Filmmaker James Cameron has joined the board of directors of artificial intelligence (AI) firm StabilityAI, 40 years after making a film about its risks.

In 1984’s The Terminator, which Cameron wrote and directed, a rogue AI called Skynet threatens the existence of mankind.

But the creator of the fictional AI has not been hired to help avoid such tech being developed in real life.

Instead, his role will centre around how the technology can be used in special effects, also known as computer-generated images (CGI).

“I’ve spent my career seeking out emerging technologies that push the very boundaries of what’s possible, all in the service of telling incredible stories,” he said.

“I was at the forefront of CGI over three decades ago, and I’ve stayed on the cutting edge since.

“Now, the intersection of generative AI and CGI image creation is the next wave.”

Amongst his long list of hit movies, Cameron is known for creating special effects-heavy Avatar, the highest-grossing film of all time.

His new place of work, StabilityAI, is best known for making Stable Diffusion – which can generate images based on a user’s text prompt.

It is also branching out into video, with Stable Video Diffusion, which works in the same way.

It is this tech that Cameron seems to have been brought on to help develop.

Proponents of AI video generation say it will enable artists to quickly create complicated digital effects.

But for many creatives – and Cameron’s contemporaries – this use of the technology is considered controversial at best.

Last week, Pan’s Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro criticised AI-generated video during a talk at the British Film Institute in London, saying it could not generate much beyond “semi-compelling screensavers”.

Michael Bay said last year the tech “will create a whole bunch of lazy people” because “it doesn’t create, it just imitates”.

And Hiyao Miyazaki, who wrote and directed animated classic Spirited Away, previously said he was “disgusted” by an AI-generated video and called it “an insult to life itself”.

Rashik Parmar, head of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, told the BBC the filmmaker’s appointment comes at a time when “many of society’s fears about AI” come from movies.

“We watch Terminator and we form the idea that AI has malicious intentions towards humanity and that it will destroy us in the near future,” he said.

“Cameron has a real opportunity to change the narrative and build a positive view of AI, we’re very happy to work with him on that.”

One of Cameron’s first challenges in his new role will be to shore up StabilityAI’s position in the wider generativeAI landscape, where it faces stiff competition.

OpenAI’s rival video generation tool Sora is the most high-profile name in the space, with Reuters reporting Hollywood executives have discussed with the firm how the film industry could use its tech.

Meanwhile, Hunger Games and John Wick studio Lionsgate made a deal last week with AI firm Runway to create tools based on its massive archive of film and TV.

And in recent weeks the video generation landscape has been shaken by the sudden emergence of MiniMax, created by China-based HailuoAI.

The tool became popular on social media this month thanks to its ability to quickly create high-quality video from just a few lines of text.

In particular, a recent trend has seen people using the tool to make videos about chef Gordon Ramsay, with one such popular post seeing him skydiving while cooking spaghetti.

Ramsay has not responded to a request for comment.

And Cameron is joining the AI industry at a critical time for a different reason – copyright.

The technology works by analysing human-made pictures, including images found online, and artists claim this means their work has been used without permission.

Stability AI founder Emad Mostaque has previously told BBC News Stable Diffusion is trained using “100,000 GB of images” taken from the internet.

Getty Images, which is working on its own AI image generator, is suing StabilityAI over this very thing.

A robot dog equipped with a blowtorch could be used to stop weeds growing on farms, potentially offering a replacement for harmful herbicides.

Even highly targeted herbicides can cause environmental problems, affecting local wildlife, and “superweeds” are quickly evolving resistance to the most common weed-killers like glyphosate.

In search of an alternative solution, Dezhen Song at Texas A&M University and his colleagues have developed a weed control system that uses a brief burst of heat from a propane-powered torch controlled by a robotic arm, attached to a Spot robot manufactured by Boston Dynamics.

Rather than incinerate the weeds, the robot is designed to identify and heat up the centre of the plant, which can stop it growing for several weeks, says Song. “The weeds don’t die – you just suppress their growth so it gives your crop a chance to fight the weed.”

Song and his team first tested the flame nozzle to make sure they could accurately target the weeds’ centre. Then they deployed the robot in a cotton field planted with weeds native to Texas, like common sunflower (Helianthus annuus) and giant ragweed (Ambrosia trifida). In five trials, they found that the robot could locate and torch the weeds with an average of 95 per cent of the flame focused on the weed.

One large limitation is the battery life of the Spot robot, which can only run for around 40 minutes in this setup before it needs to be charged, says Song, but the team is working on upgrading to a longer-lasting device. They are also looking at equipping the robot dog with an electrocution device capable of delivering more than 10,000 volts, which will stop weed growth for longer, he says.

“People have been using some forms of fairly broad, imprecise flames to kill weeds on other machines – that’s been around for a while, but I’ve never seen a precision thing like this,” says Simon Pearson at the University of Lincoln, UK. The success of the robot will depend on how accurately it can cast its flame and avoid damaging valuable crops, he says.

Get ready for a cosmic surprise this autumn – Earth is about to get a second moon, according to scientists.

A small asteroid is going to be captured by Earth’s gravitational pull and temporarily become a “mini-moon”.

This space visitor will be around from September 29 for a couple of months before escaping from Earth’s gravity again.

Sadly the second moon is going to be too small and dim to be seen, unless you have a professional telescope.

The asteroid was first spotted by NASA’s Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) on 7 August.

Scientists worked out its trajectory in a study published in Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society.

The asteroid, which scientists refer to as 2024 PT5, hails from the Arjuna asteroid belt, which contains rocks that follow an orbit quite similar to Earth’s.

Occasionally, some of these asteroids get relatively close, getting as near as 2.8 million miles (4.5 million kilometers) from our planet.

According to the researchers involved in the study, if an asteroid like this is moving at a relatively slow speed of around 2,200mph (3,540km/h), Earth’s gravitational field can exert a strong influence, enough to trap it temporarily.

Which is exactly what’s about to happen – starting this weekend, this small asteroid will spend about two months orbiting Earth.

Dr Jennifer Millard, astronomer and host of the Awesome Astronomy podcast, told the BBC’s Today programme that the asteroid would enter orbit on the 29th of September and then was predicted to leave on 25 November.

“It’s not going to complete a full revolution of our planet, it’s just going to kind of have its orbit altered, just twisted slightly by our own planet and then it’ll continue on its merry way,” she said.

The asteroid is approximately 10 meters long, which is tiny in comparison to Earth’s moon, which has a diameter of approximately 3,474 kilometers.

Because it is small and made of dull rock it will not be visible to people on earth even if they use binoculars or a home telescope.

“Professional telescopes, they’ll be able to pick it up. So you’ll be able to look out for lots of wonderful pictures online of this little dot kind of moving past the stars at great speed,” said Dr Millard.

Mini-moons have been spotted before, and it’s thought many more are likely to have gone unnoticed.

Some even come back for repeat visits, the 2022 NX1 asteroid became a mini-moon in 1981 and again in 2022.

So don’t worry if you miss this one – scientists predict 2024 PT5 will also return to Earth’s orbit again in 2055.

“This story highlights just how busy our solar system is and how much there is out there that we haven’t discovered, because this asteroid was only discovered this year.

“There are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of objects out there that we haven’t discovered and so I think this highlights the importance of us being able to continually monitor the night sky and find all of these objects,” said Dr Millard.