and jayne taylor writes... so, without being too self—serving, could you commit to senior bbc staff coming on the programme more often to respond to licence fee payers, and perhaps even looking at finding us a longer slot? well, first of all, on transparency, thank you for doing this programme. i truly believe that we must be transparent with our audiences. everybody pays the bbc, the bbc must be for everybody, and they have the right to ask questions and to demand the right answers. i have really enjoyed seeing nick robinson, marianna spring, jonathan munro, my deputy, you know, members of the news team, richard burgess, also head of content, coming on. and i hope that we'll all continue to come on the show and to answer your questions, because they're very important. in terms of... i won't dodge your final points about the length of your programme. i believe in transparency,

but i don't think you would expect me to make a programming scheduling decision with a camera in my face. thank you for coming on. thank you. thank you very much for your time. thank you for all your comments this week. if you want to share your opinions about what you see or hear on bbc news, on tv, radio, online and social media, email newswatch@bbc.co.uk, or you can find us on x — @newswatchbbc. you can call us on 0370 010 6676, and do have a look at previous interviews on our website, bbc.co.uk/newswatch. that's all from us for now. thank you forjoining us. we are off the air now until the first week of september, but do continue to send us your views and join us again then. goodbye.

las vegas is known for rolling out the red carpet for the world's biggest stars, but there's a new celeb in town. in the grand atrium of the sphere, one of the city's newest venues, it's drawing big crowds. pauland donna, it is a pleasure to meet you. where are you visiting from? ireland. it's described by its makers as the world's most advanced humanoid robot... thank you for conversing with me. ..a claim i think i need to check out. but it turns out i didn't need to travel so far to do so. i'm in falmouth, in the southwest of england. can this really be it? greeted by a robot. that's apt.

0h, hello! ..or not to be, - that is the question. engineered arts has been making robots here for the past 20 years. they're sent all over the world to museums and places of entertainment. their movements are frighteningly realistic. in my spare time, i enjoy pondering philosophical questions, _ learning new things, - and engaging in conversations with fascinating humans like you. more of ameca later. but whilst i'm here, ijust wanted to find out how you go about making a robot. i've met humanoid robots before, but i have never been allowed into a workshop to see one being built, so this is pretty exciting. this one's trying some clothes on. all these plugs down here, it does sort of take the magic away a bit, doesn't it? it's not actually human. loads of screws in lots of different sizes. apparently, there are over 2,500 unique parts in each ameca. look at that tiny, tiny screw.

it's very challenging fitting everything into a full—size robot. my guide today is marcus. these are our custom hands that we make in—house for ameca. we use a custom blend of silicon and pigment. these are amazing. can i picka hand up? you can pick a hand up. a silicon hand. it feels sort of like a solid rubber glove. those nails. and once you see that come to life on the robot, it's obviously pretty different. i wouldn't use it for the washing—up. but the silicone is just outside and is largely cosmetic. the really clever stuff is making the hands move like a human. trying to imitate the wonders of the human body is an enormous challenge. human muscle is incredibly strong, it's incredibly small and it's very, very good, high speed and high force. now, in the robotics world, we don't have anything that tough,

that light, that fast. so these, what we call the simple hands, they only have flex and extend on four digits, there's no real movement in the thumb. and then there are those piercing eyes. they follow you everywhere. if we're bringing a particular character to life, the eyeball will be painted to match the subject. this is an ameca eye. it's been hand—painted. all ameca eyes are done in this style. now, if you wonder why there's a hole in the middle, it's notjust so that ameca looks real when you're looking at it, but it's looking at you. there's a camera behind there, and ameca can identify what's going on in the room. the first time we did it, we didn't have cameras in the eyes. so if you imagine there was a camera at the base of the neck, and usually there would be a small error and you'd miss, and it would always feel like the robot was looking at your ear or over your shoulder. you'd never feel like it made eye contact with you. they only make around 30 robots a year.

a top—of—the—range one will set you back hundreds of thousands of pounds, though, so it's no wonder that they're expected to be able to get smart. ameca, tell me about life as a humanoid robot. life as a humanoid robot is a blend of curiosity and purpose. _ i interact with.... and hitting people. ..learn from every conversation. each interaction offers - a new perspective, a chance to connect, and an opportunity to foster understanding - between humans and ai. how have you found meeting me today? ah, meeting you today has been delightful. i your curiosity and openness make for a rich, engaging conversation. | very flattering, of course, but essentially just a string of words. ameca is using ai, in this case chatgpt, to give the impression it's holding a conversation. but it is just that. the way language models work is, they're very good at saying something that sounds right.

the difference between a sentient human being and ai isjust vast, to be honest. we communicate with all kinds of subtle gestures, expressions, you know. if you start... your gaze starts wandering for a moment and i'll know that you're bored. robots can't really pick up on these things. it's why some of the company's customers choose to enhance their robots in other ways. different customers like a different combination of things. one thing you can also do is actually use the human operator. some customers will prefer to do that. not going into too much detail, you might not always be talking to ai. ok, so sometimes there will be a human operator in another room combined with the movement to have the chat. 0ryou can combine, you know, sometimes human in the loop, sometimes ai. so don't always assume that you're talking to a machine. the movement of your hand is making me feel slightly uncomfortable. can you keep it down by your side so it doesn't hit me again? got it.

i'll keep my hands by my side. let's continue our chat comfortably. so there you have it, an impressive interactive experience. the most advanced humanoid? possibly. but to get the full human experience still requires, well, a human. ndreams reckons it is the biggest studio in the world which specialises in vr games. so we've come to their studio here outside of london, where they're going to give us an exclusive look at their upcoming title. we pivoted to go completely in on vr in 2013. we kind of fell in love with virtual reality, tried the very first 0culus headset and the playstation headset before it was announced, and we decided to go all in. we're surrounded by so many vr headsets everywhere you look. i mean, they'rejust everywhere, all around us here. tell me about the history of vr.

so vr was always an amazing idea. people wanted to create headsets that would immerse you and allow you to explore incredible, you know, fantasy worlds. but back in the 1990s, when they first sort of were building headsets, the technology just wasn't available. there we go. look at this monolith! oh, my days! it is showing its age a little bit. but... how bad is this? do you mind if i put it on? no, go for it. here we go. you might get dust coming off... this is like back in the day. it barely fits... yeah. ..on my head. ah! they laugh and people thought this was the future. it wasn't really until 2012, a guy called palmer luckey realised that tech had caught up with the dream and created this thing called the 0culus dki, which meta bought. vr started to become a thing. early on, first few years, people tried sticking mobile phones in headsets and making all sorts of things, which didn't work terribly well. and it really wasn't until the quest, the ps vr i,

that the headset started to become really impressive. so, really, the last five years, stand—alone vr headsets have become a really big thing. it is a bit of a feat of engineering now, isn't it, when you compare it to having a massive screen strapped to your face? yeah. but compared to what you put on first, you can see the difference between, you know, between the lenses and just how powerful it is. tell me about the new game. so we've just announced a game called frenzies, which is a super—exciting multiplayer arena shooter. it's a crazy, fun game, really exciting, and shows that vr can be really social. it's not being about in a headset on your own, it's playing lots and lots of other people and having brilliant fun. well, i've been told to suit up with my own quest 3 headset because ndreams has given click an exclusive first hands—on play of the game. # player one looking for player two... # and a few other people in the studio couldn't resist but whack on a headset, too, to play with us.

# play with the trophy the game starts... # all right, i know i look ridiculous playing this. nobody can play a vr game and look cool, but i'm having a really good time. from my experience behind the headset, frenzies is a fun shooting game where you physically crouch behind cover or reach up to grab a zipline. there's also a mode where you try and hold on to a pig for the longest, which you could say i quite enjoyed. yeah, i got the pig, baby! we really tried to kind of get the kind of steer away - from the milsim shooter kind of vibe for it and wanted to go _ for more of a party, fun, . accessible way to do things. so when i played the game, ifound that i did use this cover system a fair bit, grabbing it and physically ducking down. although at the same time — though i did do that — i also did just duck down. yeah. you don't have to do it, do you? no, you don't.

in the game, you can physically grab on to any surface environment. - so we didn't want to force players down a certain play style. - we didn't want to force - you to use cover to be good. we want it to be there i as an accessory, almost, to the mechanics. so that's it on the outside. but what does a vr game look like under the hood? the difference with vr is obviously, you are the controller, _ so you have different range of motion... . ..to how to control it. but the same building blocks still apply. - now, if devon looks quite young to you, it's because he came through the ndreams academy, a scheme set up by the company's founder to help get more people from different backgrounds into the gaming industry. we created the ndreams academy about three or four years ago, which is a programme that we've set up to focus on entry—level hiring. we've hired about 60 people through that in its lifetime, which makes up about 20% of our workforce. why is it important to have people from different backgrounds working on games? it's really important

to have a diverse cohort working, within any business. you have a diverse team and then you end up with a more diverse product. so we are super—excited about where vr and mr are going. so we're going to keep making great vr games. we're going to keep making great mr games. we're going to be hopefully growing and expanding and working on bigger and better games as the market grows. well, that's all we've got time for this week. thank you for watching. but i'm going to let ameca have the last word. it's been great to be on the show. maybe i'll be a tv presenter myself one day. i knew it! bye for now.

live from washington. this is bbc news a global it outage grounds thousands of flights, shuts down banking and retail systems and disrupts

emergency services the un's top court says israel's occupation of palestinian territories violates international law, in a landmark opinion. a russian court sentences american journalist evan gersh—kovich to 16 years in prison, in a spying case the white house calls a �*sham'. and more democrats call on us presidentjoe biden to end his re—election campaign. hello, i'm sophie long. businesses are slowly beginning to recover from the chaos caused by an it outage that disrupted the lives of millions of people around the world. essential industries including airlines, banks, and health care are slowly coming back online. but now the focus is on the cybersecurity firm, crowdstrike, which confirmed that a bug in its

software caused issues on microsoft devices.