AI Detection Remover

AI Detection Remover — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

  • Rapid PHP Editor

    Rapid PHP Editor

    rapid PHP Editor is a PHP Editor that incorporates many functions such as AutoComplete, Syntax checker, debugger and many other tools for fast PHP development. Rapid PHP Editor also contain other development tools for helping on HTML, CSS, JavaScript and many other languages. Is part of a family of products covering most aspects of modern web development integrating as well many other capabilities used by developers. Some features: (X)HTML to HTML5 CSS to CSS3 Code intelligence Powerful search and replace Support for several frameworks Code beautifier FTP Explorer (FTP/SFTP/FTPS) File explorer Database explorer Code snippets Validators and Debuggers FAST, real fast Many other tools available (many more to describe all here) == History == Rapid PHP Editor was built using the Delphi programming language.

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  • Pippit

    Pippit

    Pippit (Chinese: 小云雀; pinyin: Xiǎoyúnquè) is an artificial intelligence content creation platform developed by the Chinese technology company ByteDance. The platform, powered by CapCut leverages multimodal AI technology to streamline professional-grade video and image production, specifically targeting small and medium-sized enterprisesand social media creators. == History == In May 2025, ByteDance officially launched Pippit, which is positioned as an AI video and picture creation tool. In early 2026, Pippit underwent a major architectural overhaul with the integration of the Dreamina seedance 2.0. This technical milestone introduced the "Short Drama Agent" functionality, which enables the end-to-end conversion of scripts up to 100,000 words into fully rendered video productions.

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  • Full Dive

    Full Dive

    Full Dive, short for Full Dive: This Ultimate Next-Gen Full Dive RPG Is Even Shittier than Real Life! (Japanese: 究極進化したフルダイブRPGが現実よりもクソゲーだったら, Hepburn: Kyūkyoku Shinka shita Furu Daibu RPG ga Genjitsu yori mo Kusogē Dattara), is a Japanese light novel series written by Light Tuchihi and illustrated by Youta. Media Factory has published four volumes since August 2020 under their MF Bunko J imprint. A manga adaptation with art by Kino was serialized in Media Factory's seinen manga magazine Monthly Comic Alive from January 2021 to January 2022. An anime television series adaptation by ENGI aired from April to June 2021. == Plot == Hiroshi Yuki, with the player name of Hiro, is a high school boy who loves to play virtual reality MMORPGs (VRMMORPG) in order to escape reality. When a game store manager named Reona Kisaragi tricks him into buying the game Kiwame Quest, he soon discovers that it is not what it seems. Unlike regular games, it is a game that tries to pursue realism to a fanatical point. As such, Hiroshi struggles to eke out a niche. Despite the disadvantages, he is determined to complete the game. == Characters == === Main characters === Hiroshi Yuki (結城宏, Yūki Hiroshi) Voiced by: Daiki Yamashita, Riho Sugiyama (young) (Japanese); Johnny Yong Bosch, Michele Knotz (young) (English) Hiroshi is a high school student who is tricked into buying Kiwame Quest by game store manager, Reona Kisaragi. He is a former member of the track team who quit following an unfortunate incident and he likes to play VRMMORPGs in order to escape reality. His player name is Hiro. Reona Kisaragi (如月玲於奈, Kisaragi Reona) Voiced by: Ayana Taketatsu (Japanese); Natalie Van Sistine (English) Reona is a game store manager who tricks Hiroshi into buying Kiwame Quest. She likes to tease him and her in-game avatar is that of a fairy. Alicia (アリシア, Arishia) Voiced by: Fairouz Ai (Japanese); Kayli Mills (English) Alicia is one of Hiroshi's childhood friends in Kiwame Quest. She has an older brother named Martin in-game. Mizarisa (ミザリサ) Voiced by: Shiori Izawa (Japanese); Sarah Anne Williams (English) Mizarisa is the town inquisitor in Kiwame Quest. Kaede Yuki (結城楓, Yūki Kaede) Voiced by: Aoi Koga (Japanese); Kate Bristol (English) Kaede is Hiroshi's younger sister. She used to look up to her older brother, but their relationship has been strained ever since he quit the track team. === NPCs === Martin (マーチン, Māchin) Voiced by: Haruki Ishiya, Natsumi Fujiwara (young) (Japanese); Ben Lepley, Krystal LaPorte (young) (English) Martin is one of Hiroshi's childhood friends in Kiwame Quest. He is also Alicia's older brother in-game. Tesla (テスラ, Tesura) Voiced by: Satoshi Hino (Japanese); Jason Liebrecht (English) Tesla is the captain of the City Guard in Kiwame Quest. Govern (ガバン, Gaban) Voiced by: Shizuka Itō (Japanese); Lisa Ortiz (English) Govern is the queen of Ted in Kiwame Quest. === Other characters === Ginji (ギンジ) Voiced by: Katsuyuki Konishi (Japanese); Brent Mukai (English) Ginji is a veteran player of Kiwame Quest. Soichiro Kamui (神居宗一郎, Kamui Sōichirō) Voiced by: Yoshitsugu Matsuoka (Japanese); Samuel Drake (English) Kamui is the only known player who has successfully completed Kiwame Quest. == Media == === Light novels === Light Tuchihi launched the light novel series, with illustrations by Youta, under Media Factory's MF Bunko J label on August 25, 2020. ==== Volumes ==== === Manga === A manga adaptation by Kino was serialized in Media Factory's Monthly Comic Alive magazine from January 27, 2021, to January 27, 2022. Two tankōbon volumes were released from May 21, 2021, to January 21, 2022. ==== Volumes ==== === Anime === An anime television series adaptation was announced on December 4, 2020. The series was animated by ENGI and directed by Kazuya Miura, with Kenta Ihara writing the series' scripts, and Yūta Kevin Kenmotsu designing the characters. It ran from April 7 to June 23, 2021, on AT-X, Tokyo MX, SUN, KBS Kyoto, and BS11. Mayu Maeshima performed the opening theme "Answer", while Ayana Taketatsu, Fairouz Ai, Shiori Izawa, and Aoi Koga performed the ending theme "Kisuida!". It ran for 12 episodes. Funimation licensed and streamed the series. On June 8, 2021, Funimation announced that the series would receive an English dub, which premiered the following day. Following Sony's acquisition of Crunchyroll, the series was moved to Crunchyroll. ==== Episodes ====

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  • Sinewave synthesis

    Sinewave synthesis

    Sinewave synthesis, or sine wave speech, is a technique for synthesizing speech by replacing the formants (main bands of energy) with pure tone whistles. The first sinewave synthesis program (SWS) for the automatic creation of stimuli for perceptual experiments was developed by Philip Rubin at Haskins Laboratories in the 1970s. This program was subsequently used by Robert Remez, Philip Rubin, David Pisoni, and other colleagues to show that listeners can perceive continuous speech without traditional speech cues, i.e., pitch, stress, and intonation. This work paved the way for a view of speech as a dynamic pattern of trajectories through articulatory-acoustic space.

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  • BBC Own It

    BBC Own It

    The BBC Own It app was a British information site designed to protect and support children using the Internet. The app was launched in 2017 and retired in 2022, though the website retired in 2024 and has since moved to BBC Teach. As part of the BBC's partnership with Internet Matters, the not-for-profit contributed to content on the BBC Own It website. == History == In 2016, The Royal Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge established The Royal Foundation Taskforce on the Prevention of Cyberbullying. Work began in 2017 by the BBC to create an app about cyberbullying and online safety (later titled Own It) in response to a call for action from the Taskforce. In December 2017, the BBC launched Own It. In November 2018, work on the BBC Own It App was announced by Prince William. In September 2019, the BBC Own It App was launched into the AppStore and Google Play. In 2022, the BBC discontinued the app, although the website was still active, however in 2024, the website was discontinued, and now any links to the website now redirect to a BBC Teach page. == Awards == UXUK award for Best Education or Learning Experience (2019) Banff World Media Festival Rockies Award for Children & Youth Interactive Content (2020) CogX Award for Best Innovation In Natural Language Processing (2020)

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  • Legal expert system

    Legal expert system

    A legal expert system is a domain-specific expert system that uses artificial intelligence to emulate the decision-making abilities of a human expert in the field of law. Legal expert systems employ a rule base or knowledge base and an inference engine to accumulate, reference and produce expert knowledge on specific subjects within the legal domain. == Purpose == It has been suggested that legal expert systems could help to manage the rapid expansion of legal information and decisions that began to intensify in the late 1960s. Many of the first legal expert systems were created in the 1970s and 1980s. Lawyers were originally identified as primary target users of legal expert systems. Potential motivations for this work included: quicker delivery of legal advice; reduced time spent in repetitive, labour-intensive legal tasks; development of knowledge management techniques that were not dependent on staff; reduced overhead and labour costs and higher profitability for law firms; and reduced fees for clients. Some early development work was oriented toward the creation of automated judges. One of the first use cases was the encoding of the British Nationality Act at Imperial College carried out under the supervision of Marek Sergot and Robert Kowalski. Lance Elliot wrote: "The British Nationality Act was passed in 1981 and shortly thereafter was used as a means of showcasing the efficacy of using Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques and technologies, doing so to explore how the at-the-time newly enacted statutory law might be encoded into a computerized logic-based formalization." The authors’ seminal article, "The British Nationality Act as a Logic Program," published in 1986 in the Communications of the ACM journal, is one of the first and best-known works in computational law, and one of the most widely cited papers in the field. In 2021, the Inaugural CodeX Prize was awarded to Robert Kowalski, Fariba Sadri, and Marek Sergot in acknowledgment of their groundbreaking work on the application of logic programming to the formalization and analysis of the British Nationality Act. Later work on legal expert systems has identified potential benefits to non-lawyers as a means to increase access to legal knowledge. Legal expert systems can also support administrative processes, facilitate decision-making processes, automate rule-based analyses, and exchange information directly with citizen-users. == Types == === Architectural variations === Rule-based expert systems rely on a model of deductive reasoning that utilizes "If A, then B" rules. In a rule-based legal expert system, information is represented in the form of deductive rules within the knowledge base. In rule-based legal expert systems, logic programming has historically been applied to automate complex compliance paperwork. A notable early example designed for high-volume regulatory filings was the 1999 Intelligent Filing Manager (INTELLIFM), which utilized Prolog rules as its core inference engine to automate the generation, publishing, and population of structured forms via distributed COM interfaces. Case-based reasoning models, which store and manipulate examples or cases, hold the potential to emulate an analogical reasoning process thought to be well-suited for the legal domain. This model effectively draws on known experiences our outcomes for similar problems. A neural net relies on a computer model that mimics that structure of a human brain, and operates in a very similar way to the case-based reasoning model. This expert system model is capable of recognizing and classifying patterns within the realm of legal knowledge and dealing with imprecise inputs. Fuzzy logic models attempt to create 'fuzzy' concepts or objects that can then be converted into quantitative terms or rules that are indexed and retrieved by the system. In the legal domain, fuzzy logic can be used for rule-based and case-based reasoning models. === Theoretical variations === Some legal expert system architects have adopted a very practical approach, employing scientific modes of reasoning within a given set of rules or cases. Others have opted for a broader philosophical approach inspired by jurisprudential reasoning modes emanating from established legal theoreticians. === Functional variations === Some legal expert systems aim to arrive at a particular conclusion in law, while others are designed to predict a particular outcome. An example of a predictive system is one that predicts the outcome of judicial decisions, the value of a case, or the outcome of litigation. == Reception == Many forms of legal expert systems have become widely used and accepted by both the legal community and the users of legal services. == Challenges == === Domain-related problems === The inherent complexity of law as a discipline raises immediate challenges for legal expert system knowledge engineers. Legal matters often involve interrelated facts and issues, which further compound the complexity. Factual uncertainty may also arise when there are disputed versions of factual representations that must be input into an expert system to begin the reasoning process. === Computerized problem solving === The limitations of most computerized problem solving techniques inhibit the success of many expert systems in the legal domain. Expert systems typically rely on deductive reasoning models that have difficulty according degrees of weight to certain principles of law or importance to previously decided cases that may or may not influence a decision in an immediate case or context. === Representation of legal knowledge === Expert legal knowledge can be difficult to represent or formalize within the structure of an expert system. For knowledge engineers, challenges include: Open texture: Law is rarely applied in an exact way to specific facts, and exact outcomes are rarely a certainty. Statutes may be interpreted according to different linguistic interpretations, reliance on precedent cases or other contextual factors including a particular judge's conception of fairness. The balancing of reasons: Many arguments involve considerations or reasons that are not easily represented in a logical way. For instance, many constitutional legal issues are said to balance independently well-established considerations for state interests against individual rights. Such balancing may draw on extra-legal considerations that would be difficult to represent logically in an expert system. Indeterminacy of legal reasoning: In the adversarial arena of law, it is common to have two strong arguments on a single point. Determining the 'right' answer may depend on a majority vote among expert judges, as in the case of an appeal. === Time and cost effectiveness === Creating a functioning expert system requires significant investments in software architecture, subject matter expertise and knowledge engineering. Faced with these challenges, many system architects restrict the domain in terms of subject matter and jurisdiction. The consequence of this approach is the creation of narrowly focused and geographically restricted legal expert systems that are difficult to justify on a cost-benefit basis. Current applications of AI in the legal field utilize machines to review documents, particularly when a high level of completeness and confidence in the quality of document analysis is depended upon, such as in instances of litigation and where due diligence play a role. Among the numerically most quantifiable advantages of AI in the legal field are the time and money saving impact by freeing lawyers from having to spend inordinate amounts of their valuable time on routine tasks, aiding in setting free lawyers’ creative energy by reducing stress. This in turn increases the rate of case load reduction by accomplishing better results in less time, which unlocks potential additional revenue per unit of time spend on a case. The cost of setting up and maintaining AI systems in law is more than offset by the attained savings through increased efficacy; unbalanced cost can be assigned to clients. === Lack of correctness in results or decisions === Legal expert systems may lead non-expert users to incorrect or inaccurate results and decisions. This problem could be compounded by the fact that users may rely heavily on the correctness or trustworthiness of results or decisions generated by these systems. == Examples == ASHSD-II is a hybrid legal expert system that blends rule-based and case-based reasoning models in the area of matrimonial property disputes under English law. CHIRON is a hybrid legal expert system that blends rule-based and case-based reasoning models to support tax planning activities under United States tax law and codes. JUDGE is a rule-based legal expert system that deals with sentencing in the criminal legal domain for offences relating to murder, assault and manslaughter. Legislate is a knowledge graph powered contract management platform whi

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  • Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League

    Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League

    The Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League (A2RL) is an autonomous racing league based in Abu Dhabi and organized by ASPIRE, part of the UAE government's Advanced Technology Research Council. It has three distinct categories: the "car race", the drone race, and the buggy race. The first car race was held on 27 April 2024 at the Yas Marina Circuit, marking the first major autonomous formula race outside the US since the now-folded Roborace championship. The first drone race was held on 11 and 12 April 2025. == Formats == A2RL has three distinct formats, the formula racing format (dubbed the Car Race), the quadcopter drone racing format (dubbed the Drone Race), and the off-road dune buggy racing format (dubbed the Buggy Race). === Car Race === A2RL's main event, the car race is a standard formula racing format with self-driving formula cars. The cars are made by Dallara and are modified versions of Super Formula cars with Yokohama tires. These cars had the CPUs of their AIs mounted where the driver's seat is on a non-modified chassis, as well as hydraulic actuators for AI control of the vehicle, multiple sensor systems including LIDAR and GPS, and a large LED indicator showing the status of the AI. The first car race was held on 27 April 2024. This race was marked by the cars' subpar performance: Out of four cars that qualified, only two finished the race - the other two did not. The next race was held on 15 November 2025, with 11 teams. ==== Technical specifications ==== The full list of technical specifications are as follows: Chassis: Dallara EAV24 (modified Dallara SF23) Forward suspension: Pushrod type, torsion bar spring, adjustable dampers, third element Rear suspension: Pushrod type, torsion bar, coil springs, adjustable dampers, third element Tires: Yokohama Advan Drive-by-wire system: Provided by Meccanica 42, the DBW system consists of steering and brake actuators, with a central ECU that coordinates the driving actions and reacts to any critical situation in real-time. Brakes: Brembo calipers, Brembo carbon discs, electro-hydraulically activated Engine: 4 Piston Racing K20C1 (based on Honda 2.0l; turbocharged 4-cylinder engine) Gearbox: 3MO 6-speed gearbox Sensor suite: 7x Sony IMX728 cameras, 4x ZF ProWave radar units, 3x Seyond Falcon Kinetic lidar units Main computer: Neousys RGS-8805GC ==== Races held ==== === Drone Race === Created in partnership with the Drone Champions' League, the drone race is the quadcopter drone racing aerial format of the A2RL. The first race was held on 11/12 April 2025 at the ADNEC Marina Hall. 10 teams are scheduled to take part. === Buggy Race === The buggy race will be the off-road format of the A2RL using self-driving dune buggies. No date or number of teams has been announced for the first race. === Other events === A2RL is known to host AI vs AI and Human vs AI events, in Abu Dhabi and abroad. One such event took place at the Suzuka Circuit in Japan. The Human vs AI race was precluded due to AI car "Yalla" crashing into the wall during the formation lap. == Team lists ==

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  • Context-sensitive user interface

    Context-sensitive user interface

    A context-sensitive user interface offers the user options based on the state of the active program. Context sensitivity is ubiquitous in current graphical user interfaces, often in context menus. A user-interface may also provide context sensitive feedback, such as changing the appearance of the mouse pointer or cursor, changing the menu color, or with auditory or tactile feedback. == Reasoning and advantages of context sensitivity == The primary reason for introducing context sensitivity is to simplify the user interface. Advantages include: Reduced number of commands required to be known to the user for a given level of productivity. Reduced number of clicks or keystrokes required to carry out a given operation. Allows consistent behaviour to be pre-programmed or altered by the user. Reduces the number of options needed on screen at one time. === Disadvantages === Context sensitive actions may be perceived as dumbing down of the user interface, leaving the operator at a loss as to what to do when the computer decides to perform an unwanted action. Additionally non-automatic procedures may be hidden or obscured by the context sensitive interface causing an increase in user workload for operations the designers did not foresee. A poor implementation can be more annoying than helpful – a classic example of this is Office Assistant. == Implementation == At the simplest level each possible action is reduced to a single most likely action – the action performed is based on a single variable (such as file extension). In more complicated implementations multiple factors can be assessed such as the user's previous actions, the size of the file, the programs in current use, metadata etc. The method is not only limited to the response to imperative button presses and mouse clicks – pop-up menus can be pruned and/or altered, or a web search can focus results based on previous searches. At higher levels of implementation context sensitive actions require either larger amounts of meta-data, extensive case analysis based programming, or other artificial intelligence algorithms. === In computer and video games === Context sensitivity is important in video games, especially those controlled by a gamepad, joystick or computer mouse in which the number of buttons available is limited. It is primarily applied when the player is in a certain place and is used to interact with a person or object. For example, if the player is standing next to a non-player character, an option may come up allowing the player to talk with them. Implementations range from the embryonic 'Quick Time Event' to context sensitive sword combat in which the attack used depends on the position and orientation of both the player and opponent, as well as the virtual surroundings. A similar range of use is found in the 'action button' which, depending upon the in-game position of the player's character, may cause it to pick something up, open a door, grab a rope, punch a monster or opponent, or smash an object. The response does not have to be player activated – an on-screen device may only be shown in certain circumstances, e.g. 'targeting' cross hairs in a flight combat game may indicate the player should fire. An alternative implementation is to monitor the input from the player (e.g. level of button pressing activity) and use that to control the pace of the game in an attempt to maximize enjoyment or to control the excitement or ambience. The method has become increasingly important as more complex games are designed for machines with few buttons (keyboard-less consoles). Bennet Ring commented (in 2006) that "Context-sensitive is the new lens flare". === Context-sensitive help === Context sensitive help is a common implementation of context sensitivity, a single help button is actioned and the help page or menu will open a specific page or related topic.

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  • NNDB

    NNDB

    The Notable Names Database (NNDB) is an online database of biographical details of over 40,000 people. Soylent Communications, a sole proprietorship that also hosted the later defunct Rotten.com, describes NNDB as an "intelligence aggregator" of noteworthy persons, highlighting their interpersonal connections. The Rotten.com domain was registered in 1996 by former Apple and Netscape software engineer Thomas E. Dell, who was also known by his internet alias, "Soylent". == Entries == Each entry has an executive summary followed by a brief narrative about their life. It also lists date and cause of death if deceased. Businesspeople and government officials are listed with chronologies of their posts, positions, and board memberships. As of 2022, the site is no longer updated. == NNDB Mapper == The NNDB Mapper, a visual tool for exploring connections between people, was made available in May 2008. It required Adobe Flash 7.

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  • Perry Rhodan

    Perry Rhodan

    Perry Rhodan is a German space opera franchise, named after its hero. It commenced in 1961 and has been ongoing for decades, written by an ever-changing team of authors. Having sold approximately two billion copies (in novella format) worldwide (including over one billion in Germany alone), it is the most successful science fiction book series ever written. The first billion of worldwide sales was celebrated in 1986. The series has spun off into comic books, audio dramas, video games and the like. A reboot, Perry Rhodan NEO, was launched in 2011 and began publication in English in April 2021. == Print publication == The series has spun off into many different forms of media, but originated as a serial novella published weekly since 8 September 1961 in the Romanheft (Meaning "Magazine novel") format. These are digest-sized booklets, usually containing 66 pages, the German equivalent of the now-defunct (and generally longer) American pulp magazine. They are published by Pabel-Moewig Verlag, a subsidiary of Bauer Media Group headquartered in Hamburg. As of February 2019, 3000 booklet novels of the original series, 850 spinoff novels of the sister series Atlan and over 400 paperbacks and 200 hardcover editions have been published, totalling over 300,000 pages. == English translation == The first 126 novels (plus five novels of the spinoff series Atlan) were translated into English and published by Ace Books between 1969 and 1978, with the same translations used for the British edition published by Futura Publications which issued only 39 novels. When Ace cancelled its translation of the series, translator Wendayne Ackerman self-published the following 19 novels (under the business name 'Master Publications') and made them available by subscription only. Financial disputes with the German publishers led to the cancellation of the American translation in 1979. An attempt to revive the series in English was made in 1997–1998 by Vector Publications of the US, which published translations of four issues (1800–1803) from the current storyline being published in Germany at the time. The series and its spin-offs have captured a substantial fraction of the original German science fiction output and exert influence on many German writers in the field. == Structure == The series is told in an arc storyline structure. An arc—called a "cycle"—would have anywhere from 25 to 100 issues devoted to it. Similar subsequent cycles are referred to as a "grand-cycle". == History == ‘Perry Rhodan, der Erbe des Universums’ (Eng: ‘The Heir to the Universe’, though the American/British editions instead used the subtitle 'Peacelord of the Universe') was created by German science fiction authors K. H. Scheer and Walter Ernsting and launched in 1961 by German publishing house Arthur Moewig Verlag (now Pabel-Moewig Verlag). Originally planned as a 30 to 50 volume series, it has been published continuously every week since, celebrating the 3000th issue in 2019. Written by an ever-changing team of authors, many of whom, however, remained with the series for decades or life, Perry Rhodan is issued in weekly novella-size installments in the traditional German Heftroman (pulp booklet) format. Unlike most German Heftromane, Perry Rhodan consists not of unconnected novels but is a series with a continuous, increasingly complex plotline, with frequent back references to events. In addition to its original Heftroman form, the series now also appears in hardcovers, paperbacks, e-books, comics and audiobooks. Over the decades there have also been comic strips, numerous collectibles, several encyclopedias, audio plays, inspired music, etc. The series has seen partial translations into several languages. It also spawned the German-Italian-Spanish 1967 movie Mission Stardust, which is widely considered so terrible that many fans of the series pretend it never existed. Coinciding with the 50th-anniversary World Con, on 30 September 2011, a new series named Perry Rhodan Neo began publication, attracting new readers with a reboot of the story, starting in the year 2036 instead of 1971, and a related but independent story-line. On 2 April 2021, light novel and manga publisher J-Novel Club announced Perry Rhodan NEO as a launch title for its new J-Novel Pulp imprint, making this the first ongoing English release of new Perry Rhodan serials in over 20 years. It has become the most popular science fiction book series of all time. == Overview == === Fictional history === The story begins in 1971. During the first human Moon landing by US Space Force Major Perry Rhodan and his crew, they discover a marooned extraterrestrial space ship from the fictional planet Arkon, located in the (real) M13 cluster. Appropriating the Arkonide technology, they proceed to unify Terra and carve out a place for humanity in the galaxy and the cosmos. Two of the accomplishments that enable them to do so are positronic brains and starship drives for near-instantaneous hyperspatial translation. These were directly borrowed from Isaac Asimov's science fiction. As the series progresses, major characters, including the title character, are granted relative immortality. They are immune to age and disease, but not to violent death. The story continues over the course of millennia and includes flashbacks thousands and even millions of years into the past. The scope widens to encompass other galaxies, even more remote regions of space, parallel universes and cosmic structures, time travel, paranormal powers, a variety of aliens ranging from threatening to endearing, and bodiless entities, some of which have godlike powers. === Multiverse === The universe in which the main plot generally takes place is called the Einstein Universe (or "Meekorah"). Its laws are for the most part identical to those of the real universe, as known by late 20th century science. Newer theories about dark matter and dark energy are currently not used in the series. The laws of nature follow old theories that have been disproven, in order to protect series continuity. There are many other universes, each to a greater or lesser extent different from the familiar one, in which, for example one in which time runs slower, an anti-matter universe, a shrinking universe, etc. Each universe possesses its owntimelines, which are for the most part unreachable from each other but may be accessed by special means, thereby itself creating many more parallel timelines. The Einstein Universe is embedded in a high-dimensional manifold, called Hyperspace. This hyperspace consists of several subspaces use for faster-than-light travel by technological means. The exact traits of those higher dimensions are got yhr mode pity unexplained. The border of the universe is a dimension called the deep, once used for construction of the gigantic disc-shaped world Deepland. === Psionic Web and Moral Code === The Psionic Web crosses the whole universe, constantly emitting "vital energy" and "psionic energy", guaranteeing normal (organic among others) life and the wellbeing of higher entities. The Moral Code crosses through all universes, and is linked to the Psionic Web. It is subdivided into the Cosmogenes, which are again subdivided into the Cosmonucleotids. The Cosmonucleotids determine reality and fate for their respective parts of a given universe, via messengers. Higher beings are trying to gain control of this Code to rule reality. The Moral Code itself was not installed by the higher beings, the higher powers by themselves have no clue why or by whom the Code was made. Once the Cosmocrats ordered Perry Rhodan to find the answer to the third ultimate question: "Who initiated the LAW and what does it accomplish?" Perry Rhodan had the chance to receive the answer at the mountain of creation, but refused, as he knew that the answer would destroy his mind. The negative Superintelligence Koltoroc had received the answer to the last ultimate question, 69 million years BC at Negane Mountain, but it is not known if it made any use of the information. === Onion-shell model === An evolutionary schema, similar to the Great Chain of Being, called the "onion-shell model" is employed in relationship to all life. Here, continuous evolution is from lower to higher lifeforms, culminating in bodiless entities. Later in the series, further lifeforms, representing stages between the known shells, were introduced. The main shells are: Lifeless matter Bacteria Higher animals Intelligent species Intelligent species that have contacted other species Superintelligences (SI) Matter sources/ Matter sinks Cosmocrats / Chaotarchs (High Powers) Powers close to the "Horizon of the LAW", the essence of the Multiverse The Superintelligences are the next step above normal minds. They can be born, for example, when a species collectively gives up its bodies and unites their spirits. Such Superintelligences may claim as their domain areas consisting of up to several galaxies (the entity known as "E

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  • Batch normalization

    Batch normalization

    In artificial neural networks, batch normalization (also known as batch norm) is a normalization technique used to make training faster and more stable by adjusting the inputs to each layer—re-centering them around zero and re-scaling them to a standard size. It was introduced by Sergey Ioffe and Christian Szegedy in 2015. Experts still debate why batch normalization works so well. It was initially thought to tackle internal covariate shift, a problem where parameter initialization and changes in the distribution of the inputs of each layer affect the learning rate of the network. However, newer research suggests it doesn’t fix this shift but instead smooths the objective function—a mathematical guide the network follows to improve—enhancing performance. In very deep networks, batch normalization can initially cause a severe gradient explosion—where updates to the network grow uncontrollably large—but this is managed with shortcuts called skip connections in residual networks. Another theory is that batch normalization adjusts data by handling its size and path separately, speeding up training. == Internal covariate shift == Each layer in a neural network has inputs that follow a specific distribution, which shifts during training due to two main factors: the random starting values of the network’s settings (parameter initialization) and the natural variation in the input data. This shifting pattern affecting the inputs to the network’s inner layers is called internal covariate shift. While a strict definition isn’t fully agreed upon, experiments show that it involves changes in the means and variances of these inputs during training. Batch normalization was first developed to address internal covariate shift. During training, as the parameters of preceding layers adjust, the distribution of inputs to the current layer changes accordingly, such that the current layer needs to constantly readjust to new distributions. This issue is particularly severe in deep networks, because small changes in shallower hidden layers will be amplified as they propagate within the network, resulting in significant shift in deeper hidden layers. Batch normalization was proposed to reduced these unwanted shifts to speed up training and produce more reliable models. Beyond possibly tackling internal covariate shift, batch normalization offers several additional advantages. It allows the network to use a higher learning rate—a setting that controls how quickly the network learns—without causing problems like vanishing or exploding gradients, where updates become too small or too large. It also appears to have a regularizing effect, improving the network’s ability to generalize to new data, reducing the need for dropout, a technique used to prevent overfitting (when a model learns the training data too well and fails on new data). Additionally, networks using batch normalization are less sensitive to the choice of starting settings or learning rates, making them more robust and adaptable. == Procedures == === Transformation === In a neural network, batch normalization is achieved through a normalization step that fixes the means and variances of each layer's inputs. Ideally, the normalization would be conducted over the entire training set, but to use this step jointly with stochastic optimization methods, it is impractical to use the global information. Thus, normalization is restrained to each mini-batch in the training process. Let us use B to denote a mini-batch of size m of the entire training set. The empirical mean and variance of B could thus be denoted as μ B = 1 m ∑ i = 1 m x i {\displaystyle \mu _{B}={\frac {1}{m}}\sum _{i=1}^{m}x_{i}} and σ B 2 = 1 m ∑ i = 1 m ( x i − μ B ) 2 {\displaystyle \sigma _{B}^{2}={\frac {1}{m}}\sum _{i=1}^{m}(x_{i}-\mu _{B})^{2}} . For a layer of the network with d-dimensional input, x = ( x ( 1 ) , . . . , x ( d ) ) {\displaystyle x=(x^{(1)},...,x^{(d)})} , each dimension of its input is then normalized (i.e. re-centered and re-scaled) separately, x ^ i ( k ) = x i ( k ) − μ B ( k ) ( σ B ( k ) ) 2 + ϵ {\displaystyle {\hat {x}}_{i}^{(k)}={\frac {x_{i}^{(k)}-\mu _{B}^{(k)}}{\sqrt {\left(\sigma _{B}^{(k)}\right)^{2}+\epsilon }}}} , where k ∈ [ 1 , d ] {\displaystyle k\in [1,d]} and i ∈ [ 1 , m ] {\displaystyle i\in [1,m]} ; μ B ( k ) {\displaystyle \mu _{B}^{(k)}} and σ B ( k ) {\displaystyle \sigma _{B}^{(k)}} are the per-dimension mean and standard deviation, respectively. ϵ {\displaystyle \epsilon } is added in the denominator for numerical stability and is an arbitrarily small positive constant. The resulting normalized activation x ^ ( k ) {\displaystyle {\hat {x}}^{(k)}} have zero mean and unit variance, if ϵ {\displaystyle \epsilon } is not taken into account. To restore the representation power of the network, a transformation step then follows as y i ( k ) = γ ( k ) x ^ i ( k ) + β ( k ) {\displaystyle y_{i}^{(k)}=\gamma ^{(k)}{\hat {x}}_{i}^{(k)}+\beta ^{(k)}} , where the parameters γ ( k ) {\displaystyle \gamma ^{(k)}} and β ( k ) {\displaystyle \beta ^{(k)}} are subsequently learned in the optimization process. Formally, the operation that implements batch normalization is a transform B N γ ( k ) , β ( k ) : x 1... m ( k ) → y 1... m ( k ) {\displaystyle BN_{\gamma ^{(k)},\beta ^{(k)}}:x_{1...m}^{(k)}\rightarrow y_{1...m}^{(k)}} called the Batch Normalizing transform. The output of the BN transform y ( k ) = B N γ ( k ) , β ( k ) ( x ( k ) ) {\displaystyle y^{(k)}=BN_{\gamma ^{(k)},\beta ^{(k)}}(x^{(k)})} is then passed to other network layers, while the normalized output x ^ i ( k ) {\displaystyle {\hat {x}}_{i}^{(k)}} remains internal to the current layer. === Backpropagation === The described BN transform is a differentiable operation, and the gradient of the loss l {\displaystyle l} with respect to the different parameters can be computed directly with the chain rule. Specifically, ∂ l ∂ y i ( k ) {\displaystyle {\frac {\partial l}{\partial y_{i}^{(k)}}}} depends on the choice of activation function, and the gradient against other parameters could be expressed as a function of ∂ l ∂ y i ( k ) {\displaystyle {\frac {\partial l}{\partial y_{i}^{(k)}}}} : ∂ l ∂ x ^ i ( k ) = ∂ l ∂ y i ( k ) γ ( k ) {\displaystyle {\frac {\partial l}{\partial {\hat {x}}_{i}^{(k)}}}={\frac {\partial l}{\partial y_{i}^{(k)}}}\gamma ^{(k)}} , ∂ l ∂ γ ( k ) = ∑ i = 1 m ∂ l ∂ y i ( k ) x ^ i ( k ) {\displaystyle {\frac {\partial l}{\partial \gamma ^{(k)}}}=\sum _{i=1}^{m}{\frac {\partial l}{\partial y_{i}^{(k)}}}{\hat {x}}_{i}^{(k)}} , ∂ l ∂ β ( k ) = ∑ i = 1 m ∂ l ∂ y i ( k ) {\displaystyle {\frac {\partial l}{\partial \beta ^{(k)}}}=\sum _{i=1}^{m}{\frac {\partial l}{\partial y_{i}^{(k)}}}} , ∂ l ∂ σ B ( k ) 2 = ∑ i = 1 m ∂ l ∂ y i ( k ) ( x i ( k ) − μ B ( k ) ) ( − γ ( k ) 2 ( σ B ( k ) 2 + ϵ ) − 3 / 2 ) {\displaystyle {\frac {\partial l}{\partial \sigma _{B}^{(k)^{2}}}}=\sum _{i=1}^{m}{\frac {\partial l}{\partial y_{i}^{(k)}}}(x_{i}^{(k)}-\mu _{B}^{(k)})\left(-{\frac {\gamma ^{(k)}}{2}}(\sigma _{B}^{(k)^{2}}+\epsilon )^{-3/2}\right)} , ∂ l ∂ μ B ( k ) = ∑ i = 1 m ∂ l ∂ y i ( k ) − γ ( k ) σ B ( k ) 2 + ϵ + ∂ l ∂ σ B ( k ) 2 1 m ∑ i = 1 m ( − 2 ) ⋅ ( x i ( k ) − μ B ( k ) ) {\displaystyle {\frac {\partial l}{\partial \mu _{B}^{(k)}}}=\sum _{i=1}^{m}{\frac {\partial l}{\partial y_{i}^{(k)}}}{\frac {-\gamma ^{(k)}}{\sqrt {\sigma _{B}^{(k)^{2}}+\epsilon }}}+{\frac {\partial l}{\partial \sigma _{B}^{(k)^{2}}}}{\frac {1}{m}}\sum _{i=1}^{m}(-2)\cdot (x_{i}^{(k)}-\mu _{B}^{(k)})} , and ∂ l ∂ x i ( k ) = ∂ l ∂ x ^ i ( k ) 1 σ B ( k ) 2 + ϵ + ∂ l ∂ σ B ( k ) 2 2 ( x i ( k ) − μ B ( k ) ) m + ∂ l ∂ μ B ( k ) 1 m {\displaystyle {\frac {\partial l}{\partial x_{i}^{(k)}}}={\frac {\partial l}{\partial {\hat {x}}_{i}^{(k)}}}{\frac {1}{\sqrt {\sigma _{B}^{(k)^{2}}+\epsilon }}}+{\frac {\partial l}{\partial \sigma _{B}^{(k)^{2}}}}{\frac {2(x_{i}^{(k)}-\mu _{B}^{(k)})}{m}}+{\frac {\partial l}{\partial \mu _{B}^{(k)}}}{\frac {1}{m}}} . === Inference === During the training stage, the normalization steps depend on the mini-batches to ensure efficient and reliable training. However, in the inference stage, this dependence is not useful any more. Instead, the normalization step in this stage is computed with the population statistics such that the output could depend on the input in a deterministic manner. The population mean, E [ x ( k ) ] {\displaystyle E[x^{(k)}]} , and variance, Var ⁡ [ x ( k ) ] {\displaystyle \operatorname {Var} [x^{(k)}]} , are computed as: E [ x ( k ) ] = E B [ μ B ( k ) ] {\displaystyle E[x^{(k)}]=E_{B}[\mu _{B}^{(k)}]} , and Var ⁡ [ x ( k ) ] = m m − 1 E B [ ( σ B ( k ) ) 2 ] {\displaystyle \operatorname {Var} [x^{(k)}]={\frac {m}{m-1}}E_{B}[\left(\sigma _{B}^{(k)}\right)^{2}]} . The population statistics thus is a complete representation of the mini-batches. The BN transform in the inference step thus becomes y ( k ) = B N γ ( k ) , β ( k ) inf ( x ( k ) ) = γ ( k ) x ( k ) − E [ x ( k ) ] Var ⁡ [ x ( k ) ] + ϵ + β

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  • Imagen (text-to-image model)

    Imagen (text-to-image model)

    Imagen is a series of text-to-image models developed by Google DeepMind. They were developed by Google Brain until the company's merger with DeepMind in April 2023. Imagen is primarily used to generate images from text prompts, similar to Stability AI's Stable Diffusion, OpenAI's DALL-E, or Midjourney. The original version of the model was first discussed in a paper from May 2022. The tool produces high-quality images and is available to all users with a Google account through services including Gemini, ImageFX, and Vertex AI. == History == Imagen's original version was first presented in a paper published in May 2022. It featured the ability to generate high-fidelity images from natural language. The second version, Imagen 2 was released in December 2023. The standout feature was text and logo generation. Imagen 3 was released in August 2024. Google claims that the newest version provides better detail and lighting on generated images. On 20 May 2025 at Google I/O 2025 the company released an improved model, Imagen 4. == Technology == Imagen uses two key technologies. The first is the use of transformer-based large language models, notably T5, to understand text and subsequently encode text for image synthesis. The second is the use of cascaded diffusion models providing high-fidelity image generation. Imagen generates image in three stages, starting from a base of 64x64, then upsampled to 256x256 and 1024x1024. Imagen 4 generates image up to 2k. == Capabilities == Imagen can generate photorealistic images from text prompts. It can also create various styles, such as cinematic, 35mm film, illustration, and surreal. Like most text-to-image generative AI models, Imagen has difficulty rendering human fingers, text, ambigrams and other forms of typography. The model can generate images in five aspect ratios, namely 9:16, 3:4, 1:1, 4:3, and 16:9. Imagen can also refine already generated images by editing existing text prompts.

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  • Machine unlearning

    Machine unlearning

    Machine unlearning is a branch of machine learning focused on removing specific undesired element, such as private data, wrong or manipulated training data, outdated information, copyrighted material, harmful content, dangerous abilities, or misinformation, without needing to rebuild models from the ground up. Large language models, like the ones powering ChatGPT, may be asked not just to remove specific elements but also to unlearn a "concept," "fact," or "knowledge," which aren't easily linked to specific examples. New terms such as "model editing," "concept editing," and "knowledge unlearning" have emerged to describe this process. == History == Early research efforts were largely motivated by Article 17 of the GDPR, the European Union's privacy regulation commonly known as the "right to be forgotten" (RTBF), introduced in 2014. The GDPR did not anticipate that the development of large language models would make data erasure a complex task. This issue has since led to research on "machine unlearning," with a growing focus on removing copyrighted material, harmful content, dangerous capabilities, and misinformation. Just as early experiences in humans shape later ones, some concepts are more fundamental and harder to unlearn. A piece of knowledge may be so deeply embedded in the model's knowledge graph that unlearning it could cause internal contradictions, requiring adjustments to other parts of the graph to resolve them. Researchers have now also started studying unlearning in the context of removing incorrect or adversarially manipulated training data such as systematically biased labels or poisoning attacks. == Motivations == At present, machine unlearning is motivated by a growing range of concerns that extend well beyond the field's original focus on data privacy. A widely used taxonomy in the literature distinguishes two high-level categories of motivation. Access revocation covers cases where a data subject or rights holder requests the removal of data they own or control. This is most commonly associated with RTBF established by the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and analogous legislation such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). These regulations grant individuals the legal right to request erasure of their personal data from any system that has processed it, including models that were trained on it. Access revocation also encompasses the removal of copyrighted or pay-walled content that was incorporated into training corpora without the necessary licenses, a concern that has become prominent with the widespread use of largely web-scraped pre-training datasets. Model correction covers cases where the model exhibits undesirable behavior arising from the training data, regardless of any individual's request. This includes: Removal of toxic, biased, or unsafe outputs introduced by harmful content in the training set Correction of stale or factually incorrect associations, such as outdated knowledge encoded in a deployed model Removal of dangerous capabilities, such as detailed knowledge of the synthesis of chemical or biological agents Correction of the influence of data poisoning or adversarial attacks that have corrupted model behavior This second category has been formalized as corrective machine unlearning, which frames unlearning as a post-training mechanism for repairing the effects of bad or harmful training data. It is closely related to the AI safety literature, where data filtering alone has been found insufficient to prevent hazardous knowledge from being encoded in model weights, motivating unlearning as a complementary risk mitigation strategy. A further distinction has been drawn in the literature between removal {eliminating the influence of specific training data on model parameters) and suppression (preventing the model from generating specific outputs regardless of how that knowledge is encoded). These two goals are not equivalent: removing training data does not guarantee meaningful output suppression, and suppressing outputs does not constitute removal of the underlying training data's influence. == SISA Training == SISA is a training strategy consisting of four mechanisms designed to make machine unlearning more efficient by structuring how models are trained and updated. Its goal is to allow a system to remove the influence of specific data points without retraining an entire model from scratch. By reorganizing training data and workflows, SISA reduces the computational burden of unlearning requests. Sharding divides the training dataset into multiple disjoint subsets, or shards. Each shard is used to train a separate model instance. This ensures that a single data point affects only one shard, so unlearning it requires updating only the corresponding shard rather than the full model. Isolation refers to training each shard independently, with nothing shared across shards during the training process. This separation prevents cross-contamination between shards, ensuring that forgetting data in one shard does not require adjustments to any others. Slicing breaks the data within each shard into sequential slices and stores model states after each slice is trained on. When an unlearning request targets a piece of data, the system can roll back to the checkpoint before the point was seen and retrain only from that slice forward. This reduces retraining time even within a shard. Aggregation occurs at inference, when the model is queried. It combines the outputs of each shard to determine the output of the overall model. This is often through majority voting or averaging. This allows SISA-trained systems to behave like a single model despite being composed of multiple shard-level models. Together, these mechanisms enable machine learning systems to forget specific data points with far lower computational cost than full retraining. The trade-off is that sharding and slicing can lead to reduced model accuracy, worse generalization, and increased storage requirements for the intermediate checkpoints. This can be tolerable based on the needs of the individual or organization to comply with "right to be forgotten" or efficiently recover from backdoor attacks. == Algorithms == Machine unlearning algorithms are broadly categorized into exact and approximate methods, reflecting a fundamental trade-off between formal guarantees and computational tractability. === Exact Unlearning === Exact unlearning methods produce a model that is statistically indistinguishable from one retrained from scratch on the dataset with the forget data removed. The canonical framework for exact unlearning is SISA Training (Sharded, Isolated, Sliced, and Aggregated), introduced by Bourtoule et al. (2021). SISA partitions the training dataset into disjoint shards and trains a separate sub-model on each. At inference time, predictions are aggregated across sub-models. When an unlearning request is received, only the sub-model corresponding to the shard containing the target data requires retraining, reducing computational overhead proportionally to the number of shards. Exact methods provide the strongest guarantees but become prohibitively expensive for large pre-trained neural networks and are generally limited to settings where training can be structured in advance. === Approximate Unlearning === Approximate unlearning methods seek to produce a model whose behavior is sufficiently close to an exactly unlearned model without the cost of full retraining. These methods dominate practical applications. Common approaches include: Gradient Ascent: The model is fine-tuned by maximizing the loss on the forget set, directly degrading its performance on targeted data. This is the most direct approach but risks destabilizing performance on retained data. Random Labelling: The model is fine-tuned on the forget set using randomly shuffled labels, confusing its associations with the targeted data while producing a less aggressive weight shift than pure gradient ascent. Gradient Difference: Combines gradient ascent on the forget set with simultaneous gradient descent on the retain set, using the retain objective as a regularizer to preserve general model utility. KL Divergence Regularization: Minimizes the KL divergence between the outputs of the unlearned model and the original model on the retain set, anchoring behavior on data the model should remember. Weight Pruning and Fine-tuning: Parameters with the smallest L1-norm are pruned — targeting weights most weakly associated with general knowledge and potentially most associated with the forget set — followed by fine-tuning on the retain set to restore utility. Layer Reset and Fine-tuning: The first or last k layers are re-initialized to random weights and the model is subsequently fine-tuned on the retain set. This is a coarse but computationally simple approach. Selective Synaptic Dampening: Uses influence functions to estimate the effect of individual trainin

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  • Legal Knowledge Interchange Format

    Legal Knowledge Interchange Format

    The Legal Knowledge Interchange Format (LKIF) was developed in the European ESTRELLA project and was designed with the goal of becoming a standard for representing and interchanging policy, legislation and cases, including their justificatory arguments, in the legal domain. LKIF builds on and uses the Web Ontology Language (OWL) for representing concepts and includes a reusable basic ontology of legal concepts. The core of LKIF consists of a combination of OWL-DL and SWRL. LKIF was designed with two main roles in mind: the translation of legal knowledge bases written in different representation formats and formalisms and to be a knowledge representation formalism which could be part of larger architectures for developing legal knowledge systems.

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  • Megami Tensei

    Megami Tensei

    Megami Tensei, marketed internationally as Shin Megami Tensei (formerly Revelations), is a Japanese media franchise created by Aya Nishitani, Kouji "Cozy" Okada, Ginichiro Suzuki, and Kazunari Suzuki. Primarily developed and published by Atlus, the franchise consists of multiple subseries and covers multiple role-playing video game genres including tactical role-playing, action role-playing, and massively multiplayer online role-playing. The first two titles in the series were published by Namco (now Bandai Namco Entertainment), but have been almost always published by Atlus in Japan and North America since the release of Shin Megami Tensei. For Europe, Atlus publishes the games through third-party companies. The series was originally based on Digital Devil Story, a science fiction novel series by Aya Nishitani. The series takes its name from the first book's subtitle. Most Megami Tensei titles are stand-alone entries with their own stories and characters. Recurring elements include plot themes, a story shaped by the player's choices, and the ability to fight using and often recruit creatures (demons, Personas) to aid the player in battle. Elements of philosophy, religion, occultism, and science fiction have all been incorporated into the series at different times. While not maintaining as high a profile as series such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, it is highly popular in Japan and maintains a strong cult following in the West, finding critical and commercial success. The series has become well known for its artistic direction, challenging gameplay, and music, but raised controversy over its mature content, dark themes, and use of Christian religious imagery. Additional media include manga adaptations, anime films, and television series. In Japan, some games in the series do not use the "Megami Tensei" title, such as the Persona sub-series. Many of the early games in the series were not localized due to potentially controversial content including religious references, and later due to their age. English localizations have used the "Shin Megami Tensei" moniker since the release of Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne in 2004. == Titles == === Games === The first installment in the franchise, Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei, was released on September 11, 1987. The following entries have nearly always been unrelated to each other except in carrying over thematic and gameplay elements. The Megami Tensei games, and the later Shin Megami Tensei titles form the core of the series, while other subseries such as Persona, Devil Children, and Devil Summoner are spin-offs marketed as part of the franchise. There are also stand-alone spin-off titles. ==== Main series ==== Two entries were released for the Famicom: Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei in 1987, and Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei II in 1990. The two titles are unrelated to each other in terms of story, and each introduced the basic gameplay and story mechanics that would come to define the series. Three entries were released for the Super Famicom: Shin Megami Tensei in 1992, followed byShin Megami Tensei II in 1994, and Shin Megami Tensei If..., released later in the same year. Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne was released in 2003 for the PlayStation 2. Its Maniax Edition director's cut was released in Japan and North America in 2004, and in Europe in 2005. The numeral was dropped for its North American release, and its title changed to Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's Call in Europe. Shin Megami Tensei IV for the Nintendo 3DS was released in 2013 in Japan and North America, and a year later in Europe as a digital-only release. Another game set in the same universe, Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse, was released for the 3DS in February 2016 in Japan. Shin Megami Tensei V was released on the Nintendo Switch in 2021. An enhanced version of the game titled Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance was released in June 2024 for Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. In addition to the main series, there are also numerous spin-offs. Shin Megami Tensei: Nine, was released for the Xbox in 2002. Originally designed as a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), it was later split into a dual single-player and multiplayer package, and the single-player version released first. The online version was delayed and eventually cancelled as the developers could not manage the required online capacities using Xbox Live. Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine, a true MMOROG released for Microsoft Windows, was released in 2007 in Japan, 2008 in North America, and 2009 in Europe. Western service was terminated in 2014 when Marvelous USA, the game's then-handlers, shut down their PC Online game department. Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey was released for the Nintendo DS in 2009 in Japan and 2010 in North America. Its Japanese service ended in May 2016. A smartphone game, Shin Megami Tensei: Liberation Dx2, was released in 2018. ==== Persona ==== The Persona series is the largest and most popular spin-off from the Megami Tensei series. The first entry in the series, Megami Ibunroku Persona (originally released overseas as Revelations: Persona), was released in 1996 in Japan and North America. The first Persona 2 title, Innocent Sin, was released in 1999 in Japan. The second game, Eternal Punishment, was released in 2000 in Japan and North America. Persona 3 was released in 2006 in Japan, 2007 in North America, and 2008 in Europe. Its sequel, Persona 4, was released in 2008 in Japan and North America, and in 2009 in Europe. A sixth entry in the series, Persona 5, was released in Japan on September 15, 2016, and was released in North America and Europe on April 4, 2017, to critical acclaim. The series also features spin-offs, including Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth and Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth, two fighting games Persona 4 Arena and its sequel Arena Ultimax as well as the crossover fighting game BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, tactical role-playing game Persona 5 Tactica, action role-playing game Persona 5 Strikers and rhythm games Persona 4: Dancing All Night, Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight, and Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight. While Persona 3 and 4 used the Shin Megami Tensei moniker in the West, it was dropped for the Persona 4 Arena duology and Persona 4 Golden as it would have made the titles too long to be practical. ==== Devil Summoner ==== The Devil Summoner subseries began in 1995 with the release of Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner. It was followed by Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers in 1997, then followed by Soul Hackers 2, released in 2022. Two action role-playing prequels set in 1920s Tokyo were also developed, which revolve around demon summoner Raidou Kuzunoha: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army was released in 2006, and Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon was released in 2008. ==== Other spin-offs ==== Aside from Persona and Devil Summoner, there are other spin-off series covering multiple genres. After the release of Shin Megami Tensei II, Atlus began focusing work on building spin-offs and subseries that would form part of the Megami Tensei franchise. Shortly after Nocturne's release, a duology titled Digital Devil Saga (Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner in Japan) was created based around similar systems to Nocturne, and was also intended as a more accessible gaming experience. Two tactical role-playing games have been developed by Atlus for the DS under the Devil Survivor moniker: the original Devil Survivor and Devil Survivor 2. Both have received expanded ports for the 3DS. Other subseries include Last Bible, a series aimed at a younger audience and using a pure fantasy setting; Devil Children, which was inspired by the popular Pokémon series; and Majin Tensei, a series of strategy games. Two notable stand-alone spin-offs are action spin-off Jack Bros. and Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE, a crossover with Intelligent Systems' Fire Emblem series. === Related media === Several titles in the franchise have received anime and manga adaptations. Persona 3 received both a four-part theatrical adaptation (#1 Spring of Birth, #2 Midsummer Knight's Dream, #3 Falling Down, #4 Winter of Rebirth), and a spin-off series titled Persona: Trinity Soul. Persona 4 received two adaptations: Persona 4: The Animation, based on the original game, and Persona 4: The Golden Animation, based on its expanded PlayStation Vita port. A live-action television series based on the original Devil Summoner was broadcast between 1997 and 1998. Devil Survivor 2 also received an anime adaptation of the same name, and the Devil Children series received two anime adaptations. Multiple Shin Megami Tensei and Persona titles have received manga and CD drama adaptations. Action figures and merchandise related to Persona have also been produced. == Common elements == Despite most games in the series taking place in different continuities, they do share certain elements

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