Category: Technology

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. …

A mayor in Australia’s Victoria state said Friday he may sue the artificial intelligence writing tool ChatGPT after it falsely claimed he’d served time in prison for bribery.  Hepburn Shire Council Mayor Brian Hood was incorrectly identified as the guilty party in a corruption case in the early 2000s. Brian Hood was the whistleblower in a corruption scandal involving a company partly owned by the Reserve Bank of Australia.  Several people were charged, but Hood was not one of them. That did not stop an article generated by ChatGPT, an automated writing service powered by artificial intelligence. The article cast him as the culprit who was jailed for his part in a conspiracy to bribe foreign officials to win currency printing contracts. Hood only found out after friends told him. He told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. He then used the chatbot software to see the story for himself. “After making the inquiry, it generated five or six paragraphs of information.  The really disturbing thing was that some of the paragraphs were accurate, and then were other paragraphs that described things that were completely incorrect.  It told me that I’d be charged with very serious criminal offenses, that I’d be convicted of them and that I had spent 30 months in jail,” he said. Hood said that if OpenAI, a U.S.-based company that owns the chatbot, does not correct the false claims, he will sue. It would be the first defamation lawsuit against the automated service. However, a new version of …

The last time humans were on the moon was in 1972. Now NASA is preparing to set foot back on the moon in 2025, if all goes as scheduled. VOA’s Alexander Kruglyakov spoke with the crew that will take part in the first of those missions: a planned flight around the Moon in November 2024. …

Samsung Electronics said Friday it is cutting the production of its computer memory chips in an apparent effort to reduce inventory as it forecasted another quarter of sluggish profit.  The South Korean technology giant, in a regulatory filing, said it has been reducing the production of certain memory products by unspecified “meaningful levels” to optimize its manufacturing operations, adding it has sufficient supplies of those chips to meet demand fluctuations.  The company predicted an operating profit of $455 million for the three months through March, which would be a 96% decline from the same period a year earlier. It said sales during the quarter likely fell 19% to $47.7 billion.  Samsung, which will release its finalized first quarter earnings later this month, said the demand for its memory chips declined as a weak global economy depressed consumer spending on technology products and forced business clients to adjust their inventories to nurse worsening finances.  Samsung had reported a near 70% drop in profit for the October-December quarter, which partially reflected how global events like Russia’s war on Ukraine and high inflation have rattled technology markets.  SK Hynix, another major South Korean semiconductor producer, said this week that it sold $1.7 billion in bonds that can be exchanged for the company’s shares to help fund its purchases of chipmaking materials as it weathers the industry’s downswing. SK Hynix had reported an operating loss of $1.28 billion for the October-December period, which marked its first quarterly deficit since 2012.  “While we have lowered …

Darknet users, beware: If you frequent criminal marketplaces in the internet’s underbelly, think again. Chances are you’re in the FBI’s crosshairs.  The FBI is cracking down on sites that peddle everything from guns to stolen personal data, and it is not only going after the sites’ administrators but also their users.   A recent surge in ransomware attacks and other malicious cyber activities has fueled the effort to shut down services that cater to online criminals.   But shutting down the marketplaces has proven ineffective. With each takedown, a new iteration pops up drawing users with it. Which is why the FBI is eyeing both the operators and users of these sites.    “We’re not only trying to attack the supply side, but we’re also attacking the demand side with the users,” a senior FBI official said during a Wednesday briefing on the agency’s takedown of Genesis Market, a large online criminal marketplace. “There’s consequences if you’re going to be using these types of sites to engage in this type of activity.”  The darknet, the hidden part of the internet that can only be accessed by a special browser, has long been home to various criminal marketplaces and forums.  One type of criminal marketplace there specializes in buying and selling illegal items, such as drugs, firearms and fraudulently obtained gift cards.  Another type of market trades in sensitive data, such as stolen credit cards, bank account details and other information that can be used for criminal activity. These sites are known as “data …

The push to legally restrict children’s access to social media in the United States is gaining steam. So far, however, researchers say there are both negative and positive aspects of minors using the platforms, as VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias found out. …

Furious at U.S. efforts that cut off access to technology to make advanced computer chips, China’s leaders appear to be struggling to figure out how to retaliate without hurting their own ambitions in telecoms, artificial intelligence and other industries. Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s government sees the chips — which are used in everything from phones to kitchen appliances to fighter jets — as crucial assets in its strategic rivalry with Washington and efforts to gain wealth and global influence. Chips are the center of a “technology war,” a Chinese scientist wrote in an official journal in February. China has its own chip foundries, but they supply only low-end processors used in autos and appliances. The U.S. government, starting under President Donald Trump, has been cutting off access to a growing array of tools to make chips for computer servers, AI and other advanced applications. Japan and the Netherlands have joined in limiting access to technology they say might be used to make weapons. Xi, in unusually pointed language, accused Washington in March of trying to block China’s development with a campaign of “containment and suppression.” He called on the public to “dare to fight.” Despite that, Beijing has been slow to retaliate against U.S. companies, possibly to avoid disrupting Chinese industries that assemble most of the world’s smartphones, tablet computers and other consumer electronics. They import more than $300 billion worth of foreign chips every year. Investing in self-reliance The ruling Communist Party is throwing billions of dollars at trying …

U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday it remains to be seen whether artificial intelligence (AI) is dangerous, but underscored that technology companies had a responsibility to ensure their products were safe before making them public.  Biden told science and technology advisers that AI could help in addressing disease and climate change, but it was also important to address potential risks to society, national security and the economy.  “Tech companies have a responsibility, in my view, to make sure their products are safe before making them public,” he said at the start of a meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. When asked if AI was dangerous, he said, “It remains to be seen. It could be.”  Biden spoke on the same day that his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, surrendered in New York over charges stemming from a probe into hush money paid to a porn actor.  Biden declined to comment on Trump’s legal woes, and Democratic strategists say his focus on governing will create a politically advantageous split screen of sorts as his former rival, a Republican, deals with his legal challenges.  The president said social media had already illustrated the harm that powerful technologies can do without the right safeguards.  “Absent safeguards, we see the impact on the mental health and self-images and feelings and hopelessness, especially among young people,” Biden said.   He reiterated a call for Congress to pass bipartisan privacy legislation to put limits on personal data that technology companies collect, …

Britain’s privacy watchdog hit TikTok with a multimillion-dollar penalty Tuesday for misusing children’s data and violating other protections for users’ personal information. The Information Commissioner’s Office said it issued a fine of $15.9 million to the short-video sharing app, which is wildly popular with young people. It’s the latest example of tighter scrutiny that TikTok and its parent, Chinese technology company ByteDance, are facing in the West, where governments are increasingly concerned about risks that the app poses to data privacy and cybersecurity. The British watchdog, which was investigating data breaches between May 2018 and July 2020, said TikTok allowed as many as 1.4 million children in the U.K. under 13 to use the app in 2020, despite the platform’s own rules prohibiting children that young from setting up accounts. TikTok didn’t adequately identify and remove children under 13 from the platform, the watchdog said. And even though it knew younger children were using the app, TikTok failed to get consent from their parents to process their data, as required by Britain’s data protection laws, the agency said. “There are laws in place to make sure our children are as safe in the digital world as they are in the physical world. TikTok did not abide by those laws,” Information Commissioner John Edwards said in a press release. TikTok collected and used personal data of children who were inappropriately given access to the app, he said. “That means that their data may have been used to track them and profile …

Australia said Tuesday it will ban TikTok on government devices, joining a growing list of Western nations cracking down on the Chinese-owned app due to national security fears.    Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said the decision followed advice from the country’s intelligence agencies and would begin “as soon as practicable”.    Australia is the last member of the secretive Five Eyes security alliance to pursue a government TikTok ban, joining its allies the United States, Britain, Canada and New Zealand.    France, the Netherlands and the European Commission have made similar moves.    Dreyfus said the government would approve some exemptions on a “case-by-case basis” with “appropriate security mitigations in place”.    Cybersecurity experts have warned that the app — which boasts more than one billion global users — could be used to hoover up data that is then shared with the Chinese government.    Surveys have estimated that as many as seven million Australians use the app — or about a quarter of the population.    In a security notice outlining the ban, the Attorney-General’s Department said TikTok posed “significant security and privacy risks” stemming from the “extensive collection of user data”.    China condemned the ban, saying it had “lodged stern representations” with Canberra over the move and urging Australia to “provide Chinese companies with a fair, transparent and non-discriminatory business environment”.    “China has always maintained that the issue of data security should not be used as a tool to generalize the concept of national security, abuse state power and unreasonably suppress companies from other countries,” foreign …