Category: Business

British antitrust regulators on Wednesday blocked Microsoft’s $69 billion purchase of video game maker Activision Blizzard, thwarting the biggest tech deal in history over worries that it would stifle competition for popular titles like Call of Duty in the fast-growing cloud gaming market. The Competition and Markets Authority said in its final report that “the only effective remedy” to the substantial loss of competition “is to prohibit the Merger.” The companies have vowed to appeal. The all-cash deal faced stiff opposition from rival Sony, which makes the PlayStation gaming system, and also was being scrutinized by regulators in the U.S. and Europe over fears that it would give Microsoft and its Xbox console control of hit franchises like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. The U.K. watchdog’s concerns centered on how the deal would affect cloud gaming, which streams to tablets, phones and other devices and frees players from buying expensive consoles and gaming computers. Gamers can keep playing major Activision titles, including mobile games like Candy Crush, on the platforms they typically use. Cloud gaming has the potential to change the industry by giving people more choice over how and where they play, said Martin Colman, chair of the Competition and Markets Authority’s independent expert panel investigating the deal. “This means that it is vital that we protect competition in this emerging and exciting market,” he said. The decision underscores Europe’s reputation as the global leader in efforts to rein in the power of Big Tech companies. A …

Twitter accounts operated by authoritarian governments in Russia, China and Iran are benefiting from recent changes at the social media company, researchers said Monday, making it easier for them to attract new followers and broadcast propaganda and disinformation to a larger audience.  The platform is no longer labeling state-controlled media and propaganda agencies, and will no longer prohibit their content from being automatically promoted or recommended to users. Together, the two changes, both made in recent weeks, have supercharged the Kremlin’s ability to use the U.S.-based platform to spread lies and misleading claims about its invasion of Ukraine, U.S. politics and other topics.  Russian state media accounts are now earning 33% more views than they were just weeks ago, before the change was made, according to findings released Monday by Reset, a London-based non-profit that tracks authoritarian governments’ use of social media to spread propaganda. Reset’s findings were first reported by The Associated Press.  The increase works out to more than 125,000 additional views per post. Those posts included ones suggesting the CIA had something to do with the September 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., that Ukraine’s leaders are embezzling foreign aid to their country, and that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was justified because the U.S. was running clandestine biowarfare labs in the country.  State media agencies operated by Iran and China have seen similar increases in engagement since Twitter quietly made the changes.  The about-face from the platform is the latest development since billionaire Elon Musk purchased Twitter …

The AI bot ChatGPT has passed exams, written poetry, and deployed in newsrooms, and now politicians are seeking it out — but experts are warning against rapid uptake of a tool also famous for fabricating “facts.” The chatbot, released last November by U.S. firm OpenAI, has quickly moved center stage in politics — particularly as a way of scoring points. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida recently took a direct hit from the bot when he answered some innocuous questions about health care reform from an opposition MP. Unbeknownst to the PM, his adversary had generated the questions with ChatGPT. He also generated answers that he claimed were “more sincere” than Kishida’s. The PM hit back that his own answers had been “more specific.” French trade union boss Sophie Binet was on-trend when she drily assessed a recent speech by President Emmanuel Macron as one that “could have been done by ChatGPT.” But the bot has also been used to write speeches and even help draft laws.  “It’s useful to think of ChatGPT and generative AI in general as a cliche generator,” David Karpf of George Washington University in the U.S. said during a recent online panel.  “Most of what we do in politics is also cliche generation.” ‘Limited added value’ Nowhere has the enthusiasm for grandstanding with ChatGPT been keener than in the United States. Last month, Congresswoman Nancy Mace gave a five-minute speech at a Senate committee enumerating potential uses and harms of AI — before delivering the punchline …

The Biden administration announced more than $80 million in funding Thursday in a push to produce more solar panels in the U.S., make solar energy available to more people, and pursue superior alternatives to the ubiquitous sparkly panels made with silicon. The initiative, spearheaded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and known as Community solar, encompasses a variety of arrangements where renters and people who don’t control their rooftops can still get their electricity from solar power. Two weeks ago, Vice President Kamala Harris announced what the administration said was the largest community solar effort ever in the United States. Now it is set to spend $52 million on 19 solar projects across a dozen states, including $10 million from the infrastructure law, as well as $30 million on technologies that will help integrate solar electricity into the grid. The DOE also selected 25 teams to participate in a $10 million competition designed to fast-track the efforts of solar developers working on community solar projects. The Inflation Reduction Act already offers incentives to build large solar generation projects, such as renewable energy tax credits. But Ali Zaidi, White House national climate adviser, said the new money focuses on meeting the nation’s climate goals in a way that benefits more communities. “It’s lifting up our workers and our communities. And that’s, I think, what really excites us about this work,” Zaidi said. “It’s a chance not just to tackle the climate crisis, but to bring economic opportunity to every zip …

A viral AI-generated song imitating Drake and The Weeknd was pulled from streaming services this week, but did it breach copyright as claimed by record label Universal? Created by someone called @ghostwriter, Heart On My Sleeve racked up millions of listens before Universal Music Group asked for its removal from Spotify, Apple Music and other platforms. However, Andres Guadamuz, who teaches intellectual property law at Britain’s University of Sussex, is not convinced that the song breached copyright. As similar cases look set to multiply — with an uncanny AI replication of Liam Gallagher from Oasis causing buzz — he spoke to AFP about some of the issues being raised. Did the song breach copyright? The underlying music on Heart On My Sleeve was new, only the sound of the voice was familiar, “and you can’t copyright the sound of someone’s voice,” Guadamuz said. Perhaps the furor around AI impersonators may lead to copyright being expanded to include voice, rather than just melody, lyrics and other created elements, “but that would be problematic,” Guadamuz added. “What you’re protecting with copyright is the expression of an idea, and voice isn’t really that,” he said.  He said Universal probably claimed copyright infringement because it is the simplest route to removing content, with established procedures in place with streaming platforms. Were other rights breached? An AI-generated impersonator may be breaching other laws. If an artist has a distinctive voice or image, this is potentially protected under “publicity rights” in the United States or similar …

Competition between the U.S. and China in artificial intelligence has expanded into a race to design and implement comprehensive AI regulations. The efforts to come up with rules to ensure AI’s trustworthiness, safety and transparency come at a time when governments around the world are exploring the impact of the technology on national security and education. ChatGPT, a chatbot that mimics human conversation, has received massive attention since its debut in November. Its ability to give sophisticated answers to complex questions with a language fluency comparable to that of humans has caught the world by surprise. Yet its many flaws, including its ostensibly coherent responses laden with misleading information and apparent bias, have prompted tech leaders in the U.S. to sound the alarm. “What happens when something vastly smarter than the smartest person comes along in silicon form? It’s very difficult to predict what will happen in that circumstance,” said Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk in an interview with Fox News. He warned that artificial intelligence could lead to “civilization destruction” without regulations in place. Google CEO Sundar Pichai echoed that sentiment. “Over time there has to be regulation. There have to be consequences for creating deep fake videos which cause harm to society,” Pichai said in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” program. Jessica Brandt, policy director for the Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative at the Brookings Institution, told VOA Mandarin, “Business leaders understand that regulators will be watching this space closely, and they have an interest …

U.S. homeland security officials are launching what they describe as two urgent initiatives to combat growing threats from China and expanding dangers from ever more capable, and potentially malicious, artificial intelligence. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced Friday that his department was starting a “90-day sprint” to confront more frequent and intense efforts by China to hurt the United States, while separately establishing an artificial intelligence task force. “Beijing has the capability and the intent to undermine our interests at home and abroad and is leveraging every instrument of its national power to do so,” Mayorkas warned, addressing the threat from China during a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. The 90-day sprint will “assess how the threats posed by the PRC [People’s Republic of China] will evolve and how we can be best positioned to guard against future manifestations of this threat,” he said. “One critical area we will assess, for example, involves the defense of our critical infrastructure against PRC or PRC-sponsored attacks designed to disrupt or degrade provision of national critical functions, sow discord and panic, and prevent mobilization of U.S. military capabilities,” Mayorkas added. Other areas of focus for the sprint will include addressing ways to stop Chinese government exploitation of U.S. immigration and travel systems to spy on the U.S. government and private entities and to silence critics, and looking at ways to disrupt the global fentanyl supply chain.   AI dangers Mayorkas also said the magnitude of the threat from artificial …

Twitter has removed labels describing global media organizations as government-funded or state-affiliated, a move that comes after the Elon Musk-owned platform started stripping blue verification checkmarks from accounts that don’t pay a monthly fee. Among those no longer labeled was National Public Radio in the U.S., which announced last week that it would stop using Twitter after its main account was designated state-affiliated media, a term also used to identify media outlets controlled or heavily influenced by authoritarian governments, such as Russia and China. Twitter later changed the label to “government-funded media,” but NPR — which relies on the government for a tiny fraction of its funding — said it was still misleading. Canadian Broadcasting Corp. and Swedish public radio made similar decisions to quit tweeting. CBC’s government-funded label vanished Friday, along with the state-affiliated tags on media accounts including Sputnik and RT in Russia and Xinhua in China. Many of Twitter’s high-profile users on Thursday lost the blue checks that helped verify their identity and distinguish them from impostors. Twitter had about 300,000 verified users under the original blue-check system — many of them journalists, athletes and public figures. The checks used to mean the account was verified by Twitter to be who it says it is. High-profile users who lost their blue checks Thursday included Beyoncé, Pope Francis, Oprah Winfrey and former President Donald Trump. The costs of keeping the marks range from $8 a month for individual web users to a starting price of $1,000 monthly to …

The CEO of TikTok tried to calm critics’ fears about the security of his company’s app during an appearance Thursday. Shou Chew was asked at a TED2023 Possibility conference if he could guarantee Beijing would not use the TikTok app, owned by the Chinese tech company ByteDance, to interfere in future U.S. elections. “I can say that we are building all the tools to prevent any of these actions from happening,” Chew said. “And I’m very confident that with an unprecedented amount of transparency that we’re giving on the platform, we can, how we can reduce this risk to as low as zero as possible.” Chew made the comments in Vancouver at the TED organization’s annual convention, where artificial intelligence and safeguards were discussed. U.S. lawmakers and officials are ratcheting up threats to ban TikTok, saying the Chinese-owned video-sharing app used by millions of Americans poses a threat to privacy and U.S. national security. U.S. lawmakers have grilled Chew over concerns the Chinese government could exploit the platform’s user data for espionage and influence operations in the United States. U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy tweeted in March, “It’s very concerning that the CEO of TikTok can’t be honest and admit what we already know to be true — China has access to TikTok user data.” U.S. Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, was even more blunt in February, telling the committee, “Make no mistake, TikTok is a national security threat. … It’s a spy …

While artificial intelligence, or AI, is not new, the speed at which the technology is developing and its implications for societies are, for many, a cause for wonder and alarm. ChatGPT recently garnered headlines for doing things like writing term papers for university students. Tom Graham and his company, Metaphysic.ai, have received attention for creating fake videos of actor Tom Cruise and re-creating Elvis Presley singing on an American talent show. Metaphysic was started to utilize artificial intelligence and create high-quality avatars of stars like Cruise or people from one’s own family or social circle. Graham, who appeared at this year’s TED Conference in Vancouver, which began Monday and runs through Friday, said talking with an artificially created younger self or departed loved one can have tremendous benefits for therapy. He added that the technology would allow actors to appear in movies without having to show up on set, or in ads with AI-generated sports stars. “So, the idea of them being able to create ads without having to turn up is – it’s a match made in heaven,” Graham said. “The advertisers get more content. The sports people never have to turn up because they don’t want to turn up. And everyone just gets paid the same.” Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy, a nonprofit organization that provides free teaching materials, sees AI as beneficial to education and a kind of one-on-one instruction: student and AI. His organization is using artificial intelligence to supplement traditional instruction and make it …

This time it’s for real.  Many of Twitter’s high-profile users are losing the blue check marks that helped verify their identities and distinguish them from impostors on the Elon Musk-owned social media platform.  After several false starts, Twitter began making good on its promise Thursday to remove the blue checks from accounts that don’t each pay a monthly fee to keep them. Twitter had about 300,000 verified users under the original blue-check system—many of them journalists, athletes and public figures. The checks began disappearing from these users’ profiles late morning Pacific time.  High-profile users who lost their blue checks Thursday included Beyonce, Pope Francis and former President Donald Trump. The costs of keeping the marks range from $8 a month for individual web users to a starting price of $1,000 monthly to verify an organization, plus $50 monthly for each affiliate or employee account. Twitter does not verify the individual accounts to ensure the users are who they say they are, as was the case with the previous blue check doled out during the platform’s pre-Musk administration.  Celebrity users, from basketball star LeBron James to “Star Trek’s” William Shatner, have balked at joining — although on Thursday, James’ blue check indicated that the account paid for verification. “Seinfeld” actor Jason Alexander pledged to leave the platform if Musk took his blue check away.  ‘Anyone could be me’ “The way Twitter is going anyone could be me now. The verification system is an absolute mess,” Dionne Warwick tweeted Tuesday. She had …

A growing number of startups are using artificial intelligence to replicate human voices. A company is creating synthetic voices for organizations to use for advertising, marketing and training. Phil Dierking reports. …

Apple Inc. opened its first flagship store in India in a much-anticipated launch Tuesday that highlights the company’s growing aspirations to expand in the country it also hopes to turn into a potential manufacturing hub. The company’s CEO Tim Cook posed for photos with a few of the 100 or so Apple fans who had lined up outside the sprawling 20,000-square-foot store in India’s financial capital, Mumbai, its design inspired by the iconic black-and-yellow cabs unique to the city. A second store will open Thursday in the national capital, New Delhi. “India has such a beautiful culture and an incredible energy, and we’re excited to build on our long-standing history,” Cook said in a statement earlier. The tech giant has been operating in India for more than 25 years, selling its products through authorized retailers and the website it launched a few years ago. But regulatory hurdles and the pandemic delayed its plans to open a flagship store. The new stores are a clear signal of the company’s commitment to invest in India, the second-largest smartphone market in the world where iPhone sales have been ticking up steadily, said Jayanth Kolla, analyst at Convergence Catalyst, a tech consultancy. The stores show “how much India matters to the present and the future of the company,” he added. For the Cupertino, California-based company, India’s sheer size makes the market especially encouraging. About 600 million of India’s 1.4 billion people have smartphones, “which means the market is still under-penetrated and the growth prospect …

Japanese video games group Sega has offered to buy Angry Birds maker Rovio, valuing the Finnish company at over $770 million, the companies said Monday.    “Combining the strengths of Rovio and Sega presents an incredibly exciting future,” Alexandre Pelletier-Normand, CEO of Rovio, said in a statement, which added that Rovio was recommending shareholders to accept the offer.    The offer, which represents a 19% premium over Rovio’s closing share price on Friday, is part of the Sonic the Hedgehog maker’s “long-term goal” of expanding into the mobile gaming market, Sega CEO Haruki Satomi said.    “Among the rapidly growing global gaming market, the mobile gaming market has especially high potential,” he added.    In 2022, Rovio, which employs over 500 people, saw a revenue of $350 million, and an adjusted net profit of $34.5 million.    Rovio launched the bird slingshot game in 2009 and it soared rapidly to become one of the most popular games on Apple’s App Store.    In 2016, the “Angry Birds” movie, produced by Sony Entertainment, was a huge success and grossed $350 million worldwide.    Rovio also manages Angry Birds theme parks in several countries and oversees the publication of children’s books about the famous birds in a dozen languages.    Following the global success of Angry Birds, Rovio has remained heavily reliant on its flagship game, struggling to develop another similar hit.    After years of success tied to its Angry Birds mobile games, Rovio hit a rough patch in 2015 and laid off a third of its staff.    Sega is …

Floating in the port of Los Angeles, a strange-looking barge covered with pipes and tanks contains a concept that scientists hope to make waves: a new way to use the ocean as a vast carbon dioxide sponge to tackle global warming. Scientists from University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) have been working for two years on SeaChange — an ambitious project that could one day boost the amount of CO2, a major greenhouse gas, that can be absorbed by our seas. Their goal is “to use the ocean as a big sponge,” according to Gaurav Sant, director of the university’s Institute for Carbon Management (ICM). The oceans, covering most of the Earth, are already the planet’s main carbon sinks, acting as a critical buffer in the climate crisis. They absorb a quarter of all CO2 emissions, as well as 90% of the warming that has occurred in recent decades due to increasing greenhouse gases. But they are feeling the strain. The ocean is acidifying, and rising temperatures are reducing its absorption capacity. The UCLA team wants to increase that capacity by using an electrochemical process to remove vast quantities of CO2 already in seawater — rather like wringing out a sponge to help recover its absorptive power. “If you can take out the carbon dioxide that is in the oceans, you’re essentially renewing their capacity to take additional carbon dioxide from the atmosphere,” Sant told AFP. Engineers built a floating mini-factory on a 30-meter-long boat which pumps in seawater and …

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this week released proposals for the most aggressive vehicle emission standards in the country’s history, with the expectation that electric cars will account for two of every three cars being produced in the U.S. by 2032. Keith Kocinski reports. …

ChatGPT could return to Italy soon if its maker, OpenAI, complies with measures to satisfy regulators who had imposed a temporary ban on the artificial intelligence software over privacy worries. The Italian data protection authority on Wednesday outlined a raft of requirements that OpenAI will have to satisfy by April 30 for the ban on AI chatbot to be lifted. The watchdog last month ordered the company to temporarily stop processing Italian users’ personal information while it investigated a possible data breach. The authority said it didn’t want to hamper AI’s development but emphasized the importance of following the European Union’s strict data privacy rules. OpenAI, which had responded by proposing remedies to ease the concerns, did not reply immediately to a request for comment Wednesday. Concerns about boom grow Concerns are growing about the artificial intelligence boom, with other countries, from France to Canada, investigating or looking closer at so-called generative AI technology like ChatGPT. The chatbot is “trained” on huge pools of data, including digital books and online writings, and able to generate text that mimics human writing styles. Under Italy’s measures, OpenAI must post information on its website about how and why it processes the personal information of both users and non-users, as well as provide the option to correct or delete that data. The company will have to rely on consent or “legitimate interest” to use personal data to train ChatGPT’s algorithms, the watchdog said. Regulators question legal basis The Italian regulators had questioned whether there’s …

A Biden administration proposal would force U.S. automakers to sharply increase their production of electric cars and trucks over the next decade, lending greater urgency to the effort to build raw material supply chains that reduce the industry’s dependence on China. The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday announced a proposed rule that would place stricter limits on the average tailpipe emissions of vehicles built in the United States. The proposal would reduce the allowable limit by so much that automakers would have no way to comply unless about two-thirds of the vehicles they produce by 2032 are emission-free electric vehicles. Automakers have generally recognized that EVs represent the future of the industry, but Wednesday’s proposal would greatly accelerate the trend. The proposal, which will be open to public comment before it is finalized, would greatly reduce a leading cause of air pollution in the U.S., as well as the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. “By proposing the most ambitious pollution standards ever for cars and trucks, we are delivering on the Biden-Harris administration’s promise to protect people and the planet, securing critical reductions in dangerous air and climate pollution, and ensuring significant economic benefits like lower fuel and maintenance costs for families,” said EPA Administrator Michael Regan. The proposal, which would apply to new light-duty vehicles made in 2027 and beyond, would be the strictest environmental standard the federal government has ever applied to automobiles. If it does force the industry to make EVs account for two-thirds of …

Broadcaster National Public Radio said Wednesday it would no longer post its news content on 52 official Twitter accounts in protest of the social media site labeling the independent U.S. news agency as “government-funded media.”  NPR is the first major news organization to go silent on Twitter. The social media platform owned by entrepreneur Elon Musk at first labeled NPR as “state-affiliated media,” the same tag it applies to propaganda outlets in China, Russia and other autocratic countries.  Twitter then revised its label to “government-funded media,” but NPR said that, too, was misleading because NPR is a private, nonprofit company with editorial independence. NPR says it receives less than 1% of its $300 million annual budget from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.   NPR chief executive John Lansing said that by not posting its news reports on Twitter, the network is protecting its credibility and would continue to produce journalism without “a shadow of negativity.”  In an email to staff explaining the decision, Lansing wrote, “It would be a disservice to the serious work you all do here to continue to share it on a platform that is associating the federal charter for public media with an abandoning of editorial independence or standards.”   He said that even if Twitter were to drop any description of NPR, the network would not immediately return to the platform.  “At this point I have lost my faith in the decision-making at Twitter,” Lansing said in an article posted by NPR. “I would …

Billionaire Elon Musk has told the BBC that running Twitter has been “quite painful” but that the social media company is now roughly breaking even after he acquired it late last year. In an interview also streamed live late Tuesday on Twitter Spaces, Musk discussed his ownership of the online platform, including layoffs, misinformation and his work style. “It’s not been boring. It’s quite a rollercoaster,” he told the U.K. broadcaster at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters. It was a rare chance for a mainstream news outlet to interview Musk, who also owns Tesla and SpaceX. After buying Twitter for $44 billion last year, Musk’s changes included eliminating the company’s communications department. Reporters who email the company to seek comment now receive an auto-reply with a poop emoji. The interview was sometimes tense, with Musk challenging the reporter to back up assertions about rising levels of hate speech on the platform. At other times, Musk laughed at his own jokes, mentioning more than once that he wasn’t the CEO but his dog Floki was. He also revealed that he sometimes sleeps on a couch at Twitter’s San Francisco office. Advertisers who had shunned the platform in the wake of Musk’s tumultuous acquisition have mostly returned, the billionaire said, without providing details. Musk predicted that Twitter could become “cash flow positive” in the current quarter “if current trends continue.” Because Twitter is a private company, information about its finances can’t be verified. After acquiring the platform, Musk carried out mass layoffs as …

China’s internet regulator has unveiled a proposed law that will require makers of new artificial intelligence, or AI, products to submit to security assessments before public release. The draft law released Tuesday by the Cyberspace Administration of China says that content generated by future AI products must reflect the country’s “core socialist values” and not encourage subversion of state power.   The draft law also said AI content must not promote discrimination based on ethnicity, race and gender, and should not provide false information.   The proposed law is expected to take effect sometime this year. The regulations come as several China-based tech companies, including Alibaba, JD.com and Baidu have released a flurry of new so-called generative AI products which can mimic human speech and generate content such as images and texts. The innovative feature has surged in popularity since San Francisco-based OpenAI introduced ChatGPT last November.   Some information for this report came from Reuters, Agence France-Presse. …

The Australian government is asking major banks and other institutions to take part in ‘wargaming’ exercises to test how they would respond to cyber-attacks. It follows recent mass data theft attacks on several large companies, which compromised the data of millions of Australians.      Australia is preparing for potential cyberattacks on critical services including hospitals, the banking system and the electricity grid.   Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil Tuesday warned that recent high-profile hacks on the telecommunications and health insurance sectors, which have affected millions of people, “were just the tip of the iceberg”.    The government is setting up a series of drills with large organizations to help them respond to security breaches.    Anna Bligh, chief executive of the Australian Banking Association, an industry body, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. Tuesday that cyber security drills organized by the government will make the sector more resilient.  “How would the whole system cope if one of the very large companies were taken down by a cyber threat?” Bligh asked. “The sort of scale and sophistication of the threat is now moving into something that we haven’t seen before. So, it is a very timely move.  This is now potentially a significant threat to the national security of the country.”    A major Australian financial services company revealed Tuesday that criminals who stole sensitive customer information last month have demanded a ransom.    The cyberattack on Latitude Financial resulted in the theft of 14 million customer records, including financial statements, driver’s license numbers and passport numbers.    The …

A Kuwaiti media outlet has unveiled a virtual news presenter generated using artificial intelligence, with plans for it to read online bulletins.    “Fedha” appeared on the Twitter account of the Kuwait News website Saturday as an image of a woman, her light-colored hair uncovered, wearing a black jacket and white T-shirt.    “I’m Fedha, the first presenter in Kuwait who works with artificial intelligence at Kuwait News. What kind of news do you prefer? Let’s hear your opinions,” she said in classical Arabic.    The site is affiliated with the Kuwait Times, founded in 1961 as the Gulf region’s first English-language daily.    Abdullah Boftain, deputy editor-in-chief for both outlets, said the move is a test of AI’s potential to offer “new and innovative content.”    In the future Fedha could adopt the Kuwaiti accent and present news bulletins on the site’s Twitter account, which has 1.2 million followers, he said.    “Fedha is a popular, old Kuwaiti name that refers to silver, the metal. We always imagine robots to be silver and metallic in color, so we combined the two,” Boftain said.     The presenter’s blonde hair and light-colored eyes reflect the oil-rich country’s diverse population of Kuwaitis and expatriates, according to Boftain.     “Fedha represents everyone,” he said.    Her initial 13-second video generated a flood of reactions on social media, including from journalists.  The rapid rise of AI globally has raised the promise of benefits, such as in health care and the elimination of mundane tasks, but also fears, for example over its potential to …

Electric car maker Tesla Inc. plans to build a factory in Shanghai to produce power-storage devices for sale worldwide, state media reported Sunday. Plans call for annual production of 10,000 Megapack units, according to the Xinhua News Agency and state television. They said the company made the announcement at a signing ceremony in Shanghai, where Tesla operates an auto factory. The factory is due to break ground in the third quarter of this year and start production in the second quarter of 2024, the reports said. Tesla didn’t immediately respond to requests for information. …