• Chinese state media shared a video of what it characterized as a submarine detection device dropped by a US Navy aircraft.
• The apparent sonobuoy was discovered in the South China Sea near the Second Thomas Shoal. 
• Military maritime patrol aircraft, including China's planes, routinely use systems like these.

China's coast guard found a submarine detection device dropped by a US Navy aircraft somewhere in the South China Sea, a state broadcaster reported.

Many militaries, including China, use sonobuoys and acoustic sensors. Maritime patrol aircraft often use them and other detectors in open waters to track submarine movements and locations.

Video footage shared by Chinese state media on Wednesday showed a US Navy aircraft, what appears to be a P-8 Poseidon, dropping an object resembling a sonobuoy into the South China Sea.

Business Insider was unable to independently verify the reported details of the video posted to Chinese social media. The footage showed a close-up examination of the object, which Yuyuan Tiantan, part of the China Media Group, identified as a "submarine detector" and reported was recovered by the Chinese coast guard.

The video identifies the object's manufacturer as Ultra Electronics Undersea Sensor Systems, Inc. It's a British company which makes sonobuoys and underwater sensors.

The US Department of Defense didn't respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Chinese state media said its coast guard picked up the device near the Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea, contested territory claimed by both China and the Philippines.

The two South China Sea claimants have clashed in the area, increasingly over the past few years and especially in recent months, with Chinese Coast Guard ships firing water cannons at Philippine supply boats and ramming Philippine vessels.

Chinese coast guard personnel recently disrupted a supply run with bladed weapons, drawing complaints of piracy from Manila.

The Second Thomas Shoal, which China calls Ren'ai Jiao, is located far from the Chinese mainland, as well as the Yulin Naval Base on Hainan Island, where China houses its submarines, though its boats operate across the strategic South China Sea.

Sonobuoys and other similar sensors are small, common instruments in anti-submarine warfare and underwater acoustic research. They have long been used by militaries for monitoring submarine locations and movements, as well as non-military purposes.

There are various kinds of sonobuoys that deliver active and passive collection of data or serve specific operations. In the state media video, China said that the "probe" was being used to detect subs and counter sub signals.

Like the US Navy, China has its own anti-submarine warfare and maritime surveillance aircraft, such as the KQ-200 that are capable of deploying sonobuoys like the SQ-4s and SQ-5s.

In response to the recent discovery by the Chinese coast guard, Ministry of National Defense spokesperson Wu Qian said that China firmly opposes US warships and aircraft stirring up trouble in the South China Sea, per Chinese media reporting.

US military ships and aircraft routinely operate in the international waters of the South China Sea unilaterally and with allies and partner nations in support of what it calls a "free-and-open Indo-Pacific," flying and sailing wherever international law allows.

• Bill Gates, the Microsoft cofounder, shares three kids with his ex-wife Melinda French Gates.
• They include a recent med school graduate and a fashion startup cofounder.
• His eldest daughter, Jennifer Gates Nassar, recently announced she is expecting her second child.

Bill Gates' story is a quintessential example of the American entrepreneurial dream: A brilliant math whiz, Gates was 19 when he dropped out of Harvard and cofounded Microsoft with his friend Paul Allen in 1975.

Nearly 50 years later, he's one of the richest and most famous men on Earth, with a fortune of about $131 billion, per Forbes. He stepped down from Microsoft's board in 2020 and has cultivated his brand of philanthropy with the Gates Foundation — a venture he formerly ran with his now ex-wife Melinda French Gates, who resigned in May. 

Even before founding one of the world's most valuable companies, Gates' life was anything but ordinary. He grew up in a well-off and well-connected family, surrounded by his parents' rarefied personal and professional network. Their circle included a Cabinet secretary and a governor of Washington, according to "Hard Drive," the 1992 biography of Gates by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. (Brock Adams, who went on to become the transportation secretary in the Carter administration, is said to have introduced Gates' parents.)

His father, William Gates Sr., was a prominent corporate lawyer in Seattle and the president of the Washington State Bar Association.

His mother, Mary Gates, came from a line of successful bankers and sat on the boards of important financial and social institutions, including the nonprofit United Way. It was there, according to her New York Times obituary, that she met the former IBM chairman John Opel — a fateful connection thought to have led to IBM enlisting Microsoft to provide an operating system in the 1980s.

"My parents were well off — my dad did well as a lawyer, took us on great trips, we had a really nice house," Gates said in the 2019 Netflix documentary "Inside Bill's Brain."

"And I've had so much luck in terms of all these opportunities."

Despite his very public life, his three children with French Gates — Jennifer, Rory, and Phoebe — largely avoided the spotlight for most of their upbringing. 

Like their father, the three Gates children attended Seattle's elite Lakeside School, a private high school that has been recognized for excellence in STEM subjects — and that received a $40 million donation from Bill Gates in 2005 to build its financial aid fund. (Bill Gates and Paul Allen met at Lakeside and went on to build Microsoft together.)

But as they have become adults, more details have emerged about their interests, professions, and family life. 

While they have chosen different career paths, all three children are active in philanthropy — a space in which they will likely wield immense influence as they grow older. While their father has reportedly said that he plans to leave each of the Gates three children $10 million — a fraction of his fortune — they may inherit the family foundation, where most of his money will go.

Here's all we know about the Gates children.

Gates and his children did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Jennifer Gates Nassar

Jennifer Gates Nassar, who goes by Jenn, is the oldest of the Gates children at 28 years old.

A decorated equestrian, Gates Nassar started riding horses when she was six. Her father has shelled out millions of dollars to support her passion, including buying a California horse farm for $18 million and acquiring several parcels of land in Wellington, Florida, to build an equestrian facility.

In 2018, Gates Nassar received her undergraduate degree in human biology from Stanford University, where a computer science building was named for her father after he donated $6 million to the project in 1996.

She then attended the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, from which she graduated in May. She will continue at Mt. Sinai for her residency in pediatric research. During medical school, she also completed a Master's in Public Health at Columbia University — perhaps a natural interest given her parents' extensive philanthropic activity in the space.

"Can't believe we've reached this moment, a little girl's childhood aspiration come true," she wrote on Instagram. "It's been a whirlwind of learning, exams, late nights, tears, discipline, and many moments of self-doubt, but the highs certainly outweighed the lows these past 5 years."

In October 2021, she married Egyptian equestrian Nayel Nassar. In February 2023, reports surfaced that they bought a $51 million New York City penthouse with six bedrooms and a plunge pool. The next month, they welcomed their first child, Leila. 

In June, she announced she was pregnant with her second child.

"Leila, being promoted to big sister," she captioned an Instagram photo of herself and her daughter.

In a 2020 interview with the equestrian lifestyle publication Sidelines, Gates Nassar discussed growing up wealthy.

"I was born into a huge situation of privilege," she said. "I think it's about using those opportunities and learning from them to find things that I'm passionate about and hopefully make the world a little bit of a better place."

She recently posted about visiting Kenya, where she learned about childhood health and development in the country.

Rory John Gates

Rory John Gates, who is in his mid-20s, is Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates' only son and the most private of their children. He maintains private social media accounts, and his sisters and parents rarely post photos of him.

His mother did, however, write an essay about him in 2017. Titled "How I Raised a Feminist Son," she describes as a "great son and a great brother" who "inherited his parents' obsessive love of puzzles."

In 2022, he graduated from the University of Chicago, where, based on a photo posted on Facebook, he appears to have been active in moot court. At the time of his graduation, Jennifer Gates Nassar wrote that he had achieved a double major and master's degree.

Little is publicly known about what the middle Gates child has been up to since he graduated, but a Puck report from last year gave some clues, saying that he is seen as a "rich target for Democratic social-climbers, influence-peddlers, and all variety of money chasers." According to OpenSecrets, his most recent public giving was to Nikki Haley last year.

The same report says he works as a congressional analyst while also completing a doctorate.

Phoebe Gates

Phoebe Gates, 21, is the youngest of the Gates children.

After graduating from high school in 2021, she followed her sister to Stanford. She graduated in June after three years with a Bachelor of Science in Human Biology. Her mom, Melinda French-Gates, delivered the university's commencement address.

In a story that Gates wrote for Nylon about her graduation day, she documented her graduation day, including a party she cohosted that featured speeches from her famous parents and a piggyback ride from her boyfriend Arthur Donald — the grandson of Sir Paul McCartney.

She has long shown an interest in fashion, interning at British Vogue and posting on social media from fashion weeks in Copenhagen, New York, and Paris. Sustainability is often a theme of her content, which highlights vintage and secondhand stores and celebrates designers who don't use real leather and fur.

That has culminated in her cofounding Phia, a sustainable fashion tech platform that is set to launch later this year, with her former college roommate.

Gates shares her parents' passion for public health. She's attended the UN General Assembly with her mother and spent time in Rwanda with Partners in Health, a nonprofit that has received funding from the Gates Foundation.

Like her mother, Gates often publicly discusses issues of gender equality, including in essays for Vogue and Teen Vogue, at philanthropic gatherings, and on social media, where she frequently posts about reproductive rights.

She's given thousands to Democrats and Democratic causes, including to Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and the Democratic Party of Montana, per data from OpenSecrets. According to Puck, she receives a "giving allowance" that makes it possible for her to cut the checks.

Perhaps the most public of the Gates children — she's got nearly 400,000 Instagram followers and a partnership with Tiffany & Co. — she's given glimpses into their upbringing, including strict rules around technology. The siblings were not allowed to use their phones before bed, she told Bustle, and to get around the rule, she created a cardboard decoy.

"I thought I could dupe my dad, and it worked, actually, for a couple nights," she told the outlet earlier this year. "And then my mom came home and was like, 'This is literally a piece of cardboard you're plugging in. You're using your phone in your room.' Oh, my gosh, I remember getting in trouble for that."

• Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said the "worst moment" of Sam Altman's ousting happened around midnight.
• Chesky said Altman expected to get reinstated but OpenAI then announced Emmett Shear as CEO.
• Altman planned to go to Microsoft but Chesky said his friendship with Shear helped open a dialogue.

Sam Altman has shared glimpses of his brief ousting from OpenAI, like how he operated in an "adrenaline-charged state" and barely ate or slept for the roughly four-day period.

But the hardest moment happened at midnight about two days in, according to an interview with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on CNBC.

"It was probably 48 hours in," Chesky said. "The board had led us to believe he was going to be reinstated, and right before midnight, we get information that Emmett Shear is now the CEO."

At that point, Chesky said Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman said they would go to Microsoft, and it felt like the page had turned. While Chesky said he wanted the two former executives to fight to stay, they were ready to leave if that was best for OpenAI and its employees.

"I thought that was the end of it," Chesky said. "The miraculous thing was, it turns out Emmett Shear is also a friend of mine and that opened a new line of communication." While many other things happened, his relationship with Shear, who ran Twitch before stepping down in March 2023 and who did briefly run OpenAI over that long weekend, helped foster dialog, Chesky said.

While the midnight news might have disappointed Altman, Chesky said he was surprised — in a good way — at how he wasn't acting out of self-preservation throughout the ousting.

"When people are attacked, they typically go to themselves," Chesky said. "And Sam was focused not on himself, but OpenAI and that made me want to fight for him."

Chesky was one of the first people Altman contacted when he was fired, and the two have reportedly been friends for a decade. Altman and Shear mentored Chesky at startup Y Combinator. Both Shear and Chesky worked together to bring Altman back as CEO, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

Airbnb and OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

• Airline rating company Skytrax has released its 2024 list of the world's best business-class cabins.
• Qatar Airways and its Qsuite business class cabin took top honors. 
• Skytrax rankings are based on surveys of travelers from more than 110 countries. 

Qatar Airways offers the best business-class cabin in the world, according to travelers polled by travel industry rating company Skytrax.

Skytrax published its latest rankings in June as part of the 2024 World Airlines Awards, which also named Qatar Airways the best airline in the world.

Business-class offerings from Asian and Middle Eastern airlines took the top six spots in the Skytrax rankings which are compiled using feedback from over 350 airlines from travelers representing over 100 countries.

Here's a closer look at airlines with this year's 10 best business-class offerings in the world, according to Skytrax.

10. Turkish Airlines

Turkish Airlines operates a fleet of more than 450 narrow and widebody airliners, including the Airbus A321neo, the Airbus A350, and the Boeing 777, with various business layouts.

The Istanbul-based carrier also won the Skytrax award this year for best business class catering in the world and best airline in Europe.

9. EVA Air

EVA Air is a subsidiary of container shipping giant Evergreen Group. The Premium Laurel business class on board the Taiwanese carrier's widebody fleet offers lie-flat seats and 15.4-inch entertainment screens.

8. Delta Air Lines

The DeltaOne business class is available on the Atlanta-based airline's widebody fleet for long-haul flights.

DeltaOne is the top-rated business class in North America.

7. Air France

Air France has the highest-rated business-class product in Europe. The French national carrier also won awards for the best airline in Western Europe and for best first-class catering.

6. Hainan Airlines

Hainan has consistently been China's highest-rated carrier and the only one of the country's four major airlines not owned by the Chinese central government.

Hainan operates a fleet of over 100 aircraft, including the Boeing 737, 787 Dreamliner, and the Airbus A330.

5. Cathay Pacific Airways

Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific operates a fleet of more than 150 passenger aircraft, primarily widebody jets such as the Airbus A330, A350, and Boeing 777, with lie-flat business-class cabins.

4. Emirates

Dubai-based Emirates offers a world-class business class product across its fleet of Boeing 777-300ER and Airbus A380 Super Jumbo fleets. The standout feature of Emirates business class experience on board its A380 fleet is the iconic bar and lounge at the back of the upper deck.

3. All Nippon Airways (ANA)

Japan's All Nippon Airways offers a variety of business-class products across its widebody fleet led by its fully enclosed suite called "The Room" on board its Boeing 777-300ERs.

2. Singapore Airlines

Singapore Airlines's business class is a stalwart at the top of the annual Skytrax rankings. In addition to being named the second-best airline in the world, Singapore also picked up honors for the world's best cabin staff and the world's best first-class cabin.

1. Qatar Airways

Qatar Airways isn't just the highest-rated business class carrier; it's also the best airline in the world according to travelers surveyed by Skytrax.

Qatar's top business class offering is the Qsuite business class, which is found onboard its latest Airbus A350 and Boeing 777 widebody jets.

• Sabrina Philipp split from her husband after nearly three years of marriage.
• She celebrated her divorce by hosting a $30,000 "divorce party" for 18 family and friends.
• In a mock freedom ceremony, Philipp used a slingshot to fire her wedding ring into the ocean.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sabrina Philipp. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I hadn't expected it to be so emotional, but the high point of my divorce party was taking a slingshot and launching my wedding ring into the ocean.

A friend played "Goodbye Girl" by The Chicks as the band hit the water. It was out with the old, in with the new. My life was over as a married woman. The next adventure had begun.

My guests — including my parents — clapped and cheered. I had never felt so relieved and happy. It might have cost $30,000, but my divorce party was worth every cent.

I met my ex-husband in Bali in June 2017, when I was a 23-year-old graduate from the University of Florida. He was an Australian who was about to turn 29 and traveling simultaneously.

He was my first serious boyfriend — certainly the only one I'd lived with. We had a great time exploring Bali and then Europe. A couple of years later, we moved to Scotland.

My ex and I were the only people at our wedding

The relationship had its ups and downs. We shared many interests, such as food, travel, and animals — but spent a lot of time apart, particularly when he flew to Australia to visit his child from his first marriage.

Still, I quickly said "yes" when he proposed in January 2020. We began to plan a destination wedding in Bali in July 2021. However, the pandemic shut everything down, and we had no idea when it would end.

An immigration attorney suggested that we move the wedding forward. We ended up getting married in Denmark in August 2020. Restrictions were still in place, and we had to take COVID tests before and after the trip. Only the two of us were there, but my family watched the ceremony via Zoom.

I cried when I said my vows. Everyone thought it was because I was so happy. The truth is, I was thinking, "Oh, my God, I just got married, and my mom and my dad aren't here." But, in my young mind, I thought it was the right decision.

We settled in Edinburgh, where I ran my business coaching company. We got two dogs — Bonnie and Clyde — and considered starting a family. But there were issues behind the scenes, such as him declaring his love and ghosting me. We had couples therapy.

After a while, my ex stopped going to therapy. I went on my own. Things weren't working out. I was growing older and wiser as I approached the age of 30. We argued about money, and there were other fights. We separated in the summer of 2023.

It was extremely traumatic. I felt emotionally lost. Then there was a drama about finances. Luckily, he didn't object to me keeping our pets.

I focused on health and wellness after the split

I'm an influencer and shared the details of our break-up on Instagram. It struck a chord, especially with women. They commented on my posts, messaged me, and asked for advice. I realized I had a platform to talk about the reality of divorce and how to survive it.

Meanwhile, I became focused on health and wellness. I wanted to feel good and look good — purely for myself. I got Botox and plastic surgery, including rhinoplasty and blepharoplasty, in New York City.

My friends and I jokingly coined the phrase "Hottest Ex-Wife Ever." It was one of the reasons I decided to celebrate my new look and new-found freedom with the divorce party.

I wanted to challenge the negativity around divorce. Many people see it as a failure. If your marriage ended, that doesn't mean it failed, or you should regret it.

We live our lives in chapters. It's OK if one chapter is marriage and the next is being single again.

The party happened in April in my home city of Miami, just before my 30th birthday. Eighteen people flew in from Canada, California, Texas, North Carolina, and all over Florida. It meant the world that Mom and Dad were there. They hadn't attended my wedding, so it was fitting that they came to my divorce celebration.

I felt the opposite of ugly, rejected or unwanted

I micromanaged the guests' outfits — everyone had to wear black because it was a funeral for my marriage.

We started with a sexy lingerie shoot in my hotel suite with my girlfriends. I posed in lacy underwear with my divorce cake in the shape of a black heart. It was great because, when you go through a divorce, you can feel so ugly, rejected, or unwanted. I felt the opposite.

Then, we had a four-course dinner at a waterside restaurant in Miami Beach. We ate caviar and seafood and drank bottles of Dom Perignon. The ambiance was perfect. I couldn't have wished for better company or a better time.

As for my wedding ring — a platinum piece from Cartier that I'd bought for myself in Copenhagen for $1,000— we had a mock ceremony when I pitched it into the sea.

A jeweler told me I could have melted it down and gotten around $70 for the weight of the metal. "That's not very fun," I thought. "Do I want $70, or do I want photos and videos of me slingshotting my wedding band into the ocean?" The symbolism was everything. I took the slingshot.

Do you have a powerful story about a good or bad relationship you'd like to share with Business Insider? Please send details to jridley@businessinsider.com

• Japan's Olympic teams will wear infrared-proof uniforms at the Paris Olympics.
• Mizuno designed the uniforms to combat illicit photography of athletes.
• Complaints about revealing photos led to the development of this specialized fabric.

A brand-new innovation is coming to the Paris Olympics this summer: uniforms that creeps can't see through with infrared cameras.

Japan's volleyball, track and field, table tennis, and other teams will wear uniforms made of a cutting-edge new fabric that absorbs infrared light, preventing infrared cameras from seeing through to athletes' underwear or bodies underneath, Le Monde first reported.

Japanese sports equipment company Mizuno designed the outfits specifically to combat the rising trend of voyeurs producing and circulating compromising photos of athletes on pornographic websites, Mizuno said in a press release.

Kazuya Tajima, who works on Mizuno's development team, told Le Monde he hopes that the "use of this fabric by top athletes will make society aware that voyeurism is unacceptable," adding that "cameras are becomingly increasingly sophisticated."

The fabric uses specialized material that absorbs light from the infrared range into the composition of the textile itself, making the fabric "nearly wholly opaque" under both visible and infrared light, Mizuno explains. And that, Mizuno says, "can help reduce the number of athletes that fall victim to illicit infrared photography."

Development on the technology began after athletes complained to the Japanese Olympic Committee in 2020 about revealing photos of themselves shared on social media with sexually explicit captions, The Japan Times reported.

Though the trend may be getting more attention lately, it's nothing new.

A member of Japan's badminton team, Reiko Shiota, who competed in the 2008 Beijing Games and 2012 London Games, has been a victim of photos of her breasts and lower body circulating online, Le Monde reported.

And Japanese gymnast Airi Hatakeyama has also been targeted by people sexualizing suggestive photos of her, even when she was a minor, according to Le Monde.

Some of the voyeurs have even been caught in the act. In 2023, a man was charged for filming female athletes' lower bodies during a running match in Kyoto, and ahead of the 2021 Tokyo Games, another man was arrested for selling infrared photos of a female volleyball player on a porn website, Le Monde reported.

• A Tesla owner said he crashed his new Cybertruck after the brakes stopped working.
• Bruce Freshwater said now he can't drive the car and a repair could cost up to $30,000.
• He said Tesla was investigating, but hasn't gotten back to him. The company didn't respond to BI.

A Tesla owner said he crashed his new Cybertruck into a neighbor's yard within the first few hours of driving it — and he said it's because the vehicle's brakes didn't work.

The owner, Bruce Freshwater, told BI that the crash happened on April 27 after he picked up the Cybertruck. He said he pumped the accelerator when his daughter asked him to, but that nothing happened when he hit the brakes.

"I held the brakes down, and the vehicle really wasn't slowing down," Freshwater said.

Freshwater said he went to make a turn and "the back wheels locked up." According to a report from the North Fayette Township Police Department in Pennsylvania, Freshwater stated that his vehicle went forward 50 feet and crashed into his neighbor's yard. The Cybetruck then barreled into one of his neighbor's cars. That car then ran into a second vehicle, Freshwater told the police in the report, which BI has viewed.

Freshwater's Cybertruck, along with one of the neighbor's vehicles, sustained "disabling damage," according to the police report. The second vehicle had "moderate damage," the report said.

Freshwater said no one was hurt in the crash, but also said a fuse was blown when the airbags deployed, so the Cybertruck can't be driven.

Freshwater said a Tesla-recommended body shop gave him an estimate of between $16,000 and $30,000 to repair the vehicle. He paid around $109,000 after taxes for the Cybertruck, which he bought new from Tesla. He said he's now working with his insurance company to determine what happens next.

Meanwhile, Freshwater said he called Tesla's service line after the incident and heard back on April 29, two days after the crash, and again a week later.

He said a Tesla manager told him that due to the terrain, the accelerator may or may not disengage, and they're looking into the braking issue. He said that was the last he heard from Tesla.

Tesla didn't respond to BI's request to verify Freshwater's account or to comment on the situation.

The Tesla owner posted about the incident on X and said Tesla "needs to take some responsibility." Freshwater told BI that he still makes car payments every month on a vehicle he isn't using.

He said no other Tesla owners have contacted him regarding a similar experience, but the issue he experienced may not be an isolated case.

Tesla voluntarily recalled 2024 Cybertrucks in April for an "unintended acceleration from trapped pedal." The situation may occur when the accelerator pedal pad dislodges and causes the pedal to become trapped by the interior trim, increasing risk of crashing, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The report said the issue occurred because of an "unapproved change" during the vehicle's production in which soap had been added to the assembly. Residual soap "reduced the retention of the pad to the pedal," it said.

The recall covered 3,878 Cybertrucks, the NHTSA recall report said. As of April 15, there were no known related injuries, and by April 17, the vehicles in production were apparently equipped with a new accelerator pedal component, the report said.

Freshwater said he was initially a big fan of Cybertruck and ordered it the first day it became available. But while he initially wanted a Cybertruck replacement, he now isn't sure what he hopes will come out of the situation.

"With the wife and the kids, I'm not sure they would ever get in it with me," Freshwater said. "So it comes down to that, too."

• Artechouse is an art firm that displays digital exhibitions in US cities.
• It showcases works that use extended reality and AI to push the boundaries of immersive art.
• This article is part of "Build IT," a series about digital-tech trends disrupting industries.

When the husband-and-wife duo Sandro Kereselidze and Tatiana Pastukhova came up with the idea for Artechouse, the experiential-art firm they cofounded in 2015, it was hard to explain what they were doing. "Immersive art" wasn't a catchphrase.

Today, immersive art — which uses technology to engage the viewer in an exhibition — is everywhere. Around the world, there have been several immersive-art exhibitions dedicated to the work of Vincent van Gogh. Glimpse, a market-research and trend-tracking company, said in February that search interest in immersive art had increased by 27% over the past year.

Artechouse, which has permanent locations in Miami, New York, Houston, and Washington, DC, has a 14-person creative and production team, including contractors and full-time employees, to transform artists' work into digital and experiential art. The company's exhibitions feature extended reality, which merges physical and virtual worlds.

Among the 40 immersive shows Artechouse has done so far is "Isekai: Blooming Parallel Worlds" in Washington, DC. The exhibition involves a gallery surrounding visitors with digital cherry blossoms and a separate room with an interactive music installation. It uses 360-degree projection mapping, at a resolution of 18K, to create panoramic images.

Pastukhova said Artechouse aims to showcase digital exhibitions that challenge artists and use "new technologies and new methods."

Bringing the future to the present

One of the artists who has partnered with Artechouse is Vince Fraser, an Afro-surrealist in London known for embracing tech.

"I was looking for how I could create my digital artwork and then put it within an actual physical space," Fraser said. In 2014, he started researching immersive spaces. "Back then, it wasn't really a big thing," he said. "There were only a few people doing it."

In 2021, Fraser teamed up with Artechouse for an audiovisual exhibition, narrated by the poet Ursula Rucker, that celebrates the Black experience. The show, which opened in Miami and has since traveled, features an immersive room and an interactive area with augmented-reality technology.

A highlight of the exhibit for Fraser is the auxiliary gallery, called "Thousand Masks," which speaks to African kings' and queens' power, identity, and culture.

Fraser credits Artechouse's big production team with executing his vision in a short time. "It usually takes about six months to produce a show, but we only had three months to produce this," Fraser said. "We were working day and night to get it finished. So I was super proud to have been able to do it in such a short period."

The exhibition is in New York until November.

AI enters the picture

Last year, Artechouse ventured into generative AI with the launch of "World of AI•magination," housed in the company's main gallery in New York. The multidisciplinary project creates experimental scenes using Stable Diffusion, a text-to-image model, and a generative adversarial network, a machine-learning model that generates data.

Riki Kim, Artechouse's executive creative director, said the models used to generate the visuals were trained on images "designed specifically for each scene."

AI art isn't without controversy. Fraser, who uses generative AI in his work, acknowledged other creators' concerns. "I've had conversations with other artists, and they're not very keen on the whole AI stuff," he said. "I kind of get it, because obviously a lot of these models are trained on data, and a lot of the data which they've used are from existing artists. A lot of artists feel very uncomfortable about that."

Kereselidze said people should stay creative and use AI "as a tool and not vice versa."

"AI in the next two to three years can create pretty much anything that you desire. Anything that artists can do as humans," he continued. "It is kind of a questionable dark side that we need to be aware of. We need to be conscious about what we teach these tools."

Fraser predicted that AI would play a major role in the near future of immersive art. "I personally never thought I would be alive to see what's happening now with what is capable in terms of creativity," said Fraser, who's 52. "For me, it's just endless possibilities now."

Kereselidze is looking forward to those possibilities. "In this field, we learn as we go," he said. "It's exciting, it's nerve-racking, but it's something that is rewarding, because when the final project comes to life, it's just a beautiful experience to watch audiences interacting and engaging with the artwork."

• A doctor accused of purposely driving his family off a cliff in a Tesla can now avoid trial.
• A judge granted Dharmesh Patel's request for mental health diversion. 
• The DA whose office brought attempted murder charges against Patel told BI he was "disappointed."

The California doctor who was accused of purposely driving his Tesla off a cliff with his family inside has been handed the chance to get the charges against him dismissed.

A San Mateo County judge on June 20 granted Dharmesh Patel's request to participate in a mental health diversion program, which would allow him to avoid a trial on charges of attempted murder.

San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe, whose office brought charges against Patel, panned Judge Susan Jakubowski's order, telling Business Insider on Wednesday that he was "disappointed with the court's decision."

"Judge Jakubowski carefully weighed the evidence and the facts and went the other way," Wagstaffe said. "If I were judge, I would definitely have ruled the opposite, but that is how our criminal justice system works. We do not get to win them all."

The ability to participate in diversion programs — for juveniles, veterans, or defendants struggling with mental health diagnoses or substance abuse struggles — is an increasingly popular alternative to jail sentences across the US.

When defendants who have been charged with crimes are allowed to participate in these specialized programs, which vary by state, they are generally required to participate in therapy or medical services tailored to their needs. When defendants complete the programming successfully, they often avoid a harsher sentence, or trial — and sometimes prevent an arraignment on the charges completely.

Patel was charged last year with three counts of attempted murder after he drove his wife and two young kids off a notorious 250-foot cliff in Northern California on January 2, 2023. He later pleaded not guilty.

The family miraculously survived the plunge off the cliff known as Devil's Slide.

Patel's wife screamed to rescuers at the scene that her husband, a radiologist, "tried to kill us" and that "he intentionally drove the car over" the edge, Wagstaffe previously told BI.

Still, the wife said she did not want her husband prosecuted and previously asked the court to release him from jail.

During last Thursday's hearing, Jakubowski determined that Patel was eligible for the state's mental health diversion program and "concluded the proper diagnosis for the defendant's mental illness was major depressive disorder, which is a qualifying mental disorder under the statute," according to the district attorney's office.

Patel has been locked up in the county jail since last year and will remain there for several more weeks for what was called a "bridging period" before officially being released, the DA's office said.

The judge ordered that Patel return to court once a week for progress reports, be monitored by GPS, reside in San Mateo County at his parents home, and, for the first two months, he can only leave his residence to go to court or mental health treatment sessions, according to the DA's office.

Under the court order, Patel must also test twice a week to show medication compliance, not use alcohol or drugs, possess no weapons, and surrender his driver's license and passport.

Wagstaffe told BI the charges against Patel have now been suspended and if he successfully completes the two years of the diversion program, the charges would be automatically dismissed.

"If during the two years he violates any of the requirements for diversion that Judge Jakubowski will impose, he can have his diversion revoked and the charges of attempted murder will go forward," said Wagstaffe.

Patel's attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, Wagstaffe told BI that though he was upset by the judge's ruling, his "pique" was with the California Legislature and the state's governor, Gavin Newsom, "who feel that including violent crimes like attempted murder within the mental health diversion law does not endanger public safety."

Under California law, defendants are ineligible for the diversion program if they have been charged with other offenses, including murder, involuntary manslaughter, and rape.

" I disagree fervently with their conclusion," the DA said.

The governor's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.