Filmmakers Coerte and John Voorhees defended the use of AI to recreate the late actor Val Kilmer in the upcoming indie film As Deep as the Grave, saying they obtained consent from Kilmer’s children and worked from archival footage, photos and voice recordings. The brothers spoke at CinemaCon in Las Vegas in mid-April 2026 after a trailer released for the film showed an AI-generated Kilmer as Father Fintan, a Catholic priest and Native American spiritualist, delivering the line: “Don’t fear the dead and don’t fear me.” The trailer sparked sharp backlash on social media, with critics calling the footage “terrifying” and accusing Kilmer’s estate of monetising his likeness. The filmmakers say they followed SAG-AFTRA AI guidelines, compensated and collaborated with Kilmer’s family, and intend the work as an ethical model for future use. Kilmer, who had been cast in the role but fell ill and died in 2025 at age 65, previously explored synthetic voice technology after losing his ability to speak. The debate adds to broader industry disputes over posthumous and AI-driven performances.

Dozens of humanoid robots from Chinese developers raced in the Beijing E-Town Half Marathon on April 19, 2026, with an autonomous entry from smartphone maker Honor completing the 21.1km course in 50 minutes 26 seconds—faster than the current human world record of about 57 minutes. A separate Honor machine, remote-controlled, logged an even quicker 48:19 but was not declared champion under the event’s weighted scoring that favoured autonomous navigation. The event, held in Yizhuang, featured more than 100 teams, roughly 40% of robots running autonomously, and parallel tracks for ~12,000 human runners to prevent collisions. Organisers put the course through varied terrain to test stability, endurance and navigation; some robots still stumbled or hit barriers. The result marks a sharp improvement from last year’s inaugural race, when the fastest robot needed about 2 hours 40 minutes, and underscores growing investment and engineering advances—leg design, liquid cooling and embodied AI—in China’s robotics sector.

On April 19, 2026, multiple reports said Apple is testing undo and redo controls for Home Screen customization in iOS 27. The buttons would be added to the long‑press edit menu used to add widgets, change pages and edit wallpaper, letting users quickly reverse or reapply app and widget layout changes without manually restoring arrangements. The feature is part of an iOS 27 cycle widely reported as a “refinement‑first” update — likened to Mac OS X Snow Leopard — that prioritises performance, stability, bug fixes and battery life over major new features. Other rumored additions include a dedicated Siri app, Apple Intelligence enhancements and a new Liquid Glass slider for visual adjustments. Sources indicate beta testing will begin in June with a public release expected in September 2026. The change is aimed at improving daily usability, particularly on iPad where layouts can become complex, and fits a broader effort to tidy legacy code and polish the user experience.

WrestleMania 42’s two-night show at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas was hit by persistent streaming problems for millions of viewers worldwide, according to multiple reports on April 19-20, 2026. In the United States the first hour aired on linear ESPN before switching to the ESPN app/ESPN Unlimited; viewers reported an early audio echo during John Cena’s opening, repeated app freezes and intermittent outages through Night 2. International audiences watching on Netflix also experienced crashes, lag, search failures and difficulty finding the live event. Fans in the arena even booed ESPN when the network was mentioned during the opening. The disruption came amid WWE’s shift to a fragmented, streaming-led distribution model that places marquee content across multiple platforms. Social posts show users threatening cancellations and demanding fixes; outlets report the issues affected both the broadcast mix and app-based streams as the company and partners scrambled to stabilise service.

Apple may postpone launches of its next Mac Studio and touch-screen MacBook Pro models as a global memory shortage tightens supplies, industry reports said in April 2026. Bloomberg columnist Mark Gurman and other tech outlets reported that demand for high-bandwidth memory from AI servers, GPUs and data-centre hardware has squeezed availability of RAM and advanced storage components, forcing Apple to reconsider timing. A Mac Studio refresh originally expected around mid-2026 is now likely to slip toward October 2026, while the heavily revised MacBook Pro — previously slated for late 2026 to early 2027 — could land nearer the start of 2027. Apple is already seeing shipment delays for memory-intensive machines, and outlets note the company may avoid launching new models into constrained supply. Rumoured upgrades include M5/M6-class chips for desktops and laptops, OLED displays, Dynamic Island and touch-friendly macOS 27 software tweaks intended for the pro notebook.

Apple’s WWDC 2026 marketing and reporting from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman indicate a significant redesign of Siri will be a centrepiece at the developer conference running June 8–12, 2026. The company’s teaser art — a bright, overexposed glow around the “26” — is said to mirror a new Siri visual identity that appears inside the Dynamic Island, showing a “Search or Ask” prompt and a glowing cursor. Gurman reports Apple is testing a dedicated Siri app to store conversation history and enable ongoing, back-and-forth exchanges, plus support for multi-command processing and third‑party AI agents. Some features are expected to rely on Apple Intelligence foundation models and may be limited to newer hardware (iPhone 15 Pro series and later). iOS 27 is also said to prioritise performance and stability, with developer betas likely in June and a wider release around September. Details remain provisional ahead of Apple’s June keynote.