Technology | The Guardian

The famous Austin festival picked the Harbour City for its first foray overseas, bringing an eclectic mix of AI, celebrities and cutting edge ideas

From Asia to Europe, AI presenters are now reading the bulletins. They're attractive, ageless and work 24/7 without being paid. Should their human counterparts be worried? And what about the rest of us?Like most newsreaders, Zae-In wears a microphone pinned to her collar and clutches a stack of notes - but unlike most, her face is entirely fake. A virtual human" designed by South Korean artificial intelligence company Pulse9, Zae-In spent five months this year reading live news bulletins on national broadcaster SBS. That, you might think, is it then. To adapt the words of another animated newscaster: I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords." The future is now. The world belongs to the artificially intelligent and the News at Ten will never be the same again.Are things really that simple? Since spring, country after country have debuted their first AI news anchor: India has Sana and Lisa, Greece has Hermes, Kuwait has Fedha and Taiwan has Ni Zhen. She is bright, gorgeous, ageless, tireless and speaks multiple languages, and is totally under my control," said Kalli Purie, the vice chairperson of the India Today Group, when Sana first appeared in March. For broadcasters, it's easy to see the appeal of AI: virtual presenters can read rolling news for 24 hours unpaid and unfed, and it's unlikely they'll ever skip the queue at a lying-in-state. Continue reading...

Parent company Meta says bug caused inappropriate' auto-translations and was now fixed while employee says it pushed a lot of people over the edge'Meta has apologised after inserting the word terrorist" into the profile bios of some Palestinian Instagram users, in what the company says was a bug in auto-translation.The issue, which was first reported by 404media, affected users with the word Palestinian" written in English on their profile, the Palestinian flag emoji and the word alhamdulillah" written in Arabic. When auto-translated to English the phrase read: Praise be to god, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom." Continue reading...

The music publishers' lawsuit appears to be the first copyright case over AI's use of song lyricsMusic publishers Universal Music, ABKCO and Concord Publishing sued the artificial intelligence company Anthropic in Tennessee federal court on Wednesday, accusing it of misusing innumerable" copyrighted song lyrics to train its chatbot Claude.The lawsuit said Anthropic violates the publishers' rights through its use of lyrics from at least 500 songs ranging from the Beach Boys' God Only Knows and the Rolling Stones' Gimme Shelter to Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars' Uptown Funk and Beyonce's Halo. Continue reading...

Attorney general Letitia James brings lawsuit against Genesis Global - and parent DCG - and GeminiThe New York attorney general, Letitia James, on Thursday sued the cryptocurrency firms Genesis Global, and its parent company Digital Currency Group (DCG), and the Winklevoss twins' Gemini for allegedly defrauding" investors of more than $1bn.At the heart of the lawsuit is a program Gemini ran in partnership with Genesis. Dubbed Gemini Earn", the program let customers lend crypto assets such as bitcoin to Genesis. Gemini had billed the program as a low-risk investment" even when its internal analyses had found Genesis was on risky financial footing, James alleged. Continue reading...

The Fresh Prince, sidekick DJ Jazzy Jeff and more take a trip down memory lane and explore how 1988 revolutionised music forever. Plus: five of the best spin-off podcasts Don't get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereIt's intimate, it's engaging, it's a medium that feels somehow perfect for the confessional: podcasts and biopics are a really great fit. Perhaps that's why this week's two biggest releases are musical biographies of two megastars: Take That and Will Smith. The latter's new series Class of 88 is supposed to be a look at one year in hip-hop's history, but his back-and-forth with DJ pal Jazzy Jeff about scrapes involving an attempt to hack a plaster cast from Jeff's broken leg with a butterknife are far and away the highlight. The easy banter between Take That's remaining members also makes it clear why they've chosen to share their story in a medium that's recently seen Paul McCartney launch into mini biographies for a number of his biggest hits.As well as looking at Take That and Smith's podcasts, we'll be rounding up five of the finest ever spin-off podcasts (yes, S-Town is in there) and taking a look at the week's other great shows. Special mention goes to Ghost Story, which is one of the wildest real-life tales we've come across in a long, long time. Enjoy.

The whole world is warping to fit the screens of our mobile phones. I'm bracing myself for a wave of dramas set on ladders and staircasesThe phone is king. We are its subjects. Phone screens are vertical, set up for portrait mode, and our world must change to fit that frame. Cricket, of all things, is leading the way. The World Cup is presently being televised longways, so to speak, so you can watch it on your phone like you might watch TikTok. This offering comes to us courtesy of the streaming platform Disney+ Hotstar. Zeebiz.com says this feature facilitates a one-handed viewing experience, aligning with the way most users consume content". Makes it sound a tad smutty if you ask me.To be fair, cricket does lend itself to portrait mode because the action is generally shown from behind the stumps, so the wicket fits the up-down format. It is the same with tennis. Lucky for cricket, lucky for tennis. But whither football, which is televised side on? Radical change is necessary. To optimise phone viewing in portrait mode, we must move the goals from the short sides of the pitch to the long sides, and televise it from one of the short ends. The new playing area will be very short and very wide. The corner kicks will have to be more like goal kicks and keepers will be well within shooting range of the other goal. Chaos. But football must change or die.Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Spec bumps keep Apple top of smartwatch pack, with faster Siri and new hands-free gestureApple's smartwatches get their first speed increase in years along with brighter screens and new hands-free gestures - keeping the market leader still miles ahead of the pack.The Apple Watch Series 9 comes in various sizes and materials and starts at 399 (449/$399/A$649) - a 20 price cut in the UK. It launches alongside the Ultra 2 costing 799 (899/$799/A$1,399), which is 50 cheaper than last year's model. Continue reading...

Digit will begin its time on the floor by shifting empty tote boxes amid concerns humans will be shifted out of jobsAmazon is experimenting with a humanoid robot as the technology company increasingly seeks to automate its warehouses.It has started testing Digit, a two-legged robot that can grasp and lift items, at facilities this week. The device is first being used to shift empty tote boxes. Continue reading...

We try Tastilux, an Australian product that promises to mimic the flavour and mouthfeel of meat

There are three key drivers to get companies to change their behaviour: reputation, regulation and revenue,' the e-safety commissioner says

Revenue falls short of predictions as Elon Musk seeks to temper expectations' of Cybertruck, company's super-vehicle in prototypeTesla shares slid nearly 5% in after-hours trading Wednesday after several misses of Wall Street expectations in its third quarter earnings of 2023.Revenue for the third quarter was $23.4bn compared with analyst predictions of $24.09bn, with total gross profit declining 22% year-over-year. Earnings per share were $0.66 compared with a predicted $0.74, translating to a net income of $1.9bn - compared with $3.3bn one year ago. Continue reading...

Nintendo; Switch

Users say their posts no longer appear at top of feeds and some suspect platform is shadow-banning, or demoting contentInstagram users are accusing the social network of purposefully censoring posts in support of Palestine - underscoring longstanding concerns about unfair moderation as war rages in Gaza.Hena Mustafa, an Instagram user with 866 followers based in New York City, said that since she began posting about developments in Palestine as Israel mounted its siege in the past week, her Stories - photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours - have been receiving significantly less views". Friends and followers have messaged Mustafa to tell her that her posts are no longer appearing at the top of their Instagram feeds, her name has become unsearchable on the social network, and they are unable to interact with her posts. Continue reading...

Suit claims app features like disappearing messages and geolocating users make kids easy targets for dealersHanh Badger was working from home the morning of 17 June 2021. She went to the kitchen to grab a second cup of coffee and noticed her daughter's bedroom door was still shut. Badger found Brooke, 17, pale and motionless in bed.Soon, the sheriff arrived and immediately administered Naloxone, a nasal spray that reverses the effects of an opioid overdose. But Badger, a pharmacist, was confused. Brooke was a talented student who couldn't wait to begin college that fall. Continue reading...

Platform owned by Elon Musk says subscription trial is aimed at combating bots on the serviceX, the platform formerly known as Twitter, has begun rolling out a US$1 annual charge to new users in New Zealand and the Philippines in a move the service owned by Elon Musk says is aimed at combating bots.Fortune first reported the subscription plan, which costs US$1 a year for access to key functions including tweeting, replying, retweeting and liking. After Fortune's report, X revealed the details. Continue reading...

In this week's newsletter: The Twitter alternatives are gaining ground, and it wouldn't take much to steal X's crown as a news-sharing service Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article hereEvery time Elon Musk does something bad, you can see an influx of new users to Bluesky - one of the many social media sites to pop up as a potential Twitter/X alternative.The platform, still invite-only, has more than 1.5 million users but it is slowly growing. A website called Twexit, which tracks the exodus of users from Twitter to Bluesky, has noted spikes of people activating their invite codes in the past couple of months. Continue reading...

Double booking is the least of the worries awaiting the vacationers arriving at this desert homeWhether or not you think it deserves it, the online property-hire business Airbnb is taking a pasting of late, and now even horror films are piling in to sully its name. In this snappily edited film, a house in the desert near Joshua Tree national park (judging by the local flora) appears to have been double-booked, leading to murderous results. They complain about the circular frustration created by their inability to compare booking confirmations because they don't have the code for the house's wifi, which is accessible only on the Airbnb app, which they can't access because of lack of wifi or phone signal. Typical first-world problems.But the director, Travis Greene, and the screenwriter, Jonathan Buchanan, have more on their minds than shaming the booking service, mainly how to make the different crisscrossing timelines in the story make narrative sense without continuity errors, as the film cuts between four time periods in a single day. In the first, property co-owner Jessie shows up to clean a bungalow full of twee, millennial-friendly knick-knacks, as if the set designer went mad with a credit card in Urban Outfitters. At a different point that day, we see Instagram influencer Sam (Alisha Soper) and her actor boyfriend Dwayne (William Gabriel Grier)arrive at the house and unexpectedly meet a creepy middle-aged couple named Liz (Rosanne Limeres) and Richard (Tim Simek) already there, and insistent they have hired the place. Continue reading...

Large language models gave advice on how to conceal the true purpose of the purchase of anthrax, smallpox and plague bacteriaThe artificial intelligence models underpinning chatbots could help plan an attack with a biological weapon, according to research by a US thinktank.A report by the Rand Corporation released on Monday tested several large language models (LLMs) and found they could supply guidance that could assist in the planning and execution of a biological attack". However, the preliminary findings also showed that the LLMs did not generate explicit biological instructions for creating weapons. Continue reading...

Seven years of updates, advanced generative AI tools, top-class zoom and still undercuts high-end rivalsGoogle's top Pixel is back to outshoot, outsmart and outlast the competition, promising seven years of full software support. But whether the Pixel 8 Pro's high-end features justify a sharp price increase is open to debate.Costing 999 (1,099/$999/A$1,699), the new Android still undercuts the 1,200 competition from Apple and Samsung, but the 150 jump over last year's stellar 7 Pro stings.Screen: 6.7in 120Hz QHD+ OLED (489ppi)Processor: Google Tensor G3RAM: 12GB of RAMStorage: 128, 256 or 512GBOperating system: Android 14Camera: 50MP + 48MP ultrawide + 48MP 5x telephoto, 10.5MP selfieConnectivity: 5G, eSIM, wifi 7, UWB, NFC, Bluetooth 5.3 and GNSSWater resistance: IP68 (1.5m for 30 minutes)Dimensions: 162.6 x 76.5 x 8.8mmWeight: 213g Continue reading...

Researchers say AI tool has potential to enhance diagnosis and treatment - but without discernible biasesChatGPT will see you now. The artificial intelligence tool may be better than a doctor at following recognised treatment standards for depression, and without the gender or social class biases sometimes seen in the physician-patient relationship, a study suggests.The findings were published in Family Medicine and Community Health, the open access journal owned by British Medical Journal. The researchers said further work was needed to examine the risks and ethical issues arising from AI's use. Continue reading...

Cuts in engineering, talent and finance teams affect 3% of the 20,000 staff and come amid slowing revenue growthMicrosoft's LinkedIn said on Monday it would lay off 668 employees across its engineering, talent and finance teams in the second round of job cuts this year for the social media network for professionals amid slowing revenue growth.The cuts, which affect more than 3% of the 20,000-strong staff, add to the tens of thousands of job losses this year in the technology sector in the face of an uncertain economic outlook. Continue reading...

Facebook parent company and two subcontractors face court hearing over unfair dismissal allegationsSettlement talks have collapsed between Facebook's parent company, Meta, and Kenyan content moderators over a lawsuit alleging unfair dismissal, a tech rights group working with the plaintiffs has said.The 184 moderators sued Meta and two subcontractors earlier this year after they allegedly lost their jobs with one of the subcontractors, Sama, for organising a union. They say they were then blacklisted from applying for the same roles at a second firm, Majorel, after Facebook changed contractors. Continue reading...

Sony; PS5

TaxWatch analysis estimates British arms of seven major tech firms paid 750m in corporation tax instead of possible 2.8bnThe UK might have missed out on as much as 2bn in tax in 2021 from big tech companies shifting their profits elsewhere, according to an estimate by a group campaigning for greater tax transparency.Seven of the biggest US-headquartered tech companies, including Apple, Microsoft and Google owner Alphabet, are estimated to have paid 750m in UK corporation tax and the digital sales tax, compared with 2.8bn in estimated tax due had profits not been routed elsewhere, according to TaxWatch, a campaign group. Continue reading...

Dubbed the crackberry', it was a tech gamechanger and status symbol. So what happened to the first smartphone and why didn't the execs see it coming?A decade and a half ago, there was no bigger status symbol than the BlackBerry. Lady Gaga tweeted from hers. Madonna slept with one under her pillow. Kim Kardashian owned three of them. When he became president, Barack Obama fought tooth and nail to be able to keep his device. When Naomi Campbell lost her temper with a housekeeper in 2006, which household object did she choose to use as a projectile weapon? That's right, it was the humble BlackBerry. Without any overstatement, they were everywhere.And yet, when was the last time you thought about BlackBerry? A year ago? A decade ago? More? The BlackBerry currently occupies a genuinely strange space in the culture. It swept in with such gamechanging ferocity - here was a phone that allowed you to send emails, liberating its user from the tyranny of the office - only to be displaced just as quickly when Apple announced the iPhone. BlackBerry's ups and downs were so sudden and violent that they're now almost impossible to comprehend. Continue reading...

As the world's wealthiest men chest-thump in low-Earth orbit, others wonder how their mess will eventually be cleaned upYou're a mega-billionaire. You already own one of the world's most influential social media platforms, and dominate more than half of the US electric car market. You are regularly named as one of the world's most influential people. You've had your hairline sorted, you've already had 11 children, so what do you do next?For Elon Musk, the answer is: attempt to dominate space. Continue reading...

The social network owner's business model appears to include a slurry of unmoderated toxicity, such as footage of a murderAt 4am a couple of weeks ago, Ryan Carson, a young activist for social justice, was sitting with his girlfriend at the B38 bus stop at Lafayette Avenue and Malcolm X Boulevard in New York. They were on their way home from a wedding party. Carson was suddenly accosted by an aggressive stranger who asked: What the fuck are you looking at?" and then stabbed him to death.The murder was captured by a surveillance camera, the video from which somehow made its way to the New York Post and thence on to the internet, where it was seized upon on X, formerly known as Twitter, by one of the social network's prolific shitposters" (the ones X's owner, Elon Musk, calls creators"). This particular individual specialises in incendiary incidents from all over the world and posts several times a day to just under a million followers.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk Continue reading...

While falling sales suggest the demise of print, the industry has proved adaptable and remains attractive to media baronsThe imminent auction of the Telegraph is being viewed as a litmus test of the value of influential national newspaper titles in the era of increasingly digitally led profitability. Media barons and conglomerates, who have hung on to old-world assets for decades in the belief it was right to bet on a sector largely unfancied by tech-obsessed investors, are watching it keenly.Since the onset of the digital era at the start of the century, newspapers have, with a few notable exceptions, been a precarious investment at best. Continue reading...

Completion of sale follows regulator's decision to allow it after competition concerns were addressedMicrosoft has completed its $69bn (57bn) deal to buy Activision Blizzard, the maker of games including Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, after the UK's competition watchdog cleared the acquisition.The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) had moved to block the deal in April, citing concerns that Microsoft - the maker of the Xbox gaming console - would dominate the nascent cloud gaming market. Continue reading...

The former Alameda CEO offered stunning testimony against her ex-boyfriend and failed crypto mogul being tried for fraudIn the second week of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto fraud trial, Manhattan federal prosecutors called their star witness to the stand: former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison. She delivered stunning, detailed testimony against the failed crypto mogul.Over the course of three days, Ellison, also Bankman-Fried's ex-girlfriend, described her work at FTX's sister hedge fund - repeatedly implicating Bankman-Fried in allegedly siphoning $10bn in customer funds from the cryptocurrency exchange to boost Alameda after a crash in the market. Continue reading...

Microsoft; PC, Xbox

Federal judge seems to side with ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation that ban is unenforceable and unconstitutionalA federal judge appeared skeptical about Montana's TikTok ban in a hearing on Thursday, telling representatives of the state that their argument for restrictions on the app just confuses me".US district judge Donald Molloy heard arguments in a case filed by TikTok and five Montana content creators who want the court to block the state's ban on the video-sharing app before it takes effect 1 January. Continue reading...

As the tool becomes less of a curiosity and more a part of daily life, fans are finding clever uses - and discovering limitationsNext month ChatGPT will celebrate its first birthday - marking a year in which the chatbot, for many, turned AI from a futuristic concept to a daily reality.Its universal accessibility has led to a host of concerns, from job losses to disinformation to plagiarism. Over the same period, tens of millions of users have been investigating what the platform can do to make their lives just a little bit easier. Continue reading...

Engineers want to set up giant oven at HS2 boring sites to create calcined clay mix for use in foundations and platformsThe recent announcement that HS2 may still extend to Euston station instead of terminating in the suburbs could be good news for a group of scientific alchemists planning to conjure concrete from London clay.The boring for HS2 will produce more than a million tonnes of waste overall, and that clay will need to be carted away on the surface. Continue reading...

Trauma experts say Jon Romano, who was released from prison in 2020 after serving time for a 2004 shooting, is doing even more harmA school shooter who went viral on TikTok for talking publicly about his actions is facing backlash from many who believe he should not be on the platform at all.In 2020, Jon Romano was released from prison after serving 17 years out of a 20-year prison sentence for bringing a shotgun to Columbia High School in upstate New York back in 2004. Romano, who was 16 years old at the time, shot a teacher in the leg after the assistant principal attempted to wrestle the gun away from him. Continue reading...

Case of footage from set of Palestinian film being repurposed to make false claims is far from one-off

A new housing development outside Phoenix is looking towards European cities for inspiration and shutting out the cars. So far residents love itIf you were to imagine the first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the modern US, it would be difficult to conceive such a thing sprouting from the environs of Phoenix, Arizona - a sprawling, concrete incursion into a brutal desert environment that is sometimes derided as the least sustainable city in the country.But it is here that such a neighborhood, called Culdesac, has taken root. On a 17-acre site that once contained a car body shop and some largely derelict buildings, an unusual experiment has emerged that invites Americans to live in a way that is rare outside of fleeting experiences of college, Disneyland or trips to Europe: a walkable, human-scale community devoid of cars. Continue reading...

Delete Act signed by Gavin Newsom will enable residents to request all data brokers in the state remove their informationIn a victory for privacy advocates and consumers, the California governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill that would enable residents to request that their personal information be deleted from the coffers of all the data brokers in the state.The bill, SB 362, otherwise known as the Delete Act, was introduced in April 2023 by the state senator Josh Becker in an attempt to give Californians more control over their privacy. Californians already have a right to request their data be deleted under current state privacy laws, but it requires filing a request with each individual company. Continue reading...

The e-sim is gaining traction as smartphone connectivity shoots for the stars, but it's not without risk - as I found when I fired up my new iPhone 15 Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereA shocking thing happened when I upgraded to an iPhone 15 Pro: my sim card figuratively dissolved into a tiny pile of ash, or rather, was transformed into a wholly digital e-sim. I blame myself, but I blame Apple even more: while transferring my data from my old iPhone, I was asked whether I would also like to move my phone number. I frowned - of course I would - and tapped yes. A minute later, my new iPhone had a mobile signal, my old phone did not, and my sim card was utterly redundant.I can't feign total ignorance. I'd heard tales of woe from friends forced to move to e-sims when they bought a US version of the iPhone 14, which lacked a sim slot. New iPhones sold outside the US still take sim cards however - and I'd been planning to keep my old one, if only for convenience. Continue reading...

Dozens of contract workers at Amazon warehouses say they were tricked into toiling and living in grueling, squalid conditions

Foreign workers at the Middle East locations of US and UK brands allege low pay, harsh conditions and a legal limbo with few protections

Investment manager tells of how fraudsters managed to persuade him to hand over his life savings

Wording will form communique for AI summit next month where agreement on organisation to scrutinise technology is unlikely to be reachedRishi Sunak's advisers are trying to thrash out an agreement among world leaders on a statement warning about the risks of artificial intelligence as they finalise the agenda for the AI safety summit next month.Downing Street officials have been touring the world talking to their counterparts from China to the EU and the US as they work to agree on words to be used in a communique at the two-day conference. Continue reading...

Alex Lykos documents life without a smartphone, tablet or laptop in Disconnect Me

Elon Musk endorsed users who have posted wrong and unverifiable things' while paid-for accounts spread fake newsX's handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict has come under scrutiny after a deluge" of fake posts and Elon Musk's recommendation of war coverage from accounts that have made false claims or antisemitic comments.The owner of X, formerly Twitter, recommended two accounts on Sunday. He wrote: For following the war in real-time, @WarMonitors and @sentdefender are good. It is also worth following direct sources on the ground. Please add interesting options in the replies below." Continue reading...

Digital artist Daniel Ambrosi has created an exhibition that interprets quintessentially English, eighteenth-century vistas with AI. The exhibition runs at the Robilant+Voena gallery in London from 6 October Continue reading...

Speed is of the essence, so here are some steps to follow if you suspect fraud

Titanium sides, USB-C, 5x camera and new action button make for the biggest iPhone upgrade in yearsApple's latest, most expensive superphone is a big step forward for the iPhone. But despite a powerful new camera and USB-C port, the best feature is simply its lighter weight.That is because Apple's 6.7in iPhones have always been beasts in price and weight. But while this new iPhone 15 Pro Max is still wallet-crushingly expensive, starting at 1,199 (1,449/$1,199/A$2,199), it is at least 19g lighter, making a huge difference in your hand and pockets. Continue reading...

Matt Johnson's boisterous drama about the rise and fall of the mobile - and the Canadian nerds who created it - diverges refreshingly from the usual arc of product success storiesTech years are like dog years. Less than a decade and a half has passed since the early 2010 sheyday of the BlackBerry smartphone. But in the accelerated world of technology, the once coveted accessory of any self-respecting business bigshot or self-promoting celebrity (Paris Hilton used to carry five of them at a time) now might as well be an ancient relic.By any standard, the BlackBerry story is a wild ride - going from a prototype cobbled together from bits of a pocket calculator to a product so addictive that it was nicknamed the CrackBerry; from a share of the US mobile phone market that was at one point estimated at about 40% to virtual oblivion in the space of just a few years. Based on the 2015 book Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry, the film, directed by Matt Johnson (The Dirties), is a boisterous account of the boom-and-bust, crash-and-burn trajectory of one of the world's first smartphones and the chaotic collection of Canadian nerds that created it. Continue reading...