There are a lot of visual techniques moviemakers use to convey a certain message. Here are just a few of our favorites, pulled from movies available now on Vudu.

There are a lot of visual techniques moviemakers use to convey a certain message.

We took a look at how a film can use external appearances to give us clues to a characters inner world. These brilliant moments come from the Duplass Brothers’ Jeff Who Lives at Home, Drake Doremus’ Sundance Grand Jury winning Like Crazy and Jason Reitman’s Young Adult.

After the video, make sure and go to Vudu’s Movies On Us. All three of our Brilliant Moments choices are available to watch for free right now! All the other movies we highlighted in the episode are also available to rent or own on Vudu.com/start .

Do AI companions help people?

The research on AI companions is so new that we can't draw any conclusions about their usefulness, says Michael S. A. Graziano, professor of neuroscience at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute.

Graziano co-authored a study of 70 Replika users and 120 people who didn't use a companion chatbot to better understand their experiences. The study, which appeared last fall as a pre-print on the research sharing platform arXiv, is under peer review.

The Replika users almost always rated their companion interactions as positive. They rated their chatbot relationships as helpful for general social interactions with other people, as well as friends and family members. They also felt the chatbot positively affected their self-esteem.

Graziano cautions that the study only provides a snapshot of the users' experiences. Additionally, he notes that people in the position to maximally benefit, because they are intensely lonely, might comprise most users, thereby creating an unintentional bias in the results.

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Graziano is currently working on a longitudinal study to track the effects of AI companion interactions over time. Participants have been randomly assigned to use a companion chatbot or not, and Graziano and his co-authors are measuring aspects of their mental health and well-being.