; all that is, has been, and will be". Theories of modality talk of possible worlds as complete and consistent ways how things could have been. Phenomenology, starting from the horizon of co-given objects present in the periphery of every experience, defines the world as the biggest horizon, or the "horizon of all horizons". In philosophy of mind, the world is contrasted with the mind as that which is represented by the mind. Theology conceptualizes the world in relation to God, for example, as God's creation, as identical to God, or as the two being interdependent. In religions, there is a tendency to downgrade the material or sensory world in favor of a spiritual world to be sought through religious practice. A comprehensive representation of the world and our place in it, as is found in religions, is known as a worldview. Cosmogony is the field that studies the origin or creation of the world, while eschatology refers to the science or doctrine of the last things or of the end of the world. In various contexts, the term "world" takes a more restricted meaning associated, for example, with the Earth and all life on it, with humanity as a whole, or with an international or intercontinental scope. In this sense, world history refers to the history of humanity as a whole, and world politics is the discipline of political science studying issues that transcend nations and continents. Other examples include terms such as "world religion", "world language", "world government", "world war", "world population", "world economy", or "world championship". Etymology The English word world comes from the Old English weorold. The Old English is a reflex of the Common Germanic *weraldiz, a compound of weraz 'man' and aldiz 'age', thus literally meaning roughly 'age of man'; this word led to Old Frisian warld, Old Saxon werold, Old Dutch werolt, Old High German weralt, and Old Norse verวซld. The corresponding word in Latin is mundus, literally 'clean, elegant', itself a loan translation of Greek cosmos 'orderly arrangement'. While the Germanic word thus reflects a mythological notion of a "domain of Man" (compare Midgard), presumably as opposed to the divine sphere on the one hand and the chthonic sphere of the underworld on the other, the Greco-Latin term expresses a notion of creation as an act of establishing order out of chaos. Conceptions Different fields often work with quite different conceptions of the essential features associated with the term "world". Some conceptions see the world as unique: there can be no more than one world. Others talk of a "plurality of worlds". Some see worlds as complex things composed of many substances as their parts while others hold that worlds are simple in the sense that there is only one substance: the world as a whole. Some characterize worlds in terms of objective spacetime while others define them relative to the horizon present in each experience. These different characterizations are not always exclusive: it may be possible to combine some without leading to a contradiction. Most of them agree that worlds are unified totalities. Monism is a thesis about oneness: that only one thing exists in a certain sense. The denial of monism is pluralism, the thesis that, in a certain sense, more than one thing exists. There are many forms of monism and pluralism, but in relation to the world as a whole, two are of special interest: existence monism/pluralism and priority monism/pluralism. Existence monism states that the world is the only concrete object there is. This means that all the concrete "objects" we encounter in our daily lives, including apples, cars and ourselves, are not truly objects in a strict sense. Instead, they are just dependent aspects of the world-object. Such a world-object is simple in the sense that it does not have any genuine parts. For this reason, it has also been referred to as "blobject" since it lacks an internal structure like a blob. Priority monism allows that there are other concrete objects besides the world. But it holds that these objects do not have the most fundamental form of existence, that they somehow depend on the existence of the world. The corresponding forms of pluralism state that the world is complex in the sense that it is made up of concrete, independent objects. Scientific cosmology can be defined as the science of the universe as a whole. In it, the terms "universe" and "cosmos" are usually used as synonyms for the term "world". One common definition of the world/universe found in this field is as "[t]he totality of all space and time; all that is, has been, and will be". Some definitions emphasize that there are two other aspects to the universe besides spacetime: forms of energy or matter, like stars and particles, and laws of nature. World-conceptions in this field differ both concerning their notion of spacetime and of the contents of spacetime. The theory of relativity plays a central role in modern cosmology and its conception of space and time. A difference from its predecessors is that it conceives space and time not as distinct dimensions but as a single four-dimensional manifold called spacetime. This can be seen in special relativity in relation to the Minkowski metric, which includes both spatial and temporal components in its definition of distance. General relativity goes one step further by integrating the concept of mass into the concept of spacetime as its curvature. Quantum cosmology uses a classical notion of spacetime and conceives the whole world as one big wave function expressing the probability of finding particles in a given location. The world-concept plays a role in many modern theories of modality, sometimes in the form of possible worlds. A possible world is a complete and consistent way how things could have been. The actual world is a possible world since the way things are is a way things could have been. There are many other ways things could have been besides how they actually are. For example, Hillary Clinton did not win the 2016 US election, but she could have won. So there is a possible world in which she did. There is a vast number of possible worlds, one corresponding to each such difference, no matter how small or big, as long as no outright contradictions are introduced this way. Possible worlds are often conceived as abstract objects, for example, in terms of non-obtaining states of affairs or as maximally consistent sets of propositions. On such a view, they can even be seen as belonging to the actual world. Another way to conceive possible worlds, made famous by David Lewis, is as concrete entities. On this conception, there is no important difference between the actual world and possible worlds: both are conceived as concrete, inclusive and spatiotemporally connected. The only difference is that the actual world is the world we live in, while other possible worlds are not inhabited by us but by our counterparts. Everything within a world is spatiotemporally connected to everything else but the different worlds do not share a common spacetime: They are spatiotemporally isolated from each other. This is what makes them separate worlds. It has been suggested that, besides possible worlds, there are also impossible worlds. Possible worlds are ways things could have been, so impossible worlds are ways things could not have been. Such worlds involve a contradiction, like a world in which Hillary Clinton both won and lost the 2016 US election. Both possible and impossible worlds have in common the idea that they are totalities of their constituents. Within phenomenology, worlds are defined in terms of horizons of experiences. When we perceive an object, like a house, we do not just experience this object at the center of our attention but also various other objects surrounding it, given in the periphery. The term "horizon" refers to these co-given objects, which are usually experienced only in a vague, indeterminate manner. The perception of a house involves various horizons, corresponding to the neighborhood, the city, the country, the Earth, etc. In this context, the world is the biggest horizon or the "horizon of all horizons". It is common among phenomenologists to understand the world not just as a spatiotemporal collection of objects but as additionally incorporating various other relations between these objects. These relations include, for example, indication-relations that help us anticipate one object given the appearances of another object and means-end-relations or functional involvements relevant for practical concerns. In philosophy of mind, the term "world" is commonly used in contrast to the term "mind" as that which is represented by the mind. This is sometimes expressed by stating that there is a gap between mind and world and that this gap needs to be overcome for representation to be successful. One problem in philosophy of mind is to explain how the mind is able to bridge this gap and to enter into genuine mind-world-relations, for example, in the form of perception, knowledge or action. This is necessary for the world to be able to rationally constrain the activity of the mind. According to a realist position, the world is something distinct and independent from the mind. Idealists conceive of the world as partially or fully determined by the mind. Immanuel Kant's transcendental idealism, for example, posits that the spatiotemporal structure of the world is imposed by the mind on reality but lacks independent existence otherwise. A more radical idealist conception of the world can be found in Berkeley's subjective idealism, which holds that the world as a whole, including all everyday objects like tables, cats, trees and ourselves, "consists of nothing but minds and ideas". Different theological positions hold different conceptions of the world based on its relation to God. Classical theism states that God is wholly distinct from the world. But the world depends for its existence on God, both because God created the world and because He maintains or conserves it. This is sometimes understood in analogy to how humans create and conserve ideas in their imagination, with the difference being that the divine mind is vastly more powerful. On such a view, God has absolute, ultimate reality in contrast to the lower ontological status ascribed to the world. God's involvement in the world is often understood along the lines of a personal, benevolent God who looks after and guides His creation. Deists agree with theists that God created the world but deny any subsequent, personal involvement in it. Pantheists reject the separation between God and world. Instead, they claim that the two are identical. This means that there is nothing to the world that does not belong to God and that there is nothing to God beyond what is found in the world. Panentheism constitutes a middle ground between theism and pantheism. Against theism, it holds that God and the world are interrelated and depend on each other. Against pantheism, it holds that there is no outright identity between the two. History of philosophy In philosophy, the term world has several possible meanings. In some contexts, it refers to everything that makes up reality or the physical universe. In others, it can mean have a specific ontological sense (see world disclosure). While clarifying the concept of world has arguably always been among the basic tasks of Western philosophy, this theme appears to have been raised explicitly only at the start of the twentieth century, Plato is well known for his theory of forms, which posits the existence of two different worlds: the sensible world and the intelligible world. The sensible world is the world we live in, filled with changing physical things we can see, touch and interact with. The intelligible world is the world of invisible, eternal, changeless forms like goodness, beauty, unity and sameness. Plato ascribes a lower ontological status to the sensible world, which only imitates the world of forms. This is due to the fact that physical things exist only to the extent that they participate in the forms that characterize them, while the forms themselves have an independent manner of existence. In this sense, the sensible world is a mere replication of the perfect exemplars found in the world of forms: it never lives up to the original. In the allegory of the cave, Plato compares the physical things we are familiar with to mere shadows of the real things. But not knowing the difference, the prisoners in the cave mistake the shadows for the real things. Two definitions that were both put forward in the 1920s, however, suggest the range of available opinion. "The world is everything that is the case", wrote Ludwig Wittgenstein in his influential Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, first published in 1921. Martin Heidegger, meanwhile, argued that "the surrounding world is different for each of us, and notwithstanding that we move about in a common world". "World" is one of the key terms in Eugen Fink's philosophy. He thinks that there is a misguided tendency in western philosophy to understand the world as one enormously big thing containing all the small everyday things we are familiar with. He sees this view as a form of forgetfulness of the world and tries to oppose it by what he calls the "cosmological difference": the difference between the world and the inner-worldly things it contains. On his view, the world is the totality of the inner-worldly things that transcends them. It is itself groundless but it provides a ground for things. It therefore cannot be identified with a mere container. Instead, the world gives appearance to inner-worldly things, it provides them with a place, a beginning and an end. One difficulty in investigating the world is that we never encounter it since it is not just one more thing that appears to us. This is why Fink uses the notion of play or playing to elucidate the nature of the world. He sees play as a symbol of the world that is both part of it and that represents it. Play usually comes with a form of imaginary play-world involving various things relevant to the play. But just like the play is more than the imaginary realities appearing in it so the world is more than the actual things appearing in it. The concept of worlds plays a central role in Nelson Goodman's late philosophy. He argues that we need to posit different worlds in order to account for the fact that there are different incompatible truths found in reality. Two truths are incompatible if they ascribe incompatible properties to the same thing. This happens, for example, when we assert both that the earth moves and that the earth is at rest. These incompatible truths correspond to two different ways of describing the world: heliocentrism and geocentrism. Goodman terms such descriptions "world versions". He holds a correspondence theory of truth: a world version is true if it corresponds to a world. Incompatible true world versions correspond to different worlds. It is common for theories of modality to posit the existence of a plurality of possible worlds. But Goodman's theory is different since it posits a plurality not of possible but of actual worlds. Such a position is in danger of involving a contradiction: there cannot be a plurality of actual worlds if worlds are defined as maximally inclusive wholes. This danger may be avoided by interpreting Goodman's world-concept not as maximally inclusive wholes in the absolute sense but in relation to its corresponding world-version: a world contains all and only the entities that its world-version describes. Religion Mythological cosmologies depict the world as centered on an axis mundi and delimited by a boundary such as a world ocean, a world serpent or similar. Hinduism constitutes a family of religious-philosophical views. These views present perspectives on the nature and role of the world. Samkhya philosophy, for example, is a metaphysical dualism that understands reality as comprising 2 parts: purusha and prakriti. The term "purusha" stands for the individual conscious self that each of "us" possesses. Prakriti, on the other hand, is the 1 world inhabited by all these selves. Samkhya understands this world as a world of matter governed by the law of cause and effect. The term "matter" is understood in a sense in this tradition including physical and mental aspects. This is reflected in the doctrine of tattvas, according to which prakriti is made up of 23 principles or elements of reality. These principles include physical elements, like water or earth, and mental aspects, like intelligence or sense-impressions. The relation between purusha and prakriti is conceived as 1 of observation: purusha is the conscious self aware of the world of prakriti and does not causally interact with it. A conception of the world is present in Advaita Vedanta, the monist school among the Vedanta schools. Unlike the realist position defended in Samkhya philosophy, Advaita Vedanta sees the world of multiplicity as an illusion, referred to as Maya. This illusion includes impression of existing as separate experiencing selfs called Jivas. Instead, Advaita Vedanta teaches that on the most fundamental level of reality, referred to as Brahman, there exists no plurality or difference. All there is is 1 all-encompassing self: Atman. Ignorance is seen as the source of this illusion, which results in bondage to the world of mere appearances. Liberation is possible in the course of overcoming this illusion by acquiring the knowledge of Brahman, according to Advaita Vedanta. Contemptus mundi is the name given to the belief that the world, in all its vanity, is nothing more than a futile attempt to hide from God by stifling our desire for the good and the holy. This view has been characterised as a "pastoral of fear" by historian Jean Delumeau. "The world, the flesh, and the devil" is a traditional division of the sources of temptation. Orbis Catholicus is a Latin phrase meaning "Catholic world", per the expression Urbi et Orbi, and refers to that area of Christendom under papal supremacy. In Islam, the term "dunya" is used for the world. Its meaning is derived from the root word "dana", a term for "near". It is associated with the temporal, sensory world and earthly concerns, i.e. with this world in contrast to the spiritual world. Religious teachings warn of a tendency to seek happiness in this world and advise a more ascetic lifestyle concerned with the afterlife. Other strands in Islam recommend a balanced approach. In Mandaean cosmology, the world or earthly realm is known as Tibil. It is separated from the World of Light (alma d-nhลซra) above and the World of Darkness (alma d-hลกuka) below by aether (ayar). Related terms and problems A worldview is a comprehensive representation of the world and our place in it. As a representation, it is a subjective perspective of the world and thereby different from the world it represents. All higher animals need to represent their environment in some way in order to navigate it. But it has been argued that only humans possess a representation encompassing enough to merit the term "worldview". Philosophers of worldviews commonly hold that the understanding of any object depends on a worldview constituting the background on which this understanding can take place. This may affect not just our intellectual understanding of the object in question but the experience of it in general. It is therefore impossible to assess one's worldview from a neutral perspective since this assessment already presupposes the worldview as its background. Some hold that each worldview is based on a single hypothesis that promises to solve all the problems of our existence we may encounter. On this interpretation, the term is closely associated to the worldviews given by different religions. Worldviews offer orientation not just in theoretical matters but also in practical matters. For this reason, they usually include answers to the question of the meaning of life and other evaluative components about what matters and how we should act. A worldview can be unique to one individual but worldviews are usually shared by many people within a certain culture or religion. The idea that there exist many different worlds is found in various fields. For example, theories of modality talk about a plurality of possible worlds and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics carries this reference even in its name. Talk of different worlds is also common in everyday language, for example, with reference to the world of music, the world of business, the world of football, the world of experience or the Asian world. But at the same time, worlds are usually defined as all-inclusive totalities. This seems to contradict the very idea of a plurality of worlds since if a world is total and all-inclusive then it cannot have anything outside itself. Understood this way, a world can neither have other worlds besides itself or be part of something bigger. One way to resolve this paradox while holding onto the notion of a plurality of worlds is to restrict the sense in which worlds are totalities. On this view, worlds are not totalities in an absolute sense. This might be even understood in the sense that, strictly speaking, there are no worlds at all. Another approach understands worlds in a schematic sense: as context-dependent expressions that stand for the current domain of discourse. So in the expression "Around the World in Eighty Days", the term "world" refers to the earth while in the colonial expression "the New World" it refers to the landmass of North and South America. Cosmogony is the field that studies the origin or creation of the world. This includes both scientific cosmogony and creation myths found in various religions. The dominant theory in scientific cosmogony is the Big Bang theory, according to which both space, time and matter have their origin in one initial singularity occurring about 13.8 billion years ago. This singularity was followed by an expansion that allowed the universe to sufficiently cool down for the formation of subatomic particles and later atoms. These initial elements formed giant clouds, which would then coalesce into stars and galaxies. Non-scientific creation myths are found in many cultures and are often enacted in rituals expressing their symbolic meaning. They can be categorized concerning their contents. Types often found include creation from nothing, from chaos or from a cosmic egg. Eschatology refers to the science or doctrine of the last things or of the end of the world. It is traditionally associated with religion, specifically with the Abrahamic religions. In this form, it may include teachings both of the end of each individual human life and of the end of the world as a whole. But it has been applied to other fields as well, for example, in the form of physical eschatology, which includes scientifically based speculations about the far future of the universe. According to some models, there will be a Big Crunch in which the whole universe collapses back into a singularity, possibly resulting in a second Big Bang afterward. But current astronomical evidence seems to suggest that our universe will continue to expand indefinitely. World history studies the world from a historical perspective. Unlike other approaches to history, it employs a global viewpoint. It deals less with individual nations and civilizations, which it usually approaches at a high level of abstraction. Instead, it concentrates on wider regions and zones of interaction, often interested in how people, goods and ideas move from one region to another. It includes comparisons of different societies and civilizations as well as considering wide-ranging developments with a long-term global impact like the process of industrialization. Contemporary world history is dominated by three main research paradigms determining the periodization into different epochs. One is based on productive relations between humans and nature. The two most important changes in history in this respect were the introduction of agriculture and husbandry concerning the production of food, which started around 10,000 to 8,000 BCE and is sometimes termed the Neolithic Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution, which started around 1760 CE and involved the transition from manual to industrial manufacturing. Another paradigm, focusing on culture and religion instead, is based on Karl Jaspers' theories about the Axial Age, a time in which various new forms of religious and philosophical thoughts appeared in several separate parts of the world around the time between 800 and 200 BCE. A third periodization is based on the relations between civilizations and societies. According to this paradigm, history can be divided into three periods in relation to the dominant region in the world: Middle Eastern dominance before 500 BCE, Eurasian cultural balance until 1500 CE and Western dominance since 1500 CE. Big History employs an even wider framework than world history by putting human history into the context of the history of the universe as a whole. It starts with the Big Bang and traces the formation of galaxies, the Solar System, the Earth, its geological eras, the evolution of life and humans until the present day. World politics, also referred to as global politics or international relations, is the discipline of political science studying issues of interest to the world that transcend nations and continents. It aims to explain complex patterns found in the social world that are often related to the pursuit of power, order and justice, usually in the context of globalization. It focuses not just on the relations between nation-states but also considers other transnational actors, like multinational corporations, terrorist groups, or non-governmental organizations. For example, it tries to explain events such as the September 11 attacks, the 2003 invasion of Iraq or the 2008 financial crisis. Various theories have been proposed in order to deal with the complexity involved in formulating such explanations. These theories are sometimes divided into realism, liberalism and constructivism. Realists see nation-states as the main actors in world politics. They constitute an anarchical international system without any overarching power to control their behavior. They are seen as sovereign agents that, determined by human nature, act according to their national self-interest. Military force may play an important role in the ensuing struggle for power between states, but diplomacy and cooperation are also key mechanisms for nations to achieve their goals. Liberalists acknowledge the importance of states but they also emphasize the role of transnational actors, like the United Nations or the World Trade Organization. They see humans as perfectible and stress the role of democracy in this process. The emergent order in world politics, on this perspective, is more complex than a mere balance of power since more different agents and interests are involved in its production. Constructivism ascribes more importance to the agency of individual humans than realism and liberalism. It understands the social world as a construction of the people living in it. This leads to an emphasis on the possibility of change. If the international system is an anarchy of nation-states, as the realists hold, then this is only so because we made it this way and may change since this is not prefigured by human nature, according to the constructivists. See also References External links Africa Antarctica Asia Australia Europe North America South America Afro-Eurasia Americas Eurasia Oceania
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_and_artificial_intelligence] | [TOKENS: 4638]
Contents Music and artificial intelligence Music and artificial intelligence (music and AI) is the development of music software programs that use AI to generate music. As with applications in other fields, AI in music also simulates mental tasks. A prominent feature is the capability of an AI algorithm to learn based on past data, such as in computer accompaniment technology, wherein the AI is capable of listening to a human performer and performing accompaniment. Artificial intelligence also drives interactive composition technology, wherein a computer composes music in response to a live performance. There are other AI applications in music that cover not only music composition, production, and performance but also how music is marketed and consumed. Several music player programs have also been developed to use voice recognition and natural language processing technology for music voice control. Current research includes the application of AI in music composition, performance, theory and digital sound processing. History In the 1950s and the 1960s, music made by artificial intelligence was not fully original, but generated from templates that people had already defined and given to the AI, with this being known as rule-based systems. As time passed, computers became more powerful, which allowed machine learning and artificial neural networks to help in the music industry by giving AI large amounts of data to learn how music is made instead of predefined templates. By the early 2000s, more advancements in artificial intelligence had been made, with generative adversarial networks (GANs) and deep learning being used to help AI compose more original music that is more complex and varied than possible before. Notable AI-driven projects, such as OpenAIโ€™s MuseNet and Googleโ€™s Magenta, have demonstrated AIโ€™s ability to generate compositions that mimic various musical styles. 20th century art historian Erwin Panofsky proposed that in all art, there existed three levels of meaning: primary meaning, or the natural subject; secondary meaning, or the conventional subject; and tertiary meaning, the intrinsic content of the subject.[original research?] AI music explores the foremost of these, creating music without the "intention" that is usually behind it, leaving composers who listen to machine-generated pieces feeling unsettled by the lack of apparent meaning. Artificial intelligence finds its beginnings in music with the transcription problem: accurately recording a performance into musical notation as it is played. Pรจre Engramelle's schematic of a "piano roll", a mode of automatically recording note timing and duration in a way which could be easily transcribed to proper musical notation by hand, was first implemented by German engineers J.F. Unger and J. Hohlfield in 1952. In 1957, the ILLIAC I (Illinois Automatic Computer) produced the "Illiac Suite for String Quartet", a completely computer-generated piece of music. The computer was programmed to accomplish this by composer Leonard Isaacson and mathematician Lejaren Hiller.: vโ€“vii In 1960, Russian researcher Rudolf Zaripov published the first worldwide paper on algorithmic music composition using the Ural-1 computer. In 1965, inventor Ray Kurzweil developed software capable of recognizing musical patterns and synthesizing new compositions from them. The computer first appeared on the quiz show I've Got a Secret that same year. By 1983, Yamaha Corporation's Kansei Music System had gained momentum, and a paper was published on its development in 1989. The software utilized music information processing and artificial intelligence techniques to essentially solve the transcription problem for simpler melodies, although higher-level melodies and musical complexities are regarded even today as difficult deep-learning tasks, and near-perfect transcription is still a subject of research. In 1997, an artificial intelligence program named Experiments in Musical Intelligence (EMI) appeared to outperform a human composer at the task of composing a piece of music to imitate the style of Bach. EMI would later become the basis for a more sophisticated algorithm called Emily Howell, named for its creator. In 2002, the music research team at the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris, led by French composer and scientist Franรงois Pachet, designed the Continuator, an algorithm uniquely capable of resuming a composition after a live musician stopped. Emily Howell would continue to make advancements in musical artificial intelligence, publishing her first album From Darkness, Light in 2009. Since then, many more pieces by artificial intelligence and various groups have been published. In 2010, Iamus became the first AI to produce a fragment of original contemporary classical music, in its own style: "Iamus' Opus 1". Located at the Universidad de Malรกga (Malรกga University) in Spain, the computer can generate a fully original piece in a variety of musical styles.: 468โ€“481 In August 2019, a large dataset consisting of 12,197 MIDI songs, each with their lyrics and melodies, was created to investigate the feasibility of neural melody generation from lyrics using a deep conditional LSTM-GAN method. With progress in generative AI, models capable of creating complete musical compositions (including lyrics) from a simple text description have begun to emerge. Two notable web applications in this field are Suno AI, launched in December 2023, and Udio, which followed in April 2024. In November 2025 the AI generated song "Walk My Walk" presented as being by Breaking Rust topped the Billboard Country Digital Song Sales chart. The same year, AI band The Velvet Sundown attracted one million listeners on Spotify. Streaming service Deezer started tagging AI generated songs and excluding them from its editorialized playlists. Their tool builds on former published research work on the nature of AI music's artefacts. In November 2025, the service claimed that 50,000 AI generated songs were uploaded daily, about a third of total uploads. Composers and artists like Jennifer Walshe or Holly Herndon have been exploring aspects of music AI for years in their performances and musical works.[citation needed] Another original approach of humans "imitating AI" can be found in the 43-hour sound installation String Quartet(s) by Georges Lentz.[non-primary source needed] Software applications Developed at Princeton University by Ge Wang and Perry Cook, ChucK is a text-based, cross-platform language. By extracting and classifying the theoretical techniques it finds in musical pieces, the software is able to synthesize entirely new pieces from the techniques it has learned. The technology is used by SLOrk (Stanford Laptop Orchestra) and PLOrk (Princeton Laptop Orchestra). Jukedeck was a website that let people use artificial intelligence to generate original, royalty-free music for use in videos. The team started building the music generation technology in 2010, formed a company around it in 2012, and launched the website publicly in 2015. The technology used was originally a rule-based algorithmic composition system, which was later replaced with artificial neural networks. The website was used to create over 1 million pieces of music, and brands that used it included Coca-Cola, Google, UKTV, and the Natural History Museum, London. In 2019, the company was acquired by ByteDance. MorpheuS is a research project by Dorien Herremans and Elaine Chew at Queen Mary University of London, funded by a Marie Skล‚odowskรก-Curie EU project. The system uses an optimization approach based on a variable neighborhood search algorithm to morph existing template pieces into novel pieces with a set level of tonal tension that changes dynamically throughout the piece. This optimization approach allows for the integration of a pattern detection technique in order to enforce long term structure and recurring themes in the generated music. Pieces composed by MorpheuS have been performed at concerts in both Stanford and London. Created in February 2016, in Luxembourg, AIVA is a program that produces soundtracks for any type of media. The algorithms behind AIVA are based on deep learning architectures AIVA has also been used to compose a Rock track called On the Edge, as well as a pop tune Love Sick in collaboration with singer Taryn Southern, for the creation of her 2018 album "I am AI". Google's Magenta team has published several AI music applications and technical papers since their launch in 2016. In 2017 they released the NSynth algorithm and dataset, and an open source hardware musical instrument, designed to facilitate musicians in using the algorithm. The instrument was used by notable artists such as Grimes and YACHT in their albums. In 2018, they released a piano improvisation app called Piano Genie. This was later followed by Magenta Studio, a suite of 5 MIDI plugins that allow music producers to elaborate on existing music in their DAW. In 2023, their machine learning team published a technical paper on GitHub that described MusicLM, a private text-to-music generator which they'd developed. Riffusion is a neural network, designed by Seth Forsgren and Hayk Martiros, that generates music using images of sound rather than audio. The resulting music has been described as "de otro mundo" (otherworldly), although unlikely to replace man-made music. The model was made available on December 15, 2022, with the code also freely available on GitHub. The first version of Riffusion was created as a fine-tuning of Stable Diffusion, an existing open-source model for generating images from text prompts, on spectrograms, resulting in a model which used text prompts to generate image files which could then be put through an inverse Fourier transform and converted into audio files. While these files were only several seconds long, the model could also use latent space between outputs to interpolate different files together (using the img2img capabilities of SD). It was one of many models derived from Stable Diffusion. In December 2022, Mubert similarly used Stable Diffusion to turn descriptive text into music loops. In January 2023, Google published a paper on their own text-to-music generator called MusicLM. Forsgren and Martiros formed a startup, also called Riffusion, and raised $4 million in venture capital funding in October 2023. Spike AI is an AI-based audio plug-in, developed by Spike Stent in collaboration with his son Joshua Stent and friend Henry Ramsey, that analyzes tracks and provides suggestions to increase clarity and other aspects during mixing. Communication is done by using a chatbot trained on Spike Stent's personal data. The plug-in integrates into digital audio workstation. Musical applications Artificial intelligence can potentially impact how producers create music by giving reiterations of a track that follow a prompt given by the creator. These prompts allow the AI to follow a certain style that the artist is trying to go for. AI has also been seen in musical analysis where it has been used for feature extraction, pattern recognition, and musical recommendations. New tools that are powered by artificial intelligence have been made to help aid in generating original music compositions, like AIVA (Artificial Intelligence Virtual Artist) and Udio. This is done by giving an AI model data of already-existing music and having it analyze the data using deep learning techniques to generate music in many different genres, such as classical music or electronic music. Musical and choral classrooms are already implementing AI driven programs to aid in musical learning, and development of creative skills in students where AI has shown to provide a statistically significant increase. Ethical and legal considerations Several musicians such as Dua Lipa, Elton John, Nick Cave, Paul McCartney and Sting have criticized the use of AI in music and are encouraging the UK government to act on this matter. Another example of this protest is the silent 2025 album Is This What We Want?. Some artists have encouraged the use of AI in music such as Grimes. While helpful in generating new music, many issues have come up since artificial intelligence has begun making music. Some major concerns include how the economy will be impacted with AI taking over music production, who truly owns music generated by AI, and a lower demand for human-made musical compositions. Some critics argue that AI diminishes the value of human creativity, while proponents see it as an augmentative tool that expands artistic possibilities rather than replacing human musicians. Additionally, concerns have been raised about AI's potential to homogenize music. AI-driven models often generate compositions based on existing trends, which some fear could limit musical diversity. Addressing this concern, researchers are working on AI systems that incorporate more nuanced creative elements, allowing for greater stylistic variation. Another major concern about artificial intelligence in music is copyright laws. In the United States, the current legal framework tends to apply traditional copyright laws to AI, despite its differences with the human creative process. However, music outputs solely generated by AI are not granted copyright protection. In the compendium of the U.S. Copyright Office Practices, the Copyright Office has stated that it would not grant copyrights to "works that lack human authorship" and "the Office will not register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author." In February 2022, the Copyright Review Board rejected an application to copyright AI-generated artwork on the basis that it "lacked the required human authorship necessary to sustain a claim in copyright." The usage of copyrighted music in training AI has also been a topic of contention. One instance of this was seen when SACEM, a professional organization of songwriters, composers, and music publishers demanded that PozaLabs, an AI music generation startup refrain from utilizing any music affiliated with them for training models. The situation in the European Union (EU) is similar to the US, because its legal framework also emphasizes the role of human involvement in a copyright-protected work. According to the European Union Intellectual Property Office and the recent jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the originality criterion requires the work to be the author's own intellectual creation, reflecting the personality of the author evidenced by the creative choices made during its production, requires distinct level of human involvement. The reCreating Europe project, funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, delves into the challenges posed by AI-generated contents including music, suggesting legal certainty and balanced protection that encourages innovation while respecting copyright norms. The recognition of AIVA marks a significant departure from traditional views on authorship and copyrights in the realm of music composition, allowing AI artists capable of releasing music and earning royalties. This acceptance marks AIVA as a pioneering instance where an AI has been formally acknowledged within the music production. The recent advancements in artificial intelligence made by groups such as Stability AI, OpenAI, and Google has incurred an enormous sum of copyright claims leveled against generative technology, including AI music. Should these lawsuits succeed, the machine learning models behind these technologies would have their datasets restricted to the public domain. Strides towards addressing ethical issues have been made as well, such as the collaboration between Sound Ethics(a company promoting ethical AI usage in the music industry) and UC Irvine, focusing on ethical frameworks and the responsible usage of AI. Musical deepfakes A more nascent development of AI in music is the application of audio deepfakes to cast the lyrics or musical style of a pre-existing song to the voice or style of another artist. This has raised many concerns regarding the legality of technology, as well as the ethics of employing it, particularly in the context of artistic identity. Furthermore, it has also raised the question of to whom the authorship of these works is attributed. As AI cannot hold authorship of its own, current speculation suggests that there will be no clear answer until further rulings are made regarding machine learning technologies as a whole. Most recently, preventative measures have started to be developed by Google and Universal Music group who have taken in royalties and credited attribution in order to allow producers to replicate the voices and styles of artists. In 2023, an artist known as ghostwriter977 created a musical deepfake called "Heart on My Sleeve" that cloned the voices of Drake and The Weeknd by inputting an assortment of vocal-only tracks from the respective artists into a deep-learning algorithm, creating an artificial model of the voices of each artist, to which this model could be mapped onto original reference vocals with original lyrics. The track was submitted for Grammy consideration for the best rap song and song of the year. It went viral and gained traction on TikTok and received a positive response from the audience, leading to its official release on Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube in April 2023. Many believed the track was fully composed by an AI software, but the producer claimed the songwriting, production, and original vocals (pre-conversion) were still done by him. It would later be rescinded from any Grammy considerations due to it not following the guidelines necessary to be considered for a Grammy award. The track would end up being removed from all music platforms by Universal Music Group. The song was a watershed moment for AI voice cloning, and models have since been created for hundreds, if not thousands, of popular singers and rappers. In 2013, country music singer Randy Travis suffered a stroke which left him unable to sing. In the meantime, vocalist James Duprรฉ toured on his behalf, singing his songs for him. Travis and longtime producer Kyle Lehning released a new song in May 2024 titled "Where That Came From", Travis's first new song since his stroke. The recording uses AI technology to re-create Travis's singing voice, having been composited from over 40 existing vocal recordings alongside those of Duprรฉ. Since 2024, rapper Kanye West has been using artificial intelligence deepfakes of his own voice. His usage of deepfakes started during the production of his album Vultures 2, where the songs "Field Trip" and "Sky City" drew suspicion of artificial intelligence usage; further updates to the songs "Forever" and "530" would also be accused of using AI. Artist Ty Dolla Sign, who released Vultures 2 with West, would confirm the allegations in 2025 during an interview. West would subsequently confirm that his subsequent solo album, Bully, also used artificial intelligence, and his later album In a Perfect World and the 2025 updated version of Donda 2 would also draw accusations of AI usage.[citation needed] Playboi Carti has also been accused of using artificial intelligence deepfakes. The allegations followed the release of the song "Timeless", a collaboration with The Weeknd, where his verse was accused of using artificial intelligence. The allegations would further intensify after the release of his album Music, where "Rather Lie" and "Fine Shit" were also accused of using artificial intelligence. Playboi Carti would deny the accusations. Technical approaches Artificial intelligence music encompasses a number of technical approaches used for music composition, analysis, classification, and suggestion. Techniques used are drawn from deep learning, machine learning, natural language processing, and signal processing. Current systems are able to compose entire musical compositions, parse affective content, accompany human players in real-time, and acquire patterns of user and context-dependent preferences. Symbolic music generation is the generation of music in discrete symbolic forms such as MIDI, where note and timing are precisely defined. Early systems employed rule-based systems and Markov models, but modern systems employ deep learning to a large extent. Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), and more precisely Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks, have been employed in modeling temporal dependencies of musical sequences. They may be used to generate melodies, harmonies, and counterpoints in various musical genres. Transformer models such as Music Transformer and MuseNet became more popular for symbolic generation due to their ability to model long-range dependencies and scalability. These models were employed to generate multi-instrument polyphonic music and stylistic imitations. This method generates music as raw audio waveforms instead of symbolic notation. DeepMind's WaveNet is an early example that uses autoregressive sampling to generate high-fidelity audio. Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and Variational Autoencoders (VAEs) are being used more and more in new audio texture synthesis and timbre combination of different instruments. NSynth (Neural Synthesizer), a Google Magenta project, uses a WaveNet-like autoencoder to learn latent audio representations and thereby generate completely novel instrumental sounds. Music Information Retrieval (MIR) is the extraction of musically relevant information from audio recordings to be utilized in applications such as genre classification, instrument recognition, mood recognition, beat detection, and similarity estimation. CNNs on spectrogram features have been very accurate on these tasks. SVMs and k-Nearest Neighbors (k-NN) are also used for classification on features such as Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs). Hybrid systems combine symbolic and sound-based methods to draw on their respective strengths. They can compose high-level symbolic compositions and synthesize them as natural sound. Interactive systems in real-time allow for AI to instantaneously respond to human input to support live performance. Reinforcement learning and rule-based agents tend to be utilized to allow for humanโ€“AI co-creation in improvisation contexts. Affective computing techniques enable AI systems to classify or create music based on some affective content. The models use musical features such as tempo, mode, and timbre to classify or influence listener emotions. Deep learning models have been trained for classifying music based on affective content and even creating music intended to have affective impacts. Music recommenders employ AI to suggest tracks to users based on what they have heard, their tastes, and information available in context. Collaborative filtering, content-based filtering, and hybrid filtering are most widely applied, deep learning being utilized for fine-tuning. Graph-based and matrix factorization methods are used within commercial systems like Spotify and YouTube Music to represent complex user-item relationships. AI is also used in audio engineering automation such as mixing and mastering. Such systems level, equalize, pan, and compress to give well-balanced sound outputs. Software such as LANDR and iZotope Ozone utilize machine learning in emulating professional audio engineers' decisions. Natural language generation also applies to songwriting assistance and lyrics generation. Transformer language models like GPT-3 have also been proven to be able to generate stylistic and coherent lyrics from input prompts, themes, or feeling. There even exist AI programs that assist with rhyme scheme, syllable count, and poem form. Recent developments include multimodal AI systems that integrate music with other media, e.g., dance, video, and text. These can generate background scores in synchronization with video sequences or generate dance choreography from audio input. Cross-modal retrieval systems allow one to search for music using images, text, or gestures. See also References Further reading External links
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[SOURCE: https://www.fast.ai/posts/2019-08-07-surveillance.html] | [TOKENS: 2333]
8 Things You Need to Know about Surveillance Rachel Thomas August 7, 2019 Over 225 police departments have partnered with Amazon to have access to Amazonโ€™s video footage obtained as part of the โ€œsmartโ€ doorbell product Ring, and in many cases these partnerships are heavily subsidized with taxpayer money. Police departments are allowing Amazon to stream 911 call information directly in real-time, and Amazon requires police departments to read pre-approved scripts when talking about the program. If a homeowner doesnโ€™t want to share data from their video camera doorbell with police, an officer for the Fresno County Sheriffโ€™s Office said they can just go directly to Amazon to obtain it. This creation of an extensive surveillance network, the murky private-public partnership surrounding it, and a lack of any sort of regulations or oversight is frightening. And this is just one of many examples related to surveillance technology that have recently come to light. I frequently talk with people who are not that concerned about surveillance, or who feel that the positives outweigh the risks. Here, I want to share some important truths about surveillance: While I was writing this post, a number of investigative articles came out with disturbing new developments related to surveillance. I decided that rather than attempt to include everything in one post (which would make it too long and too dense), I would go ahead and share the above facts about surveillance, as they are just a relevant as ever. The last 24 hours:- NYC police using facial recognition on 11 year old kids- Cops are giving Amazon real-time 911 caller data- California Facial Recognition Interconnect- contd facial rec on protesters in Hong Kong- Palantir founder Peter Thiel gets op-ed in NYTimes Surveillance can facilitate human rights abuses and even genocide There is a long history of data about sensitive attributes being misused, including the use of the 1940 USA Census to intern Japanese Americans, a system of identity cards introduced by the Belgian colonial government that were later used during the 1994 Rwandan genocide (in which nearly a million people were murdered), and the role of IBM in helping Nazi Germany use punchcard computers to identify and track the mass killing of millions of Jewish people. More recently, the mass internment of over one million people who are part of an ethnic minority in Western China was facilitated through the use of a surveillance network of cameras, biometric data (including images of peopleโ€™s faces, audio of their voices, and blood samples), and phone monitoring. Pictured above is Adolf Hitler (far left) meeting with IBM CEO Tom Watson Sr. (2nd from left), shortly before Hitler awarded Watson a special โ€œService to the Reichโ€ medal in 1937 (for a timeline of the Holocaust, see here). Watson returned the medal in 1940, although IBM continued to do business with the Nazis. IBM technology helped the Nazis conduct detailed censuses in countries they occupied, to thoroughly identify anyone of Jewish descent. Nazi concentration camps used IBMโ€™s punchcard machines to tabulate prisoners, recording whether they were Jewish, gay, or Gypsies, and whether they died of โ€œnatural causes,โ€ execution, suicide, or via โ€œspecial treatmentโ€ in gas chambers. It is not the case that IBM sold the machines and then was done with it. Rather, IBM and its subsidiaries provided regular training and maintenance on-site at the concentration camps: printing off cards, configuring machines, and repairing them as they broke frequently. Data is often used for different purposes than why it was collected In the above examples, the data collection began before genocide was committed. IBM began selling to Nazi Germany well before the Holocaust (although continued for far too long), including helping with Germanyโ€™s 1933 census conducted by Adolf Hitler, which was effective at identifying far more Jewish people than had previously been recognized in Germany. It is important to recognize how data and images gathered through surveillance can be weaponized later. Columbia professor Tim Wu wrote that โ€œOne [hard truth] is that data and surveillance networks created for one purpose can and will be used for others. You must assume that any personal data that Facebook or Android keeps are data that governments around the world will try to get or that thieves will try to steal.โ€ Plenty of data collection is not involved with such extreme abuse as genocide; however, in a time of global resurgence of white supremacist, ethno-nationalist, and authoritarian movements, it would be deeply irresponsible to not consider how data & surveillance can and will be weaponized against already vulnerable groups. Data often has errors (and no mechanism for correcting them) A database of suspected gang members maintained by California law enforcement officials was found to be full of errors, including 42 babies who had been added to the database when they were less than 1 year old (28 of whom were marked as โ€œadmitting to being gang membersโ€). Even worse, there was no process in place for correcting mistakes or removing people once theyโ€™ve been added. An NPR reporter recounts his experience of trying to rent an apartment and discovering that TransUnion, one of the 3 major credit bureaus, incorrectly reported him as having two felony firearms convictions. TransUnion only removed the mistakes after a dozen phone calls and notification that the story would be reported on. This is not an unusual story: the FTCโ€™s large-scale study of credit reports in 2012 found 26% of consumers had at least one mistake in their files and 5% had errors that could be devastating. An even more opaque, unregulated โ€œ4th bureauโ€ exists: a collection of companies buying and selling personal information about people on the margins of the banking system (such as immigrants, students, and people with low incomes), with no standards on what types of data are included, no way to opt out, and no system for identifying or correcting mistakes. Surveillance typically operates with no accountability What makes the examples in the previous section disturbing is not just that errors occurred, but that there was no way to identify or correct them, and no accountability for those profiting off the error-laden data. Often, even the existence of the systems being used is not publicly known (much less details of how these systems work), unless discovered by journalists or revealed by whistleblowers. The Detroit Police Dept used facial recognition technology for nearly two years without public input and in violation of a requirement that a policy be approved by the cityโ€™s Board of Police Commissioners, until a study from Georgetown Lawโ€™s Center for Privacy & Technology drew attention to the issue. Palantir, the defense startup founded by billionaire Peter Thiel, ran a program with New Orleans Police Department for 6 years which city council members did not even know about, much less have any oversight. After two studies found that Amazonโ€™s facial recognition software produced inaccurate and racially biased results, Amazon countered that the researchers should have changed the default parameters. However, it turned out that Amazon was not instructing police departments that use its software to do this either. Surveillance programs are operating with few regulations, no oversight, no accountability around accuracy or mistakes, and in many cases, no public knowledge of what is going on. Surveillance changes our behavior Hundreds of thousands of people in Hong Kong are protesting an unpopular new bill which would allow extradition to China. Typically, Hong Kong locals use their rechargeable smart cards to ride the subway. However, during the protests, long lines of people waited to use cash to buy paper tickets (usually something that only tourists do) concerned that they would be tracked for having attended the protests. Would fewer people protest if this was not an option? In the United States, in 2015 the Baltimore Police Department used facial recognition technology to surveil people protesting the death of Freddie Grey, a young Black man who was killed in police custody, and arrested protesters with outstanding warrants. Mass surveillance could have a chilling impact on our rights to move about freely, to express ourselves, and to protest. โ€œWe act differently when we know we are โ€˜on the record.โ€™ Mass privacy is the freedom to act without being watched and thus in a sense, to be who we really are,โ€ Columbia professor Tim Wu wrote in the New York Times. Surveillance disproportionately impacts those who are already marginalized Surveillance is applied unevenly, causing the greatest harm to people who are already marginalized, including immigrants, people of color, and people living in poverty. These groups are more heavily policed and surveilled. The Perpetual Line-Up from the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology studied the unregulated use of facial recognition by police, with half of all Americans appearing in law enforcement databases, and the risks of errors, racial bias, misuses, and threats to civil liberties. The researchers pointed out that African Americans are more likely to appear in these databases (many of which are drawn from mug shots) since they are disproportionately likely to be stopped, interrogated, or arrested. For another example, consider the contrast between how easily people over 65 can apply for Medicare benefits by filling out an online form, with the invasive personal questions asked of a low-income mother on Medicaid about her lovers, hygiene, parental shortcomings, and personal habits. In an article titled Trading privacy for survival is another tax on the poor, Ciara Byrne wrote, โ€œCurrent public benefits programs ask applicants extremely detailed and personal questions and sometimes mandate home visits, drug tests, fingerprinting, and collection of biometric informationโ€ฆ Employers of low-income workers listen to phone calls, conduct drug tests, monitor closed-circuit television, and require psychometric tests as conditions of employment. Prisoners in some states have to consent to be voiceprinted in order to make phone calls.โ€ Data privacy is a public good, like air quality or safe drinking water Data is more revealing in aggregate. It can be nearly impossible to know what your individual data could reveal when combined with the data of others or with data from other sources, or when machine learning inference is performed on it. For instance, as Zeynep Tufekci wrote in the New York Times, individual Strava users could not have predicted how in aggregate their data could be used to identify the locations of US military bases. โ€œData privacy is not like a consumer good, where you click โ€˜I acceptโ€™ and all is well. Data privacy is more like air quality or safe drinking water, a public good that cannot be effectively regulated by trusting in the wisdom of millions of individual choices. A more collective response is needed.โ€ Unfortunately, this also means that you canโ€™t fully safeguard your privacy on your own. You may choose not to purchase Amazonโ€™s ring doorbell, yet you can still show up in the video footage collected by others. You might strengthen your online privacy practices, yet conclusions will still be inferred about you based on the behavior of others. As Professor Tufekci wrote, we need a collective response. We donโ€™t have to accept invasive surveillance Many people are uncomfortable with surveillance, but feel like they have no say in the matter. While the threats surveillance poses are large, it is not too late to act. We are seeing success: in response to community organizing and an audit, Los Angeles Police Department scrapped a controversial program to predict who is most likely to commit violent crimes. Citizens, researchers, and activists in Detroit have been effective at drawing attention to the Detroit Police Departmentโ€™s unregulated use of facial recognition and a bill calling for a 5-year moratorium has been introduced to the state legislature. Local governments in San Francisco, Oakland, and Somerville have banned the use of facial recognition by police. For further resources, please check out: - Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology - Digital Defense Playbook
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-1-84465-362-1] | [TOKENS: 380]
Contents Book sources This page allows users to search multiple sources for a book given a 10- or 13-digit International Standard Book Number. Spaces and dashes in the ISBN do not matter. This page links to catalogs of libraries, booksellers, and other book sources where you will be able to search for the book by its International Standard Book Number (ISBN). Online text Google Books and other retail sources below may be helpful if you want to verify citations in Wikipedia articles, because they often let you search an online version of the book for specific words or phrases, or you can browse through the book (although for copyright reasons the entire book is usually not available). At the Open Library (part of the Internet Archive) you can borrow and read entire books online. Online databases Subscription eBook databases Libraries Alabama Alaska California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Missouri Nebraska New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Washington state Wisconsin Bookselling and swapping Find your book on a site that compiles results from other online sites: These sites allow you to search the catalogs of many individual booksellers: Non-English book sources If the book you are looking for is in a language other than English, you might find it helpful to look at the equivalent pages on other Wikipedias, linked below โ€“ they are more likely to have sources appropriate for that language. Find other editions The WorldCat xISBN tool for finding other editions is no longer available. However, there is often a "view all editions" link on the results page from an ISBN search. Google books often lists other editions of a book and related books under the "about this book" link. You can convert between 10 and 13 digit ISBNs with these tools: Find on Wikipedia See also Get free access to research! Research tools and services Outreach Get involved
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[SOURCE: https://he.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%D7%A2%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%93_%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%A9%D7%99&mobileaction=toggle_view_mobile] | [TOKENS: 4611]
ืขืžื•ื“ ืจืืฉื™ ื”ื™ื“ืขืช ืคื•ืจื˜ืœื™ื ืคื•ืจื˜ืœ ื”ื™ื•ื ื™ื•ื ืคื˜ื™ืจืชื• ืฉืœ ื“ืื ืงืŸ ืื“ื•ืืจื“ืก ืคื•ืจื˜ืœ ื”ื›ื“ื•ืจื’ืœ ื”ื•ื ืฉืขืจ ืœื›ืœ ื”ื ื•ืฉืื™ื ื‘ื•ื•ื™ืงื™ืคื“ื™ื” ื”ืงืฉื•ืจื™ื ื‘ื›ื“ื•ืจื’ืœ. ื‘ืคื•ืจื˜ืœ ื ืžืฆืื™ื ืงื™ืฉื•ืจื™ื ืœืขืจื›ื™ื ื•ืœืชืžื•ื ื•ืช ื ื‘ื—ืจื•ืช ื‘ื ื•ืฉื, ืœืื™ืฉื™ื ื‘ื•ืœื˜ื™ื ื‘ืชื—ื•ื, ืœืžื•ืฉื’ื™ื ื—ืฉื•ื‘ื™ื ื•ืœื ื•ืฉืื™ ืžืฉื ื”. ื”ืฆื™ื˜ื•ื˜ ื”ื™ื•ืžื™ ื›ืœ ื”ืžื•ืกื™ืฃ ื’ื•ืจืข ื”ื˜ื™ืค ื”ื™ื•ืžื™ ื‘ืืจื’ื– ื”ื—ื•ืœ ื ื™ืชืŸ ืœื‘ืฆืข ื ื™ืกื•ื™ื™ ืขืจื™ื›ื” ื‘ื‘ื˜ื—ื”. ื’ืฉื• ืœืืจื’ื– ื”ื—ื•ืœ, ืœื—ืฆื• ืขืœ ื”ืœืฉื•ื ื™ืช "ืขืจื™ื›ื”" ื•ื ืกื• ื‘ืขืฆืžื›ื! ื—ื“ืฉื•ืช ื•ืืงื˜ื•ืืœื™ื” ืขืจืš ืžื•ืžืœืฅ ื’ืจืฉึนื ืฉืœื•ื (1897โ€“1982) ื”ื™ื” ืžื’ื“ื•ืœื™ ื—ื•ืงืจื™ ื”ืงื‘ืœื”, ืกืคืจืŸ, ื•ื›ืŸ ืืกืคืŸ ืกืคืจื™ ืงื‘ืœื”, ื—ืกื™ื“ื•ืช ื•ืžื™ืกื˜ื™ืงื”. ื‘ื ื™ื’ื•ื“ ืœืžืฉืคื—ืชื• ื”ืžืชื‘ื•ืœืœืช, ื ืžืฉืš ืœื™ื”ื“ื•ืช ื•ื”ื™ื” ื—ื‘ืจ ื‘ืืจื’ื•ืŸ ื”ืฆื™ื•ื ื™ "ื™ื•ึผื ื’ ื™ื•ึผื“ื”". ื”ื•ื ืœืžื“ ืขื‘ืจื™ืช ื•ืชืœืžื•ื“ ืžื’ื™ืœ ืฆืขื™ืจ ื•ื‘ื’ื™ืœ 18 ื”ื—ืœ ืœืœืžื•ื“ ืืช ืกืคืจ ื”ื–ื•ื”ืจ ื‘ื›ื•ื—ื•ืช ืขืฆืžื•. ืืช ืขื‘ื•ื“ืช ื”ื“ื•ืงื˜ื•ืจื˜ ืฉืœื•, ืขืœ ืกืคืจ ื”ื‘ื”ื™ืจ, ืขืฉื” ื‘ืื•ื ื™ื‘ืจืกื™ื˜ืช ื‘ืจืœื™ืŸ. ื‘ืฉื ืช 1923 ืขืœื” ืœืืจืฅ ื™ืฉืจืืœ ื•ื ื™ื”ืœ ืืช ื”ืžื—ืœืงื” ืœื™ื”ื“ื•ืช ื‘ื‘ื™ืช ื”ืกืคืจื™ื ื”ืœืื•ืžื™. ื‘ื™ืŸ ื”ืฉื ื™ื 1925 ืœ-1964 ื”ื™ื” ืžืจืฆื” ืœืงื‘ืœื” ื‘ืื•ื ื™ื‘ืจืกื™ื˜ื” ื”ืขื‘ืจื™ืช. ื‘ืžื”ืœืš ื”ืงืจื™ื™ืจื” ืฉืœื• ื”ื•ื–ืžืŸ ืœื”ืจืฆื•ืช ื‘ืžื•ืกื“ื•ืช ืืงื“ืžื™ื™ื ื™ื•ืงืจืชื™ื™ื ื‘ื›ืœ ื”ืขื•ืœื. ืคืขื™ืœื•ืชื• ื”ืฆื™ื‘ื•ืจื™ืช ื›ืœืœื”, ื‘ื™ืŸ ื”ื™ืชืจ, ืคืจืกื•ื ืžืืžืจื™ื ื‘ืขื ื™ื™ื ื™ ื”ืฉืขื”, ื—ื‘ืจื•ืช ื‘ืชื ื•ืขืช "ื‘ืจื™ืช ืฉืœื•ื", ื•ืฉืœื™ื—ื•ืช ืžื˜ืขื ื”ืื•ื ื™ื‘ืจืกื™ื˜ื” ื”ืขื‘ืจื™ืช ืœืื™ืจื•ืคื” ืœืฉื ื”ืฆืœืช ืกืคืจื™ื ืฉื”ื•ื—ืจืžื• ื‘ืชืงื•ืคืช ื”ืฉื•ืื”. ื‘ื ื•ืกืฃ, ืกื™ื™ืข ื‘ื”ืงืžืช ืžืกืคืจ ืžื›ื•ื ื™ ืžื—ืงืจ ื•ืžื•ืกื“ื•ืช ืืงื“ืžื™ื™ื ื•ืืฃ ืขืžื“ ื‘ืจืืฉ ื—ืœืง ืžื”ื. ืฉืœื•ื ื”ืงื“ื™ืฉ ืืช ื—ื™ื™ื• ืœื—ืงืจ ื”ืžื™ืกื˜ื™ืงื” ื”ื™ื”ื•ื“ื™ืช ื•ื”ื™ื” ืžื”ืจืืฉื•ื ื™ื ืฉื—ืงืจื• ืืช ื”ืชื—ื•ื ื‘ืืžืฆืขื•ืช ื›ืœื™ ืžื—ืงืจ ืืงื“ืžื™ื™ื. ื”ื•ื ื’ื™ืœื” ื•ื”ื•ืฆื™ื ืœืื•ืจ ื›ืชื‘ื™ ื™ื“ ืจื‘ื™ื ื‘ืชื—ื•ื ื”ืงื‘ืœื” ื•ื—ืงืจ ืืช ื›ืœ ืขื ืคื™ ืชื•ืจืช ื”ืกื•ื“ ื”ื™ื”ื•ื“ื™ืช. ื‘ื”ื’ื™ืขื• ืœื’ื™ืœ 80 ืžื ืชื” ื”ื‘ื™ื‘ืœื™ื•ื’ืจืคื™ื” ืฉืœื• ื›-600 ืžื—ืงืจื™ื ื‘ืชื—ื•ื ื”ืงื‘ืœื”. ืขื ืกืคืจื™ื• ื”ื ื•ื“ืขื™ื ื‘ื™ื•ืชืจ ื ื™ืชืŸ ืœืžื ื•ืช ืืช ืกื“ืจืช ื”ืจืฆืื•ืชื™ื•, ืžืฉื ืช 1938, ืขืœ ื”ื–ืจืžื™ื ื”ืขื™ืงืจื™ื™ื ืฉืœ ื”ืžื™ืกื˜ื™ืงื” ื”ื™ื”ื•ื“ื™ืช (ื‘ืื ื’ืœื™ืช), ื•ืžื—ืงืจื• ืขืœ ืฉื‘ืชื™ ืฆื‘ื™ ื•ื”ืชื ื•ืขื” ื”ืฉื‘ืชืื™ืช ื‘ื™ืžื™ ื—ื™ื™ื•, ืžืฉื ืช 1957, ืฉื ื™ื”ื ืชื•ืจื’ืžื• ืœืฉืคื•ืช ืจื‘ื•ืช ื•ื”ืงื ื• ืœื• ื”ื›ืจื” ื‘ื™ื ืœืื•ืžื™ืช. ืขืœ ืคื•ืขืœื• ื”ืืงื“ืžื™ ื”ื•ื ื–ื›ื” ื‘ืชื•ืืจื™ ื›ื‘ื•ื“ ื•ื‘ืคืจืกื™ื ืจื‘ื™ื ื‘ืืจืฅ ื•ื‘ืžื“ื™ื ื•ืช ืฉื•ื ื•ืช ื‘ืขื•ืœื, ืืฃ ืขืœ ืคื™ ืฉื—ืœืง ืžืžื—ืงืจื™ื•, ื‘ืขื™ืงืจ ื‘ืชื—ื•ื ื”ื—ืกื™ื“ื•ืช ื•ื”ืฉื‘ืชืื•ืช, ืขื•ืจืจ ื‘ืฉืขืชื• ืžื—ืœื•ืงื•ืช ืงืฉื•ืช. ื”ืฉืคืขืชื” ืฉืœ ืชื•ืจืชื• ื—ืจื’ื” ืžืขื‘ืจ ืœืขื•ืœื ื”ืืงื“ืžื™ื” ื•ืžื“ืขื™ ื”ื™ื”ื“ื•ืช, ื•ื”ื™ื ืžืžืฉื™ื›ื” ืœื”ืฉืคื™ืข ืขืœ ืจื‘ื™ื ื’ื ืœืื—ืจ ืžื•ืชื•. ืžื“ื™ ืฉื ื” ืžืชืคืจืกืžื™ื ืงื‘ืฆื™ื ื”ืžื›ื ืกื™ื ืืช ืžื—ืงืจื™ื• ื‘ื ื•ืฉืื™ื ืฉื•ื ื™ื, ื•ื›ืŸ ืžืชืคืจืกืžื™ื ื™ื•ืžื ื™ื• ื”ืื™ืฉื™ื™ื ื•ืชื›ืชื•ื‘ื•ืช ืฉื ื™ื”ืœ. ื‘ืžืงื‘ื™ืœ, ืžืชืคืจืกืžื™ื ืขืฉืจื•ืช ืžื—ืงืจื™ื ืขืœ ืžื—ืงืจื™ื•, ืฉื—ืœืงื ื‘ืื™ื ืœื”ืคืจื™ืš ื—ืœืง ืžื”ื ื—ื•ืช ื”ื™ืกื•ื“ ืฉืงื‘ืข. ืœืื—ืจ ืžื•ืชื•, ื‘ื”ืชืื ืœื”ื•ืจืื•ืช ืฉื”ืฉืื™ืจ, ื”ื•ืขื‘ืจื• ืœืกืคืจื™ื™ื” ื”ืœืื•ืžื™ืช ืืจื›ื™ื•ื ื• ื•ืกืคืจื™ื™ืชื• ื‘ืชื•ืจืช ื”ืกื•ื“, ืฉื”ื›ื™ืœื• ื›-25,000 ืกืคืจื™ื ืฉืงื™ื‘ืฅ ื‘ืžืฉืš ื—ื™ื™ื•, ืžื—ืฆื™ืชื ื‘ืชื•ืจืช ื”ืกื•ื“, ื•ื”ื ื›ื•ืœืœื™ื ืืช ืžืจื‘ื™ืช ื”ืคืจืกื•ืžื™ื ื‘ื“ืคื•ืก ื‘ืชื—ื•ื ื–ื”. ืชืžื•ื ืช ื”ื™ื•ื ื”ื™ื•ื ื‘ื”ื™ืกื˜ื•ืจื™ื” 21 ื‘ืคื‘ืจื•ืืจ โ€“ ื—ื•ื“ืฉ ืคื‘ืจื•ืืจ โ€“ ื”ื™ื•ื ื‘ื”ื™ืกื˜ื•ืจื™ื” ืื™ืจื•ืขื™ื ื‘ืœื•ื— ื”ืขื‘ืจื™ ืคืจืฉืช ื”ืฉื‘ื•ืข: ืชืจื•ืžื”ื”ื“ืฃ ื”ื™ื•ืžื™: ืžืกื›ืช ืžื ื—ื•ืช, ื“ืฃ ืž"ืื“' ื‘ืื“ืจ ื”'ืชืฉืค"ื• - ืื™ืจื•ืขื™ื ื‘ืœื•ื— ื”ืขื‘ืจื™ ืขืจืš ืžื•ืžืœืฅ ื’ืจืฉึนื ืฉืœื•ื (1897โ€“1982) ื”ื™ื” ืžื’ื“ื•ืœื™ ื—ื•ืงืจื™ ื”ืงื‘ืœื”, ืกืคืจืŸ, ื•ื›ืŸ ืืกืคืŸ ืกืคืจื™ ืงื‘ืœื”, ื—ืกื™ื“ื•ืช ื•ืžื™ืกื˜ื™ืงื”. ื‘ื ื™ื’ื•ื“ ืœืžืฉืคื—ืชื• ื”ืžืชื‘ื•ืœืœืช, ื ืžืฉืš ืœื™ื”ื“ื•ืช ื•ื”ื™ื” ื—ื‘ืจ ื‘ืืจื’ื•ืŸ ื”ืฆื™ื•ื ื™ "ื™ื•ึผื ื’ ื™ื•ึผื“ื”". ื”ื•ื ืœืžื“ ืขื‘ืจื™ืช ื•ืชืœืžื•ื“ ืžื’ื™ืœ ืฆืขื™ืจ ื•ื‘ื’ื™ืœ 18 ื”ื—ืœ ืœืœืžื•ื“ ืืช ืกืคืจ ื”ื–ื•ื”ืจ ื‘ื›ื•ื—ื•ืช ืขืฆืžื•. ืืช ืขื‘ื•ื“ืช ื”ื“ื•ืงื˜ื•ืจื˜ ืฉืœื•, ืขืœ ืกืคืจ ื”ื‘ื”ื™ืจ, ืขืฉื” ื‘ืื•ื ื™ื‘ืจืกื™ื˜ืช ื‘ืจืœื™ืŸ. ื‘ืฉื ืช 1923 ืขืœื” ืœืืจืฅ ื™ืฉืจืืœ ื•ื ื™ื”ืœ ืืช ื”ืžื—ืœืงื” ืœื™ื”ื“ื•ืช ื‘ื‘ื™ืช ื”ืกืคืจื™ื ื”ืœืื•ืžื™. ื‘ื™ืŸ ื”ืฉื ื™ื 1925 ืœ-1964 ื”ื™ื” ืžืจืฆื” ืœืงื‘ืœื” ื‘ืื•ื ื™ื‘ืจืกื™ื˜ื” ื”ืขื‘ืจื™ืช. ื‘ืžื”ืœืš ื”ืงืจื™ื™ืจื” ืฉืœื• ื”ื•ื–ืžืŸ ืœื”ืจืฆื•ืช ื‘ืžื•ืกื“ื•ืช ืืงื“ืžื™ื™ื ื™ื•ืงืจืชื™ื™ื ื‘ื›ืœ ื”ืขื•ืœื. ืคืขื™ืœื•ืชื• ื”ืฆื™ื‘ื•ืจื™ืช ื›ืœืœื”, ื‘ื™ืŸ ื”ื™ืชืจ, ืคืจืกื•ื ืžืืžืจื™ื ื‘ืขื ื™ื™ื ื™ ื”ืฉืขื”, ื—ื‘ืจื•ืช ื‘ืชื ื•ืขืช "ื‘ืจื™ืช ืฉืœื•ื", ื•ืฉืœื™ื—ื•ืช ืžื˜ืขื ื”ืื•ื ื™ื‘ืจืกื™ื˜ื” ื”ืขื‘ืจื™ืช ืœืื™ืจื•ืคื” ืœืฉื ื”ืฆืœืช ืกืคืจื™ื ืฉื”ื•ื—ืจืžื• ื‘ืชืงื•ืคืช ื”ืฉื•ืื”. ื‘ื ื•ืกืฃ, ืกื™ื™ืข ื‘ื”ืงืžืช ืžืกืคืจ ืžื›ื•ื ื™ ืžื—ืงืจ ื•ืžื•ืกื“ื•ืช ืืงื“ืžื™ื™ื ื•ืืฃ ืขืžื“ ื‘ืจืืฉ ื—ืœืง ืžื”ื. ืฉืœื•ื ื”ืงื“ื™ืฉ ืืช ื—ื™ื™ื• ืœื—ืงืจ ื”ืžื™ืกื˜ื™ืงื” ื”ื™ื”ื•ื“ื™ืช ื•ื”ื™ื” ืžื”ืจืืฉื•ื ื™ื ืฉื—ืงืจื• ืืช ื”ืชื—ื•ื ื‘ืืžืฆืขื•ืช ื›ืœื™ ืžื—ืงืจ ืืงื“ืžื™ื™ื. ื”ื•ื ื’ื™ืœื” ื•ื”ื•ืฆื™ื ืœืื•ืจ ื›ืชื‘ื™ ื™ื“ ืจื‘ื™ื ื‘ืชื—ื•ื ื”ืงื‘ืœื” ื•ื—ืงืจ ืืช ื›ืœ ืขื ืคื™ ืชื•ืจืช ื”ืกื•ื“ ื”ื™ื”ื•ื“ื™ืช. ื‘ื”ื’ื™ืขื• ืœื’ื™ืœ 80 ืžื ืชื” ื”ื‘ื™ื‘ืœื™ื•ื’ืจืคื™ื” ืฉืœื• ื›-600 ืžื—ืงืจื™ื ื‘ืชื—ื•ื ื”ืงื‘ืœื”. ืขื ืกืคืจื™ื• ื”ื ื•ื“ืขื™ื ื‘ื™ื•ืชืจ ื ื™ืชืŸ ืœืžื ื•ืช ืืช ืกื“ืจืช ื”ืจืฆืื•ืชื™ื•, ืžืฉื ืช 1938, ืขืœ ื”ื–ืจืžื™ื ื”ืขื™ืงืจื™ื™ื ืฉืœ ื”ืžื™ืกื˜ื™ืงื” ื”ื™ื”ื•ื“ื™ืช (ื‘ืื ื’ืœื™ืช), ื•ืžื—ืงืจื• ืขืœ ืฉื‘ืชื™ ืฆื‘ื™ ื•ื”ืชื ื•ืขื” ื”ืฉื‘ืชืื™ืช ื‘ื™ืžื™ ื—ื™ื™ื•, ืžืฉื ืช 1957, ืฉื ื™ื”ื ืชื•ืจื’ืžื• ืœืฉืคื•ืช ืจื‘ื•ืช ื•ื”ืงื ื• ืœื• ื”ื›ืจื” ื‘ื™ื ืœืื•ืžื™ืช. ืขืœ ืคื•ืขืœื• ื”ืืงื“ืžื™ ื”ื•ื ื–ื›ื” ื‘ืชื•ืืจื™ ื›ื‘ื•ื“ ื•ื‘ืคืจืกื™ื ืจื‘ื™ื ื‘ืืจืฅ ื•ื‘ืžื“ื™ื ื•ืช ืฉื•ื ื•ืช ื‘ืขื•ืœื, ืืฃ ืขืœ ืคื™ ืฉื—ืœืง ืžืžื—ืงืจื™ื•, ื‘ืขื™ืงืจ ื‘ืชื—ื•ื ื”ื—ืกื™ื“ื•ืช ื•ื”ืฉื‘ืชืื•ืช, ืขื•ืจืจ ื‘ืฉืขืชื• ืžื—ืœื•ืงื•ืช ืงืฉื•ืช. ื”ืฉืคืขืชื” ืฉืœ ืชื•ืจืชื• ื—ืจื’ื” ืžืขื‘ืจ ืœืขื•ืœื ื”ืืงื“ืžื™ื” ื•ืžื“ืขื™ ื”ื™ื”ื“ื•ืช, ื•ื”ื™ื ืžืžืฉื™ื›ื” ืœื”ืฉืคื™ืข ืขืœ ืจื‘ื™ื ื’ื ืœืื—ืจ ืžื•ืชื•. ืžื“ื™ ืฉื ื” ืžืชืคืจืกืžื™ื ืงื‘ืฆื™ื ื”ืžื›ื ืกื™ื ืืช ืžื—ืงืจื™ื• ื‘ื ื•ืฉืื™ื ืฉื•ื ื™ื, ื•ื›ืŸ ืžืชืคืจืกืžื™ื ื™ื•ืžื ื™ื• ื”ืื™ืฉื™ื™ื ื•ืชื›ืชื•ื‘ื•ืช ืฉื ื™ื”ืœ. ื‘ืžืงื‘ื™ืœ, ืžืชืคืจืกืžื™ื ืขืฉืจื•ืช ืžื—ืงืจื™ื ืขืœ ืžื—ืงืจื™ื•, ืฉื—ืœืงื ื‘ืื™ื ืœื”ืคืจื™ืš ื—ืœืง ืžื”ื ื—ื•ืช ื”ื™ืกื•ื“ ืฉืงื‘ืข. ืœืื—ืจ ืžื•ืชื•, ื‘ื”ืชืื ืœื”ื•ืจืื•ืช ืฉื”ืฉืื™ืจ, ื”ื•ืขื‘ืจื• ืœืกืคืจื™ื™ื” ื”ืœืื•ืžื™ืช ืืจื›ื™ื•ื ื• ื•ืกืคืจื™ื™ืชื• ื‘ืชื•ืจืช ื”ืกื•ื“, ืฉื”ื›ื™ืœื• ื›-25,000 ืกืคืจื™ื ืฉืงื™ื‘ืฅ ื‘ืžืฉืš ื—ื™ื™ื•, ืžื—ืฆื™ืชื ื‘ืชื•ืจืช ื”ืกื•ื“, ื•ื”ื ื›ื•ืœืœื™ื ืืช ืžืจื‘ื™ืช ื”ืคืจืกื•ืžื™ื ื‘ื“ืคื•ืก ื‘ืชื—ื•ื ื–ื”. ืคื•ืจื˜ืœื™ื ืคื•ืจื˜ืœ ื”ื™ื•ื ื™ื•ื ืคื˜ื™ืจืชื• ืฉืœ ื“ืื ืงืŸ ืื“ื•ืืจื“ืก ืคื•ืจื˜ืœ ื”ื›ื“ื•ืจื’ืœ ื”ื•ื ืฉืขืจ ืœื›ืœ ื”ื ื•ืฉืื™ื ื‘ื•ื•ื™ืงื™ืคื“ื™ื” ื”ืงืฉื•ืจื™ื ื‘ื›ื“ื•ืจื’ืœ. ื‘ืคื•ืจื˜ืœ ื ืžืฆืื™ื ืงื™ืฉื•ืจื™ื ืœืขืจื›ื™ื ื•ืœืชืžื•ื ื•ืช ื ื‘ื—ืจื•ืช ื‘ื ื•ืฉื, ืœืื™ืฉื™ื ื‘ื•ืœื˜ื™ื ื‘ืชื—ื•ื, ืœืžื•ืฉื’ื™ื ื—ืฉื•ื‘ื™ื ื•ืœื ื•ืฉืื™ ืžืฉื ื”. ื”ืฆื™ื˜ื•ื˜ ื”ื™ื•ืžื™ ื›ืœ ื”ืžื•ืกื™ืฃ ื’ื•ืจืข ืชืžื•ื ืช ื”ื™ื•ื ื”ื˜ื™ืค ื”ื™ื•ืžื™ ื‘ืืจื’ื– ื”ื—ื•ืœ ื ื™ืชืŸ ืœื‘ืฆืข ื ื™ืกื•ื™ื™ ืขืจื™ื›ื” ื‘ื‘ื˜ื—ื”. ื’ืฉื• ืœืืจื’ื– ื”ื—ื•ืœ, ืœื—ืฆื• ืขืœ ื”ืœืฉื•ื ื™ืช "ืขืจื™ื›ื”" ื•ื ืกื• ื‘ืขืฆืžื›ื! ื”ื™ื“ืขืช ื”ื™ื•ื ื‘ื”ื™ืกื˜ื•ืจื™ื” 21 ื‘ืคื‘ืจื•ืืจ โ€“ ื—ื•ื“ืฉ ืคื‘ืจื•ืืจ โ€“ ื”ื™ื•ื ื‘ื”ื™ืกื˜ื•ืจื™ื” ืื™ืจื•ืขื™ื ื‘ืœื•ื— ื”ืขื‘ืจื™ ืคืจืฉืช ื”ืฉื‘ื•ืข: ืชืจื•ืžื”ื”ื“ืฃ ื”ื™ื•ืžื™: ืžืกื›ืช ืžื ื—ื•ืช, ื“ืฃ ืž"ืื“' ื‘ืื“ืจ ื”'ืชืฉืค"ื• - ืื™ืจื•ืขื™ื ื‘ืœื•ื— ื”ืขื‘ืจื™ ื—ื“ืฉื•ืช ื•ืืงื˜ื•ืืœื™ื” ืžื™ื–ืžื™ ื•ื™ืงื™ืžื“ื™ื” ื ื•ืกืคื™ื: Welcome to the Hebrew Wikipedia! For assistance in other languages, please see the embassy. ืœืœื ื”ื•ื“ืขืช ื”ื’ื ื” ืื•ื˜ื•ืžื˜ื™ืช
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyonc%C3%A9] | [TOKENS: 13092]
Contents Beyoncรฉ Beyoncรฉ Giselle Knowles-Carter (/biหˆษ’nseษช/ โ“˜ bee-ON-say; born September 4, 1981) is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and businesswoman. Known for her vocal ability, artistic reinventions, and live performances, she is widely regarded as one of the most culturally significant figures of the 21st century. Credited with shaping popular music, Beyoncรฉ is often deemed one of the greatest entertainers of all time. Beyoncรฉ rose to fame in the late 1990s as the lead singer of Destiny's Child, one of the best-selling girl groups of all time. Her debut solo album, Dangerously in Love (2003), became one of the best-selling albums of the 21st century. After Destiny's Child disbanded in 2005, Beyoncรฉ released the funk-imbued B'Day (2006) and starred in the drama film Dreamgirls (2006). Her marriage to rapper Jay-Z and portrayal of Etta James in the biopic Cadillac Records (2008) influenced her pop-oriented double album I Am... Sasha Fierce (2008). Through the 2000s, Beyoncรฉ garnered the US Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles "Crazy in Love", "Baby Boy", "Check on It", "Irreplaceable", and "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)". After forming the management company Parkwood Entertainment, Beyoncรฉ embraced traditional R&B and soul on 4 (2011). The electronic-influenced Beyoncรฉ (2013) popularized surprise and visual albums, inspiring the setting of Friday as Global Release Day, while the eclectic Lemonade (2016) sparked sociopolitical discourse and was the best-selling album of 2016. Her ongoing trilogy projectโ€”consisting of the queer-inspired dance album Renaissance (2022) and the Americana-rooted country record Cowboy Carter (2024)โ€”has highlighted the overlooked contributions of Black pioneers to American musical and cultural history, spawning the respective US number-one singles "Break My Soul" and "Texas Hold 'Em". Beyoncรฉ is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with estimated sales of over 200 million records. She is the most RIAA-certified female artist and the only woman whose first eight studio albums each debuted atop the US Billboard 200. One of the most-awarded artists in popular music, she is the recipient of a record 35 Grammy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Peabody Award. Beyoncรฉ is the most-awarded artist of the BET Awards (36), MTV Video Music Awards (30), NAACP Image Awards (32), and Soul Train Music Awards (25). The first woman to headline an all-stadium tour, she is the highest-grossing Black live act of all time. Life and career Beyoncรฉ Giselle Knowles was born in Houston, Texas, on September 4, 1981. Her mother, Tina Knowles (nรฉe Beyoncรฉ), was a hairdresser and salon owner, while her father, Mathew Knowles, was a sales manager at Xerox. Mathew is African-American, while Tina is Louisiana Creole with African, French, Irish, Breton, Norman, and Native American ancestry. Beyoncรฉ's younger sister, Solange, is also a singer and actress. They are descendants of Acadian militia officer Joseph Broussard, who was exiled to French Louisiana after the expulsion of the Acadians. Both sisters also have Belgian ancestry from Hainaut Province, Wallonia. Beyoncรฉ was raised within multiple religious traditions, attending both St. John's United Methodist Church and St. Mary of the Purification Catholic Church in Houston. Her first job as a child was sweeping hair and occasionally performing for customers at her mother's hair salon. Beyoncรฉ began her education at St. Mary's Catholic Montessori School, where she also took dance classes. Her vocals were discovered by her dance instructor, who began humming a song that Beyoncรฉ completed. Beyoncรฉ's interest in music and performing grew after she won a school talent show at the age of seven by singing John Lennon's "Imagine", winning against older competitors aged fifteen and sixteen. In 1990, a nine-year-old Beyoncรฉ enrolled in Parker Elementary School, a music magnet school in Houston, where she performed with the school's choir. She later attended the Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and subsequently Alief Elsik High School. Beyoncรฉ was also a member of the choir at St. John's United Methodist Church, where she sang her first solo and was a soloist for two years. In 1990, Beyoncรฉ met singer LaTavia Roberson while in an audition for an all-girl entertainment group. Joined by Kelly Rowland two years later, the trio was placed in Girl's Tyme, a group that performed rap and dance routines on Houston's talent show circuit. In 1993, the group was entered in Star Search, the largest national talent show on television at the time. Competing in the show's singing category, the group lost the competition, which Beyoncรฉ attributed to a poor song choice. After LeToya Luckett joined in 1993, Girl's Tyme continued performing as an opening act for established R&B girl groups. In 1995, Mathew left his job to manage the group, which halved the Knowles family's income, leading to them moving into separate apartments. The group was briefly signed by Elektra Records and later dropped; ensuing tensions led to a six-month separation of Beyoncรฉ's parents. The Knowles family later reunited and the group secured a contract with Columbia Records, aided by talent scout Teresa LaBarbera Whites. The group adopted the name Destiny's Child in 1996, based upon a passage in the Book of Isaiah. In 1997, following an appearance on the soundtrack for the film Men in Black, they released their debut single and first major hit, "No, No, No", which preceded their debut album, Destiny's Child (1998), a moderate success. The group's second album, The Writing's on the Wall, was released in July 1999 and peaked at number five on the US Billboard 200, later achieving multi-platinum status in the country. The record spawned the singles "Bills, Bills, Bills", "Say My Name", and "Jumpin', Jumpin'"; the former two both peaked atop the US Billboard Hot 100. "Say My Name" won Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals and Best R&B Song at the 2001 Grammy Awards. The Writing's on the Wall became one of the best-selling R&B albums of all time, having sold 13 million copies worldwide. Following several lineup changes, Destiny's Child's final lineup comprised Beyoncรฉ, Rowland, and Michelle Williams. In early 2001, while the group were completing work on their third album, Beyoncรฉ secured a leading role in the MTV made-for-television film Carmen: A Hip Hopera, an interpretation of the 19th-century opera Carmen. Destiny's Child's third studio album, Survivor, was released in May 2001; it debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 663,000 copies in its first week. The album produced the Billboard Hot 100 number-ones "Independent Woman Part I" and "Bootylicious", as well as the title track, which peaked at number two. "Survivor" earned the group a Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. Following the release of their holiday album, 8 Days of Christmas (2001), Destiny's Child announced a hiatus to allow each member to pursue solo careers. In July 2002, Beyoncรฉ made her theatrical film debut, portraying Foxxy Cleopatra in Austin Powers in Goldmember. She released "Work It Out" as the lead single from the film's soundtrack. Her breakthrough as a solo artist came when she featured on Jay-Z's track "'03 Bonnie & Clyde" from his album The Blueprint 2: The Gift & The Curse (2002). The single peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100. Beyoncรฉ appeared as Jay-Z's girlfriend in the music video for the song, fueling speculation about a relationship. She later shared that they began dating when she was nineteen, after a year and a half of friendship. In May 2003, Beyoncรฉ released "Crazy in Love", the lead single from her debut solo studio album, Dangerously in Love. The song featured Jay-Z and became Beyoncรฉ's first number-one single as a solo artist on the US Billboard Hot 100, topping the chart for eight weeks. On June 14, 2003, Beyoncรฉ premiered songs from Dangerously in Love, during her first solo concert, which was broadcast as a pay-per-view television special. Released ten days later, the album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 317,000 copies in its first week. The single "Baby Boy" topped the Billboard Hot 100 for nine weeks, while "Me, Myself and I" and "Naughty Girl" both reached the top five. Dangerously in Love earned Beyoncรฉ five awards at the 46th Annual Grammy Awards, including Best Contemporary R&B Album and Best R&B Song for "Crazy in Love". One of the best-selling albums of the 21st century, Dangerously in Love has sold more than 11 million copies globally. Beyoncรฉ starred alongside Cuba Gooding Jr. in the musical comedy The Fighting Temptations (2003), portraying a single mother and the love interest of Gooding's character. In November 2003, she embarked on the European Dangerously in Love Tour and North American Verizon Ladies First Tour alongside Missy Elliott and Alicia Keys. On February 1, 2004, she performed "The Star-Spangled Banner", the national anthem of the US, at the Super Bowl XXXVIII. In November 2004, Destiny's Child released their final album, titled Destiny Fulfilled. The record peaked at number two on the Billboard 200, spawning the US top-five singles "Lose My Breath" and "Soldier". In 2005, Destiny's Child embarked on a global concert tour titled Destiny Fulfilled... and Lovin' It. The group announced that they would disband at the end of the tour. Destiny's Child released their first compilation album, #1's, in October 2005 and were honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in March 2006. Beyoncรฉ released "Dรฉjร  Vu" as the lead single from her second studio album, B'Day, in June 2006. A collaboration with Jay-Z, the song reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100. B'Day was released internationally on September 4, 2006, to coincide with her twenty-fifth birthday. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, with 541,000 copies sold in its first week. "Irreplaceable" was released as the second international single, and topped the Billboard Hot 100 for ten weeks. B'Day's other singlesโ€”"Ring the Alarm", "Get Me Bodied", and "Green Light"โ€”each saw moderate chart success. At the 2007 Grammy Awards, B'Day and some of its songs received five nominations, winning Best Contemporary R&B Album. At the 2008 Grammy Awards, songs from the album garnered two more nominations, including Record of the Year for "Irreplaceable". Beyoncรฉ's first acting role in 2006 was in the comedy film The Pink Panther. She performed "Check on It" as its theme song, which was included on #1's and on the European deluxe version of B'Day. "Check on It" peaked atop the Billboard Hot 100 for five consecutive weeks. Later that year, she starred in the drama film Dreamgirls, a cinematic adaptation of the 1981 Broadway musical, in which she portrayed a pop singer modeled after Diana Ross. In support of B'Day, Beyoncรฉ embarked on the Beyoncรฉ Experience in 2007, her first worldwide concert tour, which visited 97 venues. Simultaneously, B'Day was re-released with additional tracks, including the single "Beautiful Liar", a duet with Shakira, which peaked at number three in the US. In December 2007, Beyoncรฉ and Jay-Z became engaged. On April 4, 2008, Beyoncรฉ and Jay-Z married in a small, private ceremony; the latter confirmed their marriage in an interview later that year. Their marriage served as a creative inspiration for her third studio album, titled I Am... Sasha Fierce. Released on November 12, 2008, I Am... Sasha Fierce formally introduced her alter ego Sasha Fierce. A double album, it comprises two discsโ€”I Am... and Sasha Fierce; the former contains slow and midtempo pop and R&B ballads, while the latter focuses on uptempo beats that blend electropop and Europop elements. Selling 482,000 copies in its first week, it debuted atop the Billboard 200, marking Beyoncรฉ's third consecutive US number-one album. I Am... Sasha Fierce included Beyoncรฉ's fifth number-one on the Billboard Hot 100, "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)", as well as the UK chart-topping single, "If I Were a Boy". "Halo", which peaked at number five in the US, helped Beyoncรฉ attain more top-ten singles on the list than any other woman during the 2000s. Parodied and imitated around the world, the "Single Ladies" music video was described by the Toronto Star as the "first major dance craze" of the Internet age. At the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, the video won three categories, including Video of the Year. To promote I Am... Sasha Fierce, Beyoncรฉ embarked on the worldwide I Am... Tour, her second headlining worldwide concert tour; it grossed $119.5 million. Since its release, I Am... Sasha Fierce has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. Soon after its release, Beyoncรฉ starred as blues singer Etta James in the musical biopic Cadillac Records (2008). Her portrayal garnered her an NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture. In the psychological thriller Obsessed (2009), Beyoncรฉ played a woman protecting her family from her husband's stalker, which co-starred Ali Larter and Idris Elba. The film was critically panned, but Beyoncรฉ's acting saw favorable reception. Obsessed performed strongly at the US box office, earning $68 million on a $20 million budget. Beyoncรฉ performed "America the Beautiful" at president Barack Obama's 2009 presidential inauguration and "At Last" during the first inaugural dance. At the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards in 2010, she received ten nominationsโ€”both for I Am... Sasha Fierce and for her work in film soundtracksโ€”tying with Lauryn Hill for most Grammy nominations in a single year by a female artist. Beyoncรฉ won six of those nominations, including Best Contemporary R&B Album for I Am... Sasha Fierce and Song of the Year for "Single Ladies", breaking a record she previously tied in 2004 for the most Grammy awards won in a single night by a female artist. In 2010, Beyoncรฉ provided vocals on Lady Gaga's single "Telephone", from the latter's extended play The Fame Monster (2009). It peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100. In January 2010, Beyoncรฉ announced a hiatus from her music career. Over the nine-month break, she traveled to several European cities, the Great Wall of China, the Egyptian pyramids, Australia, English music festivals, and attended museum exhibitions and ballet performances. "Eat, Play, Love", a cover story written by Beyoncรฉ for Essence that detailed her career break, won her a writing award from the New York Association of Black Journalists. Around this time, she miscarried, retrospectively describing it as "the saddest thing" she had endured. Beyoncรฉ returned to the studio and wrote music to cope with the loss. In September 2010, Beyoncรฉ made her runway modelling debut at Tom Ford's Spring/Summer 2011 fashion show. In March 2011, her father Mathew stopped managing her career. A month later, during a photoshoot in Paris for her upcoming album cover, Beyoncรฉ unexpectedly discovered she was pregnant. Beyoncรฉ's fourth studio album, 4, was released on June 24, 2011, in the US and debuted atop the Billboard 200, selling 310,000 copies in its first week. It was her fourth consecutive number-one album in the US. 4 marked Beyoncรฉโ€™s first project made under her own creative direction following her split from her father. It was also her first album released through her management company, Parkwood Entertainment, and was conceived as a traditional R&B and soul record intended to stand apart from mainstream popular music. The songs "Run the World (Girls)", "Party", "Countdown", "Best Thing I Never Had", and "Love on Top" were released as singles in the US. The latter two peaked at numbers sixteen and twenty, respectively. On June 26, 2011, Beyoncรฉ became the first solo female artist in over two decades to headline the main Pyramid Stage at the Glastonbury Festival. The performance received praise from critics, with some outlets praising her growth as a live performer. In August 2011, Beyoncรฉ and Jay-Z attended the MTV Video Music Awards, in which the former performed "Love on Top" and revealed her pregnancy. Her announcement contributed to the ceremony becoming the most-watched broadcast in MTV history at the time, drawing 12.4 million viewers. The moment also set a Guinness World Record for the most tweets per second for a single event, with 8,868 tweets per second, and "Beyonce pregnant" became the most Googled phrase during the week of August 29, 2011. In August 2011, Beyoncรฉ headlined four exclusive shows at New York's Roseland Ballroom titled 4 Intimate Nights with Beyoncรฉ, performing songs from 4. That month, the album was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America after shipping one million copies to retail stores. In February 2018, 4 made Beyoncรฉ the first female artist to have three of her albums surpass one billion streams on Spotify. On January 7, 2012, Beyoncรฉ gave birth to her first daughter, Blue Ivy Carter, in New York City. In June 2012, she performed for four nights at Revel Atlantic City's Ovation Hall to celebrate the resort's opening. In January 2013, Beyoncรฉ performed the American national anthem during Obama's second presidential inauguration. In February, she headlined the Super Bowl XLVII halftime show in New Orleans. The performance became the second most tweeted-about moment in history at the time, generating 268,000 tweets per minute. That same month, she co-directed and premiered her feature-length documentary Life Is But a Dream on HBO, which offered an introspective look into both her personal and professional life. In April 2013, Beyoncรฉ embarked on the Mrs. Carter Show World Tour, released a cover of Amy Winehouse's "Back to Black" with Andrรฉ 3000 for The Great Gatsby's soundtrack, and in May, voiced Queen Tara in the animated film Epic. On December 13, 2013, she unexpectedly released her fifth studio album, Beyoncรฉ, on the iTunes Store without prior announcement or promotion. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart, selling 617,000 copies in its first week. It marked her fifth consecutive US number-one debut, making her the first woman in the chart's history to achieve this milestone with her first five studio albums. The album received widespread critical acclaim, and sold one million digital copies globally within six daysโ€”a record for any album on iTunes at the time. Musically rooted in electro-R&B, Beyoncรฉ explored darker, more personal themes than her previous work, including bulimia, postnatal depression, and the emotional complexities of marriage and motherhood. As a visual album, the album's music videos were recorded in secrecy to accompany to album's unexpected release. Beyoncรฉ is credited with helping popularize digital releases, as well as surprise and visual album formats; its release influenced the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry to adopt Friday as Global Release Day. The record spawned five singles: "Blow", "XO", "Drunk in Love", "Partition", and "Pretty Hurts". "Drunk in Love" featured Jay-Z and peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100. Beyoncรฉ sold 2.3 million units worldwide by the end of 2013, making it the one of the best-selling albums of the year. At the 57th Annual Grammy Awards, Beyoncรฉ received six nominations and won three: Best R&B Performance and Best R&B Song for "Drunk in Love", and Best Surround Sound Album for Beyoncรฉ. In April 2014, Beyoncรฉ and Jay-Zโ€”known collectively by their stage name the Cartersโ€”announced their first co-headlining stadium tour called the On the Run Tour. On August 24, 2014, she received the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at the MTV Video Music Awards, and won three additional honors: Best Video with a Social Message and Best Cinematography for "Pretty Hurts", and Best Collaboration for "Drunk in Love". The album was reissued as the Platinum Edition on November 24, 2014, featuring six additional songs. Beyoncรฉ released the single "Formation" on February 6, 2016, and performed it live for the first time during the NFL Super Bowl 50 halftime show. The performance sparked controversy due to its perceived allusions to the Black Panther Party on its fiftieth anniversary, as the NFL prohibits political statements during its events. On April 16, 2016, Beyoncรฉ released a teaser for a project titled Lemonade. An hour-long musical film and visual album premiered on HBO on April 23, coinciding with the release of the corresponding studio album of the same name exclusively on Tidal the same day. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and sold 653,000 copies in its first week. The number-one debut made Beyoncรฉ the first artist in Billboard history to have her first six studio albums debut atop the chart. All twelve tracks from Lemonade entered the Billboard Hot 100, making her the first female artist to chart twelve songs simultaneously. After the album's release, "Sorry", "Hold Up", "Freedom", and "All Night" were released as singles. It was the third best-selling album in the US in 2016, with 1.554 million copies sold, and the best-selling album globally that year, with 2.5 million copies sold. Beyoncรฉ embarked on the Formation World Tour from April to October 2016, with stops across North America and Europe. It was the first all-stadium tour by a female artist and received Tour of the Year at the 44th American Music Awards. The album's visuals earned eleven nominations at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awardsโ€”the most Beyoncรฉ had ever received in a single yearโ€”and won eight awards, including Video of the Year for "Formation". Beyoncรฉ became the show's most-awarded artist with 24 total awards, surpassing Madonna's previous record of 20 wins. In January 2017, Beyoncรฉ was announced as a headliner for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which would have made her only the second female artist to headline the event. However, on February 23, it was confirmed she would no longer perform as a result of her second pregnancy. Festival organizers later announced she would headline the 2018 edition instead. At the 59th Grammy Awards in February 2017, Lemonade led with nine nominations, including Album of the Year, and Record and Song of the Year for "Formation". Beyoncรฉ won two awards: Best Urban Contemporary Album for Lemonade and Best Music Video for "Formation". That month, Beyoncรฉ announced on Instagram that she was expecting twins. The post garnered over 6.3 million likes within a few hours, setting a world record for the most-liked image on the platform at the time. On July 13, she shared the first photo of herself with the twins, confirming they were born a month earlier on June 13. That post became the second most-liked on Instagram, following her original pregnancy announcement. The twinsโ€”a daughter, Rumi, and a son, Sirโ€”were born via caesarean section in California. Later that year, Beyoncรฉ featured on the remix of Ed Sheeran's "Perfect", which reached number one in the US, marking her sixth chart-topper as a solo artist. Beyoncรฉ headlined both weekends of the 2018 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Her performance on April 14 was the most-tweeted-about performance of the first weekend and became the most-watched live performance on YouTube. It received widespread praise from critics, many of whom described it as historic. The performance paid homage to Black cultureโ€”particularly focusing on historically Black colleges and universitiesโ€”and included a brief reunion of Destiny's Child. On June 6, 2018, Beyoncรฉ and Jay-Z launched their On the Run II Tour. After its final show, the couple released their first collaborative studio album, Everything Is Love, on June 16. The record debuted at number two in the US with 123,000 album-equivalent units sold first-week; its only single, "Apeshit", peaked at number thirteen on the Billboard Hot 100. On December 2, 2018, Beyoncรฉ and Jay-Z headlined the Global Citizen Festival: Mandela 100 at FNB Stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa. Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncรฉ, a documentary and concert film chronicling the 2018 Coachella performances, was released on Netflix on April 17, 2019, alongside Homecoming: The Live Album. The film earned six nominations at the 71st Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards in 2019. Beyoncรฉ starred as the voice of Nala in the 2019 remake of The Lion King, released in July that year. She also contributed to the film's soundtrack, performing a remade version of "Can You Feel the Love Tonight". Beyoncรฉ's original song "Spirit" was the lead single from both the official soundtrack and The Lion King: The Gift, a companion album she curated and produced. Incorporating gqom and Afrobeat, she recruited African producers to create The Gift, given the film's African setting. In September, ABC aired Beyoncรฉ Presents: Making The Gift, a surprise documentary detailing the album's creation. In April 2020, Megan Thee Stallion and Beyoncรฉ released a remix of the former's song "Savage", which topped the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Beyoncรฉ's seventh number-one as a soloist. In July 2020, Beyoncรฉ released Black Is King, the visual companion to The Gift, which she wrote, directed, and executive produced. At the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards in 2021, she led with nine nominations and won four awards, making her the most-awarded singer and woman in Grammy history, and the second most-awarded person overall. That same year, she co-wrote and recorded "Be Alive" for the biographical sports drama film King Richard, earning her first Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song at the 94th Academy Awards. On June 16, 2022, Beyoncรฉ announced the title of her seventh studio album, Renaissance. The album's lead single, "Break My Soul", was released four days later and peaked atop the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Beyoncรฉ's eighth number-one and twentieth top-ten song on the chart. This placed her alongside Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson as the only artists in chart history to earn at least twenty top-ten singles as solo acts and ten as members of a group. Renaissance was released on July 29, 2022, to critical acclaim. The album features Black dance music styles such as disco and house and largely pays homage to the historically overlooked contributions of Black queer pioneers to those genres. The album debuted atop the Billboard 200, with 332,000 copies sold in its first week. Its number-one debut made Beyoncรฉ the first artist to have her first seven studio albums debut at number one in the US. All of its sixteen songs charted on the Hot 100; its second single, "Cuff It", peaked at number six and became her longest-charting song on the chart. Upon the release of Renaissance, Beyoncรฉ revealed that it was the first installment of a trilogy developed and recorded during the COVID-19 pandemicโ€”a period she described as her "most creative". On January 21, 2023, Beyoncรฉ performed for an audience of influencers and journalists at a private event in Dubai. It was her first full concert in over four years and she was reportedly paid $24 million for the show, which sparked criticism due to the United Arab Emirates' laws criminalizing homosexuality. She then began the Renaissance World Tour across the US and Europe, which became the highest-grossing tour by a woman at the time. In November 2023, she released Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncรฉ, a documentary concert film that chronicled the tour's creation. She wrote, directed, and produced the film in partnership with AMC Theatres. She won four of her nine nominations at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards, making her the most-awarded person in Grammy history. On February 11, 2024, Beyoncรฉ announced the second installment of her trilogy project and released its first two singles, "Texas Hold 'Em" and "16 Carriages". "Texas Hold 'Em" became her ninth solo number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 and her first on the Billboard Global 200. On March 12, 2024, she announced the album's title, Cowboy Carter, releasing it to universal acclaim on March 29. Infused with Americana musical styles, Cowboy Carter highlights the historically overlooked contributions of Black pioneers to country music. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, making Beyoncรฉ the only female artist to debut her first eight studio albums at number one in the US, with 407,000 copies sold in its first week. The album's third single, "II Most Wanted", featuring Miley Cyrus, debuted at number six in the US. In July 2024, NBC released two promotional commercials featuring Beyoncรฉ for their coverage of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. She returned as Nala in Mufasa: The Lion King (2024), a prequel to the 2019 remake. In December 2024, she headlined the first-ever NFL Christmas Gameday Halftime Show, debuting songs from Cowboy Carter. At the 67th Annual Grammy Awards in 2025, she became the first Black artist in 50 years to win in the country categories, and the first Black artist to win Best Country Album. She also won Album of the Year, the first Black woman to do so in 26 years. That year, Beyoncรฉ embarked on the Cowboy Carter Tour across the US and Europe, which went on to become the highest-grossing country tour of all time. Artistry Beyoncรฉ's music is primarily R&B, pop, and hip-hop, and also incorporates elements of soul and funk. Known for her frequent artistic reinventions, Beyoncรฉ has been described as a musical "chameleon" by publications such as Vox and Billboard. Expanding beyond the hip-hop and R&B sound she featured in her previous two albumsโ€”Dangerously in Love and B'Dayโ€”I Am... Sasha Fierce incorporates a 1980s electropop- and Europop-imbued sound, featuring instruments such as synthesizers and the acoustic guitar. With the album 4, she expanded her use of soul and hip-hop compared to earlier work. Drawing from 1970s funk, 1980s pop, and 1990s soul influences, 4 featured elements of hard rock, reggae, and adult contemporary. Minimalism inspired Beyoncรฉ's eponymous album, which employed fragmented song structures that rejected traditional pop formats in favor of atmosphere. Lemonade incorporated a broader range of genres, including rock, country, gospel, reggae, and blues. The Lion King: The Gift was conceived as a record rooted in cultural celebration. As such, Beyoncรฉ recruited artists and producers from across the African continent and explored genres such as Afropop and gqom. Delving into disco, ballroom culture, and 1990s club sounds, Renaissance extensively made use of four-on-the-floor beats and pulsating synths, with interpolations of queer and Black dance music pioneers. Cowboy Carter was conceived as a country-rooted album that fuses R&B, pop, rock, folk, and Americana music; its soundscape includes pedal steel, accordion, harmonica, acoustic guitar, and banjo. Although she mainly records in English, Beyoncรฉ released Spanish-language tracks for Irreemplazable (2007)โ€”a Spanish reissue of songs from B'Day. Beyoncรฉ possesses a mezzo-soprano vocal range. T's Jody Rosen praised her musical tone and timbre as especially distinctive, calling her voice "one of the most compelling instruments in popular music". While Rosen credited the hip-hop era for shaping her rhythmic vocal style, he also noted her traditionalist leanings through balladry, gospel, and falsetto. Her voice was described as "velvety yet tart, with an insistent flutter and reserves of soul belting" by Jon Pareles. Chris Richards, in an article for The Washington Post, highlighted Beyoncรฉ's vocal range and power, noting she could "punctuate any beat with goose-bump-inducing whispers or full-bore diva-roars". On Dangerously in Love, Beyoncรฉ's vocals balance between sultry utters and powerful belting, while B'Day incorporated melismatic vocals and staccato phrasing. Throughout I Am... Sasha Fierce, Beyoncรฉ employs vibrato yelps and trills, often singing in a lower register on several tracks. With 4, she opted for "brass[y] and gritt[y]" vocals. "Love on Top" has multiple key changes with sustained vocal power, while growls and raspy textures characterize such songs as "Start Over". She embraced more breathy and airy vocals on Beyoncรฉ, with squeaky falsettos, frequent braggadocio, and wordless ecstasies accompanied by spoken word and rap-singingโ€”what music critic Kitty Empire dubbed "hood rat rapping". Beyoncรฉ adopted a looser, more genre-fluid approach on Lemonade, drawing on Southern roots with the twang of "Daddy Lessons"; a hushed and intimate tone on "Pray You Catch Me"; and raspy, distorted, and shouted vocals to channel raw anger on "Don't Hurt Yourself". On Renaissance, Beyoncรฉ's vocals are processed with electronic effects such as reverb, distortion, and modulation. She predominantly sings in her natural Texan accent on Cowboy Carter, with Southern American English elements. She experiments with an eclectic range of vocal styles on the record, including a classical operatic vocal style for the Caro mio ben excerpt on "Daughter". In Rolling Stone's 2023 list of the "200 Greatest Singers of All Time", Beyoncรฉ ranked eighth, with the magazine stating, "in [her] voice lies the entire history of Black music". Beyoncรฉ has a collaborative and experimental songwriting process, often merging different song parts to create new structures. Early in her career with Destiny's Child, her lyrics often focused on themes of female empowerment, as seen in songs like "Independent Women" and "Survivor". When her relationship with Jay-Z began, her songwriting style shifted to include more romantic and relationship-focused content with songs such as "Cater 2 U". Dangerously in Love explored sexual and romantic themes, with the follow-up B'Day delving into Black women's personal and spiritual discontent, fulfillment, self-worth, and agency. I Am... Sasha Fierce examined themes of love, heartbreak, and the tension between Beyoncรฉ's self and her stage alter ego; more personal themes characterized 4 and Beyoncรฉ, which delved into marriage, monogamy, and intimacy. Around the mid-2010s, Beyoncรฉ began exploring historical and political themes. Storytelling and poetry inspired Lemonade, an album that discusses Black womanhood, reconciliation, and heartbreakโ€”particularly in light of Jay-Z's alleged infidelity. Scholar Emily J. Lordi described the album as a "cinematic and sonic Afrodiasporic journey from betrayal to redemption". Renaissance and Cowboy Carter were conceived to highlight the historically overlooked and marginalized contributions of Black pioneers to American musical and cultural history. The former pays tribute to the influence of Black queer artists in shaping dance music, while the latter centers on the role of Black people in the development of country music. Critics and music artists have analyzed Beyoncรฉ's distinctive style of songwriting. Caroline Polachek, who worked on "No Angel", praised her ability to make connections between ideas, and called her a "genius" writer and producer. While writing with Beyoncรฉ, record producer Sean Garrett described her as "very particular about her brand", stating that she rejects anything that feels off-brand. Dubbed a "meticulous curator" by The New Yorker, Beyoncรฉ has been studied by some academics as a musical archivist, while others have likened her storytelling to that of a modern-day griot. Billboard named her the fifth-top songwriter of the 21st century based on Hot 100 chart success. She has received co-writing credits on most of her songs. Beyoncรฉ often faces scrutiny over the number of writing credits she receives, with some questioning the extent of her contributions. Beyoncรฉ has named Michael Jackson as her greatest musical influence. At the age of five, she attended her first concert where Jackson performed, an experience she later said helped her realize her purpose as a performer. She has also credited Tina Turner as a major inspiration, admiring how she embodied strength while remaining feminine and sexy. Diana Ross influenced her as an "all-around entertainer", and Whitney Houston inspired her to pursue performing, saying Houston made her believe she could do the same. Beyoncรฉ praised Madonna for her music and roles as a businesswoman. She has cited Mariah Carey's vocal styleโ€”especially on her song "Vision of Love"โ€”as an early influence that inspired her to practice vocal runs as a child. Other artists that Beyoncรฉ has mentioned as inspirations include Rachelle Ferrell, Prince, Janet Jackson, Lauryn Hill, Sade Adu, Donna Summer, Fairuz, Mary J. Blige, Selena, Anita Baker, and Toni Braxton. She has cited Michelle Obamaโ€”44th First Lady of the USโ€”as a personal inspiration. She described Oprah Winfrey as "the definition of inspiration and a strong woman". Beyoncรฉ has stated that her husband, rapper Jay-Z, inspires her, and she has praised his lyrical talent and the challenges he has overcome. She expressed admiration for artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, stating that she wants to emulate his lyrical and raw artistic traits in her music. Beyoncรฉ has named Ross and Cher as some of her fashion inspirations. Beyoncรฉ's music videos are known for their visual storytelling, frequent choreography, and thematic cohesion. Each track on the albums Beyoncรฉ (2013) and Lemonade (2016) pairs with a music video to create a continuous narrative, a format known as the "visual album" that she pioneered. Beyoncรฉ has worked with numerous directors for her music videos, such as Melina Matsoukas, Jonas ร…kerlund, and Jake Nava. Beyoncรฉ has directed several of her own films, including the musical film Lemonade and the documentary concert film Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncรฉ. Scholar Salamishah Tillet has observed that Beyoncรฉ's creative control across production roles, visual and thematic style, and personal, cultural, and artistic influences establish her as an auteur. A Vulture review of Lemonade described Beyoncรฉ as a "brilliant filmmaker" whose allegorical style, characterized by its symbolic visuals and poetic narrative, transcends conventional music videos. Beyoncรฉ is known for her meticulously produced and physically demanding performances that incorporate elaborate costumes, striking visuals, and stage design. Her shows are characterized by large-scale production elements such as LED staging, supporting ensembles, theatrical props, and numerous costume changes. When performing, Beyoncรฉ uses different fashion styles that coordinate with the music she is singing. According to The Guardian, Beyoncรฉ is the most in-charge female artist onstage, while The Independent wrote she "takes her role as entertainer so seriously she's almost too good". Critics have credited her with reinventing the festival set and commended her delivery of performances under adverse conditions. Having garnered critical acclaim for her voice and stage presence during concerts, Beyoncรฉ is often regarded as one of the greatest performers of all time. She created the alter ego Sasha Fierce to separate her stage persona from her personal attributes. Beyoncรฉ characterized the persona as "too aggressive, too strong, too sassy [and] too sexy", adding that she is not like her in real life at all. Sasha Fierce was created during the production of "Crazy in Love" and was introduced with the release of her third solo studio album, I Am... Sasha Fierce, in 2008. By February 2010, Beyoncรฉ stated she no longer needed the alter ego, having grown more comfortable with herself. In May 2012, she announced Sasha Fierce would return for her Revel Presents: Beyoncรฉ Live performances later that month. Public image Beyoncรฉ has been described by critics as having sex appeal. Writing for Rolling Stone, music journalist Tourรฉ noted that she became a "crossover sex symbol" after the release of Dangerously in Love (2003). Scholar Adrienne Trier-Bieniek argued that Beyoncรฉ's fair skin, ethnically ambiguous features, and hair are central to her status as a sex symbol and "beauty icon within the [B]lack community". The media often used the term "bootylicious"โ€”a portmanteau of "booty" and "delicious"โ€”in reference to her curvaceous figure; the phrase was popularized by Destiny's Child's 2001 single of the same name. In 2004, "bootylicious" was added to the Oxford English Dictionary, defined as "(of a woman) sexually attractive". Known for her "diva" persona, Beyoncรฉ has been nicknamed "Queen Bey" (also spelled "Queen B") by the media. Her fanbase is known as the BeyHive, having previously been known as the Beyontourage until 2011. The Guardian called them "the most dedicated group of superfans ... on the planet". She was named the "World's Most Beautiful Woman" by People and the "Hottest Female Singer of All Time" by Complex in 2012. In January 2013, GQ placed Beyoncรฉ on its cover, featuring her atop its "100 Sexiest Women of the 21st Century" list. VH1 listed her at number one on its 2013 list of the "100 Sexiest Artists". Beyoncรฉ is known for rarely granting interviews, especially to traditional media; she largely stopped participating in conventional press interviews in 2013. Active on social media, Beyoncรฉ has over 300 million followers on Instagram; she was the most-followed account on the platform until 2015 and remains one of its most-followed users. Beyoncรฉ's lighter skin tone and styling choices have drawn criticism, with some arguing that they may perpetuate Eurocentric beauty standards and contribute to issues of colorism, particularly regarding the underrepresentation of darker-skinned Black women in mainstream media. Emmett Price, a professor of music at Northeastern University, wrote in 2007 that he thinks race plays a role in many of these criticisms, saying white celebrities who dress similarly attract fewer comments. In 2008, L'Oreal denied accusations of whitening her skin in their Feria hair color advertisements; Beyoncรฉ herself criticized H&M for their proposed "retouching" of promotional images of her in 2013, requesting only "natural pictures be used". In 2007, she became the second African-American woman to appear on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue magazine, and People recognized her as the best-dressed celebrity. Legacy Beyoncรฉ is widely recognized as one of the most influential figures in music history. In 2024, Billboard named her the greatest pop star of the 21st century. Beyoncรฉ has repeatedly been named as the defining artist of both the 2000s and 2010s. Writing in The New Yorker, Rosen called her "the most important and compelling popular musician of the twenty-first century [...] the result, the logical end point of a century-plus of pop". Critics have hailed several of Beyoncรฉ's albums, singles, music videos, and live performances as amongst the greatest of all time. Beyoncรฉ is regarded as a significant figure in 21st-century popular culture. She is credited with revolutionizing the music industry, transforming the distribution, promotion, and consumption of music. Beyoncรฉ has been credited with revitalizing the album format in an era dominated by singles, with albums becoming increasingly cohesive and narrative-led. Her 2013 album Beyoncรฉ popularized surprise releases, prompting widespread adoption of unconventional promotional strategies throughout the 2010s and 2020s. Beyoncรฉ is also recognized for reviving the music video as an art form, popularizing the visual album format, and inspiring the industry to move Global Release Day from Tuesday to Friday. Beyoncรฉ's enduring popularity as a musician has received extensive recognition and is often praised for its longevity. Her use of staccato rap-singing and chopped and re-pitched vocals helped them become prominent in 21st-century music. Beyoncรฉ's work transcends traditional genre boundaries, creating new artistic standards that shaped contemporary music and helped music artists to move between and beyond genre confines. She has helped repopularize and introduce to contemporary audiences musical subgenres like R&B, country, dance, and house, and aided in the introduction of Afrobeats to the US mainstream. Beyoncรฉ is known for transforming concert tours into cultural and artistic events. By using her platform to advocate for subjects such as women's empowerment and social justice, she has become an influential figure in socio-political matters. Beyoncรฉ has been recognized for setting new standards for success in the modern era, with musicians from across genres, generations, and countries citing her as a major influence on their career. Taylor Swift called her a major influence, crediting her with showing other artists how to oppose industry standards and create new opportunities. Lady Gaga said Beyoncรฉ inspired her to become a musician, while Rihanna was motivated to pursue music after watching Beyoncรฉ. Ariana Grande said she learned to sing by mimicking artists like Beyoncรฉ, while Adele described her as part of her artistic influence since she was a preteen. McCartney and Garth Brooks have also cited Beyoncรฉ's live performances as inspirational, with the latter recommending that both new and veteran musicians analyze these performances to improve their work. Beyoncรฉ's influence extends into academia and cultural institutions, with her artistry and career being extensively studied in universities around the world. Museum exhibitions analyze her impact on music, fashion, activism, and popular culture. She has popularized phrases that entered mainstream culture: "put a ring on it" (from "Single Ladies") to signify a marriage proposal; "I woke up like this" (from "Flawless"), which sparked a trend of morning selfies; and "boy, bye" (from "Sorry"), used as a way to break up with a romantic partner. In January 2012, Australian research scientist Bryan Lessard named a species of horse-fly, Scaptia beyonceae, after her, due to the insect's distinctive golden hairs on its abdomen. Several wax figures of Beyoncรฉ are found at Madame Tussauds Wax Museums in major cities around the world. Achievements Beyoncรฉ has received numerous awards and is one of the most-awarded performers of all time. Having sold over 200 million records worldwide (and an additional 60 million with Destiny's Child), she is one of the best-selling music artists of all time. RIAA listed Beyoncรฉ as the top certified artist of the 2000s decade, with sixty-four certifications. In 2024, she became the most RIAA-certified female artist in history. Several of her tours are amongst the highest-grossing by a woman, and she is one of the highest-grossing live acts in history. Beyoncรฉ has thirty-five Grammy Awardsโ€”both as a solo artist and as a member of a groupโ€”making her the most-awarded individual at the award show. She also has ninety-nine nods, making her the most-nominated artist. As the recipient of thirty MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs),[b] she is tied with Taylor Swift for the most in its history. At the BET Awards, Beyoncรฉ is the most awarded and nominated individual, with thirty-two awards and seventy-five nominations. She also leads at the Soul Train Music Awards and the NAACP Image Awards, with twenty-five and thirty-two wins, respectively. At the 2011 Billboard Music Awards, she was honored with the Billboard Millennium Award. An inductee of the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame, she has set numerous world records over her career. For her role in Dreamgirls, Beyoncรฉ was nominated for Best Original Song for "Listen" and Best Actress at the Golden Globe Awards. The film Lemonade (2016) won a Peabody Award in 2017. In 2022, "Be Alive" was nominated for the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. In June 2021, Beyoncรฉ was honored as the Top Touring Artist of the 2010s at the Pollstar Awards. In August 2025, she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Costumes for a Variety, Nonfiction, or Reality Programming for Beyoncรฉ Bowl, which chronicled her 2024 NFL Halftime Show. Billboard ranked her at number three on its 2025 "Top 100 Women Artists of the 21st Century" list and at seventeen as part of Destiny's Child. Time named Beyoncรฉ one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2013, 2014, and 2023. She occupied the sixth place for the magazine's 2016 Person of the Year. Wealth Beyoncรฉ is one of the wealthiest musical artists; as of December 2025, Forbes estimates her net worth to be $1 billion. The magazine named Beyoncรฉ the annual highest-earning female musician in 2008, 2010, 2014, and 2017. Forbes began reporting on her earnings in 2008, calculating that the $80 million earned between June 2007 and June 2008 made her the second highest-paid musician in 2008. On the Forbes Celebrity 100 list, Beyoncรฉ was placed fourth in 2008 and 2009, second in 2010, and fourth in 2013. She ranked at number one on the Celebrity 100 list in 2014, earning an estimated $115 million. Billboard named Beyoncรฉ the highest-paid musician of 2016, with estimated earnings of $62.1 million. She was listed as the third highest-paid musician of the 2010s by Forbes, earning $685 million. Forbes placed Beyoncรฉ and Jay-Z at number one on the "World's Highest-Paid Celebrity Couples" list, collectively earning $78 million and $107.5 million in 2012 and 2016, respectively. The couple made it into 2011's Guinness Book of World Records as the "highest-earning power couple" for collectively earning $122 million in 2009. They officially became a billion-dollar couple in 2017, when Forbes estimated a combined net worth of $1.16 billion. Other ventures In 2012, Beyoncรฉ held a fundraiser for Obama's presidential campaign and voted for him in the presidential election. Three years later, Beyoncรฉ attended a celebrity fundraiser for 2016 presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and headlined in a concert for Clinton the weekend before the election. She endorsed the bid of Beto O'Rourke during the 2018 US Senate election in Texas. Beyoncรฉ endorsed Joe Biden for president during the 2020 election and Kamala Harris in 2024, giving the latter permission to use "Freedom" as the official song for her presidential campaign. Beyoncรฉ identifies as a "modern-day feminist". Her self-identification incited debate about whether her feminism is aligned with older, more established feminist ideals; Annie Lennox referred to her use of the word feminist as "feminist lite". Beyoncรฉ publicly aligned with feminism by sampling Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's 2013 TEDx speech "We should all be feminists" in "Flawless", released later that year. Adichie described Beyoncรฉ's feminism as leaning toward heteropatriarchal ideals, emphasizing men's needs and diverging from her own views. Beyoncรฉ performed at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards before a giant "Feminist" backdrop. Some critics suggest that her portrayal of empowerment tends to be individualized, with limited engagement in structural issues affecting marginalized groups. In December 2012, Beyoncรฉ joined a coalition of celebrities in the "Demand a Plan" campaignโ€”an initiative led by US mayors to urge federal action on gun control legislation following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. In 2013, she endorsed same-sex marriage via Instagram and voiced opposition to North Carolina's Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, a law criticized for discriminating against the LGBT community. In February 2017, she supported transgender youth following Donald Trump's federal rollback of protections for transgender students in public schools. During her 2023 Renaissance World Tour, she incorporated queer activism through flags, voguing, and many other forms of LGBT expression. Beyoncรฉ has spoken against police brutality toward African-Americans. She attended a 2013 rally after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin, and featured the mothers of Martin, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner holding photos of their deceased sons in the music video for "Freedom". Her 2016 single "Formation" was interpreted as a critique of law enforcement, though she clarified it was a celebration of her heritage. Performing the song during the 2016 Super Bowl halftime show, with dancers dressed in outfits referencing the Black Panther Party, sparked backlash from conservative figures and law enforcement groups. Beyoncรฉ responded to the criticism by selling "Boycott Beyoncรฉ" merchandise on her tour. In 1999, Beyoncรฉ, her mother Tina Knowles, and former Destiny's Child bandmate Kelly Rowland established the Knowles-Rowland Center for Youth. Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Beyoncรฉ, Solange, Tina, and Rowland co-founded the Survivor Foundation to offer transitional housing for displaced families and support the construction of new homes. They extended aid after Hurricane Ike in 2008, with Beyoncรฉ donating $100,000 to the Gulf Coast Ike Relief Fund. In 2007, she launched the Knowles-Temenos Place Apartments, a housing development that accommodates 43 displaced individuals. After learning about Phoenix Houseโ€”a nonprofit focused on drug and alcohol rehabilitationโ€”during the filming of Cadillac Records in 2008, Beyoncรฉ donated her entire $4 million salary from the film to the organization. She later founded the Beyoncรฉ Cosmetology Center, a program at Phoenix House that provides a cosmetology training course. In April 2011, Beyoncรฉ participated in the National Association of Broadcasters Education Foundation's campaign against child obesity by reworking "Get Me Bodied". She was an ambassador for the 2012 World Humanitarian Day campaign, and took part in Gucci's 2013 "Chime for Change" initiative to promote global female empowerment. Beyoncรฉ and Jay-Z donated tens of thousands of dollars to post bail for Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters in Baltimore and Ferguson, and contributed to building the infrastructure needed to establish BLM chapters across the US. In April 2016, she pledged to fund ten college scholarships for students in financial need. In June, she donated over $82,000 to the United Way of Genesee County to assist victims of the Flint water crisis and provided financial support for fourteen Michigan students pursuing higher education. That August, Beyoncรฉ and Jay-Z donated $1.5 million to civil rights organizations including BLM, Hands Up United, and Trayvon Martin Foundation. In August 2017, during Hurricane Harvey, Beyoncรฉ launched BeyGood Houston to support those affected and donated $75,000 worth of new mattresses to survivors. Later that month, she released a remix of J Balvin and Willy William's "Mi Gente", pledging all proceeds to disaster relief efforts across Puerto Rico, Mexico, the US, and the Caribbean in response to Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, as well as the Chiapas and Puebla earthquakes. In April 2020, Beyoncรฉ donated $6 million to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, UCLA, and local community-based organizations to provide mental health and wellness services for essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. She featured on the remix of Megan Thee Stallion's "Savage" (2020), with proceeds supporting Bread of Life Houston's COVID-19 relief efforts. Beyoncรฉ worked with the Feminist Coalition in the End SARS movement in Nigeria to cover medical costs for injured protestors, legal fees for arrested protestors, and resources for those in need. Beyoncรฉ also supports the Anglophone Crisis in Cameroon, ShutItAllDown in Namibia, Zimbabwean Lives Matter in Zimbabwe, and the Rape National Emergency in Liberia. In December 2020, Beyoncรฉ donated $500,000 to alleviate the housing crisis in the US caused by the cessation of the eviction moratorium. In partnership with BeyGood, in 2024, she introduced an annual grant program to support cosmetology students and professional hair stylists with financial assistance. In January 2025, she donated $2.5 million to Los Angeles fire relief funds amidst the wildfires that month in Southern California. In 2005, Beyoncรฉ and Tina launched House of Derรฉon, a women's fashion line inspired by three generations of women in their family. The two also established Beyond Productions to handle licensing and brand management for House of Derรฉon and its junior line, Derรฉon. The collection features sportswear, denim offerings with fur, outerwear, and accessories like handbags and footwear. In 2005, Beyoncรฉ partnered with House of Brands, a footwear company, to produce a range of shoes for House of Derรฉon. In January 2008, Starwave Mobile launched Beyoncรฉ Fashion Diva, a mobile game with a social networking component, featuring the House of Derรฉon collection. That same year, she founded Parkwood Entertainment, an entertainment company established as an imprint of Columbia Records. It has since grown to include a music division, signing artists such as Chloe x Halle. In July 2009, Beyoncรฉ and her mother launched a junior apparel label, Sasha Fierce for Derรฉon, for the back-to-school season. The collection included sportswear, outerwear, handbags, footwear, eyewear, lingerie, and jewelry. In April 2016, Beyoncรฉ launched Ivy Park, a 50โ€“50 joint venture with fashion retailer Topshop. The brand's name was inspired by her daughter, Blue Ivy, Beyoncรฉ's favorite number, four (IV), and the park where she used to run in Texas. Following allegations that Topshop owner Philip Green had sexually harassed, bullied, and racially abused employees, Beyoncรฉ bought out his 50 percent stake in the company. In April 2019, she partnered with Adidas as a creative collaborator to relaunch Ivy Park and develop new apparel and footwear, with the first collection debuting in January 2020. The brand struggled financially and by March 2023, Beyoncรฉ and Adidas mutually ended their partnership. That same month, Beyoncรฉ collaborated with Balmain creative director Olivier Rousteing on a couture collection inspired by Renaissance. With sixteen looksโ€”one for each trackโ€”it was the first time a Black woman led the design of a Parisian couture house collection. In February 2024, Beyoncรฉ launched Cรฉcred, a hair care line designed to serve a wide range of hair textures. Beyoncรฉ began her partnership with Pepsi in 2002. Two years later, she starred in a gladiator-themed commercial for the company alongside Britney Spears, Pink, and Enrique Iglesias. Beyoncรฉ signed a $50 million endorsement deal with Pepsi in 2012. Beyoncรฉ has also collaborated with Tommy Hilfiger for the fragrances True Starโ€”for which she recorded a cover of "Wishing on a Star"โ€”and True Star Gold. In 2007, she promoted Emporio Armani's Diamonds fragrance. Beyoncรฉ launched her own fragrance line with Heat in 2010, followed by Heat Rush in 2011 and Pulse later in the same year. Beyoncรฉ also has had deals with American Express, Nintendo, and L'Orรฉal. In March 2015, Beyoncรฉ became a co-owner of the music streaming platform Tidal, alongside several other artists. In November 2020, she entered a multi-year partnership with fitness and media company Peloton. In 2021, Beyoncรฉ and Jay-Z partnered with Tiffany & Co. for the company's "About Love" campaign. Beyoncรฉ became the fourth woman, and first Black woman, to wear the 128.54-carat Tiffany Yellow Diamond. The campaign drew criticism, as the diamond is considered a blood diamond and a symbol of British colonial exploitation in Africa.[c] On August 20, 2024, Beyoncรฉ announced SirDavis, a whiskey in collaboration with Moรซt Hennessy developed for years prior and co-founded with master distiller Dr. Bill Lumsden. In October 2024, Levi's launched a four-part global campaign titled "Reiimagine" with Beyoncรฉ, spotlighting women's history with the company and featuring her Cowboy Carter track "Levii's Jeans". In December 2025, Vogue announced Beyoncรฉ as a 2026 Met Gala co-chair alongside Nicole Kidman and Venus Williams. The event, themed "Costume Art", will mark her first Met Gala appearance since 2016. Discography Filmography Films starred Documentaries Tours and residencies Headlining tours Co-headlining tours Residencies See also Notes References External links
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft#cite_note-Cult_and_merchandise2-165] | [TOKENS: 12858]
Contents Minecraft Minecraft is a sandbox game developed and published by Mojang Studios. Following its initial public alpha release in 2009, it was formally released in 2011 for personal computers. The game has since been ported to numerous platforms, including mobile devices and various video game consoles. In Minecraft, players explore a procedurally generated world with virtually infinite terrain made up of voxels (cubes). They can discover and extract raw materials, craft tools and items, build structures, fight hostile mobs, and cooperate with or compete against other players in multiplayer. The game's large community offers a wide variety of user-generated content, such as modifications, servers, player skins, texture packs, and custom maps, which add new game mechanics and possibilities. Originally created by Markus "Notch" Persson using the Java programming language, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten was handed control over the game's development following its full release. In 2014, Mojang and the Minecraft intellectual property were purchased by Microsoft for US$2.5 billion; Xbox Game Studios hold the publishing rights for the Bedrock Edition, the unified cross-platform version which evolved from the Pocket Edition codebase[i] and replaced the legacy console versions. Bedrock is updated concurrently with Mojang's original Java Edition, although with numerous, generally small, differences. Minecraft is the best-selling video game in history with over 350 million copies sold. It has received critical acclaim, winning several awards and being cited as one of the greatest video games of all time. Social media, parodies, adaptations, merchandise, and the annual Minecon conventions have played prominent roles in popularizing it. The wider Minecraft franchise includes several spin-off games, such as Minecraft: Story Mode, Minecraft Dungeons, and Minecraft Legends. A film adaptation, titled A Minecraft Movie, was released in 2025 and became the second highest-grossing video game film of all time. Gameplay Minecraft is a 3D sandbox video game that has no required goals to accomplish, giving players a large amount of freedom in choosing how to play the game. The game features an optional achievement system. Gameplay is in the first-person perspective by default, but players have the option of third-person perspectives. The game world is composed of rough 3D objectsโ€”mainly cubes, referred to as blocksโ€”representing various materials, such as dirt, stone, ores, tree trunks, water, and lava. The core gameplay revolves around picking up and placing these objects. These blocks are arranged in a voxel grid, while players can move freely around the world. Players can break, or mine, blocks and then place them elsewhere, enabling them to build things. Very few blocks are affected by gravity, instead maintaining their voxel position in the air. Players can also craft a wide variety of items, such as armor, which mitigates damage from attacks; weapons (such as swords or bows and arrows), which allow monsters and animals to be killed more easily; and tools (such as pickaxes or shovels), which break certain types of blocks more quickly. Some items have multiple tiers depending on the material used to craft them, with higher-tier items being more effective and durable. They may also freely craft helpful blocksโ€”such as furnaces which can cook food and smelt ores, and torches that produce lightโ€”or exchange items with villagers (NPC) through trading emeralds for different goods and vice versa. The game has an inventory system, allowing players to carry a limited number of items. The in-game time system follows a day and night cycle, with one full cycle lasting for 20 real-time minutes. The game also contains a material called redstone, which can be used to make primitive mechanical devices, electrical circuits, and logic gates, allowing for the construction of many complex systems. New players are given a randomly selected default character skin out of nine possibilities, including Steve or Alex, but are able to create and upload their own skins. Players encounter various mobs (short for mobile entities) including animals, villagers, and hostile creatures. Passive mobs, such as cows, pigs, and chickens, spawn during the daytime and can be hunted for food and crafting materials, while hostile mobsโ€”including large spiders, witches, skeletons, and zombiesโ€”spawn during nighttime or in dark places such as caves. Some hostile mobs, such as zombies and skeletons, burn under the sun if they have no headgear and are not standing in water. Other creatures unique to Minecraft include the creeper (an exploding creature that sneaks up on the player) and the enderman (a creature with the ability to teleport as well as pick up and place blocks). There are also variants of mobs that spawn in different conditions; for example, zombies have husk and drowned variants that spawn in deserts and oceans, respectively. The Minecraft environment is procedurally generated as players explore it using a map seed that is randomly chosen at the time of world creation (or manually specified by the player). Divided into biomes representing different environments with unique resources and structures, worlds are designed to be effectively infinite in traditional gameplay, though technical limits on the player have existed throughout development, both intentionally and not. Implementation of horizontally infinite generation initially resulted in a glitch termed the "Far Lands" at over 12 million blocks away from the world center, where terrain generated as wall-like, fissured patterns. The Far Lands and associated glitches were considered the effective edge of the world until they were resolved, with the current horizontal limit instead being a special impassable barrier called the world border, located 30 million blocks away. Vertical space is comparatively limited, with an unbreakable bedrock layer at the bottom and a building limit several hundred blocks into the sky. Minecraft features three independent dimensions accessible through portals and providing alternate game environments. The Overworld is the starting dimension and represents the real world, with a terrestrial surface setting including plains, mountains, forests, oceans, caves, and small sources of lava. The Nether is a hell-like underworld dimension accessed via an obsidian portal and composed mainly of lava. Mobs that populate the Nether include shrieking, fireball-shooting ghasts, alongside anthropomorphic pigs called piglins and their zombified counterparts. Piglins in particular have a bartering system, where players can give them gold ingots and receive items in return. Structures known as Nether Fortresses generate in the Nether, containing mobs such as wither skeletons and blazes, which can drop blaze rods needed to access the End dimension. The player can also choose to build an optional boss mob known as the Wither, using skulls obtained from wither skeletons and soul sand. The End can be reached through an end portal, consisting of twelve end portal frames. End portals are found in underground structures in the Overworld known as strongholds. To find strongholds, players must craft eyes of ender using an ender pearl and blaze powder. Eyes of ender can then be thrown, traveling in the direction of the stronghold. Once the player reaches the stronghold, they can place eyes of ender into each portal frame to activate the end portal. The dimension consists of islands floating in a dark, bottomless void. A boss enemy called the Ender Dragon guards the largest, central island. Killing the dragon opens access to an exit portal, which, when entered, cues the game's ending credits and the End Poem, a roughly 1,500-word work written by Irish novelist Julian Gough, which takes about nine minutes to scroll past, is the game's only narrative text, and the only text of significant length directed at the player.: 10โ€“12 At the conclusion of the credits, the player is teleported back to their respawn point and may continue the game indefinitely. In Survival mode, players have to gather natural resources such as wood and stone found in the environment in order to craft certain blocks and items. Depending on the difficulty, monsters spawn in darker areas outside a certain radius of the character, requiring players to build a shelter in order to survive at night. The mode also has a health bar which is depleted by attacks from mobs, falls, drowning, falling into lava, suffocation, starvation, and other events. Players also have a hunger bar, which must be periodically refilled by eating food in-game unless the player is playing on peaceful difficulty. If the hunger bar is empty, the player starves. Health replenishes when players have a full hunger bar or continuously on peaceful. Upon losing all health, players die. The items in the players' inventories are dropped unless the game is reconfigured not to do so. Players then re-spawn at their spawn point, which by default is where players first spawn in the game and can be changed by sleeping in a bed or using a respawn anchor. Dropped items can be recovered if players can reach them before they despawn after 5 minutes. Players may acquire experience points (commonly referred to as "xp" or "exp") by killing mobs and other players, mining, smelting ores, animal breeding, and cooking food. Experience can then be spent on enchanting tools, armor and weapons. Enchanted items are generally more powerful, last longer, or have other special effects. The game features two more game modes based on Survival, known as Hardcore mode and Adventure mode. Hardcore mode plays identically to Survival mode, but with the game's difficulty setting locked to "Hard" and with permadeath, forcing them to delete the world or explore it as a spectator after dying. Adventure mode was added to the game in a post-launch update, and prevents the player from directly modifying the game's world. It was designed primarily for use in custom maps, allowing map designers to let players experience it as intended. In Creative mode, players have access to an infinite number of all resources and items in the game through the inventory menu and can place or mine them instantly. Players can toggle the ability to fly freely around the game world at will, and their characters usually do not take any damage nor are affected by hunger. The game mode helps players focus on building and creating projects of any size without disturbance. Multiplayer in Minecraft enables multiple players to interact and communicate with each other on a single world. It is available through direct game-to-game multiplayer, local area network (LAN) play, local split screen (console-only), and servers (player-hosted and business-hosted). Players can run their own server by making a realm, using a host provider, hosting one themselves or connect directly to another player's game via Xbox Live, PlayStation Network or Nintendo Switch Online. Single-player worlds have LAN support, allowing players to join a world on locally interconnected computers without a server setup. Minecraft multiplayer servers are guided by server operators, who have access to server commands such as setting the time of day and teleporting players. Operators can also set up restrictions concerning which usernames or IP addresses are allowed or disallowed to enter the server. Multiplayer servers have a wide range of activities, with some servers having their own unique rules and customs. The largest and most popular server is Hypixel, which has been visited by over 14 million unique players. Player versus player combat (PvP) can be enabled to allow fighting between players. In 2013, Mojang announced Minecraft Realms, a server hosting service intended to enable players to run server multiplayer games easily and safely without having to set up their own. Unlike a standard server, only invited players can join Realms servers, and these servers do not use server addresses. Minecraft: Java Edition Realms server owners can invite up to twenty people to play on their server, with up to ten players online at a time. Minecraft Realms server owners can invite up to 3,000 people to play on their server, with up to ten players online at one time. The Minecraft: Java Edition Realms servers do not support user-made plugins, but players can play custom Minecraft maps. Minecraft Bedrock Realms servers support user-made add-ons, resource packs, behavior packs, and custom Minecraft maps. At Electronic Entertainment Expo 2016, support for cross-platform play between Windows 10, iOS, and Android platforms was added through Realms starting in June 2016, with Xbox One and Nintendo Switch support to come later in 2017, and support for virtual reality devices. On 31 July 2017, Mojang released the beta version of the update allowing cross-platform play. Nintendo Switch support for Realms was released in July 2018. The modding community consists of fans, users and third-party programmers. Using a variety of application program interfaces that have arisen over time, they have produced a wide variety of downloadable content for Minecraft, such as modifications, texture packs and custom maps. Modifications of the Minecraft code, called mods, add a variety of gameplay changes, ranging from new blocks, items, and mobs to entire arrays of mechanisms. The modding community is responsible for a substantial supply of mods from ones that enhance gameplay, such as mini-maps, waypoints, and durability counters, to ones that add to the game elements from other video games and media. While a variety of mod frameworks were independently developed by reverse engineering the code, Mojang has also enhanced vanilla Minecraft with official frameworks for modification, allowing the production of community-created resource packs, which alter certain game elements including textures and sounds. Players can also create their own "maps" (custom world save files) that often contain specific rules, challenges, puzzles and quests, and share them for others to play. Mojang added an adventure mode in August 2012 and "command blocks" in October 2012, which were created specially for custom maps in Java Edition. Data packs, introduced in version 1.13 of the Java Edition, allow further customization, including the ability to add new achievements, dimensions, functions, loot tables, predicates, recipes, structures, tags, and world generation. The Xbox 360 Edition supported downloadable content, which was available to purchase via the Xbox Games Store; these content packs usually contained additional character skins. It later received support for texture packs in its twelfth title update while introducing "mash-up packs", which combined texture packs with skin packs and changes to the game's sounds, music and user interface. The first mash-up pack (and by extension, the first texture pack) for the Xbox 360 Edition was released on 4 September 2013, and was themed after the Mass Effect franchise. Unlike Java Edition, however, the Xbox 360 Edition did not support player-made mods or custom maps. A cross-promotional resource pack based on the Super Mario franchise by Nintendo was released exclusively for the Wii U Edition worldwide on 17 May 2016, and later bundled free with the Nintendo Switch Edition at launch. Another based on Fallout was released on consoles that December, and for Windows and Mobile in April 2017. In April 2018, malware was discovered in several downloadable user-made Minecraft skins for use with the Java Edition of the game. Avast stated that nearly 50,000 accounts were infected, and when activated, the malware would attempt to reformat the user's hard drive. Mojang promptly patched the issue, and released a statement stating that "the code would not be run or read by the game itself", and would run only when the image containing the skin itself was opened. In June 2017, Mojang released the "1.1 Discovery Update" to the Pocket Edition of the game, which later became the Bedrock Edition. The update introduced the "Marketplace", a catalogue of purchasable user-generated content intended to give Minecraft creators "another way to make a living from the game". Various skins, maps, texture packs and add-ons from different creators can be bought with "Minecoins", a digital currency that is purchased with real money. Additionally, users can access specific content with a subscription service titled "Marketplace Pass". Alongside content from independent creators, the Marketplace also houses items published by Mojang and Microsoft themselves, as well as official collaborations between Minecraft and other intellectual properties. By 2022, the Marketplace had over 1.7 billion content downloads, generating over $500 million in revenue. Development Before creating Minecraft, Markus "Notch" Persson was a game developer at King, where he worked until March 2009. At King, he primarily developed browser games and learned several programming languages. During his free time, he prototyped his own games, often drawing inspiration from other titles, and was an active participant on the TIGSource forums for independent developers. One such project was "RubyDung", a base-building game inspired by Dwarf Fortress, but with an isometric, three-dimensional perspective similar to RollerCoaster Tycoon. Among the features in RubyDung that he explored was a first-person view similar to Dungeon Keeper, though he ultimately discarded this idea, feeling the graphics were too pixelated at the time. Around March 2009, Persson left King and joined jAlbum, while continuing to work on his prototypes. Infiniminer, a block-based open-ended mining game first released in April 2009, inspired Persson's vision for RubyDung's future direction. Infiniminer heavily influenced the visual style of gameplay, including bringing back the first-person mode, the "blocky" visual style and the block-building fundamentals. However, unlike Infiniminer, Persson wanted Minecraft to have RPG elements. The first public alpha build of Minecraft was released on 17 May 2009 on TIGSource. Over the years, Persson regularly released test builds that added new features, including tools, mobs, and entire new dimensions. In 2011, partly due to the game's rising popularity, Persson decided to release a full 1.0 versionโ€”a second part of the "Adventure Update"โ€”on 18 November 2011. Shortly after, Persson stepped down from development, handing the project's lead to Jens "Jeb" Bergensten. On 15 September 2014, Microsoft, the developer behind the Microsoft Windows operating system and Xbox video game console, announced a $2.5 billion acquisition of Mojang, which included the Minecraft intellectual property. Persson had suggested the deal on Twitter, asking a corporation to buy his stake in the game after receiving criticism for enforcing terms in the game's end-user license agreement (EULA), which had been in place for the past three years. According to Persson, Mojang CEO Carl Manneh received a call from a Microsoft executive shortly after the tweet, asking if Persson was serious about a deal. Mojang was also approached by other companies including Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts. The deal with Microsoft was arbitrated on 6 November 2014 and led to Persson becoming one of Forbes' "World's Billionaires". After 2014, Minecraft's primary versions received usually annual major updatesโ€”free to players who have purchased the gameโ€” each primarily centered around a specific theme. For instance, version 1.13, the Update Aquatic, focused on ocean-related features, while version 1.16, the Nether Update, introduced significant changes to the Nether dimension. However, in late 2024, Mojang announced a shift in their update strategy; rather than releasing large updates annually, they opted for a more frequent release schedule with smaller, incremental updates, stating, "We know that you want new Minecraft content more often." The Bedrock Edition has also received regular updates, now matching the themes of the Java Edition updates. Other versions of the game, such as various console editions and the Pocket Edition, were either merged into Bedrock or discontinued and have not received further updates. On 7 May 2019, coinciding with Minecraft's 10th anniversary, a JavaScript recreation of an old 2009 Java Edition build named Minecraft Classic was made available to play online for free. On 16 April 2020, a Bedrock Edition-exclusive beta version of Minecraft, called Minecraft RTX, was released by Nvidia. It introduced physically-based rendering, real-time path tracing, and DLSS for RTX-enabled GPUs. The public release was made available on 8 December 2020. Path tracing can only be enabled in supported worlds, which can be downloaded for free via the in-game Minecraft Marketplace, with a texture pack from Nvidia's website, or with compatible third-party texture packs. It cannot be enabled by default with any texture pack on any world. Initially, Minecraft RTX was affected by many bugs, display errors, and instability issues. On 22 March 2025, a new visual mode called Vibrant Visuals, an optional graphical overhaul similar to Minecraft RTX, was announced. It promises modern rendering featuresโ€”such as dynamic shadows, screen space reflections, volumetric fog, and bloomโ€”without the need of RTX-capable hardware. Vibrant Visuals was released as a part of the Chase the Skies update on 17 June 2025 for Bedrock Edition and is planned to release on Java Edition at a later date. Development began for the original edition of Minecraftโ€”then known as Cave Game, and now known as the Java Editionโ€”in May 2009,[k] and ended on 13 May, when Persson released a test video on YouTube of an early version of the game, dubbed the "Cave game tech test" or the "Cave game tech demo". The game was named Minecraft: Order of the Stone the next day, after a suggestion made by a player. "Order of the Stone" came from the webcomic The Order of the Stick, and "Minecraft" was chosen "because it's a good name". The title was later shortened to just Minecraft, omitting the subtitle. Persson completed the game's base programming over a weekend in May 2009, and private testing began on TigIRC on 16 May. The first public release followed on 17 May 2009 as a developmental version shared on the TIGSource forums. Based on feedback from forum users, Persson continued updating the game. This initial public build later became known as Classic. Further developmental phasesโ€”dubbed Survival Test, Indev, and Infdevโ€”were released throughout 2009 and 2010. The first major update, known as Alpha, was released on 30 June 2010. At the time, Persson was still working a day job at jAlbum but later resigned to focus on Minecraft full-time as sales of the alpha version surged. Updates were distributed automatically, introducing new blocks, items, mobs, and changes to game mechanics such as water flow. With revenue generated from the game, Persson founded Mojang, a video game studio, alongside former colleagues Jakob Porser and Carl Manneh. On 11 December 2010, Persson announced that Minecraft would enter its beta phase on 20 December. He assured players that bug fixes and all pre-release updates would remain free. As development progressed, Mojang expanded, hiring additional employees to work on the project. The game officially exited beta and launched in full on 18 November 2011. On 1 December 2011, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten took full creative control over Minecraft, replacing Persson as lead designer. On 28 February 2012, Mojang announced the hiring of the developers behind Bukkit, a popular developer API for Minecraft servers, to improve Minecraft's support of server modifications. This move included Mojang taking apparent ownership of the CraftBukkit server mod, though this apparent acquisition later became controversial, and its legitimacy was questioned due to CraftBukkit's open-source nature and licensing under the GNU General Public License and Lesser General Public License. In August 2011, Minecraft: Pocket Edition was released as an early alpha for the Xperia Play via the Android Market, later expanding to other Android devices on 8 October 2011. The iOS version followed on 17 November 2011. A port was made available for Windows Phones shortly after Microsoft acquired Mojang. Unlike Java Edition, Pocket Edition initially focused on Minecraft's creative building and basic survival elements but lacked many features of the PC version. Bergensten confirmed on Twitter that the Pocket Edition was written in C++ rather than Java, as iOS does not support Java. On 10 December 2014, a port of Pocket Edition was released for Windows Phone 8.1. In July 2015, a port of the Pocket Edition to Windows 10 was released as the Windows 10 Edition, with full crossplay to other Pocket versions. In January 2017, Microsoft announced that it would no longer maintain the Windows Phone versions of Pocket Edition. On 20 September 2017, with the "Better Together Update", the Pocket Edition was ported to the Xbox One, and was renamed to the Bedrock Edition. The console versions of Minecraft debuted with the Xbox 360 edition, developed by 4J Studios and released on 9 May 2012. Announced as part of the Xbox Live Arcade NEXT promotion, this version introduced a redesigned crafting system, a new control interface, in-game tutorials, split-screen multiplayer, and online play via Xbox Live. Unlike the PC version, its worlds were finite, bordered by invisible walls. Initially, the Xbox 360 version resembled outdated PC versions but received updates to bring it closer to Java Edition before eventually being discontinued. The Xbox One version launched on 5 September 2014, featuring larger worlds and support for more players. Minecraft expanded to PlayStation platforms with PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 editions released on 17 December 2013 and 4 September 2014, respectively. Originally planned as a PS4 launch title, it was delayed before its eventual release. A PlayStation Vita version followed in October 2014. Like the Xbox versions, the PlayStation editions were developed by 4J Studios. Nintendo platforms received Minecraft: Wii U Edition on 17 December 2015, with a physical release in North America on 17 June 2016 and in Europe on 30 June. The Nintendo Switch version launched via the eShop on 11 May 2017. During a Nintendo Direct presentation on 13 September 2017, Nintendo announced that Minecraft: New Nintendo 3DS Edition, based on the Pocket Edition, would be available for download immediately after the livestream, and a physical copy available on a later date. The game is compatible only with the New Nintendo 3DS or New Nintendo 2DS XL systems and does not work with the original 3DS or 2DS systems. On 20 September 2017, the Better Together Update introduced Bedrock Edition across Xbox One, Windows 10, VR, and mobile platforms, enabling cross-play between these versions. Bedrock Edition later expanded to Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, with the latter receiving the update in December 2019, allowing cross-platform play for users with a free Xbox Live account. The Bedrock Edition released a native version for PlayStation 5 on 22 October 2024, while the Xbox Series X/S version launched on 17 June 2025. On 18 December 2018, the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, and Wii U versions of Minecraft received their final update and would later become known as "Legacy Console Editions". On 15 January 2019, the New Nintendo 3DS version of Minecraft received its final update, effectively becoming discontinued as well. An educational version of Minecraft, designed for use in schools, launched on 1 November 2016. It is available on Android, ChromeOS, iPadOS, iOS, MacOS, and Windows. On 20 August 2018, Mojang announced that it would bring Education Edition to iPadOS in Autumn 2018. It was released to the App Store on 6 September 2018. On 27 March 2019, it was announced that it would be operated by JD.com in China. On 26 June 2020, a public beta for the Education Edition was made available to Google Play Store compatible Chromebooks. The full game was released to the Google Play Store for Chromebooks on 7 August 2020. On 20 May 2016, China Edition (also known as My World) was announced as a localized edition for China, where it was released under a licensing agreement between NetEase and Mojang. The PC edition was released for public testing on 8 August 2017. The iOS version was released on 15 September 2017, and the Android version was released on 12 October 2017. The PC edition is based on the original Java Edition, while the iOS and Android mobile versions are based on the Bedrock Edition. The edition is free-to-play and had over 700 million registered accounts by September 2023. This version of Bedrock Edition is exclusive to Microsoft's Windows 10 and Windows 11 operating systems. The beta release for Windows 10 launched on the Windows Store on 29 July 2015. After nearly a year and a half in beta, Microsoft fully released the version on 19 December 2016. Called the "Ender Update", this release implemented new features to this version of Minecraft like world templates and add-on packs. On 7 June 2022, the Java and Bedrock Editions of Minecraft were merged into a single bundle for purchase on Windows; those who owned one version would automatically gain access to the other version. Both game versions would otherwise remain separate. Around 2011, prior to Minecraft's full release, Mojang collaborated with The Lego Group to create a Lego brick-based Minecraft game called Brickcraft. This would have modified the base Minecraft game to use Lego bricks, which meant adapting the basic 1ร—1 block to account for larger pieces typically used in Lego sets. Persson worked on an early version called "Project Rex Kwon Do", named after the character of the same name from the film Napoleon Dynamite. Although Lego approved the project and Mojang assigned two developers for six months, it was canceled due to the Lego Group's demands, according to Mojang's Daniel Kaplan. Lego considered buying Mojang to complete the game, but when Microsoft offered over $2 billion for the company, Lego stepped back, unsure of Minecraft's potential. On 26 June 2025, a build of Brickcraft dated 28 June 2012 was published on a community archive website Omniarchive. Initially, Markus Persson planned to support the Oculus Rift with a Minecraft port. However, after Facebook acquired Oculus in 2013, he abruptly canceled the plans, stating, "Facebook creeps me out." In 2016, a community-made mod, Minecraft VR, added VR support for Java Edition, followed by Vivecraft for HTC Vive. Later that year, Microsoft introduced official Oculus Rift support for Windows 10 Edition, leading to the discontinuation of the Minecraft VR mod due to trademark complaints. Vivecraft was endorsed by Minecraft VR contributors for its Rift support. Also available is a Gear VR version, titled Minecraft: Gear VR Edition. Windows Mixed Reality support was added in 2017. On 7 September 2020, Mojang Studios announced that the PlayStation 4 Bedrock version would receive PlayStation VR support later that month. In September 2024, the Minecraft team announced they would no longer support PlayStation VR, which received its final update in March 2025. Music and sound design Minecraft's music and sound effects were produced by German musician Daniel Rosenfeld, better known as C418. To create the sound effects for the game, Rosenfeld made extensive use of Foley techniques. On learning the processes for the game, he remarked, "Foley's an interesting thing, and I had to learn its subtleties. Early on, I wasn't that knowledgeable about it. It's a whole trial-and-error process. You just make a sound and eventually you go, 'Oh my God, that's it! Get the microphone!' There's no set way of doing anything at all." He reminisced on creating the in-game sound for grass blocks, stating "It turns out that to make grass sounds you don't actually walk on grass and record it, because grass sounds like nothing. What you want to do is get a VHS, break it apart, and just lightly touch the tape." According to Rosenfeld, his favorite sound to design for the game was the hisses of spiders. He elaborates, "I like the spiders. Recording that was a whole day of me researching what a spider sounds like. Turns out, there are spiders that make little screeching sounds, so I think I got this recording of a fire hose, put it in a sampler, and just pitched it around until it sounded like a weird spider was talking to you." Many of the sound design decisions by Rosenfeld were done accidentally or spontaneously. The creeper notably lacks any specific noises apart from a loud fuse-like sound when about to explode; Rosenfeld later recalled "That was just a complete accident by Markus and me [sic]. We just put in a placeholder sound of burning a matchstick. It seemed to work hilariously well, so we kept it." On other sounds, such as those of the zombie, Rosenfeld remarked, "I actually never wanted the zombies so scary. I intentionally made them sound comical. It's nice to hear that they work so well [...]." Rosenfeld remarked that the sound engine was "terrible" to work with, remembering "If you had two song files at once, it [the game engine] would actually crash. There were so many more weird glitches like that the guys never really fixed because they were too busy with the actual game and not the sound engine." The background music in Minecraft consists of instrumental ambient music. To compose the music of Minecraft, Rosenfeld used the package from Ableton Live, along with several additional plug-ins. Speaking on them, Rosenfeld said "They can be pretty much everything from an effect to an entire orchestra. Additionally, I've got some synthesizers that are attached to the computer. Like a Moog Voyager, Dave Smith Prophet 08 and a Virus TI." On 4 March 2011, Rosenfeld released a soundtrack titled Minecraft โ€“ Volume Alpha; it includes most of the tracks featured in Minecraft, as well as other music not featured in the game. Kirk Hamilton of Kotaku chose the music in Minecraft as one of the best video game soundtracks of 2011. On 9 November 2013, Rosenfeld released the second official soundtrack, titled Minecraft โ€“ Volume Beta, which included the music that was added in a 2013 "Music Update" for the game. A physical release of Volume Alpha, consisting of CDs, black vinyl, and limited-edition transparent green vinyl LPs, was issued by indie electronic label Ghostly International on 21 August 2015. On 14 August 2020, Ghostly released Volume Beta on CD and vinyl, with alternate color LPs and lenticular cover pressings released in limited quantities. The final update Rosenfeld worked on was 2018's 1.13 Update Aquatic. His music remained the only music in the game until 2020's "Nether Update", introducing pieces from Lena Raine. Since then, other composers have made contributions, including Kumi Tanioka, Samuel ร…berg, Aaron Cherof, and Amos Roddy, with Raine remaining as the new primary composer. Ownership of all music besides Rosenfeld's independently released albums has been retained by Microsoft, with their label publishing all of the other artists' releases. Gareth Coker also composed some of the music for the game's mini games from the Legacy Console editions. Rosenfeld had stated his intent to create a third album of music for the game in a 2015 interview with Fact, and confirmed its existence in a 2017 tweet, stating that his work on the record as of then had tallied up to be longer than the previous two albums combined, which in total clocks in at over 3 hours and 18 minutes. However, due to licensing issues with Microsoft, the third volume has since not seen release. On 8 January 2021, Rosenfeld was asked in an interview with Anthony Fantano whether or not there was still a third volume of his music intended for release. Rosenfeld responded, saying, "I have somethingโ€”I consider it finishedโ€”but things have become complicated, especially as Minecraft is now a big property, so I don't know." Reception Minecraft has received critical acclaim, with praise for the creative freedom it grants players in-game, as well as the ease of enabling emergent gameplay. Critics have expressed enjoyment in Minecraft's complex crafting system, commenting that it is an important aspect of the game's open-ended gameplay. Most publications were impressed by the game's "blocky" graphics, with IGN describing them as "instantly memorable". Reviewers also liked the game's adventure elements, noting that the game creates a good balance between exploring and building. The game's multiplayer feature has been generally received favorably, with IGN commenting that "adventuring is always better with friends". Jaz McDougall of PC Gamer said Minecraft is "intuitively interesting and contagiously fun, with an unparalleled scope for creativity and memorable experiences". It has been regarded as having introduced millions of children to the digital world, insofar as its basic game mechanics are logically analogous to computer commands. IGN was disappointed about the troublesome steps needed to set up multiplayer servers, calling it a "hassle". Critics also said that visual glitches occur periodically. Despite its release out of beta in 2011, GameSpot said the game had an "unfinished feel", adding that some game elements seem "incomplete or thrown together in haste". A review of the alpha version, by Scott Munro of the Daily Record, called it "already something special" and urged readers to buy it. Jim Rossignol of Rock Paper Shotgun also recommended the alpha of the game, calling it "a kind of generative 8-bit Lego Stalker". On 17 September 2010, gaming webcomic Penny Arcade began a series of comics and news posts about the addictiveness of the game. The Xbox 360 version was generally received positively by critics, but did not receive as much praise as the PC version. Although reviewers were disappointed by the lack of features such as mod support and content from the PC version, they acclaimed the port's addition of a tutorial and in-game tips and crafting recipes, saying that they make the game more user-friendly. The Xbox One Edition was one of the best received ports, being praised for its relatively large worlds. The PlayStation 3 Edition also received generally favorable reviews, being compared to the Xbox 360 Edition and praised for its well-adapted controls. The PlayStation 4 edition was the best received port to date, being praised for having 36 times larger worlds than the PlayStation 3 edition and described as nearly identical to the Xbox One edition. The PlayStation Vita Edition received generally positive reviews from critics but was noted for its technical limitations. The Wii U version received generally positive reviews from critics but was noted for a lack of GamePad integration. The 3DS version received mixed reviews, being criticized for its high price, technical issues, and lack of cross-platform play. The Nintendo Switch Edition received fairly positive reviews from critics, being praised, like other modern ports, for its relatively larger worlds. Minecraft: Pocket Edition initially received mixed reviews from critics. Although reviewers appreciated the game's intuitive controls, they were disappointed by the lack of content. The inability to collect resources and craft items, as well as the limited types of blocks and lack of hostile mobs, were especially criticized. After updates added more content, Pocket Edition started receiving more positive reviews. Reviewers complimented the controls and the graphics, but still noted a lack of content. Minecraft surpassed over a million purchases less than a month after entering its beta phase in early 2011. At the same time, the game had no publisher backing and has never been commercially advertised except through word of mouth, and various unpaid references in popular media such as the Penny Arcade webcomic. By April 2011, Persson estimated that Minecraft had made โ‚ฌ23 million (US$33 million) in revenue, with 800,000 sales of the alpha version of the game, and over 1 million sales of the beta version. In November 2011, prior to the game's full release, Minecraft beta surpassed 16 million registered users and 4 million purchases. By March 2012, Minecraft had become the 6th best-selling PC game of all time. As of 10 October 2014[update], the game had sold 17 million copies on PC, becoming the best-selling PC game of all time. On 25 February 2014, the game reached 100 million registered users. By May 2019, 180 million copies had been sold across all platforms, making it the single best-selling video game of all time. The free-to-play Minecraft China version had over 700 million registered accounts by September 2023. By 2023, the game had sold over 300 million copies. As of April 2025, Minecraft has sold over 350 million copies. The Xbox 360 version of Minecraft became profitable within the first day of the game's release in 2012, when the game broke the Xbox Live sales records with 400,000 players online. Within a week of being on the Xbox Live Marketplace, Minecraft sold a million copies. GameSpot announced in December 2012 that Minecraft sold over 4.48 million copies since the game debuted on Xbox Live Arcade in May 2012. In 2012, Minecraft was the most purchased title on Xbox Live Arcade; it was also the fourth most played title on Xbox Live based on average unique users per day. As of 4 April 2014[update], the Xbox 360 version has sold 12 million copies. In addition, Minecraft: Pocket Edition has reached a figure of 21 million in sales. The PlayStation 3 Edition sold one million copies in five weeks. The release of the game's PlayStation Vita version boosted Minecraft sales by 79%, outselling both PS3 and PS4 debut releases and becoming the largest Minecraft launch on a PlayStation console. The PS Vita version sold 100,000 digital copies in Japan within the first two months of release, according to an announcement by SCE Japan Asia. By January 2015, 500,000 digital copies of Minecraft were sold in Japan across all PlayStation platforms, with a surge in primary school children purchasing the PS Vita version. As of 2022, the Vita version has sold over 1.65 million physical copies in Japan, making it the best-selling Vita game in the country. Minecraft helped improve Microsoft's total first-party revenue by $63 million for the 2015 second quarter. The game, including all of its versions, had over 112 million monthly active players by September 2019. On its 11th anniversary in May 2020, the company announced that Minecraft had reached over 200 million copies sold across platforms with over 126 million monthly active players. By April 2021, the number of active monthly users had climbed to 140 million. In July 2010, PC Gamer listed Minecraft as the fourth-best game to play at work. In December of that year, Good Game selected Minecraft as their choice for Best Downloadable Game of 2010, Gamasutra named it the eighth best game of the year as well as the eighth best indie game of the year, and Rock, Paper, Shotgun named it the "game of the year". Indie DB awarded the game the 2010 Indie of the Year award as chosen by voters, in addition to two out of five Editor's Choice awards for Most Innovative and Best Singleplayer Indie. It was also awarded Game of the Year by PC Gamer UK. The game was nominated for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, Technical Excellence, and Excellence in Design awards at the March 2011 Independent Games Festival and won the Grand Prize and the community-voted Audience Award. At Game Developers Choice Awards 2011, Minecraft won awards in the categories for Best Debut Game, Best Downloadable Game and Innovation Award, winning every award for which it was nominated. It also won GameCity's video game arts award. On 5 May 2011, Minecraft was selected as one of the 80 games that would be displayed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum as part of The Art of Video Games exhibit that opened on 16 March 2012. At the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards, Minecraft won the award for Best Independent Game and was nominated in the Best PC Game category. In 2012, at the British Academy Video Games Awards, Minecraft was nominated in the GAME Award of 2011 category and Persson received The Special Award. In 2012, Minecraft XBLA was awarded a Golden Joystick Award in the Best Downloadable Game category, and a TIGA Games Industry Award in the Best Arcade Game category. In 2013, it was nominated as the family game of the year at the British Academy Video Games Awards. During the 16th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft for "Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year". Minecraft Console Edition won the award for TIGA Game Of The Year in 2014. In 2015, the game placed 6th on USgamer's The 15 Best Games Since 2000 list. In 2016, Minecraft placed 6th on Time's The 50 Best Video Games of All Time list. Minecraft was nominated for the 2013 Kids' Choice Awards for Favorite App, but lost to Temple Run. It was nominated for the 2014 Kids' Choice Awards for Favorite Video Game, but lost to Just Dance 2014. The game later won the award for the Most Addicting Game at the 2015 Kids' Choice Awards. In addition, the Java Edition was nominated for "Favorite Video Game" at the 2018 Kids' Choice Awards, while the game itself won the "Still Playing" award at the 2019 Golden Joystick Awards, as well as the "Favorite Video Game" award at the 2020 Kids' Choice Awards. Minecraft also won "Stream Game of the Year" at inaugural Streamer Awards in 2021. The game later garnered a Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Award nomination for Favorite Video Game in 2021, and won the same category in 2022 and 2023. At the Golden Joystick Awards 2025, it won the Still Playing Award - PC and Console. Minecraft has been subject to several notable controversies. In June 2014, Mojang announced that it would begin enforcing the portion of Minecraft's end-user license agreement (EULA) which prohibits servers from giving in-game advantages to players in exchange for donations or payments. Spokesperson Owen Hill stated that servers could still require players to pay a fee to access the server and could sell in-game cosmetic items. The change was supported by Persson, citing emails he received from parents of children who had spent hundreds of dollars on servers. The Minecraft community and server owners protested, arguing that the EULA's terms were more broad than Mojang was claiming, that the crackdown would force smaller servers to shut down for financial reasons, and that Mojang was suppressing competition for its own Minecraft Realms subscription service. The controversy contributed to Notch's decision to sell Mojang. In 2020, Mojang announced an eventual change to the Java Edition to require a login from a Microsoft account rather than a Mojang account, the latter of which would be sunsetted. This also required Java Edition players to create Xbox network Gamertags. Mojang defended the move to Microsoft accounts by saying that improved security could be offered, including two-factor authentication, blocking cyberbullies in chat, and improved parental controls. The community responded with intense backlash, citing various technical difficulties encountered in the process and how account migration would be mandatory, even for those who do not play on servers. As of 10 March 2022, Microsoft required that all players migrate in order to maintain access the Java Edition of Minecraft. Mojang announced a deadline of 19 September 2023 for account migration, after which all legacy Mojang accounts became inaccessible and unable to be migrated. In June 2022, Mojang added a player-reporting feature in Java Edition. Players could report other players on multiplayer servers for sending messages prohibited by the Xbox Live Code of Conduct; report categories included profane language,[l] substance abuse, hate speech, threats of violence, and nudity. If a player was found to be in violation of Xbox Community Standards, they would be banned from all servers for a specific period of time or permanently. The update containing the report feature (1.19.1) was released on 27 July 2022. Mojang received substantial backlash and protest from community members, one of the most common complaints being that banned players would be forbidden from joining any server, even private ones. Others took issue to what they saw as Microsoft increasing control over its player base and exercising censorship, leading some to start a hashtag #saveminecraft and dub the version "1.19.84", a reference to the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The "Mob Vote" was an online event organized by Mojang in which the Minecraft community voted between three original mob concepts; initially, the winning mob was to be implemented in a future update, while the losing mobs were scrapped, though after the first mob vote this was changed, and losing mobs would now have a chance to come to the game in the future. The first Mob Vote was held during Minecon Earth 2017 and became an annual event starting with Minecraft Live 2020. The Mob Vote was often criticized for forcing players to choose one mob instead of implementing all three, causing divisions and flaming within the community, and potentially allowing internet bots and Minecraft content creators with large fanbases to conduct vote brigading. The Mob Vote was also blamed for a perceived lack of new content added to Minecraft since Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang in 2014. The 2023 Mob Vote featured three passive mobsโ€”the crab, the penguin, and the armadilloโ€”with voting scheduled to start on 13 October. In response, a Change.org petition was created on 6 October, demanding that Mojang eliminate the Mob Vote and instead implement all three mobs going forward. The petition received approximately 445,000 signatures by 13 October and was joined by calls to boycott the Mob Vote, as well as a partially tongue-in-cheek "revolutionary" propaganda campaign in which sympathizers created anti-Mojang and pro-boycott posters in the vein of real 20th century propaganda posters. Mojang did not release an official response to the boycott, and the Mob Vote otherwise proceeded normally, with the armadillo winning the vote. In September 2024, as part of a blog post detailing their future plans for Minecraft's development, Mojang announced the Mob Vote would be retired. Cultural impact In September 2019, The Guardian classified Minecraft as the best video game of the 21st century to date, and in November 2019, Polygon called it the "most important game of the decade" in its 2010s "decade in review". In June 2020, Minecraft was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame. Minecraft is recognized as one of the first successful games to use an early access model to draw in sales prior to its full release version to help fund development. As Minecraft helped to bolster indie game development in the early 2010s, it also helped to popularize the use of the early access model in indie game development. Social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and Reddit have played a significant role in popularizing Minecraft. Research conducted by the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania showed that one-third of Minecraft players learned about the game via Internet videos. In 2010, Minecraft-related videos began to gain influence on YouTube, often made by commentators. The videos usually contain screen-capture footage of the game and voice-overs. Common coverage in the videos includes creations made by players, walkthroughs of various tasks, and parodies of works in popular culture. By May 2012, over four million Minecraft-related YouTube videos had been uploaded. The game would go on to be a prominent fixture within YouTube's gaming scene during the entire 2010s; in 2014, it was the second-most searched term on the entire platform. By 2018, it was still YouTube's biggest game globally. Some popular commentators have received employment at Machinima, a now-defunct gaming video company that owned a highly watched entertainment channel on YouTube. The Yogscast is a British company that regularly produces Minecraft videos; their YouTube channel has attained billions of views, and their panel at Minecon 2011 had the highest attendance. Another well-known YouTube personality is Jordan Maron, known online as CaptainSparklez, who has also created many Minecraft music parodies, including "Revenge", a parody of Usher's "DJ Got Us Fallin' in Love". Minecraft's popularity on YouTube was described by Polygon as quietly dominant, although in 2019, thanks in part to PewDiePie's playthroughs of the game, Minecraft experienced a visible uptick in popularity on the platform. Longer-running series include Far Lands or Bust, dedicated to reaching the obsolete "Far Lands" glitch by foot on an older version of the game. YouTube announced that on 14 December 2021 that the total amount of Minecraft-related views on the website had exceeded one trillion. Minecraft has been referenced by other video games, such as Torchlight II, Team Fortress 2, Borderlands 2, Choplifter HD, Super Meat Boy, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Binding of Isaac, The Stanley Parable, and FTL: Faster Than Light. Minecraft is officially represented in downloadable content for the crossover fighter Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, with Steve as a playable character with a moveset including references to building, crafting, and redstone, alongside an Overworld-themed stage. It was also referenced by electronic music artist Deadmau5 in his performances. The game is also referenced heavily in "Informative Murder Porn", the second episode of the seventeenth season of the animated television series South Park. In 2025, A Minecraft Movie was released. It made $313 million in the box office in the first week, a record-breaking opening for a video game adaptation. Minecraft has been noted as a cultural touchstone for Generation Z, as many of the generation's members played the game at a young age. The possible applications of Minecraft have been discussed extensively, especially in the fields of computer-aided design (CAD) and education. In a panel at Minecon 2011, a Swedish developer discussed the possibility of using the game to redesign public buildings and parks, stating that rendering using Minecraft was much more user-friendly for the community, making it easier to envision the functionality of new buildings and parks. In 2012, a member of the Human Dynamics group at the MIT Media Lab, Cody Sumter, said: "Notch hasn't just built a game. He's tricked 40 million people into learning to use a CAD program." Various software has been developed to allow virtual designs to be printed using professional 3D printers or personal printers such as MakerBot and RepRap. In September 2012, Mojang began the Block by Block project in cooperation with UN Habitat to create real-world environments in Minecraft. The project allows young people who live in those environments to participate in designing the changes they would like to see. Using Minecraft, the community has helped reconstruct the areas of concern, and citizens are invited to enter the Minecraft servers and modify their own neighborhood. Carl Manneh, Mojang's managing director, called the game "the perfect tool to facilitate this process", adding "The three-year partnership will support UN-Habitat's Sustainable Urban Development Network to upgrade 300 public spaces by 2016." Mojang signed Minecraft building community, FyreUK, to help render the environments into Minecraft. The first pilot project began in Kibera, one of Nairobi's informal settlements and is in the planning phase. The Block by Block project is based on an earlier initiative started in October 2011, Mina Kvarter (My Block), which gave young people in Swedish communities a tool to visualize how they wanted to change their part of town. According to Manneh, the project was a helpful way to visualize urban planning ideas without necessarily having a training in architecture. The ideas presented by the citizens were a template for political decisions. In April 2014, the Danish Geodata Agency generated all of Denmark in fullscale in Minecraft based on their own geodata. This is possible because Denmark is one of the flattest countries with the highest point at 171 meters (ranking as the country with the 30th smallest elevation span), where the limit in default Minecraft was around 192 meters above in-game sea level when the project was completed. Taking advantage of the game's accessibility where other websites are censored, the non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders has used an open Minecraft server to create the Uncensored Library, a repository within the game of journalism by authors from countries (including Egypt, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam) who have been censored and arrested, such as Jamal Khashoggi. The neoclassical virtual building was created over about 250 hours by an international team of 24 people. Despite its unpredictable nature, Minecraft speedrunning, where players time themselves from spawning into a new world to reaching The End and defeating the Ender Dragon boss, is popular. Some speedrunners use a combination of mods, external programs, and debug menus, while other runners play the game in a more vanilla or more consistency-oriented way. Minecraft has been used in educational settings through initiatives such as MinecraftEdu, founded in 2011 to make the game affordable and accessible for schools in collaboration with Mojang. MinecraftEdu provided features allowing teachers to monitor student progress, including screenshot submissions as evidence of lesson completion, and by 2012 reported that approximately 250,000 students worldwide had access to the platform. Mojang also developed Minecraft: Education Edition with pre-built lesson plans for up to 30 students in a closed environment. Educators have used Minecraft to teach subjects such as history, language arts, and science through custom-built environments, including reconstructions of historical landmarks and large-scale models of biological structures such as animal cells. The introduction of redstone blocks enabled the construction of functional virtual machines such as a hard drive and an 8-bit computer. Mods have been created to use these mechanics for teaching programming. In 2014, the British Museum announced a project to reproduce its building and exhibits in Minecraft in collaboration with the public. Microsoft and Code.org have offered Minecraft-based tutorials and activities designed to teach programming, reporting by 2018 that more than 85 million children had used their resources. In 2025, the Musรฉe de Minรฉralogie in Paris held a temporary exhibition titled "Minerals in Minecraft." Following the initial surge in popularity of Minecraft in 2010, other video games were criticised for having various similarities to Minecraft, and some were described as being "clones", often due to a direct inspiration from Minecraft, or a superficial similarity. Examples include Ace of Spades, CastleMiner, CraftWorld, FortressCraft, Terraria, BlockWorld 3D, Total Miner, and Luanti (formerly Minetest). David Frampton, designer of The Blockheads, reported that one failure of his 2D game was the "low resolution pixel art" that too closely resembled the art in Minecraft, which resulted in "some resistance" from fans. A homebrew adaptation of the alpha version of Minecraft for the Nintendo DS, titled DScraft, has been released; it has been noted for its similarity to the original game considering the technical limitations of the system. In response to Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang and their Minecraft IP, various developers announced further clone titles developed specifically for Nintendo's consoles, as they were the only major platforms not to officially receive Minecraft at the time. These clone titles include UCraft (Nexis Games), Cube Life: Island Survival (Cypronia), Discovery (Noowanda), Battleminer (Wobbly Tooth Games), Cube Creator 3D (Big John Games), and Stone Shire (Finger Gun Games). Despite this, the fears of fans were unfounded, with official Minecraft releases on Nintendo consoles eventually resuming. Markus Persson made another similar game, Minicraft, for a Ludum Dare competition in 2011. In 2025, Persson announced through a poll on his X account that he was considering developing a spiritual successor to Minecraft. He later clarified that he was "100% serious", and that he had "basically announced Minecraft 2". Within days, however, Persson cancelled the plans after speaking to his team. In November 2024, artificial intelligence companies Decart and Etched released Oasis, an artificially generated version of Minecraft, as a proof of concept. Every in-game element is completely AI-generated in real time and the model does not store world data, leading to "hallucinations" such as items and blocks appearing that were not there before. In January 2026, indie game developer Unomelon announced that their voxel sandbox game Allumeria would be playable in Steam Next Fest that year. On 10 February, Mojang issued a DMCA takedown of Allumeria on Steam through Valve, alleging the game was infringing on Minecraft's copyright. Some reports suggested that the takedown may have used an automatic AI copyright claiming service. The DMCA was later withdrawn. Minecon was an annual official fan convention dedicated to Minecraft. The first full Minecon was held in November 2011 at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The event included the official launch of Minecraft; keynote speeches, including one by Persson; building and costume contests; Minecraft-themed breakout classes; exhibits by leading gaming and Minecraft-related companies; commemorative merchandise; and autograph and picture times with Mojang employees and well-known contributors from the Minecraft community. In 2016, Minecon was held in-person for the last time, with the following years featuring annual "Minecon Earth" livestreams on minecraft.net and YouTube instead. These livestreams, later rebranded to "Minecraft Live", included the mob/biome votes, and announcements of new game updates. In 2025, "Minecraft Live" became a biannual event as part of Minecraft's changing update schedule.[citation needed] Notes References External links
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[SOURCE: https://www.fast.ai/posts/2019-08-06-delegation.html] | [TOKENS: 1530]
Make Delegation Work in Python Jeremy Howard August 6, 2019 On this page The Delegation Problem But now weโ€™re violating the Donโ€™t Repeat Yourself (DRY) principal. Weโ€™ve duplicated both our list of parameter names, and the defaults. So later on, we might decide to change the default author to โ€œRachelโ€, so we change the definition in WebPage.__init__. But we forget to do the same in ProductPage, and now we have a bug ๐Ÿ›! (When writing the fastai deep learning library Iโ€™ve created bugs many times in this way, and sometimes theyโ€™ve been extremely hard to track down, because differences in deep learning hyper-parameters can have very subtle and hard to test or detect implications.) The key to this approach is the use of **kwargs. In python **kwargs in a parameter like means โ€œput any additional keyword arguments into a dict called kwarg. And **kwargs in an argument list meansโ€insert all key/value pairs in the kwargs dict as named arguments hereโ€. This approach is used in many popular libraries, such as matplotlib, in which the main plot function simply has the signature plot(*args, **kwargs). The plot documentation says โ€œThe kwargs are Line2D propertiesโ€ and then lists those properties. Itโ€™s not just python that uses this approach. For instance, in the R language the equivalent to **args is simply written ... (an ellipsis). The R documentation explains: โ€œAnother frequent requirement is to allow one function to pass on argument settings to another. For example many graphics functions use the function par() and functions like plot() allow the user to pass on graphical parameters to par() to control the graphical output.This can be done by including an extra argument, literally โ€˜โ€ฆโ€™, of the function, which may then be passed onโ€. However, this makes our API quite difficult to work with, because now the environment weโ€™re using for editing our Python code (examples in this article assume weโ€™re using Jupyter Notebook) doesnโ€™t know what parameters are available, so things like tab-completion of parameter names and popup lists of signatures wonโ€™t work ๐Ÿ˜ข. In addition, if weโ€™re using an automatic tool for generating API documentation (such as fastaiโ€™s show_doc or Sphinx), our docs wonโ€™t include the full list of parameters, and weโ€™ll need to manually add information about these delegated parameters (i.e. category, date, and author, in this case). In fact, weโ€™ve seen this already, in matplotlibโ€™s documentation for plot. This has a new problem, however, which is that the most basic attributes are now hidden underneath p.page, which is not a great experience for our class users (and the constructor is now rather clunky compared to our inheritance version). Solving the problem with delegated inheritance It turns out that this approach, which I call delegated inheritance, solves all of our problems; in Jupyter if I hit the standard โ€œshow parametersโ€ key Shift-Tab while instantiating a ProductPage, I see the full list of parameters, including those from WebPage. And hitting Tab will show me a completion list including the WebPage parameters. In addition, documentation tools see the full, correct signature, including the WebPage parameter details. I really canโ€™t overstate how significant this little decorator is to my coding practice. In early versions of fastai we used kwargs frequently for delegation, because we wanted to ensure my code was as simple as possible to write (otherwise I tend to make a lot of mistakes!) We used it not just for delegating __init__ to the parent, but also for standard functions, similar to how itโ€™s used in matplotlibโ€™s plot function. However, as fastai got more popular, I heard more and more feedback along the lines of โ€œI love everything about fastai, except I hate dealing with kwargsโ€! And I totally empathized; indeed, dealing with ... in R APIs and kwargs in Python APIs has been a regular pain-point for me too. But here I was, inflicting it on my users! ๐Ÿ˜ฏ I am, of course, not the first person to have dealt with this. The Use and Abuse of Keyword Arguments in Python is a thoughtful article which concludes โ€œSo itโ€™s readability vs extensibility. I tend to argue for readability over extensibility, and thatโ€™s what Iโ€™ll do here: for the love of whatever deity/ies you believe in, use **kwargs sparingly and document their use when you doโ€. This is what we ended up doing in fastai too. Last year Sylvain spent a pleasant (!) afternoon removing every kwargs he could and replaced it with explicit parameter lists. And of course now we get the occassional bug resulting from one of us failing to update parameter defaults in all functionsโ€ฆ But now thatโ€™s all in the past. We can use **kwargs again, and have the simpler and more reliable code thanks to DRY, and also a great experience for developers. ๐ŸŽˆ And the basic functionality of delegates() is just a few lines of code (source at bottom of article). Solving the problem with delegated composition Thatโ€™s a good start. But we have a couple of problems. The first is that weโ€™ve lost our tab-completion againโ€ฆ But we can fix it! Python calls __dir__ to figure out what attributes are provided by an object, so we can override it and list the attributes in self.page as well. The second problem is that we often want to control which attributes are forwarded to the composed object. Having anything and everything forwarded could lead to unexpected bugs. So we should consider providing a list of forwarded attributes, and use that in both __getattr__ and __dir__. So now we have two really nice ways of handling delegation; which you choose will depend on the details of the problem youโ€™re solving. If youโ€™ll be using the composed object in a few different places, the composition approach will probably be best. If youโ€™re adding some functionality to an existing class, delegated inheritance might result in a cleaner API for your class users. See the end of this post for the source of GetAttr and delegates. Making delegation work for you Now that you have this tool in your toolbox, how are you going to use it? Iโ€™ve recently started using it in many of my classes and functions. Most of my classes are building on the functionality of other classes, either my own, or from another module, so I often use composition or inheritance. When I do so, I normally like to make available the full functionality of the original class available too. By using GetAttr and delegates I donโ€™t need to make any compromises between maintainability, readability, and usability! Iโ€™d love to hear if you try this, whether you find it helpful or not. Iโ€™d also be interested in hearing about other ways that people are solving the delegation problem. The best way to reach me is to mention me on Twitter, where Iโ€™m @jeremyphoward. PEP 8 shows the โ€œcoding conventions for the Python code comprising the standard library in the main Python distributionโ€. They are also widely used in many other Python projects. I do not use PEP 8 for data science work, or for teaching more generally, since the goals and context are very different to the goals and context of the Python standard library (and PEP 8โ€™s very first point is โ€œA Foolish Consistency is the Hobgoblin of Little Mindsโ€. Generally my code tends to follow the fastai style guide, which was designed for data science and teaching. So please: Source code
========================================
[SOURCE: https://www.fast.ai/posts/2019-08-06-delegation.html] | [TOKENS: 1530]
Make Delegation Work in Python Jeremy Howard August 6, 2019 On this page The Delegation Problem But now weโ€™re violating the Donโ€™t Repeat Yourself (DRY) principal. Weโ€™ve duplicated both our list of parameter names, and the defaults. So later on, we might decide to change the default author to โ€œRachelโ€, so we change the definition in WebPage.__init__. But we forget to do the same in ProductPage, and now we have a bug ๐Ÿ›! (When writing the fastai deep learning library Iโ€™ve created bugs many times in this way, and sometimes theyโ€™ve been extremely hard to track down, because differences in deep learning hyper-parameters can have very subtle and hard to test or detect implications.) The key to this approach is the use of **kwargs. In python **kwargs in a parameter like means โ€œput any additional keyword arguments into a dict called kwarg. And **kwargs in an argument list meansโ€insert all key/value pairs in the kwargs dict as named arguments hereโ€. This approach is used in many popular libraries, such as matplotlib, in which the main plot function simply has the signature plot(*args, **kwargs). The plot documentation says โ€œThe kwargs are Line2D propertiesโ€ and then lists those properties. Itโ€™s not just python that uses this approach. For instance, in the R language the equivalent to **args is simply written ... (an ellipsis). The R documentation explains: โ€œAnother frequent requirement is to allow one function to pass on argument settings to another. For example many graphics functions use the function par() and functions like plot() allow the user to pass on graphical parameters to par() to control the graphical output.This can be done by including an extra argument, literally โ€˜โ€ฆโ€™, of the function, which may then be passed onโ€. However, this makes our API quite difficult to work with, because now the environment weโ€™re using for editing our Python code (examples in this article assume weโ€™re using Jupyter Notebook) doesnโ€™t know what parameters are available, so things like tab-completion of parameter names and popup lists of signatures wonโ€™t work ๐Ÿ˜ข. In addition, if weโ€™re using an automatic tool for generating API documentation (such as fastaiโ€™s show_doc or Sphinx), our docs wonโ€™t include the full list of parameters, and weโ€™ll need to manually add information about these delegated parameters (i.e. category, date, and author, in this case). In fact, weโ€™ve seen this already, in matplotlibโ€™s documentation for plot. This has a new problem, however, which is that the most basic attributes are now hidden underneath p.page, which is not a great experience for our class users (and the constructor is now rather clunky compared to our inheritance version). Solving the problem with delegated inheritance It turns out that this approach, which I call delegated inheritance, solves all of our problems; in Jupyter if I hit the standard โ€œshow parametersโ€ key Shift-Tab while instantiating a ProductPage, I see the full list of parameters, including those from WebPage. And hitting Tab will show me a completion list including the WebPage parameters. In addition, documentation tools see the full, correct signature, including the WebPage parameter details. I really canโ€™t overstate how significant this little decorator is to my coding practice. In early versions of fastai we used kwargs frequently for delegation, because we wanted to ensure my code was as simple as possible to write (otherwise I tend to make a lot of mistakes!) We used it not just for delegating __init__ to the parent, but also for standard functions, similar to how itโ€™s used in matplotlibโ€™s plot function. However, as fastai got more popular, I heard more and more feedback along the lines of โ€œI love everything about fastai, except I hate dealing with kwargsโ€! And I totally empathized; indeed, dealing with ... in R APIs and kwargs in Python APIs has been a regular pain-point for me too. But here I was, inflicting it on my users! ๐Ÿ˜ฏ I am, of course, not the first person to have dealt with this. The Use and Abuse of Keyword Arguments in Python is a thoughtful article which concludes โ€œSo itโ€™s readability vs extensibility. I tend to argue for readability over extensibility, and thatโ€™s what Iโ€™ll do here: for the love of whatever deity/ies you believe in, use **kwargs sparingly and document their use when you doโ€. This is what we ended up doing in fastai too. Last year Sylvain spent a pleasant (!) afternoon removing every kwargs he could and replaced it with explicit parameter lists. And of course now we get the occassional bug resulting from one of us failing to update parameter defaults in all functionsโ€ฆ But now thatโ€™s all in the past. We can use **kwargs again, and have the simpler and more reliable code thanks to DRY, and also a great experience for developers. ๐ŸŽˆ And the basic functionality of delegates() is just a few lines of code (source at bottom of article). Solving the problem with delegated composition Thatโ€™s a good start. But we have a couple of problems. The first is that weโ€™ve lost our tab-completion againโ€ฆ But we can fix it! Python calls __dir__ to figure out what attributes are provided by an object, so we can override it and list the attributes in self.page as well. The second problem is that we often want to control which attributes are forwarded to the composed object. Having anything and everything forwarded could lead to unexpected bugs. So we should consider providing a list of forwarded attributes, and use that in both __getattr__ and __dir__. So now we have two really nice ways of handling delegation; which you choose will depend on the details of the problem youโ€™re solving. If youโ€™ll be using the composed object in a few different places, the composition approach will probably be best. If youโ€™re adding some functionality to an existing class, delegated inheritance might result in a cleaner API for your class users. See the end of this post for the source of GetAttr and delegates. Making delegation work for you Now that you have this tool in your toolbox, how are you going to use it? Iโ€™ve recently started using it in many of my classes and functions. Most of my classes are building on the functionality of other classes, either my own, or from another module, so I often use composition or inheritance. When I do so, I normally like to make available the full functionality of the original class available too. By using GetAttr and delegates I donโ€™t need to make any compromises between maintainability, readability, and usability! Iโ€™d love to hear if you try this, whether you find it helpful or not. Iโ€™d also be interested in hearing about other ways that people are solving the delegation problem. The best way to reach me is to mention me on Twitter, where Iโ€™m @jeremyphoward. PEP 8 shows the โ€œcoding conventions for the Python code comprising the standard library in the main Python distributionโ€. They are also widely used in many other Python projects. I do not use PEP 8 for data science work, or for teaching more generally, since the goals and context are very different to the goals and context of the Python standard library (and PEP 8โ€™s very first point is โ€œA Foolish Consistency is the Hobgoblin of Little Mindsโ€. Generally my code tends to follow the fastai style guide, which was designed for data science and teaching. So please: Source code
========================================
[SOURCE: https://www.fast.ai/posts/2019-08-06-delegation.html] | [TOKENS: 1530]
Make Delegation Work in Python Jeremy Howard August 6, 2019 On this page The Delegation Problem But now weโ€™re violating the Donโ€™t Repeat Yourself (DRY) principal. Weโ€™ve duplicated both our list of parameter names, and the defaults. So later on, we might decide to change the default author to โ€œRachelโ€, so we change the definition in WebPage.__init__. But we forget to do the same in ProductPage, and now we have a bug ๐Ÿ›! (When writing the fastai deep learning library Iโ€™ve created bugs many times in this way, and sometimes theyโ€™ve been extremely hard to track down, because differences in deep learning hyper-parameters can have very subtle and hard to test or detect implications.) The key to this approach is the use of **kwargs. In python **kwargs in a parameter like means โ€œput any additional keyword arguments into a dict called kwarg. And **kwargs in an argument list meansโ€insert all key/value pairs in the kwargs dict as named arguments hereโ€. This approach is used in many popular libraries, such as matplotlib, in which the main plot function simply has the signature plot(*args, **kwargs). The plot documentation says โ€œThe kwargs are Line2D propertiesโ€ and then lists those properties. Itโ€™s not just python that uses this approach. For instance, in the R language the equivalent to **args is simply written ... (an ellipsis). The R documentation explains: โ€œAnother frequent requirement is to allow one function to pass on argument settings to another. For example many graphics functions use the function par() and functions like plot() allow the user to pass on graphical parameters to par() to control the graphical output.This can be done by including an extra argument, literally โ€˜โ€ฆโ€™, of the function, which may then be passed onโ€. However, this makes our API quite difficult to work with, because now the environment weโ€™re using for editing our Python code (examples in this article assume weโ€™re using Jupyter Notebook) doesnโ€™t know what parameters are available, so things like tab-completion of parameter names and popup lists of signatures wonโ€™t work ๐Ÿ˜ข. In addition, if weโ€™re using an automatic tool for generating API documentation (such as fastaiโ€™s show_doc or Sphinx), our docs wonโ€™t include the full list of parameters, and weโ€™ll need to manually add information about these delegated parameters (i.e. category, date, and author, in this case). In fact, weโ€™ve seen this already, in matplotlibโ€™s documentation for plot. This has a new problem, however, which is that the most basic attributes are now hidden underneath p.page, which is not a great experience for our class users (and the constructor is now rather clunky compared to our inheritance version). Solving the problem with delegated inheritance It turns out that this approach, which I call delegated inheritance, solves all of our problems; in Jupyter if I hit the standard โ€œshow parametersโ€ key Shift-Tab while instantiating a ProductPage, I see the full list of parameters, including those from WebPage. And hitting Tab will show me a completion list including the WebPage parameters. In addition, documentation tools see the full, correct signature, including the WebPage parameter details. I really canโ€™t overstate how significant this little decorator is to my coding practice. In early versions of fastai we used kwargs frequently for delegation, because we wanted to ensure my code was as simple as possible to write (otherwise I tend to make a lot of mistakes!) We used it not just for delegating __init__ to the parent, but also for standard functions, similar to how itโ€™s used in matplotlibโ€™s plot function. However, as fastai got more popular, I heard more and more feedback along the lines of โ€œI love everything about fastai, except I hate dealing with kwargsโ€! And I totally empathized; indeed, dealing with ... in R APIs and kwargs in Python APIs has been a regular pain-point for me too. But here I was, inflicting it on my users! ๐Ÿ˜ฏ I am, of course, not the first person to have dealt with this. The Use and Abuse of Keyword Arguments in Python is a thoughtful article which concludes โ€œSo itโ€™s readability vs extensibility. I tend to argue for readability over extensibility, and thatโ€™s what Iโ€™ll do here: for the love of whatever deity/ies you believe in, use **kwargs sparingly and document their use when you doโ€. This is what we ended up doing in fastai too. Last year Sylvain spent a pleasant (!) afternoon removing every kwargs he could and replaced it with explicit parameter lists. And of course now we get the occassional bug resulting from one of us failing to update parameter defaults in all functionsโ€ฆ But now thatโ€™s all in the past. We can use **kwargs again, and have the simpler and more reliable code thanks to DRY, and also a great experience for developers. ๐ŸŽˆ And the basic functionality of delegates() is just a few lines of code (source at bottom of article). Solving the problem with delegated composition Thatโ€™s a good start. But we have a couple of problems. The first is that weโ€™ve lost our tab-completion againโ€ฆ But we can fix it! Python calls __dir__ to figure out what attributes are provided by an object, so we can override it and list the attributes in self.page as well. The second problem is that we often want to control which attributes are forwarded to the composed object. Having anything and everything forwarded could lead to unexpected bugs. So we should consider providing a list of forwarded attributes, and use that in both __getattr__ and __dir__. So now we have two really nice ways of handling delegation; which you choose will depend on the details of the problem youโ€™re solving. If youโ€™ll be using the composed object in a few different places, the composition approach will probably be best. If youโ€™re adding some functionality to an existing class, delegated inheritance might result in a cleaner API for your class users. See the end of this post for the source of GetAttr and delegates. Making delegation work for you Now that you have this tool in your toolbox, how are you going to use it? Iโ€™ve recently started using it in many of my classes and functions. Most of my classes are building on the functionality of other classes, either my own, or from another module, so I often use composition or inheritance. When I do so, I normally like to make available the full functionality of the original class available too. By using GetAttr and delegates I donโ€™t need to make any compromises between maintainability, readability, and usability! Iโ€™d love to hear if you try this, whether you find it helpful or not. Iโ€™d also be interested in hearing about other ways that people are solving the delegation problem. The best way to reach me is to mention me on Twitter, where Iโ€™m @jeremyphoward. PEP 8 shows the โ€œcoding conventions for the Python code comprising the standard library in the main Python distributionโ€. They are also widely used in many other Python projects. I do not use PEP 8 for data science work, or for teaching more generally, since the goals and context are very different to the goals and context of the Python standard library (and PEP 8โ€™s very first point is โ€œA Foolish Consistency is the Hobgoblin of Little Mindsโ€. Generally my code tends to follow the fastai style guide, which was designed for data science and teaching. So please: Source code
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Persson#cite_note-78] | [TOKENS: 3525]
Contents Markus Persson Markus Alexej Persson (/หˆpษชษ™rsษ™n/ โ“˜ PEER-sษ™n, Swedish: [หˆmวŽrหkษตs หˆpรฆฬŒหส‚ษ”n] โ“˜; born 1 June 1979), known by the pseudonym Notch, is a Swedish video game programmer and designer. He is the creator of Minecraft, the best-selling video game in history. He founded the video game development company Mojang Studios in 2009. Persson began developing video games at an early age. His commercial success began after he published an early version of Minecraft in 2009. Prior to the game's official retail release in 2011, it had sold over four million copies. After this point Persson stood down as the lead designer and transferred his creative authority to Jens Bergensten. In September 2014 Persson announced his intention to leave Mojang, and in November of that year the company was sold to Microsoft reportedly for US$2.5 billion, which made him a billionaire. Since 2016 several of Persson's posts on Twitter regarding feminism, race, and transgender rights have caused public controversies. He has been described as "an increasingly polarizing figure, tweeting offensive statements regarding race, the LGBTQ community, gender, and other topics." In an effort to distance itself from Persson, Microsoft removed mentions of his name from Minecraft (excluding one instance in the game's end credits) and did not invite him to the game's tenth anniversary celebration. In 2015 he co-founded a separate game studio called Rubberbrain, which was relaunched in 2024 as Bitshift Entertainment. Early life Markus Alexej Persson was born in Stockholm, Sweden, to a Finnish mother, Ritva, and a Swedish father, Birger, on 1 June 1979. He has one sister. He grew up in Edsbyn until he was seven years old, when his family moved back to Stockholm. In Edsbyn, Persson's father worked for the railroad, and his mother was a nurse. He spent much time outdoors in Edsbyn, exploring the woods with his friends. When Persson was about seven years old, his parents divorced, and he and his sister lived with their mother. His father moved to a cabin in the countryside. Persson said in an interview that they experienced food insecurity around once a month. Persson lost contact with his father for several years after the divorce. According to Persson, his father suffered from depression, bipolar disorder, alcoholism, and medication abuse, and went to jail for robberies. While his father had somewhat recovered during Persson's early life, his father relapsed, contributing to the divorce. His sister also experimented with drugs and ran away from home. He had gained interest in video games at an early age. His father was "a really big nerd", who built his own modem and taught Persson to use the family's Commodore 128. On it, Persson played bootleg games and loaded in various type-in programs from computer magazines with the help of his sister. The first game he purchased with his own money was The Bard's Tale. He began programming on his father's Commodore 128 home computer at the age of seven. He produced his first game at the age of eight, a text-based adventure game. By 1994 Persson knew he wanted to become a video game developer, but his teachers advised him to study graphic design, which he did from ages 15 to 18. Persson, although introverted, was well-liked by his peers, but after entering secondary school was a "loner" and reportedly had only one friend. He spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. He managed to reverse-engineer the Doom engine, which he continued to take great pride in as of 2014[update]. He never finished high school, but was reportedly a good student. Career Persson started his career working as a web designer. He later found employment at Game Federation, where he met Rolf Jansson. The pair worked in their spare time to build the 2006 video game Wurm Online. The game was released through a new entity, "Mojang Specifications AB". Persson left the project in late 2007. As Persson wanted to reuse the name "Mojang", Jansson agreed to rename the company to Onetoofree AB. Between 2004 and 2009 Persson worked as a game developer for Midasplayer (later known as King). There, he worked as a programmer, mostly building browser games made in Flash. He later worked as a programmer for jAlbum. Prior to creating Minecraft, Persson developed multiple, small games. He also entered a number of game design competitions and participated in discussions on the TIGSource forums, a web forum for independent game developers. One of Persson's more notable personal projects was called RubyDung, an isometric three-dimensional base-building game like RollerCoaster Tycoon and Dwarf Fortress. While working on RubyDung, Persson experimented with a first-person view mode similar to that found in Dungeon Keeper. However, he felt the graphics were too pixelated and omitted this mode. In 2009 Persson found inspiration in Infiniminer, a block-based open-ended mining game. Infiniminer heavily influenced his future work on RubyDung, and was behind Persson's reasoning for returning the first-person mode, the "blocky" visual style and the block-building fundamentals to the game. RubyDung is the earliest known Minecraft prototype created by Persson. On 17 May 2009 Persson released the original edition (later called "Classic version") of Minecraft on the TIGSource forums. He regularly updated the game based on feedback from TIGSource users. Persson released several new versions of Minecraft throughout 2009 and 2010, going through several phases of development including Survival Test, Indev, and Infdev. On 30 June 2010 Persson released the game's Alpha version. While working on the pre-Alpha version of Minecraft, Persson continued working at jAlbum. In 2010, after the release and subsequent success of Minecraft's Alpha version, Persson moved from a full-time role to a part-time role at jAlbum. He left jAlbum later that same year. In September 2010 Persson travelled to Valve Corporation's headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, United States, where he took part in a programming exercise and met Gabe Newell. Persson was subsequently offered a job at Valve, which he turned down in order to continue work on Minecraft. On 20 December 2010 Minecraft moved into its beta phase and began expanding to other platforms, including mobile. In January 2011 Minecraft reached one million registered accounts. Six months afterwards, it reached ten million. The game has sold over four million copies by 7 November 2011. Mojang held the first Minecon from 18 to 19 November 2011 to celebrate its full release, and subsequently made it an annual event. Following this, on 11 December 2011, Persson transferred creative control of Minecraft to Jens Bergensten and began working on another game title, 0x10c, although he reportedly abandoned the project around 2013. In 2013 Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million and profits of $129 million. Persson has stated that, due to the intense media attention and public pressure, he became exhausted with running Minecraft and Mojang. In a September 2014 blog post he shared his realization that he "didn't have the connection to my fans I thought I had", that he had "become a symbol", and that he did not wish to be responsible for Mojang's increasingly large operation. In June 2014 Persson tweeted "Anyone want to buy my share of Mojang so I can move on with my life? Getting hate for trying to do the right thing is not my gig", reportedly partly as a joke. Persson controlled a 71% stake in Mojang at the time. The offer attracted significant interest from Activision Blizzard, EA, and Microsoft. Forbes later reported that Microsoft wanted to purchase the game as a "tax dodge" to turn their taxable excess liquid cash into other assets. In September 2014 Microsoft agreed to purchase Mojang for $2.5 billion, making Persson a billionaire. He then left the company after the deal was finalised in November. Since leaving Mojang, Persson has worked on several small projects. On 23 June 2014 he founded a company with Porsรฉr called Rubberbrain AB; the company had no games by 2021, despite spending SEK 60 million. The company was relaunched as Bitshift Entertainment, LLC on 28 March 2024. Persson expressed interest in creating a new video game studio in 2020, and in developing virtual reality games. He has also since created a series of narrative-driven immersive events called ".party()", which uses extensive visual effects and has been hosted in multiple cities. At the beginning of 2025 Persson decided to create a spiritual successor to Minecraft, referred to as "Minecraft 2", in response to the results of a poll on X. However, after speaking to his team, he shortly went against this in favour of developing the other choice on his Twitter poll, a roguelike titled Levers and Chests. Games Persson's most popular creation is the survival sandbox game Minecraft, which was first publicly available on 17 May 2009 and fully released on 18 November 2011. Persson left his job as a game developer to work on Minecraft full-time until completion. In early 2011, Mojang AB sold the one millionth copy of the game, several months later their second, and several more their third. Mojang hired several new staff members for the Minecraft team, while Persson passed the lead developer role to Jens Bergensten. He stopped working on Minecraft after a deal with Microsoft to sell Mojang for $2.5 billion. This brought his net worth to US$1.5 billion. Persson and Jakob Porsรฉr came up with the idea for Scrolls including elements from board games and collectible card games. Persson noted that he will not be actively involved in development of the game and that Porsรฉr will be developing it. Persson revealed on his Tumblr blog on 5 August 2011 that he was being sued by a Swedish law firm representing Bethesda Softworks over the trademarked name of Scrolls, claiming that it conflicted with their The Elder Scrolls series of games. On 17 August 2011 Persson challenged Bethesda to a Quake 3 tournament to decide the outcome of the naming dispute. On 27 September 2011 Persson confirmed that the lawsuit was going to court. ZeniMax Media, owner of Bethesda Softworks, announced the lawsuit's settlement in March 2012. The settlement allowed Mojang to continue using the Scrolls trademark. In 2018, Scrolls was made available free of charge and renamed to Caller's Bane. Cliffhorse is a humorous game programmed in two hours using the Unity game engine and free assets. The game took inspiration from Skyrim's physics engine, "the more embarrassing minimum-effort Greenlight games", Goat Simulator, and Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing. The game was released to Microsoft Windows systems as an early access and honourware game on the first day of E3 2014, instructing users to donate Dogecoin to "buy" the game before downloading it. The game accumulated over 280,000 dogecoins. Following the end to his involvement with Minecraft, Persson began pre-production of an alternate reality space game set in the distant future in March 2012. On April Fools' Day Mojang launched a satirical website for Mars Effect (parody of Mass Effect), citing the lawsuit with Bethesda as an inspiration. However, the gameplay elements remained true and on 4 April, Mojang revealed 0x10c (pronounced "Ten to the C") as a space sandbox title. Persson officially halted game production in August 2013. However, C418, the composer of the game's soundtrack (as well as that of Minecraft), released an album of the work he had made for the game. In 2013, Persson made a free game called Shambles in the Unity game engine. Persson has also participated in several Ludum Dare 48-hour game making competitions. Personal life In 2011 Persson married Elin Zetterstrand, whom he had dated for four years before. Zetterstrand was a former moderator on the Minecraft forums. They had a daughter together, but by mid-2012, he began to see little of her. On 15 August 2012 he announced that he and his wife had filed for divorce. The divorce was finalised later that year. On 14 December 2011 Persson's father committed suicide with a handgun after drinking heavily. In an interview with The New Yorker, Persson said of his father: When I decided I wanted to quit my day job and work on my own games, he was the only person who supported my decision. He was proud of me and made sure I knew. When I added the monsters to Minecraft, he told me that the dark caves became too scary for him. But I think that was the only true criticism I ever heard from him. Persson later admitted that he himself suffered from depression and various highs and lows in his mood. Persson has criticised the stance of large game companies on piracy. He once stated that "piracy is not theft", viewing unauthorised downloads as potential future customers. Persson stated himself to be a member of the Pirate Party of Sweden in 2011. He is also a member of Mensa. He has donated to numerous charities, including Mรฉdecins Sans Frontiรจres (Doctors Without Borders). Under his direction, Mojang spent a week developing Catacomb Snatch for the Humble Indie Bundle and raised US$458,248 for charity. He also donated $250,000 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2012. In 2011 he gave $3 million in dividends back to Mojang employees. According to Forbes, his net worth in 2023 was around $1.2 billion. In 2014 Persson was one of the biggest taxpayers in Sweden. Around 2014, he lived in a multi-level penthouse in ร–stermalm, Stockholm, an area he described as "where the rich people live". In December 2014 Persson purchased a home in Trousdale Estates, a neighbourhood in Beverly Hills, California, in the United States, for $70 million, a record sales price for Beverly Hills at the time. Persson reportedly outbid Beyoncรฉ and Jay-Z for the property. Persson began receiving criticism for political and social opinions he expressed on social media as early as 2016. November 30, 2017 In 2017, he proposed a heterosexual pride holiday, and wrote that those who opposed the idea "deserve to be shot." After facing backlash, he deleted the tweets and rescinded his statements, writing, "So yeah, it's about pride of daring to express, not about pride of being who you are. I get it now." Later in the year, he wrote that feminism is a "social disease" and called the video game developer and feminist Zoรซ Quinn a "cunt", although he was generally critical of the GamerGate movement. He has described intersectional feminism as a "framework for bigotry" and the use of the word mansplaining as being sexist. Also in 2017, Persson tweeted that "It's okay to be white". Later that year, he stated that he believed in the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. In 2019, he tweeted referencing QAnon, saying "Q is legit. Don't trust the media." Later in 2019, he tweeted in response to a pro-transgender internet meme that, "You are absolutely evil if you want to encourage delusion. What happened to not stigmatizing mental illness?" He then also promoted claims that people were fined for "using the wrong pronoun". However, after facing backlash, he tweeted a day afterwards that he had "no idea what [being trans is] like of course, but it's inspiring as hell when people open up and choose to actually be who they know themselves as. Not because it's a cool choice, because it's a big step. I gues [sic] that's actually cool nvm". Later that year, Microsoft removed two mentions of Persson's name in the "19w13a" snapshot of Minecraft and did not invite him to the 10-year anniversary celebration of the game. A spokesperson for Microsoft stated that his views "do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang". He is still mentioned in the End Poem ("a flat, infinite world created by a man called Markus").[citation needed] Awards References External links
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zo%C3%AB_Quinn] | [TOKENS: 1665]
Contents Zoรซ Quinn Zoรซ Tiberius Quinn (born 1987) is an American video game developer, programmer, and writer. Quinn developed the interactive fiction game Depression Quest, which was released in 2013. In 2014, a blog post by their[a] ex-boyfriend sparked the online harassment campaign known as Gamergate, during which Quinn was subjected to extensive harassment including doxing, rape threats, and death threats. The following year, Quinn co-founded Crash Override, a crisis hotline and resource center for victims of online harassment. Early life Zoรซ Tiberius Quinn was born in 1987 and was reared in a small town near the Adirondack Mountains in New York. Growing up, Quinn's favorite video game was Commander Keen, an MS-DOS game featuring an eight-year-old protagonist who builds a spaceship with items found around his house and then travels the galaxy defending the Earth. Quinn suffered from depression as a teenager, having been diagnosed with the condition at age 14. They described receiving little sympathy or assistance from school district officials who were "less than understanding about teens with depression and suicide issues". Career At the age of 24, Quinn moved to Canada and made their first foray into video game programming. Quinn's first game was the result of a six-week course on video game creation that they attended after seeing an advertisement in a newspaper. In a later interview for The New Yorker, Quinn said, "I felt like I'd found my calling." One of Quinn's earliest creative works, Depression Quest, was conceived as a "choose-your-own path" adventure detailing the troubled life of a person suffering from depression, with many of the "correct" paths blocked due to the protagonist's struggle with mental self-care. Quinn thought this sort of game narrative would be a good way to depict depression, imposing a set of rules on players that might not experience such problems in their day-to-day lives. Depression Quest was released in February 2013. Quinn attempted to publish the game on Steam Greenlight service twice โ€“ in December 2013 and later in August 2014, when it was accepted and released by Steam. Depression Quest was featured in a Playboy article as one of several video games dealing with the subjective experience of depression. Quinn created the Game Developer Help List, designed to bring experienced game developers and novice developers into contact with one another. In 2014, Quinn intended to be part of the canceled YouTube reality television show codenamed "Game_Jam", which was meant to bring together a number of prominent indie game developers. In 2015, Quinn served as a narrative design consultant for Loveshack Entertainment's iOS game Framed. As of 2014, Quinn was also working on a full motion video game starring Greg Sestero. In 2015, Quinn wrote a chapter for Videogames for Humans, a book about games made using the Twine tool. Quinn also contributed a chapter to the book The State of Play: Sixteen Voices on Video Games, detailing their experiences making Depression Quest and the subsequent harassment they faced. In 2015, Quinn appeared in the documentary GTFO. They also wrote a scenario for "Widow's Walk", an expansion for Betrayal at House on the Hill, released in 2016. In September 2016, Quinn was reported to be working with erotica author Chuck Tingle on a full motion dating sim under the working title "Project Tingler". The game was finally named "Kickstarted in the Butt: A Chuck Tingle Digital Adventure" and a Kickstarter campaign was started in October 2016 asking for $69,420 to fund the project. The game raised over $85,000 from 2,450 backers weeks later. In January 2018, Quinn's role as Narrative Designer at Heart Machine's upcoming game Solar Ash was also announced. In June 2018, Quinn's career as a comics writer started with the announcement of their work with illustrator Robbi Rodriguez on DC Vertigo's Goddess Mode, which became one of the last comics released under the Vertigo label. In July 2019, their participation in the upcoming issues of IDW Publishing's The Addams Family: The Bodies Issue and Marvel's Fearless was announced. Quinn has additionally worked on 2064: Read Only Memories, Alien: Rogue Incursion, Fez, Jazzpunk, and They Bleed Pixels. Quinn is interested in human enhancement and has implanted an NTAG216 NFC chip in the back of their hand that can be programmed to perform various functions. Their first use of the chip was to load it with the download code for the game Deus Ex. Quinn also has a magnetic implant in their left ring finger. Quinn has faced harassment in response to Depression Quest since the game's initial release. This intensified with the additional publicity the game received on Steam. Quinn initially withdrew the game from Steam's Greenlight service, after having a detailed rape threat mailed to their home address. When they brought Depression Quest back to Greenlight, Quinn began receiving threatening phone calls. In August 2014, Eron Gjoni, a former boyfriend of Quinn, posted a lengthy blog post detailing his relationship with them. Based on the contents of the post, Quinn was falsely accused of receiving positive coverage from a journalist with whom they were in a relationship. It was later shown that the journalist, Nathan Grayson, had only written about Quinn once, before they started a relationship. These accusations sparked the harassment campaign known as Gamergate. Quinn suffered extensive harassment including doxing, rape threats, and death threats. Media coverage of Gamergate resulted in widespread recognition of sexism in gaming. According to The New Yorker, the harassment escalated to the point where Quinn left their home and began working with the authorities to identify those responsible for the harassment. Quinn detailed the experience in an interview on MSNBC's Ronan Farrow Daily, saying that Gamergate represented a rapidly shrinking fringe among an increasingly diverse gaming community, and that those attacking Quinn and women in gaming needed "to just grow up". Speaking with BBC News, Quinn said the harassment had consumed their life, leading them to feel as if "surrounded by nothing but hate โ€“ it's virulent, it's everywhere" and that they were "just trying to survive". The attacks boiled down to "the same accusation everybody makes toward every successful woman: she got to where she is because she had sex with someone", and Quinn also pointed out that Gamergate had targeted "the people with the least power in the industry". "[I] used to go to games events and feel like I was going home... Now it's just like... are any of the people I'm currently in the room with, the ones that said they wanted to beat me to death?" Quinn said that their therapist remarked of the harassment, "I don't even know what to tell you, this is so f-โ€-โ€-ing far outside anything I'm aware of." In January 2015, Quinn co-founded Crash Override, a private network of experts to assist victims of online harassment which in March 2015 joined forces with Randi Harper's Online Abuse Prevention Initiative. On September 24, 2015, Quinn spoke at the United Nations along with Anita Sarkeesian about online harassment. In their speech, Quinn spoke about the need for technology companies to provide proper moderation and terms of service which protect marginalized groups. Quinn also raised concerns about providing better protections for transgender women and victims of domestic violence on the Internet. Quinn came out as non-cisgender in January 2017; they use they/them pronouns. In September 2017, Quinn published the memoir Crash Override: How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate. The book has received generally positive reviews, with critics praising what they described as Quinn's thoughtful, nuanced portrayal of Quinn's harassers, but lamenting the book's "scattered" narrative flow. The book was nominated for the 2018 Hugo Award for Best Related Work (i.e., non-fiction work related to science fiction or fantasy). Bibliography Notes References Further reading External links
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[SOURCE: https://www.fast.ai/posts/2019-08-05-center-applied-data-ethics.html] | [TOKENS: 1668]
USF Launches New Center of Applied Data Ethics Rachel Thomas August 5, 2019 On this page Update: The first year of the USF Center for Applied Data Ethics will be funded with a generous gift from Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the organization of craigslist founder Craig Newmark. Read the official press release for more details. While the widespread adoption of data science and machine learning techniques has led to many positive discoveries, it also poses risks and is causing harm. Facial recognition technology sold by Amazon, IBM, and other companies has been found to have significantly higher error rates on Black women, yet these same companies are already selling facial recognition and predictive policing technology to police, with no oversight, regulations, or accountability. Millions of peopleโ€™s photos have been compiled into databases, often without their knowledge, and shared with foreign governments, military operations, and police departments. Major tech platforms (such as Googleโ€™s YouTube, which auto-plays videos selected by an algorithm), have been shown to disproportionately promote conspiracy theories and disinformation, helping radicalize people into toxic views such as white supremacy. In response to these risks and harms, I am helping to launch a new Center for Applied Data Ethics (CADE), housed within the University of San Franciscoโ€™s Data Institute to address issues surrounding the misuse of data through education, research, public policy and civil advocacy. The first year will include a tech policy workshop, a data ethics seminar series, and data ethics courses, all of which will be open to the community at-large. Misuses of data and AI include the encoding & magnification of unjust bias, increasing surveillance & erosion of privacy, spread of disinformation & amplification of conspiracy theories, lack of transparency or oversight in how predictive policing is being deployed, and lack of accountability for tech companies. These problems are alarming, difficult, urgent, and systemic, and it will take the efforts of a broad and diverse range of people to address them. Many individuals, organizations, institutes, and entire fields are already hard at work tackling these problems. We will not reinvent the wheel, but instead will leverage existing tools and will amplify experts from a range of backgrounds. Diversity is a crucial component in addressing tech ethics issues, and we are committed to including a diverse range of speakers and supporting students and researchers from underrepresented groups. I am director of the new center. Since youโ€™re reading the fast.ai blog, you may be familiar with my work, but if not, you can read about my background here. I earned my PhD at Duke University in 2010, was selected by Forbes as one of โ€œ20 Incredible Women in AIโ€, am co-founder of fast.ai, and have been a researcher at USF Data Institute since it was founded in 2016. In the past few years, I have done a lot of writing and speaking on data ethics issues. What is the USF Data Institute? The Center for Applied Data Ethics will be housed within the USF Data Institute, located in downtown San Francisco, and will be able to leverage our existing community, partnerships, and successes. In the 3 years since the founding of the Data Institute, more than 900 entrepreneurs & employees from local tech companies have taken evening and weekend courses here, and we have granted more than 177 diversity scholarships to people from underrepresented groups. The USF MS in Data Science program, now housed in the Data Institute, is entering its 8th year, and all students complete 8 month practicum projects at our 160 partner companies. Jeremy Howard and I have both been involved with the USF Data Institute since it first began 3 years ago; it is where we have taught the in-person versions of our deep learning, machine learning, computational linear algebra, and NLP courses, and we have both been chairs of tracks for the Data Institute conference. Additionally, Jeremy launched the Wicklow AI in Medicine Research Initiative as part of the Data Institute last year. What will you do in the 1st year? How can I get involved? Data Ethics Seminar Series: We will bring in experts on issues of data ethics in talks open to the community, and high-quality recordings of the talks will be shared online. We are excited to have Deborah Raji as our first speaker. Please join us on Monday August 19 for a reception with food and Deborahโ€™s talk on โ€œActionable Auditing and Algorithmic Justice.โ€ Tech Policy Workshop: Systemic problems require systemic solutions. Individual behavior change will not address the structural misalignment of incentives and lack of accountability. We need thoughtful and informed laws to safeguard human rights, and we do not want legislation written by corporate lobbyists. When it comes to setting policy in this area, too few legislators have the needed technical background and too few of those with knowledge of the tech industry have the needed policy background. We will hold a 3-day tech policy workshop, tentatively scheduled for November 15-17. Data Ethics Certificate Course open to the community: The USF Data Institute has been offering part-time evening and weekend courses in downtown SF for the last 3 years, including the popular Practical Deep Learning for Coders course taught by Jeremy Howard. You do not need to be a USF student to attend these courses, and over 900 people, most working professionals, have attended past courses at the Data Institute. I will be teaching a Data Ethics course one evening per week in January-February 2020. Required Data Ethics Course for MS in Data Science students: USF has added a required data ethics course that all students in the Masters of Science in Data Science program will take. Data Ethics Fellows: We plan to offer research fellowships for those working on problems of applied data ethics, with a particular focus on work that has a direct, practical impact. Fellows will have access to the resources, community, and courses at the USF Data Institute. We will begin accepting invitations this fall, for 1-year long fellowships with start dates of January 2020 or June 2020. If you are interested in any of these upcoming initiatives, please sign up for our mailing list to be notified when applications open. Other FAQ Q: What does this mean for your involvement with fast.ai? A: We plan to release a data ethics course through fast.ai, sometime in mid-2020. (We have previously covered ethics issues in our Deep Learning for Coders course, and our recent A Code-First Intro to NLP included lessons on unjust bias and disinformation). I will continue to blog here on the fast.ai site and am still committed to the fast.ai mission. Q: Given misuses of AI, isnโ€™t your work at fast.ai to make AI accessible to more people dangerous? A: What is dangerous is having a homogeneous and exclusive group designing technology that impacts us all. Companies such as Amazon, Palantir, Facebook, and others are generally considered quite prestigious and only hire those with โ€œeliteโ€ backgrounds, yet we can see the widespread harm these companies are causing. We need a broader and more diverse group of people involved with AI, both to take advantage of the positives, as well as to address misuses of the technology. Please see my TEDx San Francisco talk for more details on this. Q: Will you be coming up with a set of AI ethics principles? A: No, there are many sets of AI ethics principles out there. We will not attempt to duplicate the work of others, but instead hope to amplify excellent work that is already being done (in addition to doing our own research). Q: What do you consider the biggest ethical issues in tech? Some of the issues that alarm me most are the encoding & magnification of unjust bias, increasing surveillance & erosion of privacy, spread of disinformation & amplification of conspiracy theories, lack of transparency or oversight in how predictive policing is being deployed, and lack of accountability for tech companies. For more information on these, please see some of my talks and posts linked below. Here are some of my talks that you may be interested in: And some previous blog posts: I hope you can join us for our first data ethics seminar on the evening of Monday Aug 19 downtown in SF, and please sign up for our mailing list to stay in touch!
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansplaining] | [TOKENS: 1665]
Contents Mansplaining Page version status This is an accepted version of this page Mansplaining (a blend word of man and the informal form splaining of the gerund explaining) is a pejorative term meaning (for a man) to explain something to a woman in a condescending, overconfident, and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner without regard to her own expertise. Traditionally, mansplaining differs from other forms of condescension in that it was said to be rooted in the assumption that a man is likely to be more knowledgeable than a woman. However, it has come to be used more broadly, often applied when a man takes a condescending tone in an explanation to anyone, regardless of the age or gender of the intended recipients: a "man 'splaining" can be delivered to any audience. In 2013 Dictionary.com said it was adding both mansplain and the suffix (libfix) -splain to its dictionary. Its announcement read in part: "In addition to being creative, this term, particularly the -splaining part, has proven to be incredibly robust and useful as a combining form in 2013." Mansplaining has also engendered parallel constructions such as womansplaining, whitesplaining, rightsplaining, and goysplaining. As the word became more popular, several commentators complained that misappropriation had diluted its original meaning. Joshua Sealy-Harrington and Tom McLaughlin wrote in the newspaper The Globe and Mail that the term has been used as an ad hominem to silence debate. Etymology The verb splain has been in use for more than 200 years, originally as a colloquial pronunciation of the Late Middle English word explain. It came increasingly to refer to condescending or verbose explanations. Dictionary.com noted that the meaning of mansplain had changed somewhat since 2009, from "intense and serious to casual and jocular", while older -splain words still have "heavy cultural and political connotations and are often added to the names of politicians". The word exists in dozens of languages, including the German "herrklรคren", French "mecspliquer", Italian "maschiegazione" or "minchiarimento", and Spanish "machoexplicaciรณn". Origin and usage The term mansplaining was inspired by an essay, "Men Explain Things to Me: Facts Didn't Get in Their Way", written by author Rebecca Solnit and published on TomDispatch.com on 13 April 2008. In the essay, Solnit told an anecdote about a man at a party who said he had heard she had written some books. She began to talk about her most recent, on Eadweard Muybridge, whereupon the man cut her off and asked if she had "heard about the very important Muybridge book that came out this year"โ€”not considering that it might be (as, in fact, it was) Solnit's book. Solnit did not use the word mansplaining in the essay, but she described the phenomenon as "something every woman knows". A month later the word appeared in a comment on the social network LiveJournal. It became popular among feminist bloggers before entering mainstream commentary. Solnit ascribed the phenomenon of mansplaining to a combination of "overconfidence and cluelessness". Lily Rothman, of The Atlantic, defined it as "explaining without regard to the fact that the explainee knows more than the explainer, often done by a man to a woman". Solnit later published Men Explain Things to Me (2014), a collection of seven essays on social issues and human rights themes. Women, including professionals and experts, are routinely seen or treated as less credible than men, she wrote in the title essay, and their insights, or even legal testimony are dismissed unless validated by a man in some countries. She argued that this was one symptom of a widespread phenomenon that "keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men's unsupported overconfidence." In 2010, it was named by the New York Times as one of its "Words of the Year". The word was nominated in 2012 for the American Dialect Society's "most creative word of the year" honor. In 2014 it was added to the online Oxford Dictionaries. Journalists have used the word to describe the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney; President Donald Trump; Governor of Texas Rick Perry; MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell; various characters on the HBO drama series The Newsroom; music executive Jimmy Iovine; Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull; actor Matt Damon; and consumer rights advocate Ralph Nader. In February 2016 the term sparked an argument between two members of a committee of the Australian Senate, when Labor senator Katy Gallagher told Communications Minister Mitch Fifield: "I love the mansplaining. I'm enjoying it." Mansplaining goes further into political digital spheres amongst regular citizens as well. People being mansplained, typically women, are least likely to engage in political banter in public spaces, however, they are more inclined to do it with family. They also take a subordinate role to men in conversation. Women are more likely to use tentative language or "hedge" words and are overwhelmingly more interrupted than men In the Czech Republic during 2013 and 2015 parliamentary electoral campaigns, women who were posting to social media were less negative in expressing their political opinions, especially on profiles that they supported. Digitally, it is suggested that the women who do speak publicly about politics are more likely to share their thoughts on Facebook, rather than Twitter. This is due to the fact that on Twitter, you can connect with anyone and not have to mutually accept a friend request like on Facebook. This connects with the idea that women are more inclined to speak their political thoughts with their family. Women are inclined to be more sensitive to the "rapport dynamic" of conversation (the emotions and desires of their conversational partner), whereas men are more sensitive to the "power dynamic" (who has greater power in a given exchange and how power is gained and lost through communication). Since politics is a male-dominated field in most areas of the world, the environment of political discourse can be especially inhospitable for women. It is already assumed that women do not know much about politics so political banter can be hostile and mansplaining can happen. Even some women might believe that, because of their gender, they are not educated enough about politics. Twitter is a platform where mansplaining is most likely to be done and where the man is most likely to mansplain. The odds are higher to get into a political argument on Twitter. Twitter is more likely to be used as a proxy for public opinion than Facebook. Men on the right are more likely to be accused of mansplaining as well, while women who are mansplain victims are more likely to be better educated, younger, and Caucasian. Criticism MPR News Staff disputed the usefulness of the term. Given its gender-specific nature and negative connotation, Lesley Kinzel described it as inherently biased, essentialist, dismissive, and a double standard. In a 2016 Washington Post article, Cathy Young wrote that it is just one of a number of terms using "man" as a derogatory prefix, and that this convention is part of a "current cycle of misandry". Meghan Daum, in a 2015 Los Angeles Times article, wrote that "To suggest that men are more qualified for the designation than women is not only sexist but almost as tone deaf as categorizing everything that a man says as mansplaining." In 2014 Solnit herself said she had doubts about it: "[I]t seems to me to go a little heavy on the idea that men are inherently flawed this way, rather than that some men explain things they shouldn't and don't hear things they should." See also References External links
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Persson#cite_note-:16-81] | [TOKENS: 3525]
Contents Markus Persson Markus Alexej Persson (/หˆpษชษ™rsษ™n/ โ“˜ PEER-sษ™n, Swedish: [หˆmวŽrหkษตs หˆpรฆฬŒหส‚ษ”n] โ“˜; born 1 June 1979), known by the pseudonym Notch, is a Swedish video game programmer and designer. He is the creator of Minecraft, the best-selling video game in history. He founded the video game development company Mojang Studios in 2009. Persson began developing video games at an early age. His commercial success began after he published an early version of Minecraft in 2009. Prior to the game's official retail release in 2011, it had sold over four million copies. After this point Persson stood down as the lead designer and transferred his creative authority to Jens Bergensten. In September 2014 Persson announced his intention to leave Mojang, and in November of that year the company was sold to Microsoft reportedly for US$2.5 billion, which made him a billionaire. Since 2016 several of Persson's posts on Twitter regarding feminism, race, and transgender rights have caused public controversies. He has been described as "an increasingly polarizing figure, tweeting offensive statements regarding race, the LGBTQ community, gender, and other topics." In an effort to distance itself from Persson, Microsoft removed mentions of his name from Minecraft (excluding one instance in the game's end credits) and did not invite him to the game's tenth anniversary celebration. In 2015 he co-founded a separate game studio called Rubberbrain, which was relaunched in 2024 as Bitshift Entertainment. Early life Markus Alexej Persson was born in Stockholm, Sweden, to a Finnish mother, Ritva, and a Swedish father, Birger, on 1 June 1979. He has one sister. He grew up in Edsbyn until he was seven years old, when his family moved back to Stockholm. In Edsbyn, Persson's father worked for the railroad, and his mother was a nurse. He spent much time outdoors in Edsbyn, exploring the woods with his friends. When Persson was about seven years old, his parents divorced, and he and his sister lived with their mother. His father moved to a cabin in the countryside. Persson said in an interview that they experienced food insecurity around once a month. Persson lost contact with his father for several years after the divorce. According to Persson, his father suffered from depression, bipolar disorder, alcoholism, and medication abuse, and went to jail for robberies. While his father had somewhat recovered during Persson's early life, his father relapsed, contributing to the divorce. His sister also experimented with drugs and ran away from home. He had gained interest in video games at an early age. His father was "a really big nerd", who built his own modem and taught Persson to use the family's Commodore 128. On it, Persson played bootleg games and loaded in various type-in programs from computer magazines with the help of his sister. The first game he purchased with his own money was The Bard's Tale. He began programming on his father's Commodore 128 home computer at the age of seven. He produced his first game at the age of eight, a text-based adventure game. By 1994 Persson knew he wanted to become a video game developer, but his teachers advised him to study graphic design, which he did from ages 15 to 18. Persson, although introverted, was well-liked by his peers, but after entering secondary school was a "loner" and reportedly had only one friend. He spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. He managed to reverse-engineer the Doom engine, which he continued to take great pride in as of 2014[update]. He never finished high school, but was reportedly a good student. Career Persson started his career working as a web designer. He later found employment at Game Federation, where he met Rolf Jansson. The pair worked in their spare time to build the 2006 video game Wurm Online. The game was released through a new entity, "Mojang Specifications AB". Persson left the project in late 2007. As Persson wanted to reuse the name "Mojang", Jansson agreed to rename the company to Onetoofree AB. Between 2004 and 2009 Persson worked as a game developer for Midasplayer (later known as King). There, he worked as a programmer, mostly building browser games made in Flash. He later worked as a programmer for jAlbum. Prior to creating Minecraft, Persson developed multiple, small games. He also entered a number of game design competitions and participated in discussions on the TIGSource forums, a web forum for independent game developers. One of Persson's more notable personal projects was called RubyDung, an isometric three-dimensional base-building game like RollerCoaster Tycoon and Dwarf Fortress. While working on RubyDung, Persson experimented with a first-person view mode similar to that found in Dungeon Keeper. However, he felt the graphics were too pixelated and omitted this mode. In 2009 Persson found inspiration in Infiniminer, a block-based open-ended mining game. Infiniminer heavily influenced his future work on RubyDung, and was behind Persson's reasoning for returning the first-person mode, the "blocky" visual style and the block-building fundamentals to the game. RubyDung is the earliest known Minecraft prototype created by Persson. On 17 May 2009 Persson released the original edition (later called "Classic version") of Minecraft on the TIGSource forums. He regularly updated the game based on feedback from TIGSource users. Persson released several new versions of Minecraft throughout 2009 and 2010, going through several phases of development including Survival Test, Indev, and Infdev. On 30 June 2010 Persson released the game's Alpha version. While working on the pre-Alpha version of Minecraft, Persson continued working at jAlbum. In 2010, after the release and subsequent success of Minecraft's Alpha version, Persson moved from a full-time role to a part-time role at jAlbum. He left jAlbum later that same year. In September 2010 Persson travelled to Valve Corporation's headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, United States, where he took part in a programming exercise and met Gabe Newell. Persson was subsequently offered a job at Valve, which he turned down in order to continue work on Minecraft. On 20 December 2010 Minecraft moved into its beta phase and began expanding to other platforms, including mobile. In January 2011 Minecraft reached one million registered accounts. Six months afterwards, it reached ten million. The game has sold over four million copies by 7 November 2011. Mojang held the first Minecon from 18 to 19 November 2011 to celebrate its full release, and subsequently made it an annual event. Following this, on 11 December 2011, Persson transferred creative control of Minecraft to Jens Bergensten and began working on another game title, 0x10c, although he reportedly abandoned the project around 2013. In 2013 Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million and profits of $129 million. Persson has stated that, due to the intense media attention and public pressure, he became exhausted with running Minecraft and Mojang. In a September 2014 blog post he shared his realization that he "didn't have the connection to my fans I thought I had", that he had "become a symbol", and that he did not wish to be responsible for Mojang's increasingly large operation. In June 2014 Persson tweeted "Anyone want to buy my share of Mojang so I can move on with my life? Getting hate for trying to do the right thing is not my gig", reportedly partly as a joke. Persson controlled a 71% stake in Mojang at the time. The offer attracted significant interest from Activision Blizzard, EA, and Microsoft. Forbes later reported that Microsoft wanted to purchase the game as a "tax dodge" to turn their taxable excess liquid cash into other assets. In September 2014 Microsoft agreed to purchase Mojang for $2.5 billion, making Persson a billionaire. He then left the company after the deal was finalised in November. Since leaving Mojang, Persson has worked on several small projects. On 23 June 2014 he founded a company with Porsรฉr called Rubberbrain AB; the company had no games by 2021, despite spending SEK 60 million. The company was relaunched as Bitshift Entertainment, LLC on 28 March 2024. Persson expressed interest in creating a new video game studio in 2020, and in developing virtual reality games. He has also since created a series of narrative-driven immersive events called ".party()", which uses extensive visual effects and has been hosted in multiple cities. At the beginning of 2025 Persson decided to create a spiritual successor to Minecraft, referred to as "Minecraft 2", in response to the results of a poll on X. However, after speaking to his team, he shortly went against this in favour of developing the other choice on his Twitter poll, a roguelike titled Levers and Chests. Games Persson's most popular creation is the survival sandbox game Minecraft, which was first publicly available on 17 May 2009 and fully released on 18 November 2011. Persson left his job as a game developer to work on Minecraft full-time until completion. In early 2011, Mojang AB sold the one millionth copy of the game, several months later their second, and several more their third. Mojang hired several new staff members for the Minecraft team, while Persson passed the lead developer role to Jens Bergensten. He stopped working on Minecraft after a deal with Microsoft to sell Mojang for $2.5 billion. This brought his net worth to US$1.5 billion. Persson and Jakob Porsรฉr came up with the idea for Scrolls including elements from board games and collectible card games. Persson noted that he will not be actively involved in development of the game and that Porsรฉr will be developing it. Persson revealed on his Tumblr blog on 5 August 2011 that he was being sued by a Swedish law firm representing Bethesda Softworks over the trademarked name of Scrolls, claiming that it conflicted with their The Elder Scrolls series of games. On 17 August 2011 Persson challenged Bethesda to a Quake 3 tournament to decide the outcome of the naming dispute. On 27 September 2011 Persson confirmed that the lawsuit was going to court. ZeniMax Media, owner of Bethesda Softworks, announced the lawsuit's settlement in March 2012. The settlement allowed Mojang to continue using the Scrolls trademark. In 2018, Scrolls was made available free of charge and renamed to Caller's Bane. Cliffhorse is a humorous game programmed in two hours using the Unity game engine and free assets. The game took inspiration from Skyrim's physics engine, "the more embarrassing minimum-effort Greenlight games", Goat Simulator, and Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing. The game was released to Microsoft Windows systems as an early access and honourware game on the first day of E3 2014, instructing users to donate Dogecoin to "buy" the game before downloading it. The game accumulated over 280,000 dogecoins. Following the end to his involvement with Minecraft, Persson began pre-production of an alternate reality space game set in the distant future in March 2012. On April Fools' Day Mojang launched a satirical website for Mars Effect (parody of Mass Effect), citing the lawsuit with Bethesda as an inspiration. However, the gameplay elements remained true and on 4 April, Mojang revealed 0x10c (pronounced "Ten to the C") as a space sandbox title. Persson officially halted game production in August 2013. However, C418, the composer of the game's soundtrack (as well as that of Minecraft), released an album of the work he had made for the game. In 2013, Persson made a free game called Shambles in the Unity game engine. Persson has also participated in several Ludum Dare 48-hour game making competitions. Personal life In 2011 Persson married Elin Zetterstrand, whom he had dated for four years before. Zetterstrand was a former moderator on the Minecraft forums. They had a daughter together, but by mid-2012, he began to see little of her. On 15 August 2012 he announced that he and his wife had filed for divorce. The divorce was finalised later that year. On 14 December 2011 Persson's father committed suicide with a handgun after drinking heavily. In an interview with The New Yorker, Persson said of his father: When I decided I wanted to quit my day job and work on my own games, he was the only person who supported my decision. He was proud of me and made sure I knew. When I added the monsters to Minecraft, he told me that the dark caves became too scary for him. But I think that was the only true criticism I ever heard from him. Persson later admitted that he himself suffered from depression and various highs and lows in his mood. Persson has criticised the stance of large game companies on piracy. He once stated that "piracy is not theft", viewing unauthorised downloads as potential future customers. Persson stated himself to be a member of the Pirate Party of Sweden in 2011. He is also a member of Mensa. He has donated to numerous charities, including Mรฉdecins Sans Frontiรจres (Doctors Without Borders). Under his direction, Mojang spent a week developing Catacomb Snatch for the Humble Indie Bundle and raised US$458,248 for charity. He also donated $250,000 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2012. In 2011 he gave $3 million in dividends back to Mojang employees. According to Forbes, his net worth in 2023 was around $1.2 billion. In 2014 Persson was one of the biggest taxpayers in Sweden. Around 2014, he lived in a multi-level penthouse in ร–stermalm, Stockholm, an area he described as "where the rich people live". In December 2014 Persson purchased a home in Trousdale Estates, a neighbourhood in Beverly Hills, California, in the United States, for $70 million, a record sales price for Beverly Hills at the time. Persson reportedly outbid Beyoncรฉ and Jay-Z for the property. Persson began receiving criticism for political and social opinions he expressed on social media as early as 2016. November 30, 2017 In 2017, he proposed a heterosexual pride holiday, and wrote that those who opposed the idea "deserve to be shot." After facing backlash, he deleted the tweets and rescinded his statements, writing, "So yeah, it's about pride of daring to express, not about pride of being who you are. I get it now." Later in the year, he wrote that feminism is a "social disease" and called the video game developer and feminist Zoรซ Quinn a "cunt", although he was generally critical of the GamerGate movement. He has described intersectional feminism as a "framework for bigotry" and the use of the word mansplaining as being sexist. Also in 2017, Persson tweeted that "It's okay to be white". Later that year, he stated that he believed in the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. In 2019, he tweeted referencing QAnon, saying "Q is legit. Don't trust the media." Later in 2019, he tweeted in response to a pro-transgender internet meme that, "You are absolutely evil if you want to encourage delusion. What happened to not stigmatizing mental illness?" He then also promoted claims that people were fined for "using the wrong pronoun". However, after facing backlash, he tweeted a day afterwards that he had "no idea what [being trans is] like of course, but it's inspiring as hell when people open up and choose to actually be who they know themselves as. Not because it's a cool choice, because it's a big step. I gues [sic] that's actually cool nvm". Later that year, Microsoft removed two mentions of Persson's name in the "19w13a" snapshot of Minecraft and did not invite him to the 10-year anniversary celebration of the game. A spokesperson for Microsoft stated that his views "do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang". He is still mentioned in the End Poem ("a flat, infinite world created by a man called Markus").[citation needed] Awards References External links
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